There’s plenty of noir to go around in this all-too-sad volume about people struggling to get by.
Thirteen tales of the trouble people find in the capital city of Ghana when they’re trying to make a buck.
“For them it was about the hustle,” Patrick Smith writes about the Labone Choirboys, grifters trying to get a lawyer involved in a billion-dollar scam in “The Situation.” But even those on the margins have their hustles. A kaya girl who carries shoppers’ bundles in the marketplace in Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond’s “Chop Money” tries to make a bit on the side by subletting her rented room. The shop girl in Anna Bossman’s “Instant Justice” hopes to find her way out of poverty through her relationship with an older man. Kofi Blankson Ocansey tells the tale of a woman who parlays her relationships into an assortment of consumer goods in “Fantasia in Fans and Flat Screens.” Loss of innocence is sometimes the price of economic mobility. Billie McTernan’s “The Labadi Sunshine Bar” follows a girl from the country into the sex trade. A young woman earns her keep as a drug mule in Adjoa Twum’s “Shape-Shifters.” Not all the disillusioned are young. Ayesha Harruna Attah’s 30-ish wife finds the rewards of her marriage to the septuagenarian of “Kweku’s House” not what she bargained for. A woman in her 40s discovers her longtime lover has fathered children with two other women in Anne Sackey’s “Intentional Consequences.” Some hustlers wreak havoc on others. Ernest Kwame Nkrumah Addo’s young heroine learns that her husband’s source of income must cost her something precious in “The Driver.” And the vengeful husband in editor Danquah’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” is a hustler who hustles himself.
There’s plenty of noir to go around in this all-too-sad volume about people struggling to get by.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61775-889-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Akashic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.
A 16-year-old savant uses his Groundhog Day gift to solve his grandfather’s murder.
Nishizawa’s compulsively readable puzzle opens with the discovery of the victim, patriarch Reijiro Fuchigami, sprawled on a futon in the attic of his elegant mansion, where his family has gathered for a consequential announcement about his estate. The weapon seems to be a copper vase lying nearby. Given this setup, the novel might have proceeded as a traditional whodunit but for two delightful features. The first is the ebullient narration of Fuchigami’s youngest grandson, Hisataro, thrust into the role of an investigator with more dedication than finesse. The second is Nishizawa’s clever premise: The 16-year-old Hisataro has lived ever since birth with a condition that occasionally has him falling into a time loop that he calls "the Trap," replaying the same 24 hours of his life exactly nine times before moving on. And, of course, the murder takes place on the first day of one of these loops. Can he solve the murder before the cycle is played out? His initial strategies—never leaving his grandfather’s side, focusing on specific suspects, hiding in order to observe them all—fall frustratingly short. Hisataro’s comical anxiety rises with every failed attempt to identify the culprit. It’s only when he steps back and examines all the evidence that he discovers the solution. First published in 1995, this is the first of Nishizawa’s novels to be translated into English. As for Hisataro, he ultimately concludes that his condition is not a burden but a gift: “Time’s spiral never ends.”
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781805335436
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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