A Beautiful Place to Die

The detective in this somewhat spooky mystery has all the gifts of Sherlock but keeps them hidden with a persona a bit like Columbo. It is rewarding and fascinating to follow him along his inquiries with red herrings thrown in at many places. The cast of characters he has to interact with and thwart to get the job done are diverse, menacing and haunting all at the same time. It seems no one really wants him to solve the killing but solve he must. I cannot wait for the second from Malle. This is top shelf mystery in an unexpected time and place with characters that you want more of.

The year is 1952, the setting far out on the veldt in South Africa. The new segregation laws are just taking effect, and there are a thousand ways people of every race can get into terrible trouble with the authorities. Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper arrives from Johannesburg in the town of Jacob's Rest to investigate the alleged murder of a white police captain. He has no backup because his boss thinks the garbled call for help might be a hoax. The body in the river leaves no doubt that the case is real. As Cooper begins to suspect that the excellent captain had a shadow life - an unsavory secret that invited murder - members of the dread Security Branch appear on the scene. They want the killer to be a Red agitator, a native who can be strung up as an example to other rebels. Cooper is surrounded on all sides by brutal racists who don't like the direction he's taking. His only allies are a Zulu constable who won't talk, an old Jewish doctor who doctors only in secret - and a white constable, a mere boy, dumber than a box of rocks. Cooper speaks Zulu, is good at solving cases and can outrun any cop or criminal in Jo'burg. But in a country in the grip of political madness, he's just barely holding onto his own sanity. The war and his own past troubles have left deep scars. I'm glad that Malla Nunn, an award-winning filmmaker born in Swaziland, decided to try her hand at a novel. She paints an amazing picture of South Africa in the darkest days of its history. And her detective displays an appealing mix of humanity and low-key heroism.

A film maker takes a visual approach to a story. A novelist takes a verbal one. Sometimes novelists decide that they could be movie makers, and try with a variety of success. More rarely a film maker will try a hand at the novel, and Malla Nunn is a film maker -- an award winning one. What has happened with A Beutiful Place to Die is that the visual thought process has been brilliantly well transmitted to the written page. Here we find a painting of the South Africa of 1951 where Apartheid was at its most terrible. This was more than 25 years before P.K. Botha became State President, and gently introduced some slightly less repressive interpretations to that law. It was over 40 years before Nelson Mandela became the first fully representative President of the country, and directed the dismantling of Apartheid. Malla Nunn was born in Swaziland during the time of Apartheid's greatest power, and her exposure to the artificial segregation of the races is clearly felt throughout this novel. She left the South African region in the 1970s, and now resides in Australia, but despite that the reader may feel the powerful loathing that she feels towards the injustices of the time. She has cleverly wrapped these feelings into a story of murder and mystery that embraces the whole spectrum of the races of the time, in a small town called Jacob's Rest. The protagonist is a Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper of the Cape Police Force. The antagonists include a "racially pure" Afrikaner family, and the S.S.-like Special Police force who consider themselves free to function above the law. Her film-maker's eye comes through in the beautifully dressed "sets" in which the various scenes take place. She never reveals too much, yet by two thirds of the book's passing the reader gets a strong suspicion about "who done it". Still she builds suspense upon suspense to a powerful climax. Some novels are plot driven, and some are character driven -- this novel is a brilliantly clever blending of both approaches. Watch for more from this author. I sense a great future for her.

I loved this book and could not put it down. Ms. Nunn wraps a page turning detective novel inside a beautifully written and painful description of life under apartheid. With amazing technical skill, she weaves the plot into the fabric of the complex racial relationships of South Africa and the stunning beauty of the land. As I finished the book, my only thought was, what happens to Detective Emmanuel Cooper next? I can't wait for the next installment.

This is an unusual story of South Africa, apartheid, tragedy, love, and friendship. It begins with a murder and ends with the solution, which will not see daylight. The book deals with the fallout of the apartheid forced by law, which has separated friends, forced families to send their children to cities where they can pass for white, and created situations where a man and wife pretend that the couple is master and servant in order to stay together. The man killed is the Chief of the police, honored, and considered to be a fair but very stern and straight laced man. As the policeman sent from a much larger city to solve the case begins investigating, he is shoved aside by government police who feel that it was a communist plot. He's given the task of discovering who had been molesting young black women. By taking on the case, he uncovers a very nasty, covered up and white washed situation. I think anyone would really like this book. It can be disturbing in spots, but rings true.