*The Shining Girls, by Lauren Beukes (repost)

9780316216852
Mulholland, 2013
368 pp

hardcover

"It is a game. It's a destiny he's writing for them. Inevitably, they're waiting for him."




 note: When I picked up this book for my "books published this year" summer readfest,   I had zero clue as to what it was going to be, but as it turns out, it's focused on crimes against women, so I thought I'd post it here as well as on the main page of my online reading journal.

 The Shining Girls is a mix of time-travel scifi and serial-killer crime fiction,  but don't believe the blurb written by Matt Haig on the back cover that says it's a cross between The Time Traveler's Wife and The Silence of the Lambs.  Even if, in your wildest imagination, you could mix the two, you still don't come anywhere close to The Shining Girls.  Yes, there is time travel and yes there is a nasty serial killer out there, but this killer already knows who he's going to kill and visits his victims beforehand -- and even leaves them a little something to hold on to until he comes back.  Bought exclusively for its summer-read/beach potential, the book didn't let me down; it may not go on this year's list of favorite novels of the year, but it's still pretty good.

In this story, time runs along different chronologies.  The serial killer in this novel, Harper Curtis,  has his own time line -- he jumps in and out of time from the 1930s until 1993  -- and then there's the timeline of one his victims, Kirby, whom Harper mistakenly leaves alive after a brutal attack.  Third, there's the real, historical chronology, time and changing attitudes moving forward in history.   It may seem confusing at first, but it makes sense here. As the novel opens,  Harper Curtis is running from an angry mob in a Depression-era Hooverville.    He runs into a shack, takes a coat and leaves; in one of the pockets is a key.  He is drawn to a mysterious house in the city of Chicago, a jumping-off point into time; a place where his destiny, and those of a group of young women he doesn't even know, is literally written on the walls.  The women are the shining girls of the title, and he is compelled to track them through time and ultimately to snuff out their glowing potential in the world.   Harper  visits each one long before he kills them, leaving some token; years later when it's a woman's time to die, he leaves something else with each of them, something from one of the other victims.  One of them, Kirby Mazrachi, escapes from a savage attack and her destiny with death, but she is left with both physical and emotional scars. She becomes fixated on finding the person who did this to her, determined enough to the point where she becomes an intern on a newspaper that covered the case because of the access to the paper's archives.  She has caught on to the pattern of artifacts left behind, but trying to find someone who will listen to her is pretty much impossible, as is trying to pin down one specific person whom she knows is responsible for a number of other brutal attacks.

On a surface level I suppose you could read this book as another serial-killer novel with a time-travelling gimmick as a hook, but to me it goes well beyond that sort of simplified explanation.  Harper is figuratively plucking the wings off of  women, killing them just as they are starting to make a difference in their present;  cutting off their potential for making  a difference in  the futures of others.  Thinking about that, it seems to me that the author is not only talking about men who feel compelled to keep women down, but also about victims of violence -- where every life taken represents a loss of  future possibilities.  The crazy time loops in this novel help to point out that although time moves on, violence  against women has always been, is, and always will be part of our existence, with effects that ripple ever outward over time.

Overall, it's a good enough novel, one that kept me intrigued,  but there were parts that dragged and I had to read it twice to figure out the House. I'm also not big on graphic violence, which there is plenty of in this book; I get the point -- these were living people with personalities, lives, parents, loved ones -- but sometimes too much is just too much.  The ending, well, since I can't talk about that here, suffice it to say I think the action-packed  empowerment statement was a little too obvious,  but I know lots of people who'll disagree.  This book is getting some excellent reviews, but not everyone is loving it -- I'm somewhere in the middle of all of that.  I'll recommend it as a good summer read -- but read it slowly so you don't have to go through it a second time like I did.

 fiction from South Africa

Nairobi Heat and Black Star Nairobi, by Mukoma Wa Ngugi

978193554646
Melville House, 2011 
204 pp
paper

Nairobi Heat is the first novel to feature Ishmael Fofona,  a detective working in Madison, Wisconsin.  The book moves from the US to Kenya and back again,  while the next book in the series, Black Star Nairobi, reverses the journey in a roundabout sort of way. While the author has developed some pretty intricate plots, both books focus largely on Ishmael and the world around him as seen through his eyes, both as an African-American in the US and in Kenya.  The books  explore complicated issues of identity, morality, and justice, especially those defined vis-a-vis geography and ethnicity.  They are fast reads that will keep you turning pages, and although they are both filled with fast-paced action and political intrigue,  for me the inward focus on the characters was much more rewarding.  

