Lightseekers is an immersive book with a great setting: Nigeria. The murder case Philip Taiwo needs to solve is believable and contemporary. For the reader, it is quite a challenge to guess the motives of the people that Philip meets while investigating his case because of the – for many – unfamiliar setting. It is very exciting how you’ll keep guessing and trying to come up with different explanations while trying to figure out how life in a small town in Nigeria works. How well-versed are you in Nigerian family culture, hierarchy, and the power of friendships? Or the role of politics and religion in everyday life?

The narrative is very much focused on the thought process of the narrator, which makes for a slow start of the story. Philip is an academic, even though he has experience working together with a police department in the US. His naivety and slowness annoyed me at first. For example, his willingness to work closely with Chika without asking the right questions for most of the book is somewhat hard to believe. To me it seemed like he forgot that he can read people after the opening chapters of the book, only to be reminded of his skills in the last third of the book.