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    Strange Gods: A Mystery
    Unavailable
    Strange Gods: A Mystery
    Unavailable
    Strange Gods: A Mystery
    Ebook271 pages3 hours

    Strange Gods: A Mystery

    By Annamaria Alfieri

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    In early 20th century British East Africa, there are rules for the British and different ones for the Africans. Vera McIntosh, the daughter of Scottish missionaries, doesn't feel she belongs to either group; having grown up in Africa, she is not interested in being the well-bred Scottish woman her mother would like her to be. More than anything she dreams of seeing again the handsome police officer she's danced with. But more grisly circumstances bring Justin Tolliver to her family's home.

    The body of Vera's uncle, Dr. Josiah Pennyman, is found with a tribesman's spear in his back. Tolliver, an idealistic Assistant District Superintendent of Police, is assigned to the case. He first focuses on Gichinga Mbura, a Kikuyu medicine man who has been known to hatefully condemn Pennyman because Pennyman's cures are increasingly preferred over his. But the spear belonged to the Maasai tribe, not Kikuyu, and it's doubtful Mbura would have used it to kill his enemy. Tolliver's superior wants him to arrest the medicine man and be done with it, but Tolliver pleads that he have the chance to prove the man's guilt. With the help of Kwai Libazo, a tribal lieutenant, Tolliver discovers that others had reasons to hate Pennyman as well, and the list of suspects grows.

    Annamaria Alfieri's Strange Gods is the first in a new series. Romantic and engaging, this mystery captures the beauty and the danger of the African wild and the complexities of imposing a culture on a foreign land.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJun 24, 2014
    ISBN9781250039729
    Unavailable
    Strange Gods: A Mystery
    Author

    Annamaria Alfieri

    Annamaria Alfieri is the author of Blood Tango and two other historical mysteries set in South America. Her first novel, City of Silver, was named one of the best debut mysteries of the year by Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine. Annamaria is president of the New York chapter of Mystery Writers of America and lives in New York City.

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    Reviews for Strange Gods

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Set in British East Africa in the early 20th century, this evocative mystery describes the colonial way of life, with all its pleasures and strains, its hypocrisy and search for cultural understanding, and the land’s lurking dangers and astonishing beauty. The murder of a white physician by a tribesman’s spear must be solved by a young, inexperienced colonial police officer, who argues (perhaps once too often) for a thorough investigation, in order to demonstrate the fairness of British justice. He’s opposed by the area’s District Commissioner who wants to summarily try and execute the first suspect who comes to light, the local medicine man.While the sexual mores might be more elastic in that time and place than back home in Britain, the romantic interplay between the police officer and the dead man’s niece cannot escape the push and pull of social inhibitions and desire. Throughout the book the two trade the role of protagonist, augmented by insights from an African tribal lieutenant struggling to bridge the cultural gap.The book was written with an obvious love for the land and its peoples and the complexity of life there. Not for nothing did Alfieri include an epigram from Isak Dinensen: “Africa, amongst the continents, will teach it to you: that God and the Devil are one.”
    • 4/5
      Pretty good mystery set in 1911 British East Africa. Our heroine was born in Africa to Scottish missionaries, and identifies more as African than Scots. The romance is predictable, the mystery has a few interesting plot twists. Good read if not great literature.