BOOK SA – Magazine

Mike Nicol’s Mace Bishop is back – and forced to take matters into his own hands yet again, as he and his partner-in-preventing-crime (sort of) Pylon Buso fight old foe Sheemina February over a crooked property deal, plus the odd assassination or two.

It’s BOOK SA’s great pleasure to bring you an excerpt from the 2nd Mace Bishop novel, Killer Country. Nicol can make even a family breakfast come over as gritty and ominous:

* * * * * * * *

6 Saturday

Mace popped a piece of croissant into his mouth, cracked open the newspaper to the story on page three: another four tourists robbed by the mountain mugger. All those rangers running around the mountain, they couldn’t catch this prick doing over the tourists. Unbelievable. Waves a knife at some Germans then disappears like he’s a spectre. Mace shook his head. One mugger getting away with it again and again. The sort of incompetence encouraged vigilantism. Wasn’t too far out of Mace’s mind to go up there, sort it out.

‘Papa,’ Christa said, ‘I’m trying to tell you something.’

Mace put the paper down on the breakfast table. ‘I’m listening.’

‘You’re not,’ said Christa. ‘Come on, Papa.’

‘I am,’ said Mace, wiped crumbs from his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I heard you the first time. I think I know this person, came to your school. Tell me again.’

Oumou, wearing a blue kikoi, came out of the house with coffee to where they sat eating breakfast beside the pool. Below them the city, Saturday quiet; up on the mountain early tourists rode the cable car to the top pointing at the sights: the harbour, the Waterfront, Robben Island, the curve of the bay along the West Coast.

Oumou said, ‘That is a bad story, Christa.’ But she smiled as she said it.

‘You didn’t laugh?’ said Mace.

‘She did,’ said Christa.

‘Oui,’ said Oumou. ‘I have to say so.’

‘There you go,’ said Mace. ‘So let’s hear it again.’ Cat2 stirred on his lap and he rubbed at the scar-tissue where as a kitten she’d been nailed to a wall. The cat arched against his massage.

‘Okay,’ said Christa. ‘This woman came to tell us about drugs. How she used to shoot up stuff, inject it into her leg so many times that they had to cut it off. Her leg.’ She giggled.

‘Heavy,’ said Mace, leaving the cat and stretching for an almond croissant.

‘She’s got this cool chrome pole screwed into her knee with a Nike on it, matching the one on her real foot.’

Mace smiled. ‘Yellow trainers.’

‘How’d you know?’

‘I just do.’

Christa glanced at him suspiciously. ‘Like how?’

‘If it’s the same person, that’s what she wears. Get on with the story.’

‘Okay. So she’s telling us about spiking between her toes. She’s got this syringe filled with blood and stuff, that’s gross and she’s showing us.’

Oumou poured coffee from the Bialetti. Smacked at Mace’s hand running up her thigh under the kikoi.

‘Maman! Papa!’ said Christa.

Mace winked at his wife, caught Christa watching them. ‘Tell it, C.’

‘You’re not listening.’

‘I am.’ Mace squeezed Oumou’s knee, returned his hands to breakfast. Smeared honey on the croissant, broke off a piece. He masticated, swilled it down with a mouthful of coffee.

‘So she unscrews it. Not unscrews. You know sort of pushes a button behind her knee, that pops off the pole.’

‘Prosthesis.’

‘That word,’ said Christa. ‘Pro-thesis.’

‘Pros,’ said Mace, feeding croissant to Cat2. ‘Prosthesis.’

‘Anyway,’ said Christa, ‘like she’s standing there on one foot, with her pros … whatever in her hand. Waving it like a wand. And we’re going, ah yuk, and she shouts “catch, hey”. Throwing her artificial leg down to us. For real. Right at us. Near to me. Everybody’s pushing not to touch it.’

‘What’s she doing?’ said Mace. ‘The woman on her one leg?’

‘I told you,’ said Christa. ‘She’s laughing. It’s, like, a big joke.’

