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Jensen & Bouche Adventure Series

Willowbrook Cottage, Hampton-in-Arden 2023

Dr Helen Brooks, an esteemed archaeologist, is in her mid-forties, with striking, bright and alert blue eyes that reflect her deep curiosity and passion for the ancient Assyrian Empire. At 5’7”, with a slender, eye-catching figure, the result of many physically demanding years spent in the field, often in hostile conditions. Her jet-black hair cascades down over her shoulders, often tied back in a ponytail when she’s working. With lightly tanned skin and faint lines around her eyes, from continually squinting in the bright sunlight, evidence of her many Middle and Near Eastern archaeological expeditions. When not in her khaki field kit, she wears scholarly-chic style attire—smart casual blouses, tailored slacks and low-heel ankle fashion boots. Sitting alone in her comfortable, softly lit study. The room is her haven of information and creativity, located at the back of her cottage, where a large bay window, with heavy velvet curtains on either side, overlooks her small cottage garden, which Helen tends in her spare time. The walls of the study were lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with an impressive collection of dust-laden reference books, academic volumes, ancient manuscripts, maps, field notebooks, archaeology journals and photographs of past expeditions. The odour of old paper and leather-bound books fills the air, mingling with the faint aroma of freshly brewed Arabica espresso coffee. Her inlaid green leather solid oak Captain’s style desk, worn smooth by years of use, is usually cluttered with several research papers and well-thumbed research notebooks. A vintage globe sat on one corner of the desk, while a brass reading lamp on the other corner cast a warm glow over her work. In her hands, Helen held a large A3, carefully preserved high-resolution black-and-white photograph of an ancient clay tablet. The tablet is covered in intricate Arcadian cuneiform inscriptions, with symbols and characters arranged in a seemingly chaotic yet purposeful manner. As she gazes at the photograph, her keen eyes trace delicate lines and curves of the script, searching for patterns or hidden meanings. She has spent countless hours studying the tablet’s photograph, convinced it holds the key to one of the greatest archaeological mysteries of all time: the location of Assyrian King Sargon II’s long-lost tomb.

Some crimes wear suits. Some wear silence. Both leave the same bodies at dawn. When Kenyan wildlife ranger Elias Mwangi arrives at yet another kill site in the Amboseli reserve — tusks gone, a calf pressing against a mother that will never rise — he understands something the official reports will not say: this is not poaching. This is an extraction operation. Precise, scheduled, and run by people who have never once stood in the dust where the dying happens. In Interpol’s Lyon HQ data confirms what the field already knows. Seizures are up. Animal populations are falling. The numbers don't reconcile. Something is moving through channels no one is watching — and the network behind it has spent years making itself indistinguishable from the legitimate world. Enter Matt Jensen and Lisette Bouche of JB Associates — former intelligence operatives who operate in the space between institutional mandates. Matt goes to the ground in Amboseli. Lisette goes to the paper. What they find changes the shape of everything they thought they were fighting. Echoes of the Savannah moves between the dust of East Africa and the polished rooms of European finance, between men who guard a fence line with rifles and women who trace a system with billing codes and provenance letters. It is a story about two kinds of war fought across two kinds of terrain, and about what happens when the people waging both finally understand they are looking at the same enemy from opposite ends. The ivory trade. The horn trade. The big-cat trade. The luxury lanes that carry all three. The Archive . A word that moves men like a switch. A function so carefully built that no single piece of it ever carries a name — until, finally, one does. From the kill sites of Amboseli to the auction rooms of Paris, from the bonded storage vaults of Luxembourg to a quiet residential street in Geneva, Echoes of the Savannah follows a trail that leads not to a poacher, not to a courier, not to a logistics firm, but to the man who designed the entire architecture of exploitation — and then withdrew behind it so completely that the system itself became his disguise. A literary thriller about wildlife crime, institutional complicity, and the long, costly work of dismantling a system built specifically to outlast the people trying to stop it.

