Eugene Paul Anderson Schleh (1939-2007) received a Ph.D. in International Relations from Yale University. His dissertation was entitled Post-Service Careers of African World War Two Veterans: British East and West Africa with Particular Reference to Ghana and Uganda. He was a history professor at the University of Southern Maine. Through his work there he was awarded multiple professional honors that allowed him to focus on his greatest interest, African History. He also published many articles and books, including one that combined two of his favorite pursuits, The Mysteries of Africa (Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1991). See his complete obituary here: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/mainetoday-pressherald/name/eugene-schleh-obituary?id=9632320
This volume is a compact collection of a dozen essays on mysteries written about the Dark Continent, chronologically arranged. Each essay ends with a bibliography of works cited in the chapter, creating an extensive reading list for the mystery fan whose never-ending quest is for something new to read. Nearly 200 books published from 1932 to the late 1980s, mostly crime fiction, are cited.
The chapters are as follows:
- Colonial Mysteries – This chapter discusses the earliest mysteries about Africa which were nearly always set in European cities and towns and largely featured Europeans.
- Matthew Head’s Dr. Mary Finney and Hooper Taliaferro Novels – John Canaday, the art historian and critic for The New York Times, worked for a time in the Belgian Congo, giving him a ready-made backdrop when he undertook writing detective fiction. These books largely featured Europeans with Africans as secondary characters.
- Elspeth Huxley’s Africa: Mystery and Memory – Huxley grew up in Kenya and visited often as an adult. She mostly wrote nonfiction but she produced six volumes of fiction, all set in Africa and all based on her experiences there.
- Independence Era Mysteries – African nations began to separate from their European colonizers in the 1950s and 1960s. As governments changed hands, Africans began to try their hand at writing mysteries. Not unreasonably, the African mysteries of this time were more about the natives than Europeans.
- Popular Crime in Africa: The Macmillan Education Program – In the 1970s Macmillan Education initiated a series of novels, mostly written by Nigerians, meant to meet the need for inexpensive English language literature in Africa. About a third of it, as of the writing of this essay, is crime fiction. These books are an interesting mix of modern Africa with the traditional.
- Africa in West German Crime Fiction – West German authors became interested in Africa as a setting for their works in the latter part of the 20th century when the continent began to be seen as a desirable vacation destination and economic links with developing nations were established. A number of novels are discussed; unfortunately most of them have not been translated and are not accessible to the English language reading population.
- John Wyllie’s West Africa: The Quarshie Novels – John Vectis Carew Wyllie lived and worked in West Africa for five years, an experience he turned into a series of eight 1970s detective novels with a well-educated native as the investigator.
- Decolonization and Detective Fiction: Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood – Ngugi is Kenya’s leading literary figure. Petals of Blood is an early book in which he used the detective story structure to protest colonization and its various inequities. This essay, the longest one in the collection, thoroughly analyzes the book and its underlying premises.
- South Africa – This chapter lists nearly 70 South African detective stories published between 1951 and 1971.
- Exploring the Mind of Evil: Wessel Ebersohn’s Crime Fiction – The author of this critical essay reviews Ebersohn’s mysteries with prison psychiatrist Yudel Gordon from the perspective of morality.
- Spotlight on South Africa: The Police Novels of James McClure – James McClure was born in South Africa and immigrated to England as an adult. In 1971 he published his first detective novel about Lieutenant Tromp Kramer and his assistant Bantu Detective Sergeant Mickey Zondi of the homicide squad in South Africa. The books describe the impact of apartheid on everyone living under its rigid rule and portray the friendship the two managed to forge despite it.
- Interview with James McClure -Transcription of an interview of South Africa-born author James McClure by Don Wall, who taught mystery writing and crime fiction at Eastern Washington University.
This book is a valuable reference for crime fiction readers, students, and historians alike.