Deven Greene
Medical Crime Fiction
e-book print book audiobook
Murder, Money, and the Fight to Save the Rhino
Struggling journalist Paige leaves San Francisco for South Africa, determined to revive her failing career with a hard-hitting exposé on rhino poaching. With their horns worth a fortune on the black market, these massive, yet gentle, animals are being slaughtered at an alarming rate—and Paige is convinced this story could be her big break.
Danger strikes almost immediately after she arrives in South Africa, when poachers ambush Paige’s tour group.
She survives only because she is rescued by Spencer, a man who claims to work for the FBI. He says he wants to save the rhinos and offers to help her with her story, but as he exposes her to a world she would never see on her own, Paige learns that he’s not who he seems. He says the rules don’t work, and some laws need to be broken.While he claims he wants to save rhinos, Paige suspects he’s in the rhino poaching business himself as she becomes embroiled in the brutal underworld of dealing in rhino horns.Caught between her ambition and her survival, Paige must decide whether to continue learning about the world of rhino poaching from Spencer and risk becoming the next casualty, or leave for home while she still can. Will she escape South Africa alive with the story that could change everything for her—or lose her life in the deadly world she set out to expose?
Indies Today Review
A fascinating look at an ethically fraught topic, Rhino Horn Underground underscores the collision of traditional beliefs and modern realities. Though the book is fiction, the challenges are authentic, adding substance and urgency to the story’s moral quandaries. The novel’s cultural awareness is at the forefront, and that conspicuousness becomes central to its meaning. Alongside serious themes, however, Deven Greene does not forget that this is an action-packed thriller! She begins with a pulse-pounding opening scene and never removes her foot from the accelerator. The intense plot is carefully revealed through moments of danger, heartbreak, and humanity. Paige remains aloof and level-headed, often putting the story ahead of her own safety. Her relentless determination and emotional distance sharpen the novel’s suspense and act as a steady counterpoint to Spencer’s strategic half-truths. While Paige judges Spencer harshly and frequently, his constant obfuscation of information creates an insistent tension, a form of evasive exposition that suggests he’s protecting something more than her safety. The friction between them drives the story forward, while the writing’s dry, diagnostic calm mirrors the moral fatigue that Paige, and our world, can no longer escape. A thriller with genuine moral weight, Rhino Horn Underground isn’t a story of clear sides or easy answers, but about all the compromises in between.
Literary Titan Review
I liked how quickly the novel throws Paige off balance. She is not a polished action hero; she is frightened, opportunistic, judgmental, curious, and sometimes wrong in ways that feel genuinely human. Her suspicions about Spencer give the early chapters a prickly momentum, and the book is at its best when it lets her misread a room, then slowly recalibrate. The South African setting is not merely decorative. The landscape, the wildlife reserves, the poaching economy, and the logistics of conservation all give the story a rough, sun-blasted specificity.
Greene does not present conservation as a clean moral poster. Instead, she builds a thriller around an uncomfortable proposition: maybe the sentimental answer is not always the practical one. The science involving lab-made rhino horn gives the story its most distinctive charge, and the novel’s pace rarely lets the research sit there inertly. Paige’s personal life and the larger trafficking plot create a crowded emotional field, but that clutter also gives the book an authentic quality; everyone seems to have a private agenda, a bruise, or a debt.
This book is for readers who enjoy environmental eco-thrillers, wildlife crime fiction, conservation fiction, suspense, and morally complex adventure. Fans of Michael Crichton’s issue-driven science suspense may recognize the same appetite for turning a controversial idea into a chase, though Greene’s novel is more intimate and more emotionally entangled. Rhino Horn Underground is a bristling, brainy thriller that asks whether doing the right thing still counts when the path to it runs through the shadows.
Readers'Favorite Review
Well, that was one heck of a wild ride! Deven Greene’s Rhino Horn Underground turns an investigative assignment on rhino poaching into an international thriller. Greene rips us through the suspense with plenty of armed men, sieges, and shoot-outs. At its heart, this is something of an eco-terrorism book. A lot of political and conservation questions are raised organically in the story itself, which is a testament to Greene's skill as a writer, particularly when it comes to bioidentical, lab-engineered horns and whether or not they would slow or amplify wild rhino poaching. The settings are positively cinematic, from a hidden underground mine laboratory, glowing with incubators and pink nutrient tanks, to a fenced reserve after a heartbreaking death and its stark visual stillness. Readers who love international crime thrillers and wildlife fiction will adore this book. Very highly recommended.