Tennison
Lynda LaPlante (Simon & Schuster)
***
Book thrill
If you are a Prime Suspect fan, this is a satisfying prequel of Jane Tennison’s salad days as a young copper. It’s 1973, chauvinism is de rigeur and Tennison, a 22-year-old newbie, is one of only two women constables in her squad. But she’s tenacious: even when silently fuming about making cups of tea, all she can think is about the murder of Julie Ann Collins. She is also young and impressionable – not yet the lonely alcoholic she becomes in the TV show, played unforgettably by Dame Helen Mirren.
- Jennifer Platt @Jenniferdplatt
Whipping Boy
Allen Kurzweil (Harper)
***
Book buff
Delivers what it promises on the cover: the 40-year search for the author’s 12-year-old bully, Cesar. Kurzweil, foremost a novelist and journalist, owns up to the obsessive side of his personality, and his quest takes him all over the world, with a conclusion more bizarre than he ever dreamed of: the adult Cesar is involved in a group of con artists who impersonate obscure royalty – down to monocles and bogus knighting ceremonies – in order to fleece people with elaborate loan schemes. An entertaining read.
- Jennifer Malec @projectjennifer
Recce
Koos Stadler (Tafelberg)
****
Book bru
Operating in Angola, South West Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe in the 1970s and 80s, Stadler and his teams were tasked with blowing up trains, infiltrating enemy bases, destroying enemy aircraft and even targeting political opposition in exile. Told from the perspective of someone caught up in the Rooi and Swart Gevaars, the book gives a well-balanced account of the pressures that reconnaissance “operators” had to endure. Stadler writes about how seeing dead bodies started to change his mind about what he was fighting for. An engrossing read, with danger at every turn.
- Guy Martin @defenceWeb_Afr
Imagined Liberation: Xenophobia, Citizenship and Identity in South Africa, Germany and Canada
Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley (African Sun Media)
***
Book buff
Sociologists Adam and Moodley present the sad, hidden truth of our world through a study of three countries. In Germany, they highlight how the treatment of asylum seekers and spread Islamophobia are interrelated. Canada’s multicuturalism is looked at as a model for immigration policies. The authors then break it down in South Africa, where the disenfranchised continuously treat foreigners as easy scapegoats. They present extensive research but don’t quite provide concrete answers to the vital questions that might point us to meaningful change.
- Kgebetli Moele
Book details
- Tennison by Lynda LaPlante
EAN: 9781471140501
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- Whipping Boy by Allen Kurzweil
EAN: 9780062269485
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- Recce by Koos Stadler
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EAN: 9780624069447
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- Imagined Liberation by Heribert Adam, Kogila Moodley
EAN: 9781439911907
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