Trackers: The photographs

Part of Deon's research for every book is to take photographs of the places and landscapes where the stories happen. Want to see what the Bo-Kaap, the bushveld, the Karoo looks like? Ot the truck transporting the rhinos? TRACKERS has an Extra Page that shows it all ...

Trackers: The Video

Watch the teaser trailer on YouTube now. It's in Afrikaans (produced by Deon's South African publisher NB), but it will give you a great idea of the explosive new novel.

 

More reviews:

• This thriller moves at a break-neck pace with stories going through landscapes that are so visually clear you can smell them, whether it’s a café in the Karoo or a luxurious house in the smartest part of Johannesburg. It is all believable and very fast-moving.

- The South African

• Meyer’s carefully plotted narrative is multilayered and rich in detail, and it’s to his credit that he is able to pull these separate, seemingly unrelated threads into an a-ha conclusion. In the end, it’s about smuggling, killing, and other crimes, but also about the quotidian sins of racism, fear, aloofness, self-interest and mistreatment of others—in short, the ordinary human failings as well as their spectacular transgressions.

  - Atlantic Montly, and Kirkus reviews

• The author – who writes in Afrikaans, idiomatically translated by K L Seegers – presents an unsparing picture of social divisions in post-apartheid South Africa. They directly create the varieties of crime thrown up in this still-fractured society. But perhaps his key achievement is the astutely drawn trio: the conflicted bodyguard, streetwise but falling for a major deception; the young woman fleeing a desperately unhappy marriage and discovering something that changes her perception of herself; and the ex-cop, finding that the incendiary reserves of violence in his personality are nearer to the surface than he thought. Trackers is a sprawling, invigorating and socially committed crime novel.

  - Barry Forshaw in The Independent.

• Deon Meyer kept readers page-bound with the thrills and suspense in his previous novel, Thirteen Hours. Unlikely as it seems, he’s outdone himself in Trackers, which is certain to top any mystery reader’s best-of-2011 list. This riveting tale has everything from a pair of rhinos to a coven of spies, and to give it all a touch of spice there’s a thread from the oldest type of African adventure tale, the hunt. Those of us old enough to remember the wonders of H. Rider Haggard will recognize it, and it’s marvellous. There are many hunters here, and all of them are tracking animals, including human animals.

  There are several plotlines going, and to give them heft, Meyer brings back two of his finest hunters, the bodyguard Lemmer from Blood Safari and Mat Joubert, now retired from the police force and facing his first case as a private investigator. Add to this mix an attractive woman escaping from an abusive marriage, a couple of rare rhinos escaping from Zimbabwe, and a missing person, along with an international terrorist on the prowl. The cases seem unrelated, but any Meyer fan knows they’ll come together, and this time they literally collide. You will not stop reading this book from the opening line: “Some days leave no tracks …” to the final word.

  - Margaret Cannon, Globe and Mail, Toronto

• All of the subplots are compelling and Meyer melds them together in a brilliant resolution that not everyone will walk away from. If you haven't read Deon Meyer yet, you're missing one of the best thriller writers worldwide.

  - Hilary Williamson on Bookloons.

• One of Trackers’ many delights is Mr. Meyer’s astute observations of human nature, such as in this passage in which Milla composes a letter in her head to her estranged son:

  “You are bigger and stronger than I am; physically I am afraid of you. I don’t want to list your sins, because I can already see your face if you had to read them, those meaningless, suburban, domestic sins of the teenager: your pigsty of a room, your dirty washing on the floor of the bathroom despite my pleas. Your dullness, your selfishness, your superiority, as though I were trash, to be endured only with effort. Your general lack of consideration, your self-centered existence, your endless requests for more money, more possessions, more favors. Your reaction when I say no, the explosions, the swearing. Your accusations, so bitterly unfair, your manipulation, your lies. You are a bully and a fraud and I love you despite all of it, but it doesn’t mean I have to live with it forever.”

  Passages such as the one above elevate this brilliant and intricately plotted thriller far beyond ordinary genre fiction. Trackers is an ambitious novel that opens a window into the people, the problems, and the landscapes of South Africa. Tense action scenes, unrelenting suspense, and a phenomenal cast of characters ranging from farmers and conservationists, to outlaws and intelligence agents, make it abundantly clear why Mr. Meyer has been crowned the “King of South African crime.”

