A Beautiful Place To Die: Book Review

By Wendy Robards

A Beautiful Place to Die, by Malla Nunn.

What was it about the town of Jacob's Rest? The heat, the isolation, or maybe just the proximity of the race groups appeared to make the exercise of power over others irresistible. - from A Beautiful Place to Die, page 274 -

Detective Emmanuel Cooper is a man with a dark and secretive past. He is also an English detective who is sent alone to investigate the murder of a white police captain whose body is found partially submerged in a river between South Africa and Mozambique. Cooper's job gets a little more difficult when members of the police Security Branch arrive on the scene. Their focus is on Communists and a political motivation for the murder, but Cooper thinks the real culprit is a little closer to home. As he begins his own parallel investigation into the crime, the divide between blacks and whites, the rich and the working class, grows a bit more narrow. Before long Cooper is uncovering questionable activities and a smoldering sexual tension in the small border town of Jacob's Rest.

Set in the 1950s during the first uneasy years of apartheid when racial discrimination became institutionalized, Malla Nunn's simmering crime novel explores the consequences of allowing race to become the dividing line between justice and injustice. The police Security Branch represents the will of the Afrikaner National Party, a majority party which grabbed power in the wake of South Africa's independence from England. The apartheid laws of 1948, prohibited marriage between non-whites and whites, and sanctioned 'white-only' jobs. By 1950, the Population Registration Act required that all South Africans be racially classified into one of three categories: white, black (African), or colored (of mixed decent). Nunn introduces those restrictive and racist laws into her novel, giving them the central focus in the plot of A Beautiful Place to Die.

The first half of the novel introduces multiple characters and offers readers several threads of the underlying mystery. The pace in the latter half of the book picks up considerably and I found myself completely engaged in the plot and the characters' lives.

Malla Nunn, who was born in South Africa, writes with authenticity about the region. Her descriptions of the veldt and dusty landscape captured me. Nunn's characters are well-developed and there is a sense of doom and trepidation which overlays their lives. No one is quite as they seem, including Detective Cooper who has his own secrets to hide.

A Beautiful Place to Die was nominated for the 2010 Edgar Prize and it is certainly worthy of that nomination. Taut, skillfully penned, and brimming with the heat of political and sexual tension, this is a novel which will appeal to historical fiction fans as well as those who enjoy a well-crafted mystery.

Quality of Writing: Four stars
Characters: Four stars
Plot: Four and a half stars

Overall Rating: Four stars out of five.

FTC Disclosure: I purchased this book.

Catch all of Wendy Robard's reviews in her fabulous blog, "Caribousmom".