Seven Days

July 23, 2012
Superior prose and characterization enable Meyer to make the most of a familiar plot device in his third crime thriller with self-loathing Cape Town homicide detective Benny Griessel (after 2010’s Barry Award–winning Thirteen Hours). Griessel, a recovering alcoholic assigned to the Directorate of Priority Crimes Investigations, looks into an e-mail threat to shoot a policeman every day until the murderer of Hanneke Sloet is caught, starting that very day with the nonfatal shooting of a constable in the leg. The anonymous e-mailer, who insists the authorities know why Sloet, an attractive attorney, was stabbed to death, demands that the 40-day-old case be reopened immediately. Griessel takes up this political hot potato of a case as more e-mail communiqués add to the mystery of the sniper’s motives. Meyer balances the personal and professional adroitly, with a solution reminiscent of Peter Lovesey at his twistiest. Agent: Isobel Dixon, Blake Friedmann Literary.

August 15, 2012
In Deon Meyer's previous mystery (Thirteen Hours, 2010, etc.), South African detective Benny Griessel had all of one workday to solve a murder. In this follow-up he's allowed a full week to find the killer of a glamorous lawyer, Hanneke Sloet. And given the number of leads and complications that keep turning up, he needs every minute he can get. At first, Griessel's department, a select team known as the Hawks, can find few clues in the Sloet case. And that's unfortunate, because an elusive sniper is so preoccupied with the case that he's shooting policemen and sending emails full of Biblical quotes and anti-Communist rhetoric. Stepping up the investigation, the Hawks discover the kinks in the victim's respectable life: She'd been negotiating a high-finance deal that may have involved the Russian Mafia; and she'd lately done a nude photo shoot after breast-enhancement surgery. Meanwhile, the list of dead and wounded cops piles up, and Griessel has good reason to suspect he might be next. Meyer is good with sexy plot complications, and the mysteries of Sloet's murder and the sniper's identity take interesting turns along the way. But the book's main strength is in its characters; as Griessel's colleagues include Vaughn Cupido, a hot-blooded "bad cop," and Mbali Kaleni, a strong policewoman who harbors an embarrassing secret from a recent Amsterdam trip (this too is revealed at book's end). Griessel himself is no typical action hero: A recovering alcoholic prone to self-doubt, he's fighting to get over his broken marriage and to build a new relationship with Alexa, a former pop star who's also in recovery. Griessel is flawed but likable, and his trials give a bittersweet edge to a strong mystery.

COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2012
Meyer borrows the ticking-clock framework and many of the characters from his novel Thirteen Hours (2010). A sniper has been shooting at Cape Town policemen and then sending threatening e-mails, vowing to shoot one officer a day unless they solve a cold casethe murder of financial analyst Hanneke Sloet, who was fatally stabbed with a very large knife. Inspector Benny Griessel, newly transferred to the elite Hawks unit, is chosen to lead the investigation, and he is well aware of the pressure that will be raining down on him not only from the media but also from the highest levels of command. He has gone 227 days without a drink, but his old demons are calling to him, especially when he discovers that the Sloet case seems absolutely impenetrable, with no motive and no forensic evidence. As policemen continue to fall, Benny works to connect the threads, combing through financial records and trying to plumb the psyche of the ruthlessly ambitious victim, looking for something, anything, that makes sense. Sleekly done crime fiction layered with the cultural complexities of the new South Africa.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)