South Africa Scene

 Michael - Thursday

Most followers of Murder Is Everywhere probably know that I do a monthly piece for the International Thriller Writers’ e-magazine (which rejoices in the name of The Big Thrill) called Africa Scene. Each article features an author with a new mystery/thriller novel set largely somewhere in Africa, and the idea is to display the rich variety of work that is coming out of a range of African countries. Sometimes the books are written by authors not living in Africa, but engaged with Africa in a deep way.

Having just set up the November piece, I suddenly realized two things about 2022 so far  – one good and one not so good. The good one is that it’s been a bumper year for South Africa (actually southern Africa, including Botswana). We’ve had a remarkable suite of new novels from new and established South African authors and they’ve picked up almost all the slots this year. The bad thing, of course, is the other side of that coin - where are all the mystery/thrillers set further north? We’ve had some stunners over the last few years, but suddenly there’s a dearth. I’m always on the lookout for them, but either I’m doing a bad job or this has been a rather dry year.

So let’s get back to the good news. I’ll just focus on the themes because the spread suggests that SA crime fiction is spreading out from its focus on the Apartheid past. However, I’ve included the Africa Scene link if you’d like to find out more about the author and the book.

February:  Outside the Lines by Ameera Patel

Ameera's debut novel explores how class is replacing race as the boundaries in South Africa, although there’s still racial stereotyping going on, especially from older people. The novel has as diverse a collection of characters as one could hope: a white father and daughter who live in a modest suburban house, their domestic, Flora, who also lives in the house. A Zimbabwean, Runyararo, who is in the country illegally and whose situation forces him “outside the lines”, and Farhana who comes from a strict Muslim family, but whose boyfriend (Flora's son) is a black drug dealer. This heady mixture meshes to a tense, literary thriller.

April: The Dark Flood by Deon Meyer

The backstory for this book is based loosely on a true story of a company collapse in prosperous Stellenbosch in the Cape wine country and the resulting impact on the local property market. The modern corruption and people sailing far too close to the wind, makes a great story.

May: Serpent Crescent by Vivian de Klerk

For something completely different, Vivian gives us a protagonist who is a sociopath – now an elderly woman living alone in a house in Serpent Crescent in a town based on a university city in the Eastern Cape - who tells us the story of her life. Part of the attraction of the book is the in-depth look at how such a personality develops, and learns to protect itself, but there are many twists and turns along the way.

 June: Hammerman by Mike Nicol

One evening in February 1986, a man assassinated the Swedish prime minister, Olaf Palme, shooting him outside a cinema. No one has ever been convicted of the crime, and at the time there were rumours that South Africa was involved because of Palme’s outspoken opposition to apartheid and his pro-sanctions stance. Mike has taken that idea, and explored how the ripples from that event might spread to the present day. This one is solidly rooted in the legacy of Apartheid.

July: The Milk Tart Murders by Sally Andrew

The Milk Tart Murders is Sally’s fourth mystery featuring the delightful Tannie Maria. Set in Ladismith in the Klein Karoo, Maria works for the Klein Karoo Gazette writing a love advice and recipe column. She lives outside town with her hens and her flowers, and is a superb cook. As usual, the book is dotted with delicious recipes, a selection of which are given in detail at the end of the book. If you haven’t met Tannie Maria before, you should do so, and you should try out some of those recipes. The first book is now a prime time TV series. I just can’t work out why Tannie Maria becomes Scottish for the role...

September: A Deadly Covenant by Michael Stanley

In the new Kubu novel we return to the Bushman theme of Death of the Mantis. In this second Kubu prequel, a long-past Bushman massacre is discovered, and Kubu has to discover why that event is generating murders in the present. Kwei very kindly not only read and gave us a quote for the book, but also took the interviewer’s seat for Africa Scene, and threw some great questions our way.

The book is now out as an ebook worldwide.

October: The Heist Men by Andrew Brown

The Heist Men is a thriller around a gang that attacks and robs cash-in-transit vehicles—a modern-day scourge in South Africa. The tension comes from two directions—on the one hand we follow Captain Eberard Februarie of the SA Police Service in his efforts to track down the gang, but on the other we follow Andile Xaba, the leader of a crew of heist men who sees his activities with the gang as a career. He leads a double life with a suburban girlfriend and township mother.  Despite his role in the gang, he grabs our interest and wins our sympathy.

November: The Eye of the Beholder by Margie Orford (Next month.)

