13 Hours: The Story:

At 05:36 the woman is running up Lion’s Head. She is young, beautiful, American. And terrified. Because she is being hunted, like an animal.

At 05:37, the call wakes detective inspector Bennie Griessel. There’s been a murder. A girl, her throat slit, her body lying next to St. Martini, the Lutheran Church in Long Street.

At 07:02, the hung-over, alcoholic former singing sensation Alexa Barnard discovers her philandering music mogul husband’s body next to her on the floor – and a pistol just inches from her hand.

By nine o’clock, with two murders to solve and his own longing for the bottle almost unbearable, Griessel realises his mentorship of a new generation of law enforcers is going to be a little more complicated than he anticipated.

Past noon, the race to save a young tourist from death becomes desperate and chaotic, and just before half past five, they shoot Griessel, right in the heart.

Fairly normal day, your typical thirteen hours of Cape Town homicide investigation.

Reviews:

• Graeme Blundell in The Australian

A TERRIFIC read from South Africa's best: a hard-nosed police procedural that's also one of those race-against-time thrillers you need to read as quickly as possible.

Meyer is a class act, his novel edgy, subtly plotted and beautifully balanced between fast-paced action, believable characterisation, the tense process of investigation and penetrating social comment.

• Antonia Fraser in The Lady (UK)

One of the most exciting thrillers I've read for a long time. Take it on a journey which may involve delays, but you won't even notice them as Thirteen Hours, as it were, passes in a flash ... I shall look out for Deon Meyer in future, and meanwhile, the tapestry that is South Africa has gained in richness for me.

• Drew Carey on Twitter:

  Reading a good detective crime thriller set in Capetown: Thirteen Hours by Deon Meyer. Learning a lot of good Afrikaaner slang ...

• Christopher Fowler in the Financial Times (UK)

  South African thrillers arrive with racial baggage, and it’s a mark of Meyer’s talent to see just how well the issues are balanced with a smashing story. Imposing a strict time limit and a tight location on his plot, he ramps up the suspense to an unbearable degree.

  Best of all, his sharply drawn characters really feel part of the new South Africa, where loyalties and beliefs must always be questioned.

• Bernatette Inoz on Reactions to Reading

  It’s not often that I feel like describing a book as perfect but I simply cannot think of a single thing I would change about Thirteen Hours. It has everything you’d want in a thriller and loads more besides, and is the hefty object I shall be hurling at the very next person who says in my hearing that crime fiction isn’t real literature.

• Anthony Stidolph in The Witness (SA)

  Meyer, who has won praise for his previous novels, is very good at delineating some of the tensions and conflicts that underlie our new democracy, as well as evoking the atmosphere of a more menacing Cape Town that exists beyond the tourist brochures. His is a tough, unglamorous depiction of a city still scarred by its recent history while in Griessel he has created a sympathetic and likeable character — an essentially good man struggling with his own private demons.

• James Mitchell in The Star Tonight

  Meyer weaves their stories over 13 hours that will pass in a flash for the reader. For some of the characters, damaged physically or psychologically, there'll be a hint of a future. It's Meyer's talent to show, without labouring the point, that life is far more than an episode; that even as a bullet strikes home and consciousness ebbs there can be curiosity mixed with the inevitable, momentary regret.

  ... In Meyer we have more than a writer who entertains, and also more than a novelist who educates us about Kaleni's "little cultural differences": his greatest attribute is that he sets us thinking about ourselves and our country and our future. Painlessly.

• The Sunday Times (UK) review by Joan Smith:

  At first glance, Deon Meyer’s detective shares characteristics with other fictional cops: he’s trying to give up booze and he’s separated from his wife, although he hasn’t given up hope that she’ll come back. What makes this novel so outstanding is its setting — the new South Africa, where jaded white detectives are still getting used to working with black and “coloured” (in the country’s curious parlance) colleagues — and Meyer’s superlative talent for suspense.

  Some of the best crime fiction is rooted in contemporary events. Twenty years after the release of Nelson Mandela, South Africa remains a troubled place, and Meyer’s novels give rare insights into the texture of everyday life. Above all, though, this is a vigorous, exciting novel that combines memorable characters and plot with edge-of-the-seat suspense.

• Yvonne Klein on Reviewingtheevidence.com

  Meyer brilliantly juggles all of the thematic balls, while maintaining an unrelenting sense of suspense.

• From Material Witness

  And it is gripping: tense, cleverly plotted and beautifully balanced between action, investigation and social comment. And all of it rises towards a crescendo that is pitched to perfection.

  Thirteen Hours is a fine novel and South Africa a very attractive destination on the global crime fiction tour.

• Maxine Clarke on Eurocrime

  I won't give away any more of the plot of this exciting novel, which both progresses at breakneck speed as the police and the villains both try to find Rachel ...

  I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, both for its action-packed plot and for its subtle characterisations of many characters.

• Hubert O'Hearn on By the Book Reviews:

  Thirteen Hours is a near-perfect example of how to take a well-established crime genre - in this case the race against the clock to save a kidnapping victim - and through sharp, clean writing remind the reader why these books became storybook staples in the first place.

  It's a book for people who love scary rides, movies that make you jump, and their cops served neat. Great, great fun. And that's the final word.

• Margaret Cannon in The Globe and Mail:

  My favourite crime novels are always those that transport me. I love a story with a great setting. There have been other South African crime novelists, but none are as deft at place as Deon Meyer. Thirteen Hours is Cape Town today, with all its exquisite beauty, tribal conflicts, loyalties and corruptions.

  Meyer weaves all this into a tightly plotted story – with a twist that works beautifully – and unforgettable characters, including a Zulu policewoman who behaves like a queen and subsists on a diet of KFC.

