Category Archives: Deon Meyer

Review: Trackers by Deon Meyer

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It’s hard to know how to talk about TRACKERS without giving away too many of the book’s surprises which come from both story and structure so I shall err on the side of caution. I don’t think it’s letting too much out of the bag to say that there are three distinct books here, and though the reader assumes the stories will eventually intertwine most connections are not made until almost the very end so you are really reading three independent stories. While this maintains suspense it does require more than the usual amount of small-detail retention on the part of the reader, something that proved quite challenging with the audio version of the book.

The first and most prominent of the three stories centres around a woman called Milla Strachan who, when we meet her, is just coming to the decision to leave her violent, philandering husband and their boorish, spoiled son. Although she trained to be a journalist she has not worked for many years and struggles to find a job until she spies a small newspaper advertisement. That leads to a report-writing job with a government agency. In the second book we meet a young freelance bodyguard called Lemmer who is hired for the seemingly innocuous job of escorting two endangered rhinos being smuggled into the country from Zimbabwe on behalf of a wealthy and slightly dodgy farmer. In the final book of TRACKERS we follow the trail of former policeman Mat Joubert as he starts his new job as a private investigator and takes on the case of a missing husband whose wife is unsatisfied with what she perceives to have been a fairly cursory investigation by police.

All three stories are compelling in their own right though I have to admit to finding the first one a little tough-going in parts. Although the audio narration was excellent I found the very complicated plot a little hard to follow in this format and did have to rewind quite a bit which is something I very rarely need to do. I had no such problems with the other two books within this book and perhaps for that reason I enjoyed those two stories slightly more than the first.

There are several elements which link the books, the most obvious being that each depicts some version of tracking; be it people, animals, objects or something less tangible.  This could have been clumsy in a less talented author’s hands but Meyer is a terrific storyteller and manages to use this device almost without the reader noticing it’s being done. Another theme common to the stories is that the main character in each one is at something of a crossroads in his or her life and the events cause, or force, them to learn something not entirely comfortable about their own makeup. Milla Strachan’s case is probably the most dramatic of the three but these threads are all fascinating and provide part of the depth of this book.

The remainder of that depth comes from the other thing which links the books which is the  ever-present commentary on life in modern South Africa. It is almost as if Meyer has written a non-fiction book underneath the fictional one in which he is depicting a year in the life of his country. Setting the main part of the story in the time leading up to the country’s hosting of the football (soccer) world cup offers scope to show how the country and its residents want to be seen on the all-important international stage, while the disparate stories within TRACKERS allow a broad cross-section of ‘routine’ lives to be depicted which helps readers build up a real picture of the country today. Again it is something you almost don’t notice until the book is finished when you suddenly realise you have such a detailed picture of the place that you feel like you could walk into the pages and feel at home.

I think I’ve only scratched the surface of all that is good about TRACKERS so can only recommend you read the book for yourselves, though I’d only recommend the audio format to seasoned listeners. It is an intelligent, compelling thriller with a fantastic range of characters and an absorbing sense of place. At a time when many successful writers seem content to write the same book over and over again Meyer is to be applauded for continuing to stretch himself and his readers.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Trackers has been reviewed at International Noir Fiction, Mysteries in Paradise, Petrona, The Game’s Afoot and was chosen as one of 2011′s best thrillers by Kirkus Reviews

I’ve reviewed three of Deon Meyer’s other books Devil’s Peak, Dead at Daybreak and Thirteen hours.  There hasn’t been a dud in the bunch.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 4.5/5
Author website http://www.deonmeyer.com/
Translator K.L. Seegers (from Afrikaans)
Narrator Saul Reichlin, Rupert Degas, Sandra Duncan
Publisher Hodder & Stoughton [2011]
ASIN B005OSUOAE (downloaded from audible.com)
Length 17 hours and 55 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series standalone
Source I bought it
Creative Commons Licence
This work by http://reactionstoreading.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Books of the Month – July 2010

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That was Then

July was a month of reading highs and lows for me. Undoubtedly my favourite book for the month (and the year so far) was Adrian Hyland’s Gunshot Road. I know I have become a bit of a broken record but it really is a beautifully written ripping yarn and I encourage everyone to read it. Honourable mentions go to

  • Deon Meyer’s Thirteen Hours (a brilliant thriller with heart and humour on top of great action)
  • Sulari Gentill’s A Few Right Thinking Men (Australian historical fiction combining politics, social commentary and a puzzle in a most satisfactory way)
  • Teresa Solana’s A Not So Perfect Crime (a deliciously funny Spanish tale of brothers, justice and disillusioned left-wingers)

I finished another 8 books besides these but there were a couple of duds and another couple I haven’t found time to review yet.

