Read The World — The Witch Doctor’s Wife by Tamar Myers (Congo)

blurb from goodreads.com, please scroll down for my review.

FROM BELOVED MYSTERY WRITER TAMAR MYERS COMES AN ENTHRALLING TALE OF DUTY, GREED, DANGER, AND MIRACLES IN EQUATORIAL AFRICA.

The Congo beckons a young Amanda Brown in 1958, as she follows her missionary calling to the mysterious “dark continent” far from her South Carolina home. But her enthusiasm cannot cushion her from the shock of a very foreign culture-where competing missionaries are as plentiful as flies, and oppressive European overlords are busy stripping the land of its most valuable resource: diamonds.

Little by little, Amanda is drawn into the lives of the villagers in tiny Belle Vue-and she is touched by the plight of the local witch doctor, a man known as Their Death, who has been forced to take a second job as a yardman to support his two wives. But when First Wife stumbles upon an impossibly enormous uncut gem, events are set in motion that threaten to devastate the lives of these people Amanda has come to admire and love-events that could lead to nothing less than murder.

Richly evocative, written with warmth and humor, and based on the author’s own experiences, Tamar Myers’s The Witch Doctor’s Wife is an unforgettable African journey with a spellbinding mystery at its heart.

My Review

Quote “The passenger in 3B couldn’t tear her gaze from the window. Was that patch of dirt the landing strip? It couldn’t be. It was way too short — and there were pigs on it. Pigs! This book taught me some interesting facts about animals and customs from the Congo at the beginning of each chapter.

Such a cool idea, at the beginning of each chapter is a little history, customs or animals of Congo, very interesting and cultural even though these details have nothing to do with the plot line itself.

An exciting beginning, various characters giving their personal experiences of the plane crash. The same scene is written from different points of view.

Lovely, often amusing interactions between white and black people. Most of the African characters have some unusual names, like First Death, Cripple and Protruding Navel.

Delightful and funny conversations between the local people and the Belgiums, who are the invaders of the country, as the book is based in the country of Congo, during the 1950’s before the independence of the country, the Belgiums were the owners of all the diamonds found in the mines and even anywhere else, diamonds are a big part of this book. The characters are nicely developed and alive. I loved the descriptions with the drums and you could almost hear them.

Even though in the title it says Belgium Congo mystery, the mystery part is not the most important in the book, the important part of the book is the development of the characters.

The author herself was born and raised for some years in this small town in Congo, and covers many of her experiences. How much of this is true, it is always difficult to know, but after reading a colourful interview on her website, https://www.tamarmyers.com/bio and reading that the author kept all the letters her father sent to her grandmother in the USA, while living in Congo, this book might have more truth than fiction.

This is a cozy mystery, even though it takes a long time to get to be mysterious, it is a slow burner after an exciting beginning and there were a couple of parts that were a little mysterious as they didn’t have an ending, as this is the first in a series this might continue in a later book.

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I give this book 4 stars. The next country in the read the world challenge is Moldovia.

Originally published at http://readinginecuador.wordpress.com on January 17, 2022.