Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: The Wild Girls by Phoebe Morgan

The Wild Girls by Phoebe Morgan (Morrow, 2022) is Morgan’s fourth thriller. Her fifth book is scheduled for release in 2023. Grace, Felicity, Alice, and Hannah formed a tight bond during their school days and it persisted as they undertook careers. Until one devastating evening when their friendship shattered. Felicity, the ringleader, moved to New York and the three remaining in London went their separate ways until two years later they each receive an invitation to celebrate Felicity’s birthday in Botswana. Despite various commitments, they each decide to go. After a long flight they are met by a chauffeur who takes them to Deception Valley Lodges, an exotic resort near the Limpopo River, when the action really begins.

The story is told in the voices of the four friends, with a long flashback to the pivotal incident that shattered their alliance. This rotating POV and shifting timeline is the current style and I have become resigned to it, but it results in a choppy read. The considerable foreshadowing and oblique references to incidents in the group’s collective history does create and sustain a high level of suspense.

Readers familiar with Christie’s And Then There Were None (1939) will recognize the inspiration for the basic plot, but Morgan incorporates several original elements including a close look at friendships among women and the way they tend to assume roles within a cohesive group. Morgan says in the acknowledgements that the book was written during the 2020 COVID shutdown and she could not travel to Botswana for onsite research. This lack of firsthand experience with the setting shows, as the colorful African landscape tends to fade out. There’s a lost opportunity here to establish a striking backdrop for a chilling story similar to The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian (2022). Not that this book isn’t unsettling, it most definitely is, but the proximity of the Kalahari Desert and a major waterway could have been used to greater felonious advantage.

For fans of psychological thrillers.

 

·         Publisher: ‎ William Morrow Paperbacks (April 26, 2022)

·         Language: ‎ English

·         Paperback: ‎ 320 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎ 0063144832

·         ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0063144835

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2023

 

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: A Deadly Covenant by Michael Stanley

The author Michael Stanley is actually two people, retired academics Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip. Both were born and raised in Africa and they both still live there, at least part time. A Deadly Covenant (White Sun Books, August 2022) is their latest book about assistant superintendent David Bengu of the Botswana Police Department. Bengu is known as Kubu, Setswana for hippopotamus, an allusion to his size as well as a reference to his personality, genial on the surface but deadly when provoked.

This volume is another prequel to the first books in the series, which showed Bengu at the peak of his career. A Deadly Covenant and the previous book Facets of Death (2020) are intriguing looks back at Bengu just starting out as a detective, unsure of himself, learning from his supervisor who in turn was beginning to realize Bengu’s potential.

The village of Ncamasere has embarked on a project to bring much-needed water from the Kavango River inland to struggling farms. The backhoe operator is digging the pipeline in the sandy soil when he discovers unmistakably human bones. Bengu is sent to watch the pathologist examine the scene and conduct the autopsy. So he’s observing closely when the pathologist discovers the area is actually a mass grave of what appears to be bushmen, the indigenous people of the Kalahari Desert. Bullet fragments and injuries to the bones consistent with gunshots make it a crime scene, although one many years old.

The local police station commander tries to rush the investigation, anxious to have these outsiders gone. Bengu insists that the homicides must be looked into, his thoroughness and tenacity coming to the fore. He discovers strong opinions about the water project, some anxious to receive its benefits and others who resist change. This dichotomy of urge to modernize versus reluctance to abandon ancestral practices is an underlying theme in many of the mysteries I have read set in Africa.

Somehow word of the massacre reaches the media and they descend on the village, disrupting Bengu’s work, demanding justice for the murdered natives. A fascinating subplot with a bushman illustrates some indigenous beliefs.

Not much like Precious Ramotswe’s version of Botswana, the Botswana shown here is more realistic, with the intricacies and the contradictions to be expected of such an ancient land. The resolution is far more complex than I imagined, keeping me in suspense until the final pages. A fine addition to the series.

 

·         Publisher: ‎ White Sun Books (August 28, 2022)

·         Language: ‎ English

·         Paperback: ‎ 352 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎ 0997968982

·         ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0997968989 

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2022

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night. 

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