Hacking Timbuktu [Hardcover]

This is an exciting quest story. The book begins with a thief in an underground tunnel in the fourteenth century, Ankonio Dolo, a student at the University. Ankonio has tunneled his way into the treasury, where pure gold ingot bars are packed nine deep. His tunnel comes up behind the gold and he has spent years removing two million mitqals worth of gold bars. He has taken his gold to a safe place, a place he leaves a cryptic clue to once he is caught following an unfortunate series of events. Ankonio yells the gold is hidden in the Dogon cliffs and, "It takes a Dogon to know a Nommo," as he comes to a brilliant and shocking end.

In the twenty-first century, two young men are scanning ancient manuscripts to computer when they find the doodling of the long ago student in the margin of a page in a math textbook. That discovery launches a quest for the legendary gold. But one of them is going to be put out of the running immediately. The one left standing has one goal. The gold.

The London hackers are brought into the picture by a group calling itself Knights of Ankonio Dolo. Their methods are a little violent. Their goal? The gold. The abused hackers also now have a new goal. The gold. Omar and Danny are skilled in the practice of parkour - the ability to travel from one place to the next in a straight line very quickly, no matter the obstacles. They need to go to Timbuktu to find the cliffs of Dogon and the gold. The treasure hunters all converge on the same site.

This novel is very likable. The fourteenth century boy and Omar and Danny are all the same age and have many of the same sensibilities. It's easy to hate the hate-able characters, easy to feel sorry for the likable ones. This is an adventure novel and is likely to be especially liked by young teenage boys. It is not too dense and stays pretty tight with the story. Personally I would cover the book with warnings. "Don't try this at home."

I am 75 years old. In my lifetime I have seen America absorb previously unfamiliar sports such as surfing, skateboarding and soccer. And now there is parkour.

In his Author's Note to his 2010 novel HACKING TIMBUKTU, missionary to Africa Stephen Davies, opines that he has just written "perhaps the first-ever parkour novel." You do not have to know anything about parkour before opening HACKING TIMBUKTU. The book will explain it all. But I was helped before I started reading, because my 15-year old grandson in Greenville, South Carolina took up parkouring (aka PKing) a couple of years back. I have ever since watched him leap across streams, scale pillars and fall without (too much) pain on shoulders, etc. after jumping off a ten-foot high tree house.

Action is non-stop from beginning of HACKING TIMBUKTU to end. Two English boys, Danny Temple and Omar Dupont (the latter bilingual in French, which helps greatly when the boys reach francophone Mali), are swept into a worldwide frenzied hunt for treasure. 700 years ago Akonio Dolo, a fictional 17-year old mathematics student in Timbuktu, Mali, had cleverly stolen millions of dollars of gold from a mosque. He left clues where to find his trove but they were not noticed until a university project scanning all ancient manuscripts of Timbuktu into computers popped up Akonio Dolo's clues.

Danny Temple is a world-class white hatted (i.e., he does no harm) computer hacker with some knowledge of parkour. His friend Omar Dupont is a master of parkour but a bit of a computer dud. Throughout HACKING TIMBUKTU there is constant interplay between the mental games played by the mind and the physical games played by bodies (called traceurs) that do parkour (PK). A perfect example, from many, is what happens at the Gatwick Airport. The two boys, after fleeing across the rooftops of London from The Knights of Akonio Dolo (Danny even made a daring three-storey dive into the Thames), are determined to fly to Mali and find the treasure for themselves. But they don't have enough money. Yet Omar has Air France's equivalent of Frequent Flyer Miles. If Danny can tap into the computer at the Air France travel desk, he can increase the miles in Omar's account and, voila, off they go!

And the following episode allows me to flesh out my review title "From here on in it's all catting and hacking." Daniel had climbed up high above the Air France station. He reached a beam, cut into a computer cable and did the necessary penetrating of fire walls, using software conveniently attached to his Swiss army knife.

Parkour and hacking: what a high! "Catting" refers to "cat balance," a maneuver you can find all over YouTube. "Cat balance had been one of the first techniques Danny learned. ... Left palm, ball of right foot. Right palm, ball of left foot. Head down, back straight. ... You had to practice until you couldn't get it wrong" (Ch.20)

With the whole world in pursuit, Dan and Omar figure out where the treasure is hidden. But Moktar Hasim, a murderous Arab knows too. And he won't hesitate to kill them if he finds them there before him.

I remember my own pleasure 65 years ago reading books like Sinclair Lewis's boys adventure tale Hike and the Aeroplane and R. Sidney Bowen's Dave Dawson with the R. A. F. (The War Adventure Series, 2) (Yank teen and UK teen team up to defeat the Axis). I think my computer savvy, PK traceur grandson will eat up HACKING TIMBUKTU. My only caveat to all young readers (even the girls who are NOT represented at all in this novel) is this: gold corrupts, even Arab and English boys who start out wearing white hats.

-OOO-

So, I knew absolutely nothing about parkour before reading Hacking Timbuktu; however, in no way did this lack of knowledge diminish my enjoyment of the novel. I learned as I went. At first, I thought that all of the French terms would confuse me; I was woefully wrong, and they added great flavor to the read. Also, I knew little of the culture of Timbuktu but was enlightened as I read. This novel had a wonder international flavor to it.

Action and adventure run rampant! If you want page-turning excitement, this is a book you will want to read. This a great addition the the Young Adult genre. If only more of the YA novels taught lessons. . . (Greed hides within us).