Review of Present Darkness by Malla Nunn (Emily Bestler Books, 2013)

1953, Johannesburg, South Africa. As with other cops, Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper is hoping that no-one is murdered in the days leading up to Christmas. While his colleagues are looking forward to a holiday away from the city, Cooper is hoping to spend time with his coloured partner and child, a strictly illegal relationship in the apartheid country. Their hopes looked dashed after a white couple are assaulted, the man dying in the hours afterwards, but the positive identification of a black boy and his friend as the assailants by their daughter appears to lead to a quick result. For Cooper it creates a major headache as the boy is the son of Cooper’s friend, Zulu detective, Samuel Shabalala. Cooper is certain the boy is innocent, however the daughter is sticking to her story, the lead detective Lieutenant Mason is determined to wrap things up quickly – planting evidence as required – and the boy refuses to provide an alibi for himself. To make things more difficult, the hard-headed Mason has made it clear he will not tolerate anyone disrupting the case and he’s prepared to shatter Cooper’s home life if necessary. Cooper, however, is made of stern stuff, as are his friends Shabalala, and Dr Daniel Zweigman, a survivor of German concentration camps, and he knows the terrain, having been raised in the Sophiatown ghetto.

Present Darkness is the fourth book in the Detective Emmanuel Cooper series set in South Africa in the 1950s. In this outing, Cooper has returned to Johannesburg, the city in which he was raised, and is living in secret with Davina, his coloured partner, and their child. The plot concerns the assault and murder of a white couple and the framing of a teenage black boy for the crime. The sting in the tail is the boy is the son of Cooper’s friend, Zulu detective Samuel Shabalala.  Cooper wants justice, his boss Lieutenant Mason wants to see the boy hang and is quite prepared to not only ignore evidence but to fabricate it. Mason is a bully and full of dirty tricks, though it’s not clear why he’s so keen to close the case so quickly and to push Cooper to one side. Nunn once again does a nice job of detailing the lived realities of apartheid South Africa, with its marked prejudices and oppression, corrupt policing, its dangerous ghettos, and illicit relations and friendships across the race divide. And it has a strong sense of place – both in the city and the countryside – and historical contextualisation. The three friends at the heart of this, and the other books – Cooper, Shabalala, and Dr Zweigman – again shine, forming an interesting and engaging trio. While the other books take a slightly more expansive view, this tale focuses very much on personal danger – the framing of an innocent boy and the fraught attempt to see justice served, and the threat to Cooper’s new family. Nunn nicely builds the tale up to a dramatic denouement, though the resolution seemed a little contrived and held together with plot devices. Overall, another entertaining addition to an excellent series.

Review of Blessed are the Dead by Malla Nunn (Washington Square Press, 2012)

October 1953, Drakenberg Mountains, South Africa.  When the beautiful seventeen year old daughter of a Zulu chief, and maid to a rich white farming family, is discovered dead Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper and his Zulu partner Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala are sent to investigate.  Neither the Zulu chief, nor the white family, want the city detectives on the case.  As they search for the murderer they discover that Amahle was headstrong and ambitious with secrets that were potentially explosive in a strongly apartheid society.  The more they probe, the more they place themselves in danger, but neither is prepared to walk away from the case.

Blessed are the Dead is the third book in the Emmanuel Cooper series set in 1950s South Africa.  Nunn has really hit her stride in this instalment, both adding to the overall story arc of Cooper’s life and providing a thoroughly engaging mystery.  The characterisation is excellent, especially Cooper and his colleague Shabalala, but also the supporting cast, particularly Gabriel a white boy who is totally at home in the bush, and Nunn nicely portrays their interactions and social relations.  Indeed, she excels at detailing the complex social structure within and between communities – Black, Indian, Jewish, White Afrikaans, White English – and the politics of policing within such strictures.  There is a nice attention to historical detail and the sense of place is palpable with the reader being transported to rural South Africa and its dramatic landscape.  The plot is absorbing and nicely executed.  Overall, a very good police procedural that delivers on multiple levels.

Review of Let the Dead Lie by Malla Nunn (Washington Square Press, 2010)

It’s 1953 and in the aftermath of his last case, Emmanuel Cooper has been forced to resign as detective sergeant in the South African police force and he has been reclassified as ‘mixed race’ in the wake of new race laws.  He’s relocated to Durban and is now working in and around the docks whilst moonlighting for his ambitious ex-boss, Major van Niekerk, spying on corrupt officers.  Whilst patrolling the freight yards one night he discovers the body of a young white boy.  He knows he shouldn't get involved, but his old detective instincts kick in and he starts to investigate.  Shortly after his landlady and her maid are found murdered.  The local cops target the simplest explanation - that Cooper is responsible - and arrest him.  van Niekerk uses his political clout to set him free, but he’s only forty eight hours to clear his name and discover the real killer before he’s back in the frame.

Let the Dead Lie is the second book in Malla Nunn’s series set in 1950s South Africa.  The strength of the story is the characterisation, its historical contextualisation, and atmosphere and sense of place.  Emmanuel Cooper is an intriguing character, a kind of nowhere man that belongs to no community, but somehow manages to straddle both white and black worlds.  He is surrounded by other conflicted and flawed characters that are all well penned.  The tensions and shifting social and legal landscape of South Africa is vividly bought to life, especially the marginal spaces around the Durban docks.  Whilst the story is engaging and entertaining, I found the plotting and pacing a little tenuous in the first half, becoming more purposeful and sure in the second, turning into a real page turner as the political intrigue deepened and tension rose as Cooper’s deadline approached.  Moreover, the story concentrates on the first murder and it never really became clear to me why the second and third murders occur.  Overall, an interesting read and I’m looking forward to reading the third book in the series.

Review of A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn (Picador, 2009)

September 1952 and the body of Willem Pretorius, an Afrikan Captain of the local police force, is found dead, lying face down in waters of a river he’d been fishing in rural South Africa. Due to a miscommunication, rather than a full investigative team arriving on the scene, Sergeant Cooper, an ‘English’ South African has been dispatched on his own, much to the chagrin of the dead man’s powerful family. Not long after Cooper starts his investigation, the case is taken over by the army’s security branch who are keen to prove that the captain’s death was the work of black communists. Convinced that the security branch are using the murder for their own ends and that Pretorius had been leading a double life, Cooper is ordered by his boss to stay in place and run a parallel investigation, much to the annoyance of the family and the army. Running against the grain, he slowly starts to unpick Pretorius’ dark secrets, aware that in pursuing them he is in danger of revealing his own – secrets that would threaten his position.

A Beautiful Place to Die has all the ingredients of a good crime novel – social tension between individuals and groups, interesting historical context, excellent characterization, strong sense of place, good pacing and a well constructed plot. The novel is set not long after the National Party came to power in 1948 and started to push a strong apartheid agenda and Nunn uses this context to good effect, especially the simmering tensions between Dutch Afrikaners, English White, Blacks and Coloureds, and even Jewish refugees from Germany, and exploring the blurred lines between these groups. The characters are well penned and memorable, and the dialogue and scenes were well judged. The sense of place is particularly strong, capturing both the landscape of rural South Africa and the geography of apartheid in terms of how space was carved up and traversed. The plot builds nicely, with a number of blinds and twists, though ultimately in striving for increasing tension the end wobbles a little by stretching plausibility to the limit and becoming a little too over-melodramatic. This was a shame as the book really was excellent up until this point. Regardless, there is much to like about A Beautiful Place to Die, and Nunn has the foundation for an enjoyable series.