Femi Kayode

I've seen this billed as a "thriller" but I think that's slotting this novel into too narrow of a niche.

Dr. Taiwo, an investigative psychologist in Nigeria, is looking into the lynching of three college students at the request of the father of one of the murdered young men. The psychologist angle gives it a slightly different view, especially as Dr. Taiwo is trying to look at group/mob dynamics (having studied lynchings in the American South). I liked the Nigerian setting & think Kayode has show more done a good job of capturing the places, people, & events to give a real sense of place & time for the uniqueness of Nigeria. I felt immersed in the sights, sounds, smells.... While the main character himself is Nigerian, he's also been in the US for many years, so he is experiencing both an insider's & an outsider's perspective.

You can read this as an investigative thriller type story (& that would work, if that's what you seek as a reader), but there are more layers here like different social strata, confraternities, religion, police response (or lack thereof), power dynamics, mob manipulation/mentality, prejudice, scams/crime, the Biafran War, & more. It's a book that straddles the line of books for entertainment (seems the wrong word for the seriousness of the topic), while also providing lots of food for thought & rabbit trails to follow & learn. Overall recommended. show less

I've always been a bit of a fan of whydunnit's, and LIGHTSEEKERS intrigued right from the moment it arrived with the line in the blurb "He's an investigative psychologist, an academic more interested in figuring out the why of a crime than actually solving it.".

Dr Philip Taiwo has recently returned from the US to Nigeria, a man who is more than a bit lost. A loving father, and good son, he is a conflicted husband, convinced his wife, who instigated their return to Lagos, is having an affair, show more based solely on something briefly glimpsed, never discussed with her. His wife, Folake is an academic - they are very much a power couple, used to being outsiders in America, he's surprised to discover he feels the same on their return to Nigeria. He's also an academic, a psychological investigator, who specialises in the difficult and confrontational field of crowd killings, which leads to him being asked by his father's friend, the Managing Director of a large bank, to find the reason behind the murder of his son, one of a notorious crowd killing of 3 young students 2 years ago.

The victim's of the mob public execution have become known as the Okriti 3, their killings proven by plenty of eye-witnesses and lots of harrowing mobile phone footage, but the reason why 3 young students could come to be called out as thieves in the small town adjacent to the university they attended, and why that event lead to such a brutal and public execution has never really been investigated or explained. Persuaded by his own father's pleading, feeling the need to get some thinking space between him and his wife, Taiwo heads to small town Nigeria - Port Harcourt, to meet up with his driver and assistant, Chika Makuochi, encountering a woman on the plane, Salome Briggs, who will later play an important part in ensuring that their investigation continues despite local resistance.

From the moment that Taiwo appears on the page, LIGHTSEEKERS immerses the reader in the people, place and society of Nigeria. From the wealthier, educated environs of Lagos and the sorts of circles that Taiwo's own family moves in, to the dusty, dry streets of a small town where the nearby presence of the University is both a blessing and a curse. Money, drugs, social divides, religious conflicts and the tensions that happen everywhere between locals and transients (in this case the student population), are both universal and specific to the Nigerian experience. Populated by a fascinating cast of characters, author Femi Kayode has deft hands when it comes to balancing action, character development and some very current issues like social media misinformation, lack of faith in institutions and governments, and the impacts of constant violence on people's sense of right and wrong.

It reads like a very authentic and honest depiction of Nigerian life, with the tensions between extreme wealth and extreme poverty, the differences in basic infrastructure provision, and the everyday challenges of living in a country where military roadblocks to collect bribes are a regular occurrence, the terror of civil war still a recent memory, and the discovery of a resource like oil as much of a curse as it is a blessing.

At the centre of all of this is a great central character in Philip Taiwo. An intelligent, insightful man, except when it comes to his own personal life, a good friend, and decent colleague, the sense of threat for he and his assistant Chika Makuochi is ever present and all pervasive throughout this novel. As is the very firm hope that this is a series in the making because LIGHTSEEKERS is a pitch perfect series opener if ever there was one.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/lightseekers-femi-kayode show less

Having moved back to Lagos, Nigeria when his wife gets a teaching position at the law school, Dr. Philip Taiwo takes a job investigating the causes of mob violence in which three university students are brutally murdered. He's a psychologist who wrote his thesis on mob behavior in American lynchings so he is asked by one of the murdered student's fathers to find a reason for what happened. Sent to the town of Okriki, Taiwo is often out of his depth, but he has a good assistant and a woman he show more met on the plane is also eager to help. But are they both hiding motives of their own? Taiwo finds himself in the middle of a situation he doesn't understand and he quickly finds himself in danger.

The strength of this novel lays less in the plot than in the setting and how by creating a protagonist who both is and isn't an insider, allows Kayode to explain the culture, history and events to western readers without inserting long explanations. The author based his novel on a real incident and used that basis to explain aspects of Nigerian culture, like the presence on university campuses of violent confraternities and the difficulties students have in finding housing. Taiwo was more an observer than a detective, but this novel was interesting enough for me to want to read the next book in this series -- it very much feels like the start of a mystery series. show less

A very interesting story, set in the far south-eastern part of Nigeria, in a small town where the students at a university have created a serious town-gown controversy. Some of the fraternities have become "cults" that operate like gangs, and the local townsfolk are unhappy with the ways students behave. As the book opens, a mob has surrounded three boys accused of theft, ending in a horrific murder. The father of one of the boys hires a US-educated psychologist who specializes in show more crime-scene analysis to investigate, since he's sure his son was innocent of the crimes that led to mob violence, kicking off the investigation that follows.

The setting is well drawn, and the psychologist, who has recently moved back to Nigeria after some years in the states, is an interesting guide to it because he is nearly as unfamiliar with the locale as readers are. He's smart and dogged but he couldn't get where he does without his sidekick, who is suspiciously well-informed. A further complication for the protagonist is that he thinks his wife, back in Lagos, has cheated on him, but he's reluctant to talk to her about it. For me, this aspect of the book (and the attraction he feels to a beautiful lawyer he meets) was the least satisfying part of the story, but it works well for both the plot and his character development.

It's great to have another African writer added to the genre. I look forward to more from Femi Kayode. show less