Synopsis
A SPLIT-SECOND DECISION WITH NO SECOND CHANCE GET IT WRONG AND YOU WAKE UP DEAD
On a blowtorch-hot night in Cape Town, American ex-model Roxy Palmer and her gunrunner husband, Joe, are carjacked, leaving Joe lying in a pool of blood. As the carjackers make their getaway, Roxy makes a fateful choice that changes her life forever.
Disco and Godwynn, the gangbangers who sped away in Joe's convertible, willstop at nothing to track her down. Billy Afrika, a mixed-race mercenary, also won't let her out of his sights since Joe owed him a chunk of money. And hunting them all is Piper, a love-crazed psychopath determined to renew his vows with his jailhouse "wife," Disco.
As these desperate lives collide and old debts are settled in blood, Roxy is caught in a wave of escalating violence in the beautiful and brutal African seaport. With savage plotting and breakneck suspense that ends in a shattering cataclysm of violence, Wake Up Dead confirms Roger Smith as one of the world's best new thriller writers.
Library Journal
From the terrific first sentence, the reader is firmly hooked in this dark South African thriller of murder, drugs, corruption, and revenge. When American ex-model Roxy Palmer and her arms merchant husband are carjacked, his life is gone and hers is drastically changed. The black robbers want to silence her, Billy Afrika, a colored ex-cop-turned-mercenary, wants money owed, the white investigating cops suspect her, and a psychopathic killer just released from prison needs her as a pawn. These are just some of the characters and subplots in this explosive description of the underbelly of postapartheid Cape Town. Smith, a screenwriter and producer, mined this scene in Mixed Blood and continues here with bizarre characters Elmore Leonard might appreciate and an intricate plot of tangled relationships across racial divides. VERDICT Like his compatriots Richard Kunzmann and Deon Meyer, Smith portrays the dark side of this exotic locale, with a keen eye for irony, a pessimism about society, and yet a note of hope for the honest exception. Highly recommended for those wanting their noir as hard-boiled as it gets. [Library marketing.]—Roland Person, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale