Thirteen Hours: A Benny Griessel Novel (Benny Griessel Mysteries)

In his best and most complex novel yet, Afrikaans-writer Deon Meyer recreates thirteen hours of life in Cape Town, South Africa, hour by terrifying hour, revealing more about the city's many criminal cultures than you may want to know. The police who try to keep the criminal underworld at bay are undermanned and undertrained. A series of police scandals has led the National Commissioner to establish a whole new South African Police Service (SAPS), retaining the best and most experienced officers within new departments and hiring new recruits from all racial groups. Racial differences, tribal differences, and changing historical roles add to the complexities here as good people try to prevent crimes in a fraught and changing environment in which the Metro Police are also flexing muscles over control, and private security agencies perform their own investigations. In the opening pages, a young girl, still in her teens, is tearing through the city, begging for help from people she sees, as she tries to escape five or six young men who are pursuing her. Her companion, who was also trying to escape these men, now lies dead, her throat slit and her backpack stolen. SAPS Captain Benny Griessel and his young, inexperienced staff are assigned to this case, and soon have their worst fears realized. The young victim was an American tourist, with all the governmental complications that entails on all levels. At the same time, the body of a music executive, shot in the head with his own gun, is found at home near his wife, an alcoholic who knows of his flagrant affairs and who has been lying passed out for hours. She appears to have shot him. As Benny and his staff investigate, these separate stories interrupt each other as more information is revealed about each crime in the course of the day. The author keeps the suspense at fever pitch. Rachel Anderson, the girl trying to escape, must evade discovery for many hours, while Benny Griessel must keep all the leads for two separate cases going in the right direction and find Rachel before her pursuers do. The main characters' own backgrounds and family lives unfold and add depth to the novel, showing how they live, for better or worse, in the newly integrated society. As the novel develops further, the ins and outs of the not always honest music business, the roles of Russian owners and managers of clubs and bars, the weaknesses of police officers who may be offered enormous bribes, illegal immigration from other African countries whose governments are in total disarray, the problems of a drug culture, and the corruption which seems to be an unfortunate natural result of power all appear as well integrated themes and plot lines. Despite the darkness of its plot, Afrikaans writer Deon Meyer honors hard-working and honest people of all races in this novel--Benny Griessel (white), bright new detective Vusumuzi Ndabeni (black), no-nonsense female investigator Mbali Kaleni (black), and pathologist,

This is the first crime novel I've read by South African author Deon Meyer but it won't be the last. Thirteen Hours is one of those rare thrillers that, started, you don't want to put down until finished. And once done, you wish you could start it anew. The setting (Cape Town, South Africa), plot (it's a police procedural, not a one-man quest) and characters are different than in Lee Childs's action-filled Jack Reacher novels --for one thing, Meyer's hero isn't invincible and Jack Reacher almost is-- but the rush you feel reading is the same. The action of this novel takes place across thirteen hours as a multi-ethnic team of South African police push to solve two very high profile cases. The worst involves a dead American girl, a second one who is missing, on the run from a pack of ruthless killers. The lead detective in this case is a recovering alcoholic, Benny Griessel. Benny is far from the first ex-drunk to feature in a detective novel but he's one of the most convincing: his alcoholism doesn't seem a gimmick, it's part of him. Besides, Benny's a super detective. He's bright and tenacious but in present-day South Africa, with all its racial tensions, he's been sidelined because he's white. Instead of heading cases, he's `mentor' to six colored (means non-black) and black detectives. An excellence of this fine novel is the nuanced picture Meyer provides of cross-race relations in the `new' South Africa. Benny is Afrikaans,; Vusi, the detective he is mentoring, is Xhosa; another detective, Fransman Decker, is `colored' and resents both whites and blacks; and neither Vusi nor Fransman is sure they can work with a woman inspector who is Zulu. (She can also be a pain in the ass but that's irrelevant to their prejudices.) Fransman feels he's discriminated against by both white and black: coloreds represent eight percent of the population and --this is Fransman's view--they are thus ignored in the government's attempts to address racial discrimination. In the process of telling his story, Meyer presents a number of telling pictures of his all to human detectives. The most appealing is of an overweight woman inspector with an affection for KFC chicken. Her station commander describes her (accurately) as "outspoken, principle-driven, stubborn." I hope she appears in subsequent Meyer thrillers because she's too good to throw away on only one book. The premiere virtue of this policier is pacing. From the first page, the reader is gripped by the action. A girl is running. Who's chasing her and why? By page three you know a little more but not enough to answer your questions: she asks a passerby to call the police. "They're going to kill me," she tells her, and runs on, trying to escape her unknown assailants. From that point on, there's never a let up. Son Meyer introduces a second puzzle -- a music industry impresario is found dead in the bedroom with his alcoholic and comatose wife. Benny and his team of mentorees pursue both cases in alternatio

Deon Meyer has written a couple great books and this is his best so far. The way he spins the plot really kept me glued to the book until I finished it. Detective Inspector Benny Griessel is a great protagonist, not perfect, but manages to pull off a couple big arrests. I hate reviewing mysteries because it's hard to describe why the books is good without giving away the plot. I can only say that if you like mysteries, this is a must-read. The uniqueness of the South Africa location is also enjoyable for someone who knows precious little about that country. He does introduce a number of characters and it was a bit difficult at times trying to put them in perspective, but all-in-all it worked!

