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Overview
From rising South African thriller writer Deon Meyer, a gripping suspense novel about revenge, forgiveness, and the race to catch a trained killer.
A young woman makes a terrible confession to a priest. An honorable man takes his own revenge for an unspeakable tragedy. An aging inspector tries to get himself sober while taking on the most difficult case of his career. From this beginning, Deon Meyer weaves a story of astonishing complexity and suspense, as Inspector Benny Griessel faces off against a dangerous vigilante who has everything on his side, including public sympathy.
A gruesome abuse case has hit the newsstands, and one man has taken it upon himself to stand up for the children of Cape Town. When the accused is found stabbed through the heart by spear, it's only the beginning of a string of bloody murders - and of a dangerous dilemma for detective Griessel. The detective is always just one step behind as someone slays the city's killers. But the paths of Griessel and the avenger collide when a young prostitute lures them both into a dangerous plan - and the two find themselves with a heart-stopping problem that no system of justice could ever make right.
Synopsis
From rising South African thriller writer Deon Meyer, a gripping suspense novel about revenge, forgiveness, and the race to catch a trained killer.
A young woman makes a terrible confession to a priest. An honorable man takes his own revenge for an unspeakable tragedy. An aging inspector tries to get himself sober while taking on the most difficult case of his career. From this beginning, Deon Meyer weaves a story of astonishing complexity and suspense, as Inspector Benny Griessel faces off against a dangerous vigilante who has everything on his side, including public sympathy.
A gruesome abuse case has hit the newsstands, and one man has taken it upon himself to stand up for the children of Cape Town. When the accused is found stabbed through the heart by spear, it's only the beginning of a string of bloody murders - and of a dangerous dilemma for detective Griessel. The detective is always just one step behind as someone slays the city's killers. But the paths of Griessel and the avenger collide when a young prostitute lures them both into a dangerous plan - and the two find themselves with a heart-stopping problem that no system of justice could ever make right.
Publishers Weekly
Complex, finely wrought characters, keen psychological insight and a compelling plot lift this crime novel from South African author Meyer (Dead Before Dying). Former mercenary Thobela Mpayipheli is trying to live a peaceful life, but these plans are shattered when his eight-year-old son, Pakamile, is shot dead. The two gunmen responsible escape before sentencing, and the grieving father decides to take matters into his own hands. As he pursues his son's killers, Mpayipheli begins to target pedophiles and other perpetrators of violence against children, meting out justice with a Xhosa tribal sword called an assegai.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
Complex, finely wrought characters, keen psychological insight and a compelling plot lift this crime novel from South African author Meyer (Dead Before Dying). Former mercenary Thobela Mpayipheli is trying to live a peaceful life, but these plans are shattered when his eight-year-old son, Pakamile, is shot dead. The two gunmen responsible escape before sentencing, and the grieving father decides to take matters into his own hands. As he pursues his son's killers, Mpayipheli begins to target pedophiles and other perpetrators of violence against children, meting out justice with a Xhosa tribal sword called an assegai.
Library Journal
In his fourth thriller set in and around Cape Town, South African crime writer Meyer interweaves the stories of three desperate individuals. Thobela Mpayipheli, a former Xhosa assassin last seen in Heart of the Hunter, is unable to stop two gas station thieves from killing his stepson. Driven by vengeance and armed only with an assegai(a spear), he begins to track down the thieves. Unsuccessful at first, he expands his crusade to include those suspected of sexual crimes against children. As the bloody killings mount, Detective Inspector Benny Griessel, an alcoholic determined to stay sober in order to win back his wife and children, is assigned the assegai case. Meanwhile, Christine van Rooyen, a prostitute with a young daughter, tells a clergyman how she became involved with the local boss of a Colombian drug cartel. In time, the lives of all three will collide with devastating results. Readers will need a measure of patience to handle the quick jumps between stories and the half-page or so that it takes to figure out whose story is now center stage. Still, Meyer's ability to probe the depths of his major characters makes this read well worth the effort. Recommended for public libraries.
—Ron Terpening
Kirkus Reviews
Meyer's rangy, ambitious fourth suspense novel shows the man who starred in the author's impressive debut in a startling new light. Someone is stalking the South African town of Umtata, executing criminals who prey on young children. The vigilante's chosen weapon is an assegai, a Zulu spear, and his victims, child molesters and rapists who believed that sex with a baby could banish the AIDS virus, are as deserving a bunch as you could imagine. So it would be hard for DI Benny Griessel, who heads the task force charged with finding the killer the press has dubbed Artemis, to motivate himself even under ideal conditions. As it is, however, conditions for Griessel are considerably less than ideal. His wife Anna, sick of his drinking and abuse, has tossed him out of the house. Charged with identifying and arresting a local folk hero, Griessel would be even more discouraged if he knew that his quarry was Thobela Mpayipheli, the Xhosa farmer who headlined Heart of the Hunter (2004). Mpayipheli is bent on avenging the murder of his adopted son. Though he finds no lack of surrogate victims, he goes at length after Carlos Sangrenegra, the possessive Colombian lover of prostitute Christine van Rooyen, and trouble boils over for Mpayipheli, for van Rooyen and for Griessel, who's already in hot water because some civic-minded colleague compromised his investigation by tipping off the newspapers about his private demons. Meyer (Dead Before Dying, 2006, etc.) piles on the complications, doling out exposition via an intermittent confession van Rooyen makes to an exceptionally patient priest, before ending with a show-stopping tableau bringing the cop and the vigilante together. The real drama hangs onevery exchange between members of the multiracial police force and the citizens they're sworn to protect. Agent: Isobel Dixon/Blake FriedmannWisconsin Bookwatch
“Knife-edge suspense delineates the thin line between justice and revenge, murder and retribution, in this gripping audio experience superbly performed by Booklist’s 2008 ‘Voice of Choice’ reader Simon Vance. Highly recommended.”
—Wisconsin Bookwatch
Booklist
“Although [the principal] three characters exhibit extreme anguish and pain, Vance never shies away from expressing their respective emotions and revealing their distinct personalities. Without resorting to caricature, he does a good job with minor characters as well, and handles escalating events in stride. Filled with suspense, social commentary, and well-drawn characters, this story is the whole package.”
—Booklist