I'm not the biggest fan of detective fiction, usually I read more classic stuff like Chandler and Christie from that genre. The first ones remind me of film noir (there's something utterly enchanting about Los Angeles at night) and the latter ones are just adorably entertaining (despite the grisly murders). However, when I got the chance to get a free copy of the new Finnish translation of this, I thought why not. I've wanted to read more about Africa anyway and this sounded exotic. I think I also got a sudden urge to learn Afrikaans.

The result was that I almost sabotaged my own studying, because I could not put this down for too long a period. I was kind of upset that when I went to my parents' house for a couple days I forgot to take this with me. I waited anxiously to get back to the story.

At first I wanted more descriptions of the surroundings. It felt like the story could have happened anywhere, because there were just brief mentionings of names and places that didn't ring a bell. As the plot thickened, however, I barely thought about it. Meyer drops small pieces of the South African society here and there, and something can also be spotted between the lines. Nothing ever seemed too glued on, and there was no dumping of information (unlike historical fiction often has). The story about the football match was touching, and got me more curious about the situation in South Africa, because I'm not very familiar about the whole continent.

The two levels of time brought nice depth to van Heerden's character. He believes every human being to be fundamentally evil. Hope is not entirely lost, because Beneke would like to break through his hard and cynical barrier. Other characters were realistic as well, and none of them are either good or evil, just ordinary human beings who've had to make some tough choices.

Let's be honest, this ain't special in the way that I usually consider special literature, but this is still an entertaining one in its own genre.