THIRTEEN HOURS: DEON MEYER

Another Meyer novel and I am almost done with all of his books, alas.  In this one, we are once again treated to the veteran detective Bennie Griseell, sober for six months and estranged from his wife. H is is forced to work with and train some of the newer detectives, much to his dismay.  Two are particular interesting and fun, Vusi, eager and willing and the tough minded, by the book Zulu, Mbali Kaleni.  She's a tough cookie for Bennie to swallow but she ends up earning his and our respect.  Like many of his books, there are multiple crimes that need solving, so Bennie first is called to a church yard where a corpse of a young American woman is found. We also follow a young woman named Rachel who is running from bad guys when she discovered her young friend Erin had been killed.

We see South Africa's problems up close, in a police procedural, the old timers like Bennie, the new Black police commissioners, and the mixed bag of new detectives, some white, some colored, some Zulu.  A third murder, a husband,  is also discovered by a washed up but once famous singer, leading us in to the music industry. As Bennie and his fellow detectives try to find Rachel. we begin to see how the crimes connect.  The narrative jumps back and forth between the murders, tension being built by the need to find Rachel as quickly as possible.  Pressure, as always, comes from both the press and above, as solving the case of the American becomes paramount, as the papers have been playing it up, sensationalizing it, bringing in the girls' parents and the American Embassy.  I felt somewhat dizzy and confused at the end but it was worth the ride on a Mayer roller coaster.