Fiction leading fact?

Does art imitate life or the other way around? One of the age-old questions, but it keeps popping up.

Take, for example, last week's coup in the uranium-rich African country of Niger. Apparently led by an army colonel, soldiers shot up the presidential palace and ousted the president.

In my thriller CUTTHROAT, the hero, Solomon Gage, tries to thwart an international business scheme that includes an army colonel in Niger overthrowing the government by shooting up the presidential palace and ousting the president.

The book came out in late 2007.

Anyone could predict a coup in Niger, and the odds would be pretty good the forecast would prove true eventually. The nation has a history of such coups. Still, the headlines gave me a strange sense of deja vu.