A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn
Summary: Screenwriter Nunn draws on her true-life experience growing up in Africa to create this darkly romantic crime novel set in 1950s apartheid South Africa. Detective Emmanuel Cooper is caught up in a time and place where racial tensions and the raw hunger for power make for dangerous times.
Library Journal Review
Verdict: This skillfully constructed and involving debut-intended as the first in the Detective Emmanuel Cooper series-reveals the terrible toll of apartheid and belongs in all mystery collections. Background: Nunn, a South African-born writer, begins her series in 1952 with the murder of a white police captain in a small South African town riddled with apartheid. The victim was a son-in-law of a leader of the Afrikaner nationhood movement, and his five adult sons are out for vengeance. Arriving from Johannesburg to investigate, Det. Sgt. Emmanuel Cooper wrestles with the police Special Branch, whose officers are searching for communist connections to the crime. Making matters worse, he is targeted by official and unofficial law enforcers as he stretches the boundaries between black and white.-Michele Leber, Arlington, VA Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.
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