Mace helped himself to more coffee and topped Oumou’s cup. ‘And then Pumla grabbed hold of it?’

‘Her and some others,’ said Christa.

‘But not you?’

‘I touched it.’ Christa grimaced. ‘It was all warm at the knee part.’

‘So who took off the trainer?’

‘Pummie.’ Christa glanced at her father.

Mace grinned, Pylon would like that one: his step-daughter getting in on the act. ‘And?’

‘The wooden foot had green toenails. That’s so gross.’

‘It’s supposed to be.’

‘Mace!’ Oumou laughed. ‘You are being unkind. This woman is brave, to talk about it.’

‘Of course,’ said Mace. ‘I agree she’s brave. It’s what she does, how she earns a living, being a motivational speaker. It’s what people do. You rob banks, you do your time, afterwards people pay big money to hear you speak. Or you get raped, your throat’s cut, you’re left for dead, you’ve got a new career.’

‘Mace.’ Oumou frowned at him.

‘What?’

‘That is not nice.’

‘That’s what happens. This chick was a druggie. She gets over it, she gets a new life. Goes to show how people move on. Turn stuff around.’ He pointed at Christa. ‘We got one right here. A couple of years ago she was paralysed for life.’ Mace flashing on the gunshot. Hearing Christa cry out. Seeing her collapse. The blood stain darkening at her stomach. He looked at his daughter, looking back at him across the table: her Zen face, her Buddha smile. Mace thought, this is why I’ve got to get out. Washed down the wish with coffee.

Heard Christa saying, ‘Papa! Papa, listen.’

Mace smiling at her.

‘Pummie wanted to know why she painted the toenails.’

‘What’d she say?’

‘She said to remind her of her foot. That she’d once had a real one.’

‘That is sad,’ said Oumou.

‘She’s tough,’ said Mace. ‘If it’s the woman I’m thinking of. Lives with an investigator, ex-cop, we used him once to track down stolen stuff. Chews a lot of mints. Nice guy. Him and his one-legged doll.

Mace’s cellphone rang. He reached for it lying on the table next to the basket of croissants and rolls. The screen displayed ‘Pylon’. He thumbed him on. Watched Christa push back her chair and stand. Beautiful, the black costume against her honey skin. The child’s body morphing into a young woman. He wasn’t sure how he felt about this: her childhood ending.

Said, ‘You’re interrupting my breakfast.’

Heard Oumou say to Christa, poised on the edge of the swimming pool, ‘I must buy clay, cherie: you will come with me?’ Saw Christa nod and flash a smile before she plunged into the water. Slipping in like a dolphin, hardly a splash.

Oumou turned from watching Christa gliding through the water, raised her eyebrows at him: who’re you talking to?

Mace said, ‘Pylon.’

Pylon said, ‘I’m driving now, passing Century City. Great view of the mountain opening up. I can tell you I’ve been sitting for four hours.’

‘Some particular reason you’re out there instead of at home?’

Mace walked to where he could see the city clearly through a break in the trees. The cascade of the garden suburb down the bowl of the mountain into the concrete centre. The buildings clustered tall and white there, the sea a flat blue beyond.

‘Driving behind this brand new black Yengeni. Nice car the ML350.

‘You’re thinking of one?’

Pylon not into buying cars at all, happy to use the office Merc.

‘Too arriviste.’

Mace smiled, turning from the view to his house: the house Oumou’d wanted of concrete and glass and chrome. Something as far removed from the mud towns of her desert life as she could get.

‘I work with clay, Mace,’ she’d said. ‘In my pottery are my memories. We must live in something modern. Where no one has lived before.’

Once the house was built Mace couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. He glanced above the roof at Devil’s Peak, deep shadow still in the kloof.

‘So where’ve you been?’ Mace waved at Christa to keep swimming. To Pylon said, ‘Help me out, I’m pulling teeth here.’

Pylon laughed. ‘Outside Mr Chocho‘s.’

‘Doing what?’

‘A stakeout.’

‘We’ve registered as investigators? I didn’t notice.’

