Blood, sun and suspense set the tone for Where Dreams Die, a crime novel by Kenyan writer Mukoma wa Ngugi. This book, originally titled Nairobi Heat (2009), lacks nothing that one would expect from a thriller: exchanges of gunfire, chases, tough interrogations, but also love scenes and drunkenness. at the bottom of a glaucous bar.
The story begins like a detective film: the body of a murdered young woman is found in front of the house of a university professor whose status as a peace activist does not protect him from suspicion. The victim happens to be white and his alleged killer Rwandan – in a word, “black”, an unforgivable fault in the context of the predominantly white American city of Madison, where Ku Klux Klan supremacists run rampant. “One side was the case, the other side was political, and the two never go well together,” writes the author.
So much so that what was initially a dramatic news item immediately rose to prominence in public opinion, with the national media taking over from the local press to demand proof of guilt, or even the head of the designated murderer. The inspector in charge of the investigation, Ishmael, divorced and solitary, is also black, as is his boss, with whom he shares the conscience of the minority and the weight of an exacerbated responsibility: “If we solved what promised to be a high-profile case, more doors would open to blacks in the police force. But if we screwed up, more would shut down. And this idea did not make things easy for us. »
To this initial tension relatively common in fiction, Mukoma wa Ngugi adds an unexpected dimension by sending his detective to continue his investigations in Africa following a mysterious phone call. Admittedly, the process is a little crude – moreover the novelist does not fail to ironize on this subject by the mouth of his hero: “If I had been told two weeks earlier that I would soon find myself in a bar in Africa singing Catfish Blues with a schizoid inspector named O and a Rwandan blues guitarist, waiting for one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, I would have replied that they were kidding me. »
Perceived as a “mzungu”
But all the interest of the book lies precisely in the experience that Ishmael will live and the way in which he tries to move from then on no longer between two racial communities, but truly between two continents, both geographically and professionally. or cultural. At first glance, finding himself as an African-American in the land of his ancestors seems to leave Ishmael indifferent, but he is nevertheless irritated at being immediately perceived and designated, wherever he goes, as a ” mzungu” (a white man).
Admittedly, the investigation remains at the center of his concerns, the complexity of the case causing many twists and turns to the delight of readers, but how does the hero experience his presence on African soil? What about Kenya interests him, touches him, displeases him? “How do you feel here?” I mean, how does it feel to you, black man from America, to be in Kenya? asks his teammate Odhiambo. To this vast question which would require psycho-philosophical developments beyond the framework of the thriller, Mukoma wa Ngugi prefers to answer with a pirouette: “How do I feel? I want to find my killer and bring him to justice… That’s all. »
In spite of everything, rendering justice, confusing the culprits – even if this means killing in the process – or even discovering that the beings we least suspect turn out to be the most devious, this is perhaps what truly connects the detective and his Kenyan partner, and undoubtedly the best way for Ishmael to finally resonate with his continent of origin. To one day live, as researcher Karen Ferreira-Meyers would say, “the African dream”?
Born in the United States in 1971, Mukoma wa Ngugi first grew up in Kenya before returning to live and teach in the United States. Son of the literary icon Ngugi wa Thiongo, he first became known as a poet. He followed the adventures of Ishmael with a thrilling second part, Black Star Nairobi, which takes the detective to Mexico.
