The Last Word: An Adaeze Okonkwo Mystery: 1

SHE HEARS THE LAST THOUGHT OF THE DEAD. SHE WASN'T SUPPOSED TO USE IT.Adaeze Okonkwo is Lagos's finest professional mourner: hired to wail, paid to grieve, and ruthlessly transactional about the gift she inherited from her grandmother - the ability to hear a dead person's final thought. The rule is simple. One thought. Twenty-four hours. Then silence. You mourn, you collect your fee, you go home.You do not investigate.When the patriarch of one of Lagos's most powerful families dies at his own seventieth birthday party, his last thought gives Adaeze three things: a name, a Yoruba word for thief, and the unmistakable feeling of a man who did not see it coming. The official verdict is cardiac arrest. The guests are suspects. And Adaeze - professional mourner, accidental detective, woman still haunted by the one voice the gift never gave her - has twenty-four hours before the window closes forever.A closed compound. A family with secrets. A killer hiding in plain sight.The Last Word is a sharp, witty, deeply felt cozy mystery set in contemporary Lagos, Nigeria - for readers of The Thursday Murder Club, Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice on Murder, and Knives Out.Closed-circle ensemble cast. No romance. Supernatural gift with strict rules. Own-voices Lagos setting. Series-starter.

Pages: 214, Paperback, Eleanor Marchwood