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The second in a crime series set in 1950's South Africa when apartheid laws were first introduced.
- Sales Rank: #649735 in Books
- Brand: Washington Square Press
- Published on: 2010-04-20
- Released on: 2010-04-20
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x 1.00" w x 5.31" l, .69 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 382 pages
- Great product!
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. With this gripping sequel set in South Africa in 1953, Nunn, who is also a screenwriter, proves that her impressive debut novel, A Beautiful Place to Die, was no fluke. A former police detective sergeant, Emmanuel Cooper is now working undercover on the docks of Durban Harbor to document police corruption for his old boss, Major van Niekerk. When Emmanuel comes across the body of a white slum kid, who ran errands in the port area, with his throat slit, he observes that the notebook the 11-year-old boy used to record orders is missing. The authorities regard Emmanuel as the prime suspect in this crime as well as in the subsequent murders of a landlady and her black maid, whose throats are also cut. Van Niekerk manages to get Emmanuel out of jail, but with a strict two-day deadline to find the real killer. Nunn deftly balances suspense and deduction as she offers a revealing glimpse into South African society under the segregation laws promulgated by the ruling National Party. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Malla Nunn was born in Swaziland, South Africa, and currently lives in Sydney, Australia. She is a filmmaker with three award-winning films to her credit and is currently at work on her next novel.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA, MAY 28, 1953
THE ENTRANCE TO the freight yards was a dark mouth crowded with rows of dirty boxcars and threads of silver track. A few white prostitutes orbited a weak streetlight. Indian and coloured working girls were tucked into the shadows, away from the passing trade and the police.
Emmanuel Cooper crossed Point Road and moved toward the yards. The prostitutes stared at him, and the boldest of them, a fat redhead with a molting fox fur slung around her shoulders, lifted a skirt to expose a thigh encased in black fishnet.
“Sweetheart,” she bellowed. “Are you buying or just window-shopping?”
Emmanuel slipped into the industrial maze. Did he look that desperate? Brine and coal dust blew off Durban Harbor and the lights of a docked cruise ship shone across the water. Stationary gantry cranes loomed over the avenue of boxcars and a bright half-moon lit the rocky ground. He moved to the center of the yards, tracing a now familiar path. He was tired, and not from the late hour. Trawling the docks after midnight was worse than being a foot policeman. They at least had a clearly defined mission: to enforce the law. His job was to witness a mind-numbing parade of petty violence, prostitution and thievery and do nothing.
He scrambled over a heavy coupling and settled into a space between two wagons. Soon, an ant trail of trucks would roll out of the yard, packed to the limit with whiskey and cut tobacco and boxes of eau de cologne. English, Afrikaner, foot police, detectives and railway police: the smuggling operation was a perfect example of how different branches of the force were able to cooperate and coordinate if they shared a common goal.
He flicked the surveillance notebook open. Four columns filled the faintly ruled paper: names, times, license plate numbers and descriptions of stolen goods. Until these cold nights in the freight yard he’d thought the wait for the Normandy landing was the pinnacle of boredom. The restlessness and the fear of the massed army, the bland food and the stink of the latrines: he’d weathered it all without complaint. The discomforts weren’t so different from what he’d experienced in the tin and concrete slum shacks his family had lived in on the outskirts of Jo’burg.
This surveillance of corrupt policemen lacked the moral certainty of D-day. What Major van Niekerk, his old boss from the Marshall Square Detective Branch, planned to do with the information in the notebook was unclear.
“Jesus. Oh, Jesus …” A groaned exhalation floated across the freight yards, faint on the breeze. Some of the cheaper sugar girls made use of the deserted boxcars come nightfall.
“Oh … no …” This time the male voice was loud and panicked.
The skin on Emmanuel’s neck prickled. The urge to investigate reared up, but he resisted. His job was to watch and record the activities of the smuggling ring, not rescue a drunken whaler lost in the freight yard. Do not get involved. Major van Niekerk had been very specific about that.
The faint hum of traffic along Point Road mingled with a wordless sobbing. Instinct pulled Emmanuel to the sound. He hesitated and then shoved the notepad into a pants pocket. Ten minutes to take a look and then he’d be back to record the truck license plate numbers. Twenty minutes at the outside. He pulled a silver torch from a pocket, switched it on and ran toward the warehouses built along the northeast boundary of the freight terminus.
The sobs faded and then became muffled. Possibly the result of a hand held over a mouth. Emmanuel stopped and tried to isolate the sound. The yards were huge, with miles of track running the length of the working harbor. Loose gravel moved underfoot and a cry came from ahead. Emmanuel turned the torch to high beam and picked up the pace. The world appeared in flashes. Ghostly rows of stationary freight cars, chains, redbrick walls covered in grime and a back lane littered with empty hessian sacks. Then a dark river of blood that formed a question mark in the dirt.