New Additions

I somehow managed to acquire twice the number of books that I read for the month which just means I’ll have to learn to read faster. Among these treasures are some I’m really looking forward to reading including these:

What to read next?

I’ve been a bit disgruntled and distracted lately so at present am after lighter reading. I plucked the first title in a new cosy series from my TBR pile (Riley Adams’ Delicious and Suspicious) this morning. After that I might tackle one of the political titles I added to my TBR pile after asking for recommendations from you all on what to read while #ausvotes. I have Margaret Truman’s Murder at the Kennedy Center (thanks Margot) which looks like it might be light and political at the same time.

And then I’ll need to pay attention to my two remaining challenges for the year. I’m going to read James Thompson’s Snow Angels for the Scandinavian Reading Challenge (it’s set in Finland) and Charolotte Jay’s Beat Not The Bones (set in Papua New Guinea) for the Global Reading Challenge.

And all the while I’ll be plodding through R J Ellory’s A Simple Act of Violence in audio format. The book won the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award in July this year but at the moment I am struggling to understand why. In audio format the book is 18 hours long and feels every minute of it. I have so far (hour 7+) found it slow going and not terribly compelling. About the best I can say is that it “will do” as accompaniment to the dullest of my housework activities.

Chart of the Month

I’ve not got an actual chart this month but a couple of numbers:

$738.11

Is the amount I spent on all the books I read (including DNFs) in the first 6 months of this year. I only bought 58 of the 85 books but if I average the cost out across all the books read my hobby has cost me an average of $8.68 per book or roughly $1.24 per hour of reading entertainment (I’ve used an average of 7 hours reading time per book).

This is to be compared with

$1,914

which is a rough estimate of the amount I would have spent if I’d bought all 58 purchased books in Australian bookshops. It’s actually a quite conservative estimate of $33 per book because while I might have scored the odd $24 bargain I would have paid $45-50 per audio book (there are 28 of those) and would probably have incurred some hefty special order fees for some of the translated fiction I like to read (one book I ordered from Book Depository for $9.18 would have cost me $53 to ‘special order’ locally).

That’s why I don’t shop in Australian bookstores.

How do you say congratulations in Swedish?

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By now everyone who cares is undoubtedly well aware that while I was sleeping on Friday night Johan Theorin’s The Darkest Room was awarded the 2010 UK Crime Writer’s Association’s International Dagger Award for crime fiction translated into English. My heartfelt congratulations and thanks go to Theorin and his translator Marlaine Delargy for what is a wonderful book and a terrific win. Although it wasn’t my personal pick of the bunch I will repeat what I said when I finished all six of the shortlisted books: there wasn’t a dud in the bunch and any winner is deserving. I congratulate the five nominees (indicated by ** in the list below) and their translators too because they were in excellent company.

To look at the bigger picture for a minute I’m also grateful that there is an award for translated crime fiction at all, and also for the great websites that bring these works to my attention, in particular the excellent Euro Crime which is a brilliant source of reviews and information about what I should spend my pay cheque on each fortnight :)

I am reading my 17th translated book of the year at present. Before the past couple of years I simply did not read translated fiction. I barely even knew it existed really but so far this year I’ve read (in reading order):

Before you think I’m being all lefty intellectual in rating ‘foreign’ stuff above English works I should point out that the above list contains my equally highest rated books of the year as well as by far the worst book I have read this century and everything in between. But being able to read from a much wider range of settings and voices than just the English-writing ones has enriched my reading life, even including the odd dud (it’s The Last Pope in case you’re wondering).

I have another couple of dozen translated titles teetering on mount TBR and that’s without starting to think about the books eligible for next year’s International Dagger award. I wonder what treats I have ahead of me.

