Random Violence

Starred review from February 8, 2010
Set in contemporary South Africa, Mackenzie’s triumphant debut introduces PI Jade de Jong. After roaming the world for a decade, Jade returns home to Johannesburg to take her revenge on the convicted murderer, about to be released from prison, who she believes killed her “highly respected police commissioner” father. Meanwhile, David Patel, her father’s former assistant, asks Jade for help in investigating the murder of Annette Botha, gunned down one night after getting out of her car to unlock a malfunctioning automatic gate outside her home. David and Jade later learn that robbers killed Botha’s brother a few years earlier, and that the dead woman recently retained a detective, who has since disappeared. The plot has more than its fair share of nice twists, and Mackenzie does a superb job of making the reader care for her gutsy lead while offering a glimpse at life in South Africa after apartheid. Readers will wish Jade a long fictional career.

March 15, 2010
As a private investigator, a cop's daughter proves a chip off the old block when she solves a tough, tangled murder.

After more than a decade in England, Jade de Jong returns to her native Johannesburg at the request of Police Superintendent David Patel, the protg and eventual successor of Jade's father. It was her father's death and her unresolved feelings for David that drove Jade away from her homeland, and time has not entirely settled everything in her mind. David wants Jade to probe the murder of wealthy Annette Botha, shot at close range in front of her pack of loyal guard dogs, who were locked behind her security gate. David sees the murder as the collateral damage of a carjacking, but the reader knows otherwise and Jade intuits the same. She zeroes in on Annette's ex-husband Piet, the chief heir of her sizable estate. Here too the reader is a step ahead of the heroine, as a villain identified as Whiteboy monitors Jade's movements, gloating at the success of"the Botha job." Evidence leads Jade to Viljoen, a convict her father helped put away. At length the plot gets thicker and twistier, and Jade is menaced both by muscle-bound thugs and government bureaucrats. When they're not following leads, both Jade and David, who has a young son with his beautiful ex Naisha, struggle with personal boundaries and the possibility of becoming lovers.

Mackenzie's debut is a bit overstuffed, but key characters and a gritty style augur well for proposed future installments.

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Starred review from April 1, 2010
PI Jade de Jong, who fled her native South Africa ten years ago after her policeman father was killed, returns to Johannesburg and is asked to work with her father's former assistant and now current superintendent, David Patel, on a the car-jacking murder of a wealthy white woman. The husband is the prime suspect, but Jade's investigation points to a killer randomly picking victims. Jade is not convinced, and she soon gets caught up in trying to help out too many people while attempting to get to the man convicted of killing her fatherthe real reason she has come home. VERDICT South African writer Mackenzie has created a strong female character with amazing resilience, unusual friends, and incredible luck. This gripping first entry in a new crime series set in postapartheid South Africa should please readers of Zo Sharp and Suzanne Arruda. Fans of other South African crime fiction by Deon Meyer, Roger Smith, and Malla Nunn will also want to try.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2010
Mackenzies debut is the first in a series about private investigator Jade de Jong, who returns to South Africa after 10 years abroad, having fled her home after her fathers brutal death. When a woman is shot, execution-style, in a carjackingunusual even for ultraviolent JohannesburgJade is hired by David, her fathers former partner, now a supervising detective, to look into the crime. Grim, gritty, and violent, the novel offers a revealing view of modern South Africa from the eyes of the people tasked with the seemingly overwhelming job of fighting crime in a society still in the midst of post-apartheid upheaval. Recommend Random Violence to readers of Roger Smith (Mixed Blood, 2009) and Deon Meyer (Heart of the Hunter, 2004), both of whose series are also set in contemporary South Africa.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)