‘This’s private and confidential,’ said Pylon. ‘Got nothing to do with us, Complete Security. Got to do with us the property investors.’

‘The West Coast thing?’

‘Precisely.’

‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Mace. ‘Maybe you lend me something against the Cayman account. An IOU.’

‘We can talk about it,’ said Pylon. ‘Another time. You have to listen to this first.’

‘Perhaps turn the music down,’ said Mace. The driving sound of the Cowboy Junkies in the background.

‘So what do I see?’

‘I couldn’t guess. Tell me.’ Mace watched Oumou clearing the table, Cat2 pawing at her for titbits.

‘I see my comrade and consortium partner Popo Dlamini coming out of Mr Chocho’s house.’

‘And this is interesting?’

‘At six in the morning. Very interesting. What I wonder is, does Obed Chocho know? What I also wonder is, how would that brother feel about this brother looking after his wife while he’s doing prison?’

‘It’s nine o’clock,’ said Mace. ‘Why’re you only on the highway now?’

‘I told you,’ said Pylon. ‘Staking out. Had to be sure Mrs Chocho’d been playing hostess. She’s driving the Merc I’m following. Must have a date in the city.’

Mace dipped his toe in the water, Pylon’s machinations on the empowerment deal labyrinthine in their complexity. Thorough though.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘after you’re finished playing Easy Rawlins, I’m meeting a prospective client. You got time to be in on that? A judge. Name of Telman Visser.’ He heard a blare of hooters and Pylon swear. ‘We could talk afterwards.’

Mace said, ‘Hey, talk to me. You going to make it or what?’

‘Can’t,’ said Pylon. ‘Consortium meeting. I told you, there’s major shit on this deal. The seller holding out ‘cos he can see pay dirt. Young white couple wanting in on the act or major compensation.’ A pause, Pylon muttering in Xhosa, ‘We’re coming off the highway. Check you later.’

Mace disconnected, thinking Pylon was taking strain on this one. Putting in a lot of effort to get them sorted, get them access to the Cayman stash. He flipped closed the cellphone. If only there wasn’t the court case. If only. He closed his eyes, shook his head as if to shake out the thought.

With an hour and a half till he met the judge, he could join Christa in the pool for a dozen laps. Work down the two almond croissants. And the salami roll. He stripped off his t-shirt. Stood poised in his Speedo on the edge of the pool.

Oumou came up, rubbed a hand over his stomach. ‘A little bit round,’ she said.

* * * * * * * *

• Killer Country is published by Umuzi, an imprint of Random House Struik
• Umuzi home
• Umuzi @ BOOK SA

Book details

• Killer Country by Mike Nicol
  EAN: 9781415201169
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Mixed Blood author Roger Smith is back with a new thriller that’s set to have readers riveted to their seats: Wake Up Dead. Here’s the blurb for the forthcoming US edition (the book will appear this Feb):

On a blowtorch-hot night in Cape Town, 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 choice that changes her life forever.

Disco and Godwynn, the ghetto gangbangers who sped away in Joe’s convertible, will stop at nothing to track her down. Billy Afrika, a mixed-race ex-cop turned mercenary, won’t let her out of his sight because 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.

The author has released an excerpt from the book on his website. Enjoy, but beware: it’s quite a ride.

The night they were hijacked, Roxy Palmer and her husband, Joe, ate dinner with an African cannibal and his Ukrainian whore.

The African, languidly elegant in a hand- tailored silk suit, was blue- black with tribal scars on his cheeks. He spoke beautiful French-accented English, and he could have recited the Cape Town phone book and made it sound poetic. The whore had yellow braids, the dark roots cross- hatching her skull like sutures on a cadaver. She didn’t say much, spent most of the meal hating Roxy for her naturally blonde hair and perfect American teeth.

When the cannibal paused his monologue to eat or drink, Joe Palmer tried to fill in. After the francophone eloquence, South African Joe sounded like a truck driven without a clutch. They were at Blues in Camps Bay, overlooking the ocean, and even though they sat down to eat at nearly nine, the last of the golden light still washed the beach and the slopes of Table Mountain. Cape Town is twinned with Nice on the French Riviera, and on a night like this Roxy could see why.

