Invisible - The story:

When the rich and famous visit South Africa their first port of call is often Body Armor, the personal security company offering two types of protection: the big and intimidating muscle men called Gorillas, or the lean and hungry former government body guards, referred to as Invisibles.

Lemmer is a free-lance Invisible, way down on the price list where the bargains are to be found, because he is white trash, a violent man with a criminal record who spent four years in jail after killing a guy in a road rage incident. He lives in the remote village of Loxton in the Upper Karoo, trying to rebuild his life, when the call from Body Armor comes on Christmas morning: The tiny and beautiful Emma le Roux, a brand consultant from Cape Town, wants to hire him.

He needs the money. So he drives down, meets her, and listens to her story.

She says she saw her brother on the television news a few days ago. He seems to be the suspect in the killing of a witch doctor and four vulture poachers up in the Lowveld of Mpumalanga Province, now apparently on the run. The only problem is, her brother is supposed to be dead. He disappeared twenty years ago in the Kruger National Park.

After calling the investigating officer, she accepted that it must be a case of mistaken identity. But two days later, she received a mysterious phone call. And then three men in balaclavas broke down her front door and tried to kill her. She escaped, but now, she wants answers. She's going to the Lowveld herself, and Lemmer must watch her back.

Lemmer's First Law of Small Women is: Don't trust them.

Lemmer was a ministerial body guard for twenty years before affirmative action claimed his job. He knows people. He can read them like paperback novels - all the little signs and signals. And he knows Emma le Roux is lying. Probably about everything. But hey, that's what rich people do. If she wants to indulge in fantasy, he'll take the money and go along for the ride, thank you very much.

Emma's investigation goes nowhere quickly. And then she is seriously injured.

Lemmer's First General Law is: Don't get involved. But he has never failed as a body guard before. And despite her storming of windmills, he's grown a little too fond of Emma. So he starts digging, uncovering simmering racial and political tensions, greed, corruption, and a network of eco-terrorists. He bangs heads, has an encounter with a black mamba (see photo), and follows the leads until he finds what he's after: The people who attacked and almost killed Emma.

Getting to them will be extremely dangerous, and exposing them could have international political implications. If he fails, both he and Emma will end up dead.

But Lemmer is sick and tired of being invisible.

He goes after them, against all odds.

The Mail & Guardian Review

For years Afrikaans readers have been starved of quality thriller writers, who can dish up death and destruction in the most toe-curling fashion. As one of my friends puts it: “If you read Afrikaans, you either read sugary sweet romance or arty-farty literature that leaves you wondering about the meaning of it all.”

This same friend has been reading thriller and crime novels by the dozen in English and, though he is as Afrikaans as the boertjie next door, he has refused to touch anything in the taal other than newspapers. When I offered him a Deon Meyer thriller, he was sceptical.

But not for long. Three days later the book was returned to me with “those English writers can learn something from us. Skop, skiet en donder has never given me this much pleasure as in the soetste taal.”

He has been a complete addict ever since and before Meyer’s latest offering, Onsigbaar, came out, he had already pre-ordered the book. He knows all the Meyer characters and can quote their habits like those of old friends. He finished Onsigbaar in less than two days and was suitably dejected afterwards.

“This was so good it could have gone on forever,” he said grimacing.

I couldn’t agree more. In this book Meyer introduces a new character, Lemmer, who has the typical, flawed characteristics of a Meyer protagonist up against the ropes, with the threat of violence ever present.

Lemmer is an “invisible”, a bodyguard without the threatening stance, who does his job quietly behind the scenes, but who is definitely not someone to tangle with. Just before Christmas the petite Emma hires him to protect her while she investigates the past of a supposedly dead brother.

As in all Meyer thrillers, things are not as they seem. The Mpumalanga Lowveld becomes a sinister setting for a fascinating plot and the type of excursion into the past that has become a Meyer coup-de-grâce.

In peeling off the plot layers Meyers dishes up a host of South African problems, including ecological ones. While the action scenes are plentiful and excellent, the plot is refined -- a delicately prepared five-course meal. Onsig­baar touches on issues such as land claims, unchecked development of luxury estates, conflict between Western and African values, “development” versus the environment. And, as with the best of Meyer’s novels, the significant historic event.

The value of Meyer’s writing lies in the familiar Afrikaans landscape and South African setting in which he places his characters, while still managing to draw readers who are unfamiliar with the Afrikaans colloquial into the action. Real evil is universal, which is why Meyer’s book are so loved. His message is that the bad guys might crawl under the radar for some time, but they will never elude it altogether.

English readers, salivating in anticipation of the translation of Onsigbaar, will certainly not be disappointed.

- Yolandi Groenewald