Review of Cobra by Deon Meyer (Hodder and Stoughton, 2013)

Detective Benny Griessel is called to a kidnapping scene on a wine estate just outside Cape Town in which two bodyguards and an estate worker have been murdered – each shot with a bullet engraved with a cobra.  It seems the victim is a recently arrived British citizen who was prepared to pay handsomely for protection.  The British consulate confirm the passport is a fake, but will say little else; Interpol reveals that the kidnap is probably the work of an elusive hitman named ‘the Cobra’; and the South African secret service wants to muscle the case away from the cops.  Meantime, a pickpocket is working a shopping mall, trying to gather enough cash to pay for his sister’s university tuition.  Only he picks the wrong victim and suddenly there’s more dead bodies, and more bullets with cobra engravings.  Ordered to pass the case over, Griessel and his team decide to keep investigating sensing that there is more to the demand than law and order.  Still possessing the lifted wallet, the pickpocket is also being drawn into a deadly game.

Cobra is the fourth novel in the Benny Griessel series.  Like its predecessors, it’s a fairly high octane police procedural thriller, with a strong sense of place and nicely penned characters.  Griessel, along with his feisty female colleague, Captain Mbali Kaleni, are once again the stars of the show, along with Tyrone Kleinbooi, a pickpocket trying to pay his sister’s way through university.  In this outing, Benny should be happy, now off the booze for some time and having moved in with new love, Alexa.  But his sense of inadequacy with Alexa and the job is giving him the blues.  The kidnapping of a British citizen and the death of two bodyguards and a wine estate worker provides an welcome distraction.  When higher authorities try to push Griessel and his team to one side, it’s clear that they’ve started to investigate a case with international connections and local connotations.  For Kaleni, the case gives the strong whiff of corruption from the Apartheid era and she’s not prepared to be sidelined.  Tyrone is a pickpocket with a code who has chosen the wrong bag to lift a wallet.  The plot is pretty linear as Griessel, Kaleni and co try to track down the hitman, ‘the Cobra’, and Tyrone tries to negotiate a swap of the wallet for his sister.  However, Meyer skilfully swaps the narrative back-and-forth between the cops and Tyrone, providing a storyline that races along and was certainly difficult to put down.  However, the tale runs out of steam a little towards the end and halts quite abruptly, which was a bit of a shame.  Nonetheless, an entertaining read and I’m looking forward to the next instalment.  

Review of 7Days by Deon Meyer (Hodder, 2012)

Captain Benny Griessel is a recovering alcoholic, so is his friend, Alexa.  After much persuasion she is making a come-back, reviving her singing career.  Benny is to be her rock, helping her regain her confidence.  However, their plans are derailed when Benny is called away from her first public outing to deal with a shooting incident.  A policeman has been shot and an email sent to SAPS states that unless the killer of Hanneke Sloet is arrested a police officer will be targeted each day.  Sloet, a successful and sultry lawyer, had been slain in her apartment a month earlier but the case had quickly gone cold.  Griessel is put in charge of re-investigating the Sloet murder, whilst his colleague, Mbali Kaleni is assigned the task of finding the sniper.  Along with the political and media pressure, adding to Benny’s woes is trying to keep Alexa from sliding all the way off the wagon and to make sure he doesn’t join her.

Deon Meyer might well be the best writer of police procedural thrillers at present.  His stories have all the good hallmarks of a police procedural – an interesting lead cop and supporting cast, a strong sense of place, interesting puzzles, and attention to detail – but they also have the pace and tension of a thriller; the rollercoaster ride of a race against time.  And so it is with 7Days.  Captain Benny Griessel, a man who trails a litany of personal failures in his wake, is given the task of solving a murder while under immense pressure from a sniper shooting police officers and bosses, politicians and media demanding immediate results. Meyer expertly balances character development, plot and pace, producing a highly engaging and entertaining read that not only delivers an intriguing story but nicely advances the longer narrative of the Griessel books.  I was hooked from the first page and picked it up at every opportunity to find out how Benny was getting on at solving the two intertwined cases.

Review of Thirteen Hours by Deon Meyer (Hodder, 2010)

Benny Griesel’s home and work life seem to be drifting away from him. He’s been sober for six months, but his wife has still not let him return to the family home. At work he’s been eased to one side, assigned the role of mentor to a new crop of detectives. The day starts badly when he gets an early morning call about the discovery of a body. A short time later he receives a second call; another body has been found. Both are high profile: a young American tourist and the owner of a successful record label. His day is going to be busy and stressful, giving advice to two rookie detectives. Then he discovers that a second American tourist is being chased by a gang of men intent on killing her. Griesel is ordered to take charge of finding and protecting the young woman. But not only is she running scared, she believes that some of the men pursuing her are police officers. The clock is ticking and time is running out for both the woman and Griesel.

Thirteen Hours starts at a brisk pace and hurtles along to its tense conclusion. The journey, however, is not overly linear, with Meyer managing to create a layered, complex and compelling story consisting of two intersected plotlines. The contextualisation is excellent, particularly with respect to the dynamics and politics of the Afrikaans music industry and the South African police force, and the social geography of Cape Town. The characterisation is very nicely realised, especially Griesel and his fellow cops, and Meyer is particularly good at portraying the interplay and dynamics between characters and how these evolve over time and in context. The only slight niggle was the sense that woman being chased should have really been able to find safety in such a large and busy city, especially once she knows the US authorities are also looking for her, yet when she does find refuge she takes a bath rather than calling for help. Other than that, this is a great read - a tense, fast-moving, textured thriller - which definitely whets the appetite for spending more time in Griesel’s company.

Review of Devil's Peak by Deon Meyer (Hodder, 2007)

Christine van Rooyen is a high class escort with a young daughter that she dotes on and a rich client who wants her to play the role of a wife. Thobela Mpayipheli served as a elite soldier overseas before returning to work as a bodyguard for a criminal in Cape Town and eventually settling down on a farm with a wife and young son. The wife has died and the son becomes everything, but then at a service station two armed robbers shoot the boy as they make their getaway. Whilst on trial the two men escape and the police seem resigned to leaving them on the run. Thobela though isn't and he has the skills and the patience to track them down, and whilst he stalks them he can do the work that the justice system fails to. Inspector Benny Griessel is an alcoholic cop on the verge of losing his wife, kids and his job. He's been given one last chance to get himself off the drink and to solve the case of a vigilante killing paedophiles and child murderers that the justice system has failed to deal with. Christine, Thobela and Benny start to dance around each other, slowly circling until their inevitable convergence.

The real strengths of Devil's Peak are the characterisation, plotting and sense of place. Meyer provides an intricate story based on three in-depth character studies embedded in the turmoil of South African society, its criminal underbelly, and overstretched and corrupt police force. Over the course of the novel their back stories are revealed and teased apart as their lives start to intersect. The story moves at a steady pace, at times a little too slow for my tastes, slowed by detailed description, as Meyer carefully moves the inter-connecting pieces into place, but it builds to a page-turning finale. At its heart, the story is about the strengths and failings of people, families and institutional systems, and it raises questions about human nature, justice and the balance between self-destruction, love and survival. Benny Griessel and Meyer's storytelling reminded me of early Harry Bosch stories by Michael Connelly. Meyer writes with the same intensity, layering, and level of detailed knowledge that Connelly does, raising the story above the average police procedural fare. The overall result is a very fine read and I'll certainly be keeping an eye out Meyer's other novels.