Review of Mukoma Wa Ngugi's Black Star Nairobi

Black Star Nairobi by Mukoma Wa Ngugi

It is December 2007, and Kenyans are celebrating Barack Obama's campaign to become the United States' first black president. They are also preparing to elect their own president when Mukoma Wa Ngugi's Black Star Nairobi begins. Polls show incumbent Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, trailing Raila Odinga, leader of the Luo ethnic group. This is noteworthy, because Kikuyus have dominated political power since Kenyan independence 50 years earlier. Despite the polls, some joke that Kenya is less likely than the United States to elect the first Luo president. They are proven correct when Kibaki is re-elected in what many see as a rigged election. The country explodes, and many police officers, divided along ethnic lines, commit acts of violence, too. More than 1,000 Kenyans die, and hundreds of thousands more flee the country.

Norfolk Hotel, Nairobi

Against this back drop, the private detectives of Nairobi's Black Star agency, Ishmael Fofona and David ("O") Odhiambo, who moonlights from his job as a Nairobi cop, investigate the death of a black American, whose body is found in Ngong Forest. It appears that the murder is connected to  a bombing at the Norfolk Hotel.

O and Ishmael are an unusual pair. Like the Ishmael of Melville's Moby-Dick, Ngugi's Ishmael is a man searching for a place to call home. He is a black man who was born in Madison, Wisconsin, and he became a cop there. After tiring of institutionalized racism in his police department, he moved to Nairobi to become a PI. In Nairobi, his dark skin lets him blend in, but as soon as he opens his mouth, he's identified as an American. Ishmael misses his parents back home, and the dreams he most enjoys are those in which he's eating "heart attack food--meat lover's pizza from Domino's or the properly named Kill Me Quick Double Cheese and Bacon hamburger at the Paradise Bar in good old Madison, Wisconsin." He's in love with Muddy, a poet and former Rwandan Patriotic Front member. O somewhat resembles Walter Mosley's amoral Raymond "Mouse" Alexander. Ishmael values O's loyalty and skills of observation and analysis, but he's uneasy about how comfortable O is with violence. O's mixed marriage with Mary, a beautiful schoolteacher, provides a window into the traditional animosity between Luos and Kikuyus.

Post-2007 election violence (AP photo/Karel Prinsloo)

Many books that invite thinking about complex issues such as identity, post-colonial racism, genocide, gender roles, and local and international politics are obviously complex. Ngugi's books of crime fiction explore these issues; yet, they are deceptively simple. Ishmael narrates in language so plain, I was initially taken aback; however, after awhile, I began to look, not only at how he is telling me, but at what he is telling me. Ngugi is a poet, and there are layers of meaning in Ishmael's choice of words. Ishmael is not a simple man; rather, he is one who values simplicity. He muses about the dualities in one's self and the differences that create gulfs and make bridges necessary between people. Ishmael thinks about what it means to feel at home physically and emotionally, and what an identity means. Ishmael's identity is found in his work, and this case changes Ishmael and O and those around them.
I loved Ishmael, O, Muddy, and Mary, and what I learned from them about Kenya. In Nairobi, the good guys and bad guys traditionally meet over Tusker beer in Broadway's Tavern. There, O and the CIA's African bureau chief share a joint, and Ishmael and O swap information with friendly criminals who lead them to look at the local bombing more globally.

I 'm looking forward to Ngugi's third Nairobi book. In the meantime, I'll read the series first, Nairobi Heat. I strongly suggest this series to people interested in international crime fiction, politics, and social issues. I've really enjoyed the thinking and research Ngugi has prompted me to do.

Note: I received a free galley for the purposes of this review. Black Star Nairobi was published on May 29, 2013 by Melville International Crime.

