Capture by Roger Smith

Smith continues exposing the underbelly of Cape Town.

Nick Exley is a motion capture entrepreneur living on the coast with his wife and 5 yo daughter. But all’s not idyllic. His wife is cheating on him with a Slavic brute. Nick smokes dope regularly to escape his failing marriage to this bipolar shrew. Daughter Sunny is his queen.

The story revolves around the collective guilt of the parents. At a small party on their beach, the wife is inside being unfaithful while the husband is sharing a joint on the beach, both ignoring Sunny. The child wades into the water to get her toy boat, gets caught in the current around the rocks and drowns.

The whole episode is witnessed by one of the community’s security who, having purposely waited too long, tries to save the child. Vernon is an ex-cop who lives with his diabetic mother in the Cape Town slums and he severely abuses his mom. Among others, he also has his hooks into Dawn, a stripper, and her 5yo child. Vernon takes great pride in manipulating people for money, drugs, power, or just for the pure entertainment value. This guy is just mean once he gets hold.

Nick and his wife fall further into their personal pits of guilt and remorse while Vernon’s ‘help’ is meant to serve one purpose: his own. Need a preacher for Sunny’s funeral? Need a dancer for a motion capture job? Need a gun? Need to direct blame for a killing on to a stoner bum? No problem. Let Vernon handle it.

“Capture” is the 4^th in Smith’s continuing series of tales of the people who inhabit some of the worst slums on the planet and how their plight spills over to people outside. As with all Smith stories, this noir tale is bleak, violent, remorseless, and ridiculously tense reading. It opens up bright with Nick and Sunny, then spirals down, down, down after Sunny’s death. And yet we keep on reading. Smith’s real skill is in keeping us glued to the pages knowing full well that this probably will not turn out all that well. It never does. 

You don’t believe, me do you? 

Dust Devils by Roger Smith

Robert Dell is one part pacifist, one part reporter, married to the half breed Rosie and father of twins. Living a nice life in Cape Town, except that Rosie is carrying on with a fat, rich white man. After one tryst, 2 guys surprise them and execute the old guy, putting Rosie's life in danger to say the least. While driving their truck a day or two later with Dell riding shotgun and the 2 kids in back, a truck forces them off the road and down a cliff, but But Dell is tossed free and he watches his family plunge down to a fiery death. 

The man behind both hits, a South African cabinet minister making a play for president, arranges for Dell to be held on charges of murder. As he is about to be transferred to South Africa's most notorious prison, Dell is hijacked by father, Earl Robert Goodbread.  Dell's dad is a former US special ops soldier and recently a merc in the war against apartheid, but now dying of lung cancer.

Years ago, 2 Zulu running mates, Disaster Zondi and Inja Mazibuko, murdered a woman whom Diasater had enjoyed a brief fling. With time, Disaster and Inja took different paths. Disaster became an investigator and Inja is also a cop, but he works most closely as the sociopathic enforcer for the Minister.

And Inja has full blown AIDS. And according to legend, the only cure is to marry a virgin, which Inja has chosen . . . the daughter of the woman he murdered 16 years ago who may or may not be Disaster's daughter.

Goodbread knows that Inja is the muscle behind the murder of that fat crumb and Dell's family. He also knows that the way to smoke Inja out is through his betrothed. So does Disaster, making this girl the target of a three-pronged chase - Sunday away from Inja with Disaster, Dell, and Goodbread all after the girl.

We've reviewed Smith's two previous efforts. This follows right close behind Wake up Dead and Mixed Blood. All three are some of the most brutal noir I've ever read. Murder in nearly every chapter, sometimes by most gruesome means, the remains roting in the African desert or left to the hyenas. The specter of AIDS, the soon to be 16 yo bride as remedy, Goodbread's looming death, the abject poverty and desolation of the outlying landscape. Don't give Inja the answers he wants? He'll kill your goats, burn your house, execute your wife, decapitate your kids. Down here in the south, we'd say "He needs killing."

Make no mistake. This noir tale is dark, brutal, uncompromising, and an absolute winner in every way. The ruthless behaviors presented grabs you by the throat and won't let you go until you turn the last page and that doesn't take long because this book is really hard to put down. No smart aleck Elvis Cole or jaded cop Harry Bosch will be found here. Heros and villains in Smith's world are awfully hard to tell apart.

East Coast Don

Mixed Blood by Roger Smith

I was so taken with Wake up Dead that I got his first novel, Mixed Blood, from the library right away.

Hard to tell just where Benny Mongrel came from. He was a child of the flats, the worst slum near Cape Town. Orphaned at 10, murderer shortly thereafter, burned alive and tortured as a teenager, two time resident of the worst prison in South Africa and determined never to go back, despite his high ranking inside. Once released, he takes a security job as a night guard over a house under construction. The company gives him a broken down guard dog that Benny becomes emotionally attached to.

The house is next door to house rented by Jack Burns, his pregnant wife, and son Matt. Jack is a Gulf War vet who opened a security business in SoCal. He has a rep as being lucky in all things, including gambling. But when that luck runs out, he is pressured into joining a small crew to rob a Milwaukee bank, a job that goes horribly wrong, so Jack and his family runs to Cape Town.

