Cheryl R. (Spuddie) - , reviewed on 10/19/2009 + 412 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 4

#1 Detective David "Kubu" Bengu mystery set in Gaborone, Botswana. A half-eaten body is found near a waterhole in the Kalahari desert, a disgruntled hyena hovering close by, waiting to see if the humans are going to leave him to his lunch or not. Not! Assistant Superintendent Kubu's first task is to try to determine the identity of the body, which has no hands and thus no fingerprints. No white men have been reported missing, so this is proving quite difficult initially. After a time, however, Kubu has several different possibilities to fulfill the role, and he and his team remain interested when the coroner determines that the man (whoever he was) was murdered. Several different sub-plots to the main mystery seem to intersect with Botswana Cattle & Mining Company (the country's largest company) involved on several scales, and with several more dead bodies piling up along the way. Some of these sub-plots were fairly easy to figure out, as was the main baddie.

Detective Kubu (Kubu meaning "Hippopotamus") is a delightful character, a large man fond of good food and wine, proud of his heritage and country and family, and yet pragmatic in recognizing its faults, too. He sings off-key opera, is respectful of his parents, resists his wife's attempts at getting him to diet and delights in having the baboons from the nearby jungle jumping all over the outside of the police station!

While I delved right into the cultural details about the country, enjoyed getting to know Kubu, his wife Joy and the other secondary characters, and learned much about several pertinent social issues (diamond poaching and theft, alienation of the indigenous Kalahari Bushmen, etc) it seemed to me that at times the story was burdened with too many different issues and details. It felt crowded, as though the author were trying to cram in as much information and detail about the area, the culture, the food, the climate, the law enforcement system...etc...as possible. It was a lot to digest, and thus was not a book to be read quickly in a couple of sittings. Whether that is the result of the collaborative effort of the two people writing the book and overlapping on some things, or some other reason, I don't know. At any rate, despite it being somewhat bloated, I very much enjoyed the book and do look forward to the second in the series.

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