Part of Series
United Nations Investigator Valentin Vermeulen has been sent to a peacekeeping mission in the Ivory Coast, West Africa. After falsely accusing a higher-up at the UN, he is relegated to ferret out a suspected fraud in the miserably wet, politically volatile city of Yamoussoukro. A large amount of fuel has gone unaccounted for, and the culprit seems to be a petty bureaucrat named Khoury. But after Vermeulen confronts the man, he is shot and his death declared a suicide. Vermeulen knows Khoury’s death was no suicide. He heard the gunshot and saw a young thug leave Khoury's office. The suicide note did not appear until later. Vermeulen’s search for answers takes him to the offices of a beautiful widow, Desirée Doué, who runs a cocoa export company. For security, Madame Doué employs a group of young hoodlums known as the Jeunes Patriotes, and Khoury’s killer is one of them. Obviously someone in the UN is in league with her, but with the city’s politics in disarray, how will Vermeulen stop the perpetrators and remain alive? Fortunately he has an ally, Kwame Appiah, a member of UN troops with a trick or two up his sleeve. “Big Dreams Cost Too Much” is one of three stories featuring Valentin Vermeulen. The UN investigator is also featured in the novels Legitimate Business, Illicit Trade, and Illegal Holdings (March 2018).
Author
Award winning author Michael Niemann has long been interested in the sites where ordinary people’s lives and global processes intersect. He’s shared umqombothi with shack dwellers outside Cape Town, interviewed Morgan Tsvangirai, former Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, when he was still a trade union leader, and has seen Eduardo Mondlane’s dorm room at Northwestern University, faithfully recreated at the Museum of the Revolution in Maputo. His thrillers featuring UN investigator Valentin Vermeulen are published by Coffeetown Press. Legitimate Business and Illicit Trade were published in March 2017. Illegal Holdings came out in March 2018, and No Right Way went on sale in June 2019. Illegal Holdings won the 2019 Silver Falchion Award for Best Thriller at Killer Nashville. The fifth Vermeulen thriller, Percentages of Guilt is due for publication in 2020. His short stories have appeared in Vengeance, the 2012 Mystery Writers of America anthology edited by Lee Child, and Mysterical-E. "Africa Always Needs Guns" and "Big Dreams Cost Too Much" are now available as Kindle singles. "Some Kind of Justice" will follow soon. On the non-fiction side, he is the author of A Spatial Approach to Regionalism in the Global Economy (2000). His academic articles have appeared in numerous journals and several edited books. Copies are available on this website in the non-fiction section. Throughout his academic career, he has helped students of all ages and backgrounds to understand their role in constructing the world in which they live, and to take this role seriously. He grew up in a small town in western Germany before moving to the United States. He has studied at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität in Bonn, Germany, and the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver where he received his PhD in International Studies. He lives in southern Oregon with his dog Stanley.
