It all adds up to a
complex and satisfying crime novel, with an attractive and rounded main
character and a clever plot to unravel. (Review by Margaret von Klemperer)
Femi Kayode is a Nigerian who trained as a clinical psychologist before turning to writing. He currently lives in Namibia and Gaslight is his second novel after the acclaimed Lightseekers. Both feature investigative psychologist Philip Taiwo. Gaslight can be read as a stand-alone though there are references to events in the earlier book.
Philip and his family are back in his home country of Nigeria after many years in America, and there are degrees of culture shock for all the Taiwos. But things seem to be going relatively smoothly until Philip’s sister gets him involved when the wife of the bishop of the charismatic church to which she belongs goes missing, and the bishop, to the horror of his faithful flock, is very publicly charged with her murder.
Despite his reservations about the church – Philip says he hovers between being a lapsed Christian and an agnostic – he checks the apparent crime scene, and forces the police to agree that it is all a set-up. But who has set it up?
Then the Bishop’s wife is found genuinely dead and things begin to get very murky and complicated, and ultimately dangerous for Philip and his family. The more he discovers about the financial and moral shenanigans at the church, the more dangerous his situation becomes. Another body appears, an obvious warning to Philip not to meddle. Nothing and nobody is quite what they seem on the surface and it gets very hard to know who to trust, but Philip is determined to get to the bottom of the case.
To add to his problems, his daughter is having a hard time at school, and wants to go back “home” to America. The digressions into issues of racism in both America and Nigeria are cleverly handled and add another and appealing dimension to the novel. Philip is a likeable and believable narrator, a man of principle and one with very human doubts and concerns.
The reader has information that Philip doesn’t have. There are short sections throughout the book that are apparently in the voice of the bishop’s missing and ultimately dead wife. It all adds up to a complex and satisfying crime novel, with an attractive and rounded main character and a clever plot to unravel. - Margaret von Klemperer
Gaslight is published by Raven Books. ISBN 978-1-5266-1764-4
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