 9781612192109

Melville House, 2013

267 pp

 paper

 If there was a yearly award honoring most violent fiction, Nairobi Heat would have certainly been on the longlist, and two years later  the author would have been on his way to the podium to give his acceptance speech for the even more incredible amount of bloodshed he writes into Black Star Nairobi.  To be fair, while I don't particularly enjoy these sorts of  violent crime/conspiracy thrillers, there's something in these books that kept me reading -- and for me it comes down to the main character and the issues the author explores through his writing, and interestingly enough, violence is one of them.  Personally, I'm more of a motive person -- what I look for when I read crime is an examination of what brings someone to the point of doing what he/she does --  and from that perspective (for the most part),  the author's exploration of character are more than satisfying in both novels.

Madison, Wisconsin is the starting point for Nairobi Heat.  A young white woman is found dead at the doorstep of an African man -- an act which Detective Ishmael predicts will be  "the story of the year."  In the wee hours of the morning, Ishmael is called to the scene in Maple Bluff, a "little tax haven" which has its own police and fire departments but no detectives.  Inside the house is Joshua Hakizimana, a Rwandan who currently teaches "Genocide and also Testimony" at the university.  Hakizimana is lauded as a national hero who'd turned his school,  "An island of sanity in a sea of blood,"  into a sanctuary during the Rwandan genocide, and who helped numbers of people escape over the border to safety.  Now there's a dead girl on his doorstep, and Hakizimana denies any knowledge of her or how she came to be there.  There's nothing about Joshua to initially arouse any suspicions; the police officers outside find a needle half full of heroin that had evidently gone into the dead girl's arm, so it looks like a straightforward case.  Yet the more Ishmael thinks about it, the more he begins to feel that something doesn't add up -- that there must be some connection between the dead girl and Joshua. As he notes, "He may be a hero somewhere in Africa, but he's mixed up in this shit somehow."  At home after work, Ishmael receives an anonymous call where he learns that if he wants to the truth, he needs to come to Nairobi, where he would find that "the truth is in the past." His chief gives him the okay after two weeks of pleading, and off he goes to Kenya, where he meets the man who will eventually become a good friend and colleague, David Odhiambo, known as "O," as well as a beautiful woman called Muddy, and they begin navigating the alleys, streets, bars and the wealthiest enclaves of Nairobi to get to the very ugly truth behind the young, unknown woman's death.


Black Star Nairobi picks up Fofona and O about three years later.  Ishmael has relocated to Kenya, where he's fallen in love with Muddy and he and  O have formed an investigative partnership called the Black Star Agency.  They've taken on "some of the strangest cases," but they're not doing so well at making a living. When they are given a case to work on involving a dead man in the Ngong forest, they take it, needing the money.  Ishmael will later come to regret it, especially after a powerful explosion rocks Nairobi's Norfolk Hotel, and they realize their dead guy may have been somehow involved when some American  CIA agents become interested, believing the bombing may have been a terrorist act.   When O remarks that "this shit is way over our heads," Ishmael agrees, but they both realize that they need the money, and they will just work their original case. Everything else would have to remain "background music, no matter how loud it got."  The Norfolk explosion, however,  sets off an incredible series of events, leading to personal tragedy and a no-holds barred, personal search for the perpetrators, while in the background, shady presidential politics triggers a "vortex of violence" pitting ethnicity against ethnicity in wholesale slaughter. 

