Instruments of Darkness

Bruce Medway #1

by Robert Wilson

Meet British expatriate Bruce Medway, a "fixer" for traders in an unwelcoming part of Africa once known as the White Man's Grave. Medway's work is tough, but never life-threatening - until he crosses paths with the mighty Madame Severnou. And the situation becomes even stickier when he is called to search for Steven Kershaw, a missing fellow expat. Against a backdrop of political disruption and endemic official corruption, Medway learns that nothing in Africa is what it seems and that those who seek the truth find out more than they wish to know.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Africa, Thriller, Benin, Crime, Mystery Thriller

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Robert Wilson has written thirteen novels including the Bruce Medway noir series set in West Africa and two Lisbon books with WW2 settings the first of which, A Small Death in Lisbon, won the CWA Gold Dagger in 1999 and the International Deutsche Krimi prize in 2003. He has written four psychological crime novels set in Seville, with his Spanish detective, Javier Falcón. Two of these books (The Blind Man of Seville and The Silent and the Damned) were filmed and broadcast on Sky Atlantic as ‘Falcón’ in 2012. A film of the fourth Falcón book was released in Spain in 2014 under the title La Ignorancia de la Sangre. Capital Punishment, the first novel in his latest series of pure thrillers set in London and featuring kidnap consultant, Charles Boxer, was published in 2013 and was nominated for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. This was followed by You Will Never Find Me in 2014. The third book in the series, Stealing People, will be published in 2015. Robert Wilson loves to cook food from all over the world but especially Spanish, Portuguese, Indian and Thai. He also loves to walk with dogs…and people, too.

Reviews

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Back in the 90s I had to order Robert Wilson's Bruce Medway novels from the UK. (Now you can find them in the US, though probably still only online.) This is the first of the quartet, followed by The Big Killing; Blood is Dirt and A Darkening Stain. These four books are a lot more hardboiled than Wilson's more popular novels (starting with A Small Death in Lisbon, first published in 1999). Medway is a burned-out Brit living in Benin, working as a "fixer" for all sorts of unsavory clients who have to deal with the equally corrupt governments of West Africa.

Medway makes Philip Marlowe look like lightweight. Wilson's prose is like Chandler on steroids, muscular and chiseled. I give these books 5 stars not because they're the best detective fiction ever written (though they're up there), but because there's nothing else quite like them. If you're weary of American psycho-killers or British cozies, give these a try.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Looking forward to book #2 in this series. A very good murder, thriller, mystery book set in
West Africa.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've got my eyes open for (non-cozy) mysteries and thrillers that are located somewhere else and more exotic.
When I saw this book, I couldn't just pass it since I had enjoyed A Small Death in Lisbon by the same author. But the books are completely different.

Instruments of Darkness has Bruce Medway, a British expat, a "fixer" as its hero. Bruce makes Philip Marlowe look like Miss Marple. Take a thrilling mystery with a hero a bit like Philip Marlowe, but make him more hard-boiled, and add 10 % The Vesuvius Club by Mark Gatisse and 10 % of The Maltese Falcon and a lot of other ingredients, place it in hot West Africa and you'll get there.

Bruce Medway is a fixer, meaning he does odd (but legal) works for people who don't want to do something themselves, or who want to get him do something. When one of the gigs goes sour, he's asked to locate another British expat, Steve Kershaw. The rest is hunting down Kershaw, and then finding out who killed him.

Despite being hard-boiled, Bruce has lots of verbal humor. West Africa gives an interesting atmosphere: very hot climate, lots of corruption everywhere taken into account. And there is a wonderful gallery of shady and interesting people in the book.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a major disappointment. First of all, I felt led to believe this takes place in Benin which is a country I wanted to fill in for my GR group challenge. Nope. Well over half of it takes place in Togo. But my disappointment went well beyond that. Never have I read where a character gets beat unconscious in chapter after chapter only to get up and pursue the plot in the following chapter over and over again.

As if that weren't enough, the writing is close to trivial. I didn't consider highlighting in the early chapters and so these are late in the novel, but typical throughout. I think there are no spoilers below.

I sipped a second beer after the first had shot over my larynx like a white water river.

The garden was walled with high, dreadlocked palms guarding it. A frangipani spread itself in one corner like a curtsying ballerina. The underwater-lit, kidney-shaped pool lapped and gurgled and simmered at my feet.

By the time we got to the top of the stairs my T-shirt was like a tiresome girl at a disco.

