The Case of the Mad Doctor (The Ollenu and Ashby Investigations, 1)
England, 1772. A law clerk and an insurance agent travel from Bristol to Jamaica to investigate those suspected of committing a missing-presumed-dead insurance scam. Nothing unusual, perhaps, but the apprentice barrister is Black, British-born professional Isaiah Ollenu, long accustomed to tolerating conflicts of attitude and acceptance, much as now but more so. Fellow voyager Ruben Ashby is pious, white, somewhat reserved and initially sceptical about Ollenu’s usefulness, becoming less so as the story progresses. The relationship between the colleagues illustrates, through the eyes of one Black man and one white, the ubiquitous racial divide, this book being as much about the Black experience as it is the white reactions to it.
They sail on an ex-slave ship, triggering, in Ollenu, the first of several random mystical episodes and introducing us to the grim realities of that horrendous trade and its consequences. Lennon avoids over-preaching by letting Ollenu voice the outrages and truths for all the unwilling who have ever been dragged from their natural homeland to be enslaved elsewhere, in scenes somehow understated yet simultaneously screaming from the rooftops: this was and still is wrong, and this is how and why.
Her unfussy writing is engaging, entirely redolent of the era, giving authenticity to the descriptions of Jamaica’s towns, landscapes, coast and climate; moreover, aided by eclectic and realistic support characters, particularly the ‘Mad Doctor’ himself, she offers genuine insights into the establishment’s master-slave divisions, providing overall an excellent socially aware murder-mystery with a powerful, unmistakable message.
