A Beautiful Place to Die [Kindle Edition]

Africa remains a relatively unexplored setting for crime novels, so I was pleased to come across this book set in 1950s South Africa. It opens with Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper arriving in the tiny eastern border town of Jacob's Rest to investigate a report of a drowned police officer. It turns out the man found floating in a pool of water was the town's police captain/unofficial mayor, and was shot through the head. Thus begins Cooper's trip down the dark mean dirt paths that criss-cross the velt behind the town's Afrikaner, Zulu, and Colored houses, shops, and farms. As in any good small-town crime story, nearly everyone has secrets to hide from Cooper -- even the stoic Zulu police constable and mysterious Jewish shopkeeper who become his sidekicks. However, what might have been a standard procedural whodunit in an exotic setting is vastly complicated by the arrival on the scene of two national Security Force goons who take over the investigation. They are hunting for a communist angle to the murder, even if they have to beat it out of an innocent scapegoat, or knock a non-Afrikaner policeman like Cooper around.

These Security Force guys are more dangerous than any criminal Cooper has faced in Johannesburg, and he has to tread lightly around them in order to find the real killer. The story takes place just after the passing of the Immorality Act, banning sexual relations between the races, so you know that's going to play a big role in the story. And indeed it does, as Cooper strips away layer after layer of propriety and deception to reveal the not-so-innocent heart of this supposed "Godly" town, he gets closer and closer to being a victim himself. There's a kind of silly semi-supernatural element to it, as Cooper sometimes hears the voice of his old Scottish drill sergeant in his subconscious yelling at him to keep digging deeper and not to give in. While the bulk of the book is pretty engaging and fun, the climax is a bit of a letdown. The villain, when unmasked is somewhat disappointing, having been motivated by largely invisible extreme pathologies. I never like it when an otherwise perfectly decent crime story features a loony villain, I guess I prefer things to be more mundane. On the whole, however, it's a decent debut with some great atmosphere and a protagonist I wouldn't mind spending another book with. (And indeed, Cooper returns in the Durban-set Let the Dead Die).

A Beautiful Place to Die has all the ingredients of a good crime novel - social tension between individuals and groups, interesting historical context, excellent characterization, strong sense of place, good pacing and a well constructed plot. The novel is set not long after the National Party came to power in 1948 and started to push a strong apartheid agenda and Nunn uses this context to good effect, especially the simmering tensions between Dutch Afrikaners, English White, Blacks and Coloureds, and even Jewish refugees from Germany, and exploring the blurred lines between these groups. The characters are well penned and memorable, and the dialogue and scenes were well judged. The sense of place is particularly strong, capturing both the landscape of rural South Africa and the geography of apartheid in terms of how space was carved up and traversed. The plot builds nicely, with a number of blinds and twists, though ultimately in striving for increasing tension the end wobbles a little by stretching plausibility to the limit and becoming a little too over-melodramatic. This was a shame as the book really was excellent up until this point. Regardless, there is much to like about A Beautiful Place to Die, and Nunn has the foundation for an enjoyable series.

FIRST SENTENCE (Chapter 1): Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper switched off the engine and looked out through the dirty windscreen.

MEMORABLE MOMENT (Page 151): Every colour from fresh milk to burnt sugar was on show. There was enough direct evidence in the churchyard to refute that blood mixing was unnatural. Plenty of people managed to do it just fine.

KEEP IT OR NOT?: A reading group book, I shall return this for other readers to read and discuss.

A debut novel that I both enjoyed reading and learnt a lot from - I will certainly be looking out for further books by this author. A real page-turner - the crime/thriller aspect to the story was interesting enough but, for me, it was the insight into 1950s South Africa that was so fascinating.Well researched, A Beautiful Place To Die tells the story of a country segregated not only into 'whites' and 'blacks' but also into 'coloureds' as well - throw a Jewish character into the racial stew and you have a compelling if somewhat disturbing look at a country where, and I quote .....

"The new segregation laws divided people into race groups, told them where they could live and told them where they could work. The Immorality Act went so far as to tell people who they could sleep with and love."

Not only a good plot, there is a real mix of wonderfully observed characters who, though not always pleasant, are always human and make for great reading. My only 'complaint'? I would love to know more about the previous lives of 'English' South African Detective Emmanuel Cooper and Jewish doctor (?) Daniel Zweigman and hope the author explores at least Cooper in greater depth in her second book Let the Dead Lie