Africa Scene: Kwei Quartey interviews Michael Stanley, creators of the Detective Kubu series set in Botswana

Michael Stanley is the writing partnership of Stanley Trollip and Michael Sears. Their mystery series features an overweight detective in the Botswana Criminal Investigation Department nicknamed “Kubu”. The New York Times said of him: “Kubu is also hugely appealing ... We may be attracted to Africa by the scenery, but it takes a great character like Kubu to win our loyalty.”

Stanley’s third book, Death of the Mantis, was shortlisted for an Edgar award and won a Barry Award. Their fourth book, Deadly Harvest, was shortlisted for an International Thriller Writers award.

The latest series instalment — the duo's eighth — A Deadly Covenant is a prequel set on the Kavango River in northwest Botswana and starts with the discovery of a long dead San skeleton that turns out to be one of a group of murdered San people.

As a big fan of uncovered or unsolved mysteries from the past, I found A Deadly Covenant intriguing and engrossing and the San scenes fascinating. Kubu seems ever more incisive than his first outing as a detective in Facets of Death. Vividly painted scenery — and you can feel the oppressive heat. Talk about sunshine noir.

In this exclusive interview for The Big Thrill, the authors share insight about A Deadly Covenant and their protagonist, Kubu.

I’ve always been curious whether the Kubu character is based on a person or people you know. He has particular features that make him stand out, especially his size, which belies a certain degree of psychological vulnerability.

Kubu isn’t based on anyone. He wasn’t even intended to be the protagonist. In our first book, A Carrion Death, an ecology professor discovers a dead body in the desert and rapidly deduces that the victim was murdered. Since we were both academics when we wrote the book, we thought the professor would be our protagonist because we were told you should write what you know. However, because a murder was involved, we needed a police detective to investigate.

So Kubu climbed into his Land Rover, well supplied with food and drink, and set out from Gaborone into the desert. Along the way he sang (badly) and thought about how his experiences with an early San school friend had encouraged him to look below the superficial, to be observant. That and his love of puzzles eventually persuaded Kubu to become a detective. By the time he arrived at the crime scene, he’d taken over the lead role and shoved the ecology professor aside. So in some odd way, Kubu actually invented himself.

One issue with how that transpired was that we hadn’t thought out Kubu’s backstory very well. We tried to rectify that in Facets of Death, the first novel featuring Kubu as a young detective having just joined the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). As you point out, he was already smarter than the other detectives but his relationships (especially with his future wife) were very tentative. That seems right, since he would have been teased about the very large size that led to his nickname Kubu, which means “hippopotamus” in the local language.

Assistant superintendent Mabaku, a tough, smart, and likeably irascible character, acts as Kubu’s mentor in A Deadly Covenant. Is he responsible for “everything Kubu knows”? How does their relationship evolve over the years?

Certainly Kubu looks up to Mabaku and learns a lot from him. In this book, he starts to think ahead even of Mabaku and their relationship changes a little. Kubu becomes more confident about his detection abilities, and Mabaku starts treating Kubu as a colleague rather than a subordinate and begins to use his nickname for the first time.

Do the novels accurately represent the degree of progress of the Botswana/Gaborone police service? It seems considerably more advanced than the Ghana Police Service I write about in my own novels, for example: designated interview rooms, good forensic resources, and so on. In the same vein, what’s the status of police corruption in Botswana? In Ghana, it’s a raging issue.

A very interesting question. Botswana is probably the least corrupt country in Africa. Botswana was never a colony (it was a British Protectorate at the request of its leaders until 1960), and we think that was an important factor in maintaining the traditional values of the Tswana people. Another is that its major foreign currency earners are diamonds, tourism, and beef exports. None of those looks good if corruption is involved. Botswana also obtains significant aid from the EU, and that comes with strict anti-corruption strings attached. While it would be silly to claim there is no corruption — in the police service or more broadly — our experience suggests an honest and well-managed country. We wish we could say as much for SA.

The CID in Botswana is well equipped and follows modern police methods. However, it does sometimes ask for assistance from the SAPS in Pretoria and Scotland Yard in London. It’s important to remember, however, that Botswana is a big country (about the size of France) and there is much less development outside the capital. For example, in A Deadly Covenant, the pathologist has to drive a dead body 160km in an ordinary vehicle to reach a hospital where he can do the autopsy.

Without giving anything away, one scene involves some “wildlife” action. This is also featured in some of your other novels, not to mention that Kubu’s name means “hippopotamus” in Setswana (interesting story of how that came about). I know you are drawn to the region’s wildlife, but I can’t gauge if Kubu feels the same. At best, he seems neutral. How knowledgeable or proud of Botswana’s wildlife is the average urban Motswana? For instance, I suspect that in Ghana many citizens don’t know (or care, for that matter) that strong populations of elephants exist in the country’s northern regions.

It’s sometimes said that setting is a character in its own right. That’s true of Botswana, certainly in our books. The Kalahari Desert, Okavango Delta, the magnificent wildlife and varied peoples all make a mystery story more unusual and intriguing. Wildlife has featured in some way in most of our books, starting in chapter one of A Carrion Death, where a game ranger stumbles across a human body being eaten by a hyena.

The Batswana are very proud of the natural attractions of their country and aware of them in general terms. Most of the people exploring these areas are foreign tourists. We guess this is more because of the cost and large distances involved than in lack of interest. However, the small game reserves near Gaborone have lots of local visitors. Certainly a country needs local involvement in wildlife preservation if it is to carry on into the future.

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