Harmattan Season

The prospects of down-on-his-luck private eye Boubacar are as dry and dusty as the Harmattan wind blowing through this unnamed, theoretically postcolonial West African city. Boubacar believes his magically influenced luck can’t get worse, until it does, wrapping him in a case that sets him in the center of even worse odds. His city is in turmoil; the coming elections have been rigged through bribery and murder, Boubacar’s past crimes have come back to haunt him, and dead people are found floating in midair over the sites of vast explosions caused by no normal bomb. Onyebuchi (Goliath) writes a compelling mystery, adds corrupt politics, a feet-on-the-ground exploration of postcolonialism that isn’t all that “post,” and a jaundiced discussion of the supposed good old days, all told through the eyes of a Raymond Chandler–style detective.