Pan Macmillan Australia

Let the Dead Lie
Nunn, Malla

RRP
A$32.99

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA, 1953 Forced to resign from his position of Detective Sergeant and re-classified as 'mixed race' after an incident involving a young black woman, Emmanuel Cooper winds up powerless and alone in the tough coastal city of Durban mixing labouring with surveillance work for his old boss, Major van Niekerk. Patrolling the freight yards one night, he stumbles upon the body of a young white boy and the detective in him cannot, or will not, walk away. When two more bodies - this time an older English woman and her maid - are discovered at his boarding house, he unwittingly becomes the prime suspect in a triple murder case.

At Major van Niekerk's behest, Cooper is given 48 hours to clear his name and - unofficially - solve the three murders. And so, temporarily back to being a European Detective Sergeant, he descends into Durban's seedy underworld, a viper's nest of prostitution, drugs and violence run by Indian gangsters. To solve the crimes and save his own skin, he must place his trust in a mysterious figure who drives a white DeSoto convertible, a Zion Gospel preacher, and the exquisite yet streetwise Lana, who also happens to be Major van Niekerk's mistress...

Suspenseful, compelling and rich with the complexities of life in Apartheid-era South Africa, Let The Dead Lie cements Malla Nunn's place as one of Australia's most engaging crime writers.

Author Information

Malla Nunn grew up in Swaziland before moving with her parents to Perth in the 1970s. She attended uni in WA, and then the US. In New York, she worked on film sets, wrote her first screenplay and met her American husband to be, before returning to Australia where she began writing and directing short films and corporate videos. Her debut novel A Beautiful Place to Die was published to international acclaim and won the 2009 Sisters in Crime Davitt Award for Best Adult Crime Novel by an Australian female author. Malla and her husband live in Sydney with their two children.