Introducing HJ Golakai’s Krimi Debut: The Lazarus Effect

by Chris on Jun 30th, 2011

Voinjama Johnson, 28, is an ambitious investigative journalist at the Cape Town magazine Urban. Her life is messy, and to top it all, Vee’s been seeing things: a teenage girl in a red hat, more specifically, an unsettling hallucination that goes hand-in-hand with debilitating episodes Vee is loath to call ‘panic attacks’.

When Vee spots a photograph of the girl from her visions at a local hospital, she quickly launches an investigation, under the pretext of an article about missing children in Cape Town. She’s soon delving into the secrets of the fractured Fourie and Paulsen families, with the help of her assistant Chloe Bishop, another young woman who isn’t quite what she seems. What happened to Jacqui Paulsen, who left home two years ago and hasn’t been seen since?

The Lazarus Effect is a gripping new addition to the Cape Town crime genre from a very talented debut author.

About the author

Hawa Jande Golakai is from Liberia and was born in 1979. As a result of political and economic unrest she moved around a great deal with her family and lived in many African countries, including Togo, Ghana and Zimbabwe, before coming to Cape Town as a student in 2003. Hawa trained and worked as a medical researcher in immunology at local academic research institutions. She writes from her experiences as a refugee, foreigner, scientist and contemporary African nomad, a life which has helped foster an intense passion for crime and thriller fiction. The Lazarus Effect is her first novel.

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