Assistant professor of English Mukoma Wa Ngugi recently published his second work of crime fiction, “Black Star Nairobi,” a sequel to his successful novel “Nairobi Heat.”

Published by Melville House in North America, “Black Star Nairobi” uses as a backdrop the 2007-08 Kenyan presidential election season, outbreaks of ethnic violence and a hotel bombing in Nairobi. Woven into the story are discussions among the locals of the rise of half-Kenyan U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama.

A suspicious death gives Mukoma’s protagonists, Ishmael and O, and their startup detective agency, Black Star, their first big case – an investigation beset by shadowy local and global political forces.

Mukoma was born in 1971 in Illinois and raised in Kenya. He earned praise from critics for capturing the politics and culture of Africa and the African-American experience in his debut novel “Nairobi Heat” (2007). In that tale, Ishmael is introduced as a police detective in Madison, Wis., who travels to Nairobi to solve a murder case pinned on a famous African peace activist who teaches at the local university. Through Ishmael’s eyes, we see the perception of black Americans by black Africans as no different from rich, white tourists, and the genocide, violence and oppression in Africa.

Wa Ngugi

Mukoma came to Cornell from Case Western Reserve University in 2012. He has published numerous essays, poetry and short fiction; is a columnist for Ebony.com and has written for The Guardian, the International Herald Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. His fiction has been shortlisted for the 2009 Caine Prize and the 2010 Penguin Prize for African Writing.

His other books include “Conversing with Africa: Politics of Change” (2003) and a poetry collection, “Hurling Words at Consciousness” (2006).