Once you start to get under the surface of these plots in both novels,  you discover that these books are not your average political thrillers. Nairobi Heat has a much better, more tightly-plotted and credible  core mystery that takes the reader into the world of the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath; Black Star Nairobi focuses on the hunt for a shadowy group of men for whom the lives of innocent people mean nothing and who are powerful enough  behind the scenes to manipulate world politics and individuals.  While Black Star Nairobi has a much different feel than its predecessor, the main action moving more along a political thriller line, it also offers the reader a peek at the effects of hatred that creates cultural gaps that keep a nation divided.  It's like in coming to Africa, Ishmael finds some of the same issues he thought he'd left behind in America, but defined  in Kenyan terms on Kenyan turf.

In both books, it's the characters that take center stage; in  Black Star Nairobi, the characters from Nairobi Heat are much more developed and the reader sees them coming to terms with just what they're capable of and how they try to maintain their individual senses of humanity when faced with situations that would try a saint.  Ishmael, the narrator in both novels,  provides insight not only into the people in his immediate circle, but into himself as well.   For example, before he was a cop, he understood that  "being black, poor, and urban meant you were the scapegoat that no one cared about;" after joining the force and working in Madison where he stood out in a "sea of whiteness," he notes that the "stink of racist policing rubbed off on me and some family members called me a sell-out to my face." He also admits to having done some things "in order to stay alive," but that when it came down to it, he had no "innocent blood" on his hands:

"For me it was always in self-defense or in the defense of someone else. I had come to know that I was good with violence the same way a boxer realizes he is good with his hands -- in and outside the ring I was aware of the rules, and whenever possible I followed them."

Ishmael admits he "hadn't felt American for a long time," and that in reality, he hadn't wanted to.  As far as his friend O, he's a guy who realizes that sometimes to get justice, it is necessary to try to understand and play within the rules of the "fucked-up moral code" of the bad guys.  There is a duality at work in O, one where "evil and good were compartmentalized in him," where he

"worked in the world of nine-to-five; he was happily married and always came home at the earlierst possible moment. However, when we entered the world of thieves and murderers, he fit right in and he followed their rules as often as he made and broke them."

Ishmael wonders what will happen if O ever becomes "unhinged" and that well-cultivated compartmentalization completely breaks down.

All of  the  main characters are excellently portrayed, and there's plenty of the "what-makes-them-tick" thing going on that for me elevates these novels beyond the average thriller. The author's ability to sustain an ongoing and vibrant sense of place is amazing, especially as viewed through the lenses of Ishmael's experienes and his examination of people  than through the normal details that some authors stick in their stories hoping to convey certain nuances that don't always come off well.   The books are very well written, and there is much improvement from Nairobi Heat to Black Star Nairobi. I preferred the core mystery of Nairobi Heat much more than the who's-behind-the-bomb plot of the second book, because it seemed much more realistic and credible; it's a shame that the author had to come up with that whole twisty, conspiracy plot to showcase his excellent characters. However, readers who are into that sort of thing will probably find more of what  they like in Black Star Nairobi.  

Other readers of Nairobi Heat  have noted that the whole idea of a Madison cop traveling to Africa to solve a case is farfetched -- well, ok, maybe, I might agree there. I particularly didn't care for blanket race generalizations, but that's a personal thing.   However, from a casual reader standpoint, I can recommend both books, but they are definitely not novels  for the cozy crowd or for people who like upbeat endings or stories -- that's simply not the case here.  They are both thought provoking and what the author has to say will stick with you for quite a while.  I'm still thinking about these books, and I finished them both over a week ago. Now I'm hoping that I'll see more of Ishmael, O and Muddy very shortly.

Deadly Harvest, by Michael Stanley

9780062221520
Bourbon Street Books/Harper, 2013
496 pp

(ARC: thanks to the publisher and to TLC book tours!)

Deadly Harvest is book number four in a series of crime fiction/mystery novels to feature Detective David "Kubu" Bengu, who works for the Botswana police force. Normally I begin with the first installment of a series,  but I didn't realize that this book was so far ahead. As it turns out, its placement in the series wasn't an issue at all -- in fact, it can easily be read as a standalone, without any prior knowledge of the characters or the setting necessary.  So if you're considering it, and you haven't read the others, no problem.  The author, Michael Stanley, is actually a composite of two people: Stanley Trollip and Michael Sears, both born in Johannesburg, South Africa. 

