Lightseekers

"I’ve been excited in the past couple of years to see more crime fiction that took me to Africa. One of my favourite books last year was The Missing American , set in Ghana. Light Seekers is set in Nigeria , with the action starting off in Lagos and taking the reader to Okriki, a small university town near Port Harcourt, a big centre for the Nigerian oil industry. There is never any mystery about the crime—mob violence that leads to the brutal killing of three students—but the lead character, an investigative psychologist who has recently returned from the United States, has been tasked to find out why it happened. Along the way, we pick up bits and pieces about the Biafran War, local history, tensions, corruption and the feelings of the main character as he adjusts to life back in Nigeria. Like Peter May’s book, Light Seekers is partly based on real events, in this case the horrific killing of four students in Aluu, Nigeria in 2012. That makes the book harder to read, but more important. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter"