The Electric Shaman ... near-future detective fiction

[Tony Richards]

In the not too distant future, the Dark Continent has changed. It’s become Federal Africa, with all of the old countries now united into one great nation. The separate tribes are gone, technology has boomed … it is a very modern place.

But if you think that it’s completely changed, meet Lieutenant Abel Enetame of the Zimbabwe State Police Force, a single father with a great deal on his plate. He doesn’t only have the usual crimes to deal with, murders, assassinations, kidnappings. There are violent Black Supremacists. There are fanatics like the Tribalists, who want to take the whole place back to the old days. And there are egotistic billionaires and power-crazy politicians.

And when those kinds of people start getting their hands on brand-new devices that can do startling things, like change the past, for instance … well, that’s when the sparks really start to fly. Because the future of the whole of modern Africa might well rely on one police detective.

Some parts of this novel were first published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.

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[Dr. Drib]

Got it!

Thank you.

[crich70]

Thanks Tony.

[Tony Richards]

The first section of this book was inspired by a long trip to Zimbabwe in the early Nineties, back when it was much safer to go there. I still came within a whisker of being robbed a couple of times, but managed to have a fascinating time, starting in the capital, Harare, driving to a nearby game reserve and across the Mvurwi Mountains to the Chinhoyi Caves. I went to Victoria Falls too. I stayed at the Hwange Game Reserve on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. I even managed to get a boat trip down the Zambezi River. And when I arrived home, I eventually put it all into a longish story set in the near future.
I’d already sold several straight mysteries to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and so I thought ‘why not?’ And to my astonishment, editor Linda Landrigan snapped ‘The Very Edge of New Harare’ up, inspiring me to write a number of other tales with the same setting and central character, all of them joining up to form a book-length piece of fiction.