British author Hogg’s elaborate debut centers on the hunt for self-destructive rock star Billy K, “who vanished into thin air on a Cornish cliff top.” After a year of fruitless searching, Insp. James Dent, a rogue London policeman, isn’t giving up. The last known clue about Billy K is that he was reading Show Me the Sky
, the journal of a 19th-century missionary, Nelson Babbage of Whitechapel, London (“formerly Naqarase Baba of Lakemba, Fiji”). Taking a new approach to the case, Dent travels first to Australia, then to Kenya and finally back to London in his quest to find the missing singer. Extracts from Show Me the Sky
, which chronicle Babbage/Naqarase’s return to his homeland with a group of English missionaries, stand out as the most compelling of the various narrative strands, some of which are slow to develop. His vivid adventures at sea will remind many of Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
. (Apr.)
