Akashic Press sent me an advance reader copy of this book.
I confess I don't tend to enjoy books in this series set in third world countries as much as others. Might be first world privilege speaking but I suspect it may have to do with some of these nations having less of a tradition of mystery writing. A lot of the stories, even when they have a crime prominently in them, don't feel to me like crime stories. They feel, dare I say it, mainstream.
This story, on the other hand, works just fine for me. It is, in fact, a type of whodunit.
The narrator, a high school girl, lives in Plot 10, a neighborhood of ten small houses served by one latrine. Both the neighborhood and the latrine are kept locked so when the narrator's friend is found butchered in the latter we have a sort of locked room mystery on our hands.
The police arrive and are as vicious as you might fear. Is the crime solved?
Well. That's an interesting question.
Daryl Gregory once said: "Stop just short of the ending. If you act like Tom Sawyer and let your readers do the rest of the work, they'll be more connected to the story, and thank you for it."
That is more or less what happens here. Ms. Mose provides all the clues but leaves it to the reader to connect the pieces. I thank her for it. It's a very interesting story.
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