Margie has been working on other interests since leaving South Africa so it's been a while since her last novel. Her new book revolves around the lives of three women, and is set partly in Canada, partly in South Africa, partly in London, and partly in Scotland. The theme is not particularly South African although the toxic masculinity that generates the sort of abuses these women face is endemic in South Africa. Their ways of trying to cope with it form the canvass on which these women are painted.

 Returning to the bad side of the coin, please let me know if you come across any suitable African mysteries from elsewhere on the continent that I’ve missed. I’d love to feature them!

 __________________________________

This weekend you can catch up with Stan for the last three A Deadly Covenant launch events in the Twin Cities:

Friday 14, 10 am

Lake Country Booksellers event

4766 Washington Ave, White Bear Lake, MN 55110 Phone:651-426-0918

 

Saturday 15, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm 

Twin Cities Book Festival

Join Stan to chat about books, Botswana and Bushmen at this great annual event!

Minnesota State Fairgrounds, Saint Paul, Minnesota

@RainTaxiReview #TCBF

 

Sunday 16, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm

Barnes and Noble, 

3230 Galleria, Edina, MN 55435 Phone:952-920-2124

NAME OR NUMBER: Dealing With Chapters

Zoë Sharp

 

Back when I wrote my first novel, I think it had about twenty-five chapters, each with scene breaks, plus an epilogue to explain what happened in the aftermath. These days, I’m more likely to write the same number of words but have a hundred and twenty-five chapters.

 

There’s no doubt that, when you look at the Table of Contents that appears in every eBook, that great long list of sequential numbers is lacking something in appeal.

 

At one point, it seemed that books always had chapter titles—sometimes instead of numbers, sometimes as well. If you pick up a Margery Allingham, or a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, you tend to find chapter titles more often than not.

 

Some contemporary writers go in for chapter titles, or often use the time and day, or time and place instead. In One Fine Day in The Middle of the Night, Christopher Brookmyre uses a time, location, and a chapter title: ‘09:00 – nether Kilbokie – elite unit assembles’ for example. Or ‘09:50 – Glasgow airport – lost soul in transit’.

 

The reason this subject came up was because of my current work-in-progress—the follow-up to The Last Time She Died. I usually create separate Word documents for each chapter while I’m writing it. Once it’s more or less done, I drop it into the file containing the entire book so far. It just makes things a bit easier to deal with. Because, when you’re dealing with a third-person, multiple-viewpoint narrative, it’s very easy to get hopelessly lost, I find. So, when I name the file, as well as the chapter number and the character whose POV I’m following, I’ve now also started adding a word or two to tell me what the chapter’s about.

 

But that’s made me wonder if I should be adding that kind of chapter title into the book. The closest I’ve come to this was in the second Lakes crime thriller, Bones in the River, when I numbered the chapters, but also broke the books into Parts, each labelled with the day of the week. And I did a Charlie Fox short story, ‘Across the Broken Line’, which hopped backwards and forwards in time, so each section was titled to pin that down.

 

I thought I’d take a quick look through some of the titles written by my fellow Murder Is Everywhere bloggers, to see how they handled the subject of chapters and what to call them.

 

In Blood Tango, Annamaria Alfieri begins the book in Buenos Aires 1945, and each chapter has a day and date rather than a number. The whole book takes place over twelve days. While Strange Gods has an initial place and date: ‘The Protectorate of British East Africa 1911’ and then goes on to numbered chapters. Annamaria does the same with City of Silver: ‘Potosí – Alto Perú – 1650’ and then we’re on to straightforward numbering.

 

Cara Black’s long-running Aimée Leduc series, set in Paris, does not have chapter numbers at all. Cara uses the day and approximate time, so Murder in the Marais, for example, begins with ‘Paris: November 1993’, then has ‘Wednesday’ as the Part title, and ‘Wednesday morning’ as the chapter title. A later book, Murder in the Bastille, has ‘Paris: October 1994’, then goes straight into the chapter titles of ‘Monday Evening’, ‘Later Monday Night’, ‘Wednesday Afternoon’, etc. 

 

Cara’s standalone novel, Three Hours in Paris, has—by its very nature—a compressed timescale. Here Cara sets the scene with ‘Sunday, June 23, 1940 – Nine Days into the German Occupation of Paris – Montmartre, Paris | 6:15 a.m. Paris time’. And then goes on with day, date, location, and time for each chapter following.

