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rosseroo 's review for:
Black Star Nairobi
by Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ
Nairobi Heat, the first book in this series by the son of Kenya's most famous writer (Ngugi wa Thiong'o), was a bit of a disappointment. The Kenyan setting was vivid, but the crime story was very weak. I picked this up hoping for a stronger story to carry me along.
Set against the 2007 elections, the book finds African-American expatriate Ishmael eking out a living of sorts in partnership with his Kenyan cop buddy from the first book. Living with his Rwandan refugee, slam-poetess girlfriend, he seems to work as a kind of freelance investigator for the police, in an arrangement that seems rather implausible. When an unidentified corpse is found in a forest outside Nairobi famous for being a dumping ground for murder victims, they are tasked with figuring out who he is.
As in the first book, their investigation leads them into the heart of a preposterous international plot to destabilize the country for reasons that I won't even bother trying to explain. While this fails to convince, it does provide a good excuse to dramatize the crisis and near descent into total ethnic warfare that happened after the 2007 election. If nothing else, the book brings home the news that Kenya is perhaps a more fragile political entity than we might realize.
However, despite some harrowing scenes here and there, the book again fails to really connect. Both writing and plotting just aren't that strong, and the story isn't helped by a lengthy interlude where the heroes have to fly to Mexico and sneak across the border to conduct some sleuthing in California. On the whole, another disappointment.
Set against the 2007 elections, the book finds African-American expatriate Ishmael eking out a living of sorts in partnership with his Kenyan cop buddy from the first book. Living with his Rwandan refugee, slam-poetess girlfriend, he seems to work as a kind of freelance investigator for the police, in an arrangement that seems rather implausible. When an unidentified corpse is found in a forest outside Nairobi famous for being a dumping ground for murder victims, they are tasked with figuring out who he is.
As in the first book, their investigation leads them into the heart of a preposterous international plot to destabilize the country for reasons that I won't even bother trying to explain. While this fails to convince, it does provide a good excuse to dramatize the crisis and near descent into total ethnic warfare that happened after the 2007 election. If nothing else, the book brings home the news that Kenya is perhaps a more fragile political entity than we might realize.
However, despite some harrowing scenes here and there, the book again fails to really connect. Both writing and plotting just aren't that strong, and the story isn't helped by a lengthy interlude where the heroes have to fly to Mexico and sneak across the border to conduct some sleuthing in California. On the whole, another disappointment.