When I realized Benin wasn't going to be at least 51%, I considered abandoning the effort, but decided to salvage the time already spent and finish it. I won't be reading any more of this series. 2 stars might be somewhat generous.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Noir mystery set in contemporary West Africa. The author does a great job in conveying a sense of place, and his characters are interesting. The plot was pretty complex, and I found it challenging to understand how each character fit into the mystery. You do get a bit of a recap in the end, to clear up any confusion. This is the first book in a short series, so hopefully the author won't make the next book so complex. An interesting read.

[Bevan Lisle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Second time I’ve read this. A debut that matches Chandler with a West Africa setting. Adored it just as much the second time round.

[Carsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've travelled close to a dozen times in West Africa, and the Bruce Medway books are an excellent depcition of the colours, sounds, and feel of the area. I read them in paperback, and then bought them again on Kindle, to read on another trip to West Africa. I enjoyed all four of the books and wish Rob Wilson would take us back to Africa for more

[Sally Sugarman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book takes places in West Africa, including Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria. The characters travel through those places in a car. The heat is tangible as is the sound of the air conditioners and the difficulty breathing when the air conditioners are not working. One can feel the humidity and the sweat that oppresses the people. Bruce Medway is a fixer, mostly for white businessmen who may be involved in some shady dealings. He is asked to find out what happened to Steve Kershaw who seems to have disappeared. In the process Medway and we meet many shady characters. One is also amazed at Bruce’s physical stamina. He is repeatedly beaten over a short period of time with his life being threatened as he discovers various dead bodies while he tries to find out what happened to Kershaw. There are also a variety of women from the sinister Madame Severnou to some femme fatales to Bruce’s girl friend. Kershaw’s wife has a touching speech about how hard it is for a plain woman to see everyone watch all the pretty ones. Bruce is helped somewhat by an eccentric policeman, but mostly he has to try and find out who keeps threatening him on his own. Who is pulling the various strings that keep tripping him up? There are surprises along the way, casual sex and an unbelievable number of beatings. This is a combination of a mystery and a thriller. The first two hundred pages setting the complex scene with the last hundred filled with unbelievable and confusing action. The reader is confused that anyone can be as brutalized as Medway and not only survive, but prevail. There are revolutionaries, corrupt police, sadistic killers and much violence to conclude the tale.

[Julie Griffin · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you like pot boilers with femme fatales and dead bodies, wise-guy tough guys and bullying bad guys, then this one is well done, and for you. It is not really my kind of book, and I do not want to leave a bad review because I do not care for the stylistics of the genre. Read this book in desperation for reading around the world project, could not find anything affordable or by a native writer for Benin. I feel like I did get a good feel for what it must be like to be an expatriot living in Benin, which was not really the point, but the author does a good job of describing the character and scenery of the country. Bruce and his co hort Moses are "fixers" of somewhat shady business deals, and through the hijacked delivery of some rice find themselves involved in a murder inquiry. Sent by his "boss" to find a missing colleague, Bruce finds a suspicious connection to a murder of a French woman, gets tied in with some other shady characters and a Benin police officer, and struggles to balance a relationship with his girlfriend visiting from another African country. There are doublecrosses, femme fatales, animal suffering, and Black stereotypes aplenty. The ending is a surprise, and the plotting, while convuluted, is handled well. If you like this sort of thing, you will enjoy.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting African setting and a cast of characters who should have been interesting, but weren't. All the men seemed similar to one another, as did the women. There was a lot of kinky sex and simmering violence in the book, but it was like reading a car manual, as if the author had to look up how to write it. Somehow the narrative just lacked a hard boiled edge, with the lead character coming across more like an upstanding rugger-playing, private school chap than the dodgy, flinty, womanising dog that he's supposed to be. There were also a lot of characters, so they needed to stand out as individuals and, when they didn't, the plot became quite confusing and borderline boring. I kept with it, feeling that it might break through into the verve of a James Lee Burke novel or the class of a John Le Carre, but it did neither. I've enjoyed books by Robert Wilson in the past, and I believe this was his first novel. It kind of felt like it too.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me, there was something quite satisfying about this read. I enjoyed that Wilson really got the feel of the setting and the heat without bogging down the story in too many details. Similarly, I appreciated that the characters each had their own characteristics but were not overly done.

I still do, however, have one question (well, one with two parts): 1a) Who was taking care of the parrot? and 1b) what happened to the parrot. It bothered me that there was nothing said about how the parrot ended up. Wilson otherwise tied up the loose ends well, though the 'recite it for this person' schtick was not the best strategy, it did at least wrap it all up.

