Malla Nunn

Let the Dead Lie is set in 1950s port town of Durban, South Africa where former Detective Emmanuel Cooper is dealing with the aftermath of inflaming the Security Branch in A Beautiful Place to Die. With no police badge and a different race identification card, Cooper now works undercover in the Victory Shipyards doing surveillance for his former boss, Colonel Van Niekerk.

When Emmanuel discovers the dead body of a ten-year old white errand boy, he cannot let the crime go even though he know show more it will cause him serious problems. As he becomes a suspect in the crime he's given 48 hours to solve it or end up in jail as the murderer. Several complications and interwoven connections expose layers of corruption and danger. The plot takes so many twists and turns that it isn't possible to guess the outcome. The story gets more and more intriguing as the real facts of the boy's killing are exposed with countless characters, policemen and spies. The boy's killing is only a small part of this story.

This suspenseful novel is taut, well written and tightly paced. The reader is immersed into the culture and the atmospherics of the unjust and complex color dynamics of South Africa. Throughout the novel, we are confronted with the race laws and the cruel realities of living at a time where identity is granted only through being officially white. This book develops the series with a more intimate look at Emmanuel Cooper and moves the series forward in a new and interesting plot twist. The insights into his character become even more fascinating here as past and present combine to create one of the most fascinating literary characters I've ever read about. Sometimes an author's work will just “grab” you. This has been my experience so I can't recommend this series enough. show less

Present Darkness is the fourth superb instalment in Malla Nunn's Detective Emmanuel Cooper series. This unique crime series, set during the 1950's in apartheid ruled South Africa, has become one of my favourites, and Present Darkness is Nunn's best yet.

It is a few days before Christmas, 1953 and Cooper is fast losing patience with his colleagues in the Johannesburg major crimes squad. While the temporary transfer from Durban allows him to see Davida and their baby daughter Rebekah every day, show more he is wary of his boss, Lieutenant Walter Mason who seems far to interested in what Cooper does in his off time. Called to a vicious beating of a white couple, a high school principal and a secretary at the office of land management, Cooper is surprised when their teenage daughter blames Aaron Shabalala, the youngest son of his best friend and Zulu Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala, for the brutal attack. From the first things don't seem to add up, but Mason isn't interested in Cooper's doubts and insists the girls identification closes the case. Cooper, who owes Shabalala his life, can't let it rest though and with the help of Dr. Daniel Zweigman, he begins an investigation of his own.

Cooper's inquiry leads him from the violent slum in which he was raised to a dusty farm on the outskirts of Pretoria. He encounters thieves, corrupt cops, pimps, murderers and an abducted prostitute in his drive to prove Aaron Shabalala's innocence. Full of twists and turns, complicated by Cooper's need to avoid alerting Mason to his unsanctioned investigation and his desire to protect his family, the plot is fast-paced and tension filled. Cooper, as always, follows the evidence wherever it leads him, no matter the threat or danger, ably assisted by Shabalala and Zweigman.

As I've written before, the cultural framework of the novel is what really sets this series apart from other crime fiction I have read. Apartheid affects every facet of life for South Africans, and Nunn doesn't shy away from exposing the appalling inequalities of the period. Having experienced life on both sides of the colour line, Cooper is more aware of the arbitrary injustice based on skin colour than most and refuses to let apartheid compromise his job or his personal life. In 1953, Cooper's relationship with Davida, a mixed race woman, is illegal and he is conscious that she, and their daughter, is a vulnerability his enemies could easily exploit.

As with Nunn's last book, Silent Valley (published in the US as Blessed Are the Dead), I read Present Darkness in single sitting. Skilfully crafted with an intriguing plot and superb characterisation, Malla Nunn's Detective Emmanuel Cooper series should be on everybody's reading list. show less

This 2019 winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for young-adult literature is set in 1960s Swaziland [officially renamed in 2018 to the Kingdom of eSwatini]. Adele Joubert, 16, attends the Keziah Christian Academy, a school for mixed-race students the author based on one attended by her mother, aunt, and grandmother, and which the author herself attended before emigrating to Australia when she was fourteen.

