Malaria is a murder mystery that reads
like a classic Agatha Christie novel. It’s a reunion and a celebration gone
wrong.
Personally, there are many things to cherish in this book, as well as many that feel distracting to me.
There are many characters to learn. I give up memorizing when they are mentioned in the first page because it’s somehow easier to learn about them as the story unfolds, with their arrivals and interactions. This brings me to the point of too many clutters in the book: information and descriptions of things that are not important to the story or characters. They could be used as distractions, because that is one way to make the mystery richer, but imo they end up merely as clutter, since there are already enough things going on in the story.
Unfortunately, the one thing that needs more explanation, imo, that keeps me wondering from start to finish is the clarity of the Foreign Nomad Posse. They are supposed to be close (it barely feels so), but it takes them so long to get together after an incident, yet they meet for a reunion when a lot of dark things have happened among the members, and then they meet a year later, after more unfortunate events. There is barely any similarity in terms of members’ backgrounds and interests on top of it. Maybe it’s only me, but I waited for a subsequent murder because, unfortunately, most of the characters feel detached and not root-able. The kitten analogy feels very weird when professionals deal with a group of adults. How they treat witnesses and suspect are very questionable, besides other factors like the right to detain them and the short statute of limitations. Some of their interactions are clunky with unrealistic reactions. The group also feels very incestuous, and I barely keep track of who is humping whom.
I enjoyed the middle of the book the most. I like the time jumps. They are not difficult to follow with the time stamp, and it’s an interesting way to get the story going. The ending feels a bit disappointing because it feels unearned yet. We need many explanations to completely understand the story. However, I applaud the writer for the complexity of the case and the unpredictability.
3.5 out of 5 stars
