This delightful novel starts as a slow burner that I found difficult to keep having a go at, but when part 2 starts the plot quickens and then turns into something truly profound and earth shattering. The end is brilliant, and left me in shock. If only she could have started with the final scene! Then it would have been 5 stars probably. This book is about revenge and redemption, whereby redemption wins… at a price.

(SPOILERS AHEAD!!) The build-up is straight forward but o so crafty – we first listen to Pilgrim, a stunning American divorcee, who accidentally hits and kills three young children at a bus stand in a small Swiss town with her car. Her narrative alternates between Arnau, Swiss, and two places in Tanzania where she flees after the enquiry has been concluded. In a remote place, Pilgrim tries to repent, finding solace in the make-do attitude of Dorothea, the bereft Tanzanian nurse running a clinic without medicine. Pilgrim also has some interactions with Martin the blunt mercenary, who kind of fancies her. Next a mysterious bag with body parts is found and Pilgrium takes it upon her to deal with the bad, since as a mzungu she is inure to its charms. She travels to the coast taking the bag, which she dumps in some cave. Pilgrim’s narrative ends with a mysterious guest arriving at her ramshackle home in Tanga, Tanzania, Pilgrim willingly letting him fold a plastic bag over her head and tidying that up. Presumably nothing is left for Pilgrim, but to die. But then we switch to Detective Chief Inspector Strebel (one of the heroes of the book). Strebel has fallen in love with Pilgrim through an unprofessional move one night. He knows he has been misbehaving (like a 6 year old), but his heart has been touched and there seems to be no way back despite his stoic efforts to revert to his dull but predictable marriage. When the father of one of the deceased kids is found missing, he smells a rat, and the trail leads him to Tanga. But he arrives just one day too late… The inevitable has happened. After some fruitless attempts to trace Pilgrim through Harry (a British bar fly at the club in Tanga) and Gloria (an American do-gooder and friend of Pilgrim), the corpse of the father surfaces and Strebel is the witness who confirms his identity. Strebel returns to his safe life, a changed man, knowing in his heart that Pilgrim lives. And that’s where Harry, the utterly loveable barfly picks up – he is tipped off by one of his ‘ghosts’ (victims of a terrible flying accident he caused somewhere in Africa) and arrives just in time to save Pilgrim from asphyxiation and accompany the Swiss father on his way to Heaven (he slit his wrists under the shower). Next Harry phones Gloria, who has lost her son earlier in life and recognized the Swiss father as a soul mate. Gloria takes care of his corpse. Harry takes Pilgrim to safety. The book ends with the voices of Dorothea who begets the land rover of Harry and uses it to visit her lost sons in neighbouring Kenya (they were taken there by her abusive ex-husband) and the voice of Martin Martins the creepy mercenary who Pilgrim met earlier in the remote place near lake Victoria. Martin and his mate Franco are on an assignment somewhere in Congo (?). They stumble on a group of rebels, and through a miraculous act manage to escape, but not for long. After days in the jungle, they arrive at an old missionary post, where Pilgrim is acting like an avenging angel (nun) for orphaned children. There is a brief exchange about why Pilgrim opted to do this work and then the rebels arrive. Pilgrim has been dead for a long time already, but now she chooses to go down a heroine, and so does Martin.

So what wins? Revenge or redemption? Redemption, but at the cost of one’s life. This novel will work on you for days after and its magnificence grows with each day. ( )