Brian Kasaine’s ‘3 jolts from the blue’
Writer Brian Lesalon Kasaine, a content specialist at Transread Technology Limited, with a novel he wrote out of cyberbullying that followed the arrest of his namesake following the 2018 murder of Monica Kimani in Nairobi.
What you need to know:
- Among the main characters in the novel is Inspector Max Njagi, who Kasaine admits was inspired by the DCI detective he met and made friends with.
- Now three weeks since Kasaine released his self-published crime thriller, he has been receiving good feedback and he is already thinking of a sequel.
A woman fails to wake up during a sleepover with her boyfriend. Another unsuspecting young woman is murdered by an outwardly benign but inwardly broken boyfriend Rings a bell, doesn’t it?
The narratives might not immediately scream “Monica Kimani”, but when you consider where the author is coming from, the shadow of the woman murdered in Kilimani in September 2018 looms large.
The author of that novel, titled 3 Bolts From the Blue, is Brian Kasaine. Again, ’rings a bell? Note the spelling, the single ‘s’. Brian Kasaine, not Brian Kassaine.
Kassaine was the neighbour of former newscaster Jacque Maribe and is a key witness in the ongoing criminal case against Ms Maribe and her former fiancé Joseph “Jowie” Irungu.
Kasaine, on the other hand, is the young man who was subjected to cyberbullying when the arrest of Mr Kassaine was first announced as some people believed this writer-cum-motivational speaker was living a double life.
News bulletins mentioned just the name and because Mr Kassaine is a publicity-shy man whose photos are hardly available online, one blog lifted photos of Kasaine — an active social media user — and told the world he is the one who had been arrested in connection with Ms Kimani’s murder.
In real sense, it was Mr Kassaine, who was later released by police and made a prosecution witness. In those few days, it was hell for Kasaine. As he told the Sunday Nation in the October 7, 2018 edition, he received numerous calls, had a planned talk event cancelled as the hosts feared they were promoting a suspect, and could not think straight for days on end.
Wayward boy
It did not help matters that before he turned over a new leaf, he was a wayward boy who once led a strike at Anestar Boys, Nakuru, in 2011. Some thought the old Kasaine was resurfacing.
“When I was mistaken for a suspect and Kenyans on social media killed my name, I went to the detectives: first at their headquarters on Kiambu Road, and later at Central Police Station, where I self-recorded a statement,” Kasaine said in an interview on Friday.
Police were more understanding and made light of the matter. And that act saw Kasaine strike a rapport with a seasoned investigator.
“After the storm died down and everything went back to normal, I approached this detective again, this time with a request that he helps me with my fiction,” said Kasaine.
“We planned, met in the evenings over coffee, and I asked him questions. I gave him scenarios created from my mind, and he gave me ideas on how a detective would react. Funny that one imagined scenario that I gave him had actually happened. Fiction reflects reality, you only need to read between the lines,” he added.
Just weeks later, a story idea was dancing in Kasaine’s mind. It reflects in the first line of the 112-page book: “What would you do if you woke up to find the person you slept with dead in bed?” And in it there is a young man who surrenders to police and is exonerated from playing part in a woman’s death.
Among the main characters in the novel is Inspector Max Njagi, who Kasaine admits was inspired by the DCI detective he met and made friends with.
“He was among the first to get a copy. Here’s a little secret: My enduring character, Detective Inspector Max Njagi, is closely, not entirely, named after my detective friend at DCI,” Kasaine told the Sunday Nation.
In the book’s acknowledgement section he writes: “The toxic cyberbullying and verbal slaughter broke me, but it’s what put me in a room with Andrew Fundi Njagi, who has been a resourceful friend.”
So, was Ms Kimani’s death dancing in his subconscious as he wrote the novel?
“Maybe, maybe not,” Kasaine answered.
“I can’t confidently say that Monica’s murder subconsciously influenced me, though, I admit, during the case, I kept imagining an innocent woman, dead, in a bathtub. ’Could be why my book has two dead women.”
The other Kassaine, he has gathered, is a businessman. During a court hearing on November 2019, Ms Maribe’s former househelp told the court that she was woken up on that fateful night by shouts of Jowie calling Mr Kassaine, the neighbour, to help him.
She also noted that Mr Kassaine and Ms Maribe took Jowie to hospital that night so that Jowie’s injured arm could be attended to.
Now three weeks since Kasaine released his self-published crime thriller, he has been receiving good feedback and he is already thinking of a sequel.
Inspector Max Njagi
“People want more of Detective Inspector Max Njagi. They want to see him solving more cases,” he said.
After the ordeal, Kasaine turned a cold shoulder towards his “Brian” name. He prefers Lesalon Kasaine, and that is the author name appearing on the novel.
He had written a demand letter to a local blog that erroneously published his photo with the news that he had been arrested. While they pulled down the photo, they did not apologise. And suing them is impossible.
“The guys behind the online paper are faceless. Ghosts. Their servers are not even in Kenya. With the system, the process is another headache of its own intensity. I just let it go. I chose to focus on the now, customise my future, and forget about my past,” said Kasaine.
“Maybe one day I’ll write a fictional story, put the journalists who muddied my name in there, and kill them all.”
