Treachery in the Yard is essentially a standard American hardboiled/detective story filtered through a Nigerian setting. Ibe takes the famous Chandler essay, “The Simple Art of Murder”, and uses it as a blueprint to create both the story of Treachery in the Yard and the character Det. Peterside.
All of which makes the story feel very familiar to the reader. The setting may be different but everything else is something we have read before. This allows for a quick and comfortable read but one that ultimately doesn’t quite live up to its full engagement potential. As a study of corruption I was hoping for more insight into the Nigerian sociopolitical landscape, hopefully further novels delve a little deeper in to this. I don’t know nearly enough about Nigeria and its history but I’d like to and hope further novels touch on this as well.
With that said I think there is potential here and Ibe is an author who bears watching and if done right Nigeria could become the next South Africa.
Here is an interview with the author.
Here is the author’s sole blog post so far in which he talks a little about himself and the road to publication. Apparently the book was being shopped in 2003, the author sold it through Lulu in 2005, he started to submit it again in 2007, it sold in 2008 and here we are in 2010.
You can read an excerpt here.
