โ Scribed by Nicholas Hogg
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
British author Hogg's elaborate debut centers on the hunt for self-destructive rock star Billy K, who vanished into thin air on a Cornish cliff top. After a year of fruitless searching, Insp. James Dent, a rogue London policeman, isn't giving up. The last known clue about Billy K is that he was reading Show Me the Sky, the journal of a 19th-century missionary, Nelson Babbage of Whitechapel, London (formerly Naqarase Baba of Lakemba, Fiji). Taking a new approach to the case, Dent travels first to Australia, then to Kenya and finally back to London in his quest to find the missing singer. Extracts from Show Me the Sky, which chronicle Babbage/Naqarase's return to his homeland with a group of English missionaries, stand out as the most compelling of the various narrative strands, some of which are slow to develop. His vivid adventures at sea will remind many of Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. (Apr.)
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This ambitious first novel by Britishwriter Hogg moves back and forth in time and across several continents, offering multiple narrative strands and characters.The novels central arc follows Detective James Dent, who has spent the last year on the hunt for missing British rock star Billy K. Obsessed with the case, Dent abandons his job to track a final, desperate lead in Australia. Intercut with the hunt are passages froma journal Billy K was reading when he was last spotted. It contains the writing of nineteenth-century Fijian missionary Nelson Babbage, whose vivid rendering of colonial oppression forms the backbone of Hoggs themes of identity and assimilation. Other narrative strands followmotorcycle rider Caland thetouching lettershe pens to his girlfriend while slowly dying in the Australian Outback,and an exhausted teenage runaway whoappears tobe the teenage incarnation of Detective Dent.There isso much going onplotwise that thestory never quite gels, yetits hybrid natureits part thriller, part historical noveland confident writing make for an intriguing read. --Joanne Wilkinson
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