Adam Oyebanji’s first science fiction book was the innovative generation-ship story Braking Day. He followed that up with his Quiet Teacher series – a couple of contemporary accidental-detective-meets-spy-thriller novels. In Esperance, Oyebanji mashes these genres, delivering a twisty science fiction thriller powered by a police procedural. And it is a combination that works. Esperance is also self-contained and stand alone which is something that is becoming rarer in the speculative fiction world.
Esperance opens with an impossible crime. A Nigerian man and his baby son are found dead in a tenth storey apartment in Chicago. The impossible bit is that they apparently drowned in seawater. Detective Ethan Krol (who has plenty of his own personal issues) is called in to this puzzling case and soon finds himself on his way to Rhode Island where a similar death has been discovered. Meanwhile a woman called Abidemi Eniola arrives in Bristol with some futuristic tech and speaking like she just stepped out of a 1930s gangster movie. Abi get some help from a local called Holly as she investigates the history of a ship called the Esperance which was docked in Bristol in the 18th Century. By anchoring his action around these two strong, well developed and very different characters, readers get to anticipate their encounter when it finally happens (after which everything becomes even crazier).
In Esperance, Oyebanji once again shows his deep understanding of genre conventions in the way he is able to bend, stretch and combine them to unique and interesting ends. Oyebanji also uses this scifi/crime mash up to explore a dark time in history and the echoes of those events through to the present. By tying the action specifically to tragic events in the 18th century Oyenbanji can also explore a clash of two very different ways of considering the concept of justice. And all of this is fuel for what is ultimately a twisty, energetic, thought provoking, page-turning thriller.
Esperance by Adam Oyebanji
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