• Read the complete excerpt (pdf download)

Praise for the novel

“An intricate Robert Altman–like narrative that, when the pieces finally connect, forms a terrifying portrait of the Cape Flats. [A] searing vision of characters trapped in a fetid purgatory.” — Kirkus Reviews

“[A] stellar thriller. Bad choices, not bad luck, drive human depravity in this brutal fable. One fundamental irony unforgettably lingers: that these characters, trapped in poverty, ignorance, and prejudice, have really had no choice at all.” — Publishers Weekly

Book details

• Wake Up Dead: A Thriller by Roger Smith (US Edition)
  EAN: 9780805088762
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Margie Orford knows bullets. She knows inmates, and she knows gangs. I know because I’ve been there, at Orford’s launches and talks – one of them inside the Groot Drakenstein prison – where she’s explained how she’s fired the arms, spoken with the murderers and rapists, chased after the hijackers, travelled shotgun in the police van.

Orford’s knowledge is of the dangerous sort – it’s possibly what got her manuscript for her latest crime novel, Daddy’s Girl, stolen recently. Word has it that she employed all her insight into the mind of the criminal to get it back.

Daddy’s Girl, a prequel in Orford’s Clare Hart series of thrillers, is being launched at the Book Lounge tonight, so if you’re in the mood for a good krimi yarn, don’t miss it.

Meanwhile, BOOK SA is proud to present the book’s first chapter:

* * * * * * * *

August the eighth
THURSDAY

One

A grey heron waited in the reeds, beak poised above the pool.

When the prison gates opened for the man, the bird flew off. The fish dived, a flash in the tea-brown water.

Five-thirty. Nearly weekend.

The guards impatient to get home at the end of a long shift.

The man’s parole papers filed under a name not his own.

His fingers curled around the hundred rand note from the Prisoners’ Friend Society. He’d already discarded the address of the Christian halfway house expecting his arrival.

The man crossed the deserted road.

He wore borrowed trousers, a jacket that exposed his bony wrists, a white shirt. The smell of another man’s day in court, the sweat that came with the clock-stopping moment of sentence.

He waited, the last rays of the weak August sun warm on his back.

The guards packed up, listening as the radio spat out Cape Town’s news.

In the distance, the rattle of a minibus taxi.

It crested the rise, and he flattened his blade-thin body into a ditch next to the road.

The driver stopped. The guards glanced up: the new shift arriving. Nothing much to mention. Thursday would be a quiet night. They handed over, boarded the taxi, sped home.

Darkness descended.

The prisoner dusted off his clothes, eyes focused fifty metres ahead. The length of an exercise yard.

Ex-prisoner.

He cut through farmland, a shadow slipping down the serried vines.

The runty dogs lying between the workers’ cottages yapped.

A woman making her way home, stopped. She listened, but the dogs fell silent, and she walked on. Uncertain.

The man watched her, at ease. Prison erases a man’s smell, teaches him the art of absence.

Above him, the stars wheeled, freed from the barred square that had contained his nights for so many years.

On the stoep of a gabled farmhouse, dogs lifted their heads. Then settled again. Inside by the fire, the owners sipped brandy as they glanced at the day’s headlines.

He did not slow down as he scythed through the night.

At the crossroads, he orientated himself and headed for Cape Town.

~

No one would be waiting for him.

No one had, not since his mother’s funeral. His twenty-seven year-old mother, shot five times by her pimp.

Twice in the face, twice in the heart, once in the cunt.

He had hoped, then, that someone would claim him. No one had, after the funeral. Except the pimp who’d pinned him down for an old man to sample, both of them laughing at the blood, the tears.

Payment for the bullets used to kill his insolent mother.

He had melted into the cold Cape drizzle, sharpened a bicycle spoke, and gone to the shebeen where his mother’s killer sat. A beer in one hand and a girl in yellow hotpants in the other.

