Thriller Author Ian Kruger

Archive for the ‘News’ Category

12 April 2010

US President Praises South Africa for Dismantling its Nuclear Weapons Program: But has it really been done?

As reported by News24.com on 12 April 2010, President Barack Obama commended South Africa on the 11th for voluntarily dismantling its nuclear weapons program when he convened with South African President Jacob Zuma on the eve of a key summit on nuclear terrorism in Washington. But how do we know that the South African nuclear weapons have really been dismantled? This is the question that South African Author Ian Kruger poses in his thriller novel Strike of the Black Mamba.

The novel opens with the ingenious theft of a shipment of nuclear material from a cargo ship destined for Japan’s nuclear power reactors off the Namibian coast by a mastermind criminal, Donald Morse. Morse is an American whose company used to supply the South African Government with arms during the apartheid years, in contravention of the UN arms embargo at the time. Morse was eventually apprehended and sentenced to twenty years imprisonment. He later on escaped and fled to South Africa.

In the story, Morse knows that South African scientists developed really sophisticated nuclear weapons, and some of them stowed these weapons secretly away when the nuclear program was dismantled. Under the guise of a new Afrikaner right-wing movement, Morse proceeds to excavate the nuclear weapons and he has a chilling use for them which is only revealed at the climax of the novel.

Kruger mentions that the idea for the South African nuclear weapons came from a non-fiction book written by investigative journalists Peter Hounam and Steve McQuillan in 1995. The title of the book was The Mini-Nuke Conspiracy: Mandela’s Nuclear Nightmare and it proposed that apart from the six conventional atom bombs that the South Africans had built and showed to the world in 1993, they had secretly developed much more sophisticated nuclear weaponry, including mini nukes. They concluded that it is highly possible that these weapons of mass destruction might be secretly in the hands of right-wing elements in South Africa.

“The Mini-Nuke Conspiracy really set my creative juices flowing,” says Kruger, “and although my book, Strike of the Black Mamba, was first published in 2008, it is now even more relevant in lieu of three recent developments regarding South Africa. First is the praise given by the US President to South Africa regarding the dismantling of its nuclear weapons. Second is the recent racial tensions caused by Julius Malema, president of the ANC Youth League, stirring much trouble by singing the struggle song containing the words ’shoot the Boer or Farmer’, as well as the murder of right-wing extremist Eugene Terreblanche, leader of the AWB, on his farm last week. Third is the terror threats made by Al-Qaeda as reported in the media last week, when it said it might attack athletes at the Soccer World Cup Games in South Africa in June 2010.”

Kruger advises us to keep in mind that the plot of his thriller novel is only a piece of fiction. Or is it?

Strike of the Black Mamba can be found at most online retailers world-wide, such as Amazon, as well as Kalahari.net and Crink.co.za in South Africa. The book was published by CruGuru with the ISBNs 978-1-920265-13-7 and 978-1-920265-72-4. More information can be found on Ian Kruger’s website: www.iankruger.com.

As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post the paperback version of my thriller novel “Strike of the Black Mamba” (ISBN: 9781920265137) is now available at most online book retailers. Here are some of the sites where you can find the book:

USA: Amazon.com
UK: Amazon.co.uk
Canada: Amazon.ca
Australia: Booktopia.com.au
South Africa: Kalahari.net

These are just a few examples — there are many well known online book retailers that sell my book. Just go and search for it in your favorite store!

My thriller novel “Strike of the Black Mamba” has now been published by CruGuru as an e-book in both PDF and Microsoft Reader formats. The ISBN for the PDF version is 9781920265342 and for the Microsoft Reader version is 9781920265359.

The novel is sold via most large online e-book retailers, such as Diesel eBooks, ereadable, Powell’s Books, BooksOnBoard, eBooks About Everything!, eChapterOne.com, etc.

The retail price is $6.99, but some of these sellers are selling it at a discount; I’ve seen prices as low as $5.59. If you are into e-books then please check it out!

The TV interview with SABC News International was quite an interesting experience. It was a quick affair, about five minutes in total, sandwiched between news items.

They did not brief me beforehand about the questions I could expect, but it was more or less the standard book interview – although I was asked to give my views on nuclear terrorism. I did a lot of research for the book, so it did not catch me off-guard.

I’ve been invited for a TV interview about my thriller novel “Strike of the Black Mamba” tomorrow morning (18 May 2008) between 07:30 and 09:00 South African time (about GMT + 2 hours) on SABC International. It is on The Weekender Show’s book slot. The station transmits to the U.S, most of the African continent, parts of Europe and Asia.

I’m quite thrilled about it and will let you know how it went!

The updated and hopefully improved version of the book video trailer for my thriller novel Strike of the Black Mamba is now finished and available on YouTube for viewing. I would love to hear your comments! Please leave a comment on my Blog or on YouTube.

Finally my debut thriller novel, “Strike of the Black Mamba”, is available on Amazon.com. Please take a look at my Amazon book page and if you do read the book and like it, I would really appreciate if you could write a review on Amazon for it!

My new thriller novel, “Strike of the Black Mamba” is now available! The book is an international crime thriller dealing with the ingenious theft of nuclear material and weapons and the spine-chilling use thereof. Please take a look on my Thriller Novels page.