Gaslight

Gaslight (2023) is Nigerian author Femi Kayode’s 2nd installment in the Dr. Philip Taiwo series (Lightseeker is book #1), but it’s OK if you haven’t read the first book.

Philip, a forensic psychologist, and his wife, Folake, a law professor, are back in Lagos, Nigeria with their three children after having spent two decades in school and working in the United States. Philip’s sister Kenny asks for his assistance in finding the wife of the Bishop of her megachurch, Grace Church. Sade Dawodu is First Lady, the young and beautiful wife of charismatic and wealthy Bishop Jeremiah Dawodu, and she hasn’t been seen for a few days. Bishop expects that she has just gone off on a retreat by herself as she has been known to do, but the police get an anonymous tip that Sade has been harmed by her husband, so Bishop is arrested.

Philip is hired by the board of the congregation to clear Bishop, and so in addition to his teaching duties at the university, he begins his investigation. But things are different in Nigeria when it comes to databases and forensics, and the police are often on the take. And things just don’t seem to add up–what the police seem to think is the crime scene seems to be a setup–but by who, and why? And how can Bishop be as good as he seems? He has to be hiding something.

Then Sade’s body is found, drowned, but it’s not clear whether she’s been murdered or if it was accidental. More bodies start piling up, and matters get too close for comfort for Philip and his family.

It was a satisfying mystery, and the Nigerian setting intrigued me. It confirmed my distrust of megachurches–the hidden depravity and greed was disgusting. There is also a subplot about Philip and Folake’s oldest child, a daughter who is 15, and is enduring the kind of bullying they never expected in Nigeria.

I consider it weight-neutral, though there is one description of a very minor character as “overweight”.