The Hidden Assassins

by: Robert Wilson

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Dead Before Dying

Dead Before Dying, by Deon Meyer starts with a man contemplating suicide while he cleans his gun. The location is South Africa, a natural enough choice since Mr. Meyer himself was born there and continues to live on that continent. Perhaps whoever translated this book should get as much praise as Deon Meyer himself, since translation is never an easy task, and especially when the result must remain not only clear but in the identical polished prose in which it was originally written. In Dead Before Dying, Mr. Meyer has gifted us with a fine murder mystery:

Captain Marcus (Mat) Joubert on the Murder and Robbery team had lost his wife Lara two years and three months before. She had been part of the police force like him, and killed in the line of duty. Joubert has succumbed to depression ever since.

His closest friends were constantly trying to pull him out of it. At a barbecue to which one of his friends invited him, the teenage daughter tries to seduce him. His body's sexual response is the first sign of his return to any kind of normality. Then he finds himself attracted to the psychologist his boss has sent him to – a Doctor Hanna Nortier. Gradually he falls in love with her.

A man (eventually named the Sweetheart Robber) enters banks, and after complimenting female tellers, orders them to pack bags with all the money they keep and walks out with it. Then a James Wallace is found outside a hotel, murdered with a large pistol. It's traced by the cartridge found nearby and discovered to be from a Mauser – an old type pistol long since replaced by newer, better models. The police think the Sweetheart Robber and the murderer are the same person. Joubert's new boss, Colonel Bart De Wit, thinks the murder must have been done by a Chinese drug ring, and a witness, high on drugs, says it was a woman who shot him – the angel of Death. Since the witness so obviously isn't totally in this world, his rantings are ignored. Benny Griessel is one of Joubert's friends, constantly sticking by him throughout Joubert's depression; in spite of his own escape into alcohol. Benny is an alkie. But he and Joubert are called to the scene and take on the Wallace murder.

In a subplot, Joubert has been warned by De Wit that he must not only get out of his depression but lose the weight he's gained while in it as well as seeing Doctor Hanna. So Joubert swims as well as sticking to a diet, gradually increasing the number of lengths along with losing the pounds gained over time..

Then there are other murders, plus a confusion of various facts before both the robberies and the clues lead the Murder and Robbery team to the reasons and sources for both. Dead Before Dying has a protagonist who demands your empathy, plus a surprise ending along with enough clues, twists and turns to indicate that author Deon Meyer is an expert at his craft.

Alan Paul Curtis

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