Two gang bangers, high on tic, pick a house at random to rob . . . the house of Jack Burns. Bad decision. Jack disarms and shoots one and slits the throat of the other just as his wife starts contractions. Now he has to dispose of the bodies. Benny sees what's happened.

A corrupt detective, as fat as Jabba the Hut, starts to follow hunches and clues that finally leads him to that the guy in the rental who is wanted in the multimillion dollar robbery in Milwaukee. Gatsby, the cop, is also being investigated by Disaster Zondi, a federal investigator who has Gatsby in his crosshairs, but is a few steps behind the fat man. Gatsby figures that night watchman in the house next door to Burns must know something and when he confronts Benny, the dog attacks only to be shot. Benny is crushed and vows to kill this pig who killed his dog. But, Gatsby sees the millions that Burns must have, kidnaps Burns' son and sets in motion multiple murders, tortures, maiming, and torching as Burns, now partnered with Benny, and Zondi close in on Gatsby.

Like Wake up Dead, this story begins with a rash action. In this case, Jack's military training takes over and he handily defeats a couple drugged out punks. The problem is that his son is scarred by the attack. The story basically takes place over the following week. Jack's wife wants out to take her children back to the States. Benny goes from what seem like a passive soul in the lowest of the low jobs whose reckless violent past returns when the only important thing in his life is taken from him in an instant. Nothing will stand in his way to get back at Gatsby who is carving out his own path of blood and charred bodies trying to get out one step ahead of Zondi.

While the story is told with the Burns family as the focus, I actually found Benny to be the more interesting character. As the story unfolds, Benny is always there, watching from the sidelines and when he is called into the game, an entirely different character emerges. Gatsby is a pig of the first order who deserves his fate and Zondi is a relentless investigator who starts off after Gatsby, but ends up looking into Burns and his family.

As I said for Wake up Dead, the books of Smith are relentlessly violent with people meeting their mother in all kinds of disgusting mayhem. The stages for the final confrontation are set halfway through the book and Smith skillfully keeps you glued to the page as things are played out. If blood and maiming is not your cup of tea, don't pick this up. But for lovers of violent, no-holds-barred crime fiction, Smith is hard to beat.

East Coast Don

Wake Up Dead by Roger Smith

Continuing on with West Coast Don's recent novels by foreign authors, this one comes from South Africa.

Roxy Palmer, South Florida native and former high fashion model, is the unhappy trophy wife of Joe Palmer, a gangster in Cape Town who deals in weapons and mercenaries. They are having dinner with a tribal cannibal and his Ukrainian whore who has just handed over a bucketload of money to buy arms. On their way home, a couple of junkies follow them home to hijack their car and sell it off. The hijack goes bad, a little, and Joe gets shot in the leg. On an impulse, Roxy picks up the discarded gun and puts one through Joe's forehead. And, boy does her life change, mostly for the worse.

Billy Afrika is one of Joe's mercenaries back from Iraq and needing back salary that Joe owes him. With Joe gone and most of this assets frozen, Billy moves in with Roxy to protect his investment. Billy has a history. As a teenager, he lived in some of the harshest of slums run by various gang fractions. One up and comer, Piper, beats Billy, sets him on fire and tosses him in a shallow grave.

But Billy survives, saved by a cop who becomes his partner when Billy grows up and joins the police force. Unfortunately, his partner is gutted right there on his home sidewalk in full view of his family. Billy could've killed the perp right there, but doesn't and the guy goes to prison. The guy becomes a war lord in prison . . . Piper. And Billy promises to watch over the family of his partner. He needs what is owed to him, he needs the salary Joe owes him for his partner's family who is being extorted by another scum of the slum.

In prison, Piper takes a wife, a pretty boy who goes by Disco. Now Disco is not all that enthralled at being Piper's bitch. Once Disco is released, Piper makes him promise to get arrested again so they can be together, but Disco isn't in any rush to go back. But he needs drugs and money, so he and a bud decide to hijack the car of a rich man . . . a hijacking that goes bad, a little.

Piper is pissed. He arranges to escape and starts to track down Disco. This starts a trail of blood and death unlike anything I've ever read. Cops, gang members, innocent bystanders, homeless people, children, all suffer at the will of Piper's knife. Piper likes the up close and personal nature of killing with a knife, stabbing people in their groin and ripping flesh up to the victim's sternum, spilling viscera and blood everywhere allowing the victim to watch their life flow into the dirt.

I can't remember a grittier story full of unsympathetic characters. Relentlessly violent, Smith pits various factions of the Cape Town slums (even that is too gracious a term) against each other. The nightly gunfire, the drugs, the deceit, the crooked cops, beheadings, and plot twists in the suffocating heat of Cape Town far too numerous to describe are painted by Smith using a brush heavily tinged in blood red. People say Hannibal Lector was a most evil character, but Piper makes Hannibal look like a guest at high tea by comparison. Billy is a flawed hero, Disco is a loser whose decisions have put him right where he is, and Roxy has ridden her beauty to her own hilltop prison that in an instant, she tried to break free from and suffers unspeakable consequences.

Make no mistake, this is a brutal book, probably one of the most brutal I've ever read. Told largely in flashbacks, Smith keeps dozens of balls in the without losing the reader in the detail of the Cape Town gangs, ghettos, and a disgusting array of vicious creeps there by the bad luck of genetics.

If you pick this up, you best be prepared.

East Coast Don