Nicol’s view of
contemporary society is one that can make readers very afraid at the same time
as entertaining them. (Review by Margaret von Klemperer)
Here Mike Nicol, who is deservedly hailed as one of South
Africa’s leading thriller writers, is launching a new series, this time
centered on Captain Zara Dewane of the police’s Internal Crime Unit. If you
have been following the horror show that is the Madlanga Commission, you might
rightly assume that such a unit would have its hands full. Nicol helpfully
provides a list of the characters at the beginning of the book, but while I
don’t wish to give spoilers, it is a list that is going to diminish at an alarming
pace as you read on.
The action starts when Zara and her sidekick Wynstan Adams are called to a cottage on the West Coast where a cop has shot his family and himself, and in the shed behind the cottage are a whole lot of stolen firearms. Some kind of corruption is obviously at play, but what Zara needs to find out is how deeply it goes. Local police are presumably involved, but this all seems to reach its tentacles much further into the hierarchy.
As well as dealing with potential criminals who outrank her, some by a very long way, Zara has a messy private life to contend with – something that seems to affect the vast majority of fictional cops – and also operates on a very short fuse which can complicate things. As Zara struggles to unravel the tangle of corrupt cops, stolen guns, gangsters, shady diamond dealers, and very dubious money transactions, the violence escalates. She is a target, and there is going to be a lot of collateral damage.
Nicol’s style is laconic and his storytelling is fast-paced. The picture of the South African police service – and South Africa in general - that he paints is deeply unsettling and disturbing, particularly as there is no reason to think that this is a fictional exaggeration. For some readers, this may all come a little too close to the bone – cosy crime it certainly is not. But one of the great strengths of good thriller writing is that it can draw a picture of the real world for readers who might otherwise bury their heads in the sand. Nicol’s view of contemporary society is one that can make readers very afraid at the same time as entertaining them. – Margaret von Klemperer
Falls The Shadow is
published by Macmillan: ISBN 978-1-77010-946-9
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