Hitchcock used to say that one of the ways he made audiences identify with his films was to "put the heroine through it", and the canny South African writer Deon Meyer does just that for his beleaguered hero in this exemplary thriller. After a successful career in the South African police force, Mat Joubert is hitting the skids. When his wife is tragically killed, he takes a sharp downturn into depression. With the twin demons of alcoholism and spiralling weight problems, he"s not best equipped to be drawn into the investigation of a serial killer who appears to be murdering at random. But (apart from saving more lives), Mat comes to realise that nailing this killer is his last best hope for reclaiming his own life and exorcising the past. Utilising his journalistic background with quiet skill, Meyer creates the turbulent politics of an over- stretched police department in a vivid and energetic fashion, while Joubert is a sympathetic protagonist (with more than a touch of one of Graham Greene"s under- pressure heroes about him). If the serial killer plot is nothing new, the atmosphere of a hot, turbulent country is very vividly evoked and the characterisation is dynamic enough to make the familiar plot come up as fresh as paint in the rainbow colours of the new South Africa. A striking debut novel. --Barry Forshaw