I have not read a lot of books. I don’t need to read a lot to stumble over a thriller by a Nigerian author. It is a genre Nigerian writers have not exploited. Probably because Nigerian publishers are more interested in getting a book on the school curriculum. So there is a lot of literary fiction everywhere read mostly for examination purposes. Everyone is afraid there is no market for thrillers in Nigeria. But how can there be a market? Until we write. I appreciate the efforts of writers like Adimchinma Ibe, Uche Eze Al…the least has already exhausted, who are paving the way for upcoming writers like us. I fell in love with thrillers around 2005. That is not too long ago, huh? Other people fell in love with James Hardley Chase, Tom Clancy, Sheldon when they were 6. A lot of Isaac Asimov’s should have introduced me to this kind of novels, but reading was not my thing. It is still not but I am learning to grow out of it. I was almost 20 when I took a novel on my own and read without having to write exams about it, Eddie Iroh’s Without a Silver Spoon. That’s late to start reading and then feel that a year after, you could write a book. But I did. I drew inspiration from Without a Silver Spoon. I wrote my first story worthy to be a book in 2005 in two weeks. A professor, David Iornem helped me publish it in 2008. I knew little, no, nothing about book publishing. There was no good editor to work on the book so it came out almost in that draft state that I wrote it. It was like a first step; it was awkward. That awkward step is why I am saying today, three years after, that I have completed a manuscript titled ON THE RUN that would be anyone’s idea of a high-concept thriller set in our own modern day Nigeria. ON THE RUN tells the story of a hard-fighting female NDLEA undercover agent, Kathryn Zoho’s struggle to expose corruption in a system where everyone including Supreme Court judges have been bought, after she had been framed and declared wanted. I read my first thriller around 2005, John Grisham’s The Street Lawyer given to me by a friend. That was when I fell in love with crime fiction. I had told my friend, Mandy, who gave me the book that I must write a book like that. I had exhibited creativity in other aspects like fine arts—that is what I can trace to my childhood, I think the very moment I knew how to scribble. I was going to study fine arts and graphics. My father made me study estate management—I never knew what estate management was and I feel I couldn’t have studied anything better. Now I hardly draw. If I am not working in the day as an estate surveyor and valuer, I am trying to write that great Nigerian thriller at night. It’s something I enjoy passionately. I couldn’t have discovered myself earlier. But if I did, Nigerians would have been reading my books earlier. I am doing my best now to continue being a writer. And a better one. Breaking into writing thrillers is challenging, because of how complex the storyline always is—a lot of characters, twists, fast-paced action, suspense and all the other elements. It is a challenge I enjoy for the sake of self-fulfillment and to offer Nigerians a new thing—something that has been greatly missing. I have not traveled a lot but where I have been, probably in just three states, I see a lot of young people read novels—thrillers. And those novels are all from Western authors. So I wonder whether it is the reading culture that is bad or we the writers as well are not diverse. I am here to help fill a void that is as old as Nigerian literature itself. Also to feed an audience that I strongly believe would welcome this new dawn in Nigerian literature.
I leave you with a synopsis of ON THE RUN.
A desperate President.
A ruthless drug lord.
Fifty million dollars.
One angry woman.
Death in their wake.
Framed for arms dealing in the Niger-Delta uprising, young female NDLEA undercover agent, Kathryn Zoho’s only way out is stealing fifty million dollars. As she plans an escape, one of her accomplices, a bank security guard resurfaces as disgruntled EFCC secret agent Nicholas Bassey with a shocking revelation that leads them to a web of corruption, lies and a secret criminal empire that roots right from the country’s leadership. Now on a collision course with a desperate, dangerous President, and a ruthless drug lord on her trail to recover fifty million dollars, Kate and Nicholas would have to throw in everything as they vie to dismantle a clandestine criminal empire and disrupt a scheme that would put one man in power forever.
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