Silent Valley by Malla Nunn, Macmillan, $24.99
A beautiful young girl, Amahle, is found dead in the remote foothills of South Africa’s majestic Drakensberg Mountains. She is the daughter of the local Zulu chief and her body has been treated tenderly, garlanded with wildflowers.
Yet no-one seems to know anything about her death – or perhaps her life either. A vast silence has fallen across the community.
Nunn’s novels are set during the 1950s, the years of apartheid, which adds an intriguing complexity to relations between her two favourite sleuths – Englishman Det-Sgt Emmanuel Cooper and his native off-sider and tracker Constable Shabalala.
They’re a great team and Nunn enjoys exploring the way they work around both the legal restrictions on race and skin colour, and the personal contempt of the valley’s religious white farmers, who call Shabalala the kaffir.
But slowly, they penetrate the wall of silence and pry open the secrets surrounding Amahle’s death.
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
