The Sunday Hangman

Bank robber Tollie Erasmus has been found hanging from a tree with a Bible in his hand. What looks at first like a suicide turns out to be a killing performed in the same manner as that used by the South African criminal justice system to execute criminals. It soon becomes clear that the murder of Erasmus is more than an isolated crime, as a second victim turns up who was killed in a similar manner.
Police detectives Lieutenant Tromp Kramer and his Bantu assistant Mickey Zondi pursue their investigation amid the hate filled atmosphere of South Africa under the apartheid system. This atmosphere is so much a part of the story that it could not be told in any other time or place. The emphasis on the gradations of color of a person’s skin, show more and whether they are white, black or colored are such an integral part of the dialog and relationships among characters as to be frightening.
McClure’s characters are as multi-layered as a writer can make them. He adds details of their personal lives that bring the reader into the minds of police, criminals, and peripheral characters, whether we are meant to like them or not. The differing cultures and ethnic backgrounds of the characters rub against each other in a constant friction as Kramer and Zondi work their way toward the capture of the killer.
The Sunday Hangman was originally released in 1977, and is one of eight Kramer and Zondi novels. This riveting story serves as a scathing indictment of the apartheid system, which was still fully in force in South Africa at the time the book was written. But primarily, McClure is telling a good tale, with plenty of satisfying twists and turns for the avid crime novel reader. The message, if there is one, is so woven into the story as to be not so much part of the plot as part of the life of the characters. And it is this subtlety that is the novel’s strength.
(Review published in Suspense Magazine) show less

The acrid edge to these books and the very foreign to me setting make for a smooth getaway. I will have to go back and read Snake when I can find it.

An amateur hangman is busy hanging people in Trekkersburg - a dorp in Apartheid South Africa. Once again the indomitable duo Lieutenant Tromp Kramer and his Zulu side-kick, Sergeant Mickey Zondi are on the case.