 

Caro Ramsay also uses dated chapters for some of her Anderson and Costello Scottish-set detective series. Absolution, for example, starts with ‘Anna – Glasgow, 1984’, then ‘Alan – Glasgow, 2006’ and moves on through seven days from September 30 to October 7, plus an epilogue. By The Sideman, however, Caro is using numbering, with the date as a sub-title for each chapter. Was this a conscious change?

 

Leighton Gage, Jeff Siger’s Andreas Kaldis Greek series, Susan Spann's Hiro Hattori series—set in 16th century Japan—my own Charlie Fox novels, and Sujata Massey’s contemporary, Japanese-set Rei Shimura books all use basic chapter numbering. Nice, simple, and it works.

 

For her Perveen Mistry series, set in 1920s' India, however, Sujata has used the chapter title approach. The opening of The Widows of Malabar Hill has ‘1921 – 1 – A Stranger’s Gaze – Bombay, February 1921’. That seems to cover all the bases!

 

For the first book in Kwei Quartey’s Emma Djan series, The Missing American, he uses numbered Parts and chapters, with a sub-heading of the date and place: ‘Chapter One – 4th January, Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana’. His Inspector Darko Dawson novel, Murder at Cape Three Points, on the other hand, sticks with chapter numbering.

 

The Michael Stanleys’ African-set Detective Kubu novels have either numbered chapters or numbered Parts and chapters. But their standalone, Dead of Night uses numbered chapters with Part titles of the places they are set. So Part 1 is Duluth, Minnesota. Part 2 is South Africa, and so on.

 

For The Last Time She Died, I went with a prologue and then the usual numbering, although I did need sub-headings for dates on some chapters, when I hopped back and forth between what’s happening now, and ten years ago, when the story began.

 

But still, I’m tempted by those chapter titles. And when I looked up Rick Riordan’s Magnus Chase and the Sword of Summer I'm even more tempted. Any one of these would make you want to read that chapter, so I will list some of them without further comment:

 

1.         Good Morning! You’re Going to Die

2.         The Man with the Metal Bra

3.         Don’t Accept Rides from Strange Relatives

4.         Seriously, the Dude Cannot Drive

5.         I’ve Always Wanted to Destroy a Bridge

6.         Make Way for Ducklings, or They Will Smack You Upside the Head

7.         You Look Great Without a Nose, Really

8.         Mind the Gap, and Also the Hairy Guy with the Axe

9.         You Totally Want the Minibar Key

10.   My Room Does Not Suck

11.   Pleased to Meet You. I will Now Crush Your Windpipe

12.   At Least I’m Not on Goat-Chasing Duty

 

Not a lot more you can say to that, is there?

 

This week’s Word of the Week is litost, a Czech word meaning the humiliated despair we feel when someone accidentally reminds us, through their own accomplishments, of everything that has gone wrong with our lives and we become only too aware of the scale of our own inadequacies.

The Yule Book Flood

 Zoë Sharp

 

It was only a couple of years ago that I discovered the wonderful tradition of jólabókaflóð,

(jolabokaflod) which is the exchanging of books on Christmas Eve and then spending the evening reading. It’s something I particularly associate with Iceland, and although I understand it’s not unique to that country, it has become something of a cultural phenomenon there.

 

I seem to recall that chocolate was also mentioned. Books and chocolate—what’s not to like?

 

Apparently, this tradition really took hold during the Second World War, when strict limitations on imports to Iceland meant many gift items were in short supply. Paper, fortunately, was not one of those items, so books—and the giving of books—became an ideal option.

 

Iceland is now a famously literary country. Everyone there receives a catalogue from the Icelandic Publishers Association of new book releases out between September and November. At one point, not only did half the population read at least eight books a year, but one in ten of them would go on to write their own.

 

As this is my last Murder Is Everywhere post before Christmas, I thought I would encourage the establishment of jolabokaflod—literally, Yule Book Flood—elsewhere by giving you some last-minute ideas. Or, to put it another way, the latest publications of my fellow blog-mates.

 

Annamaria Alfieri

Annamaria’s latest publications are audiobook editions of THE IDOL OF MOMBASA and THE BLASPHEMERS, both in her Vera McIntosh and Justin Tolliver series. The books are set in British East Africa in the early years of the twentieth century, and narrated by Dennis Kleinman. Annamaria is hoping to have news of the next instalment in the New Year...

Cara Black

Cara’s latest is a standalone historical spy thriller, THREE HOURS IN PARIS. ‘In June of 1940, when Paris fell to the Nazis, Hitler spent a total of three hours in the City of Light—abruptly leaving, never to return. To this day, no one knows why.’