And the winner is…

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…I’ve no idea. The only thing that can be virtually guaranteed is that my personal selection for best of the shortlisted novels for the UK Crime Writers Association International Dagger Award for translated crime fiction will not be the one chosen by the judges. ‘Cos I rarely get these things right. However having bothered to read all the shortlisted novels I feel I’m at least entitled to a few thoughts on the subject.

I’m actually not much of a follower of awards but when the shortlist for this particular award was announced I had already read two of the six books and had another two on my TBR shelves so I made a deliberate choice to read all six of the books prior to the announcement of the winner. At least then, I thought to myself, I can legitimately rant long and loud about how the judges got it wrong (not that I’m averse to doing this in other circumstances but having read all the possible winners would, I imagined, give my ranting some gravitas).

Alas, it is not to be.

You see the judges have made a great selection of titles for the shortlist. They are a disparate collection of sub-genres and writing styles but there is not a dud among them. Naturally there are ones I liked more than others but I simply cannot see myself moving into major rant mode even if my least preferred of the books were to take the title. For better or worse no matter how things turn out on 23 July we will not see a repeat of the month-long rant that followed the announcement of Peter Bloody Carey winning his second Booker Prize for the un-punctuated ramble that is True History of the Kelly Gang.

In fact I am quite glad that I am not judging this particular prize. It would of course be a great pleasure to crown the winner (whoever he might be) (the only dead cert is that it will be a he) (though it could in fact be a dead he and I don’t fancy crowning a corpse). But I think I might feel awful about letting down the other nominees. For heaven’s sake I’ve rated four of the six books 5 stars out of 5.

I do find it a little easier to knock out Andrea Camilleri’s August Heat (though the translation by Stephen Sartarelli might just be the best of the bunch, it is certainly exquisite) and Tonino Benacquista’s Badfellas (translated by Emily Read) which I thought were both good but not great books. But when it comes to the remaining four I’m just about down to tossing a coin (assuming I can find a four-sided coin of course).

  • I loved the conclusion to Stieg Larsson’s famous trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (translated by Reg Keeland), and even all these months after reading it I am warmed by the way it fiercely and proudly depicts strong female characters, shows a side to Sweden that most of us probably found surprising and gloried in the role that investigative journalism rarely plays but is so sorely needed these days.
  • I cried (in a good way) upon finishing Arnaldur Indriðason’s Hypothermia (translated by Victoria Cribb). I found it a sad, beautiful and a totally compelling story that shows you don’t have to have 197 plot threads to make a great book
  • Johan Theorin’s The Darkest Room (translated by Marlaine Delargy) was truly haunting (in a literal and figurative sense) and I still find myself thinking of the many absorbing characters including storm-battered island of Öland
  • And finally there is Deon Meyer’s Thirteen Hours (translated by K L Seegers) which I only read this week but found to be a simply perfect example of its sub genre and the book most likely to be hurled at the next person to sneer at me that crime fiction isn’t proper literature.

In the end my personal favourite of these wonderful books is, by the width of a bee’s private parts (to misquote Monty Python), Hypothermia, though I have oscillated frequently on the subject and am only putting an opinion in writing because it would be churlish not to.

I’ve an idea it won’t win the award though.

If the award is for the best example of the genre then I’d be hard pressed not to plump for Thirteen Hours which does, I think, most perfectly encapsulate everything that is good about crime fiction (written first in English or not) in 2010.

I wonder though if The Girl Who… might not just take it out. It’s both a great book and one that has done much for crime fiction in general and translated crime fiction in particular. And I don’t think too many people would begrudge a win by what would be a sentimental favourite.

Any way it goes the award will be going to a deserving winner and I feel very grateful to all the authors and their splendid translators for providing me many happy hours of though-provoking entertainment.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

If you’ve not yet done so you can vote at Euro Crime (see the very top of the right hand side bar) for the book you want to win the award and again for the book you think will win the award.

Review: Thirteen Hours by Deon Meyer

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This is the last book I needed to read to complete the 2010 CWA International Dagger Award shortlist and is the third book I have read by Deon Meyer.