2007 election (AP photo/Ben Curtis)

Ice vs. Heat

Earlier this week, I was stunned when my fellow Material Witnesses began making lists for our upcoming summer books post on June 28th. Is it summer time already? My kids are out of school, but it's still hard to believe when the weather has been zigzagging between hot and cold. I've been pulling sweaters on and off and switching from hot chocolate to iced tea accordingly. But the decision to apply heat or ice can be trickier than that. Take the debate between applying a cold pack or a heating pad to a sports injury. And how do you pick a book when the thermometer ranges from 95° to 55°? A book like Robert Aickman's Cold Hand in Mine: Strange Stories (the title's got that right) raises your temperature by making your heart pound, but also gives you goosebumps that chill. A better bet might be one of these two books:

When Beluga narrator Nick Reid tells himself out loud, "I'm not having the week I'd hoped to have," he hasn't seen the half of it. He and his ginormous best friend, Desmond, were "taking time off" after robbing a meth lord of $300,000 in Rick Gavin's first series book, Ranchero (reviewed here). To keep up appearances, Nick and Desmond have returned to repossessing rent-to-own furniture when Kalil's customers, many of whom live in the type of houses where dogs boil out from under the porch and a shotgun pokes out of a window, don't make their payments.

Therefore, life could be pretty routine in Indianola, Mississippi but for the fact that Desmond's ex-wife Shawnica still has him in her clutches. Her shiftless brother Larry, fresh out of Parchman Prison, wants Desmond to lend him money for a criminal scheme. A hidden trailer-load of already-stolen Michelin tires is just waiting for Larry and his friend Skeeter to steal and sell on the black market––but they need money to buy a truck. Desmond's $30,000 buys not only transportation, but also the terrible vengeance of the man who originally stole the tires, a well-connected Mississippi Delta crime lord, Lucas Shambrough. Between helping Desmond deal with that god-awful sniveling Larry, Shambrough's deadly "ninja schoolgirl assassin" and his dumber-than-two-sacks-of-hair hired cracker villains, it's a wonder Nick has time to court pretty Greenville cop Tula Raintree, although it is convenient that their first "date" happens when she's placed Nick under arrest.

Author Rick Gavin, who lives in the Delta and writes when he isn't doing construction work, combines the charm of appealing characters with insightful observations of Delta residents and traditions. The dialogue is pitch perfect. Watching Nick, a former Virginia deputy sheriff, scuff up no-goods, and Desmond squeeze relish onto his Sonic drive-in hot dogs goes well with ice tinkling in a glass of lemonade and the drone of a ceiling fan. This entertaining Mississippi Delta noir, both gritty and funny, is perfect for hot days of summer reading.

On the other hand, Richard Crompton's 2013 debut, Hour of the Red God, is a great pick when it gets chilly. It's a book set in Nairobi, Kenya, "a landscape of corrugated iron, concrete, and thatched makuti roofs."

The title is the English translation of Enkai Nanyokie, the Maasai tribe's name for the time when people turn against each other in anger and madness descends. In his criminal investigations and the loss of his wife, Detective Sergeant Mollel is much more familiar with the vengeful and capricious Red God than the loving Black God.

Mollel is a conscientious man who never seems to feel at home, even with his young son. He has long and looped ears that are a mark of pride among the Maasai but an object of ridicule and prejudice elsewhere. His boss, Otieno, has brought him back from traffic duty in Loresho to Nairobi Central CID. The mutilated body of a young Maasai woman has been found in Uhuru Park and Otieno expects Mollel to solve what he calls "a Maasai circumcision ceremony gone wrong."  Mollel disagrees. He says it's deliberate murder.

He and his colleague Kiunga, a Kikuyu, investigate against the backdrop of the 2007 election, with its ethnic violence and the involvement of mungiki gangs and the government's paramilitary General Services Unit. Evidence leads the two policemen to Orpheus House, a recently closed refuge for women who wish to leave prostitution, and to powerful political and religious leaders.

Former BBC journalist and Nairobi resident Crompton's book is nothing short of stunning. His prose, with a lack of quotation marks, takes some getting used to, but it fits this complex story about crime set in an exotic Nairobi. Mollel reminisces about his tribal childhood and shares various Maasai myths. Even in the city center, Mollel doesn't escape tradition. At night, there are rumors of night runners with supernatural speed and strength who, when killed return, to their forms as normal humans. The stories about scavengers that Mollel's mother told him influence how he solves a crime. Crompton's characters are caught between modernity and traditionalism. How does tribal identity survive in a changing world?