Review: Water, water everywhere, and no one cares to think

Genres tumble into the deep as the supernatural consequences of slavery rise on a vengeful tide.

Detective Ethan Krol is called to the scene of a crime after a father and son drown in an apartment in Chicago. But the water that killed them isn’t fresh water, it’s from the sea. When other police departments in the US and in Nigeria contact Krol about similar baffling cases, he becomes even more intrigued. He sets off on the suspect’s trail, but it takes him far too long to realise he’s not dealing with something – or someone – ordinary.

Should you figure out what is going on in Esperance before Krol himself, be assured that its central concept and twists and turns will keep you hooked.

Other speculative fiction works have dealt with supernatural vengeance for the trans-Atlantic slave trade: Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa and The Deep by Rivers Solomon come to mind. In these stories, revenants emerge from the deep to wreak their vengeance on the living. Sometimes they concern themselves not with revenge, but instead re-imagine how people thrown overboard could have survived (or come back to life). Esperance does a bit of both.

In Esperance Adam Oyebanji infuses the classic police procedural with sci-fi elements and the satisfying prospect of vengeance. His tongue-in-cheek humour about oyinbos (white people) lands exactly right and his plotting and character development are excellent.

In fact, Esperance is a very smart novel indeed: if you start it with merely high expectations then prepare to have them exceeded.