Laurent Guillaume

Solo Camara is White Leopard, a man with a past in Mali with his present business as a private investigator. Laurent Guillaume does everything but give you a photo of this far from perfect man with demons galore. The case almost takes a back seat to Camara as a character & his voice is very strong as he tells the story. I was in it from the beginning prologue and couldn't' guess at what Solo would do. I just had to wait to be told as I read the book. In any case, I look for more from this author and hope for more Solo Camara. This identical review is on www.netgalley.com.… (mais)

“White Leopard” is a pretty standard noir mystery thriller. It is strong on violence but weak on plot and nuance. The one feature that makes this novel unusual is its setting in the West African nation of Mali, most notably the city of Bamako. Guillaume does an excellent job of capturing this locale with excellent descriptions of its geography, people, food, ambiance and, especially, its corruption. His protagonist, Souleymane (Solo) Camera, is representative of the genre. He has a checkered backstory, dubious ethics, exceptional intelligence, exquisite observational and deductive skills, a high degree of competence beyond most of his peers, tenaciousness and an outsider status. Likewise, the antagonists exhibit the traits of all bad guys in the genre: they are relentless, threatening, brutal and morally bankrupt. The damsel in distress in this case is the beautiful Farah Tebessi whose sister, Bahia is being held on a petty drug smuggling charge.

The weakness of this genre is that the reader knows at the outset that the hero, notwithstanding his obvious flaws, will succeed. However, we read on just to learn the details. Guillaume’s plot is no exception in this regard. Solo spars with a brutal drug cartel, often finding himself in situations that would seem to be hopeless. But he always manages to escape, often with the miraculous help of police commissioner Kansaye. The latter has taken on the responsibility of looking out for Solo in the Malian tradition of “fostering” the children of close friends who have passed on.… (mais)

Thriller set in Mali
I received this as a giveaway on Goodreads. A hard-boiled private investigator is visited by a beautiful woman who asks him to help her sister who is in trouble. The PI gets into all sorts of scrapes while investigating and there is a lot of violence and some sex. Sounds familiar? Except instead of being in LA or New York, this takes place in Bamako, Mali, where bribery and corruption is rife.
An engaging read with some grammatical errors and typos in the uncorrected proof version, hopefully corrected in the published version. I object to the near-death situations in which our hero finds himself only to be saved “regularly” at the last minute. Quite well-written, this is a good relatively brief read, worth the effort.
… (mais)