The Score

by H.J. Golakai

In this fabulous follow-up to the internationally acclaimed The Lazarus Effect, newspaper reporter Vee Johnson reprieves her role as Cape Town's most feisty female investigator. Vee and her ever-faithful sidekick, Chloe Bishop, have been banished from City Chronicle's newsroom to review a tourist lodge in sleepy Oudtshoorn. But Vee and Chloe are barely checked in to their rooms when the first body is discovered...hanging from a tree, with Vee's purple silk scarf used as a noose. But is it suicide or strangulation? As Vee investigates the death, she is pulled into a bewildering world of conferences and corruption, dog-walking and drug addiction, break-ins and black economic empowerment. And all this whilst juggling the two men in her love life.

The Score is a unique combination of sex, intrigue and subterfuge, set against the fading colours of the Rainbow Nation.

Genres: Africa, Crime

336 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2017

About the author

Hawa Jande Golakai was born in Germany and hails from Liberia, where she spent a lively childhood before the 1990 civil war erupted. She writes crime, speculative fiction (fantasy, science fiction, horror, magical realism) and is in an unhealthy relationship with all twisted tales. A medical immunologist by training, she still enjoys performing autopsies and investigating peculiar medical cases in her spare time. She now writes full time and moonlights as a literary judge, creative consultant and educator.

Golakai is on the Africa39 list of most promising writers under the age of 40. She is the winner of the 2017 Brittle Paper Award for nonfiction, longlisted for the 2019 NOMMO Award for speculative fiction and nominated three times for crime fiction. She has written two novels (The Lazarus Effect, The Score). Her articles and short stories have featured in BBC, Granta, Omenana, Cassava Republic, Myriad Editions and other publications. Currently, she lives in Monrovia with her son and too many chickens.

Reviews

[Carolien · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Set in South Africa, Vionjama Johnson, is a Liberian journalist who is making her life in South Africa post the Liberian civil war where she experienced the horrors thereof personally. I enjoyed Vee's generally positive outlook on South Africa and appreciated the cynicism of her assistant Chloe on South African institutions. The pair finds themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time as a man is murdered with Vee's scarf while they are on assignment at a hotel. Their investigation of the murder which turns out to be linked to the South African preferential procurement system forms the basis of the plot. I personally found the plot under-whelming, but this is also related to the cynicism of a local. The investigation is presented as a potential front-page lead story for the newspaper, but corruption in this sphere is endemic in South Africa and this story will struggle to make it to page 5 of any local paper. Well-written and I enjoyed the characters, but a less than convincing plot.

[Madhulika Liddle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Voinjama ‘Vee’ Johnson is an investigative journalist in Cape Town, and is sent—not on an investigative assignment at all—with her colleague and friend Chloë Bishop to write a travel piece about a lodge out in the (somewhat) wild. Very soon, Vee and Chloë come up against a death: an alcoholic manager with an uncanny memory for names and faces is found dead in her chalet. Then, a delegate at a conference, a man who tries to hit on Vee, is strangled, and Vee is suspected.

Vee (mostly), helped sometimes by Chloë, goes about getting to the heart of the matter: who killed Rhonda Greenwood, who killed Gavin Berman, what do their deaths have to do with LEAD, or with the possibly nefarious and corrupt dealings of a cyber outfit in town? Interspersed with that are Vee’s personal problems and her past: her coming to terms with some possibly unsavoury truths about her father; and her inability to make up her mind about which man she wants to be with. Plus, friction between Vee and Chloë.

I started off liking this book: it was interesting, and it seemed to be settling in for a gripping, fast-paced ride. The ride was fast-paced all right (the episode at the vet’s was especially edge-of-the-seat), but the convoluted cybercrime plot was a little vague for me. It seemed to go over the same plot elements again and again, and after a while I lost interest. That said, I appreciated the insight The Score offered into race relations in South Africa. Plus, some of Golakai’s sharp wittiness is delicious.

All right for a one-time read, but not a book I especially want to return to.

[Fiona Snyckers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Journalist Vee Johnson has a new gig writing for City Chronicle magazine. She prefers hard-hitting investigative journalism like the missing children case that made her name in her first adventure THE LAZARUS EFFECT. But her boss has other ideas.

Still, Vee isn't crying too hard about being sent with her friend and colleague Chloe to review The Grotto Lodge in Oudtshoorn. It's more like advertising than journalism, but the weather is good and the pool is sparklingly blue.

Then it turns out that the Grotto Lodge has a body problem. The deputy manager has been found dead in bed and a body is discovered hanging with Vee's scarf around its neck.

Vee and Chloe will have their hands full unravelling this one. Vee is never sure whether the visions and intuitions she inherited from her Liberian grandmother are a help or a hinderance in these investigations.

H J Golakai's Vee Johnson mysteries are absolutely entertaining, complex, and beautifully written. I can't wait for the next one.

[Sipho Lukhele · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am bit frustrated with the book! The writing was not flowing for me and I feel the plot is what kept me reading the book. However, I feel it was not brilliantly delivered, especially when it comes to the relationship between Vee and Chloe, which I loved from the authors debut, The Lazarus effect. Having mentioned some of my frustrations, I would still recommend the book to anyone that read and completely enjoyed HJ Golakai's debut. I will have to add that this is one book that dragged to the finish line as far as my reading for the year is concerned.

[Eugene · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just could not finish this book..........

[Jaylani Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is awesome! A crime fiction written by an African writer, taking place in an African nation. Love it.

[D.J. Cockburn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most people go to lodges in the Little Karoo to get away from it all. Vee Johnson didn’t want to go in the first place, and she definitely didn't go to explain how a man came to be hanged with her scarf. Her response is to show that you can put a crime reporter on a travel assignment but you can't stop her investigating.

Vee's scarf is the thread that unravels a tangle of corruption in the glass towers housing the businesses of Cape Town, but what lifts The Score above most thrillers is that the thriller element is balanced with Vee's numerous dysfunctional relationships with colleagues, friends, lovers and her eleven-year old dogsitter, all of which was conveyed with humour and whipcrack dialogue.

Vee Johnson is such a strong protagonist because she's simultaneously someone I've been and someone I wish I could be. Like most people, I've found myself on the wrong end of office politics in the same way that Vee does. I don't need to imagine how frustrated she was by that. But if I stumbled on a murder, I'd go home, watch Sherlock and fantasise about being the sort of person who would sink my teeth into the mystery and not let go until I'd revealed all the facts to the world. In short, a person like Vee Johnson.

[Tiah]

Interview: http://shortstorydayafrica.org/news/u...

- This woman had died with two – possibly more, who knew – great shortbread recipes in her head.

- I don't like 'although' when it comes with strings. -

- Cringing, Vee gaped at the dark blue bodice and gleaming chrome of the convertible. "The metal vagina? Every idiot in Cape Town with a bald spot and mommy complex has one." -

- We may pretend at our democracy, but we pretend very hard. And stylishly. Like the Europeans. -

- You're a journalist, Johnson, not a crime fighter. You chase stories to boost circulation. You don't save lives. That shit's cute on TV characters but in real life trying to only makes you bitter. -