The Lingala Code might be the most mysterious Edgar award-winning novel out there, and I don’t just mean the plot. Even getting a copy of this book required internet research and a special order. Doing background for this review, I stayed up until 3:00 AM one night trying to untangle the biography of the author,…
My writing thrillers set in faraway places has its origin in my long appreciation of books written in that sub-genre. Growing up in Germany—a stone’s throw from the Dutch border—the world outside was never far away. At the time, the Cold War novels of John Le Carré and Len Deighton were my favorite pleasure reading.…
Illegal Holdings by Michael Niemann is the third book in the Valentin Vermeulen Thriller series, set in Africa (available March 1, 2018). UN fraud investigator Valentin Vermeulen is on assignment in Maputo, Mozambique. His humdrum task is to see if Global Alternatives is spending UN money the way they promised. The nonprofit was set up…
Ghosts may not be real in the paranormal sense of a spirit world interacting with our own—however, they are real in the literal sense, when the woman that you paid to have murdered shows up to greet you at her own funeral. Today, The Washington Post reported the story of Noela Rukundo—a woman of African…
A Death in the Family by Michael Stanley is the 5th procedural mystery featuring Detective Kubu of the Botswana police department (available October 27, 2015). “There's no easy way to say this, Kubu. Your father's dead. I'm afraid he's been murdered.” Faced with the violent death of his own father, Assistant Superintendent David 'Kubu' Bengu,…
24: Rogue by Alex Mack is the 2nd book in the 24 series and picks back up more than a year after Jack Bauer's forced exile from the United States (available September 8, 2015). The time is 8:00 PM. Jack Bauer is a man without a country, a fugitive hunted by the most powerful nations…
Hell's Gate by Richard Crompton is the 2nd book in the Detective Mollel series who's just been banished from to the outskirts of Kenya (available June 2, 2015). Detective Mollel, the Maasai warrior-turned-detective, has been banished from Nairobi, Kenya's bustling metropolis, to a small, fly-blown town on the edge of a national park. His career,…
Over the last ten years there has been an explosion of authors writing contemporary crime fiction set in southern Africa. Four of the ten crime fiction novels published in South Africa last year were debut authors to the genre (Kurt Ellis, Penny Lorimer, Joanne Macgregor, Charlotte Otter). How have readers elsewhere in the world reacted…
The Laughing Monsters by Denis Johnson is an international thriller featuring Ronald Nair who returns to Sierra Leone with hopes of repeating the get-rich-quick scheme he employed ten years past (available November 4, 2014). Roland Nair calls himself Scandinavian but travels on a U.S. passport. After ten years’ absence, he returns to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to…
The Delta is a thriller by Tony Park set in Africa about Sonja Kurtz, an ex-assassin turned mercenary who's hired to blow up a dam in Botswana (available October 7, 2014). Modern Africa is a nation torn by tribal divisions, poverty, great riches and a fragile ecosystem. Sonja Kurtz is a woman in love with…
