| Family drama, ghost stories, military plans gone wrong |
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| The Thread's Must Read |
“Dead Before Dying” by Deon Meyer
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I’m opening my June recommendations for international crime thrillers with a bit of regret. I wish I’d discovered South Africa crime writer Deon Meyer before I explored Capetown and South Africa. Nothing like reading literature set in the place you’re visiting for a delightfully immersive experience!
But I didn’t know about Meyer until I read an interview with bestselling crime writer Michael Connelly a few months ago, and he mentioned Meyer as a favorite.
There are similarities between the two writers: Just like Connelly, Meyer honed his writing skills at a daily newspaper. He knows how to pace his writing — to add the small detail, the intriguing morsel — to keep a reader’s attention.
But it is Deon Meyer’s lead character that kept me reading. I started with “Dead Before Dying,” published in 2008, and encountered Captain Mat Joubert in the last stages of grief over the death of his wife. She was a policewoman killed on the job. He’s lived in a gray fog of heartbreak ever since, sleepwalking through his job as a Capetown detective, isolating himself from his friends. “You can take Mat Joubert out of the dark,” Meyer tells us, “but you can’t take the dark out of Mat Joubert.”
But now, Joubert has been assigned to investigate a series of murders carried out with a 100-year-old German weapon from the Boer War and his new boss is expecting him to bring his A-game to the investigation.
Joubert now has to decide whether he’s ready to step back into his life in a place that is undergoing deep political and cultural change. Meyer’s touch is light but intentional, and his observations about where South Africa is headed are delicately woven throughout the plot.
-Kerri Miller |
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