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For a few years while growing up, I was obsessed with crime novels. I read every John Grisham and Sidney Sheldon book I could lay my hands on. Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series was a notable favourite, but I also deeply loved Karin Slaughter’s Will Trent series and Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta books. Though African crime novels have been available since the 1970s, I had not discovered them.
I was intrigued by how these crime novels depicted the unbelievable twists an otherwise ordinary life could take. Through their detailed accounts of terrible crimes and the relentless pursuit of justice, they revealed just how chaotic life could become. Now, with an ever-growing list of crime novels and authors from Africa, the message feels even closer to home.
In our latest book recommendation, we have compiled a list of seven African crime novels that will show you how chaotic your life can get. The books on this list span several African countries—from Nigeria to Kenya to Zimbabwe—and belong on every crime fiction enthusiast’s bookshelf.
Read our recommendations below.
Easy Motion Tourist
AUTHOR: Leye Adenle
GENRE: crime FICTION
Nigerian author Leye Adenle stuns with his award-winning gem, Easy Motion Tourist. It follows the experiences of Guy Collins, a British journalist, as he gets pulled into the underground world of Lagos.
Guy Collins has been sent to Lagos to cover the upcoming elections, and he means to have a great time in the city. But his hopes are quickly dashed. On his very first night out at a club in Victoria Island, he stumbles upon the mutilated body of a female corpse and gets arrested by the police as a suspect. He is subsequently rescued by Amaka, Guardian Angel of the city’s working girls, who is on a one-woman mission to stop the city’s body parts trade.
Collins begins to work with Amaka, but as they progress on their mission, they realize just how high-up the organ trafficking trade goes in the city’s political scene.
My sister, the serial Killer
AUTHOR: oyinkan braithwaite
GENRE: crime FICTION
Korede and Ayoola are two sisters living in Lagos, Nigeria. Ayoola is the younger and more beautiful younger sister. She is also possibly sociopathic: for the third time in a row, she has stabbed her boyfriend to death. She claims it’s in self-defense, so Korede, a nurse, helps her dispose of the bodies.
But when Ayoola starts going out with Tade, a kind, handsome doctor whom Korede secretly loves Korede fears that her sister will strike again. This time, the victim will be her beloved Tade.
lightseekers
Author: femi kayode
Genre: crime fiction
Inspired by the Aluu Four case, this novel is brought together by the brutal murder of three university students at the hands of a mob. While the murderers are known, their motive remains elusive. It is the attempt to find answers to this question of why that drives the novel forward.
Desperate for an answer, one of the boys’ fathers reaches out to a psychologist, Philip Taiwo. Philip becomes interested in the case and decides to take it on. But he is neither a lawyer nor a detective. He is an academic, and his interest is academic in nature. As he digs into the case, he finds himself thrown into the reality of cult gangsterism in Nigeria, as well as other historical social issues.
Will Philip be able to solve the mystery of why the Okiri Three were murdered?
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THE quality of mercy
Author: siphiwe gloria ndlovu
Genre: crime FICTION
Zimbabwean veteran police officer Spokes Moloi has had a great career. Now on the eve of his retirement, his integrity is spotless. But he has one more case to solve before he bows out. The case is classified as Moloi’s first ‘white case’ and it involves the possible murder of the Organization of Domestic Affairs’ head, Emil Coetzee. Upon reaching the crime scene, Moloi finds it very confusing, and finds himself pulled into a long-standing web of mysteries.
Ndlovu gives a potent exploration of the country’s history of transitioning from a colonial state to a postcolonial one, weaving powerful social comedy into a story of crime and politics.
black star nairobi
AUTHOR: mukoma wa ngugi
GENRE: crime FICTIOn
It’s 2007 and the last thing on African American detective Ishmael’s bucket list is to get involved in African politics. But that is exactly what happens when he relocates to Nairobi, Kenya to start a detective agency, the Black Star Agency, with a Kenyan detective, O.
Desperate for money, Ishamel and O take on odd cases involving witchcraft, body parts trafficking, etc. to get by. But when a new case about a dead body discarded in the Ngong Forest comes along, they jump at it, hoping for a big break. Investigations connect the dead body to a later bombing in the city that kills ten Americans and to the Kenyan presidential elections.
Suddenly, the two detectives find themselves in the middle of Kenyan politics, with local forces doing everything possible to keep them from investigating any further. But Ishamel and O are nothing if not persistent, and their investigations will take them around the world, from Nairobi to the United States to Mexico and back to Nairobi again.
THE missing american
AUTHOR: kwei quartey
GENRE: crime FICTION
Ghanian-American author Kwei Quartey draws readers into the world of online scams with his 2020 novel, The Missing American. On the one hand, there is Emma Djan, a 26-year-old policewoman in Accra whose career has just come crashing down. She hoped to be a senior police officer in the city, just like her father, but that is impossible now. Instead, she starts working for a private detective agency.
On the other hand, we meet Gordon Tilson, a widower in Washington, DC. After his wife’s death, he joins an online community where he meets a young Ghanian widow with whom he forms an emotional bond. When a terrible car accident sends the woman’s sister to the hospital, he sends her thousands of dollars to cover the bill. Later, Gordon decides to surprise his Ghanian lover with a visit, only to disappear. His son, Derek, must travel all the way to Ghana to find his father with Emma’s help.
Making wolf
AUTHOR: tade thompson
GENRE: crime fiction
For many Nigerians in the diaspora, visiting home is often an opportunity to brag about their lives in foreign countries. This usually goes without consequence, but that is not the case for Weston Kogi, the protagonist of Nigerian writer Tade Thompson’s electrifying novel, Making Wolf.
A supermarket store detective in London, Kogi returns home to Alcacia, a fictional Nigeria, for his aunt’s funeral. There, he boasts about his work in London, exaggerating that he is a homicide detective. This seems harmless at first, until he is kidnapped and forced by two rebel groups to investigate a local hero’s murder.