Detective Fiction and The African Scene

Detective Fiction and The African Scene
Author: Linus Tongwo Asong
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 71
Release: 2012
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9956727024

From its very inception, detective fiction has enjoyed a great popularity among the young and the old, the learned and the not so learned. By some unfortunate stroke of irony, its respect has not kept pace with its enormous popularity. For over half a century now, it has remained the bane of creative writing. In strict intellectual circles, it is very rare to find people talk defensively and interestingly about the genre. Yet Asong has chosen to do just that. He has stoutly defended the weak by putting up a good case for its continued existence. He has also shown how irresistible key elements of the genre are to even the best respected novelists. Finally he has demonstrated for the first time, how the genre has been domesticated by African writers of very great repute such as Ngugi, Sembene and Lessing. That he has been able to prove that these writers have used techniques of detective fiction is a significant broadening of the horizons for appreciating creative writing in Africa.

Divine Justice

Divine Justice
Author: Joanne Hichens
Publisher: African Crime Reads
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2021-01-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781946395429

Recovering addict Rae Valentine, a PI in Cape Town struggling with her own demons, finds herself in the violent world of diamond theft, white supremacy, and religious zealots--a world that doesn't want someone like Rae--to solve a case that may be more than she can handle.

Lightseekers

Lightseekers
Author: Femi Kayode
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2021-03-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316536601

A Nigerian psychologist travels to a remote southern border town to uncover the truth about the murder of three university students in this "original and fast-paced thriller" (Lauren Wilkinson, author of American Spy). When Dr. Philip Taiwo is called on by a powerful Nigerian politician to investigate the public torture and murder of three university students in remote Port Harcourt, he has no idea that he’s about to be enveloped by a perilous case that is far from cold. Philip is not a detective. He’s an investigative psychologist, an academic more interested in figuring out the why of a crime than actually solving it. But when he steps off the plane and into the dizzying frenzy of the provincial airport, he soon realizes that the murder of the Okriki Three isn’t as straightforward as he thought. With the help of his loyal and streetwise personal driver, Chika, Philip must work against those actively conspiring against him to parse together the truth of what happened to these students. A thrilling and atmospheric mystery, and an unforgettable portrait of the contemporary Nigerian sociopolitical landscape, Lightseekers is a wrenching novel tackling the porousness between the first and third worlds, the enduring strength of tribalism and homeland identity, and the human need for connection in the face of isolation.

August Snow

August Snow
Author: Stephen Mack Jones
Publisher: Soho Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2017-02-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1616957190

Winner of the Hammett Prize and the Nero Award From the wealthy suburbs to the remains of Detroit’s bankrupt factory districts, August Snow is a fast-paced tale of murder, greed, sex, economic cyber-terrorism, race and urban decay. Tough, smart, and struggling to stay alive, August Snow is the embodiment of Detroit. The son of an African-American father and a Mexican-American mother, August grew up in the city’s Mexicantown and joined the police force only to be drummed out by a conspiracy of corrupt cops and politicians. But August fought back; he took on the city and got himself a $12 million wrongful dismissal settlement that left him low on friends. He has just returned to the house he grew up in after a year away, and quickly learns he has many scores to settle. It’s not long before he’s summoned to the palatial Grosse Pointe Estates home of business magnate Eleanore Paget. Powerful and manipulative, Paget wants August to investigate the increasingly unusual happenings at her private wealth management bank. But detective work is no longer August’s beat, and he declines. A day later, Paget is dead of an apparent suicide—which August isn’t buying for a minute. What begins as an inquiry into Eleanore Paget’s death soon drags August into a rat’s nest of Detroit’s most dangerous criminals, from corporate embezzlers to tattooed mercenaries.

Scene of the Crime

Scene of the Crime
Author: David Geherin
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2008-03-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0786432985

Offering analysis of the fiction of 15 authors for whom the setting greatly contributes to their overall literary style, this book focuses on the many ways that "place" figures in modern crime and mystery novels. The authors (and their settings) are: Georges Simenon (Paris), Donna Leon (Venice), Tony Hillerman (American Southwest), Walter Mosley (South Central Los Angeles), George P. Pelecanos (Washington, D.C.), Sara Paretsky (Chicago), James Lee Burke (Southern Louisiana), Carl Hiaasen (South Florida), Ian Rankin (Edinburgh), Alexander McCall Smith (Botswana), James McClure (South Africa), Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (Stockholm), Paco Ignacio Taibo II (Mexico City), Leonardo Sciascia (Sicily) and Lindsey Davis (Ancient Rome).