“No …”
Emmanuel swung the torch beam in the direction of the voice and caught two Indian men in the full glare of the light. Both were young, with dark, slicked-back hair that touched their shoulders. They wore white silk shirts and nearly identical suits made from silvery sharkskin material. One, a slim teenager with a tear-streaked face, was slumped against the back wall of the warehouse. The other, somewhere in his early twenties, sported an Errol Flynn mustache and a heavy brow contracted with menace. He hunched over the boy, with his hand over his mouth to keep him quiet.
“Do not move.” Emmanuel used his detective sergeant’s voice. He reached for his .38 standard Webley revolver and touched an empty space–like a war veteran fumbling for a phantom limb. The most dangerous weapon he had was a pen. No matter. The gun was backup.
“Run!” the older one screamed. “Go!”
The men ran in different directions and Emmanuel targeted the smaller of the two, who stumbled and pitched toward the ground. Emmanuel caught a sleeve and steadied the teenager against the wall.
“Run again and I’ll break your arm,” he said. A coupling clanked. The older one was still out there somewhere. Emmanuel rested shoulder to shoulder with the boy and waited.
“Parthiv.” The boy sniffled. “Don’t leave me.”
“Amal,” a voice called back. “Where are you?”
“Here. He got me.”
“What?”
“I’ve got Amal,” Emmanuel said. “You’d better come out and keep him company.”
The man emerged from the dark with a gangster swagger. A gold necklace complemented his silvery suit, and a filigree ring topped with a chunk of purple topaz weighed down his index finger.
“And just who the hell are you?” the skollie demanded.
Emmanuel relaxed. He’d put down thugs like this one on a daily basis back in Jo’burg. Back before the trouble in Jacob’s Rest.
“I’m Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper,” he said.
With the National Party now in control, the police had become the most powerful gang in South Africa. The air went out of the Indian’s hard-man act.
“Names,” Emmanuel said when the men were against the wall. He’d deal with the fact that he had no authority and no jurisdiction later.
“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” the Indian Errol Flynn said. He looked tough and he talked tough but something about the flashy suit and the jewelry made him look a little … soft.
“Names,” Emmanuel repeated.
“Amal,” the youngster said quickly. “My name is Amal Dutta and that’s my brother, Parthiv Dutta.”
“Stay put,” Emmanuel instructed, and dipped the torchlight toward the ground. A bottle of lemonade lay on its side near the pool of blood. Then, in the shadows, Emmanuel made out the curled fingers of a child’s hand. They seemed almost to motion him closer. A white boy lay in the dirt, arms outstretched, skinny legs tangled together. His throat was sliced open from ear to ear like a second mouth.
Emmanuel recognized the victim: an English slum kid, around eleven years old, who picked a living among the boxcars and the whores. Jolly Marks. Who knew if that was his real name?
Starting at the tattered canvas shoes, Emmanuel searched upward over the body. Army-issue fatigues were rolled up at the cuffs and threadbare at the knees. A line of string was tied to the belt loop of the khaki pants and a smear of blood stained the waistband. Streaks of dirt fanned out across the boy’s gray shirt and gathered in the creases around his mouth. The search revealed the lack of something in every detail. The lack of money evident in Jolly’s shabby clothes. The lack of hygiene in the tangled hair and filthy nails. The lack of a parent who might stop a young boy from going out onto the Durban docks after dark.
Emmanuel focused the light on the stained waistband again. Jolly Marks always had a small notebook attached to the belt loop of the khaki pants, where he wrote orders for smokes and food. The string that held the book was still there, but the book itself was missing. That fact might be significant.
“Did either of you pick up a spiral notebook with a string attached?” he said.
“No,” the brothers answered simultaneously.
Emmanuel crouched next to the body. An inch from Jolly’s right hand was a rusty penknife with the small blade extended. Emmanuel had owned a similar knife at almost exactly the same age. Jolly had understood that bad things happened out here at night.
Emmanuel knew this boy, knew the details of his life without having to ask a single question. He’d grown up with boys like Jolly Marks. No, that was a lie. This was whom he’d grown up as. A dirty white boy. This could have been his fate: first on the streets of a Jo’burg slum and then on the battlefields in Europe. He had escaped and survived. Jolly would never have that chance. Emmanuel returned to the Indian men.
“Either one of you touch this boy?”
“Never.” Amal’s body shook with the denial. “Never, never ever.”
“You?” Emmanuel asked Parthiv.
“No. No ways. We were minding our own business and there he was.”
