Thirteen Hours

The flap reads: "Some would call Detective Benny Griessel a legend. Others would call him a drunk.
Either way, he has trodden on too many toes over the years ever to reach the top of the promotion ladder, and now he concentrates on staying sober and mentoring the new generation of crime fighters — from the many ethnic backgrounds that make up the new South Africa. But when an American backpacker disappears in Cape Town, panicked politicians know who to call: Benny has just thirteen hours to save the girl, save his career, and crack open a conspiracy, which threatens the whole country."

I was really excited when I heard Deon Meyer was putting out a new novel because I really enjoyed his previous book, Blood Safari, a lot. In Thirteen Hours, Meyer takes the reader on another breathtaking journey into the seedy side of South Africa with a thriller set in and around Cape Town, with a hero poised in the precarious position of not only being a recovering alcoholic on the job, but a man trusted with putting out racial fires amongst his colleagues and trying to solve two murders and find a missing tourist, all at the same time.

Thirteen Hours follows Inspector Benny Griessel from early morning one day, when he gets called out to a murder scene after having a difficult night before. While starting off the preliminaries with that murder, another body is discovered in another part of time, apparently unrelated to the first murder, and Benny, who is now mentoring new detectives, needs to see to the second scene too. On top of that, there is the case of a missing American girl who is being hunted down by a group of young thugs for reasons we never discover until the very end. As Benny oversees both investigations, the reader gets insight into the many challenges faced by law enforcement in the new South Africa: corruption, tense race relations between colleagues, racial quotas, apathy, and a drastic shortage of manpower.

The pace of the novel, as one might expect since it covers a 13 hour day involving a series of crimes & mysteries, is breakneck and never rests for a minute. Meyer deftly weaves in the thriller aspects of the story with a gritty portrait of the issues faced by South African law enforcement. Once again, I learned a lot about the culture of this country and it's people, and I really appreciated that about it. Originally written in Afrikaans and translated to English by someone named K.L. Seegers, there were a few clunky bits of dialogue and prose, but overall, these elements were snappy and tight. I could not put this book down!

A definite recommend if you like mystery, suspense, and intrigue mixed with some politics and insights into a different culture.