Author: Chris Marnewick, Publisher: Umuzi
BusinessDay, By Sue Blaine: Great writing peps up a standard plot in this South African crime novel, AVING sworn I would no longer read crime fiction written by non-South Africans — why read crime stories set in other countries when ours abounds with them? — I snapped up Chris Marnewick’s A Sailor’s Honour. I was not disappointed. It means I have read the last in a trilogy and must now read the first two — not that Marnewick didn’t do a good job of conveying enough of the back story to keep latecomers up to speed. Needless to say, I wouldn’t bother if this one had not been worthwhile. It was an effortless read and a welcome respite after a swathe of nonfiction that left me feeling emotionally battered and intellectually stretched. ( I like to intersperse such times with an easy read, which for me means delving into those worlds where the bad guys get their comeuppance, or the girls get their guy.) Marnewick — author by night and Durban advocate by day — has created an oddly sympathetic character in former bush war soldier Pierre de Villiers, the three novels’ protagonist. De Villiers has turned his skills to good and joined the New Zealand police, leaving SA far behind him to live in Auckland with his wife Emma and daughter Zoe. Then Zoe is kidnapped from school at the same time that the wife of De Villiers’s brother-in-law, Durban maritime advocate Johann Weber, is kidnapped from the AIDS clinic where she works. The two must join forces to battle old enemies and get their women back. So, a pretty standard plot then, but it’s the writing of it that wins. It has pace, intrigue and well-researched history; it has believability. It had me up reading when I should have been asleep. Marnewick has woven a story around the eerie existence in the old SA of the "Third Force" that instigated "black-on-black" violence, postulating that old Third Force agents are still working, now aiming their sights on the triumphs of the new SA. He’s written a solid story, peopled with believable characters and a bad guy who would have made Ian Fleming proud. He also uses his experience as a lawyer to good effect. The harbour and court scenes are lucidly entertaining and written with passion.De Villiers’s past — and what’s a crime-novel protagonist without a painful history — gives his steely-eyed determination credibility and ensures reader sympathy with his cold, but effective, methods of dealing with those who have come crawling out of his skeleton-filled closet to disturb his new found equilibrium. Marnewick has done Weber the same favour, giving him a clear motive for his sidestepping the strictly legal in his bid to get back his wife. Source: BusinessDay
