Pale Horses
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
When base jumper Sonet Meintjies plummets to her death from the top of a Sandton skyscraper, her jumping partner insists that it was no accident. Recovering from the end of her tricky relationship with police superintendent David Patel and trying to deal with the ugliness of her last job, P.I. Jade de Jong is initially reluctant to take on the case. But after initial investigations reveal that the victim worked to help impoverished communities, and that one of these communities has disappeared entirely, their houses razed to the ground, she cannot walk away. Digging deeper for answers, Jade learns of a mystery disease that swept through the entire community, killing everyone except for a mother and her son, whose whereabouts are unknown. When Sonet’s journalist sister goes missing, Jade is desperate to find them, especially when her own life is under threat as a result. A deadly harvest has been gathered in, and the only person who knows the truth about it has been forced to become collateral in its trade ...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The death of aid worker Sonet Meintjies, who took a fatal plunge from a Johannesburg high-rise, propels Mackenzie's gripping fourth thriller featuring flinty South African PI Jade de Jong (after 2012's The Fallen). Red flags start popping up almost immediately when Jade discovers that a tribal farming community whose members Sonet was mentoring has vanished without a trace as has Sonet's sister, Zelda, a muckraking journalist. With bullets whizzing and bodies falling, Jade contacts her on-again, off-again lover, Supt. David Patel, even though he has problems of his own between his bitchy pregnant wife and anonymous threats. As the novel hurtles toward a devastating climax, Mackenzie pumps up the suspense with a secondary but eventually intersecting story line centering on Ntombi Khumalo, a gutsy widow and mother who proves every bit as intrepid as Jade. Despite giving readers such appealing women to root for, Mackenzie paints a decidedly dystopian view of contemporary South Africa.
