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A Beautiful Place to Die A Novel Detective Emmanuel Cooper Malla Nunn Books

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A Beautiful Place to Die A Novel Detective Emmanuel Cooper Malla Nunn Books

Jacob's Rest in 1950s South Africa may be a beautiful place to die, but it's a horrid place to survive if you're black. Malla Nunn's novel is set in 1952, when South Africa was in the grip of the National Party's apartheid laws that ensured the segregation of the natives from the supreme masters of Afrikanerdom.

Det. Sgt. Emmanuel Cooper, an Afrikaner from Johannesburg, has been assigned to investigate the murder of Captain Willem Pretorius, a local policeman at Jacob's Rest. Generally respected and more sympathetic to the natives than other whites, Pretorius was found dead with a bullet wound in the river bordering Mozambique and S. Africa.

Cooper is immediately hampered in his investigations--first by the thug-like sons of Pretorius then, by the Security Branch that taunts and provokes him and soon takes over the investigation. But Cooper can't be stopped that easily. Though he has to navigate his way cautiously through the muck of segregation, politics and superstition every step of the way, and battle some demons from his past, he doggedly pursues the truth behind the secretive Pretorius and possible motives for offing the captain. Aided by a wizened Zulu constable, Shabalala, Cooper sifts through the clues and what he comes up with could very well cost him his own life.

The most interesting portions of this novel for me are those that depict the ills of apartheid and its effects on S. African society in general. Thankfully, Nunn doesn't sugarcoat anything here and there are graphic scenes and descriptions that may bother more sensitive readers. Re Cooper's investigations, the action in the first half is quite entertaining but the story does lag toward the middle. It doesn't recover until the denouement when some surprising revelations threw me for a loop.

As a writer, Nunn has a no-nonsense style. Just tell it like it is seems to be her mantra. There's a paucity of poetic/artistic phrasing here, and the reading can become tedious at times. As far as the mystery, however, it's interesting enough and the twists toward the end make up for the middle. (I agree with another reviewer. The synopsis in the back of the book gives away one major plot twist. It's almost unforgivable because it's key to the murder and should really be edited out.) I'm not wholly satisfied as I didn't think the plot and developments justified close to 400 pages. With more editing and perhaps compressing the plot into a faster-paced investigation, it would have been a far more compelling read. It wasn't great literature, but it was entertaining for the most part thus, the 3 stars.


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A Beautiful Place to Die A Novel Detective Emmanuel Cooper Malla Nunn Books Reviews

First Line Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper switched off the engine and looked out through the dirty windscreen.

It is 1952. The apartheid laws have just been enacted in South Africa. Jacob's Rest is a small town on the border of South Africa and Mozambique. When the local police chief's body is found, Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper is sent-- all by himself-- to the town to solve the crime. He soon discovers why he was sent alone the Security Branch has been dispatched to take control of the investigation. It takes less than 1% of Cooper's deductive reasoning to see that the Security Branch has its heart set on a black communist murderer, and its officers will stop at nothing to procure this result.

The presence of the Security Branch's thugs means that Cooper's job is going to be extremely difficult, but his boss wants him to continue to dig. As Cooper questions people of all races and social strata in Jacob's Rest, he begins to see that the murdered Captain Pretorius wasn't the man he appeared to be, but bringing the killer to justice might mean his death by Security Branch means or igniting a powder keg of racial tension... or both.

This book was extremely difficult to put down, and I probably pouted a time or two when I was forced to stop reading. With seemingly very little effort, Nunn transported me right in the middle of apartheid South Africa-- and I didn't like it. I was so involved in what I was reading that I felt as if one wrong word, one incorrect facial expression, would find me thrown in one of their jails. I love reading books that have such an immediacy to them-- even when it makes me uncomfortable.

The primary characters were well-drawn and multi-faceted. The more I learned about them, the faster I read because they oftentimes surprised me. A few of the secondary characters seemed a bit two-dimensional, but as far as I'm concerned when you're a bigot who only knows how to spout hatred and the party line, you don't always deserve that extra dimension.

