Yvonne
Since I have become a fan of South African crime writer, Deon Meyer, I am eagerly awaiting the September 2011 release date of his latest novel ‘Trackers’
I started reading Deon’s hard-hitting, South African crime novels, late on into the series, but have become an instant fan of this page-turning, fast-paced style of crime detection. I have also become quite attached to the character of DI Benny Griesel, however this story brings to the fore the character of Mat Joubert, who featured as a detective in the book ‘Dead Before Dying’ and is now working on this, his first case as a Private Investigator. As I haven’t come across this character before, I am looking forward to meeting him, as he becomes central to solving this latest case, which leaves a trail of death and destruction in its wake.
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Synopsis
Lemmer’s First Law: Don’t get involved.
But when Emma le Roux looks at him with pleading eyes, when the roof of his Karoo house needs big repairs, when the cause is good and just, laws can be broken. So he sighs, and says, yes, he’ll ride shotgun for the two rare black rhino’s.
Bad call.
Because on a dark and dusty road in Limpopo, they stick a Smith & Wesson Model 500 against his head. They kick him and beat him, they lie, they deceive him, and they steal his Glock, the one with his fingerprints all over it. He wants it back. And he wants revenge.
So he tracks them, leaving a trail of violence that will run the length and breadth of a country, and touch the lives of:
- Former cop Mat Joubert, working on his first dossier as a private investigator. It’s a ‘fifty-five’, police slang for a missing persons case. Danie Flint, easy-going, life of the party, route planner at the Atlantic Bus Company, disappeared three months ago. The SAPS bungled the case, and Flint’s wife is at the end of her tether. Joubert must track him down before her money runs out. But it’s been years since he did the grunt work, he no longer has the might of the State behind him, and the trail has gone icy cold.
- And Milla Strachan, the former housewife, who walked out on her rich, cheating husband and abusive teenage son to start a new life. Milla, who had only seen South Africa from behind the high walls and alarm systems of her plush northern suburbs home, and through the rose-tinted glasses of the privileged.Struggling with being suddenly single at forty, trying to rebuild her relationship with her son, lost in a job market favouring the young and the wired, she has to settle for a lowly ‘journalism’ job at a secretive government agency. A whole new world opens up for her – including the murky realm of organised crime, Muslim extremism and terrorism, right on her doorstep. And then this world reaches out and touches her, draws her in.
A trail of death, stretching from the Chizarira tot the Cape Waterfront. And at the end of it, nobody will be untouched.
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About The Author
Deon Meyer was born in the South African town of Paarl in the winelands of the Western Cape in 1958, and grew up in Klerksdorp, in the gold mining region of Northwest Province.
After studying at the Potchefstroom University, he joined Die Volksblad, a daily newspaper in Bloemfontein as a reporter. Since then, he has worked as press liaison, advertising copywriter, creative director, web manager, Internet strategist, and brand consultant.
Deon wrote his first book when he was 14 years old, and bribed his two brothers into reading it. They were not impressed.
Heeding their wisdom, he did not write fiction again until he was in his early thirties, when he started publishing short stories in South African magazines.
“I still believe that is the best way to learn the craft of writing. Short stories teach you a lot about story structure – and you have limited space to develop character and plot,” says Deon.
All novels, with the excetion of the first, have been translated into 25 languages, having been written in his native Afrikaans.
Deon lives in Melkbosstrand on the South African West Coast with his wife and children
Other than his family, his big passions are motorcycling, music, reading, cooking and rugby.
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This is already on my reading list, although as I am on a book-buying ban, it may have to be a sneak download to my kindle!!!