The story takes place across a single day. In the early Cape Town morning almost simultaneously a young girl’s body is found in a churchyard and a record producer is discovered dead in his home with his alcoholic wife sleeping nearby. Both cases are high profile and require urgent action, the first because it soon becomes clear that there is another young girl, an American tourist called Rachel Anderson, on the run from the people responsible for the dead girl and the second because if the man’s wife didn’t kill him then the most likely suspect is a celebrated gospel singer.  Two relatively new detectives, Vusumuzi Ndabeni (Vusi) and Fransman Dekker, are put in charge of one case each. Both are being mentored by Benny Griessel who is something of a dinosaur in ‘the new South Africa’ but who has lots of knowledge and experience to share if Vusi and Dekker choose to learn from him. Benny is under enormous pressure from himself and everyone around him. Can he still cut it when it matters?

A few weeks ago I described my perfect thriller. I said

If a thriller has

  • A twisty, turn-y plot that clips along at a decent pace and offers a pay-off for my investment of time (e.g. family reunited/world saved/justice done)
  • At least a couple of characters who, if not exactly three-dimensional, provide enough humanity that I care whether they live (or die), triumph over adversity (or fail) or right a wrong (or don’t).

it will probably get a rating of 3 (= decent/solid entertaining read) on my personal scale. There is a chance of extra points for humour, above-average excitement levels, deeper than usual exploration of a theme that interests me, a male character who doesn’t viewevery woman he meets as a potential bed mate or a female character who doesn’t look like a supermodel yet, miraculously, proves to have some value to the world anyway. Keeping the car chases short and detailed descriptions of weaponry to a minimum also scores bonus points.

Thirteen Hours gets a tick for each and every one of these points and a bonus for something I didn’t include above (but should have): an ending that didn’t make me roll my eyes and/or wish I’d stopped reading 30 pages beforehand. In essence it’s a perfect example of its genre and I absolutely loved it.

In thrillers plot is king and here the story is fast, unpredictable and has just the right level of complication. We switch back and forth between the two cases with often breathtaking speed and there are no convenient spots at which to pause for respite. This is the kind of book that the ‘page-turner’ cliché should be reserved for as I literally tore pages in my haste to find out what would happen next.

What excites me even more than a great story though is characters who involve and engage me and Thirteen Hours has bunches of them. Benny Griessel is intriguing: a recovering alcoholic struggling to re-connect with his family as well as find a place for himself in the newly restructured police force. But far from being dour or melancholic he’s funny and philosophical while still driven to do his job well for all the right reasons. His two mentees are equally interesting though vastly different people from Benny. Vusi is a quiet man reflecting on his mother’s simple view of the new world while finding his feet in a city new to him and Dekker is angry about prejudices he has been subject to as a coloured man in a black and white South Africa. There are plenty of other deft portrayals too and never knowing who would be a minor character and who would play a larger role made them all the more interesting.

Perhaps it didn’t hurt that the buzzing of the dreaded vuvuzela accompanied my reading of the last few chapters of the book (during the opening moments of the football world cup final) but another of the things that the book does beautifully is create a sense of its location. It is done more subtly than in Meyer’s previous books, such as when Rachel’s parents learn about South Africa’s crime rate from the internet and an when an elderly man who briefly helps Rachel discusses the country’s past and future, but it has no less of an impact for that. All the complications of a country in a state of great change where people of all backgrounds are both eager for and fearful of the new ways are played out in a myriad of small but fascinating details.

It’s not often that I feel like describing a book as perfect but I simply cannot think of a single thing I would change about Thirteen Hours. It has everything you’d want in a thriller and loads more besides, and is the hefty object I shall be hurling at the very next person who says in my hearing that crime fiction isn’t real literature.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 5/5

Translator K L Seegers Publisher Hodder & Stoughton [this edition 2010, original edition 2008]; ISBN 9780340953600; Length 412 pages

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Thirteen Hours has also been reviewed at Crime Scraps, Euro Crime, Material Witness, International Noir Fiction and Reviewing the Evidence

Deon Meyer’s Devil’s Peak was one of my top ten reads for 2008 and Dead at Daybreak was another excellent book of his that I read this year.

