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Strange Gods
British East Africa, 1911
There are rules for the British and rules for tribal people. Vera McIntosh, daughter of Scottish missionaries, having grown up in Africa with Kikuyu playmates, is not the well-bred Scottish maiden her mother would like her to be. More than anything, she dreams of the idealistic and handsome Justin Tolliver, an Assistant District Superintendent of Police she's danced with.
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When the body of Vera's uncle, the doctor at the mission hospital, is found with a tribesman's spear in his back, Tolliver comes to investigate. He first focuses on a Kikuyu medicine man known to have condemned the doctor, whose cures were increasingly preferred over his. But the weapon is a Maasai spear, not Kikuyu, and it's doubtful the witch doctor would have used it.
Tolliver's superior wants him to arrest the medicine man, but Tolliver pleads for the chance to prove the man's guilt. With the help of Kwai Libazo, a tribal lieutenant, Tolliver discovers that others also had reasons to hate the Scottish doctor.
This romantic and engaging mystery captures the beauty and the danger of the African wild and the complexities of life when cultures clash.
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The Idol of Mombasa
The Coast of British East Africa, 1912
The British are tangled in an uneasy peace with the Sultan of Zanzibar. Much of the tangle concerns the slave trade. The British have outlawed it, but Arab law permits it, and to keep the uneasy peace, the Brits must turn a blind eye to some infractions of their rules.
This slippery morality infuriates Vera Tolliver, a Scottish missionary's daughter and the bride of an English police officer whose job it is to enforce the law...after he figures out what it is. The murder of a runaway slave only increases the complications, especially because a longtime friend of Vera's family is the likeliest suspect. And Vera and Tolliver discover that official fingers are knotted into the tangle's every strand.
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The Blasphemers
British East Africa, 1913
Justin Tolliver is on the brink of an enormous change. As the younger son of an English peer with no money and no prospects, he had joined the police force in British East Africa. He began full of dreams of bringing his majesty's justice to a dark and savage world, but it is now 1913, and his hope of finding fairness under colonialism is in tatters. His wife, Vera, has helped him put aside images of darkness and come to see Africa as all but lit from within.
The young couple now hope to establish a place of their own where they will raise their infant son. However, just as Justin is embracing Africa, Vera's faith in the land is tested when she is brought face-to-face with terrible brutalities and her own naiveté. There are murders, yes, and Justin and Vera will take a hand in investigating them. But when the crimes are solved, Justin and Vera will have to reckon with levels of injustice far beyond anything they had previously witness.
Against the beautiful backdrop of 1913 East Africa, The Blasphemers reckons with the injustices of colonial times and a fraught murder investigation.
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A Death On The Lord's Day
British East Africa, 1914
It is 1914, Justin Tolliver and his tribal lieutenant Kwai Libazo are still smarting from the dreadful events that ended their work on the police force a year ago. Justin and his wife, Vera, are establishing their farm in Ngong. Kwai and his baby daughter are living on the property, but tension still exists between the two men. One beautiful Sunday moming, a passing stranger discovers a dead body on the road that leads to their home. A Kikuyu man has been shot in the back. Vera and Tolliver soon learn that the dead man is Kwai's half-brother. When Kwai begins to investigate his brother's death, complications pile up.
As word of the crime leaks out, Kwai's search for the murderer inflames the underlying tensions between and among the various groups now inhabiting the Protectorate of British East Africa: the king's faithful empire builders of the administration, the missionaries who largely defend the rights of the tribal people-who have lived there for millennia, and the upper-class white British who are moving in and accustomed to rule over the places they occupy.
Vera walks a tightrope, trying to help the investigation process. Being the daughter of a missionary and the wife of an English aristocrat, she finds herself in the center of all the tension. The closer Kwai gets to securing justice for his dead brother, the wider the tension spreads. Will Justin Tolliver and Kwai Libazo be able to cooperate fully despite the emotional gap that has formed between them?
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