 

The latest in the Aimée Leduc series is MURDER IN BEL-AIR.

Sujata Massey

Reissued as a trade paperback in 2020, THE SATAPUR MOONSTONE takes place in India, 1921. ‘It’s rainy season in the lush, remote Sahyadri mountains, where the princely state of Satapur is tucked away. A curse of deaths has fallen on Satapur’s line of maharajas. The state is now ruled by an agent of the British raj on behalf of Satapur’s two maharanis. The royal ladies are disputing the education of the young prince, and a lawyer’s counsel is required. Enter Perveen Mistry. She is determined to bring peace to the place and make a sound recommendation for the young prince’s future. Yet when she arrives she finds the palace is full of cold-blooded power plays and ancient vendettas. Too late, she realises she’s walked into a trap…’

 

Kwei Quartey

Kwei’s latest book is the first in the Emma Djan series, set in Accra: THE MISSING AMERICAN. ‘When her dreams of rising through the police ranks crash around her, 25-year-old Emma Djan’s life takes an uncertain and unfamiliar direction as an agent of a private detective agency in Accra. Elsewhere, Gorden Tilson, a middle-aged widower in Washington D.C. seeks comfort in an online support group, where his love for a young Ghanaian widow ignites. When Gordon runs off to Ghana to find his new love, to the horror of his son, Derek, he vanishes. Fearing for his father’s life, Derek embarks on a journey to find his father before it’s too late.’

 

The second Emma Djan novel, SLEEP WELL, MY LADY, will be out in January 2021.

Caro Ramsay

Caro’s latest is #11 in the Anderson & Costello mystery series, THE RED, RED SNOW. ‘A family man is stabbed to death at a crowded Christmas Ice Show. Murdered in plain sight. No clues, no witnesses, no known motive… What secrets are lurking within this isolated, superstitious community? As the snow piles higher, detectives Anderson and Costello put their wits to solving a seemingly impossible crime, and gradually uncover a twisted tale of greed, obsession—and cold-blooded murder.’

 

And in 2021, Caro has THE CURSED GIRLS and another Anderson & Costello, ON AN OUTGOING TIDE coming out.

 

the Michael Stanleys

The latest in the Africa-set Detective Kubu novels is #7, although it’s actually a prequel. In the previous books, Kubu is the senior detective in the Criminal Investigation Department in Gaborone. A large man — as his nickname Kubu (hippopotamus) suggests – he investigates complex murder cases with southern African backstories.

‘FACETS OF DEATH is set in the late 1990s when Kubu first joins the Botswana CID as a raw detective. While he’s trying to be accepted by the current staff and to make a role for himself in the CID, a massive diamond heist takes place on the road from Jwaneng—home of the world’s richest diamond mine… Kubu and Mabaku are sure they can solve the case if only their contacts can stay alive long enough to point them in the right direction. However, when one of the mine’s senior managers becomes the next victim, they’re forced to set a trap for the crime’s mastermind. If it fails, their careers are over—in Kubu’s case before it’s even begun.’

 

Zoë Sharp

My own newest release is book #2 in the Lakes Crime Thriller Trilogy, BONES IN THE RIVER, featuring CSI Grace McColl and Detective Nick Weston. ‘Driving on a country road late at night, you hit a child. There are no witnesses. You have everything to lose. What do you do?’ This and the first Lakes book, DANCING ON THE GRAVE, are available in audio format, narrated by Lewis Hancock, and you can listen to tasters on my website.

 

I have also put together two eBoxsets of the Charlie Fox series. The first three books, set ‘back when Charlie was still a self-defence instructor with a motorbike and an attitude,’ can be found in CHARLIE FOX: THE EARLY YEARS. The second eBoxset is CHARLIE FOX: BODYGUARD. ‘Ex-Special Forces soldier Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox aced the course in close protection. She already had the instinct. All she needs now is the experience.

 

Jeffrey Siger

‘ISLAND OF SECRETS, the tenth book in the Greece-based Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis mystery-thriller series, reveals the wildly lucrative dark side of an internationally renowned Aegean island playground for the world’s rich and famous, those battling for control of its vices, and the innocents affected by it all.’ (Published in hardcover as THE MYKONOS MOB.)

 

Plus, in January 2021, a reissue of #1 in the Kaldis series, MURDER IN MYKONOS, with an introduction by Thomas Perry. And in April 2021, #11 will be out: A DEADLY TWIST.

