Once again, Deon Meyer creates a vivid and sometimes frightening look at life in contemporary South Africa, which serves as the background for a real can’t-put-it-downer of a thriller. In the course of his six previous novels, each of which has been more exciting than the previous one, he has continued to expand his plotting and characters. This is his most complex and intricate novel yet, filled with twists and ironies and a series of surprises in the conclusion that makes it all work. Unlike most of his previous novels, however, this one is divided into four separate sections, each of which develops independently from the others, like individual novellas, with little to connect them until late in the novel. What the reader knows from the outset is that South Africa’s Presidential Intelligence Agency (PIA) has uncovered a plot which suggests that militant Muslims are planning a takeover of the country with the aid of violent gangs and disaffected youth from the poorest neighborhoods of Capetown. Since the PIA itself is threatened with the prospect of its absorption into a national super-intelligence agency, they are sometimes overly zealous in promoting their own interests.
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Author Philip Hensher is nothing if not controversial, and a quick look at the ratings for his novels on Amazon in the UK will show the typical love-him-or-hate-him distribution of star ratings for his books. Though Hensher was named in 2003 as one of Granta’s Twenty Best British Novelists, and his previous novel, The Northern Clemency (2008) was nominated for the Man Booker Prize, many readers have never forgiven him for what may be one of the most infamously nasty book reviews ever written. Having never read a Hensher novel before, and having heard little about him, living as I do “across the pond,” I approached this novel with some sense of uncertainty, hoping that the brilliance of the author’s own work would nullify the opprobrium directed toward him by his resentful critics. I need not have worried. This book, though not without its excesses, is a significant and utterly compelling work of social criticism, a classic example of the best of the best of social satire. The disappearance of a young child on an errand shocks the community of Hanmouth, where the “elite” have never before had to deal with the expansion of the town limits to include people not “their kind,” with their unexpected problems like this one, and many resent the time and effort the town has expended to find China, a “council child.” Great dialogue, vivid description, well developed characterizations, and brilliant satire.
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When she died in July, 2010, Beryl Bainbridge, Dame Commander of the British Empire, had been working for the preceding six months on this novel, The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress. Nearly completed at the time of her death, this novel is her twentieth, including five which were nominated for the Booker Prize and two (Injury Time in 1977 and Every Man for Himself in 1996) which won Whitbread Awards. Set in late May and early June, 1968, the novel opens with Harold Grasse, known as Washington Harold, greeting Rose, whom he regards as “Wheeler’s woman,” at the airport in Baltimore. Rose has come to the United States to try to reconnect with a “Dr. Wheeler,” who played an important role in helping her to deal with her miserable childhood, and he has paid for her trip. The mysterious Dr. Wheeler is working on the campaign of Robert F. Kennedy for President, and he is traveling the country, so Harold Grasse is in charge of trying to get them together. Unbeknownst to Rose or some of the other characters, all of whom also seem to know Wheeler, Harold also has his own reasons for wanting to find Wheeler and to exact his revenge for Wheeler’s atrocious behavior. A wonderful finale to Bainbridge’s great writing career.
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