The world of Keziah is a microcosm of the country itself, rigidly divided by show more color (and gradations of color), wealth, and social status. In an interview, the author explained:

"I needed to write about what was actually important in our experience. . . . The caste system, for people like me who were multiracial, was microclassified.”

You had to find your own way, she clarified in the interview, by importing whatever powers you could.:

"Those with money were considered a cut above and given fawning respect while poverty was treated as a self-inflicted injury. Light skin was preferable to dark skin. The laws made that clear. But even then, being a light-skinned biracial person meant that you were second best when compared to the white ruling class."

In the novel, Adele lamented that white people, classified as “European,” were “the kings and queens of everything.” Her mother told her to be grateful for the European genes in her that gave her curly but not kinked hair, and green eyes. Indeed, these traits helped confer social status on Adele.

Adele’s father, who was a white engineer, lived with his white family in Johannesburg. He did call Adele and her mother every week however, and visited them occasionally. He also provided the money for Adele to attend Keziah.

Adele had a best friend at Keziah, Delia, who was one of the “pretties,” the most popular girls. Popular girls even had a cadre of “pets” - younger female students who admired them and catered to them. But this year, Adele found that Delia was no longer interested in her; her place in Delia's circle was taken by Sandi Cardoza, a new student from a wealthy family whose parents were married, which granted her higher status than other girls, certainly more than Adele. Adele also learned she would no longer be rooming with Delia; rather, she would be thrown in with Lottie Diamond, a "reject" who was half-Jewish, quarter-Scottish, and the rest pure Zulu, and who was from an impoverished background. Lottie had worn-out shoes, a faded school uniform, and actually spoke her mind instead of saying only what was expected. Adele felt humiliated and furious to have been dumped, and to be stuck with “a girl from the bush.”

Adele could not complain, however; the system was set, and the administrators were harsh and punitive. Complaints or infractions earned the girls unpleasant work details and/or physical punishments. Students reflected the system by engaging in physical fights of their own to settle insults.

Adele had some solace; her father gave her a [used, of course] book to take with her to school: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. She started reading the book, and Lottie did too - at first surreptitiously, and then, after Adele found out, they started to read it together, alternating reading it aloud to each another. In this way, as well as in their shared status as rejects and victims of vicious gossip and nasty pranks, they began to bond. A fire and a death at the school cemented their relationship further.

Adele learned much more from living with Lottie than she did from lessons or from anyone else at the Keziah Academy. Lottie never compromised herself and her integrity in order to be accepted; acceptance was never really an option for her in any event. Adele, having internalized what society taught her was most valuable, faced great hurdles in overcoming her beliefs about race and class, and to behaving in a way that she knew in her heart was both more honest, and morally superior to how she had lived before.

Evaluation: This excellent and moving story has so much to offer in terms of a view into other societies and other ways of understanding the world. Highly recommended! show less

Blessed are the Dead finds DS Emmanuel Cooper and DC Samuel Shabalala traveling to the tiny town of Roselet where the body of an young Zulu girl named Amahle Matebula has been found covered in wildflowers on a hillside in the Drakensberg Mountains, halfway between her father’s kraal and the Afrikaner farm where she worked as a maid. Her family, headed by a chieftain with five wives, demands the release of her body from the local medical office and the doctor refuses to have anything to do show more with an autopsy. This will be the impetus to bring in our third main character, Dr. Zweigman. This tiny team of three will again band together to find the murderer. There are few clues at the crime scene other than a tartan blanket, but Cooper and Shabalala start to ask questions and eventually discover more clues as well as multiple suspects.

The Emmanuel Cooper mystery series by Malla Nunn is my current “most favored” series. It takes place in post-WW2 apartheid South Africa and the setting is incredibly important in each of the mysteries. The author does an excellent job of weaving the structure of apartheid into the story showing us how our main characters deal with the strict rules that segregate South African's into a separate-and-unequal role. These characters are totally alive, believable and incredibly conflicted. The most current book, Present Darkness, has just been released and I plan to pick that up as soon as possible. Blessed are the Dead is not only a riveting mystery where clues and carefully laid twists and turns but also an atmospheric story with an incredible depth in setting, characterization and history. show less