Susan Spann 

CLIMB is a non-fiction work. ‘After more than forty years of living “safe and scared,” Susan Spann decided to break free by climbing one hundred of Japan’s most famous mountains in a single year. But when an unexpected cancer diagnosis forced her to confront her deepest fears, the mountains of Japan became the setting for a transformative journey–from pain and fear to a new life fuelled by hope, confidence, and strength.’

 

Her latest novel in the Hiro Hattori series is GHOST OF THE BAMBOO ROAD. ‘En route to Edo, Master ninja Hiro Hattori and Portuguese Jesuit Father Mateo spend the night in a rural mountain village whose inhabitants live in terror of a legendary vengeful ghost. When the innkeeper’s wife is murdered and Father Mateo’s housekeeper, Ana, is blamed for a crime she did not commit, Hiro and Father Mateo are forced to investigate and reveal the truth. But when another woman turns up murdered in the snow, the detectives must face the shocking truth that the vengeful yurei the villagers fear might be more than just a legend after all.’

Well, that should give you plenty to read over the holiday season. And, although strict adherents to jolabokaflod believe you should give only hardback books as gifts, I think in these Covid-stricken times, eBooks and Audiobooks are more than acceptable. It’s a little journey the recipient can make, even if they’re self-isolating at home.

And don't think I'd forgotten the chocolate. One of my favourites is Lindor milk chocolate. What about you?

 

This week’s Word of the Week is plangent, which means loud and resonant, but with a mournful tone. It comes from the Latin plangere, which can mean either to strike or beat, particularly in relation to beating your breast in grief. It also means to lament.

Barbara's Debut Review

Barbara and her Man [on] Friday

Jeff--Saturday

I have an announcement to make. It’s approaching Barbara’s and my six-month anniversary, but that’s not the announcement.  Lesa Holstine—book reviewer, librarian, and great person extraordinaire--asked that I write a blogpost for Scottsdale, Arizona’s Poisoned Pen Bookstore, a place we mystery authors all know well. The premise was to write about “Distractions.”  What books kept us distracted during these pandemic times.  Lesa wanted two or three examples from me.  But I had another idea.

First of all, how was I going to decide among the many first-rate new releases from my Murder is Everywhere blogmates?  Secondly, in many cases I’d have to lie about reading them, as I’d found my distraction in immersing myself in my own writing. So, I hit upon this idea: have Barbara—who’s been reading voraciously--take the heat and make the choices.  Not to be outfoxed by moi, she agreed to recommend two, but only if I did the same. 

Arrgh. Foiled again, I accepted.

That left me to decide among my blogmates. How to do that?  I took the easiest way out and did it alphabetically.  I went with those with a last name starting with “S,” but not living at the moment in a country that started with the first letter of my first name.   

That seemed a fair way to do things. And despite recent anonymous pound and rand deposits to my bank account, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Anyway, below is the post and here is how it looks on line...with an introduction courtesy of Lesa [feel free to skip over the part about me].

Lesa Holstine

Jeffrey Siger’s photo is at the top of his piece [Nope, I replaced it with a far more lovely one], and we’ll talk about his Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis pieces, but it’s a treat to have him joined by his wife, Barbara. I’ve known Jeff for a number of years, and it’s so nice to have them share writing duties here.

Jeffrey Siger was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, practiced law at a major Wall Street law firm, and later established his own New York City law firm where he continued as one of its name partners until giving it all up to write full-time among the people, life, and politics of his beloved Mykonos. The Mykonos Mob is the tenth novel in his internationally best-selling and award nominated Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series, following up on An Aegean April, Santorini Caesars, Devil in Delphi, Sons of Sparta, Mykonos After Midnight, Target: Tinos, Prey on Patmos, Assassins of Athens, and Murder in Mykonos.

The New York Times described Jeffrey Siger’s novels as “thoughtful police procedurals set in picturesque but not untroubled Greek locales,” and named him as Greece’s thriller writer of record. The Greek Press called his work “prophetic,” Eurocrime described him as a “very gifted American author…on a par with other American authors such as Joseph Wambaugh or Ed McBain,” and the City of San Francisco awarded him its Certificate of Honor citing that his “acclaimed books have not only explored modern Greek society and its ancient roots but have inspired political change in Greece.” He now lives in Greece and the U.S. You can find Siger’s books in the Web Store, http://bit.ly/2jC3gpp

You can also find the books that both Barbara and Jeffrey suggest as “Distractions”. Check in the Web Store for those as well. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

*****

Ahh, distractions. How I love them.  Truth be told, prior to Barbara and I squirreling ourselves away on our farm on the edge of the pandemic’s worldwide epicenter, I was reading at the pace of one or two new mystery/thrillers a week. But then came the plague, and I fell into a very different, but comfortable routine.