He had inserted the spoke into the pimp’s back, pressing upwards until the tip pierced his heart. Then he’d disappeared into the night.

Sorry Mom.

He’d had that inked on the skin above his heart.

Vrou is gif.

That above the other nipple, for the whore in the yellow shorts who’d pointed at him in the courtroom.

Woman is poison.

~

A taxi pulled over with its cargo of late-shift workers. He settled next to a window and watched the new housing developments whip past. Villas hiding behind security booms; an empty soccer stadium where armed guards with leashed Alsatians patrolled the encircling razor wire; a shopping mall offering discounts.

He’d been gone for years.

Things had changed for the rich.

The roads became clogged arteries. Factory shift workers hurried home in the dark. Young men swaggered on street corners.

He got out where the land was flat and the southeaster howled around huddled houses that stretched as far as the curve of False Bay. Government-built boxes for the people.

Nothing had changed for the poor.

He breathed in the smells of the place that had been his home.

Car fumes, a dead dog, the tang of salt from the distant sea.

The outside.

A forgotten dream that he had buried when he’d first gone to prison and been absorbed by the Number, the brutal prison brotherhoods. A killer at ten, the 27s had embraced him, the gang giving him rank and purpose and a sense of family more powerful than anything a mother outside ever presided over.

On the corner was the Nice-Time Bar, a corrugated iron lean-to attached to a brick house. White plastic chairs clustered around red Coke crates; five men sat drinking.

Inside the bar, a television flickered.

He ordered a beer from the barmaid, and stared at the woman on the screen who was unbuttoning her shirt.

The girl gave him his drink.

“Pop Idols,” she said, flicking through the channels. “It’s the final tonight.”

“Go back to it,” he ordered.

“It’s mos a rerun of Missing, that Doctor Hart’s gang-cherrie programme.” The barmaid rolled her eyes. “Just some Number gangster’s daughter showing off her scars. An excuse to show off her tits on TV. Hoping the Voice of the Cape will pay her for her story.

“Go back. Turn up the sound.”

She knew enough to do what she was told.

“All the same when they come out,” she muttered, lighting a cigarette. “An inch of skin, and the brain’s dead.”

He ignored her, listening to the rasp of the woman’s voice.

Pearl, she called herself.

Stupid name.

The barmaid finished her cigarette, going off to serve another customer.

The programme ended, the man drained his beer, and left.

~

He stood in the alley behind the shebeen, running through the plans he’d made with the other 27s, the generals who’d crouched in a circle.

The custodians of the unwritten law of the Number gangs had decided who should die, and when.

Any slight, any unearned claim to rank, any secret revealed, was a betrayal that had to be paid for in blood.

That was the law of the 27s.

He did not have much time.

He did not have enough information.

But he knew where to start.

He took the hand-fashioned knife from the sole of his shoe, slipped it into his pocket.

An expert at prising open secrets.

* * * * * * * *

• Daddy’s Girl is published by Jonathan Ball
• Jonathan Ball home
• Jonathan Ball @ BOOK SA

Book details

• Daddy’s Girl by Margie Orford
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781868423262
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

In her tantalizing interview with Crime Beat today, Jassy Mackenzie has this to say about the two villains in My Brother’s Keeper:

I think it must be a serious character flaw on my part that I love flawed characters! Although my villains are both cold-blooded killers, I think Paul Kenyon is somewhat more human and less psychopathic than Whiteboy. If I had to choose to be stranded on a desert island with one of them it would be a difficult choice, but I’d probably go with Paul. I think I might live a few hours longer.

Mackenzie’s launch is tomorrow night; but you can get to know Paul Kenyon right now:

* * * * * * * *

Three

At seven a.m. the kitchenette at the ambulance base was crowded with workers. Red-eyed staff with creased uniforms were having a last shot of caffeine before signing out. Most were sluggish with exhaustion, but Nick spotted a few who were wired with adrenaline, clustered in a group and talking at the top of their voices. He guessed they’d just worked a crime scene.

