Hour of the Red God: A Detective Mollel Novel
A young Nairobi prostitute is found murdered, her body mutilated. The case falls to Detective Sergeant Mollel. The gaunt Mollel, seemingly an ascetic, was once a Maasai warrior, and his stretched earlobes brand his ethnicity in a city in which politics are literally tribal. Following leads and theories, Mollel and his partner, Kiunga, move almost ceaselessly through the city of 10 million and come to recognize that two of Nairobi’s most important people may be implicated in the crime. But a heated national election that has stirred tribal rivalries threatens to set Nairobi aflame. Crompton, a former BBC journalist, lives in Nairobi, and the election he describes (2007) was a real one. His debut novel combines a sinuous plot, a wonderfully complex and tragic protagonist, and a remarkable portrait of a city that is simultaneously exotic yet familiar (e.g., a murder victim who might have suffered female circumcision, modern office towers surrounded by an ocean of corrugated metal shacks, and a megachurch minister who slickly televises his Sunday services). All fans of international crime fiction will want to follow Mollel through Nairobi’s mean streets. --Thomas Gaughan