Two little girls go missing in two different locations,  and when their loved ones turn to their local police forces, little to nothing happens.  Soon the cases go cold, at least officially, but one father named Witness can't stop thinking about his daughter. His grief leads him to the local bar where he spends a great deal of time drinking; and then to a local witch doctor who tells him that his daughter may have been taken for muti.  Normally extracted from plants or sometimes animals, the belief is that if a person ingests this traditional substance, he or she will take on some of the powers of the plant/animal being used (like a lion heart for bravery, etc.). However, there is also a market (illegal and definitely unsanctioned) for  muti derived from humans. Witness comes to believe that his daughter is a victim of this illegal muti trade, and he is told he should look for a man seeking power.  This advice makes Witness remember seeing candidate Marumo about the time of his daughter's disappearance,  a member of the opposition Freedom Party in an upcoming election.  Witness goes to Marumo's home in the dark of night, kills him and flees.  Don't worry -- not a spoiler -- this bit of information is right on the cover blurb. Kubu is assigned to the case, an investigation where he will have to tread extremely lightly due to political considerations. As it happens, a new detective, Samantha Khama is working on her first case which deals with  of one of the missing girls.  Their individual investigations merge together when a gourd filled with muti is found in Marumo's desk and ultimately reveal a unknown, deadly and "invisible" adversary who needs to be stopped.  Help, however, is not fast in coming -- their unidentified suspect is very powerful and no one will speak against him.

The mysteries within this police procedural  are engaging, but even more so are the social and political issues that are brought out here.  As I've noted previously in other posts,  crime fiction is becoming a medium for the airing of important issues, especially in countries with which most people are unfamiliar.   The discussion of prejudice against albinos, for example, and their value in Tanzania as a source of muti that breeds fear among that group of people goes way beyond the police procedural aspect, as does the line between traditional beliefs and modern viewpoints, a boundary which is often straddled by those on both sides.  It's also interesting that some things seem to be universal -- the politics involved in police work, the lack of enough police to adequately investigate crimes in smaller areas, the concern about AIDS and the plight of children born of mothers who've died from the disease, corruption etc. Of course, this isn't why most people tend to read crime fiction, but these authors have done a great job in introducing the issues important in this area.  

The main character, Detective David "Kubu" Bengu (known as Detective Kubu throughout) is described as having a great bulk. Even so, he speaks softly, has a rational mind, and never fails to direct respect where it is due even under trying situations. He is a family-oriented man as well as a good investigator. His new colleague, Samantha Khama, hasn't yet learned the fine art of tempering her very hot temper, becoming passionate about issues that are important to her not only as a cop, but as a woman and as a human being.  Both characters are drawn very well.

On the other hand,  there is a really large amount of space spent on Kubu's personal life -- with his father's declining mind, the decision whether or not to adopt a little girl whose mother died of AIDS, Sunday family traditions, games played with his little girls, etc., and while I'm sure this all adds to character development, it's often distracting in terms of the mystery and the action at the heart of the novel. I also have to say that despite all of the careful plotting and the focus on the investigation, I guessed who the "invisible" adversary was not too far into the story.   This is a personal thing, but when I read crime, I want that "aha" moment at the end when all is revealed.  Finally, I'm not feeling an overall entrenched sense of place in this novel which to me is important and especially so in a place I've never been.  On the flip side, however, this is a series I would like to read from its beginning, so I will definitely be revisiting Detective Kubu in the future. 

Overall, it's a fun read that is remarkable in terms of the authors' attention to pressing social and political issues and how the characters react in such situations.  As I noted, not everyone looks to a crime novel for what it can say about another country or another culture, so if you're in it just for the mystery aspect of it all, you probably won't be disappointed.  Deadly Harvest is a book I can recommend to other readers of crime fiction/mystery, despite my personal little niggles.