The Satanic Mechanic

Starred review from January 30, 2017
Food heals, arouses, coerces, and kills in Andrew’s sublime second psychological cozy featuring South African agony aunt Tannie Maria van Harte (after 2015’s Recipes for Love and Murder), which also offers an immersion course in a polyglot post-Apartheid culture. Afrikaans and Xhosa spice the luminous English sentences; skin is just another detail. Still, old grudges survive. When Bushman leader Slimkat is poisoned with honey-mustard sauce on the kudu kebabs, Maria suspects the white cattle baron whose land the Supreme Court awarded to Slimkat’s people. Hunky cop Hank Kannemeyer fears losing Maria and demands she quit sleuthing, but he needs her forensic taste buds. Another murder at an exotic PTSD workshop, which Maria’s attending because of her guilt over her abusive husband’s death, quashes her thrumming desire for Henk. Tannie Maria’s authentic recipes, for which Andrew credits many sources, are easy to make far from the veldt. Her food wisdom is universal, unassailable: potato salad eases worry; warm orange pudding makes one feel whole. Agent: Isobel Dixon, Blake Friedmann Literary Agency (U.K.).

April 24, 2017
In this thrilling and ultra charming mystery, Afrikaner food columnist Tannie Maria and her beau, Detective Lieutenant Henk Kannemeyer, attend a food festival celebrating a courtroom decision that forced corporations to return the Bushman tribe’s ancestral lands. When popular tribe leader Slimkat Kabbo is fatally poisoned, Henk, assigned to protect the man, vows to find the killer and Tannie Maria decides to assist him. She, meanwhile, is struggling with recurring nightmares triggered by her late husband’s violent death and their extremely abusive marriage. She turns to an informal PTSD therapy group led by the book’s charismatic title figure. His methods seem to be working—and then a group member is murdered, possibly by Slimkat’s assassin. Just as the novel’s authenticity depends on author Andrew’s firsthand knowledge of South Africa, its people, culture and food, the audio is enriched by the performance of Prinsloo, a South African actor best known for her role in the film The Gods Must Be Crazy. Her thespian experience allows her to do justice by the book’s characters, convincingly conveying Tannie Maria’s reaction to her painful memories and her infatuation with edibles. Her cadences, especially during Andrew’s loving descriptions of veldt flora, fauna and, yes, food, flow like music. An Ecco hardcover.