I’ve been banging away on the keyboard every day, immersed in a standalone I’d been meaning to write for a half-dozen years, chasing new characters in whatever directions they decided to go. In other words, I’ve been living in a different world, returning to this one only long enough to repair a leaky roof, remove the occasional unwelcome snake from the front porch, or perform otherwise necessary farm chores—like eating and sleeping.

Yes, I know reading provides the same form of escape for many—thank God—but this time writing did the job for me.  I’m happy to say I just finished the first draft of my standalone obsession and look forward to returning to my normal reading routine. In a moment, I’ll tell you the books at the very top of my TBR list.

But first, I think it may be of more interest to you to hear a few insights from my wife on the books she’s been reading over these past months while I’ve been goofing off at the keyboard. So, here they are, in her words:

Friends and family have told me that reading during the Covid crisis has become too difficult for them. They simply cannot stay focused.  But I’m reading the same as always. Perhaps it’s my choice of books, for I’ve been happily accompanying strong female characters through the slower-paced, elegant, and structured settings of Jane Austen novels. I love their modern, often humorous take on human nature, filled with subtle jabs at the pretensions of the wealthy, and silly small-minded behaviors of family members and so-called friends, all still so very relevant today. My return-to-Austen-novels-binge began with her unfinished, eleven-chapter Sanditon, and has taken me (thus far) back through Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion.

Coincidentally, just before the crisis, I’d binged on Charles Todd’s Bess Crawford series (starting with #1, A Duty to the Dead), featuring a devoted, tireless nurse struggling through the illnesses and death of World War I and the 1918 influenza pandemic. These days I often think about Bess, and how her human instincts, pathos, and heroism are reflected in today’s hero nurses.

What attracts me to Austen’s and Charles Todd’s work is that each is written from the perspective of sharp, intelligent, strong-minded women; women who could be my friends.

Thanks, Barbara. Now on to my picks of two works I cannot wait to read.  I’m sure my choices won’t surprise you, as they’re the newest releases of great authors.

We all know and love Zoë Sharp for her iconic Charlie Fox series, but I cannot wait to read her just released Bones in the River.  It’s the second gripping police procedural in her CSI Grace McColl and Detective Nick Weston thriller series based in England’s Cumbria Lakes region. “Dark, shocking, and exciting, but imbued with intuitive empathy and dry wit throughout” is how one reader described it. 

The novel opens with the death of a local child, and though an accident, the killer makes a panicked decision to hide the evidence. The child’s body is found as a small Lakes town is in the midst of hosting its Appleby Horse Fair, a traditional event drawing the largest gathering of Gypsies and Travellers in Europe.  The discovery quickly turns longstanding prejudices and distrust of Roma into accusations and much more. As one relentless dramatic discovery after another unfolds, Sharp draws us into better understanding what drives the Gypsy stigma, through her vivid characters, engrossing and balanced exploration of complex family issues, and gifted prose.

What more could one ask for in seeking distraction?

For fans of Michael Stanley’s award-winning Detective Kubu series, a treat is in store for us with their latest book, Facets of Death. Actually, it could be labeled first in the series, because it’s the prequel to all that we’ve come to love about these Botswana-based novels featuring David Bengu, whose girth has him nicknamed Kubu (Setswana for “hippopotamus”).  It’s the story of how Kubu applied his keen mind and famous persistence (along with his namesake’s gift for masking one of the deadliest creatures in Africa behind a docile appearance) to overcome the jealousies of his colleagues when he entered the Botswana CID straight from university as a detective, skipping the usual beat cop phase. 

When the richest diamond mine in the world is robbed of 100,000 carats in a deadly hijacking, police suspect an inside job, but have no evidence of who it might be. After the robbers are killed execution-style and the diamonds are still missing, suspicion switches to a witch doctor and his son, and the case lands in Kubu’s prodigious lap for him to show the skill and integrity needed to catch those responsible—or find his career at an end.  I’m pretty sure I know how this will end for Kubu, but the great thing about reading Michael Stanley novels is how much you learn about Africa and so many other things along the way…and the masterful story telling that takes you there.

Well, that’s all for now folks.  Here’s wishing for you all to stay safe—and happily distracted.

*****

Jeffrey Siger’s most recent book in the Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series is Island of Secrets, previously published as The Mykonos Mob.

--Jeff [and Barbara]