Reflections On The Detective Novel As A Moral Fable Of Contemporary Kenya

Abstract

The detective novel has for a long time been seen as a popular genre, often supposedly read for entertainment as opposed to its concern with ‘serious’ issues about society. This paper reads two detective novels by Richard Crompton to examine what they seem to be suggesting about social reality in 21^st century Kenya. Crompton’s The Honey Guide (2013) and Hell’s Gate (2014) appear to suggest that the Kenyan national body is ailing because of social turpitude. We argue that these two detective novels are profound commentaries, moral fables and critiques of given socio-economic, political and cultural realities in the 21^st century Kenya; and that the corruption of the Kenyan body is partly a consequence of both local and international forces such as the circulation of what could be called ‘crimescapes.’