DANCING WITH THE WITCHDOCTOR: One Woman's Adventures in Africa

"I investigate safari, ship and plane accidents as well as murders and thefts and I search for missing persons," explains international private investigator James. In this ambitious but somewhat uneven debut, she combines mystery, literary memoir and adventure tale, achieving elements of all but mastering none. With a colorful cast of characters, from Kumlesh the "alchemist" and Hitesh the guru to Ensign Basso, "hero" and sometime lover, and Captain Daniel MacKinnon, skipper of the boat that shuttles James on some of her journeys, the stories have some truly fine moments of high adventure and peril. Sometimes stiff, her prose occasionally glitters with vivid descriptions and a hint of magic realism. Readers accompany James on an unauthorized mountain gorilla trek in Rwanda as chaperone to an extremely annoying young man, and travel to Nairobi to investigate the alleged suicide of a plantation owner; to war-torn Beira, Mozambique, in search of the almost certainly dead sister and mother of a friend; and to "hell on earth," Turkanaland in northern Kenya, to find a missing witchdoctor, in the seemingly endless title story. Though the stories are intriguing, the wry and world-weary voice of the narrator often impedes the overall enjoyment of her tales. But the book takes readers places that many of them will never go and paints an intimate portrait of the diverse and fascinating cultures coexisting on the African continent. As such, it can be treated as a kind of safari: parts of the journey may be difficult, but in the end, they are worth the ride. (Sept.)