Hardback: Cobra (2014) is the latest and fourth book in the brilliant Benny Griessel thriller series - introducing some marvellous new characters - with Deon Meyer's trademark page-turning finesse.
Benny Griessel is first on the scene of a bloodbath at a luxury guesthouse on a beautiful Franschhoek wine farm.
Two of the professionally executed dead are bodyguards, but there is no sign of the man they were meant to be protecting: Paul Morris, a British citizen with a brand new passport, new suitcase, new clothes and no history, has been kidnapped.
The only clue is an engraving on every shell case - the flaring head of a spitting cobra.
In Cape Town, skilled pickpocket Tyrone Kleinbooi is drawing on all his considerable talents to pay for his younger sister Nadia's university fees.
Security guards arrest him after he steals a purse from a beautiful foreigner's handbag - but as they question him a figure enters and kills the security guards with consummate ease, leaving behind the distinctive cobra shell casings.
In the chaos, Tyrone manages to escape with his loot but he leaves his mobile phone behind.
Meanwhile Benny and his Hawk unit partners make some uncomfortable discoveries: Morris's passport is fake and the British consulate is suddenly not very eager to cooperate.
The cobra casings are the mark of a ruthless assassin and the missing man is an eminent Cambridge mathematician.
Why would a mathematics professor from Cambridge University, renting a holiday home outside Cape Town, require a false identity and three bodyguards?
Where is he, now that they are dead?
What knowledge does he hold that is so desirable and so dangerous?
Investigating the massacre, Benny Griessel and his team find themselves being drawn into an international conspiracy with shocking implications.
It seems it is not just the terrorists and criminals of Britain and South Africa who may fear the Professor's work, but the politicians too.
Cobra was translated from the Afrikaans to the English by K L Seegers.
About the author: Deon Meyer lives near Cape Town in South Africa. His big passions are motorcycling, music, reading, cooking and rugby. In January 2008, he retired from his day job as a consultant on brand strategy for BMW Motorrad, and is now a full-time author. Deon Meyer's books have attracted worldwide critical acclaim and a growing international fanbase. Originally written in Afrikaans, they have now been translated into twenty-six languages.
Thirteen Hours (2010) was shortlisted for the CWA International Dagger and won the Boeke Prize in South Africa - the first time in the prize's sixteen year history that a South African book has won. His novels have also won literary prizes in France, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands, and the film rights to seven of his novels have been optioned or sold.
Deon has also written two television series, and several screenplays for movies. In 2013, he directed one of his original scripts for the feature film The Last Tango.
Visit the author's website and follow him on Twitter @MeyerDeon.
Rating: 5/5
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