Kibera explores drugs underworld in new self-published thriller

One of the genres many of us enjoyed in our youth was the crime thriller. Young readers in upper primary and lower secondary school devoured the Hardy Boys series and locally familiar, school-approved fare such as Barbara Kimenye’s adventurous Moses series. Older readers graduated to James Hadley Chase, Robert Ludlum, John Grisham and others.

 Locally, we had such brilliant works as The Double Cross by Mwangi Gicheru, a memorable thriller revolving around Lodi Karafuu, a flamboyant cashew-nut billionaire whose excesses call to mind the wash-wash types who flaunt their cash in bars and live lavish lifestyles. Karafuu, we are told, is not averse to lighting his pipe with a banknote.

Of course, it was not only readers who were kept on the edge of their seats by fast-paced, adrenaline-charged plots. In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, thriller movies were also a craze. The star faced hurdles and untold tribulations at the hands of villains before staging a comeback. Often, the hero rescued a woman in distress and they “lived happily ever after”.

And now, just when thrillers seem to have taken a back seat somewhat – I repeat, thanks to the textbooks gold rush – we still get the occasional gem that keeps the fire burning. A case in point is Ngumi Kibera’s new novel, The Hitman. This is not your ordinary, predictable, happily-ever-after fare. Indeed, if there is something Ngumi has perfected, it is the art of weaving a complex plot and delivering an easy-to-follow story.

The Hitman takes us deep into the drugs underworld. Through a street-bred assassin-for-hire, promised millions of shillings by a grubby drug baron to eliminate a business rival, we find ourselves unpacking the intricate relations between big money, politics, power and crime.

Unlike crime thrillers focused on detectives unravelling a single mystery, Ngumi presents a web of corruption in which politicians, held captive by dirty money, protect despicable criminals with no qualms about ordering murders to preserve their flashy lifestyles and delusions of grandeur.

In the novel, a series of drug-related murders off the Kenyan coast jolts the highest office in the land into ordering a 36-hour crackdown. The violence has ruffled international feathers, with possible sanctions looming over a country already weakened by rising debt and a struggling economy.

A special unit is formed to bypass the usual reporting lines and blindside entrenched networks within institutions whose members serve the public by day but work for the cartels they are tasked with fighting by night. The urgency gives the story its momentum, while the political dimensions widen its reach beyond the familiar contest between criminals and the police.

One of Ngumi’s greatest strengths is his ease with words. His masterful turns of phrase, particularly in dialogue, enable him not only to create credible characters and moving scenes but also to reflect on everyday events in ways that are philosophical and captivatingly humorous.

Consider the hired assassin waiting in a bank to receive money from a drug lord for an assignment he has yet to accomplish. He watches bank staff stream in to work with haughty airs and wonders why they should behave so grandly when dealing with people whose money they handle.

Worse still, they have the cheek to charge customers for handling their own money. It is a recognisable irritation transformed into an amusing observation about power and privilege. Such moments prevent the novel from becoming a grim procession of criminal acts.

This command of the literary craft is part of what has earned Ngumi recognition over the years. He has won the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature twice. He bagged the prize in 1997 for The Grapevine Stories, his collection of short stories, and in 2024 for The Gambler, published by Oxford University Press East Africa.

His The Devil’s Hill, published by Longhorn Publishers in 2012, was a runner-up in the inaugural Burt Award for African Writing that year. He was also among the 25 writers recognised by the Kenya Publishers Association in 2024 for their contribution to the country’s literary landscape. These honours point to a writer who has sustained a presence in Kenyan publishing across genres and generations of readers.

His work suggests extensive geographical research and wide reading. There are few, if any, mundane paragraphs in it. Perhaps this literary inclination runs in the family. Ngumi comes from a family of writers.

His brother Sam Kahiga was a popular humour columnist with The Standard. Kahiga also authored books such as The Girl from Abroad and Dedan Kimathi: The Real Story. Another brother, the late Professor Leonard Kibera, was a literary scholar and writer whose works include Potent Ash, co-written with Sam Kahiga, and Voices in the Dark.

Several stories from Potent Ash, which explores the Mau Mau experience, have appeared in anthologies. ‘The Stranger and ‘The Spider’s Web’ are among the best-known. Leonard’s fiction, in particular, confronted the disillusionment of freedom fighters who were neglected after independence.

Unlike earlier works by Ngumi, such as The Devil’s Hill and The Gambler, The Hitman is self-published. Self-publishing offers authors creative freedom that traditional publishers, particularly those with an eye on the mass market, may not always permit.

Writers can explore themes that cautious editorial teams might find difficult or commercially unappealing. That freedom, however, places a greater responsibility on the author to ensure that the finished book receives the editorial attention it deserves.

It is important to note that I received an advance review copy of The Hitman. It is, like Ngumi’s other works, well written, but I trust it subsequently benefited from a final editorial pass to dot the i’s and cross the t’s, so to speak. This is one of the details self-published authors sometimes ruefully overlook.

A good story and an assured command of language do not exempt a manuscript from proofreading and copy-editing. Without a publisher’s established production process, that final scrutiny is all the more important. The occasional rough edge should not obscure the achievement, but neither should a writer’s reputation make every page immune to improvement.

What must be said about The Hitman, however, is that it maintains the old philosophical orientation in which the bad guys eventually pay for their sins. That gives the novel a satisfying sense of closure, even as it takes readers through a world where money and influence corrupt institutions meant to protect the public. It is a reminder that the crime thriller can entertain while holding up a mirror to society.