Simon Akam

419 by Will Ferguson – review

Photo credit should read PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP/Getty Images

The term ‘419’ is drawn from the article in the Nigerian penal code that addresses fraud. However, it has transcended its origins in statute and become shorthand for trickery across West Africa. When I worked as a correspondent in Sierra Leone, 1,400 miles from Nigeria’s capital Abuja, the phrase was in widespread use.

Deception is fertile ground for fiction, and Will Ferguson has produced a fine novel from the West African variant. He takes 419 in its purest form: the email scam. Nigerian hustlers persuade foreigners to part with their savings, often with the promise of a tranche of a fortune that just needs a western bank account to park in.

Here the bait is 15 per cent of ‘THIRTY FIVE MILLION SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND dollars US,’ thus capitalised in a transatlantic email exchange. The scammer is Winston, a young operator in Lagos, Nigeria’s muggy commercial capital. Winston’s victim is Henry Curtis, a retired Canadian schoolteacher.

The novel opens as Curtis’s car plunges down an embankment. A police investigation indicates suicide, as a result of financial ruination. The Canadian authorities advise that Nigeria is such a maelstrom that redress is impossible. Curtis’s daughter Laura disregards them and flies to Lagos. Without spoiling the plot, suffice it to say that, by and large, Laura turns the tables on the scammers.

Ferguson makes extensive use of parallel narratives. In Canada, exposition of the fraud folds back from the initial car crash, while in Africa a pregnant girl called Amina treks south from the Sahel. She eventually meets Nnamdi, who has himself emerged from Nigeria’s oil-producing delta. This ambitious structure in general works, and the dénouement, when the strands twist together, is genuinely thrilling.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in