Looking for Evelyn: a romantic thriller in the heart of Africa

Posted on June 22, 2017

Looking for Evelyn, the new novel by Maggie Ritchie published on 22 June 2017, combines love, secrets and colonial history in a glorious African setting.

After her highly successful debut – Paris Kiss, set in 19th-century bohemian Paris – Maggie Ritchie serves up another slice of sumptuous popular fiction that transports readers to another magical time and place. Writing in The National, Lesley McDowell has described Looking for Evelyn as “this year’s perfect summer read, with a deliciously provocative mix of exotic locations, sexual scandal and the end of colonialism”.

Chrissie Docherty returns to the southern Africa of her childhood and tracks down Evelyn Fielding, the woman at the centre of an explosive scandal involving a traditional colonial officer and a gifted black African artist.

Together, the two women uncover the secrets that shattered a remote expatriate outpost in the Zambian bush in the 1970s.

Switching deftly between today and the recent past, and set against a background of tense post-colonial race relations, political turmoil and witchcraft, Looking for Evelyn powerfully evokes the very special colours, sounds and smells of Africa.

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Maggie Ritchie will be launching Looking for Evelyn at Waterstones Sauchiehall St, Glasgow, on 22 June at 6.30pm.