I will look up book #2 in this series.

[Diana H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was difficult. It was hard to understand, hard to follow, and hard to read. At first.
Once I had gotten past the 7 chapter, it was interesting and kind of made me want to keep reading and reading. The closer I got to the end, the harder it was to put down.
With multiple lines of plot twisting around each other like a ball of yard, I was unsure how the author was going to finally bring about resolution. Surprised me when he did - and with a ending that I couldn't have guessed at even if I had been given blatant clues.
A good book for mystery lovers.

[Adolfo Laurenti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Five star to the atmospheric descriptions of life in West Africa. It made for a compelling background, and the region came across vividly. Something different, an opportunity to travel in spirit to a far away land at a time when one cannot walk to the corner of the street.
Three stars to the style/language. Yes, the quality of writing is solid, but I found it a bit overdone — it is more Chicago 1930s than present-day West Africa.
Four stars to the plot — engaging, but some of the twists were confusing, and in a few cases they were left hanging.

[Moirad · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author captures so many aspects of West Africa - the steamy climate and luxuriant greenery, the endemic corruption, the glittery sham of expat life, the maddening bureaucracy, and the teeming squalid nature of the cities - and wraps them up in a gripping page turner.

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Drunk, hungover, regularly beaten, Bruce Medway still manages......to be a middleman for sketchy commodity trades in west Africa. This while running down a "missing person," ricocheting back and forth among the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria.

[DeAnn]

I have NEVER added a book to my DNF list so fast in my life. I lasted 2 pages into this book. Casual racism in the first paragraph, then a graphic description of a dog murder, then the MC saying "It was probably a Chinese" then to clarify he says, "To eat." UGH NOOOOO WHY DOES THIS EXIST.

[gail ober · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was ok. I enjoyed some of his other books more than this one.

[Windy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very much a "man's" book, this story of a fixer in West Africa was overly descriptive and not really my cup of tea. It does however tick off Benin on my ATW challenge

[Kyra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating location and great character development - wow! The plot is more than a little sticky, but this was an entertaining read nonetheless. I still do not want to go to Africa.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it for book group. Not what I usually read. Found it a bit confusing and didn't really care for any of the characters.

[William Walter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as some others of Wilson's--the milieu is less compelling to me. Not sure I'll read others of this group.

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wasn’t the best of Wilson - took ages to get a grip on all the characters and the plot(s). Readable, but chaotic.

[João · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

[Shireen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was looking for the Canadian author Robert Wilson in the virtual branch of the Toronto Public Library. He wasn't listed, but this Wilson was. The blurb sounded interesting, and even more relevant, it was available to borrow right away. Most books in TPL are on hold!

Instruments of Darkness describes a world I'm not familiar with at all: the grit of Africa, where violence roams next to pockets of people trying to earn a living, where booze and cigarettes are as ubiquitous as the heat, where money greases the shipping, and pale-skinned folk stand out. I wasn't sure at first if this was my kind of detective story, but I kept turning the pages. I took that as a sign that I was engaged enough to make reading it worthwhile.

In places, I really noticed the short sentence structure, and the patois got a bit tedious at one point. As a young reader, I used to be a fan of writers using dialect in their dialogue. But now I often find it distracts when overused and adds a layer of artificiality or a feeling of trying too hard on the part of the author. As the book went on, the dialect lessened, and the story took ascendance.

It's a simple story on the surface, of a man trying to puzzle out why two people died in the way they did and the truth of how they are tied together. But underneath seethes a plot that requires you to use your little grey cells. Even the personal back story of the protagonist requires one to do more than eyeball the words but to think about how men and women interact and what the woman in the protagonist's life really wants.

The heat is unrelenting and is a metaphor for the heat of injustice weighing on the Englishman, the narrator and protagonist of Instruments of Darkness. But it's not done in an obvious way. Rather, though at first unpleasant to read seemingly endless descriptions of sweat and sticking, it became a compelling part of the milieu and gave me a peek into what it's like to live in another part of our shared planet where air conditioning is infrequent.

The book ended when I was not ready. The story was complete; I just wanted more.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a murder mystery thriller set in West Africa. The action takes place across Benin, Togo, Nigeria and Ghana but primarily in Togo. I was glad there was a map at the front of the book as the actions zips across borders pretty rapidly. I didn't know that the four countries mentioned above all have access to the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean within about 100 miles of each other with Togo and Benin being very slim countries sandwiched between their two much bigger neighbours.