The Real-World Wildlife Crime Behind my Novel

The hidden criminal economy threatening Africa's wildlife

Extinction isn't an accident. It's a business.

That is the central idea behind Echoes of the Savannah —but the wildlife crime at the heart of the novel is rooted in a very real global problem. Illegal wildlife trafficking is no longer simply a matter of poachers entering a national park and killing an animal. Modern wildlife crime can involve organised criminal networks operating across borders, corruption, document fraud, transportation, financial transactions and international markets. The animals may be killed thousands of miles from the people who ultimately profit from their deaths. The result is a criminal economy in which elephants, rhinoceroses, big cats and many other species can become commodities. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), wildlife trafficking is part of the wider globalised illegal economy and shares characteristics with other forms of transnational organised crime. Its 2024 World Wildlife Crime Report specifically examines illegal trade in elephant ivory, rhinoceros horn and big-cat bones, among other wildlife products. (UNODC)

Ivory: when an elephant becomes a commodity

Few wildlife products have become as internationally recognisable as elephant ivory.

The tusks of an elephant can be transformed into carvings, ornaments, jewellery and other objects. But behind every illegally obtained tusk is the death or suffering of an animal and the loss of an important member of an ecosystem. Ivory trafficking is also a supply-chain problem. Poaching takes place at source, but the ivory must then be collected, moved, concealed, transported and sold. This creates opportunities for intermediaries, corrupt officials, document fraud and international trafficking networks. Seizures provide only a partial picture. UNODC cautions that seizure data represent an unknown proportion of actual illegal trade flows, meaning that what authorities intercept cannot simply be assumed to represent the full scale of the market. (UNODC) That distinction is important. A seizure is not necessarily the crime. It is evidence of the crime. And behind a single intercepted shipment may be a much larger network of suppliers, financiers, transporters, brokers and buyers.

Rhino horn: rarity, demand and organised crime

Rhinoceros horn presents another particularly disturbing example.

Rhino horn has been targeted by international trafficking networks for decades. The Wildlife Justice Commission's global threat assessment, submitted to CITES, examined hundreds of rhino-horn seizure incidents between 2012 and 2021 and identified trafficking as a form of transnational organised crime. (CITES) The horn's value is driven not by any scientifically demonstrated medicinal benefit, but by demand, cultural beliefs, status and perceptions of rarity. CITES has described rhino horn and other high- value wildlife derivatives as targets for transnational organised crime groups. (CITES) For criminals, the attraction is obvious: a relatively small quantity of a highly valuable commodity can cross borders through sophisticated trafficking networks. For the rhinoceros, the consequences are catastrophic. A poached rhino is not simply a lost commercial asset. It represents the loss of a breeding animal, the disruption of a population and, in some cases, the abandonment of a dependent calf. That human and ecological cost rarely appears in a trafficking ledger.

Big cats and the trade in derivatives

Wildlife crime does not stop with ivory and horn.

Big cats are also targeted for their skins, bones and other body parts. CITES reporting has identified traditional medicine products, bones and skins among the big-cat specimens most frequently seized, with tiger and leopard specimens featuring prominently. (CITES) UNODC's 2024 analysis also examines trafficking connected to the big-cat bone trade, including concerns about the sourcing and processing of lion and other big-cat parts. (UNODC) This reveals another characteristic of wildlife trafficking: criminals can diversify. When one commodity becomes harder to obtain, another may become attractive. When enforcement increases in one country, routes can shift. When demand changes, products can be repackaged or redirected towards another market. The animal becomes the source of a commodity portfolio. That is one of the darker themes explored in Echoes of the Savannah .

Wildlife crime and organised criminal networks

The image of a lone poacher acting independently can obscure the larger reality.

