Chrys Chime, a postgraduate student at Southampton, writes a book: The Wacky World of Dark Dictators. Many publishers are not impressed. Pete Alott, an upstart publisher and son of a British publishing mogul, decides to gamble on it. The book stirs up the Rastamuffins, an obscure group of fundamentalist Rastafarians that considers it heretical and a collective insult that Haile Selassie should be maligned as a dictator. The media take up the story, and cowboy publishing triumphs. Chrys's girlfriend, Amanda, is shot in Lagos, Nigeria. Chrys is abducted in London. The arrows point to the...