Table Mountain towers over the skyline of Cape Town like a monolith. When the Dutch settlers first arrived here in 1652 they contemplated digging a canal around the cape into an island, separating their colony from ‘Darkest Africa’. The city itself isn’t actually that big: you can comfortably walk from one side to the other…
When a cold case dossier lands on Captain Benny Griessel’s desk, he and his partner Vaughn Cupido, a fellow member of an elite police unit in South Africa, reluctantly set to work reviewing the evidence of the possible murder of an ex-cop on the world’s most luxurious train. When you read about South Africa you…
Steeplejack by A.J. Hartley is the New York Times bestselling author's young-adult debut, set in a 19th-century South African fantasy world (Available June 14, 2016). Seventeen-year-old Anglet Sutonga lives repairing the chimneys, towers, and spires of the city of Bar-Selehm. Dramatically different communities live and work alongside each other. The white Feldish command the nation’s…
The final series of Wallander on Masterpiece Mystery has an uncharacteristic start. For one thing, our Swedish detective friend Kurt Wallander (Kenneth Branagh) is in South Africa for some sort of international police conference. More uncharacteristic than that, Wallander is soaking in the sunshine, jogging, inhaling…smiling. “I have been a police officer for 40 years,”…
One Tragic Night by Mandy Wiener and Barry Bateman is the detailed account of the famous murder trial of South African Olympian Oscar Pistorius for the death of his fiancé (available October 14, 2014). At 08:03 on the morning of Valentine’s Day 2013, news broke that Oscar Pistorius, the Paralympic superstar known as the “Blade Runner,” had…
When can murder be an almost pleasant event? When Miss Marple is on the case. This time she’s on the Caribbean island of St. Honoré for her rheumatism, vacationing at a small hotel called the Golden Palm among the standard array of characters/suspects: grumpy old men, flirty young women, dissatisfied married couples, a dogmatic man…
Coldsleep Lullaby by Andrew Brown is a literary thriller where the daughter of a prominent South African citizen is found floating in a river, and Detective Eberard Februarie is tasked with uncovering her secrets and solving the case (available June 17, 2014). In the sleepy Cape Winelands of South Africa the body of a young…
Oh, the bliss of finding a new author you like! Who has multiple books! I feel like Maria at the beginning of Sound of Music—running and spinning around. I got a copy of Deon Meyer’s Thirteen Hours a year ago. I never even cracked the cover. I don’t know why. The cover copy makes it…
