Phoenix FM Podcast - Mark Hayhurst

Stream / Download

Click here to read more

If you've read Friday at the Nobody Inn - you'll know what we are talking about when we say 'Steal this Song'

Stream / Download

Friday At The Nobody Inn - Mark Hayhurst Preview


Warning: Adult Content

Three book deal for 'persistent' author

Click here to read more

Free Book Group Reading Guide

If you are interested in picking The Angel Makers as your next book club book you can download the reading group guide for free! The guide is also included in the back of the book (both hardback and paperback).

Cry of the Justice Bird - Reading guide

Download .doc
Download .pdf

Does Armstrong come over as likeable and engaging, or do you find him somewhat shallow and self-important?

To what extent is Armstrong trustworthy?  For example, Armstrong narrates the story throughout as if he were the hero.  Is he – or is there good evidence to prove that, if hero there is, it’s Temba?

Armstrong has a regular arrangement with the little black prostitute, Mumbai.  At the first opportunity, he leaps into bed with his best friend Temba’s beautiful sister, Sizwi.   What he does with Mirianna at the Lake Hotel after the killing of Onias Matanganesa and Mophas Mandabanga is, perhaps mercifully, left to the imagination.  Despite this, can it be argued that Armstrong’s is a deeply moral character?

Accessible, available women are a mere diversion.  It’s the inaccessible women that Armstrong swears he loves.  But isn’t it true that both Chloris and Rebecca are rather shallow characters?
 
Is it ever right to take the law into your own hands, as Armstrong and Temba did, even in small things?  Have the two men an excuse in that the rule of law has virtually ceased to exist in Boromundi?  Is one of the great contradictions of the book that Armstrong is so unforgiving of those, like the boy soldier Smallboy Mushewa, who transgress against society’s rules, yet he has little hesitation in taking up a gun and operating outside the law in order to hunt down and slaughter the ‘five’?

In A Long Way Home (4th Estate, 2007), Ishmael Beah, a boy soldier himself, argues that children dragged into conflicts such as the horrific civil war in Sierra Leone deserve understanding and should be helped to come to terms with the terrible atrocities they commit.  In discussing `Smallboy’ Mushewa, Armstrong disagrees: “Smallboy was only fourteen.  There are people who will say that it wasn’t his fault he had turned out so rotten, that, as a kid, he’d been deprived, traumatised, brutalised, bestialised and brainwashed.  Personally, I don’t care what happened to him or whose fault it was.  Smallboy wasn’t stupid.  He had plenty of chances to behave himself, just like the rest of us, but he thought that he could get away with it and, because we failed to catch up with him alive, in a way he did.’  (Page 2)   How far should society go in forgiving those who have committed appalling atrocities, especially if they are children?  Again, are the dreadful circumstances of Boromundi any excuse?

Several of the villains in this book are attached to the church, particularly John Muteresa, Archbishop of Boromundi, and Joseph ‘Bullet’ Shibane.  Bullet, in particular, uses his position within its structure to further his wicked ends.  Does the author make any attempt to stress the positive nature of the church’s work, particularly in such difficult places as Africa?

“As the second Boromundi civil war abated through the first half of 1996 the aid agencies returned.  With them they brought their new white four-by-fours and ludicrous sums of money which they poured into the bottomless pit of African corruption.  Even when they brought food, like sacks of maize or nutritious biscuits for young children, or tents and clothing, it was stolen from under their noses, the food adulterated, and sold on at enormous profit.  Out of the carnage of war emerged the blowflies of peace.” (Page 59)  Armstrong, obviously, has little time for the sort of aid that is given to Africa.  Shouldn’t we now stop all aid – despite the additional suffering that may result in the short term - until that continent sorts itself out?

Is there evidence in the book that the author of Cry of the Justice Bird has political views somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan, demeans women, has a racial statement to make in that all his main characters are white, and believes that black Africa is past redemption – or is his book sympathetic to a people stuggling under the realities of today’s Africa?

Surely a book like Cry of the Justice Bird merely exploits and exacerbates Africa’s difficulties by overstating its problems?  Or has our woolly liberalism encouraged us to sweep far too much under the carpet?

It is received wisdom that a good novel should show, not tell.  Does Cry of the Justice Bird fail this test, and are there any mitigating circumstances?

The book has variously been categorised as action/adventure, crime, thriller or mystery.  Which of these do you think it is, and to what extent is it more than a mass-market novel in its attempt to ask moral questions such as, ‘Should one ever take the law into one’s own hands’?