[Detective Mollel 01] • Hour of the Red God

**In the grit of contemporary Nairobi, a bedeviled detective pursues an unusual killer**

In Nairobi’s Uhuru Park, the police have recovered the body of a local prostitute: a Maasai woman, brutally murdered. It’s hard to discern what went wrong. Was this a female circumcision gone awry? Was she the victim of a pimp, or maybe of one of her customers?

     Detective Mollel, himself a former Maasai warrior, is assigned to the case. Like all great heroes in crime fiction, Mollel is complicated, even flawed. His scars and stretched earlobes, the hallmarks of the Maasai, make him conspicuous on the streets of corrupt contemporary Nairobi. Worse still, he can’t seem to leave well enough alone, no matter what the consequences.

     As Mollel pursues the death of the prostitute, he begins to suspect something far more extensive than an ordinary murder. But are his warrior’s instincts—which have never failed him—as true as they feel? Or will all his convictions about the case be turned on their head? As the investigation devolves into chaos, the outcome becomes more personal than he could ever have imagined.

     With the sophistication of Ian Rankin and Colin Harrison, and set against the backdrop of Kenya’s turbulent 2007 elections, Richard Crompton’s *The Honey Guide* brings Nairobi and its citizens vividly to life: gritty and modern, with an extraordinary blend of tribal and urban elements. In this dark thriller, tradition and power collide to a shocking, unforgettable end.