Trackers, Deon Meyer's latest thriller, travels from deep in the Karoo to the mean streets of post-apartheid South Africa. In this tale of multiple betrayals, a disparate band of characters have a shared instinct for survival. Freelance bodyguard Lemmer (Blood Safari) returns, this time to protect a pair of endangered black rhinos from poachers. In Cape Town, Milla Strachan, newly divorced and struggling to escape the suburban banality of her former existence, joins the lower echelons of national security. Meanwhile, former police superintendent Mat Joubert is learning the hard way that in the private sector the only thing he's expected to protect and serve is the bottom line. All three are drawn into a violent web of intrigue linking Islamic terrorists to urban gangsters, black-market weapons and blood diamonds.
A boon for the mystery/thriller connoisseur weary of the same old New York/Los Angeles backdrop, Meyer's South Africa is palpable, a world at once achingly beautiful yet torn still by deep-seated racial hatred and injustice. An American audience may find the Afrikaner author's lack of "coloured" or black protagonists jarring, but Meyer in no way hides from the remnants of apartheid; his unflinching take on South Africa reads as reality.
Trackers is a thick, meaty mystery so full of twists and subplots the reader could easily forget where the story began. Don't worry--Meyer skillfully ties up even the most frayed of loose ends. Be warned though, he waits until the last pages to do it. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher