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Library | Call Number | Status |
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Searching... Monmouth Public Library | Fic (m) Meyer, D. 2008 | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Salem Main Library | Meyer, D. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
From rising South African thriller writer Deon Meyer, a gripping suspense novel about revenge, forgiveness, and the race to catch a trained killer.
A young woman makes a terrible confession to a priest. An honorable man takes his own revenge for an unspeakable tragedy. An aging inspector tries to get himself sober while taking on the most difficult case of his career. From this beginning, Deon Meyer weaves a story of astonishing complexity and suspense, as Inspector Benny Griessel faces off against a dangerous vigilante who has everything on his side, including public sympathy.
A gruesome abuse case has hit the newsstands, and one man has taken it upon himself to stand up for the children of Cape Town. When the accused is found stabbed through the heart by spear, it's only the beginning of a string of bloody murders - and of a dangerous dilemma for detective Griessel. The detective is always just one step behind as someone slays the city's killers. But the paths of Griessel and the avenger collide when a young prostitute lures them both into a dangerous plan - and the two find themselves with a heart-stopping problem that no system of justice could ever make right.
Author Notes
Deon Meyer is an internationally renowned crime writer who also works as a journalist and an Internet consultant. He is the author of Heart of the Hunter, Dead at Daybreak, and Dead Before Dying. He lives in Cape Town, South Africa.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Complex, finely wrought characters, keen psychological insight and a compelling plot lift this crime novel from South African author Meyer (Dead Before Dying). Former mercenary Thobela Mpayipheli is trying to live a peaceful life, but these plans are shattered when his eight-year-old son, Pakamile, is shot dead. The two gunmen responsible escape before sentencing, and the grieving father decides to take matters into his own hands. As he pursues his son's killers, Mpayipheli begins to target pedophiles and other perpetrators of violence against children, meting out justice with a Xhosa tribal sword called an assegai. Dubbed "Artemis" by the papers as the killings increase, Mpayipheli becomes a kind of folk hero to the people of Capetown. Insp. Benny Griessel, an aging alcoholic whose struggles with the bottle have all but cost him his family and his life, works the case with a desperate intensity. Griessel finds an unlikely ally in Christine van Rooyen, a young prostitute, who lures the detective into a very dangerous plan of her own when her young daughter goes missing. This book is easily Meyer's finest effort to date. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* A former counterintelligence operative for the anti-apartheid movement, Thobela Mpayipheli, featured in Meyer's excellent Heart of the Hunter (2004), has shed his violent past to become a loving father to his adopted son. That all changes the day his son is killed in a botched robbery, and the killers escape from jail. Thobela cannot allow the injustice of his son's murder to go unpunished, for in a country where the system routinely fails, Thobela feels deeply that somebody has to take a stand. While hunting for the killers, he also begins murdering pedophiles, stabbing them through the heart with an assegai, the weapon favored by his Xhosa ancestors. As his popularity grows in Cape Town, the police come under increasing pressure to capture him. Inspector Benny Griessel, struggling to overcome his alcoholism, dedicates himself entirely to the case. Meanwhile, a young prostitute comes up with a plan to extricate herself and her daughter from the life, a plan that will put the three principals on a collision course. Meyer weds his taut plot to deeper social issues and to flawed but compelling characters in a novel that is almost unbearably suspenseful.--Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2008 Booklist
Library Journal Review
In his fourth thriller set in and around Cape Town, South African crime writer Meyer interweaves the stories of three desperate individuals. Thobela Mpayipheli, a former Xhosa assassin last seen in Heart of the Hunter, is unable to stop two gas station thieves from killing his stepson. Driven by vengeance and armed only with an assegai (a spear), he begins to track down the thieves. Unsuccessful at first, he expands his crusade to include those suspected of sexual crimes against children. As the bloody killings mount, Detective Inspector Benny Griessel, an alcoholic determined to stay sober in order to win back his wife and children, is assigned the assegai case. Meanwhile, Christine van Rooyen, a prostitute with a young daughter, tells a clergyman how she became involved with the local boss of a Colombian drug cartel. In time, the lives of all three will collide with devastating results. Readers will need a measure of patience to handle the quick jumps between stories and the half-page or so that it takes to figure out whose story is now center stage. Still, Meyer's ability to probe the depths of his major characters makes this read well worth the effort. Recommended for public libraries.-Ron Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tuscon (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.