Dust Devils [NOOK Book]

This is a shocking book to read

Reviewed by John D. for Readers Favorite

Robert Dell is an out-of-work journalist living in South Africa. His father, ex-CIA agent and general mercenary Bobby Goodbread, has just been released from jail after serving less than the life term he was given for murder and mayhem committed during South Africa's struggle against apartheid. Dell and his family are ambushed by Mazibuko, a warlord serving the Minister for Justice and potential new president. The only survivor of the attack, Dell is forced into collaboration with his despicable father to exact revenge from Muzibuko and the minister. Muzibuko, who has full blown AIDS, is preparing to wed his fourth wife, a sixteen year old virgin, in an attempt to rid his body of the disease.

This is a shocking book to read...the descriptions of a ravaged land and its people leave the reader struggling to find any redeeming features of South African society during the post-apartheid years. Smith's writing is eminently readable; his style is sparse, yet full of in-your-face imagery which burns itself into the reader's mind. The story is relentless and its characters exhibit a total disregard for human life...money and power subsume all else. The raw and violent countryside is a perfect backdrop for Smith's harrowing tale. Don't try and count the bodies; you will be numb to the death toll by the last page.

AN AMAZING CRIME/THRILLER SET IN SOUTH AFRICA! DUST DEVILS BY ROGER SMITH...

DUST DEVILS by Roger Smith is an exciting South African crime thriller set in present day Cape Town,South Africa. It is well written with depth and details. The characters are believable,engaging and will capture your heart. It has corruption,revenge,redemption,arranged marriage,conspiracy,AIDS,South Africa,violence, lawlessness,political and civil corruption and murder. This is a fast paced,heart pumping thriller where the characters are engaged in political and civil corruption and where young teenager is sold by her family,because she is a virgin.She is to be the fouth wife of a corrupt,evil,killer who thinks he can save himself with a virgin wife. This is an engaging story that will have you on the edge of your seat from the first page to the last page. It brings a father and son together after the son has lost his family to a diabolical plan.It gives you insight into the violence in South Africa and the lives these people must deal with on a day to day basis,while their corrupt leaders turns the other way. "Dust Devils" is a must read for all crime,suspense,and thriller readers. This book was received for the purpose of review from Library Thing and the author.Details can be found at the author's website and My Book Addiction Reviews.

Amazing...disturbing...wow.

The book Dust Devils was, in a word, amazing. While the details of life in South Africa during and after the apartheid reign were, for the most part, unknown to me, the manner of writing that Roger Smith used made it very understandable. There were no happy moments in this story - although there was one instance that causes the reader to say to themselves, 'Thank God,' - and yet the depressing, horrifying, disastrous happenings only made this story all the more real.

The characters are alive in a way that defies explanation. The thinking behind each character's actions and motives were, while not agreed with in some cases, completely understandable, so well did Smith explain them. The story was interesting, and the plots (because there were definitely multiple going on at once) were beyond intricate - in truth, once I began reading, I had to force myself to stop.

This is an amazing read that opens up minds to the different takes surrounding a single subject.

Tired of cold, brittle Scandinavian crime fic? Try the South African model.

South African journalist Robert Dell, his wife and two children are all headed off on a holiday, when a black pickup truck runs them off the road. Dell's family is killed and he is framed for their murders.

If that sounds anything like a typical thriller, please, just hold the phone a sec. Because you haven't read anything like this book. No, you haven't. No, it's not like that book or that one or any of the thrillers you'll recall right offhand, and that's because Roger Smith isn't just any writer. In the span of just three books, his prose has gone from spare and evocative to darkly lyrical. His characterizations are masterful, his POV treatment is impeccable. And thematically, where once he was just pretty damned good, he now soars.

DUST DEVILS is a brilliant work, revolving around five major characters: Dell, a pacifist wrought by his grief and also by his sense of justice in a world that has none, into waging personal war on the men who killed his family; Inja, a corrupt, murderous cop and Zulu chief, a man dying of AIDS and looking to superstition instead of science for help, he will kill anyone who gets between him and his 16-year-old bride-to-be, Sunday, because he believes that sex with her will cure him. Sunday wants only not to have to marry Inja. She, as much as anyone, knows him for the cold killer he is. And then there is Disaster Zondi, an ex-cop as a result of having principals in a time and place where those things have no cash value. The author spins these characters and more through a space-time continuum where personal interactions go repeatedly nuclear. Oops, I said five characters, didn't I? South Africa is the fifth one. The varying cultures, the extremes of power and wealth matched again helplessness and poverty, places where AIDS harvests one out of three people thanks to neglect, superstition, and ignorance. Where news events don't begin to tell the depth of the stories.

Along the way, the reader gets a mini-education in the behind-the-scenes politics of South Africa as that country moved from apartheid to... whatever one calls it today, because freedom hardly seems the right word. Unless one is remembering the old song lyric from Me and Bobby McGee: "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose."

Thematically, where other authors would simply push the characters examining their past sins toward a search for redemption or atonement, Smith takes his characters beyond and into a stark cultural landscape where the wages of sin don't include the possibility of redemption, and where careful preservation of innocence is futile because innocence was long ago the first victim of sin. Harshly violent, the book is a broken window onto the cultural indifference to massive suffering, but more pointedly -- and poignantly -- Smith highlights the effect of the neglect by those powerful enough to relieve such suffering, who make such suffering more intense and widespread through corruption and indifference. The story's end is a sorrowful angel, breathtakingly cinematic on one level, and on another so personal that the reader's heart bleeds. A brilliant work.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Outstanding Crime Thriller from South Africa

The author's previous books, Mixed Blood and Wake Up Dead, are responsible for my interest in South African writers of crime and thriller novels. I think this latest is his best. Readers of his other books will notice a shift in tone but he maintains has all the action, fast pacing, violence, and evocative visual descriptions of the previous books. This time he moves the action away from Cape Town and takes a broader view of his subject, including problems affecting South Africa today: AIDS; corruption at all levels, civil and political; a climate of lawlessness that make South Africa one of the most violent countries in the world. He also brings back Disaster Zondi from Mixed Blood but a discouraged and disillusioned Zondi. First time readers should be warned that Smith writes scenes of shocking violence but the violence is never gratuitous and very much a required part of the story. South African crime/thriller writers are long overdue for recognition and Roger is a good introduction. Besides stories, you can learn something about a very complex country. If you have read Mixed Blood and Wake Up Dead you'll know you're in for a treat but this isn't a series book so don't let that stop you from downloading this book right away.

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No text was provided for this review.