Femi KayodeReseñas

Ein sehr beeindruckender Krimi aus Nigeria, den ich ausgesprochen gern gelesen habe. Er umfasst verschiedene Themen anlässlich eines Lynchmordes an drei Studenten, der leider auch ein reales Vorbild hatte. Das Buch ist super spannend und ist eines von der Sorte, bei dem man bei jedem Kapitelende denkt: „Ach ein Kapitel geht noch“. Ich kann es wirklich empfehlen.½

Lightseekers by Femi Kayode follows Philip Taiwo after he is hired by the politician father of a young man who had been one of three killed in a mob attack in a small town in Nigeria. Philip goes into this town, not looking to find out who did the killings, but why they happened.

This is the first thriller from a non-western perspective I have read, and I really enjoyed it. The plot was well-developed, and I enjoyed how it progressed and the way in which it was presented to the reader. It was a quick read, with short chapters, which I really appreciated. I would have liked a little more character development, or possibly even the addition of some chapters from Mike's or Chika's perspective so we could see some of Philip's flaws, since he was by no means a perfect person and went into the investigation with presumptions of what happened and had a hard time changing his perspective.

Kayode has a lot of potential as an author, and I will definitely be reading the next book he wrote.

Philip Taiwo, a psychologist trained in America who has moved back to Nigeria with his family, is urged by his religious sister to look into a missing persons case - the wife of a megachurch leader has vanished, but nobody seems all that worried about her. Before long, though, it becomes clear there's more going on with the church, which has vast influence, than is on the surface. The case blows up when the police get involved, eager to make a mark whether or not their accusations have merit.

Interspersed in the story are fairly cryptic messages from ... someone, it's not at all clear at first who. As that threat unravels, the psychologically complex nature of the story becomes clear, though I'm not sure the characters' motivations were ever entirely clear to me. The final scenes seem a little over the top.

But the view into fundamentalist Christianity in Nigeria and the celebrity megachurch cults that sprout out of it, complete with sinister controlling behavior and patriarchal beliefs, was interesting as is the lively voice of the narrator and his multi-talented if somewhat conveniently skilled sidekick, a common trope in the genre.

The event that sets off Lightseekers is a triple murder of uni students at the hands of a mob, but it’s before the novel opens, and it’s mostly offstage. Instead, we see the protagonist’s reaction to the video of the murder of the Okriki Three. Just as Philip Taiwo is revolted and motivated to find the truth, so was I.

Taiwo is a psychologist, not a police officer or detective, and he comes at these crimes as an academic, with different access than the law or a family representative would have. He’s already drawn in through complicated personal loyalties, and that’s sort of the heart of this book, all about complicated loyalties and personal connections.

Full review on my book blog

Having moved back to Lagos, Nigeria when his wife gets a teaching position at the law school, Dr. Philip Taiwo takes a job investigating the causes of mob violence in which three university students are brutally murdered. He's a psychologist who wrote his thesis on mob behavior in American lynchings so he is asked by one of the murdered student's fathers to find a reason for what happened. Sent to the town of Okriki, Taiwo is often out of his depth, but he has a good assistant and a woman he met on the plane is also eager to help. But are they both hiding motives of their own? Taiwo finds himself in the middle of a situation he doesn't understand and he quickly finds himself in danger.

The strength of this novel lays less in the plot than in the setting and how by creating a protagonist who both is and isn't an insider, allows Kayode to explain the culture, history and events to western readers without inserting long explanations. The author based his novel on a real incident and used that basis to explain aspects of Nigerian culture, like the presence on university campuses of violent confraternities and the difficulties students have in finding housing. Taiwo was more an observer than a detective, but this novel was interesting enough for me to want to read the next book in this series -- it very much feels like the start of a mystery series.

I've always been a bit of a fan of whydunnit's, and LIGHTSEEKERS intrigued right from the moment it arrived with the line in the blurb "He's an investigative psychologist, an academic more interested in figuring out the why of a crime than actually solving it.".