Anglophone African Detective Fiction 1940-2020

Anglophone African Detective Fiction 1940-2020
Author: Matthew J. Christensen
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2024-03-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1847013872

Providing a survey of Anglophone African detective fiction, from the late 1940s to the present day, this study traces its history both as a literary form and a mode of critical exploration of the fraught sovereignties of the African state and its citizens. Since the late 1940s, African writers including Cyprian Ekwensi, Arthur Maimane, Adaora Lily Ulasi, Hilary Ng'weno, Unity Dow, Parker Bilal, and Angela Makholwa have published over 200 murder mysteries, police procedurals, spy thrillers, and other fictional narratives of investigation and discovery in English-language newspapers, magazines, and novels. Distributed widely across the continent's diverse cultural and political geographies, these texts share aesthetic characteristics and thematic preoccupations that reflect transnational networks of production, circulation, and influence. Anglophone African Detective Fiction, 1940-2020 surveys this literary history and examines how African writers have repeatedly harnessed the detective story to interrogate postcolonial realities of selfhood and the state. It argues that African writers have turned the detective story into a highly productive, while at the same time suspense-filled and entertaining, mode of social and political critique, first of colonialism and the independence era and latterly of neoliberal governance. Offering an overview of paradigmatic texts, from Ghana to Kenya and Sudan to South Africa, the book traces the contours of the history of Anglophone African detective fiction that is at once a cultural history of a uniquely African assessment of the ongoing problematics of sovereignty and decolonization.

Wife of the Gods

Wife of the Gods
Author: Kwei Quartey
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2010-08-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0812979362

“Fans of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency may have a new hero: Detective Inspector Darko Dawson.”—The Wall Street Journal Introducing Detective Inspector Darko Dawson: dedicated family man, rebel in the office, ace in the field—and one of the most appealing sleuths to come along in years. When we first meet Dawson, he’s been ordered by his cantankerous boss to leave behind his loving wife and young son in Ghana’s capital city to lead a murder investigation: In a shady grove outside the small town of Ketanu, a young woman—a promising medical student—has been found dead under suspicious circumstances. Dawson is fluent in Ketanu’s indigenous language, so he’s the right man for the job, but the local police are less than thrilled with an outsider’s interference. For Dawson, this sleepy corner of Ghana is rife with emotional land mines: an estranged relationship with the family he left behind twenty-five years earlier and the painful memory of his own mother’s inexplicable disappearance. Armed with remarkable insight and a healthy dose of skepticism, Dawson soon finds his cosmopolitan sensibilities clashing with age-old customs, including a disturbing practice in which teenage girls are offered to fetish priests as trokosi, or Wives of the Gods. Delving deeper into the student’s haunting death, Dawson will uncover long-buried secrets that, to his surprise, hit much too close to home. Praise for Wife of the Gods “An absolute gem . . . mystery fans have an important new voice to savor.”—Los Angeles Times “Full of suspense, humor and plot twists . . . Quartey’s remarkable characters give the reader a worthy whodunit.”—Ebony “[A] winning debut . . . Dawson is a wonderful creation, a man as rich with contradictions as the Ghana Quartey so delightfully evokes.”—Publishers Weekly “Engrossing . . . [Quartey] renders a compelling cast of characters. . . . Fans of McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency will relish the opportunity to discover yet another intriguing area of Africa.”—Booklist (starred review)

Blood Trail

Blood Trail
Author: Tony Park
Publisher: Ingwe Publishing
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2021-08-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1922389676

A poacher vanishes, two young girls go missing, a tourist disappears... magic or murder? Evil is at play in a South African game reserve. A poacher vanishes into thin air, defying logic and baffling ace tracker Mia Greenaway. Meanwhile Captain Sannie van Rensburg, still reeling from a personal tragedy, is investigating the disappearance of two young girls who locals fear have been abducted for use in sinister traditional medicine practices. But poachers are also employing witchcraft, paying healers for potions they believe will make them invisible and bulletproof. When a tourist goes missing, Mia and Sannie must work together to confront their own demons and challenge everything they believe, and to follow a bloody trail that seems to vanish at every turn.

Sacrificed (VSA Uitgawe)

Sacrificed (VSA Uitgawe)
Author: Chanette Paul
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Total Pages: 601
Release: 2017-07-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1946395021

Caz Colijn receives a phone call from Belgium that tears her out of her reclusive life. In Belgium, where she tries to trace her and her daughter’s family origins, it becomes clear that that country’s colonial past has had as much impact on her life as the Apartheid years in South Africa did.

The Rabbit Hole

The Rabbit Hole
Author: Mike Nicol
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2021-02-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1415210810

Money. Money. Money. Tons of it. In us dollars. And it’s all being funnelled into a government tender snagged by family-owned Amalfi Civils. Which would be great for business if ceo Angela wasn’t fighting with her cfo brother Rej. Where Angela sees corruption, Rej sees cabinet ministers, politicians, officials eager to lend a hand. For a fee. It’s a big pot so he’s happy to oblige. And if needs be he’ll take out his sister to keep the lucre. There are other players in this game. The cia for one. The State Security Agency for another. And a black op using lawyer and spy Vicki Kahn as a honeytrap to ensnare Rej’s middleman – the very same middleman that her lover, pi Fish Pescado, is investigating. With these stakes, it’s only time before the killing starts.