Review: TRACKERS, Deon Meyer

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press (September 6, 2011)
• Language: English - (originally written in Afrikaans. translated into English by K Seegers)
• ISBN-10: 080211993X
• ISBN-13: 978-0802119933
• Source:  advanced copy as an e-version from NetGalley provided by the publisher Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
• aka SPOOR (Afrikaans title)

Marketing Copy

Lemmer, a freelance bodyguard, goes against his rule to not get involved when a wealthy farmer asks for his help smuggling a pair of rare black rhinos out of Zimbabwe, where the animals are murdered for their horns. Before he knows it, Lemmer is in a small airplane, zipping across the border with an airsickness bag in his hand and a military-grade shotgun at his feet. But trouble finds Lemmer on a deserted road in Zimbabwe that night. Big trouble.

Back in Cape Town, Milla Strachan, the emotionally abused wife of a philandering husband and the mother of a cruel teenage son, works up the courage to pack up and start a new life. But at forty, it’s tough to find work as a journalist and Milla takes what she can get—in this case, a classified job writing intelligence reports. It’s exciting work, more exciting than she could have imagined, and more dangerous than she could have ever expected. Connecting Milla and Lemmer is Mat Joubert, a former detective working on his first case as a private eye.

Moving between a phenomenal cast of characters including farmers, outlaws, gangsters, and intelligence agents, Meyer delves deep into the people, the problems, and the landscapes of South Africa. He is an insightful writer that expands the reader’s horizons as he threatens to take ones breath away.

For a different blurb check the page on Deon Meyer's own website where other aspects of the story are described, you can browse the photo gallery the author assembled before he began writing, or see an Afrikaans trailer on YouTube.

My take

I found TRACKERS a challenging book to read but all my "problems" are probably minor when you consider what Deon Meyer has attempted to do, and succeeded in doing. The book's length and structure create complexity.

Another reviewer talks about the roller coaster ride you get when the novel presents a series of seemingly disconnected events that involve rhino smuggling, gang warfare, the FIFA soccer tournament and Al-Qaeda threats, and then get muddled up with intelligence gathering. The reader knows that somehow all of these things must jell together and it is almost with a sigh of relief that you welcome a familiar face, Mat Joubert, Bennie Griessel's boss in earlier books. You just know if anyone can get you out of this mental mess, then Mat can.

The novel is set in a South Africa that has "gone wrong". Mat Joubert for example has resigned from a police force that he feels has lost its way, where he has become an insignificant and ineffective cog, but he comes to realise his new job is no better.

But when he was inside, the last two, three years, another kind of loss had slowly overcome him –a disillusionment, a disappointment, a powerlessness, a realisation of potential leaking away, possibilities lost. He, who had been so positive to begin with, who believed the police service could get better, could adapt to the new challenges, new realities. He had supported the ideal wholeheartedly and enthusiastically, the ideal of a SAPS which reflected the population demographic, which deployed affirmative action to cancel out old injustices, which transformed to a proud, effective, modern instrument of government. Only to see how it was slowly poisoned by politics and good intentions and haste and stupidity. And, in the end, by greed and corruption. And when he spoke up, when he warned and advised and pleaded, they marginalised him, pushed him out of the pack, made it clear that they no longer had any use for him. A lifetime’s work. For nothing. No, no, he mustn’t think like that.

Take the case of Milla Strachan, a housewife, once trained as a journalist, but on the sidelines with home duties for twenty years. Gets a job with a government agency that assembles "intelligence" reports. Those who employ her have an agenda in their recruitment - they really want people who won't ask questions, despite the important nature of their work.

“You do realise, we are all rejects,” said Jessica the Goddess as she poured more red wine, her words fuzzy from the alcohol. “All those questions you answered during the interviews, all the psycho-babble like ‘are you an ambitious person?’, it’s all bullshit. All they wanted to know was, are you a reject. They like that. A lost cause, an outsider. Damaged goods, well isolated.”

And as a result their reports become misinformation. Those at the writing level often see connections but their incompetent managers jump to the wrong conclusions and innocent people are credited with traitorous intent and become the target of surveillance and expensive "operations".

There's a lot to think about in TRACKERS. It is as if Deon Meyer has all these ideas boiling inside him - things he must write about - but only an annual book to do it in. This gives TRACKERS a voice that goes beyond crime fiction.

My rating: 4.7

Other Deon Meyer titles I have reviewed (I have many to catch up on)
DEVIL'S PEAK
4.8, THIRTEEN HOURS

"Counting" TRACKERS in these lists: e-book challenge, 2011 Global Reading Challenge, and translated books.

Review: THIRTEEN HOURS, Deon Meyer

Published in Afrikaans 2008
translated from Afrikaans by K. L. Seegers 2009
Published in English by Hodder & Stoughton 2010
ISBN 978-0-340-95359-4
412 pages

When the story opens at 5:36 am, the girl has been running for over 3 hours. On Signal Hill Road she meets a woman with a dog, and asks for help. "They're going to kill me.... Call the police", and she runs on.