Books of the Month – June 2010

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That Was Then

I only finished 11 books in June and formally consigned one to the DNF pile. It’s hard to pick my favourite book for the month as both

were terrific. Having read Theorin’s previous book I fully expected The Darkest Room to be excellent whereas I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Bauer’s debut. It’s always particularly exciting to find a great new author.

Honourable mentions for the month go to a couple of top quality police procedurals from opposite sides of the planet

It’s marvellous to see this sub-genre being so well represented by relatively new authors as some of my old favourites have kinda lost their shine of late.

New Additions

Of the 18 books that made their way into the house this month highlights include

  • Andrea Camilleri’s August Heat (I’ve already started this one, it’s the 5th of 6 books on the shortlist for the CWA International Dagger Award that I want to read before the winner is announced later this month)
  • Elly Griffiths’ The Janus Stone (which I received from my reading fairy godmother and will leave on the shelves for a while as I like to leave it a few months between books in a series and I’ve only read the first book in May)
  • Stuart Neville’s The Ghosts of Belfast (I’ve read a couple of reviews of this that made it sound very, very tempting)

What to Read Next?

In July you’re likely to be seeing reviews for

  • Linda Castillo’s Pray for Silence (I finished it on this morning’s walk to work in 2°C, I read the first of Castillo’s mysteries last year )
  • Deon Meyer’s Thirteen Hours (the last book on the CWA International Dagger shortlist which I need to read before the winner is announced later this month)
  • Adrian Hyland’s Gunshot Road (my copy has been despatched from the UK and I await its arrival eagerly, having thoroughly enjoyed Diamond Dove)
  • Mario Vargas Llosa’s Death in the Andes (thanks to a recommendation from Jose Ignacio at The Game’s Afoot I tracked this one down for the 2010 Global Reading Challenge as it’s set in Peru)
  • Mystery Man by (Colin) Bateman (the subtitle is murder, mayhem and damn sexy trousers and I have Mack of Mack Captures Crime to thank for this funny recommendation)
  • John Hart’s The Last Child (this one’s next up on my audio book playlist, it’s won a bunch of awards so hopefully I enjoy it – a book needs to be especially good to take my mind of chattering teeth these winter mornings)

Chart of the Month

I’ve felt too busy to read as much as I wanted to this month and this chart of how many pages my eyes have scanned and hours my ears have absorbed shows it’s true: June has been my second lowest month of the year for printed pages and the lowest for hours listened :(

What about you? What did you really enjoy in June? What are you looking forward to reading in July?

Books of the month – April 2010

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In an effort to make my end of year selection of best reads a little easier I have decided to sum up each month’s bookishness here at the blog. Most people would have started in January but I’ve never been one to follow the crowd. Also I didn’t think of it until now.

That was then

I finished 15 books in April and threw another one on the DNF pile. Six of my completed reads were audio books which is an indication that the weather finally cooled down enough for me to get back into my regular routine of walking to walk every day (and sometimes home again too). Without wanting to sound all schmalzy I truly do feel grateful to be alive when someone tells me a great story as I walk through the city which I have almost to myself in the crisp early morning. Crunchy Autumn leaves underfoot are a bonus right now.

The pick of the month’s books was undoubtedly Arnaldur Indriðason’s Hypothermia. I am still reflecting on it and telling people about it and would be pressing my copy upon friends but for the fact I borrowed this particular book from the library (I’ve thought about opening my own branch but I’m not sure I want strangers reading newspapers in my lounge room all day to keep warm).  The one word I keep using to describe this book is beautiful. I’ll read it again one day.

Honourable mentions go to Deon Meyer’s Dead at Daybreak for introducing me to the compelling Zatopek (Zet) van Heerden and Margot Kinberg’s B-Very Flat for a fine modern take on the classic whodunit.

The other book from this month’s reading that I’m still talking about is Luis Miguel Rocha’s The Last Pope but only because it was the silliest book I’ve read in ages and I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think of something more polite than that to say about it when I go to my book club to discuss it on the weekend.

More to come

For now at least I’ve given up giving up acquiring books. I spent most of 2009 completely failing to give up getting more books and I know what the definition of insanity is. So I’m allowing my TBR pile to grow at its natural rate and I tell myself that I’m sensibly planning for the apocalypse. Oh you can smirk all you like about that but who’d have been laughing if the Icelandic volcano ash cloud had kept planes out of the sky for a year instead of a week huh?

