The Boy Who Stole the Leopard's Spots by Tamar Myers

First Line: It was much cooler in the canyon that lay in front of, and below, the village.

Legends surround the birth of twins to a king in the Belgian Congo of the 1920s. This was the time when headhunters and cannibals still followed the old ways, a time when the birth of twins was a bad omen that must be dealt with swiftly. Due to his cunning, the king's twins both survived and grew to manhood.

Fast forward to the late 1950s. As independence for the Congo grows nearer, even the remote town of Belle Vue becomes acquainted with the stirrings of upheaval. Self-professed spiritual leaders travel through almost daily, speaking to large groups of natives, telling them of the delights to come-- to when they will inherit all the goods of the whites and all their knowledge of how to operate the technology. Some whites are nervous, others-- like Madame Cabochon-- who were born in the Congo and have lived there all their lives, seem willing to fight for their rights to remain in their homeland.

Into this unsettled time for Belle Vue arrive some strangers, a huge snake, and a horrendous storm that literally divides the town in half. As one person, then another, dies, it becomes obvious to readers that someone is willing to kill as many times as it takes for a secret to remain buried.

Tamar Myers' parents were missionaries; she grew up in the Belgian Congo. Her young American missionary, Amanda Brown, shows readers how difficult it could be to get used to the climate, the people, and the customs. In this book, Amanda has definitely become romantically involved with the police chief, Captain Pierre Jardin, and the natives who work for her-- Cripple and Protruding Navel-- are up to their usual tricks. Amanda is learning the language, she's learning the customs, and she feels as though she's becoming friends with Cripple, although there's still a lot she must learn from the wise little woman with the twisted back.

If you're looking for a traditional whodunit where the characters are actively out and about searching for clues, you're not going to find it here. The mystery, the clues, the resolution, all unfold gradually, naturally. Everything has been woven into this colorful fabric of story, and if one thread is pulled loose from the rest, the entire book suffers. Myers is skillful at her honest portrayal of the Congo during that era without becoming overly graphic, but it's the character of Cripple who shines brightest over this entire series of books.

If you've read all of Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books, and are looking for something in the same vein, try Tamar Myers' books set in the Congo (The Witch Doctor's Wife, The Headhunter's Daughter, The Boy Who Stole the Leopard's Spots). I wouldn't be at all surprised if-- like me-- you prefer reading about Amanda Brown and Cripple!

The Boy Who Stole the Leopard's Spots by Tamar Myers

ISBN: 9780061997730

William Morrow and Company  ©2012

Paperback, 304 pages

Genre: Historical Mystery, #3 Amanda Brown mystery set in the Belgian Congo of the late 1950s

Rating: B+

Source: LibraryThing Early Reviewer's Program

The Headhunter's Daughter by Tamar Myers

Title: The Headhunter's Daughter
Author: Tamar Myers
ISBN: 9780061997648
Publisher: William Morrow, 2011
Paperback, 256 pages
Genre: Historical Mystery, #2 Amanda Brown mystery
Rating: B+
Source: Publicist

First Line: The gravel pits had been haunted for the past six years, ever since the first white woman drowned.

In 1945 an infant was left out by the gravel pits as a result of a botched kidnapping plot. The baby girl is found by a young Bashilele tribesman on his quest to claim the head of an enemy. The young boy takes the baby back to his tribe where she is raised as a member of his family-- even though her pale skin, straw-like hair and strange blue eyes mark her as being very different from the rest.

Thirteen years later, young missionary Amanda Brown hears the stories of a white girl living among the Bashilele headhunters. She enlists the help of the local police chief, Captain Pierre Jardin, and brings along the witch doctor's wife, Cripple, to act as translator. They find the young girl (now called "Ugly Eyes") and bring her back to the Missionary Rest House and "civilization". But the young white girl no longer belongs in Amanda Brown's world, and the secrets surrounding her birth and disappearance prove to be very deadly indeed.

