Playing with language, tone and contrast to make something that feels familiar and new at the same time.
This is a story of juxtapositions. Tone and content and setting and expectations and language, many unexpected bedfellows rub up against one another. It's interest and success comes from how well managed those contrasts are, and how the unexpected intertwine to emphasise the meaning coming from both sides.
Harmattan Season is set in West Africa under recent French colonial rule. The main character, Boubacar, has mixed ancestry, with one foot in each of the cultures in his home city. In the past, he has fought for the French, but in the present is a down on his luck, struggling for work chercher - someone who finds people for money. When a grievously injured woman stumbles into his room one night, the police hot on her tale, he's set on a journey to discover who she is, where she came from, what happened to her, and what it could mean not just for him, but for the whole city.
That sounds familiar, right? Maybe not the specifics, but the tone, the setup. A detective, a woman with a problem, a mystery that might be more than it first seems... if your genre senses are telling you "noir", you would absolutely be right. Within even the first few sentences, the vibe is settling itself in for the long haul:
Fortune always left whatever room I walked into, which is why I don't leave my place much these days. It works pretty well; I keep my office close (downstairs, actually) for others' sake. Means that the bad-luck radius stays small. But, of course, the work suffers.
This could be any hard-boiled detective in any black-and-white office in any number of stories. Onyebuchi sets out his stall on this right from the off, and that tone never dips, not even for a second. There are familiar phrases, quirks of grammar - a lot of sentences clipped at their beginning - that put you right into exactly that framework and keep you there. Obvious, but not so over the top as to be egregious. And part of why that is is because so much of the rest of the story runs counter to that clear tone.
To start with, the setting. It's about a generation into French colonisation (given that mixed heritage adult characters exist), which puts us a bit early for the typical time period of the hardboiled detective, never mind that none of the characters are speaking English. Obviously the book is in English, but there's a frisson that comes from these very familiar US-specific linguistic flourishes in a story that takes pains to specify when different languages are spoken. Onyebuchi wants you to remember what this is - and isn't. But even if not for the time, the noir detective is typically at home in his US city, so taking him out into the world beyond is already a little unexpected. Add into that the mentions of fashion - the gendarme uniform and the djellaba - and the picture we hold in our heads is never the pinstripe suit and the brimmed hat. Again, these details of dress are constantly noted, this is another contrast being made clear.
And then of course just... the story. The typical noir detective isn't dealing with bodies who float up into the air, their blood hanging in mesmerising droplets over the city square. Nor are they reckoning with the ongoing legacy of colonialism or the difficulties of being tied to two different and opposing sides in a conflict that keeps on going.
There's a lot going on here.
And somehow... it all works. It's not just that the disparate elements are kept tightly under control, but that they are used to intersect productively. The contrast and the frisson turns into something new and better, something that reinforces the points being made on all sides, rather than just adding an unexpected twist.
Take, for example, the standard fantasy trope of the woman in danger who needs the comfort of the hard-boiled detective. The dame. Or, in a French-speaking context, the dame. It's not just a pun. Several moments like this, where the language or tropes of one side of the equations cuts through into one of the other pieces in play and you realise there's a connection going on, that there's a through-current you hadn't thought about at all. The pun, the visual cue, the little moment of knowing is just the nudge you need to get you across into the deeper well of connection that Onyebuchi is drawing from.
And there are likewise moments of disconnection, of language choices that feel deliberately set to break you out of immersion, and make you step back from the story - anachronisms like the protagonist talking about "batting average" as a metaphor for success rating (and his conversation partner not knowing what he meant), meme references like "I don't think that word means what you think it means", sitting in an alley with a little kid planning a heist - an "impossible mission" - in a scene achingly reminiscent of the movie staple. It's full of knowing winks telling you that what's being done here is, always, deliberate.
And it works. It shouldn't, but it does, because it feeds back into this being a story about contrasting culture, and a character unsure of himself and his place in his city, his role in the events unfolding.
Aside from all this linguistic playfulness, there's a depth to the thematic core of the book that is surprisingly hefty for the relatively short page count. Because so much of the heart of the story turns back to the recently ended war and the very present current legacy of the violence enacted as part of it. Whether that's the injured ex-soldier we meet in a care-home, his one glass eye unnerving the protagonist, or the upcoming election whose result may bring about a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, uncovering ghosts and literal bones many wish left undisturbed, the spectre of the past hangs close overhead. Bouba himself fought, and he too must face up, by the end of the story, to his role in what came before, and what that might mean for his future.
And the story is unflinching about facing up to that reality. By the time it becomes a pressing concern, we've spent a lot of time along the road with Boubacar, seen him being kind to street kids, bantering with beautiful women, trying to do his best for a dead woman and to remember her as a person, not just a clue. There are things to be sympathetic with in his character and his actions. But there must also be a reckoning. Can doing good in the present outweigh the sins of the past? Can there ever be closure, or forgiveness? Those are all questions asked of the story, and the character. Onyebuchi doesn't necessarily have answers tied up in a bow, but he doesn't shy away from having his protagonist face up to them. There isn't an easy answer to many of these questions. But asking them on the page makes for deeply engaging, thoughtful reading, and a story that lingers after you close the final page.
There is one aspect of the whole that doesn't quite sing as loudly as the rest of the choir, and that's the logistical nuts and bolts of the mystery plot itself. If this were just a detective story, where the only focus was on solving the crime, that might be a problem. As it stands, there were a few moments where it was a little unclear how A led to B, but I found myself willing to gloss over them because it was far from the most important or most interesting thing going on. The mystery is there to serve some of the thematic interweaving, and so I found it less critical that it be executed absolutely perfectly. It never detracted from the atmosphere, the sense of a city poised on the edge of something big, and of a character trying to find how he fits into his own life. So it was more a niggle than anything else.
All in all, it's a beautifully written story, and I love how knowingly it messes around with how its different pieces all fit together. Tonal incongruity well managed is one of my absolute favourite things in books, and Onyebuchi does it with panache, leaving a novel worth lingering over, to make sure you enjoy how every word fits into the pattern of the whole.
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The Math
Highlights:
- Willing to look the hard themes square in the face
- Thoughtful and unexpected use of language and genre cues to play with reader expectations
- Plot that brings great surprises without being deceitful or sneaky
Nerd Coefficient: 8/10
Reference: Tochi Onyebuchi, Harmattan Season, [Tor Books, 2025].
POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroformtea.bsky.social
