Dying to Live: A Detective Kubu Mystery

David “Kubu” Bengu, an assistant superintendent in the Botswana CID, investigates a particularly baffling murder in his sixth, and best, outing (after 2015’s A Death in the Family). Ian McGregor, the pathologist for the Botswana Police Service in Gaborone, discovers some striking anomalies when he performs an autopsy on the body of a Bushman discovered in a game preserve: the youthful internal organs don’t match the victim’s aged exterior, and an old bullet inside him has no apparent means of entry. Soon afterward, the corpse is stolen from the morgue, strongly suggesting that it held secrets someone wanted kept hidden. Clues are hard to come by, but Kubu is interested to learn that the dead man, identified by acquaintances as Heiseb, recently met with anthropologist Christopher Collins, a researcher from the University of Minnesota. Collins, who has gone missing, was studying the Bushmen’s oral traditions, which included a mode of storytelling in which the narrator pretends to have been present at events that predated his birth. Stanley (the pseudonym of Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip) keeps the intriguing plot twists coming. Agent: Jacques de Spoelberch, J. de S. Associates. (Oct.)