• Yolandi Groenewald in the Mail & Guardian:

  Deon Meyer leaves bloody fingerprints all over his books.

  His novels are so engaging that you can easily get paper cuts from turning pages too fast or gripping books too tightly in one of his super- suspenseful moments.

  His intricately researched plots are of course best dished up in Afrikaans, but English readers usually have a wait of only some months before being able to enjoy South Africa’s best suspense writing in their home language.

  Meyer’s latest, 13 Hours, is a ripping good read guaranteed to keep you up until the last word. His overseas success is written into the novel, with American tourists taking centre stage and even a cameo for his American friend and fellow suspense writer Michael Connelly (who is also Meyer’s spitting image), but this hardly detracts from the plot.

  South Africans will delight in the rollercoaster ride of a policeman chasing down a case in 13 hours all over Cape Town, and his growing fan base overseas will be won over once more.

  13 Hours is 24 -- only better. There is no need for a Kiefer Sutherland to carry the plot -- the words alone are enough to hook you for the few hours necessary to finish the book.

The First few pages ...

05:36: a girl runs up the steep slope of Lion’s Head. The sound of her running shoes urgent on the broad footpath’s gravel.

At this moment, as the sun’s rays pick her out like a searchlight against the mountain, she is the image of carefree grace. Seen from behind, her dark plait bounces against the little rucksack. Her neck is deeply tanned against the powder blue of her T-shirt. There is energy in the rhythmic stride of her long legs in denim shorts. She personifies athletic youth – vigorous, healthy, focused.

Until she stops and looks back over her left shoulder. Then the illusion disintegrates. There is anxiety in her face. And utter exhaustion.

She does not see the impressive beauty of the city in the rising sun’s soft light. Her frightened eyes search wildly for movement in the tall fynbos shrubbery behind her. She knows they are there, but not how near. Her breath races – from exertion, shock and fear. It is adrenaline, the fearsome urge to live, that drives her to run again, to keep going, despite her aching legs, the burning in her chest, the fatigue of a night without sleep and the disorientation of a strange city, a foreign country and an impenetrable continent.

Ahead of her the path forks. Instinct spurs her to the right, higher, closer to the Lion’s rocky dome. She doesn’t think, there is no plan. She runs blindly, her arms the pistons of a machine, driving her on.

Detective Inspector Benny Griessel was asleep.

He dreamed he was driving a huge tanker on a downhill stretch of the N1 between Parow and Plattekloof. Too fast and not quite in control. When his cell phone rang, the first shrill note was enough to draw him back to reality with a fleeting feeling of relief. He opened his eyes and checked the radio clock. It was 05:37.

He swung his feet off the single bed, dream forgotten. For an instant he perched motionless on the edge, like a man hovering on a cliff. Then he stood up and stumbled to the door, down the wooden stairs to the living room below, to where he had left his phone last night. His long hair was unkempt, too long between trims. He wore only a pair of faded rugby shorts. His single thought was that a call at this time of the morning could only be bad news.

He didn’t recognise the number on the phone’s small screen.

“Griessel,” his voice betrayed him, hoarse with the first word of the day.

“Hey, Benny, it’s Vusi. Sorry to wake you.”

He struggled to focus, his mind fuzzy. “That’s OK.”

“We’ve got a ... body.”

“Where?”

“St Martini, the Lutheran church up in Long Street.”

“In the church?”

“No, she’s lying outside.”

“I’ll be there now.”

He ended the call and ran a hand through his hair.

She, Inspector Vusumuzi Ndabeni had said.

Probably just a bergie. Another tramp who had drunk too much of something or other.

He put the phone down beside his brand new second-hand laptop.

He turned, still half asleep, and bashed his shin against the front wheel of the bicycle leaning against his pawn shop sofa. He grabbed it before it toppled. Then he went back upstairs. The bicycle was a vague reminder of his financial difficulties, but he didn’t want to dwell on that now.

In the bedroom he took off his shorts and the musky scent of sex drifted up from his midriff.

Fuck.

The knowledge of good and evil suddenly weighed heavily on him. Along with the events of the last night, it squeezed the last remaining drowsiness from his brain.

Whatever had possessed him?

He tossed the shorts in an accusatory arc onto the bed and walked through to the bathroom.

Griessel lifted the toilet lid angrily, aimed and peed.

Suddenly she was on the tar of Signal Hill Road and spotted the woman and dog a hundred metres to the left. Her mouth shaped a cry, two words, but her voice was lost in the rasping of her breath.

She ran towards the woman and her dog. It was big, a Ridgeback. The woman looked about sixty, white, with a large pink sun hat, a walking stick and a small bag on her back.

The dog was unsettled now. Maybe it smelled her fear, sensed the panic inside her. Her soles slapped on the tar as she slowed. She stopped three metres from them.

“Help me,” said the girl. Her accent was strong.

“What’s wrong?” There was concern in the woman’s eyes. She stepped back. The dog growled and strained on the lead, to get closer to the girl.

“They’re going to kill me.”

The woman looked around in fear. “But there’s nobody.”

The girl looked over her shoulder. “They’re coming.”

Then she took the measure of the woman and dog and knew they wouldn’t make any difference. Not here on the open slope of the mountain. Not against them. She would put them all in danger.

“Call the police. Please. Just call the police,” she said and ran again, slowly at first, her body reluctant. The dog lunged forward and barked once. The woman pulled back on the lead.

“But why?”

“Please,” she said and jogged, feet dragging, down the tar road towards Table Mountain. “Just call the police.”

She looked back once, about seventy paces on. The woman was still standing there bewildered, frozen to the spot.