He jostled his way across to the other side of the room in pursuit of what Laki jokingly referred to as ‘the finest house blend’. It was actually cheap, bitter and chicory-laced, as fine as dust, spooned from a plastic container and served in a polystyrene cup. It always puzzled him that, in a privately owned EMS company where they had state-of-the-art technology and equipment and the newest vehicles, the coffee was so appallingly bad.

It wasn’t the worst he’d ever had. That award went to a hotel in Freetown, Sierra Leone, back in the days when he was an army medic. The start of their mission had been delayed an extra day due to an event of overriding international importance – the Rugby World Cup final at Ellis Park, Johannesburg.

They’d grouped around the small television set in the hotel bar and watched the game. Sat and swigged the unpalatable coffee. Downed crates of beer. He guessed every soldier in the unit had made the same bet – if South Africa beats New Zealand, I’ll get out of this godforsaken country alive.

When the Springboks won, the soldiers in that hot, smoky bar had shouted and cheered and high-fived each other. Smacked their Star Lager bottles together in a toast to victory.

Most of them had come home safe. But not all. In war, it was never all.

*

‘Coffee, Mr Kenyon?’ One of the dispatch operators greeted him, a curvaceous brunette with short, spiky hair. What was her name? Diane? Davine? Yet again, it eluded him, so he gave her shoulder a friendly squeeze and said, as he always did, ‘Thanks, sweet pea.’

She handed him a steaming cup, smiling in a way that made him think coffee wasn’t the only thing she wanted to offer him. She was cute. Sexy and fun, no doubt about it, but so young. She looked about eighteen, although he guessed she’d have to be a couple of years older to work in the high-pressure environment of ambulance dispatch. Far too young for him, either way. He was thirty-six. They were generations and worlds apart. A friendly squeeze on the shoulder was as far as he’d allow this relationship to go.

‘How did my callout go?’ she asked him. ‘That one on the highway?’

‘We took a girl to hospital.’ He took a sip of coffee, grimacing at the rank aroma. ‘She was alive. Bad leg injuries, though. Can’t say if she’ll make it.’

Jon, a red-haired medic, overheard his words and turned away from the chattering group.

‘So you took the passenger in?’ he said. ‘I was called out for the driver.’

‘Dead?’ Nick asked.

The man shook his head.

‘Gone,’ he said. ‘Didn’t find him, didn’t find his body. We searched with the police for more than an hour. It was light when we called it off.’

‘He must be alive, then.’ Nick frowned.

‘You sure the woman wasn’t driving?’ Jon asked.

‘Positive. You sure you looked properly?’

Jon’s confused expression matched his own. ‘Positive. We walked that highway flat. Nobody there.’

Nick shrugged. ‘Stranger things happen, I guess. He’s not the first guy to be thrown clear of a rolling car and survive.’ Although remembering the devastation he’d witnessed, he thought it was unlikely.

‘I picked up a handbag and a wallet that belongs to your passenger. I’ll take it through to Jo’burg Gen tomorrow,’ Jon said, wiping a drop of coffee off his freckled chin.

‘She’s at Sandton Medi-Clinic.’ Nick corrected him.

‘Not for much longer. I spoke to the boys there. She’s got no medical aid.

As soon as she’s stable, she’s going to be transferred.’

‘Shame,’ the dispatch operator said, pouring the contents of her half-full cup into the sink. ‘Poor girl.’

Shame was an understatement, Nick thought. Johannesburg General Hospital, where Natasha would go, was overcrowded, understaffed and underfunded, with demoralised nurses, ancient equipment and hygiene standards that veered between inadequate and deadly, depending on who was on duty. He recalled Natasha’s frightened eyes, her crushed and bleeding limbs.

‘Will I be safe?’ she’d asked him. An odd question. The more he thought about it, the more it bothered him. Safe from what? The dispatch operator saw his expression as she turned to go. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Their ICU department’s fine. But when they move her to a general ward she’ll have to put padlocks on her pyjamas or they’ll be stolen right off her.’ She sashayed away, swinging her hips.

