Deadly Safari (1991) by Karin McQuillan
Good Reads meta-data is rated 3.69 by 158 litizens.
Genre: Krimi
Verdict: A Start
Deep in the bush of Kenya our heroine leads a group of snappers among the game, big and little. She spends a lot of time feeling sorry for herself, i.e., backstory. The compensation for that dreary indulgence is the setting which is very well realised: the heat, humidity, smells, noise of birds, insects, grunts of lions, and so on, though sometimes it seems forced into the story, contributing neither to character, plot, or ambience.
It is a small group of eight Safarians (plus attendants) and as the guests start dying, the plot thickens, following the rulebook: the obnoxious boor dies (because no one could stand him for many more pages) and it seems a heart attack triggered by his constant bad temper combined with a surprise tumble. No one seems to care or miss him, though he dominated the first chapters, least of all his wife. When a second member is speared in her sleep, not even the rulebook deniers can deny it is foul play. Well it turns out later they can deny the reality.
For as convention has it, one member of the party is a Republican and denies reality vigorously while loudly proclaiming his law and order credentials and obstructing the police investigation in every way possible and some impossible for no other reason than to inject some tension into the story. Quite how anyone could think not investigating two murders made sense is never explained but that’s fiction.
The Kenyan detective who descends on the camp is a marvellous character as is his taciturn sergeant. Their approach to investigation is not from the manual of krimi conventions, and very refreshing for that. Among the noteworthy scenes is a visit to a Masai village which I found intriguing and informative.
There is also some self-deprecating humour. When asked how she suspected the least likely person to be the murderer, our heroine said, ‘When she pulled a gun and threatened to kill me, then I knew.’ Not before. Nice.
Yes, much of the book is David Attenborough about the plants, the animals, and the peoples of Kenya but I found that tolerable. What I found less tolerable was the Elle fashion commentary of everyone’s clothes in each scene. Still less the Gourmet Traveller menus for each meal. None of the clothing or food contributed to the plot but taken as a whole it went on for pages. Likewise I found some of the dialogue attenuated to spin out the length. Grumble, grumble, grumble.
First in a series and perhaps in later titles the author relaxes a little and lets the time and place carry the reader along without the fashion shows or gourmet meals. Maybe our heroine will spend less time thinking about herself in later titles. Or perhaps the success of this one has encouraged the writer to pad the next title even more with irrelevant details and victimology.
The title reminded me of a restaurant by that name – The Safari – on King Street at the corner of Queen Street that opened early at 5 pm and so I had meals there often before evening classes in the middle of the 1970s. Despite the name and the mosquito netting suspended from the ceiling, it was a continental menu leaning to Italian (pasta and scaloppine) but it was run by a couple from Germany. Since I was early, alone, and regular I got to know them. I did once ask about the name and all I can remember now (nearly fifty years later) is that the business had that name when they took over. Perhaps there was more to it but that is now lost to time.
On one occasion I was in a hurry and to accommodate my need for speed Heinz (though I do not remember his name) put the water for the spaghetti through the espresso machine to get it to boiling temperature in no time at all. That was my most memorable meal, I ordered as I walked in and by the time I sat down and drew out the papers to review before class, the plate arrived!
When the German couple left about 1980 the new proprietors changed the cuisine to Indonesian but retained the name. In the next decade organised labour put that incarnation out of business, protecting workers rights so well that none them any longer had a job, and since then it has been a vegetarian butcher (you read that right) per the signs in the window, a tattoo parlour, and it is currently….? I haven’t been that way in a while and don’t know.