Hell's Gate

It must have been Otieno's idea of a joke. Too many offended egos back at headquarters, too many influential people unhappy with him in Nairobi. And yet, with his record, he was almost impossible to dismiss. So Otieno had sent Mollel straight to Hell. Detective Mollel might have solved the case, but he disturbed the balance of power in Nairobi and now he's been rewarded with a reassignment-to a beaten-up town on the edge of Hell's Gate National Park. Mollel figures his career just took a permanent nosedive: his colleagues never took kindly to having a former Maasai warrior in their midst, and he suspects that they're responsible for the extortion and bribery that plague the force. And when the body of a flower worker turns up in the local lake, Mollel starts to wonder if they might be involved in something more. For all is not as it seems in Hell's Gate. Amid rumors of a local death squad, disappearances, and blackmail, Mollel is forced not only to confront his Maasai heritage but also to ask himself where justice truly lies. In upholding the law, is he doing what is right? Transporting readers to one of Africa's most fascinating locale's, Richard Crompton captures contemporary Kenya in all its complexity and delivers a captivating novel that you won't be able to put down.

Richard Crompton is a former BBC journalist and producer. He moved to East Africa several years ago with his wife, a human rights lawyer who worked on the Rwanda genocide trials. Crompton won the Daily Telegraph Short Story Award in 2010, and his first novel, Hour of the Red God, was published to great popular acclaim in 2013. He lives in Nairobi.