In Twice the Devil, Fortune Omosola delivers a novel that reads like a smouldering ember, quiet at first, then suddenly flaring into a blaze that refuses to die. Set against the churning backdrop of contemporary Nigeria, the book is an unflinching exploration of morality, survival, and the thin membrane between good and evil.
The main act, Kola, is an ambitious young man whose plans for a better life collapse in the chaos of a roadside kidnapping. One wrong turn, one terrible decision, and he is drawn into a chain of events that stretches from dusty rural checkpoints to the underbelly of West African escape routes.
Omosola doesn’t waste time dressing his protagonist in false innocence. Instead, he offers us a man who is flawed from the start—a man who runs, bargains, and sometimes fights, but never quite escapes the shadow of his own choices.
The story’s pacing is one of its sharpest weapons. Omosola is a master of the slow build, letting the danger simmer before snapping the reader into moments of almost unbearable tension. The checkpoint scene, where a bribe goes wrong and the officer recognises Kola, could stand alongside the most riveting sequences in John Grisham’s legal thrillers or the cat-and-mouse stretches of Frederick Forsyth’s political dramas. The shootout that follows is not a stylised burst of action, but a messy, human, and tragic affair, where an innocent bystander falls, and the guilt clings like blood under the fingernails.
The prose is rich without ever being indulgent. Omosola moves effortlessly between lean, urgent dialogue and lush descriptive passages that anchor the reader in place. In one breath, we feel the heat and dust of a rural court, the wooden benches sagging under the weight of curious villagers; in the next, we are swept into the murky interior of a Cotonou café, where Kola begins to write the story we’ve just read. The effect is both immersive and intimate, as though the book is quietly reminding us that our own lives are never far from the borderlines we pretend not to see.
Perhaps the most striking section is the trial, or rather, the performance of justice, in a village court presided over by a Yoruba elder whose Catholic rosary sits uneasily against the Ifá scars on his wrist. Here,
Omosola reveals himself not just as a storyteller, but as a chronicler of Nigeria’s contradictions: the mingling of faiths, the hybrid systems of authority, and the way verdicts are often delivered in parables rather than clear rulings. The elder’s haunting words, “The man who kills the devil twice will wear his face in the dark”, linger long after the final page, a perfect summation of the novel’s moral spine.
Twice the Devil is not simply a crime story. It is also a portrait of a nation where law is mutable, where loyalty is often a currency more fragile than cash, and where survival demands both cunning and a kind of moral flexibility. Omosola resists easy answers; there are no clean heroes here, no singular villains, only people navigating the shifting tides of necessity and greed.
It is this refusal to reduce his characters to archetypes that gives the novel its staying power. Even the most ruthless figures have moments of doubt or unexpected tenderness. Even the ostensibly “good” characters make decisions that leave a sour taste. This complexity gives the novel the texture of real life, something that will resonate with readers far beyond Nigeria’s borders.
In the end, Twice the Devil earns its place alongside the best of African literary thrillers. It is a work that could be taught in literature classes for its layered themes, while also enjoyed as a page-turner by readers looking for a sharp, intelligent story that grips from start to finish.
Fortune Omosola is not just dexterous with fiction, he is a writer of several poetry collections and self help books that is sold on sites Amazon, Selar, Goodreads etc.