The hero of the book is Bruce Medway, a Benin based Englishman who does all sorts of odd jobs to earn his living. He's not quite a private eye but he does some of that type of work and when the novel opens we find him enabling a smuggling deal to get a large container ship's cargo of rice that is docking in Benin, across Togo into Nigeria to get around an embargo on rice imports. This ongoing smuggling project leads him to getting more work in the shape of a missing person search but this in turn gets him involved in a tangled web of murder, drug deals and government corruption.

The novel is really well written, with constant delightful Chandleresque descriptions and is very atmospheric of Africa with the stifling heat, endemic corruption and political instability all a constant backdrop to the action. The plot moves along at a pace but there was just something missing for me and it related to Medway's character. I just didn't quite buy into his motivation for getting deeper and deeper involved in the mystery once he discovered that there was murder and probable personal risk involved. I got the impression that he was someone who liked being on the edge of excitement but preferred an easy life and would thus shy away at an early stage from the dangers he exposed himself to.

This was Robert Wilson's first novel written in the mid 90's and although I don't rate it as highly as A Small Death in Lisbon, which I read last year, it was pretty enjoyable for all that.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

If there is one series where heat envelops the reader it is in Robert Wilson’s West Africa series featuring Bruce Medway, a British expatriate who lives in Benin, but travels back and forth across the armpit of Africa, as it is called, because there are several counties nestling closely under the arm of the continent as it juts out into the Atlantic. Medway is a fixer; a facilitator who tries to make a living by helping people out, providing they are not criminals. Unfortunately, he doesn’t exactly have a good nose for scenting out who are the good guys.

The first in the series is Instruments of Darkness, and Bruce starts out simply trying to facilitate the sale of some rice, but ends up looking for another Englishman who was working in the shea butter trade and is missing. Benin, Ghana and Togo are in turmoil, and Medway has to stay on the right side of the law, which fluctuates day by day.

The stories in Wilson’s African quartet are fast-paced, occasionally violent, but there are flashes of humor to temper it. Wilson has a way with descriptions that resonated with me and I recall them from time to time because they are so apt, like the girl with the sputnik hair. Sometimes it is so hot, the people move at a slow pace, and the vultures look at each other as if to say "Dinner soon."

[Rob Kitchin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wilson writes in an assured style that is strong on description and insight, and Instruments of Darkness captures the complex social and political relations of West Africa and how a white trader and fixer operates within such conditions. Indeed, the book does a good job of evoking a strong sense of place and people. The characterisation is, for the most part, good, although sometimes there was a sense of caricature. I suspect that is because there are no weak characters, in the sense that they all have strong personalities. The story is probably best described as a thriller, rather than crime novel, and there is a good pace and page turning quality to the narrative. However, as the book progressed the plot got increasingly convoluted and less believable, and parts made little sense, such as why the main character was not just killed by his enemies as with the other troublesome characters. Regardless of this shortcoming, overall, an enjoyable thriller.

[John Marsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set in the sultry heat of West Africa. Benin, West Africa. Englishman Bruce Medway operates as a 'fixer' for traders along the part of the coast they used to call the White Man's Grave. It's a tough existence, but Medway can handle it... until he crosses the formidable Madame Severnou. Warned off by his client, Jack Obuasi, his energies are redirected into the search for missing expat Steven Kershaw. Kershaw, though, is a man of mystery: trader, artist, womanizer... and sado-masochist. Against background rumblings of political disturbance, in the face of official corruption, egged on by an enigmatic policeman, Medway pursues his elusive quarry across West Africa. Is Kershaw tied to Obuasi's and Madame Severnou's shady dealings? Is he a vicious murderer? Is he, indeed, alive or dead?

[Gavin · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was OK, as the stars say. There's not much to like about the characters in this book and I see there are a few more in a series with Bruce Medway as the main character. He's an ex pat in the horn of Africa who deals with the seedier side of life. Some would call it gritty, I'd call it formulaic and lacking in human interest.

Being an ex pat myself, albeit in a different part of the world, I can offer the opinion that Bruce Medway patently did not take the opportunity offered to him and singularly failed to 'get' the local scene. This may be why his investigations are a little long winded.

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is really a 2.5. I almost stopped reading a third of the way in but kept on because I was trying to decide if it was ridiculously bad noir or deliciously bad noir. Turns out it's both, with a story that hooks you before you realize it. Diverting entertainment and a quick read. I'll definitely read the next one in the series.

(Note:not at all the same tone or approach as A Small Death in Lisbon. If - like me -that is your only prior experience of Robert Wilson's writing, be prepared for something quite different.)