Leo

Meyer's excellent eighth novel featuring Benny Griessel (after The Dark Flood) finds the South African police detective longing to return to the high-stakes missions he and his partner, Vaughn Cupido, embarked on before they were exiled from Cape Town for exposing corruption within South Africa's top intelligence agency. Griessel's dreams take a hit when his former commander, Mbali Kaleni, who'd promised to reinstate him and Cupido after the uproar quieted down, resigns without explanation. Before the detective can find out what happened, he and Cupido are assigned to investigate the death of a female mountain biker in the usually sleepy village of Stellenbosch. The victim was found with a broken neck and animal bite marks on her legs. Meanwhile, wildlife guide Christina Jaeger's former partners in crime enlist her in a daring million-dollar theft, which doesn't go as planned. Meyer expertly interlaces his main narrative threads in shrewd and unpredictable ways, remaining one step ahead of readers as he ushers the plot to a rollicking conclusion. This intelligent page-turner confirms Meyer's reputation as a master of the police procedural. Agent: Richard Pine, InkWell Management. (Feb.)

South African detectives Benny Griessel and Vaughn Cupido, demoted from their elite violent crimes unit in Cape Town and shipped out to a sleepy university town, are awakened by a murder that will connect with the heist of millions of dollars in gold. The perpetrators of the heist are former members of the South African Special Forces--plus, as their "honey trap," a hard-edged beauty who worked with one of the plotters in the past and is currently biding time as a wildlife guide. The job goes spectacularly, violently wrong, leaving people dead and wounded and a surviving thief out for vengeance--and a second shot at the bullion. At first, the murder of a local businessman appears to the long-partnered Griessel and Cupido to be an isolated hit job. But the more they dig into the case, the more complicated it becomes, especially after a second victim is killed in the same way as the first--with filler foam sprayed down his throat. Griessel, a recovering alcoholic pushing 50, and the several-years-younger Cupido, who's anxious about his partner's upcoming wedding, are hopeful that solving the case will get them reappointed to the special unit known as the Hawks. But as the crimes take on South African and international political trappings, Griessel and Cupido's detective skills may not be enough. As is often the case with Meyer's sharply divided narratives, readers may find themselves wanting a pair of trifocals to keep all the plotlines straight. (References to past novels are actually footnoted.) The protagonists drop out of the novel for long stretches, but there's a lot to like in Meyer's quirky approach, which makes up for all the business related to Griessel's wedding--including the need to make it to the altar in time--with action-packed scenes. Meyer's eighth Griessel and Cupido book makes demands of the reader, but ones that get rewarded. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.