Book: Falls the Shadow
Author: Mike Nicol
This book has taught me that I like my crime thrillers exotic and somewhat glamorous.
Perhaps a non-South African reader would find the beautiful, kayaking lead, her surfing son and the sexy gangster villains in Falls The Shadow, exotic or glamorous, but for me the story hit too close to home.
There’s nothing bad about this novel. The story is engaging, the characters fleshed-out, and entertaining and the plot well-paced and twisty enough to keep one guessing. But since the story is about a lone good cop on an impassioned crusade to rain down justice on her weapons-trading, diamond-hustling, corrupt counterparts it didn’t feel like escapism.
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Synopsis
Zara Dewane is the lead investigator in the police’s Internal Crime Unit. She and her partner Wynston head to Saldanha to investigate a police officer’s murder-suicide close to a stash of illegal weapons, but run into opposition from the local department.
As Zara and Wynston dig deeper into an ever-evolving spiders’ web, things become dangerous and hairy, and the bodies start piling up quicker than your high-fantasy George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones chapter.
My thoughts
Falls The Shadow has everything a good crime novel needs, except maybe a smidgen of romance, but I nevertheless struggled to finish it.
It was not the book’s fault. Had it been set in another country with cops who had different accents then I don’t think I would have been able to put it down, but unfortunately it hit too depressingly close to home. It felt as if I was reading the news.
The book nerd in me did, however, enjoy the Macbeth reference.
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