Hour of the Red God
A Detective Mollel Novel
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The Maasai believe in two gods. Enkai Narok, the Black God, is benign. Enkai Nanyokie, the Red God, is the god of anger, vengeance, and death.
Nairobi, 2007. In Africa's sprawling megacity, a small elite holds power over an impoverished, restless majority. Corruption, exploitation, and ethnic rivalry are part of everyday life. Amid claims of vote rigging and fraud, the presidential elections could be the spark that sets this city ablaze.
With chaos looming, few care about one dead prostitute. But Detective Mollel does. For Mollel is a former Maasai warrior, and the dead girl was a Maasai, too.
As he ventures from slums to skyscrapers, from suburbs to sewers, Mollel begins to realize that there is more at stake than just this murder. But even as he is forced to confront his turbulent past, he begins to doubt his warrior's instincts.
Can Mollel manage to find the killer and solve the case before the Red God consumes all?
With the sophistication of Ian Rankin and Colin Harrison, and set against the backdrop of Kenya's turbulent 2007 elections, Richard Crompton's Hour of the Red God brings Nairobi vividly to life: gritty and modern, with an extraordinary blend of tribal and urban elements. In this dark thriller, tradition and power collide, arriving at a shocking, unforgettable end. And in the Maasai hero Mollel, a new detective icon is born.
One of Publishers Weekly's Best Mystery/Thriller Books of 2013
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former BBC journalist Crompton interweaves a complex whodunit plot with 2007 Kenyan politics in his spectacular fiction debut. Nairobi police detective Mollel, a single parent who lost his wife to the 1998 al-Qaeda bombing of the U.S. embassy, looks into the murder of a fellow Maasai tribe member, a woman whose genitals were freshly mutilated. Mollel's less-than-honest boss, who quickly labels the victim a prostitute, directs him to wrap things up quickly. But the dogged Mollel follows the evidence wherever it leads him, even if it means stepping on the toes of the rich and powerful, including popular evangelist George Nalo, whose charitable organization, Orpheus House, works to get prostitutes off the streets. As a bitterly contested election nears, the pressure on the detective to let things be only increases. The surprising but fair-play solution to the mystery packs a wallop and instantly elevates the author, now a Nairobi resident, to the first rank of African crime writers.
