EBOOK
About
When P.I. Jade de Jong invites Superintendent David Patel on a scuba diving holiday in St. Lucia, she hopes the time away will rebuild their conflicted relationship. Jade's dreams are soon shattered when David calls off their affair, forcing her into the arms of environmentalist Craig Niewoudt. But the next morning, romantic issues are put aside when a scuba diving instructor, Amanda Bolton, is found brutally stabbed to death.
Amanda is a most unlikely candidate for murder-a quiet and intelligent woman who until a few months ago pursued a high-powered career as an air traffic controller. She had few acquaintances and no lovers. The only loose end is a postcard in her room from Jo'burg-based Themba Msamaya, asking how she is doing "after 813 and The Fallen." Jade and David put their differences aside and start the deadly hunt. "Searing… Mackenzie's blend of contemporary South African issues with Jade's inner turmoil is pitch perfect, and the true cliffhanger will leave fans eager for more." -Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW
"A white-knuckle thriller with an utterly chilling finale."-Tess Gerritsen
"[H]igh suspense, complex story, and almost non-stop action." -Gumshoe Review
Praise for the Jade de Jong series:
"Remarkable."-The New York Times Book Review Jassy Mackenzie was born in Rhodesia and moved to South Africa when she was eight years old. She lives in Kyalami near Johannesburg and edits and writes for the annual publication Best of South Africa. She is the author of three novels in the Jade de Jong series. 1
Themba Msamaya didn't suspect a thing on the morning he
opened his door to death.
He was halfway through his first cup of tea when the knock
came. Over the past few months, he'd developed something of a
ritual. He'd get up early, boil the kettle and dunk a bag of cheap,
Shoprite own-brand tea into a chipped South African Airways
mug. He'd learned to do without milk, but a teaspoon of sugar
was an essential he couldn't forego. Black tea didn't have to be so
strong-it tasted better weak, in fact-and he had discovered
one teabag could easily stretch to two mugs.
He would drink the steaming, reddish brew while sitting at
the desk in his tiny Yeoville bedsit, yesterday's papers open at
the Classifieds, his elderly laptop ready to browse the Jobsearch
websites.
Over the last few days, his searching had become more stressful,
because his useless Internet connection, slow at best and
unreliable at worst, was close to reaching its cap. He'd nearly
got through the five hundred megabytes that his low-spec package
allowed him, God knew how, seeing it was only the twentysecond
of the month, and all he'd been using it for was trying to
find work. But once the threshold was reached, he would be cut
off. Rudely, instantly and without any warning. It had happened
a couple of times recently, once while he was right in the middle
of sending off his cv.
Today, JobSA was slow to load and Workopolis had no new
listings, but his favourite site, nats Careers, was advertising a
position that looked promising.
Email us your application and cv, the advert read. All companies
required candidates to do that these days. Phone calls appeared
to have become redundant.
A quick read through the well-worded cv that he'd paid a
specialist company to put together for him five months ago. Now
he wished he hadn't wasted the money on it.
Did he need to change anything in the accompanying letter?
He scanned the document once more, slowly, even though he
knew the damn thing off by heart. He thought it sounded fine.
As fine as was possible, at any rate. He attached it and pressed
'Send', willing the email to go through the first time, praying
that the connection would not drop, as it often did, forcing him
to repeat the task and gobbling up even more of his precious
bandwidth allocation.
A series of cl
Amanda is a most unlikely candidate for murder-a quiet and intelligent woman who until a few months ago pursued a high-powered career as an air traffic controller. She had few acquaintances and no lovers. The only loose end is a postcard in her room from Jo'burg-based Themba Msamaya, asking how she is doing "after 813 and The Fallen." Jade and David put their differences aside and start the deadly hunt. "Searing… Mackenzie's blend of contemporary South African issues with Jade's inner turmoil is pitch perfect, and the true cliffhanger will leave fans eager for more." -Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW
"A white-knuckle thriller with an utterly chilling finale."-Tess Gerritsen
"[H]igh suspense, complex story, and almost non-stop action." -Gumshoe Review
Praise for the Jade de Jong series:
"Remarkable."-The New York Times Book Review Jassy Mackenzie was born in Rhodesia and moved to South Africa when she was eight years old. She lives in Kyalami near Johannesburg and edits and writes for the annual publication Best of South Africa. She is the author of three novels in the Jade de Jong series. 1
Themba Msamaya didn't suspect a thing on the morning he
opened his door to death.
He was halfway through his first cup of tea when the knock
came. Over the past few months, he'd developed something of a
ritual. He'd get up early, boil the kettle and dunk a bag of cheap,
Shoprite own-brand tea into a chipped South African Airways
mug. He'd learned to do without milk, but a teaspoon of sugar
was an essential he couldn't forego. Black tea didn't have to be so
strong-it tasted better weak, in fact-and he had discovered
one teabag could easily stretch to two mugs.
He would drink the steaming, reddish brew while sitting at
the desk in his tiny Yeoville bedsit, yesterday's papers open at
the Classifieds, his elderly laptop ready to browse the Jobsearch
websites.
Over the last few days, his searching had become more stressful,
because his useless Internet connection, slow at best and
unreliable at worst, was close to reaching its cap. He'd nearly
got through the five hundred megabytes that his low-spec package
allowed him, God knew how, seeing it was only the twentysecond
of the month, and all he'd been using it for was trying to
find work. But once the threshold was reached, he would be cut
off. Rudely, instantly and without any warning. It had happened
a couple of times recently, once while he was right in the middle
of sending off his cv.
Today, JobSA was slow to load and Workopolis had no new
listings, but his favourite site, nats Careers, was advertising a
position that looked promising.
Email us your application and cv, the advert read. All companies
required candidates to do that these days. Phone calls appeared
to have become redundant.
A quick read through the well-worded cv that he'd paid a
specialist company to put together for him five months ago. Now
he wished he hadn't wasted the money on it.
Did he need to change anything in the accompanying letter?
He scanned the document once more, slowly, even though he
knew the damn thing off by heart. He thought it sounded fine.
As fine as was possible, at any rate. He attached it and pressed
'Send', willing the email to go through the first time, praying
that the connection would not drop, as it often did, forcing him
to repeat the task and gobbling up even more of his precious
bandwidth allocation.
A series of cl