Ibe, Adimchinma. Treachery in the Yard. New York: Minotaur Books, 2010.
Reason read: Nigeria’s new president was sworn into office March of 2005.
Meet Tamunoemi “Tammy” Peterside. If this was a television show or a movie, Tammy would be the barely playing by the rules, dripping with sarcasm, wise mouthed but good looking cop who goes rogue from time to time. He would play by his own rules but always for the best reasons, of course. He’d have a beautiful girlfriend he pretends to care nothing about but wear a fierce loyalty to his work on his sleeve. In Treachery in the Yard he is the creation of Adimchinma Ibe, designed to be around for awhile. In this first mystery Tammy needs to solve a bombing that has left several people dead and a politician wounded. Every time Tammy gets close to the truth another body finds its way to the morgue. When someone very close to him is the next murder victim, Tammy knows he has to wrap up the case and fast. The ending may seem a little predictable and Ibe makes too many references to the heat, but other than that this is a good read!
Lines I liked, “You have to spend a lot of time climbing over the bodies to get to the truth” (p 49) and “Nothing is tough if you have an Uzi” (p 143).
As an aside, for a such a short book Ibe mentions Nigeria’s poverty a lot (I already mentioned the heat). Many sentences contained the words “could not afford,” or “it was expensive,” or “no new [fill in the blank],” or “it is cheaper to [fill in the blank].” I counted nearly a dozen such phrases by page 66, not even halfway through the book. It was a little distracting.
Author fact: Adimchinma was born in 1977 which makes me older than him by a few years.
Book trivia: Treachery in the Yard is a super short novel or a longer short story. At only 146 pages one could read it in one sitting. I did.
Nancy said: Pearl said she is confident we will see more of Adimchinma Ibe “in years to come” (p 157). She was right. He has gone on to publish another Tammy Peterside mystery titled Cronies.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called simply, “Nigeria” (p 157).
~*LunaSea*~ 