Through a mixture of purchases both new and second hand (damn the library’s book sale), gifts from my fairy godmother, library borrowings and a prize win from the Scandinavian Reading Challenge host I acquired 18 books this month (a net gain for my TBR of only 2 books which is not too appalling). Highlights of these acquisitions that I’ve yet to read include:

Matt Rees’ The Samaritan Secret is the third Omar Yussef mystery set in Palestine and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the first 2 books. There’s already a 4th in the series so I need to catch up and look forward to reading this one soon.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The audio version of Shona MacLean’s The Redemption of Alexander Seaton is a historical mystery that’s been discussed at several of my favourite blogs including the excellent Confessions of a Mystery Novelist. It’s set in Scotland in 1620 and tells the tale of a disgraced would-be religious Minister who sets out to uncover the murderer of the apothecary’s nephew in an effort to redeem his good name.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Simon Lelic’s A Thousand Cuts is a book I wanted to read after seeing Maxine’s excellent review at Euro Crime. The book views a horrific school shooting from the viewpoint of various people impacted by the crime including police, family members of victims and staff and students of the school.

None of these books qualify for my several ongoing challenges though so I’m not sure when I’ll be reading these. The actual titles next up on my reading list are

  • Michele Giuttari’s A Death in Tuscany to complete the Europe portion of the global challenge (I’ve had it on the go for a week, it’s kind of dragging)
  • Leif Davidesn’s The Serbian Dane as book 2 in the Scandinavian Challenge (I’ve read the first 50 or so pages and am hooked)
  • Glen Peters’ Mrs D’Silva’s Detective Instincts and the Shaitan of Calcutta to complete the Asian leg of the global challenge (to be honest I bought it because I loved the title)
  • Malla Nunn’s Let the Dead Lie which is her newly released second novel that I am dying to read after devouring the first (plus I can count it for the Aussie authors challenge) (she wasn’t born here and the book isn’t set here but she lives here so she is an Aussie OK)

Chart of the month

As everyone probably knows by now I keep a lot of utterly useless information about the books I read and sometimes I create charts out of it all just to give the illusion I’m not barking mad. This month let’s look at how many pages I’ve read so far this year. I have no analysis of these figures for you except to say that you can tell January is holiday month in Oz – even though I was at work no one else was which meant I wasn’t busy and could get much more reading time into my day.

Pages read per month



Review: Dead at Daybreak by Deon Meyer

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In South Africa Zatopek (Zet to his friends) van Heerden is an ex cop now working, reluctantly, as a private detective. Lawyer Hope Beneke hires him to find the will of an antiques dealer called Johannes Jacobus Smit who was killed in his home nearly a year earlier. If the will is not found within seven days Hope’s client, Wilna van As who was Smit’s live-in partner, will not receive any of Smit’s estate. One thread of this book takes off then as a fairly standard, if action-packed, procedural that counts back from Day 7 through van Heerden’s investigation into what happened to Smit and where the will might have ended up. The other thread of the book, revealed in alternating chapters, is a recounting of Zet’s life from his childhood onwards to his present circumstance of being self-proclaimed trash with evil in his heart.

The flawed protagonist is certainly not a new invention but I did find myself completely engaged by Zet van Heerden whose route to personal destruction is far from run-of-the-mill. The son of a miner and an artist, Zet’s journey to becoming a policeman and profiler is revealed in such a way that it feels perfectly natural and entirely believable even though it described many events which are completely foreign to me. One of the things that I like most about the characterisation of Zet is that although he’s depicted as quite sad, even depressed at times, he’s not always so and he does maintain some healthy relationships. For example he’s very close to his mother, the only woman he cooks for, and manages to make great friends with some unlikely people along the way even if he struggles to find the kind of love his father and mother shared.

The plot is quite complicated, with both threads getting sidetracked at times, but I found it remarkably easy to follow which is a credit to both Meyer’s writing and the excellent translation from Afrikaans by Madeleine Van Biljon which has retained all the bantering and colloquialisms that are sometimes lost in translated novels. As often happens with thrillers I did find the ending a teeny bit disappointing in terms of the alarming number of testosterone fueled shoot-outs that took place, but overall it was interestingly paced,  full of suspense and quite unpredictable. Along the way there are some absolutely beautiful vignettes, such as when Zet and Hope discuss their personal feelings about the country’s referendum on apartheid in 1992 or when Tiny Mpayipheli, a man Zet engages to protect his mother when the search for the will gets dangerous, describes a rugby match he played in the Soviet Union.