Author Tamar Myers was born and raised in the Congo, so this is very familiar territory to her. (When reading the book, don't skip The Author Answers Some of Your Questions section at the end of the book where Myers talks about her life in Africa.)

The plot is well-paced and the mystery very intriguing. I didn't figure out the mastermind behind everything and did an "of course!" eye roll at the reveal.

Amanda is a good blend of strength and naivete. She truly wants to do the right thing even if that right thing doesn't coincide with what her judgmental elders believe-- and she has the delightful habit of speaking her mind before she can stop herself.

The book really shines in the setting and the clashing cultures. Myers delves a bit deeper into the Congo's tortured past as a colony under the rule of King Leopold II of Belgium and what the whites believe will happen when the Congo becomes independent in a couple of years.

The clashing cultures show to best advantage when Amanda's servants at the guest house try to decipher white behavior and dress. The scene where Cripple and Protruding Navel try to figure out how to put a bra on the young white girl is hilarious.

Returning to "civilization" after so many years, the young white girl probably has the best sense of the difference between the cultures:

The laughter of women as they set about doing their daily chores. Next to her mother, that is what Ugly Eyes had missed the most about village life. White people were so serious, their mouths perpetually pulled down at the corners, their foreheads so quick to pucker. Ugly Eyes did not know of a single village woman who bore vertical creases between her eyes, yet almost every woman at the party the night before had at least the beginnings of one.

I enjoy this series for its truthfulness, gentleness, humor and unpredictability. There is more than meets the eye between their covers. The lasting image of the books for me is the resident gargantuan crocodile who lives at the bottom of the ravine next to the Missionary Rest House. Seldom ever seen, the crocodile is well fed, since the rest house throws its garbage down there. In addition, there have been times that the unwary human has stumbled at the edge and fallen... never to be seen again.

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King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild

Title: King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
Author: Adam Hochschild
ISBN: 9780618001903
Publisher: Mariner Books, 1999
Paperback, 400 pages
Genre: History
Rating: A
Source: Paperback Swap

First Line: On January 28, 1841, a quarter-century after Tuckey's failed expedition, the man who would spectacularly accomplish what Tuckey tried to do was born in the small Welsh market town of Denbigh.

Over a century has passed since the events depicted in this book, and the first thing I learned was that-- somewhere along the line-- I had fallen prey to King Leopold II of Belgium's public relations team. For quite a long time, Leopold was known as a great humanitarian. The real King Leopold was quite horrifying.

In the 1880s while Europe carved Africa into colonies to harvest as much of the continent's natural resources as possible, King Leopold II (who scathingly referred to his own country as "small country, small people") was frantic not to be excluded from the feast. The vast colony he seized in 1885 as his private fiefdom included most of the unexplored basin of the Congo River.

Leopold then proceeded to put in place a reign of terror that would end in the deaths of four to eight million people-- a genocide of Holocaust proportions. Those indigenous peoples who survived went to work mining ore or harvesting rubber while Leopold squirreled away billions of dollars in hidden bank accounts around the world.

Although the king's ministers tried to keep a very tight lid on what was really going on in the Congo, the word began to get out and circulate to a wider and wider audience, due mainly to men willing to risk their jobs, their reputations and their lives in order to put an end to the atrocities. Their efforts to expose these crimes led to the first great human rights movement of the twentieth century.

The strength of Hochschild's book is that he uses the wealth of information that can be found in actual eyewitness accounts.  I have to admit that I had to read this book in short doses. Normally I am not squeamish, but as I read what Leopold sanctioned in order to reap untold wealth-- all the while painting himself as a great and wise humanitarian-- I became sickened.

There are those who may read of the genocides in Africa in recent decades and think, "So what? It's just one tribe wiping out another tribe. There are plenty more to take their places. It's not as though white people are being murdered." Once again, a piece of forgotten history shows us that the indigenous peoples of Africa learned all about genocide... from the "civilized" whites.

As painful as this book can be to read, I'm glad I read it-- and I hope you consider reading it as well.

