A billion dollars is a lot of money. But not for Jim, a trading whizz kid. While buying into a new mine in Congo, his broker has gone missing in the jungle. Baz Mycock is a shady mining promoter who will stop at nothing to part speculators with their money. Barron mining could be just the killing he has always planned. 'Man Bites Dog' is a Congolese child soldier, trapped and enslaved by a conflict of unprecedented brutality. In The Twain Maxim, their paths cross under the malevolent gaze of Nyiragongo, Africa's most volatile volcano.