The Lazarus Effect: A Vee Johnson Mystery Paperback – November 7, 2017

It is to the credit of H.J. Golakai's engaging, rewarding, and fun thriller that I didn't notice until I finished that it entirely circles around strong women. The protagonist is Voinjama "Vee" Johnson, a reporter for a South African fashion magazine who survived Liberia's horrific civil war. She can detect, she can fight, and she can keep a secret. "Vee didn’t have secrets as much as a whole other underground life."Her assistant, Chloe Bishop, is fearless. Her boss, Portia Kruger, has some compassion but Vee is pushing her limits. The murder victim that Vee wants wants to investigate is (was) a rebellious, strong-willed teenager, Jacqui. The list goes on. This is a feminist novel, and I love this investigative team.Golokai repeated turns the traditional thriller on its head: 1. Vee wants to investigate Jacqui's death because Jacqui appears to her in visions. But unlike Patrick Swayze in Ghost, typing out names on keyboards, Jacqui just appears, leaving Vee to figure out the rest. "Movie ghosts introduced themselves, and then went about sprinkling helpful clues for the intrepid heroine to find. Jacqui was a lazy, taciturn diva." 2. Near the end, several characters gather so that Vee can reveal what happened, just like Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot might do. But Vee tells the story so non-linearly that her friend remarks, "You're a terrible storyteller." (Contrast with Yaa Gyasi's recent novel Homecoming, in which one character tells another, early in the novel, "You are a fine storyteller." Sorry, Voinjama.) 3. Women detectives tend to be asexual (Agatha Christie's Miss Marple) or tough-on-crime but sensitive-on-love (Robert Parker's Sunny Randall). But Vee is "sexually frustrated" and -- minor spoiler alert -- ends up with two simultaneous boyfriends.The novel's pacing wasn't perfect, with occasional ebbs and flows, but I still won't miss the sequel --  The Score  -- already out.

This isn't bad for a first novel. The author has an interesting plot, and the characters, except for the boyfriends, are also interesting. However, the author would benefit from a good editor who could help make the story clearer. The boyfriends are an unnecessary distraction, and don't help the story at all. It isn't really clear why Vee gets interested in the missing girl in the first place -- there's a bit about a ghost with a red hat haunting her, but that bit doesn't fit in with the rest of the story. Also some of it just isn't believable. Someone as ill as Vee is portrayed couldn't take all those beatings and live. I think the author wasn't really sure about what kind of story she wanted to tell. So she threw in a lot of elements and made the story a bit murky.Still, it was a good enough story that I read it all the way through. I think the author's next book will be better and I look forward to reading it.

Now this is how it’s done! I am late to the HJ Golakai Perry and now I can’t wait to read more of her writing. Superb.

When journalist Vee Johnson sees a photograph of a missing girl on a paediatrician's wall, she realises that she has seen her before - in her dreams.The visions, intuitions and black-outs Vee experiences are part of an African mystical tradition passed down to her from her Liberian grandmother. They can also be a pain in the butt. As a Columbia-trained investigative journalist, Vee relies on hard skills to decipher mysteries.The missing child comes from a difficult background. The product of an extramarital affair, she has never known whether she belongs to her single mother or to her wealthy surgeon father and his family. It's only when they need her for a bone marrow donation that her father's family expresses interest in her.It's up to Vee to determine what this all has to do with the girl's disappearance. The Lazarus Effect is an entertaining debut from a talented and unusual author.

In June 2019, Sara Paretsky wrote a letter to to the New York Times, that women have been in writing thrillers for at least the last couple of decades, citing Lisa Cody (a personal favourite as well), Linda Barnes, Sue Grafton. HJ Golakai deserves a place amongst those, and damn, the woman can write! As the investigation into a missing teen in Cape Town unfolds, we get to know snippets of her own complicated history; whilst capturing the contradictory essence of Cape Town. Great read, am buying her other books!!

Great book..excellent writingPersonally knows the writer...She has a crazy sense of humor....And has a style of writing that will completely pique your interest and keep you intrigued.

This was a really good book with a really likeable main character. The dialogue was crisp and fresh and it took place in a setting which was new and different to me.

Terrific new find for crime novel fans. A spicy and colourful Liberian-South African concoction, starring a smart and sexy investigative duo, Cape Town setting, satisfyingly different.

This was a slow read for me as I was having difficulty concentrating. This was the first book I completed reading in 2021 and was distracted by the COVID surge with new restrictions to figure out, the riot on TV, and a local safety alert. I do not feel I can rate it fairly. Some of my favourite books have been crime novels set in South Africa, but I probably was missing some of its nuances or subtleties. The main characters were identified by race, Black, White, or mixed parentage, but had difficulty remembering their racial background. Set in post-apartheid South Africa, I did not have a clear picture of present race relationships, conflict, reconciliation, and opportunities. The crime and its solution were unexpected, and the characters were strongly developed. Vee, an investigative reporter, is determined to solve the disappearance of a teenaged girl who vanished two years earlier and is presumed dead. She is driven to learn what happened because she is haunted by a vision of the girl while in a psychotic trance brought on during an anxiety attack. Vee suffers from these attacks after enduring the horrors of the war in Liberia as a child, and later following a breakup with a man she loved. With the help of assistant Chloe, they question the girl's dysfunctional family (families) and her friends. They receive help from a cell phone hacker known to Chloe. Both women are in danger as they draw nearer to solving the mystery. Vee is offered a more prestigious job in journalism but is also considering becoming a private detective. It looks like she may return in a sequel.

Not what I expected, my fault. Interesting but not to my taste