Links of a Chain.

Gibbs, James

According to the cover blurb, Links of a Chain is a "compelling story of love, romance, deceit, murder and death." It is the thirty-sixth title in the Spear Books series, which began with Sugar Daddy's Lover and includes work by such popular Kenyan authors as Charles Mangua and David Maillu. It is the sort of book that is read rather than reviewed.

The outsider coming to Monica Genya's novel is immediately struck by the imported elements. This is a thriller in which Susan Juma, the gutsy, talented young employee of a Kenyan state-security organization, stands against a ruthless international conspiracy that is determined to destroy the nation's political system and divide up the resulting United States of Kenya. There are a few references to places in and around Nairobi, and there are occasional linguistic features that may reflect an East African usage. For example, we read, "No case had ever buffled him" (for "baffled"), "clattering up" (for "cluttering up"), and the odd-sounding "flunged," as in "Susan was flunged against the dashboard."

But these are overwhelmed by the Americanisms. On the phone to a potential colleague, Susan says "Listen buster, you may think that you are the reincarnation of a Greek god but let me tell you that you come in a poor second, or third, or even nineteenth." She continues in a similar vein - surely with a North American metropolitan twang - concluding, "I didn't call to discuss your hang-ups pal. Either say yes or no." To this conversational style should be added references to diapers, allusions to baseball, and the convention of reading suspects their rights before arresting them ("You have the right to an attorney . . ."). Even more striking than the individual Americanisms are the exhausted narrative usages borrowed from "hard-boiled" detective fiction, from the dialogue employed in books by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and others of their school. Vehicles are forever being "gunned" into action, and an investigator who turns up valuable information inevitably is said to have "hit pay dirt." All this reinforces the impression that the author has used foreign models to jump-start her creative muse.

The basic situation explored in Links of a Chain, and the factors at work in the drama, owe minor details only to the Kenyan setting. For example, the conspiracy is a foreign-style affair dressed up with a little local color. There is minimal reference to the deprivation of the Kenyan masses, or the political system in which the nation is seeking a place. Genya's Nairobi stands beside the Hudson.

There is no reason why the detective-fiction and thriller conventions should not be taken over by African writers. Indeed, Kole Omotoso in Fella's Choice and Kodwo Abaidoo in Black Fury have already experimented with the domestication of the tradition. To be successful, however, there must be a willingness to master basic elements, and this includes the requirement that both plotters and sleuths should comport themselves with intelligence. Only if this is the case does the story become "compelling." Genya's tale is pushed beyond the bounds of credibility time and again by the failure of either side to behave with a modicum of understandable self-interest: the villains pursue their plans to assassinate cabinet ministers despite indications that their alliance is crumbling, and the "goodies" slaughter those who might provide clues to links in the criminal chain with reckless abandon.

The element of "expatriation" is also indicated by the fact that the protagonist is only half Kenyan - she has an Irish mother. And Chris Mathenge, known as "Chain" and sometimes addressed as "buster," the ace operative whom she draws out of retirement, is described as having a bronze torso. On the whole, Genya does not convey much sense of what her characters look like, but the pigmentation of her leading characters seems to betray a recognition that she is not really writing about Kenya and Kenyans.

The author is more interested in action than in character or community. As in other examples of the convention, there is, for example, little attempt to show the repercussions of violence on the wider community, and agents undertake casually dangerous assignments with inadequate backup. There is almost no attempt to explore the impact of brutal killings and scenes of carnage on the perpetrators and witnesses. The youthful supersleuth moves away from scene after scene of carnage with little more than a gulp. Genya is also interested in the "compelling story of love" referred to on the back cover of her book.

As the threat posed by the villains is first challenged, then exposed, and finally "neutralised," Susan and Chain fall in love. Although there is much that is predictable in the details of the romance, Genya does not allow herself to be drawn into describing sex scenes. Indeed, the one respect in which she does not follow recent American models is in the restraint with which she handles descriptions of the affection that grows. For this, much thanks.

Monica Genya has written a novel of over 290 pages. It must have taken her months of hard work, and I can only hope that good sales give her the confidence to write another book, this time radically scrutinizing the principles on which she is working. If Genya is a Kenyan, I would suggest she used her own experience, reflected the realities of East Africa, and practiced "speaking" in her own voice.

James Gibbs University of the West of England, Bristol