This is a fine book and I strongly recommend it. It is satisfying as a well-crafted thriller but goes beyond it in its wider resonance. I don't recall a mystery writer so strong in deftly sketching out characters. The central figure is the stock cop in disarray: fighting his alcoholism, kicked out by his wife, missing his daughter and caught in the politics of his job, made more complex by the ongoing transition from the apartheid era to the "new" South Africa, with all its volatility, corruption, and racial jostling for jobs and control. The characters are very diverse: a young colored new detective, an Afrikaan senior one, a very pushy and arrogant Zulu woman officer, white businessmen and singers, and many others. They are all revealed by what they say and think in a way that is very subtle and provides a rich sense of context. One instance is the brilliant weaving into the story of the Zulu female--obnoxious, overweight, dogmatic, pushy and insensitive but in the end remarkably admirable. The young detective whom the central Captain Benny Griesel must reluctantly mentor as part of the effort to accelerate the shift of police work - and seniority - to non-whites is similarly brought to life with little explicit portrayal in his intelligence, decency and growing respect from Griesel. Such touches do not get in the way of the plot but at the same time give weight to the story. The basic requirement in a thriller is to tell a strong story and pull it together with a powerful central proponent, sometimes the hero and sometimes the villain, with whom you can identify at some level of engagement. Anything else is a plus. Anything less is at best a good read that fills a few hours but doesn't leave you thinking or going back over the story and its wider implications. This book - for me at least - is good story, with an intriguing plot that moves along smoothly and pulls you in; it is very much a jigsaw puzzle as the detective and his colleagues each uncover some fragment and gradually zero in on two crimes: the central flight across Capetown of a young American tourist chased by some very vicious thugs, and the more complex and emotive murder of a music company executive. Both plots keep you guessing - literally so. As so often, the denouement is a little artificial in some of the details but all in all it is superior to most "mystery" novels built on the mystery as the core of the narrative. The writing is plain and measured. It's a translation from the Afrikaans original and reads well. It's perhaps thirty or so pages too long but that's a minor criticism; it does, though, lose a little of the tension around two-thirds of the way in. The threads of the plot are quite complex but are kept focused through the characterization of Benny. Core to his despair and sense of failure is his relationship with his daughter who is working in London. She never appears but as so often in the book very comes alive as a presence in the narrative. The relatively s

Afrikaner Deon Meyer's latest pulse-pounding thriller hits the ground running--literally. In Cape Town, South Africa, at six in the morning, an American teenage tourist is running for her life. Her best friend's throat was slit in front of her and she is bolting from the perpetrators' clutches. The story hits its stride early and swiftly as events unfold over thirteen-hours. Vicious outlaws and the snarl of conspiracy; Afrikaner, Xhosa, and Zulu crime-fighters; and crooners and corporate fleecers storm the pages of the book. Besides Rachel Anderson, the pursued and wily tourist, there's music industry giant, Adam Barnard, found shot and dead near his hard-drinking, faded-diva wife. This is my third Meyer book (this is his seventh), after reading Dead at Daybreak and Blood Safari, all set in the author's home country. The narrative is bracing and the characters resonant and ripe. Meyer delivers with sizzle in this dual-crime novel; his terse prose lances the pages, and the pitch-perfect pace purrs and thrums. The reader feels like a detective as fragments eventually pull together from the grime of corruption. You suspect, you speculate, and you quiver. The knot of Barnard's death is teased out concurrently with Rachel's web of intrigue. Meyer is brilliant at interlocking disparate characters, events, and scenes, and at solving parallel puzzles. The crisp story is supported by trenchant characters. Benny Griessel, the Slavic-eyed, bushy-haired Inspector with a sinking marriage and six months sobriety, has a sharp radar and a fox's energy, as well as a tarnished reputation. He pursues the perps with thirsty zeal while trying to keep his inner demons at bay. Can he save his marriage? Can he rescue the girl? Will the lure of drink undo him? Benny struggles to keep it together while people's lives are falling apart. Fransman Dekker, an apt, avid cop with a strident temper, is furious about the racial hiring practice in the department. He's close to losing his cool over the results of affirmative action--not black enough, not white enough, feeling the statistical stab of "eight percent coloured." His nemesis, Zulu Mbali Kaleni, is one of the most delightfully imperious and exotic policewomen I have come across in fiction. She looks like an "overstuffed piegeon," with a "big bulge in front and a big bulge behind in her tight black trouser suit." Dekker, Griessel, and Kaleni, like the other players in the book, are dimensional and sympathetic. Meyer has a knack for fiery characters that vault from the pages while they crackle and burn. The story is taut and the climax is gripping. Although more cinematic and conventional than his previous work, Meyer's brio is seductive, his pointed narrative is spicy. Some parts are predictable, yet without feeling tired and shopworn. He tells the story with a candid depth that is wholly humane and authentic. A primal essence buzzes and hums as he juxtaposes scenes, cutting from one jolting moment to