Much as I love the thriller genre, I admit that its writers all too often conjure up archetypal protagonists: male, physically tough, cops or spies who are fast with their fists and ready to fight their way out of danger.
So I especially welcome two new books among this month’s selection that feature engaging, tenacious heroines: one set in Argentina, the other in Ghana.
Veronica Rosenthal is a sexually adventurous, Argentinian Jewish investigative journalist. In Sergio Olguín’s The Foreign Girls (Bitter Lemon Press £8.99), Veronica is on holiday in an isolated cottage in Tucuman, northern Argentina, recovering from the traumatic events portrayed in The Fragility of Bodies, the first volume in the series.
While there, she befriends Frida and Petra, Norwegian and Italian tourists. They hang out, sunbathe, eat and drink — and one evening Frida seduces Veronica. The trio attend a party, where Veronica decides to leave and travel on alone; several days later she learns that Frida and Petra have been found murdered.
Determined to find the truth of their fate — and that of other murdered girls — Veronica is quickly drawn into a dangerous conspiracy reaching into the heart of the country’s corrupt, ultra-conservative establishment. Meanwhile, the dark forces Veronica battled and defeated in the earlier novel are regrouping — and a hitman is on her trail.
The narrative meanders occasionally but overall Olguín, an acclaimed Argentinian novelist, delivers a layered, gripping story, finely translated by Miranda France.
Argentina’s Dirty War casts a long shadow through Eloísa Díaz’s Repentance (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £14.99). It’s 1981 and Inspector Joaquin Alzada simply wants to get on with his job as a policeman. But at a time when those judged to be leftists and subversives are “disappeared” by the army, who are the guardians of law and order? The question becomes intensely personal when Jorge, his leftwing activist brother, is arrested.
Twenty years later, riots are erupting as the currency collapses. A young woman from one of Buenos Aires’ most powerful families has gone missing. In his search for her, Alzada must face his past, when he too was compromised. Repentance is an apt title for this very impressive debut which works on multiple levels. It is an evocative crime thriller with a likeable, self-aware protagonist, but also skilfully explores the darkest period in Argentina’s modern history. When Alzada sees his former police partner, he winces, because “back in the day, they had both been in the business of looking the other way”.
Lightseekers (Raven, £14.99) is the first volume of a new series from Femi Kayode. Philip Taiwo is a Nigerian investigative psychologist, but his many years spent living in the US make him a semi-outsider. When three students are brutally murdered in Okriki, a sleepy university town, their deaths are filmed and shared on social media. An expert in mob violence, Taiwo is hired by the father of one of the dead boys, and travels to Okriki to investigate. But the more he probes, the more the locals stonewall and obstruct him. It’s soon clear that there is something twisted going on in Okriki.
Kayode trained as a clinical psychologist before turning to novel writing, and his expertise brings an extra layer to an already absorbing narrative. Nigeria is vividly drawn, from the backwater where the killings take place to the chaotic bustle of Lagos airport. Despite the frustrations and danger, Taiwo’s affection for his country is clear. “One minute I am in Okriki, fighting off assailants, next I am in a five-star hotel in Port Harcourt. Only in Nigeria.”
A similar energy buzzes through Kwei Quartey’s Sleep Well, My Lady (Allison and Busby, £12.99). Emma Dijan is the only private eye at her agency in Accra, the capital of Ghana. When Lady Araba, the empress of Ghanaian fashion, is found murdered in her bed in the Trosacco Valley, the city’s “Beverly Hills”, her driver is quickly arrested and imprisoned. But Araba’s favourite aunt, Dele, who virtually raised her, believes someone else killed her beloved niece: Augustus Seeza, the country’s best known talk show host.
The narrative skitters at the start, jumping from the day of the murder, to 20 years earlier, 16 years earlier then back again, and it feels too long before Emma actually appears in the story. She has her own demons to battle, including an attempted rape by a high-ranking police officer, who remains unpunished. But once Emma gets going she takes the reader on an engrossing journey through her life in Accra and Ghanaian high society, where guests are served Danish butter cookies and chilled tropical punch. Here, too, behind the smiling politesse, there is little welcome for those who persist in asking unwelcome questions.
Adam LeBor is the author of ‘Kossuth Square’, a Budapest noir crime thriller
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Genre round-up — the best new crime thrillers - Financial Times
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