I am a big fan of Deon Meyer, and I try to read all his books in order. So it finally came time for me to read the first of the Benny Griessel series. I found the book slow to begin with but then it picked up speed as all the different plots and characters became more cohesive. This is a book about both Benny and his individual demons, as well as his hunting down of a serial killer who has been executing individuals who have committed horrible crimes against children. We also have interwoven with this the story of a prostitute and her Colombian boyfriend which eventually leads to the resolution of the case.
The first section of the book was rather slow moving because I could not grasp all the different parts of this plot. We have the prostitute talking to a minister, we’ve got Benny who is an alcoholic and we’ve got the individual who became a serial killer and the story as to what happened that led him to become this executioner. By the time we got to the second section which was just about Benny, basically, things started to become clearer and I can understand why the author uses him in his own series of books. Benny is a fascinating character who has sunk almost as far as you can due to the effects of alcoholism, and so we follow him as he tries to clean up his act and also catch the killer.
I can’t say this is my favorite of the books that I have read by Deon Meyer, but I can see where this character is going to grab my attention and I’m thinking the future books are going to be even better. This is well written, as always, once I could make my way through all the different subplots, I thought everything worked well together and, again, as I got about halfway into the book I couldn’t put it down. If you have not read any books by Meyer I think he does a wonderful job of explaining the political and police situation over in South Africa, and I find his works extremely realistic. I’m looking forward to the remaining books in this series!
