Amie African Adventure: A Plot Heavy Review

Amie African Adventure by Lucinda E. Clarke, available at Amazon, is a genre-defying thriller with a prologue that really draws the reader in before settling back to introduce its characters and set the scene. With some keen cultural observations, it's got some great twists, upping the pace until its denouement which is both satisfying, and establishes the background for the sequel in the series.

Amie is in part a primer in corrupt non-western countries, written with a flair for documentary as well as action. Jonathon and Amie are a couple on-the-up in England. Although Amie’s career in media production is stagnating ever-so-slightly, working as she does as a receptionist at a production house, she is eager to progress and knows how to hold a video camera.

Jonathon is in Facilities and Engineering, and he gets an offer from his employer to travel overseas and establish a water desalination plant in the country of Togodo, in Africa. His wife is reluctant to travel; the project is long-term, but both her family and Jonathon’s are keen to see them go.

A glimmer of the peril the couple later encounters with their arrival at the airport, their luggage  unceremoniously rifled through, and Amie’s headache tablets confiscated, is significant. 

Later, Amie has similar difficulties getting through the unofficial red tape involved in sending packages home. It seems everyone requires a bribe in Togodo for anything to happen. Jonathon comes to similar conclusions in efforts to establish offices for his firm in Apatu.

In this capital of Togodo, the construction of modern buildings and wide, highway-like thoroughfares is de rigeur. Meanwhile development monies or the building of high-rises never seem to find their way to the less developed communities, which are out of favour due to tribalism.

Amie settles down to the role of housewife, learning the quirks of maintaining a household while leaving the housework to maids and gardeners. She's a member of a collective of colonial housewives who take safari trips and play tennis, sometimes with their husbands and sometimes without. The novel simmers through the descriptions of Amie's lifestyle, but even trivial elements play into overall cultural description, and the micro-details of engaging with the housemaid feed into explaining the macro levels of government activity.

There are tribal tensions here too, we discover. We learn details of the culture through Amie’s eyes, via mouthpieces such as expats Diana and Richard Carstens, older than the new arrivals by a decade but experienced in the Togodian way of life. Although the conversations are not stilted, much explanation is delivered to the reader by Amie learning from others. Through contact with a Colonel Mbanzi who has learned of her camera-working skill, Amie finds herself inadvertently becoming the Leni Riefenstahl of this corrupt republic. Although this smooths things for Jonathon’s work, it complicates the couple’s involvement in the country’s affairs.

The pace picks up as the country's ruling class's political situation becomes problematic while the tribal tensions increase. Amie is forced to flee, and she discovers the true beauty of Africa.

The novel subverts what we typically expect while sustaining both tension and maintaining interest: the heroine effects the rescue, but she is led rather than followed (her objectives frequently immediate, and related to survival, rather than having an endgoal). We are often as unenlightened as she is throughout, and we learn as she does.

A great introduction into how Eurocentric or western bureaucracy can be delegitimised or poorly translated by former colonies, Amie: African Adventure is the first in a series.
You can find Lucinda's first Amie book at this link from a number of shops and sources.
Lucinda E Clarke is on Amazon and Twitter.