Nobody in the back lanes of the Durban port after midnight was minding his own business unless that business was illegal. There was, however, a big difference between stealing and murder, and the brothers’ sharkskin suits were pressed and clean. Emmanuel checked their hands, also clean. Jolly lay in a bloodbath, his neck cut with a single stroke: the work of an experienced butcher.
“Have either of you seen the boy before, maybe talked to him?”
“No,” Parthiv said, too quickly. “Don’t know him.”
“I wish I’d never seen him.” Amal’s voice broke on the words. “I wish I’d stayed at home.”
Emmanuel tilted the torch beam away from the teenager’s face. Violent death was shocking, but the violent death of a child was different; the effects sank deeper and lingered longer. Amal was only a few years older than Jolly and probably still a schoolboy.
“Sit down and rest against the wall,” Emmanuel said.
Amal sank to the ground and sucked breath in through an open mouth. A panic attack was in the cards. “Are you going to … to … arrest us, Detective?”
Emmanuel pulled a small flask from a jacket pocket and unscrewed the lid. He handed it to Amal, who pulled back.
“I don’t drink. My mother says it makes you stupid.”
“Make an exception for tonight,” Emmanuel said. “It’s mostly coffee anyway.”
The teenager took a slurp and coughed till fat tears spilled from his eyes. Parthiv gave a derisive snort, embarrassed by his younger brother’s inability to hold liquor. Emmanuel pocketed the flask and checked the narrow alley between the warehouse wall and the goods train.
He had a body in the open, no murder weapon and two witnesses who, in all probability, had stumbled onto the crime scene. This was a detective’s nightmare–but also a detective’s dream. The scene was all his. There were no foot police to trample evidence into the mud and no senior detectives jockeying for control of the investigation. Clumps of vegetation embedded in the gravel shuddered in a sudden breeze. Beyond Jolly’s body, the butt of a hand-rolled cigarette blew on the ground. Emmanuel picked it up and smelled it–vanilla and chocolate. It was a special blend of flavored tobacco.
“You smoke, Parthiv?” Emmanuel asked over his shoulder.
“Of course.”
“What brand?”
“Old Gold. They’re American.”
“I know them,” Emmanuel said. Half the Yank army had puffed their way across Europe on Old Gold and Camel. For a few years it seemed that the smell of freedom was American tobacco and corned beef. Old Gold was a mass-market cigarette imported into South Africa. The vanilla and chocolate tobacco was probably made to order.
“What about you, Amal … do you smoke?”
“No.”
“Not even a puff after school?”
“Only once. I didn’t like it. It hurt my lungs.”
Parthiv snorted again.
Emmanuel shone the beam on Jolly’s hands and face. Amal looked away. There were no defense wounds on the boy’s hands despite the open penknife. The killer had worked fast and with maximum efficiency. Maybe it was the night chill that made the murder read cold and dispassionate. The word professional came to Emmanuel’s mind.
This was hardly a description that fit either one of the Dutta boys. He played the torchlight over the rough ground again, looking for hard evidence. Jolly’s order book was nowhere near the body.
A coupling creaked in the darkness. Parthiv and Amal focused on an object in the gloom of the freight yard behind him. Emmanuel swiveled and a black hole opened up and swallowed him.
© 2010 Malla Nunn
Most helpful customer reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Meet the next great detective novel.
By S. Rogers
By now you've probably heard of Stieg Larsson's best-selling novel, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. It's a fast-paced thriller set in Sweden, the first in a trilogy of books featuring Lisbeth Sanders, a quirky investigator/computer hacker and the "Girl" in the title. In this particular story, she teams up with Mikhail Blomkvist, a once-respected journalist who has fallen on hard times, to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a young girl forty years ago. I could hardly put it down.
So I was thrilled to receive an email from my friends at Simon & Schuster recently that read, "If you love Steig Larsson's Mikael Blomkvist you will certainly fall in love with Malla Nunn's enigmatic Emmanuel Cooper." They were referring to the main character in Nunn's second novel, Let the Dead Lie, and I was sold. I requested an advance review copy and devoured it.
This book is actually a sequel to Nunn's debut novel, A Beautiful Place to Die (now also on my reading list). Both stories feature Emmanuel Cooper, a former soldier and police detective sergeant who is indeed as crafty and tough as Larsson's Blomkvist. And like Blomkvist, the actions of his past haunt his present.
Let the Dead Lie is set in 1950s South Africa, specifically, in the port town of Durban - a melting pot of Indians, Afrikaners, Zulus, English, Russians, Jews, and Greeks - that at this point in history is still subject to the racial separation system of apartheid. The area of focus is the Victory Shipyards, which turn into a hotbed of violence, prostitution, and thievery at night.