Dead at Daybreak is a little more noir than what I tend to think of as ‘my’ kind of crime fiction but I found it captivating. Alongside the male-dominated narrative and the shootouts at the end there’s plenty of heart and intelligence in this book which made it a very satisfying reading experience for me. Saul Reichlin added to my enjoyment with his wonderful narration which included excellent South African accents that helped make me feel like I was half a world away and he might just have the sexiest voice I’ve heard on an audio book. Ever.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 4/5

Translator: Madeleine Van Biljon; Narrator: Saul Reichlin; Publisher: Whole Story Audiobooks [this edition 2007, originally 2000]; ISBN: N/A (downloaded from audible.com); Length 13hrs 3mins; Setting: South Africa

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The only other book of Deon Meyer’s that I’ve read (so far) is Devil’s Peak which I thought was so good it made it into my top ten reads for 2008.

2008 a year in reading

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Before I list my best books of the year a few statistics that sum up my reading year:

tbr-20081227

  • I started 94 books this year and finished 82 of those. That’s a few more DNFs than I usually have but I did try a lot of new (to me) authors so some uncompleted books are to be expected.
  • I acquired 158 books which is worrisome not only because it’s far more than I read but also because it is indicative of my growing ‘problem’. This time last year my TBR pile sat comfortably on a corner of my nightstand and now occupies its own separate bookshelf (see photo)
  • I bought less than half of those books and acquired the rest via mooches, gifts, review copies and borrowing
  • I tried 47 authors for the first time (a definitive personal record)
  • I joined four online reading groups and one new face-to-face one

Although it’s my favourite genre I don’t only read crime fiction and thought I should include a couple of my other great finds this year:

  • Shakespeare: A Short Life by Bill Bryson (a witty, beautifully observed ode from one word craftsman to another and I devoured it)
  • Blind Faith by Ben Elton (this saw Elton back at his best and offered a funny, if depressingly possible, vision for our collective future that is scarier than anything a crime fiction writer has ever written)
  • Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (detailing the events of a fictional English village which isolates itself to control an outbreak of plague in 1666 it brings alive one of the most vividly depicted fictional worlds I’ve ever had the good luck to stumble into)

And now on to my 10 favourite crime fiction reads of the year. Looking at the list, which has been mulled over extensively in the last week or so, there are some common elements to all the books: fascinating characters of one sort or another and the creation of a strong sense of location being chief among them.

As I rarely read books in the year they’re published (I’m too cheap to buy them at the exorbitant new release prices in Australia)  only one of these was actually published in 08. As I wasn’t blogging all year only some of the books have been reviewed here (links where available):

  • The Broken Shore by Peter Temple (which does, without trying, a far better job of representing Australia than the film of that name which was released this year and has oodles of dry humour and wonderfully sparse writing as well)
  • The Savage Altar (a.k.a The Sun Storm) by Asa Larsson (my first foray into Scandinavian crime fiction and a thoroughly suspense-filled, unpredictable story)
  • Blue Heaven by C J Box (a book that made me feel like I’d been to North Idaho by the time I’d finished reading it)
  • Still Waters by Nigel McCrery (the book with the most disturbing opening image I read all year which continued on to do something unique with this genre I love so much)
  • Devil’s Peak by Deon Meyer (yet another innovative approach to crime fiction with marvellous characters and great scene-setting imagery)
  • A Certain Malice by Felicity Young ( the second of three new-to-me Australian authors appearing on this list who can tell gripping yarns in a recognisably Australian voice without making me cringe and pretend to be Canadian)
  • Earthly Delights by Kerry Greenwood (a book with such warmth and great characters that reading it made me want to pack all my worldly belongings and move into the apartment building at its heart)
  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by  Stieg Larsson (a book I was pleased to have been bullied gently encouraged to read by Kerrie due to the wonderfully unique and captivating Lisbeth Salander) (I’ve even bought book 2 in the series at new release prices!)
  • Vodka Doesn’t Freeze by Leah Giarratano (not relying on a sole protagonist this book is brimming with strong, memorable voices including the villainous Jamaal Mahmoud with his simmering violence and pull-the-blankets-over-your-head terror inducing contempt for everyone he meets)

And my number one read of the year

#1  The Collaborator of Bethlehem by Matt Beynon Rees (published as The Bethlehem Murders in the UK and Australia but I got mine from the US).

