Deon Meyer

In the aftermath of a gruesome child abuse case that has caught the attention of the media, Inspector Benny Griessel struggles to maintain his sobriety in order to bring down a vigilante killer who has won the sympathy of the public.

Someone in Cape Town has chosen a conspicuous murder weapon--a century-old German handgun, with ancient bullets to match, bullets that tear through flesh and bone. The killer has a preferred method: one shot to the head and one shot to the chest, leaving a rapidly rising number of dead. For Captain Mat Joubert, this might be the last chance to prove that his life's slow spiral will not pull him under and sink him at last.

Early on a May morning in the depth of South Africa's winter, a woman's naked body, washed in bleach, is discovered on a stone wall beside the N2 highway at the top of Sir Lowry's Pass, some thirty-five miles from Cape Town. The local investigation stalls, so the case is referred to Captain Benny Griessel and his colorful partner Vaughn Cupido of the Hawks--the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations. The woman proves to be Alicia Lewis, an...

It's early morning in Cape Town and Benny Griessel, homicide detective with the South African police service, has a bad feeling. He's been sober for 156 days. But day 157 is going to be very tough. A teenage girl's body has been found on the street, her throat cut. Griessel has been assigned to mentor a young detective on the case. It turns out the girl was American - a P.R. nightmare in South Africa's #1 tourist destination - and she wasn't alone....

Six-foot five-inch Thobela "Tiny" Mpayipheli was once a feared freedom fighter, trained by the Stasi and KGB. Now, he's a family man working in a garage in post-apartheid South Africa. But when the daughter of one of Tiny's former associates comes to him with a desperate plea, he finds himself returning to his violent former life. With his old friend Johnny being held hostage, Tiny agrees to do whatever it takes to get him back safely. But as he races...

"At a guest house in the beautiful Franschhoek wine valley, a famous English mathematician is kidnapped and his two bodyguards are killed. It's clearly a professional hit, and the spent shell cases offer a chilling clue: Each is engraved with the head of a spitting cobra. Meanwhile, in Cape Town, a skilled young thief is using his talents to put his sister through college. Then one day he picks the wrong pocket, grabbing the wallet of a young American...

A week before Christmas, a young photographer discovers a plastic-wrapped corpse amidst the sand dunes north of Cape Town. It doesn't take long for the police to identify the body as that of Ernst Richter--the tech whiz founder of Alibi, an Internet service that provides unfaithful partners with sophisticated cover stories to hide their affairs. Assigned to the case is lead detective Benny Griessel--but unfortunately, his two years of sobriety have...