  - Karen Dionne in The New York Journal of Books

• "This is the author’s most accomplished novel to date. Following the thrilling plot of his best­selling Thirteen Hours was always going to be a challenge but he’s visibly gained confidence, showing his technical skill and handling the different sections of the new book with effortless ease. It’s a mesmerising read, and a ­startling revelation at the very end suggests that we haven’t heard the last of these engaging characters."

  - Joan Smith in the Sunday Times (London).

• “Meyer’s ambition matches his execution in this brilliantly complex standalone thriller set in his native South Africa.

  Few readers will anticipate exactly how the seperate plot strands will be resolved. This powerhouse read, which captures the many facets of modern South Africa, should be the American breakthrough this talented author deserves.”

  — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

• “Award-winning crime fiction author Meyer demonstrates his superb gift for bringing together several disparate plots, striking characters, and vividly drawn scenes of contemporary South Africa, all roaring toward a climax with more than one surprise.

  With a fine eye for detail, Meyer ... never loses focus on page-turning suspense and riveting mystery. Highly recommended.”

  — Roland Person, Library Journal (starred review)

• The South African scribe's great skill is making connected events read as random, and skillfully bringing them all to a conculsion to deliver a complex piece of fiction that won't leave you with a headache. Here, he ambitiously links black rhino smuggling, gang warfare, al-Qaida and Fifa - and it's about time they showed up in a crime novel.

  - Shortlist, UK.

• There is much that Deon Meyer fans will recognize and appreciate in Trackers, as well as a lot of new and interesting developments. I've been a fan since Meyer's first two novels were translated into English from Afrikaans (one featuring Mat Joubert), and Trackers reinforces my appreciation for Meyer's work (he's certainly the "dean" of South African crime writing).

  - International Noir Fiction

• TRACKERS (has) a voice that goes beyond crime fiction.

  - Mysteries in Paradise

Trackers: The Teaser:

"That's the rumour. They want to bring in weapons. For an attack, here. For the first time."

"A Muslim attack? In South Africa?"

"Ja. Here. Cape Town. The fairest Cape."

Just a rumour. Unlikely. Far fetched.

So why is the Presidential Intelligence Agency scampering so deperately to intercept the shipment? Why is the CIA bringing in their big guns?

Why is the whole thing leaving such a wide and bloody trail, through the lives of Milla Strachan, the former housewife who just wanted to live a little dangerously; and Lemmer, the bodyguard, hell-bent on revenge after they stole from him, lied to him, and almost killed him.

And former cop Mat Joubert who has to track a missing man before the money runs out and the last remnants of his trail disappear into thin air.

Perhaps, it's more than just a rumour ...

Trackers: The Story:

Lemmer's First Law: Don't get involved.

But when Emma le Roux looks at him with pleading eyes, when the roof of his Karoo house needs big repairs, when the cause is good and just, laws can be broken. So he sighs, and says, yes, he'll ride shotgun for the two rare black rhino's.

Bad call.

Because on a dark and dusty road in Limpopo, they stick a Smith & Wesson Model 500 against his head. They kick him and beat him, they lie, they deceive him, and they steal his Glock, the one with his fingerprints all over it. He wants it back. And he wants revenge.

So he tracks them, leaving a trail of violence that will run the length and breadth of a country, and touch the lives of:

• Former cop Mat Joubert, working on his first dossier as a private investigator. It's a 'fifty-five', police slang for a missing persons case. Danie Flint, easy-going, life of the party, route planner at the Atlantic Bus Company, disappeared three months ago. The SAPS bungled the case, and Flint's wife is at the end of her tether. Joubert must track him down before her money runs out. But it's been years since he did the grunt work, he no longer has the might of the State behind him, and the trail has gone icy cold.

• And Milla Strachan, the former housewife, who walked out on her rich, cheating husband and abusive teenage son to start a new life. Milla, who had only seen South Africa from behind the high walls and alarm systems of her plush northern suburbs home, and through the rose-tinted glasses of the privileged.

  Struggling with being suddenly single at forty, trying to rebuild her relationship with her son, lost in a job market favouring the young and the wired, she has to settle for a lowly 'journalism' job at a secretive government agency. A whole new world opens up for her – including the murky realm of organised crime, Muslim extremism and terrorism, right on her doorstep. And then this world reaches out and touches her, draws her in.

A trail of death, stretching from the Chizarira tot the Cape Waterfront. And at the end of it, nobody will be untouched.