Two Hangmen, One Scaffold Book II

written by Basil Diki

In The Hangman’s Shadow

When a correlation emerges between a prophecy and a police investigation, and a kidnapper maintains his presence at a crime scene, a woman dreads the passage of time. She cannot understand why a man set an innocent teenager on fire and kidnapped her son. The kidnapped boy’s father knows when two warring hangmen stand on the same scaffold, one must bow to the other or die. Into the fray comes a game ranger, an ex-decathlete expert at tracking man-eating crocodiles. However, a Senator twice his age counting her fertility days desperately wants him in bed. She isn’t aware her sweetheart is in the belly of a world no criminologist can understand. As mayhem takes centre-stage in a community suffering the brunt of a veiled matrix of calamities, is the ranger further bait, a weapon or a sacrificial ram between crouching outlaws?

Basil Diki

Basil Diki, born in Kadoma, Zimbabwe in 1971, is an iconic prolific dramatist who has written, performed and directed numerous plays. In 1988 he pioneered the founding of Rimuka Performing Arts, a theatre company, and in 1991 founded Kadoma Actors and Writers Organisation. He has won several awards for his daring and outstanding dramaturge, notably the 2001 Writing & Publishing Award, Special Mention; Poetry and Drama from the Zimbabwe Book Publishers Association for the play The Tribe of Graves. In 2004 he won the Best Achievement & Production Award from the Zimbabwe Invitational Drama Festival Society for directing his play Behind the Façade. He is an entrepreneur and a freelance Total Quality Management practitioner. Father to a son and two daughters, he still leaves in the City of Kadoma as a celebrated thespian, drama critic and adjudicator.