A Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Mystery/Thriller

Nairobi, 2007. In Africa's sprawling megacity, a small elite holds power over an impoverished, restless majority. With Kenya's presidential elections looming on the horizon, tensions in the city have reached an all-time high. So when the body of a prostitute is discovered inside Uhuru Park, the police are too preoccupied to care. But Detective Mollel does, and deeply. He is a former Maasai warrior, and the dead girl was Maasai too. As he ventures from slums to skyscrapers, from suburbs to sewers in search of the killer, Mollel is forced to confront his turbulent past—and the terrifying realization that this homicide is anything but typical.

Richard Crompton's Hour of the Red God is a dark, thrilling, and vividly imagined mystery, with a hero as complex as Nairobi itself.

Richard Crompton lives in Nairobi, Kenya, with his wife and their three young children. A former BBC journalist, Crompton left London several years ago when his wife, a human rights lawyer, was offered a job in Rwanda helping to prosecute the perpetrators of genocide.