Dave,
I've stuck a copy of the book on order. Don't know when I'll actually get around to reading it. But as a South African (raised in Joburg, born in Belgium but now living in London) I'm curious to see how accurately the writer potrtrays the country.
South Africa has some major problems with crime. Murder especially. I'm surprised there aren't more novels of this sort out there.
What relationship -- if any -- does the writer have to SA? Not that it really matters. Research and imagination are all that matter ... a wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool from the top of a hill.
Sean Shapiro
________________________________
From: davezeltserman <davezelt@rcn.com>
To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, March 9, 2009 9:31:32 PM
Subject: RARA-AVIS: Mixed Blood by Roger Smith
I just finished this one, and it's excellent. The setup, an American forced to participate in a bank robbery in Milwaukee which left one policeman dead and his accomplices either dead or captured, has fled with the money and his family to Capetown, South Africa. When a couple of drugged out gangsters break into his new home for rape and other nastiness, it triggers a sequence of very violent events.. This is a very dark, violent book where the violence is played straight and not for laughs, and plays almost like a Parker book if Parker ever ended up in Capetown, and found himself a family man and his 4-year old son kidnapped. This book's a first novel, but doesn't read like one. Not one moment of slack from beginning to end. If you like Richard Stark/Parker, I think you'd like this, although it's quite a bit darker and more violent than Parker. As a caveat, I know Roger, but while it had influenced me to try his book, it has no influence at all in my
posting here.
--Dave
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