Pale Horses, by Jassy Mackenzie

Pale Horses, by Jassy Mackenzie.  Random House Struik Umuzi. Cape Town, South Africa 2012. ISBN 9781415201640 / ISBN 978-1-4152-0164-0

Pale Horses, by Jassy Mackenzie. Random House Struik Umuzi. Cape Town, South Africa 2012. ISBN 9781415201640 / ISBN 978-1-4152-0164-0

Jassy Mackenzie's crime novel, Pale Horses, is about police officer Jade De Jong being hired to investigate a base jumping accident at a Durban skyscraper. What appears to be a very open and closed case turns into something altogether different and a scary and provoking story line.

Jassy Mackenzie  

[...] The rusty windmill behind the house creaked into unwilling life, starting with a low groan and then escalating into higher-pitched cries as its blades moved faster. In the tuneless shrieks he fancied he heard his father's words, the grey-bearded man in full voice, towering over his breathless congregation as he approached the climax of one of the diatribes he called sermons. 'Mislukking!' the predikant would scream, slamming his fist against the pulpit to emphasise his words. 'Failure! If you do not repent now, and prepare yourself for the Second Coming, everything you attempt will crumble into failure.' Even though his father had drawn most of his inspiration from the vivid imagery of the Book of Revelations, his god had been a true Old Testament figure. Vengeful and authoritarian. One who demanded the full payment of an eye for an eye. Meintjies had turned his back on his father and everything he represented many years ago, and without guilt or regret. In any case, he knew repentance would not help him now. The wind was swirling the stench of decay from the outbuildings at the back of the house. Fetid plants. Rotting livestock. He had no choice but to breathe it in, grimacing as he did so, unable to suppress a stab of fear. In front of him was only emptiness, something he had learned long ago to live with. Behind him was something far worse. Death and destruction. The final legacy of what he had started doing as a favour for his sister, but which had finished with him trapped inside this nightmare. How much time did he have left? Was she even still alive? Abruptly, Meintjies turned away from the darkening sky and strode back inside the old sandstone farmhouse. At the door, he stopped, bent down, and grasped the weathered wooden butt of the Purdey shotgun he'd propped against the wall. The only thing he could be sure of was that they would be here before morning. Because what they had ordered him to do here had now been done.

Magdalena Eckhardt loved nothing better than people watching. In fact, she prided herself on being an astute observer. Her book club friends had often commented that she could read them as well as if they were one of the Lisa Gardner novels that circulated within the group. Certainly, she had a keen eye for body language and a memory for detail. She was also blessed with a fertile imagination that allowed her to fill in the gaps, to her own satisfaction at least, where observation alone failed to give the full story. Now she was comfortably ensconced in the embrace of one of the sought-after armchairs at Chez Chic, the Sandton coffee shop with a legendary position on the corner of Nelson Mandela Square, just a few metres away from the massive bronze statue of Madiba himself. Sipping on her soy decaf latte, Magdalena was happily appraising her fellow patrons while she waited for her two-thirty appointment with the Botox specialist in the nearby Medical Mews. One couple in particular had caught her attention today, if only for the fact that she couldn't quite work them out. They were definitely not stereotypical Sandton shoppers. 'Stereotypical!' she remembered one of the younger members of her book club exclaiming at their last get-together. 'That's such a cool word! Such a Magdalena word, don't you agree! Stereotypical... I love it!' [...]

This is an excerpt from the crime novel: Pale Horses, by Jassy Mackenzie.

Title: Pale Horses
Author: Jassy Mackenzie
Genre: Novel
Publisher: Random House Struik
Imprint: Umuzi
Cape Town, South Africa 2012
ISBN 9781415201640 / ISBN 978-1-4152-0164-0
Softcover, 15 x 22 cm, 256 pages

Mackenzie, Jassy im Namibiana-Buchangebot

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