A person carrying a rifle in a reserve may be only one component of a much wider operation. Behind the person at the point of extraction may be someone supplying information, equipment or money. Further along the chain there may be intermediaries, transporters, document specialists, corrupt facilitators, wholesalers and buyers. The criminal structure may not resemble a traditional hierarchy. It can operate through compartmentalised networks in which individuals know only what they need to know. That makes wildlife crime particularly difficult to investigate. CITES has repeatedly emphasised that wildlife crime can involve organised criminal networks, corruption and sophisticated cross-border techniques. It has also stressed that wildlife crime requires responses involving more than wildlife agencies alone—including customs, police, financial investigators, prosecutors and international cooperation. (CITES)

The money behind the killing

Perhaps the most important lesson is that wildlife crime should not be viewed solely as a conservation problem. It is also a financial and organised-crime problem. Money generated by illegal wildlife trafficking can move through legitimate-looking commercial structures, while companies, logistics operations and other businesses may provide opportunities to conceal ownership, movement or transactions. This is why following the money can be as important as following the poacher. An investigation that arrests people at the point of extraction may stop one operation. An investigation that identifies the financiers, facilitators, transport networks and beneficiaries can potentially disrupt an entire criminal structure. That is the principle behind Matt Jensen and Lisette Bouche's investigation in Echoes of the Savannah . Their challenge is not simply to find who killed the animals. It is to discover who benefits.

Conservation is more than protecting animals

The consequences of wildlife trafficking extend beyond individual species.

Elephants, rhinos and large predators form part of complex ecosystems. Their disappearance can alter ecological relationships and affect landscapes and the communities that depend upon them. Wildlife crime can also undermine legitimate conservation, tourism, local livelihoods and confidence in law enforcement. CITES has warned that wildlife crime can damage ecosystems, livelihoods and development opportunities while contributing to the risk of species extinction. (CITES) This is why protecting wildlife requires more than armed patrols. Rangers remain essential. They are often the people standing between endangered animals and armed criminals. But they cannot win the wider battle alone. Effective responses require intelligence sharing, forensic investigation, customs enforcement, financial investigation, international cooperation, prosecution, corruption prevention, community engagement and demand reduction. The fight must reach the entire chain.

The reality behind Echoes of the Savannah

Echoes of the Savannah is a work of fiction.

The characters of Commander Matt Jensen, Commander Lisette Bouche, Chief Ranger Elias Mwangi, The Archive and The Curator are all fictional creations. But the criminal environment surrounding them reflects a genuine global challenge. The novel asks a simple question:

What happens when wildlife crime is treated not as isolated poaching, but as organised international commerce?

The answer is frightening.

Because the men carrying rifles may be the easiest part of the problem to see. The real challenge lies farther away—in the financial systems, transportation networks, corrupt relationships, legitimate businesses and markets that allow wildlife products to move from a dead animal in Africa to a valuable commodity somewhere else in the world. The distance between those two points is where the real battle takes place. And somewhere along that journey, an animal disappears from the world forever. 1 . An elephant loses its tusks. 2 . A rhino leaves behind an orphan. 3 . A lion becomes bones. 4 . A tiger becomes a skin. 5 . A living creature becomes a transaction.

That is the reality behind the fiction

And that is why Echoes of the Savannah matters

Commander Matt Jensen

Former Naval Intelligence commander with a mind honed in the crucible of covert operations, Matt Jensen is a force to be reckoned with. His tactical brilliance and unwavering commitment to duty have earned him a reputation as the go-to operative when the stakes are highest. But beneath the stoic exterior lies a complex character with a haunted past, driving him to confront not only external threats but the demons within.

Commander Lisette Bouche

Matt's equally formidable counterpart, brings a unique blend of eloquence and strategic acumen to the world of intelligence. A linguistics expert with an uncanny ability to decode cryptic messages, Bouche's brilliance lies not only in her analytical mind but also in her capacity to navigate the intricate web of international politics. Her presence is magnetic, her resolve unyielding, and she is determined to uncover the truth, no matter the cost.

Meet Michael Wilkinson

Whether you're after daring adventures, historical secrets or real-world insights into risk, you’ve come to the right place.

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