Nick said his goodbyes, retrieved his gun from the locker, and walked downstairs to the parking lot where his silver Jeep waited.

Natasha’s phone was an entry-level Nokia with a cheerful red casing. Cheap and simple. Pretty indestructible, too, he decided, because it didn’t seem any the worse for wear after the accident and the rain.

But the last number dialled wouldn’t connect. It was the right one, he knew that, because it was saved under the name ‘Khani’. He’d tried several times, the first just after she’d been admitted, and after that whenever he’d had a chance. Each time, the call cut off before it rang. He didn’t know what the problem was. He’d tried dialling it on his own phone without success.

Perhaps the storm had knocked out the power somewhere; perhaps a cell-phone tower had gone down. He punched the button, wondering what he’d say if it was answered this time. ‘Natasha’s been in an accident and she wants you to go …’ Go to the hospital? Go home? Go to hell? He didn’t know.

But there was no point in wondering. Once again, the phone refused to connect.

*

A few hours later, it rang. The sound jerked him awake. At eleven a.m. his bedroom was quiet and dark. The unattractive thick, black blinds he’d installed gave the room a deliberate tomb-like effect, but aesthetics were a minor concern when the alternative was trying to get to sleep with the morning light streaming in through the window.

Now the phone’s screen flickered an incandescent blue in the murky room as the Nokia ringtone blared at full volume. The instrument buzzed on his wooden bedside table like a beetle on its back.

Nick grabbed it, squinting at the bright keypad with bleary eyes. He stabbed the answer button and, without thinking, said hello.

Silence. And then, without a word, the caller disconnected.

‘Damn,’ Nick said. He propped himself up with his elbow and began scrolling through the menu, trying to trace the incoming number. Before he found it, the phone rang again.

This time he was better prepared.

‘Natasha’s phone,’ he said.

‘Is she there, please?’ A woman’s voice. Pleasant but worried.

‘She’s in hospital,’ he replied, fumbling for the light switch. ‘She was in an accident last night.’

‘What?’ Her voice thrummed with stress. ‘My God. Is she all right?’

‘She’s in ICU. Serious leg injuries.’

The caller let out a deep, ragged sigh. ‘Oh, no. I can’t believe it. Which hospital?’

‘Jo’burg General.’

A pause. He guessed she was pulling herself together. When she spoke again, she sounded stronger, more coherent, as if she had forced the stress into retreat.

‘Thanks for letting me know. Who am I speaking to?’

‘Nick Kenyon. I’m the paramedic who took her in. And you are?’

‘Rachel Jacobs. I’m a friend of her friend Khani.’

‘Khani?’ Nick sat straighter. ‘That’s great. I’ve been trying to phone him all night. Natasha wanted me to give him a message.’

Another, longer pause.

‘You can’t give Khani a message,’ she said. Her voice broke and she cleared her throat. ‘He’s dead.’

* * * * * * * *
(more…)

Now that the Cape Town Book Fair has come and gone, we can get back down to the business of shaking the tree of SA Lit.

The juiciest item to fall at our feet in the past many weeks was the announcement, by Umuzi, of the publication of James Kilgore’s We are All Zimbabweans Now – a novel that tells the story of Ben Dabney, a young American who falls in love with Zimbabwe, but finds the scales falling from his eyes as he penetrates the darker areas of the country’s history.

The plotline alone qualifies the book as “juicy” – but it leaps to the fore of juicincess when you add the author’s own history with southern Africa into the mix.

BOOK SA has been given permission to reproduce the complete text of the pdf excerpt that’s available on the Umuzi homepage (see link below). Here you go:

* * * * * * * *

Chapter 2

‘Which hotel, sir?’ the taxi driver asks as he closes the trunk of his gleam-ing yellow Datsun. The latch catches on the third try.

‘King George the Sixth,’ I reply.

‘The King George, sir,’ he answers as if he hasn’t heard correctly.
(more…)