Nairobi Heat by Mukoma wa NgugiMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
What could have been a decent, if unexciting murder mystery.....rapidly turned into a well written thriller. Set mainly in Nairobi, Kenya....we find our protagonist Ishmael, a Detective from Madison, Wisconsin (!), on the case of a young white woman...Identity Unknown....whose body was found on the doorstep of a prominent University professor. Not just any professor, though...Joshua Hakizimana being a famous hero of the Rwandan Genocide
Life in Nairobi proves a bit tricky, as Ishmael discovers after being summoned by a mysterious phone call. In the company of the enigmatic O...a local detective-of-sorts, and the sensuous spoken-word performer, Muddy.....Ishmael discovers the corrupt underbelly of Global Humanitarianism....and the lingering aftertaste of Mass Murder...
Ambiguity abounds, here....and for a while, no one is who he seems to be..but Wa Ngugi gives the reader a taste of the Real Africa...an the people surviving in the wake of a national horror.
While this is not a novel of detection, per se..it is a novel about justice...swift and unrelenting...where the Bad Guys do pay....and the Good Guys??? Endure.
This is a review of a Net Galley
4 Stars (****)
