A Beautiful Place to Die (Detective Emmanuel Cooper, #1) in WACKY READING CHALLENGES

Jan 14, 2025 Olivermagnus rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-mystery, 2025, crime, jan-2025

A Beautiful Place to Die is the first book in a series featuring Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper, an Englishman who served in WWII, and still has nightmares about the horrors he's seen. It's 1952 and in South Africa the new apartheid laws have gone into effect, separating white from black and mixed race people. Cooper has been sent to investigate the murder of prominent Afrikaner policeman, Captain Willem Pretorius, in the small town of Jacob’s Rest on South Africa’s border with Mozambique.. A Beautiful Place to Die is the first book in a series featuring Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper, an Englishman who served in WWII, and still has nightmares about the horrors he's seen. It's 1952 and in South Africa the new apartheid laws have gone into effect, separating white from black and mixed race people. Cooper has been sent to investigate the murder of prominent Afrikaner policeman, Captain Willem Pretorius, in the small town of Jacob’s Rest on South Africa’s border with Mozambique.. Captain Pretorius is considered to be a fair, honorable, stern and straight laced man.

Almost as soon as he starts his investigation, he is shoved aside by two men from the National Security squad, a Gestapo-like police unit who want to prove it was a communist plot committed by black agitators. Cooper is assigned the task of discovering who had been molesting young black women and uncovers a very nasty, covered up situation. Cooper is surrounded on all sides by brutal racists who don't like the direction he's taking. His only allies are a Zulu constable who won't talk, an old Jewish storekeeper who doctors in secret, and a young white constable named Hansie Hepple who is dumber than anyone Emmanuel has met before.

There are some rough language and adult themes in the book but it is a riveting mystery where clues and carefully laid twists and turns make this book a fast page turner as well as a fascinating view of South African history. The author draws the reader into both the setting and the hunt for the killer which leads to an unexpected revelation with dangerous consequences. Cooper is the epitome of a conflicted hero and the bleak African setting works well as its own character.

Malla Nunn is absolutely wonderful at depicting life in a society that not only condones, but openly institutionalizes racism. The down side of this is that racial violence is very, hard to read about and very realistically written.

This was an extraordinarily powerful novel, both as a mystery and also as a commentary of South Africa during that time period. If you are looking for a page-turning and carefully-plotted story with tight, clean writing and engaging characters, this book won’t disappoint. ...more

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