Hell's Gate

Starred review from April 20, 2015
The jaw-dropping opening of Crompton’s outstanding second Detective Mollel novel (after 2013’s Hour of the Red God) finds the honest Nairobi cop, a Maasai, in prison, surrounded by hostile inmates. When the criminal who runs the prison, Mdosi, summons Mollel to his private room and asks why his men on the outside keep disappearing, their meeting ends in violence. A guard hears a disturbance and catches the detective red-handed, holding a bloody shard of glass and standing over Mdosi’s body. A flashback presents the events of the previous week. In doing his job too well by solving a prostitute’s murder, Mollel has outraged “some of the most powerful people in the city.” His boss demotes and transfers him, literally, to Hell, a small town near Kenya’s Hell’s Gate national park. Greeted with suspicion by the corrupt local police force, Mollel ends up on a twisted path that leads to his incarceration. Crompton effectively integrates Maasai culture into the absorbing plot. Agency: William Morris Endeavor (U.K.).

April 1, 2015
A righteous detective is shuttled to a remote post where he's challenged by culture shock, organized crime, and an unsolved murder. Detective Mollel is in a prison in Kenya under murky circumstances. A moment after a privileged prisoner named Mdosi teases him, asking about several men who've gone missing, Mollel finds himself standing over the man's bloody corpse, shards of glass in his hands. Flash back a week to Mollel in the ominously named Hell's Gate, where he's been exiled after making too many waves in Nairobi. His new co-worker Shadrack Kitui sternly advises against ruffling feathers locally. As a Maasai, Mollel already has a head start on tribal interactions, and he sets about familiarizing himself with the citizenry. His thoughts wander repeatedly back to his beloved brother Lendeva, now estranged from the family. The various members of the underclass he encounters are short stories in themselves: the young street vandal with the spray can, the flower seller who can't make a living, the Wildlife Service ranger Kibet, who's trying to stop elephant killings. The murder of the flower seller, whose name, Mollel learns, was Jemimah, gives him a sharper sense of purpose and the novel a sharper focus. The anguish of his investigation makes Mollel consider leaving this "civilized" world and returning to his tribe. Mollel's second appearance is moody and slow-rolling, as layered and involving as his first (Hour of the Red God, 2013), immersing the reader in a fascinating and unfamiliar world, with a mystery heightening the tension.

Starred review from March 1, 2015

Sergeant Mollel, a Maasai warrior-turned- police officer with a strong sense of justice, has ruffled one too many feathers at Kenya's police national headquarters in Nairobi. His preference for doing what is right over following the rules has resulted in his exile to a small town on the edge of Hell's Gate National Park. Ostensibly this is a punishment, but he is also tasked with investigating a rash of disappearances and potential corruption in the local police force. In a Kenya torn apart by postelection violence and tribal warfare, Mollel must navigate the complicated social structure of a rapidly changing country and earn the trust of the insular local police force, all the while dealing with his own painful past. VERDICT In this second Mollel novel (after Hour of the Red God), Crompton writes about Kenya's social problems--including wildlife poaching, violence against women, and corruption--in a way both searing and compassionate. Mollel's love for and commitment to his country, despite its many problems, is evident throughout. A classic lone-wolf detective story with enough plot twists to keep readers guessing until the end, this novel will appeal to those looking for both a psychological and an action thriller.--Sarah Cohn, Manhattan Coll. Lib., Bronx, NY

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2015
Mollel (Hour of the Red God, 2013), the former Masai warrior turned Nairobi detective sergeant, has been demoted and sent to a small town near Hell's Gate National Park. It's an undercover assignment to investigate the frequent disappearances of local bad guys there. But the local cops Mollel joins are suspicious of him, and Mollel knows they might kill him at any moment. Even worse, an investigator from the International Criminal Court is poking the same hornet's nest. Crompton delivers a plausible and compelling tale of murder, corruption, tribal enmities, displaced persons, and poaching by small armies that outnumber and outgun the park rangers who are supposed to stop them. Additionally, he offers fascinating insights into today's Kenya, for example, the ubiquity of cell phones even in undeveloped areas and the national ban on smoking in public places. But it is the melancholic Mollel, whose resoluteness comes from the Masai culture he abandoned, who really propels Hell's Gate.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)