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Jade de Jong is a private investigator working in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is hired for a job that seems almost humdrum, serving as a bodyguard for a wealthy woman, Pamela Jordaan, after her husband, Terrance, disappears. Things quickly become complicated. A man on a motorcycle attempts to kill Pam. Then her oldest daughter goes missing, and the husband is found brutally tortured. As if that's not enough, the husband's mistress is killed in their family home.
When involved in such a complex investigation, Jade often turns to her friend and former lover, police superintendent David Patel. It is obvious that the two of them are fighting their attraction to each other. Patel is in the midst of a big human trafficking operation. As it turns out, that connects to the Jordaan family and their troubles. And then his son is kidnapped. David experiences great guilt; it is because of him that his estranged wife gave up a career opportunity that would have required her to move and remained in Johannesburg. As it turns out, the kidnapping arose out of her job, where she is involved in a department that issues immigration documents.
Although it may sound like there is way too much going on, Mackenzie succeeds in pulling all the threads together in a gripping narrative. The glimpses of how the human trafficking ring worked were horrifying yet informative. Although the characters all seem to carry a lot of baggage, there are nuances about all of them that make them interesting to read about. However, there was a bit too much relationship angst for my liking.
Mackenzie has done a great job of depicting a place where paranoia is the normal state of affairs. One must consider the possibility of being a crime victim for almost every daily activity. The narrative throbs with this underlying thread of danger. And then there are the other hassles such as massive traffic gridlock which makes getting around a challenge. The city is really a character in its own right, and the setting is the strongest element of the book.
§ Formerly a training development manager for a large company, Maddy is now retired and continues to enable the addiction of crime fiction fans as owner of the online discussion group, 4 Mystery Addicts(4MA), while avidly reading in every possible free moment herself.
Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, March 2012
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Contact: Linda Wilson (ljw@reviewingtheevidence.com), Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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