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LAST OF THE PIRATES: The Search for Bob Denard

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In Belgium, Britain, France and colonial Africa in the sixties, people followed the exploits of les affreux--the white mercenaries--like the easterners followed the exploits of the gun fighters and bank robbers of the Old West or the bank robbers of the 1930s. The most famous of the Congo mercenaries was Robert "Bob" Denard, whose mercenary career lasted from 1961 to 1995 and spanned eight countries in Africa and the Middle East. Denard was the only major Congo mercenary leader not to write his memoirs. Judging from the title of this book, I expected a biography. Alas, it was not. Weinberg spends only seven pages on his life and career before the 1978 Comoros coup which put his patron, Ahmed Abdullah Abderamane, in power as president. Denard remained in the Comoros as the power behind the throne for the next eleven years until Abdallah was murdered on the night of Nov. 26, 1989. Denard was suspected of the murder but never tried. Most of the book is an investigation, done through interviews with witnesses--most of whom the author feels are lieing--into the murder. Finishing the book I knew no more about the murder than I did from reading a couple of articles in Jeune Afrique at the time of the murder. The best part of the book were the interviews with Denard and with those who worked with him in the Comoros. This book will be a valuable source for someone writing a biography of Denard in English--but it fails as a substitute for one. It also does not provide enough context about the French role in Africa during Denard's early career, but only hints at it during the interviews and in the postscript. If Weinberg wants something involving Denard of real importance to investigate, she should look into his involvement in the mercenary revolt of 1967 and the Katangese revolt of 1966 in the Congo. These are events which might have involved the secret services of Belgium or France, or both, and in a country whose future was once assumed to be important for the future of Africa. There are several memoirs of Congolese politicians, books on the French role in Africa, and mercenary memoirs that she can use as a starting basis for such an investigation. But when she writes this story she should avoid padding it with descriptions of her own activities which are of little relevance to the story.