Making Wolf by Tade Thompson

 

Weston Kogi is a supermarket store detective in London. When he returns to the country of his birth (Alcacia, a fictional West African state, inspired by Nigeria) for the funeral of his aunt, the woman who took care of him as a child and put him on a plane to London just as the country exploded into civil war and thus secured him a better life, he runs up against people from his past. The abusive father who always disliked and was ashamed of him, the boy who bullied him at school and made his childhood a torment, the girl he loved. 

It is Churchill “Church” Okita, the boy who bullied him at school, who has the biggest and most immediate impact. For he has heard that Kogi is a detective, mistaken his job title to mean he is a proper police detective and abducts him to press him into service investigating a real-life murder. Church is an enforcer for one of two main rebel groups, the Liberation Front of Alcacia (LFA) and they want to know who assassinated an elder statesman who was refereeing negotiations with the Government. Kogi begins his investigations out of necessity (he doesn’t want to be murdered if Church and the LFA discover the truth) but soon discovers he has an aptitude for the work.

It isn’t long before the other guerrilla group, the People’s Christian Army (PCA) get involved, as indeed does the government’s intelligence services and the plot of Making Wolf becomes a combination of gumshoe PI novel in a unique setting, political thriller, and satire about West African corruption.

Tade Thompson is a gifted writer of Nigerian descent. Making Wolf is his first foray into crime fiction (before this he’s written sci-fi) and the first novel of his that I’ve read. Making Wolf seems like the first on a new series and I really hope it is, as this was a thoroughly enjoyable read. A well-written novel with a cast of interesting characters, this is a great read.

4 out of 5 stars