Malla Nunn has the gift of perfect description in a mere line or two. Here are some examples

"A knot of three white men stood farther up the riverbank and took turns drinking from a battered silver flask. They were big and meaty, the kind of men who would pull their own wagons across the veldt long after the oxen were dead."

"They look like they can beat a confession out of a can of paint."

"There was the quiet murmur of Zulu before a pencil-thin woman in a yellow dress gave a shout and ran for the Packard. Emmanuel stilled as the woman hauled the miner into a sitting position in the backseat and wailed out loud. The sound was an ocean of sorrows."

I also enjoyed the complexity of the mystery. As soon as I thought I'd solved something, Nunn (through Cooper) either set me on my ear or showed me that there was more to the case than I'd originally believed. I'm going to be very surprised if this book isn't among my Top Ten Reads of the year.

Nunn's next book in the series, Let the Dead Lie, is now out. Do you know how difficult it is for me to leave it alone? I thought you bookaholics would understand!
I loved this book and hope to pick up some others by this author. I am a mystery "nut", and love South Africa and South Africa struggle books. This was terrific. It outlined easily the tensions between British South Africans, Afrikaans South Africans, Black South Africans, and Indian South Africans, while having heroes and murderers in each. The Detective is a "flawed" person as most detective's in mystery stories are, but he is incredibly well drawn and his story compelling.
I would say, don't read this story if you don't want to try to understand the reality that was Apartheid Africa, but if you do....the seedy the beautiful, the violent and the peace, then this is a terrific book.
The ending is a surprise and everyone surely will be held to the story all the way
I really cannot rate the books as I gave as a gift to a dear friend who is an avid reader. He enjoys and analyses many genres so I expected he would find these books of interest. I recently saw a Tara Moss interview, on the TV, with the Author, Malla Nunn here in Australia. I was facinated with Malla's life story and how she came to be a writer and selected the themes for her various books. She has also been nominated for several Literary awards..All of this peaked my interest and decided to give as a gift to my friend.
Jacob's Rest in 1950s South Africa may be a beautiful place to die, but it's a horrid place to survive if you're black. Malla Nunn's novel is set in 1952, when South Africa was in the grip of the National Party's apartheid laws that ensured the segregation of the natives from the supreme masters of Afrikanerdom.

Det. Sgt. Emmanuel Cooper, an Afrikaner from Johannesburg, has been assigned to investigate the murder of Captain Willem Pretorius, a local policeman at Jacob's Rest. Generally respected and more sympathetic to the natives than other whites, Pretorius was found dead with a bullet wound in the river bordering Mozambique and S. Africa.

Cooper is immediately hampered in his investigations--first by the thug-like sons of Pretorius then, by the Security Branch that taunts and provokes him and soon takes over the investigation. But Cooper can't be stopped that easily. Though he has to navigate his way cautiously through the muck of segregation, politics and superstition every step of the way, and battle some demons from his past, he doggedly pursues the truth behind the secretive Pretorius and possible motives for offing the captain. Aided by a wizened Zulu constable, Shabalala, Cooper sifts through the clues and what he comes up with could very well cost him his own life.

The most interesting portions of this novel for me are those that depict the ills of apartheid and its effects on S. African society in general. Thankfully, Nunn doesn't sugarcoat anything here and there are graphic scenes and descriptions that may bother more sensitive readers. Re Cooper's investigations, the action in the first half is quite entertaining but the story does lag toward the middle. It doesn't recover until the denouement when some surprising revelations threw me for a loop.

As a writer, Nunn has a no-nonsense style. Just tell it like it is seems to be her mantra. There's a paucity of poetic/artistic phrasing here, and the reading can become tedious at times. As far as the mystery, however, it's interesting enough and the twists toward the end make up for the middle. (I agree with another reviewer. The synopsis in the back of the book gives away one major plot twist. It's almost unforgivable because it's key to the murder and should really be edited out.) I'm not wholly satisfied as I didn't think the plot and developments justified close to 400 pages. With more editing and perhaps compressing the plot into a faster-paced investigation, it would have been a far more compelling read. It wasn't great literature, but it was entertaining for the most part thus, the 3 stars.