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Arms Trade #1

The Trade

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James Martingell is a self-made explorer, hunter and prospector, and few men know war-torn Southern Africa better than he. He also sells guns to whoever can afford them. Offered a fortune to deliver a huge stock of weapons to would-be Boer rebels in the Transvaal, he supposes his fortune is made. Instead, he finds himself facing betrayal, imprisonment, open warfare and eventually murder as he becomes involved with international traders. Will he survive long enough to become the best known, and most feared, gun-runner in the world?

450 pages, Hardcover

First published December 18, 1997

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About the author

Christopher Nicole

225 books58 followers
Christopher Robin Nicole was born on 7 December 1930 in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana), where he was raised. He is the son of Jean Dorothy (Logan) and Jack Nicole, a police officer, both Scottish. He studied at Queen's College in Guyana and at Harrison College in Barbados. He was a fellow at the Canadian Bankers Association and a clerk for the Royal Bank of Canada in Georgetown and Nassau from 1947 to 1956. In 1957, he moved to Guernsey, Channel Islands, United Kingdom, where he currently lives, but he also has a domicile in Spain.

On 31 March 1951, he married his first wife, Jean Regina Amelia Barnett, with whom he had two sons, Bruce and Jack, and two daughters, Julie and Ursula, they divorced. On 8 May 1982 he married for the second time with fellow writer Diana Bachmann.

As a romantic and passionate of history, Nicole has been published since 1957, when he published a book about West Indian Cricket. He published his first novel in 1959 with his first stories set in his native Caribbean. Later he wrote many historical novels set mostly in tumultuous periods like World War I, World War II and the Cold War, and depict places in Europe, Asia and Africa. He also wrote classic romance novels. He specialized in Series and Sagas, and continues to write into the 21st century with no intention of retiring.

He signs his books as Christopher Nicole and uses several pseudonyms, some of them female. Pseudonyms used include: Peter Grange, Andrew York, Robin Cade, Mark Logan, Christina Nicholson, Alison York, Leslie Arlen, Robin Nicholson, C. R. Nicholson, Daniel Adams, Simon McKay, Caroline Gray and Alan Savage. He wrote disaster thrillers in collaboration with his wife, Diana Bachmann, under the penname Max Marlow. Under his different pseudonyms he has worked with many publishing houses: Jarrolds, Hutchinson, Simon & Schuster, Coward-McCann & Geoghegan, Jove, Michael Joseph, Mills & Boon, and Severn House.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christop... and
http://openlibrary.org/authors/OL1009...

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5 stars
114 (38%)
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3 stars
48 (16%)
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16 (5%)
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Profile Image for Michael Butler.
7 reviews
June 25, 2018
Tons of action and intrigue

Sex, guns, subterfuge, gunrunning; what’s not to love? Lots of blood and guts, travelogue of virtually all of the Horn of Africa to Afghanistan, with characters as intriguing as the hero (the gunrunner) to the Mullah (meant to be the savior of Somalia)! Love interests die, main characters are routinely threatened, kidnapped, raped, and sullied in all fashions, and then almost always rescued. Almost always. If you like action, and an insight into a historical period of the development and exploitation of swaths of Africa by European powers and amoral entrepreneurs, this is your kind of novel. As for me, I’m off to read the next rendition of this exciting set.
26 reviews
October 29, 2019
History repeats itself

How extraordinary to read about areas of the world that don’t seem to have changed much in 120 or so years. Off to the next one.
202 reviews1 follower
December 18, 2019
You need arms to help your cause

This is my first book by this author and will not be the last it's definitely worth the time to read this book.
98 reviews1 follower
October 25, 2022
Enjoy all the adventures of the author. Some are interesting and some are unbelievable, so take your pick. But it is all very enjoyable and hard to put you book down once you start.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews