South Africa, 1953. The National Party's rigid race laws have split the nation and a gruelling poverty grips many on the edges of its society. When former Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper stumbles across the body of a child, Jolly Marks, at the Durban docks, he can little imagine what the discovery will lead him to. Soon Cooper finds himself under suspicion for not only Jolly's murder, but others as well. The only way he can clear his name is to find out who the real killer was -- and he's got 48 hours in which to do it. His investigations will lead him into Durban's murky underworld of pimps, prostitutes, strange and sinister preachers, and those on the wrong side of the race laws. For there is more to Jolly's barbaric murder than Cooper could ever have realized ...'One reads this superior sequel to an outstanding debut feeling moral outrage and genuine excitement, which makes it an unusually intense experience' Daily Telegraph

Let the Dead Lie

Malla Nunn

Picador USA

Award-winning screenwriter Malla Nunn delivers a stunning and darkly romantic crime novel set in 1950s apartheid South Africa, featuring Detective Emmanuel Cooper -- a man caught up in a time and place where racial tensions and the raw hunger for power make life very dangerous indeed.   In a morally complex tale rich with authenticity, Nunn takes readers to Jacob's Rest, a tiny town on the border between South Africa and Mozambique. It is 1952, and new apartheid laws have recently gone into effect, dividing a nation into black and white while supposedly healing the political rifts between the Afrikaners and the English. Tensions simmer as the fault line between the oppressed and the oppressors cuts deeper, but it's not until an Afrikaner police officer is found dead that emotions more dangerous than anyone thought possible boil to the surface.   When Detective Emmanuel Cooper, an Englishman, begins investigating the murder, his mission is preempted by the powerful police Security Branch, who are dedicated to their campaign to flush out black communist radicals. But Detective Cooper isn't interested in political expediency and has never been one for making friends. He may be modest, but he radiates intelligence and certainly won't be getting on his knees before those in power. Instead, he strikes out on his own, following a trail of clues that lead him to uncover a shocking forbidden love and the imperfect life of Captain Pretorius, a man whose relationships with the black and coloured residents of the town he ruled were more complicated and more human than anyone could have imagined.   The first in her Detective Emmanuel Cooper series, A Beautiful Place to Die marks the debut of a talented writer who reads like a brilliant combination of Raymond Chandler and Graham Greene. It is a tale of murder, passion, corruption, and the corrosive double standard that defined an apartheid nation. I

A Beautiful Place to Die

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

Pan/Macmillan

Unabridged CD Audiobook... 11 CDs / 12.5 hours long

RECORDED BOOKS^

Present Darkness: A Novel (Detective Emmanuel Cooper, 4)

Present Darkness (Detective Emmanuel Cooper, 4)

Bolinda Audio

Blessed Are the Dead

The body of a seventeen-year-old girl has been found covered in wildflowers on a hillside in the Drakensberg Mountains, near Durban. She is the daughter of a Zulu chief, destined to fetch a high bride price. Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper is sent to investigate. He must enter the guarded worlds of a traditional Zulu clan and a white farming community to gather up the clues. But with no cause of death and no motive, Cooper's investigation is blocked at each turn. Can he tough it out, or will the small-town politics that stir up his feelings about the past be more than he can bear?

Sugar Town Queens

Teen & Young Adult

Literature & Fiction

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Books by Malla Nunn