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In his fourth appearance, Assistant Superintendent David Bengu of the Botswana CID must deal with a very touchy, perhaps even personally threatening, business - witchcraft. He also has to learn how to cope tactfully with a new colleague, Samantha Khama, the only woman in the CID. To further complicate his life, an election is underway and the charismatic founder of a new political party has found a dog's head on his front steps, an apparent threat. Readers familiar with the series will know Bengu by his nickname Kubu ("hippo"); he comes by it honestly, being an outsized man with an appetite for good food and wine and when these are not on offer, whatever food and sweets might come his way. He is, unlike too many fictional police detectives, happily married and the father of a little girl. Nor is his wife, the appropriately named Joy, the cliched bitter and neglected wife, forced into a distant second place behind her husband's job. If Kubu must defer his domestic responsibilities when his job requires, he makes up for it when he can and Joy understands. Two little girls have disappeared recently in the vicinity. Their distraught parents have received little help from the local police, who apparently feel that there is nothing odd about young girls vanishing without a trace. Samantha has a personal interest in these cases - her childhood friend disappeared years ago in much the same way and was never seen again. Samantha believes, with considerable reason, that her friend's case and now these more recent ones were not pursued with the vigour they deserved because the victims were merely girls. Samantha believes that the missing girls were either press-ganged into the sex trade or, even worse, victims of the dark trade in muti, the harvest of body parts, usually animal but sometimes human, to be used in amulets and spells. Samantha is appalled at the persistence of what she can only see as rank superstition. It embarrasses her to hear of her people still in the grip of these notions. Kubu is not himself a believer but typically he understands how others might be, so he is less quick to judge. But his comprehension does not make him any the less determined to put an end to the activities of the local witch doctor, believed to be able to provide potions of great power and to make himself invisible. In this, he demonstrates a bravery that some others in the police service do not; if they do not altogether credit the evil power of the witch doctor, somewhere in themselves they fear his reach. Michael Stanley (Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip) are themselves aware of the necessity of approaching the question of traditional medicine with tact. Readers are reminded of the terrible toll that HIV-AIDS has taken in the country and of the helplessness many felt as it seemed unstoppable. Botswana has the second-highest rate of infection in Africa. Although an active program of government intervention has reduced the rate of infection, AIDS-related deaths are still commonplace. Small wonder that traditional medicine has retained a hold on the populace. But the authors also slyly remind us of our own cultural involvement in witchcraft by heading each chapter with a quotation from Macbeth, that play whose title actors are still too superstitious to pronounce. Despite its problems, a country that can produce so attractive a policeman as Kudu remains a wonderful place to visit. His approach to law enforcement unites careful police work, intelligent analysis, and the kind of flash of insight that fictional detectives have relied on since the days of Sherlock Holmes. Although he has a famous compatriot in Mma Ramotswe, they are by no means cut from the same cloth nor do they live in quite the same country. Kubu's Botswana is a darker, more difficult place and the authors are properly not prepared to say otherwise. DEADLY HARVEST makes that perfectly plain and is an excellent place for readers new to the series to begin. Of course, those who know Kubu's Botswana will need no further invitation. § Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, May 2013
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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