The October Killings
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Abigail Bukula was fifteen years old when her parents were killed in a massacre of antiapartheid activists by white apartheid security forces. Because a young soldier spoke up in her defense, she was spared. Now she's a lawyer with a promising career in the new government, and while she has done her best to put the tragedy behind her, she's never forgotten Leon Lourens, the soldier who saved her life. So when he walks into her office almost twenty years later, needing her help, she vows to do whatever she can. Someone is slowly killing off members of the team who raided the house where her parents were murdered, and now Leon and an imprisoned colonel are the only targets left.
Abigail turns to Yudel Gordon, an eccentric, nearly retired white prison psychologist for help. To save Leon's life they must untangle the web of politics, identity, and history before the anniversary of the raid—only days away.
The October Killings, the first novel in decades from Wessel Ebersohn, not only brings to life the new South Africa in all of its color and complexity but also Abigail Bukula—the sharpest, most determined sleuth in international crime fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
South African author Ebersohn kicks off a promising new series pairing psychologist Yudel Gordon, last seen in 1992's Closed Circle, with Abigail Bukula, chief director of South Africa's justice department, who can more than hold her own with the brilliantly eccentric Gordon. As a 15-year-old girl, Bukula survived a raid on an African National Congress house in Lesotho on October 21, 1985, thanks to the intervention of a white soldier, Leon Lourens. In 2005, Lourens seeks Bukula's help after learning that almost all his colleagues on the raid have been murdered on the exact anniversary of the assault. To catch the killer, Bukula hooks up with Gordon, who lost his government position with apartheid's end, to get access to the imprisoned commander of the attack, Marinus van Jaarsveld. The complexities of South Africa a decade after the end of white rule help fuel a compelling plot that builds to several dramatic climaxes.
