DEON MEYER , TRACKERS

L e m m e r' s f i r s t l a w: d o n' t g e t i n v o l v e d but when emma le roux looks at him with pleading eyes, when the roof of his karoo house needs big repairs, when the cause is good and just, laws can be broken so he sighs, and says, yes, he'll ride shotgun for the two rare black rhino's bad call because on a dark and dusty road in limpopo, they stick a smith and wesson model 500 against his head they kick him and beat him, they lie, they deceive him, and they steal his glock, the one with his fingerprints all over it he wants it back and he wants revenge so he tracks them, leaving a trail of violence that will run the length and breadth of a country, and touch the lives of: former cop mat joubert, working on his first dossier as a private investigator it's a 'fifty five', police slang for a missing persons case danie flint, easy going, life of the party, route planner at the atlantic bus company, disappeared three months ago the s a p s bungled the case, and flint's wife is at the end of her tether joubert must track him down before her money runs out but it's been years since he did the grunt work, he no longer has the might of the state behind him, and the trail has gone icy cold and milla strachan, the former housewife, who walked out on her rich, cheating husband and abusive teenage son to start a new life milla, who had only seen south africa from behind the high walls and alarm systems of her plush northern suburbs home, and through the rose tinted glasses of the privileged struggling with being suddenly single at forty, trying to rebuild her relationship with her son, lost in a job market favouring the young and the wired, she has to settle for a lowly 'journalism' job at a secretive government agency a whole new world opens up for her – including the murky realm of organised crime, muslim extremism and terrorism, right on her doorstep and then this world reaches out and touches her, draws her in a trail of death, stretching from the chizarira to the cape waterfront and at the end of it, nobody will be untouched