Killer Country
Mike Nicol
Publisher: Umuzi
ISBN: 9781415201169
Prys: R144.50
As a full-time writer, Mike Nicol is no stranger to the world of fiction writing, having penned six novels, four of which have been published in the UK and the US. Having recently risen to local prominence with his previous crime novel, Out to Score, in collaboration with Joanne Hichens, Nicol laid down a marker as one of the finest crime writers around with his sensational first instalment of the Revenge Trilogy, Payback, published in 2008.
In this breathless thriller, Nicol introduces audiences to the central players (previous gun-runners Mace Bishop and Pylon Buso, and the mysterious and spectacularly venomous corporate and criminal lawyer Sheemina February) in an elaborate and ongoing saga of bloodshed, intrigue, double-crossing and vengeance that at their core originate from the rebel camps in the Angolan Border War. Payback was set in the summer of 1998 and revolved largely around a triple narrative giving insight into the character of Bishop and Buso (who have formed the security company Complete Security), the shadowy reasons for February’s dark fascination with Buso, and the power play between various criminal masterminds, gangsters and those connected to the drug business in and around Cape Town and PAGAD, memorably jolting the reader back to the shocking bombing of the Planet Hollywood branch at the V&A Waterfront. While Nicol creates a novel that establishes the close relationships between the two men and their respective families, the novel ends with a spectacular and spine-chilling revelation that exposes the motivations behind February’s antipathy and desire for revenge towards Mace Bishop.
Killer Country picks up where Payback leaves off. With South Africa’s legislation and implementation of Black Economic Empowerment, Nicol paints a vivid and unsettling picture of a dark underbelly where criminals and lawyers, judges and hit men cross the lines between the corporate and the criminal with consummate ease. As both Bishop and Buso are physically and emotionally bruised and battered, they look to make investments to procure a life of luxury and considerably less jeopardy. Inevitably, this process is far from smooth and the pair are drawn into a labyrinthine plot of deception and murder by Judge Telman Visser, who is seeking protection on his family’s farm after a recent spate of farm murders, but more importantly, because the man he put away for six years on charges of corruption, Obed Chocho, is about to be released on parole. Both these men and lawyer Sheemina February – alongside the hit man Spitz, his side-kick Manga and a host of other unsavoury and memorable characters – conspire to put a hold on the Bishop and Buso’s dream of respite and distance from all that is devious and deceitful. This leaves the reader with a game of cat and mouse so brilliantly conceived and conveyed that the reader hardly dares to look away from the page.
As with Payback, Nicol deftly and purposefully immerses readers in a web of lies and increasing tension, told with a narrative style that recalls the often remarkable yet unflashy work of American author Cormac McCarthy. Apart from riveting the reader with a continuation of the battle of wits between the two bodyguards and February (her character even more spine-chillingly cunning and methodical this time around), Nicol presents the fractious relationships between Buso and his pregnant wife Pumla and Bishop with his suspicious wife Oumou and fragile daughter Christa (kidnapped and shot during Payback). The author drives further into his habit of excellent characterisation by introducing new faces such as the brutal killer Spitz, who travels throughout the “Killer Country” playing country music on his iPod that tells stories of murder, loss and betrayal. Largely quiet but deadly in his assassinations, Spitz strongly recalls McCarthy’s hit man Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men.
As Killer Country hurtles towards its devastating and emotional climax, culminating in a ferocious showdown at the Bishop home, Nicol is unrelenting and unsparing in his searching vision of a frightening world just under society’s layers of normalcy, regulations and routine. As his stark yet often humorous prose captures the reader’s attention to no end, the author increasingly makes it clear that Sheemina February’s obsession with destroying the lives of Mace Bishop and his family will culminate in a third instalment of the Revenge Trilogy. Promising to raise the bar of crime fiction in South Africa even higher, with Payback superb and Killer Country immaculately written and tremendously entertaining, there is little doubt that Nicol’s final and third novel in this trilogy will be worth the wait.