Excerpt, Guest Post, & #Giveaway: The Missing Corpse (The General's Project #2) by Yasin Kakande
- Archaeolibrarian
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
Book Details:
Published by: Black Writers Ink LLC
Publication Date: September 11, 2025
Number of Pages: 379
ISBN: 979-8990984448
Series: The General's Project, Book 2
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@yasikak @partnersincrimevbt
The president is dead. His son’s pretending he’s not. And the corpse? Well, that’s missing.
When the CIA sniffs out whispers that an African general—who also happens to be the president’s darling son—may have murdered dear old dad and stashed the body like last week’s leftovers, they send in their best bloodhound: Agent Shawn Wayles. He’s good at two things—digging up dirt and getting shot at in places the U.S. swears it’s not involved.
This time, Shawn’s not alone. He’s paired with an LGBTQ couple who have more secrets than the Vatican and fewer moral brakes.
Their mission? Retrieve the dead president’s body from the general’s paranoid, trigger-happy security team.
Because in this twisted power struggle, it’s not the living who rule—it’s the guy in the coffin. And whoever has the corpse... controls the country.
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The General knew—like a rotting tooth you can’t stop tonguing—just how hard his old man had worked to hammer him into something resembling a real man, using boot camps, backdoor deals, and enough disappointment to fill a graveyard.
Before the president found Twitter—sorry, X—for him, he mostly just found disappointment. And not the subtle, quiet kind. No, this was loud, public, teeth-grinding failure. The kind that makes a father grip his whiskey glass hard enough to shatter it. The boy was dull. A wet match in a thunderstorm. The people ignored him like a pothole they’d grown used to swerving around.
The president, who fancied himself a blend of warlord and wise grandfather, had done all the right things—by dictator standards. He’d oiled the machinery, laid the bricks. He'd shipped the lad off to Sandhurst, the British womb for future coup-makers and ceremonial dictators. But the academy spat him out like a bad oyster after just one year. Reason? "Intellectual capacity insufficient for command responsibilities." That's British for “the boy was dumb as soup.”
Panic set in. The president, no stranger to coups or cover-ups, scrambled for another boot camp that would accept his undercooked progeny. And God bless Africa—it never disappoints. Egypt, under old mummy Hosni Mubarak, opened its arms. The president’s warning was clear as day and sharp as a bayonet: “If you fail here, don’t ever mention my name again.” The boy emerged months later with a piece of paper that said he could command a battalion. No one bothered to ask if it was his own handwriting.
Still not satisfied, Daddy rang his buddies in Langley. Mr. Taylor—CIA spook with a neck like a tree stump—hooked him up with a slot at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. That’s where the U.S. trained its foreign military friends—the ones that smiled for cameras by day and broke skulls by night. The General graduated. Barely. His grades so low they had to be excavated.
Back home, the president, desperate to turn the boy into something—anything—decided to mold him into a public figure. He hired speech coaches, media whisperers, ex-BBC anchors, even a former Miss Uganda who once read the weather on WBS Television. Still, every time the General opened his mouth in public, it was a horror show. His hands trembled like a leaf in a blender. He couldn’t pronounce words. Once, he called “sovereignty” soup-ver-nanny and the room went so silent you could hear careers dying.
But then came the miracle: Twitter. Well, X. Rebranded like a shady funeral home. The president's advisors—witchdoctors in suits—pitched a bold idea: give the boy a Twitter account. Hire a comedian ghostwriter. Make him sound dangerous. Sexy. Unhinged. Like Idi Amin with a smartphone.
Enter the ghostwriter—a washed-up tabloid journalist who once faked an alien sighting in Karamoja and got sued by a Catholic bishop. The guy was perfect. He knew how to stir the pot with one tweet and have the country boiling by lunch.
The General gave him ideas—half-mumbled thoughts between sips of imported whiskey—and the ghostwriter turned them into gold. Tweets like: Kenya has two weeks left. Consider this your final warning. #WeMarchAtDawn
The country gasped. The president “fired” the General. He even sent an apology to Kenya. A public scandal. Oh no, Daddy can’t control his baby boy! The media gobbled it up like pigs at a buffet.
But behind the curtain, the ghostwriter kept churning out wild, headline-drenched tweets. The General was now lusting after Beyoncé and Ayra Starr like a horny war god in fatigues. He made bizarre threats about airstrikes on Tanzanian Bongo Flava concerts. People were horrified. People were entertained.
Sex, seduction, and attraction are the oldest weapons in espionage. Older than guns. Older than flags. Spies have used them to topple governments and sink businesses without firing a single bullet. A smile can do more damage than a bomb. Everyone in intelligence knows this.
Agents are taught the basics. Some are trained until flirting feels like breathing. Recruiters already know the truth: beauty opens doors. That’s why spies tend to look like trouble walking on two legs—men and women who can make you forget your own name before they ever ask it.
But what happens when the weapon turns around and bites the hand holding it?
That’s exactly what happens to Shawn Wayles, a CIA agent born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, who is at the center of The Missing Corpse by Yasin Kakande. Shawn is sent to Uganda to spy on a dangerous plan: replacing a dead, long-serving dictator with his even more brutal son, known simply as the General. Bad idea. Worse timing.
Then Shawn walks into a Kampala nightclub and meets Joanne Nambatya.
What is supposed to be a one-night stand quickly turns into something else. The devil, as always, starts whispering. Keep her close. She’ll make a perfect local cover. Shawn listens—because spies are trained to listen. But soon he realizes the truth is much worse: he doesn’t just need Joanne. He wants her. Completely.
Joanne, unfortunately for Shawn, is not impressed.
She turns him down. Coldly. Repeatedly. And somehow, every rejection makes her more irresistible. The more she pushes him away, the deeper he falls. Desire becomes obsession. Obsession becomes stupidity—the most dangerous condition for any spy.
Then Shawn learns Joanne has a baby. Fine.Then he learns she has a lover. Okay, competition.Then comes the real twist.
Joanne also has a wife—or girlfriend—named Helen.
Now the game changes. This isn’t a love triangle. It’s something sharper. Riskier. More intoxicating. And Shawn, instead of backing away like a trained intelligence officer with a functioning brain, steps closer.
While this romantic disaster unfolds, the real world catches up. The General is closing in. Shawn’s mission is collapsing. His colleagues practically beg him to save himself, save the operation, save the United States of America.
Shawn chooses Joanne.
He walks straight into the line of fire, possessed, reckless, driven by something older than loyalty and stronger than fear—like an African spirit grabbing him by the heart and refusing to let go.
The Missing Corpse may be a spy thriller, but it reads like a romance comedy with teeth. Sexy. Dangerous. Darkly funny. A story where desire ruins everything—and somehow makes it worth it.
Yasin Kakande is an international journalist, TED Global Fellow, and author of several critically praised non-fiction books, including "Why We Are Coming" and "Slave States," which offer fresh perspectives on immigration and geopolitics. His journalism career includes contributions to outlets such as The New York Times, Thomson Reuters, Al Jazeera, The National, and The Boston Globe. Yasin holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College and resides outside Boston.
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Oooo this sounds really good! thanks so much for sharing!