I didn’t have to look at my reading notes for this book when preparing this article. I remember it most vividly both for its content and the way it made me feel. Though reading it made me so sad I struggled to finish it through streaming tears it’s the book I reflect most upon since finishing it. There’s a reasonably straight-forward plot about a flawed but morally strong and stubborn man trying to clear the name of his friend and stand up to the bullies around him. On another level there’s the depiction of Palestinian Bethlehem which is simply breathtaking. I’ve travelled in the Middle East and do keep up with news from there as much as I can but headlines, even in-depth reporting, never tell the whole story. This book humanised the news and events I hear so much about and provided what I think, sadly, is a fairly realistic picture of the day-to-day lives of displaced refugees in the region. It wasn’t a book I could put back on the shelf and forget. I’ve picked it up countless times to re-read passages, some of which still make me cry, and have badgered others silly until they agreed to read it too. I’ve yet to meet anyone who isn’t moved by it.

*****

In some ways this list is a little arbitrary. Perhaps the fact that these stuck with me a little more than the others is more an accident of timing than anything else because there are another 35 or so excellent books that I read this year that I had to weed out of this best reads list.

They are all, in combination, the collective reason I’m so happy that I’m one of those people who can enjoy the simple pleasure of losing myself in a great book and am very grateful to authors everywhere for supplying me with an abundance of choices in which to get lost. Bring on 2009.

Review: Devil’s Peak by Deon Meyer

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Title: Devil’s Peak

Author: Deon Meyer

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton (2007)

ISBN: 978-0-340-89705-8

In present-day South Africa three stories unfold in parallel. Christine explains to a patient Minister what led to her becoming a prostitute while Benny, an alcoholic police officer, has one last-ditch attempt to salvage his marriage and career. At the same time Thobela, a former freedom-fighter, is devastated when his adopted son is killed as an innocent bystander to a robbery and he turns to a life of vengeance.

This book reminded me of Peter Temple’s The Broken Shore. Although they’re set on different continents both books stretch the boundaries of traditional crime fiction and use the genre to demonstrate wider social issues in an understated way. And, like Temple, Meyer paints the most spectacular pictures with often only a handful of words, as with the sentence

“Beyond George the houses of the wealthy sat like fat ticks against the dunes, silently competing for a better sea view”.

The book is littered with such startlingly clear images that make it easy to visualise the people never met and the places never visited.

At the beginning of the book I almost groaned audibly at the thought of yet another drunken copper (I’ve lost count of how many I’ve met over the years) but Meyer’s depiction of the alcoholic’s constant struggle with his demons is the most eloquently heart-wrenching character development I’ve read in a long time and I was soon internally cheering Benny’s day-by-day efforts along. In fact Meyer takes his time, and ours, establishing all three characters and their separate, but ultimately linked stories. In a lesser writer’s hands this would be annoying but here provides a solid foundation for what otherwise could be an unbelievable or far-fetched climax. Instead the stories are tantalisingly built to their inevitable but gripping combination and resolution.

While I won’t pretend that one book can give a definitive view of such a mammoth thing as post-apartheid South Africa  I think a good book can provide a valid snapshot of a time and place that helps define the bigger picture. All three characters struggle with details of ‘the new South Africa’ in very real ways that made me think more deeply than I’ve done before about what the removal of the apartheid system might have been like to live through from a variety of perspectives.

I learned since reading this book that while not strictly part of a series there are other books featuring some of these characters however I didn’t once have the sense I was missing something by not having read anything else by this author. The book works entirely as a suspense-filled standalone novel which is haunting, unpredictable and utterly absorbing.

My rating 4.5/5

Other reviews:

Euro Crime reviewed the audio version of the book in June 2008