HARMATTAN SEASON by Tochi Onyebuchi – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Harmattan Season by Tochi Onyebuchi
Published by Tor Books on May 27 2025
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Pages: 240
Format: Finished hardcover
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: Tochi Onyebuchi’s latest melds hard boiled noir and fantasy in a perfectly paced story with humor and heart.

“The français are a Harmattan that never ends.”

Harmattan Season is a tautly written crime story with magical overtones, set in a fantasy version of postcolonial West Africa. This is a slow-burn mystery told from the first person POV of private detective Boubacar, a man caught between the worlds of the “dugulen,” the native West Africans, and the “français,” the French who have colonized his country. While I enjoyed the mystery, it was Bouba’s character and personality that left a lasting impression.

Bouba is a “chercher,” someone who finds missing people or objects. Business has been bad lately, but despite his lack of income, Bouba’s debts keep piling up, thanks to the new French regime. Even though he’s good friends with a cop named Moussa, Bouba finds himself in trouble more often than not. And things are about to get worse. Bouba opens the door to his apartment one day and finds a bleeding woman on his doorstep, who implores him to “hide her.” 

Bouba stashes the dying woman in his closet, right before cops burst into the apartment. But when he returns later in the day after being questioned about the incident, the woman is gone and only a smear of blood remains behind. Later, Bouba is shocked to see the dead woman floating high over the town, an inexplicable event that raises lots of questions. Are the French behind the crime? What does it mean? And how does it tie into the upcoming election? Bouba jumps head first into finding the answers, but asking questions could get him in trouble—or dead.

Harmattan Season has a perfectly pitched crime noir vibe, offset by the author’s themes of colonization and political unrest. Bouba is your typical down-on-his-luck PI, barely scraping by financially but unable to resist the allure of a mystery. He knows everyone, and he has a weakness for smoking “shisha.” Bouba is a “deux-fois,” which I’m guessing has several meanings, but mostly means he belongs to both worlds, dugulen and français, but also belongs to neither. He’s both an outcast and someone who can invisibly blend into either world, and while he uses it to his advantage at times, it’s not a label he wants. The fact that he fought in the war on the other side doesn’t help matters either. I loved the way he throws himself into unraveling the mystery of the floating woman, rarely stopping to think things through. And yet he has a softer side as well, which comes through in some of his interactions with other characters.

Onyebuchi’s setting is dry and gritty and full of characters living a hardscrabble life. The Harmattan of the title is a strong, dry wind that occurs right before the rainy season, but it’s also a metaphor for the brutal, controlling French who have taken over the country. The dugulen are in the midst of an election which will determine the course of their future, and that political drama plays a big part in the mystery that Bouba is trying to solve.

Onyebuchi throws the reader right into the deep end without much explanation of his world, so you have to figure things out through context. But I was OK with that. Even the author’s generous use of French words and terms didn’t trip me up too much, although it did slow my reading down a bit. There’s never any explanation for the magical things that happen in the story, which might frustrate some readers, but you just need to go with it. The fantasy isn’t the main focus of the story anyway, and when it came along I sort of shrugged my shoulders and kept reading.

The final chapter was a surprise, and it added a wonderful emotional layer to an already excellent story. Grab this if you can, it’s really good.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.