Megan Baker-Goldsmith

Black Dollar Megan Baker-Goldsmith

Brian Connor, an Australian war veteran waits out the hot summer nights by the cool ocean breeze in his home town, Corio. He is haunted by his experiences serving in the middle-eastern conflict - particularly by the death of a young Iraqi girl, caught in the crossfire. One night, while passing the evening by the beach he notices a tanker ship secretively arriving into the harbour - the ship operating silently and without running lights. In the middle-east conflict escalates between the Western Allied Forces and the brutal Islamic Caliphate. An oil baron makes a private deal with a senior military official to take out a resistance cell planning to attack oil infrastructure within the contested territories. In the Oval Office harsh trading sanctions on oil are set, starving the Caliphate of financial resources, and cementing America's place as leader of the global economy, setting in place a chain of events that lead to a private company establishing a billion-dollars smuggling racket. A lucrative cash assignment offered to local private investigator Kyra Brooke just doesn't add up. As she investigates she begins to realise that she's caught a tiger by its tail. Deiter Van, a cadet journalist; eager and inexperienced manages to strike up an unlikely friendship with the grizzled, broken and battle-hardened veteran. It's up to them to out-wit, out-smart and out manoeuvre a three hundred year old corporation and a brutal, but new regime; both bent on world domination. Together, they unravel from the smallest of threads a globalised government-military-corporate conspiracy in this unique and fast paced thriller/action/adventure story with a distinctively Australian flavour.