Cooper is now working undercover on the docks of Durban Harbor to document police corruption, when he stumbles upon the slain body of an 11-year-old English slum kid that ran errands in the shipyard. Cooper, who grew up in a mixed-race family in the slums of Johannesburg, identifies with the boy. Rather than "letting the dead lie," he gets entangled in the crime scene and becomes the prime suspect in the murder, only to become a pawn in a much larger game of international intrigue.
If you like detective stories, this is a must-read; it's as fast-paced and engaging (with equally colorful characters) as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but also an easier read. Also fascinating is the historic and cultural aspects of the story; Nunn was born in Swaziland, South Africa, and her parents actually grew up in Durban, but later moved the family to Australia to escape the race restrictions imposed on them in their home land. Her fiction is inspired by real people and stories from her relatives, combined with diligent research and good dose of imagination. It's a great murder mystery that will have you reading into the wee hours of the night.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
4.5 Stars: 2nd book in a most promising series
By D. Merrimon Crawford
Second in the Emmanuel Cooper series, LET THE DEAD LIE opens in 1953 in Durban, South Africa after a brief prologue in set in 1945 Paris which casts a framework defining Cooper's career and determined search for justice. The National Party's apartheid laws are in effect. The port town of Durban with its diverse racial groups and tribes does not easily fit into a black and white view of race. After his case in the first book, A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO DIE, now former detective and ex-soldier Emmanuel Cooper, does surveillance work of corrupt policemen on the seedy docks of Durban, a place frequented by prostitutes, thieves and other low life activities. When Cooper discovers the dead body of a young errand boy, he cannot let the crime go. As he becomes a suspect in the crime, Cooper races against the clock to solve the murder. Several complications and interwoven connections expose several layers of corruption and danger.
In LET THE DEAD LIE, Malla Nunn, Swaziland born filmmaker and author, creates a murder mystery rich in detail that takes the reader to the heart 1950s South African culture. Every gesture or word between characters carries with it the social construct of apartheid. As in her first novel, Malla Nunn instills a keen sense of place and history into the mystery. Against this rich background, LET THE DEAD LIE creates complex characters in which various types of corruption, overt and those hidden beneath surface appearances come into play. Cooper's investigation takes the reader beyond the stereotypes created by apartheid, while exposing the unintended consequences of the apartheid laws. The preparations for Queen Elizabeth's coronation in the background provide a stark contrast to life around the Durban dockyards and the other places where Cooper's investigation leads while also placing the mystery within a larger historical framework. As in the first book, Malla Nunn digs deeper behind the surface to reveal those human connections and passions that seethe below the surface of the society and the individual.
Like her debut mystery, A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO DIE, LET THE DEAD LIE is a riveting mystery where clues and carefully laid twists and turns make for a fast page turner and also a rich work of fiction to satisfy a deeper longing within the reader for depth in setting, characterization and history. The second novel can be read as a stand alone although I would encourage first time readers to read both books in order. The second novel will be all the richer in the context of the first when a reader already knows the history of many secondary characters, particularly the Scottish voice of the phantom staff sergeant that reappears from time to time, which is likely to be more confusing to first time readers. This voice, however, give insights into Cooper's past and his internal thoughts. The framing of the mystery as a deal quickens the pace and yet, somehow, feels unbelievable. Nevertheless, once one suspends belief and follows the story, the intricate connections that make the mystery make LET THE DEAD LIE more satisfying than a straight line to the culprit with a few red herrings mystery.
As a whole, A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO DIE, was slightly better as a mystery than LET THE DEAD LIE, yet it is this second Malla Nunn mystery that truly develops the series with a more intimate look at Emmanuel Cooper. LET THE DEAD LIE is a crucial important book to carry the series forward precisely because of the author's character development. The insights into his character become even more fascinating here as past and present once again combine to create him the man that he is, making this reader most curious where this case will lead him next. While I love the first book of the series, this book, despite its minor imperfections, makes the choice to read the author's third automatic more so than just the first alone. Together, the two books create a complex character worth following. In both books, setting and history play a crucial role, not just as background but as fully integrated into the mystery. Twelve questions and a short interview at the end will facilitate a deeper reading either for individual readers or as a starting point for book club discussions. Malla Nunn is a must read for the mystery lover looking for something rich, original and refreshingly different.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
The second Nunn novel - as good as the first
By Carla Ford
Having thoroughly enjoyed the first novel by the same author, I was looking forward to this one, and I wasn't disappointed. As a matter of fact, this one was easier to read because I had already learned so much about the race classifications for this era in South Africa from the first novel. The main character, Emmanuel, is wonderful, and such a good guy that it is easy to get caught up in the solving of the mystery. The plot takes so many twists and turns that it isn't possible to guess the outcome, even though it makes perfect sense. I love that the ending alluded to another novel to come, where we may learn more of the background on Emmanuel, who is still surrounded by much mystery himself.
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