Detective Inspector Bernie Grissel is woken at about the same time. A girl's body has been found in the grounds of the Lutheran Church.
South Africa's Serious and Violent Crimes Unit has recently been dissolved, and Benny has a new job in the Provincial Task Force, mentoring six high flyers, trying to make good detectives out of them. He's luckier than his former boss Mat Joubert who seems to have gone into head office limbo. Benny's protege is already at the scene of the crime, and making minor mistakes.

By 7 am there's another body - this time the victim is the head of a record company. He has been found lying on his living room floor, shot three times, and his wife, and alcoholic is lying next to his body. Another detective for Benny to mentor.

Both cases are headline catchers, particularly when the dead girl is confirmed as an American backpacker, and the girl she is travelling with is found to be missing. These cases will confirm whether Bernie Grissel is any good as a mentor, whether the new scheme will work, and whether 3 of the new detectives have what it takes. There are local and international reputations riding on successful outcomes.

The cases are worked at a frenetic pace throughout the day, and the reader is made aware of the passage of time by section headings such as 05:36 - 07:00. The action moves swiftly, and reaches crisis point in both cases by the end of the day.

I enjoyed my second outing this year with Bernie Grissel (see my review of  DEVIL'S PEAK). He is a likeable and very human character. In THIRTEEN hours he is nearing the end of his 6 months without alcohol, and wondering if his wife Anna will take him back. He realises though that he really has come to enjoy his independence.

You are probably wondering if you need to read the preceding title first. While I always recommend reading a series in order, there is no doubt that THIRTEEN HOURS works quite well on its own. It seems to me that Deon Meyer has seen to it that there is sufficient backstory to keep most new readers happy.

My rating: 4.8

THIRTEEN HOURS has been shortlisted for the 2010 CWA International Dagger,

Other reviews to check: Reactions to Reading, Crime Scraps, Euro Crime

Visit Deon Meyer's website

Review: DEVIL'S PEAK, Deon Meyer

You might like to read my progress report written back in December.

First published in English: 2007
Translator: K.L. Seegers
Afrikaans title: Infanta
French title: Le Pic Du Diable
German title: Der Atem des Jagers
Italian title: Afrikaan Blues
Author's site
Audio version: 14 hours 40 mins.

Three narrators weave a story - Bennie Griessel, a detective whose alcoholism is in danger of making him a "has been"; Thobela Mpayipheli, former KGB sniper, whose personal loss has turned him into a vigilante and has brought him to wreaking justice when the system failed him; and Christine van Rooyen, the prostitute who becomes entangled with a drug runner and small time crook who is part of an international cartel.
For much of the book Christine is telling her story to a minister, sitting in his study, unburdening herself. In the long run all three will have blood on their hands, and all three will have administered their own form of rough justice.

The narration often slides imperceptibly from Christine's story to that of Bennie or Thobela, and it comes as a surprise to the reader (or in my case the listener) that you have made that transition. In the long run I was never quite sure whose eyes I was seeing the world through.
There are some wonderfully drawn characters in this story, and the three threads are beautifully layered.
Saul Reichlin's voice (the reader) was really the only thing that reminded me that this novel was originally written in Afrikaans.

I haven't read any Deon Myer titles before, but Thobela has apparently appeared in an earlier book (HEART OF THE HUNTER), and Bennie was a minor character in DEAD BEFORE DYING. One thing is sure, I will be looking for further titles.

My rating: 5

Other reviews to check:

• Complete Review
• Karen Meek of EuroCrime
• Sunnie
• Reactions to Reading
  

Progress Report: THE DEVIL'S PEAK, Deon Myer

In the car I'm listening to THE DEVIL'S PEAK by Deon Meyer. I'm only just about half way through the 15 hours of the book, and with holidays coming up, I'm not going to finish it any time soon, most probably not this year.

I'm sharing the Audible blurb with you, but in reading it I realised that I've found out something that I didn't know even though I'm well into the book.

Here is the blurb from Deon Meyer's own site:

About the book

My name is Benny Griessel and I am an alcoholic.

"Hello, Benny," said thirty-two voices in a happy chorus.

"Last night I drank a whole bottle of Jack Daniels and I hit my wife. This morning she kicked me out the house. I have gone one day without drinking. I am here because I can't control my drinking. I am here because I want my wife and children and my life back."

But getting his life back won't be easy for Detective Inspector Benny Griessel of Cape Town's Serious and Violent Crimes Unit, because there is a vigilante killer on the loose - a ruthless executioner with a personal vendetta against the scum committing crimes against children.

With the media screaming, politicians turning up the heat, his young, inexperienced colleagues bumbling, and the body count rising, Griessel has to resort to the desperate measure of setting a trap.

But his brilliant plan does not quite take into account the love of a sex worker for her child, the ruthlessness of the deadly Sangrenegra drug cartel or his own passion for the healing powers of the bottle.

Karen Meek of EuroCrime has a nice review of the audio version that I am listening to.

I've also learnt tonight that the novel was originally published in Afrikaans (2004) and then translated into English in 2007.

Want to find out more about the novel?

• the complete review's Review.
• Sunnie enjoyed it earlier this year
  

You're going to have to wait a few weeks for my review though. Am I enjoying it? yes!