Dr Philip Taiwo has recently returned from the US to Nigeria, a man who is more than a bit lost. A loving father, and good son, he is a conflicted husband, convinced his wife, who instigated their return to Lagos, is having an affair, based solely on something briefly glimpsed, never discussed with her. His wife, Folake is an academic - they are very much a power couple, used to being outsiders in America, he's surprised to discover he feels the same on their return to Nigeria. He's also an academic, a psychological investigator, who specialises in the difficult and confrontational field of crowd killings, which leads to him being asked by his father's friend, the Managing Director of a large bank, to find the reason behind the murder of his son, one of a notorious crowd killing of 3 young students 2 years ago.

The victim's of the mob public execution have become known as the Okriti 3, their killings proven by plenty of eye-witnesses and lots of harrowing mobile phone footage, but the reason why 3 young students could come to be called out as thieves in the small town adjacent to the university they attended, and why that event lead to such a brutal and public execution has never really been investigated or explained. Persuaded by his own father's pleading, feeling the need to get some thinking space between him and his wife, Taiwo heads to small town Nigeria - Port Harcourt, to meet up with his driver and assistant, Chika Makuochi, encountering a woman on the plane, Salome Briggs, who will later play an important part in ensuring that their investigation continues despite local resistance.

From the moment that Taiwo appears on the page, LIGHTSEEKERS immerses the reader in the people, place and society of Nigeria. From the wealthier, educated environs of Lagos and the sorts of circles that Taiwo's own family moves in, to the dusty, dry streets of a small town where the nearby presence of the University is both a blessing and a curse. Money, drugs, social divides, religious conflicts and the tensions that happen everywhere between locals and transients (in this case the student population), are both universal and specific to the Nigerian experience. Populated by a fascinating cast of characters, author Femi Kayode has deft hands when it comes to balancing action, character development and some very current issues like social media misinformation, lack of faith in institutions and governments, and the impacts of constant violence on people's sense of right and wrong.

It reads like a very authentic and honest depiction of Nigerian life, with the tensions between extreme wealth and extreme poverty, the differences in basic infrastructure provision, and the everyday challenges of living in a country where military roadblocks to collect bribes are a regular occurrence, the terror of civil war still a recent memory, and the discovery of a resource like oil as much of a curse as it is a blessing.

At the centre of all of this is a great central character in Philip Taiwo. An intelligent, insightful man, except when it comes to his own personal life, a good friend, and decent colleague, the sense of threat for he and his assistant Chika Makuochi is ever present and all pervasive throughout this novel. As is the very firm hope that this is a series in the making because LIGHTSEEKERS is a pitch perfect series opener if ever there was one.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/lightseekers-femi-kayode

A very interesting story, set in the far south-eastern part of Nigeria, in a small town where the students at a university have created a serious town-gown controversy. Some of the fraternities have become "cults" that operate like gangs, and the local townsfolk are unhappy with the ways students behave. As the book opens, a mob has surrounded three boys accused of theft, ending in a horrific murder. The father of one of the boys hires a US-educated psychologist who specializes in crime-scene analysis to investigate, since he's sure his son was innocent of the crimes that led to mob violence, kicking off the investigation that follows.

The setting is well drawn, and the psychologist, who has recently moved back to Nigeria after some years in the states, is an interesting guide to it because he is nearly as unfamiliar with the locale as readers are. He's smart and dogged but he couldn't get where he does without his sidekick, who is suspiciously well-informed. A further complication for the protagonist is that he thinks his wife, back in Lagos, has cheated on him, but he's reluctant to talk to her about it. For me, this aspect of the book (and the attraction he feels to a beautiful lawyer he meets) was the least satisfying part of the story, but it works well for both the plot and his character development.

It's great to have another African writer added to the genre. I look forward to more from Femi Kayode.