A Sunday Times ‘100 best crime novels and thrillers since 1945’ pick!
Shortlisted for the CWA International Dagger Award 2010
They killed her best friend. Now they are chasing Rachel Anderson through the streets of Cape Town. The young tourist doesn’t dare trust anyone – except her father, back home in America. When he puts pressure on the politicians, they know that to protect their country’s image, they must find Rachel’s hiding place before the killers.
So Benny Griessel – detective, maverick and father of teenagers himself – has just 13 hours to crack open a conspiracy which threatens the whole country.
Shortlisted for the CWA International Dagger Award 2010
They killed her best friend. Now they are chasing Rachel Anderson through the streets of Cape Town. The young tourist doesn’t dare trust anyone – except her father, back home in America. When he puts pressure on the politicians, they know that to protect their country’s image, they must find Rachel’s hiding place before the killers.
So Benny Griessel – detective, maverick and father of teenagers himself – has just 13 hours to crack open a conspiracy which threatens the whole country.
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Reviews
This terrific, action-packed thriller has superbly drawn characters and an enthralling setting. Deon Meyer is one of the best crime writers on the planet.
Deon Meyer is the undisputed king of South African crime fiction, and THIRTEEN HOURS demonstrates why.
South African thrillers arrive with racial baggage, and it's a mark of Meyer's talent to see just how well the issues are balanced with a smashing story. Imposing a strict time limit and a tight location on his plot, he ramps up the suspense to an unbearable degree. Best of all, his sharply drawn characters really feel part of the new South Africa, where loyalties and beliefs must always be questioned.
What makes this novel so outstanding is its setting... and Meyer's superlative talent for suspense... This is a vigorous, exciting novel that combines memorable characters and plot with edge-of-the-seat suspense.
Far and away South Africa's best crime writer
gripping and suspenseful crime novel set in a violent, post-apartheid South Africa
A cracking read from one of Africa's finest
One of the sharpest and most perceptive thriller writers around
Far and away the best crime writer in South Africa
One of the most exciting thrillers I've read for a long time.
Blood Safari is my first exposure to the man billed by his publishers as the "king of South African crime thrillers". For once the publicity spinners are not guilty of hyperbole -- Meyer is simply excellent.
Pulsating and gripping
I rushed through it like one of Meyer's beloved BMW motorbikes in overdrive. A fantastic read. I know Cape Town well and he did glorious justice to the city's mosaic
A glimpse of the soul of the new South Africa in all its glory, and with all the gory details of its problems and corruption...I marvelled at the intricacy of the plotting, I smiled at Christine's cheeky ingenuity, I felt Thobela's pain and Benny's desperation, and I was stunned by a denouement of awesome power and accomplishment
My favourite South African thriller writer
'Meyer is a gifted writer...believable and disturbing'
'Deon Meyer, who writes in Afrikaans, portrays a world of terrifying uncertainty, in which those who fought for liberation from apartheid are having to come to terms with the knowledge that freedom is not enough to wipe out cruelty. A thoughtful and exciting novel'
This guy is really good. Deon Meyer hooked me with this one right from the start. HEART OF THE HUNTER is a thriller with some weight attached and that is a rare find.
HEART OF THE HUNTER is a brilliant book. Deon Meyer does an excellent job of developing a whole range of characters who are affected by the changes in South Africa in different ways. And Thobela, a giant of a man in search of redemption, is a wonderful hero.
Meyer weaves an impressively tangled web and taut narrative keeps the reader guessing until the last couple of pages
Like post-war Germany, post-apartheid South Africa offers fertile ground for reflective fiction ... Senior editor at Little, Brown, Judy Clain, a fellow South African, says, "Meyer has an extraordinary landscape - a changed world where the ghosts of the past play a huge role."
With simmering racial tensions, a bounty of natural resources, and a government whose members worked both sides of the cold-war fence, South Africa should prove fertile ground for many fine spy thrillers to come. Don't be surprised if quite a few of them are written by Meyer.
A fascinating portrayal...a black, assegai-wielding former freedom fighter who turns into a vigilante and goes on a killing spree; a high-class tart; and a policeman who drinks to drown the screaming that's waiting inside his head: "One day it will come out and I am scared that I am the one who will hear it." It does come out and he is the one who hears it, winding up the tension to a gripping, shocking climax. Highly recommended.
A sombre but terrifying thriller, and some parts will ignite even those readers with the iciest of hearts...Meyer plays the best of mind games with his readers
Tough in-your-face crime writing that spares nothing in language, visceral scenes of blood and mayhem (for Meyer is adroit at choreographing descriptions of slaughter), and never wavers from the compelling pace of the story. It also has a mean line in humour that comes through in the snappy dialogue.
an explosive mixture
the staccato story slips back and forth between the various strands at a breathless clip, doling out huggest of plot in just the right amounts to have us salivating to know more
[Benny Griessel is] 'a gem of a protagonist... This is my favourite novel of the year so far.'
What makes Deon Meyer's novel so outstanding is its setting - the new South Africa, where jaded white detectives are still getting use to working with black and coloured (in the country's parlance) colleagues . . . Meyer gives rare insights into the texture of everyday life in a country still troubled 20 years after the release of Nelson Mandela.
'A moving, expertly constructed story of a broken man's redemption'
Out of post-apartheid South Africa comes a thriller good enough to nip at the heels of le Carré
A Christmas Choice for best thrillers in 2007