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The Devil in the Bush by Matthew Head

Title: The Devil in the Bush
Author: Matthew Head
ISBN: 1933397217, Felony & Mayhem, 2005
Genre: Amateur Sleuth, #1 Dr. Mary Finney mystery
Rating: D

First Line: That was a wonderful job I had in 1943.

World War II is raging and young government flunkey, Hooper Taliaferro, finds himself on a mission out in the boonies of the Belgian Congo. He is supposed to be dealing with the owner of the Congo-Ruizi plantation, but when he gets there he discovers that the owner is dead. At first thought to be death by disease, the true cause of death is poison. Who would want to poison André de l'Andréneau? At first Hooper doesn't seem overly concerned about it; this young man tends to be interested in other things:

The first thing I always wonder about new people is what they manage to do for a living and how they arrange their sex life, because it seems to me that those two activities plus sleep and a movie or two account for most people's twenty-four hours a day.

It doesn't take long for Hooper to run into Dr. Mary Finney, a Yankee version of Miss Marple. She likes the amiable young man, but has no illusions of his powers of deduction: "You're a nice kid, Hoopie," Mary Finney told me, "but you're blind as a bat. I'll tell you when it's time." Finney has strong opinions about everyone and everything. She's convinced she knows what really happened, and she sets about to prove it.

The Devil in the Bush was originally published in 1945, and as a depiction of life in the Belgian Congo at that time, I did enjoy it. However, the plot was too derivative of Conan Doyle and Christie, and the two main characters were two-dimensional. Perhaps I've been reading too many mysteries lately that are very complex, but The Devil in the Bush was a Wham! Bam! Thank you, ma'am! piece of crime fiction that really didn't satisfy.

[Source: Amazon.]

The Witch Doctor's Wife by Tamar Myers

Title: The Witch Doctor's Wife
Author: Tamar Myers
ISBN: 978-0-06-172783-2, Avon, 2009
Genre: Cosy Mystery
Rating: B+

First Line: The dominant female danced along the edge of the manioc field, impatiently waiting the arrival of her pack.

The plane young missionary Amanda Brown is traveling on crash lands outside the village of Belle Vue in the Belgian Congo, which is too forceful a way of telling her that she is no longer in South Carolina. Amanda's housekeeper, an evil-tempered man named Protruding Navel, is highly incensed when she hires a village woman named Cripple to take his place. Profits at the mine are not as high as stockholders would like. Love affairs are being conducted. People relive old tragedies with each new dawn. When one of the villagers stumbles upon a huge uncut diamond, events are put into place that could lead to nothing less than murder.

When I began my long and willing descent into mystery reading, Tamar Myers' cosy "Den of Antiquity" series set in South Carolina was one of the first that I devoured. I enjoyed Myers' sense of humor and way with words. The author has a second long-running "Pennsylvania-Dutch" series as well. In deciding to use her own background as child of missionaries in the Congo of the late 1950s, Tamar Myers has broken new ground in what I hope will be a very fertile field.

Myers' knowledge of the land and people of the 1950s Congo permeates every page, even when it's a small detail such as villagers knowing they had to get home before they heard the first sounds of the hyenas. The customs of the native peoples, how the whites lived and behaved, the landscape, the weather, the architecture... all of these things brought such verisimilitude to the book that I would rank The Witch Doctor's Wife right up there with Alexander McCall Smith and Michael Stanley.

I did have one problem with the book however: there were too many characters, and several of them didn't seem to have anything to do. I didn't get any of them confused; I just read and wondered why they were there. Myers is possibly setting up future books in a series, but I did find the character bounty awkward.

Normally I tell people not to believe blurbs that say, "If you like McCall Smith's #1 Ladies Detective Agency" because most of the time that merely means that the book is set somewhere on the African continent. This time, I would say a blurb like that would be true. There's a gentleness, a humor, and a wisdom to The Witch Doctor's Wife that does remind me of Precious Ramotswe. If Myers does continue to write about Amanda Brown, I'll continue to read the books. They're that good.

[Source: LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program.]