Benny Griessel

A young woman makes a terrible confession to a priest. An honorable man takes his own revenge for an unspeakable tragedy. An aging inspector tries to get himself sober while taking on the most difficult case of his career. From this beginning, Deon Meyer weaves a story of astonishing complexity and suspense, as Inspector Benny Griessel faces off against a dangerous vigilante who has everything on his side, including public sympathy. A gruesome abuse case has hit the newsstands, and one man has taken it upon himself to stand up for the children of Cape Town. When the accused is found stabbed through the heart by spear, it's only the beginning of a string of bloody murdersand of a dangerous dilemma for detective Griessel. The detective is always just one step behind as someone slays the city's killers. But the paths of Griessel and the avenger collide when a young prostitute lures them both into a dangerous planand the two find themselves with a heart-stopping problem that no system of justice could ever make right.

Some would call Detective Benny Griessel a legend. Others would call him a drunk. Either way, he has trodden on too many toes over the years ever to reach the top of the promotion ladder, and now he concentrates on staying sober and mentoring the new generation of crime fighters: mixed race, Xhosa, and Zulu. But when an American backpacker disappears in Capetown, panicked politicians know who to call: Benny has just thirteen hours to save the girl, save his career and crack open a conspiracy which threatens the whole country.

When Deon Meyer's Thirteen Hours won the Barry Award for Best Thriller, one of international crime fiction's most electrifying writers finally began to get the American attention he so richly deserves. With seven novels published in twenty languages (all available on audio from HighBridge), Meyer has set countless hearts racing with gripping stories that mix the violence, politics, natural beauty, and history of his native South Africa. In Thirteen Hours, homicide detective Bennie Griessel struggled to solve the murder of an American girl, find her missing friend, and avoid drinking again, all in a single day. In Seven Days, Griessel is given another nearly impossible task. Two police officers have been shot, and the department has received an e-mail from the shooter alleging a cover up in a cold case. He threatens more violence until the case is solved. The case in question is the murder of Hanneke Sloet, an ambitious lawyer stabbed to death in her luxury apartment. There's no apparent motive and no leads, just a set of nude photographs and an ex-boyfriend with a rock-solid alibi. Then more policemen are shot and the pressure mounts. Can Bennie solve the case and stay sober? Seven Days is a gripping adventure by a fantastic writer at the top of his game.

At a guest house in the beautiful Franschhoek wine valley, a famous English mathematician is kidnapped and his two bodyguards killed. It's clearly a professional job, and the spent shell casings offer a chilling clue: each is engraved with the head of a spitting cobra. Meanwhile, in Cape Town, a skilled young thief is using his talents to put his sister through college. One day he picks the wrong pocket, grabbing the wallet of a young American woman who was delivering valuable and dangerous information. Before the day is over, five more people have been killed by Cobra, the sister is kidnapped, and the thief is on the run. Captain Benny Griessel and South Africa's top police unit, the Hawks, attempt to identify the missing man, save the sister, and track down Cobra. But when intelligence services step in, ordering them to turn over the investigation, it becomes clear that powerful people are involved. The Hawks, however, aren't about to let it go. Building to a deadly, heart-pounding finale, Cobra is a masterful thriller from a writer at the top of his game.

A week before Christmas, a young photographer discovers a plastic-wrapped corpse amidst the sand dunes north of Cape Town. The only thing found on the corpse is a dead iPhone, but it doesn't take long for the police to identify the body as that of Ernst Richter-the tech whiz behind MyAlibi, an internet service that provides unfaithful partners with sophisticated cover stories to hide an affair. Meanwhile, Benny Griessel is called to the scene of a multiple homicide involving a former colleague, and four years of sobriety are undone on the spot. He emerges from his drunken haze determined to quit the force, but the indomitable Major Mbali Kaleni, now his boss, wants Griessel on the Richter case. The high-profile murder has already been the subject of fierce media speculation, with questions swirling about the potential for motive: could the perpetrator be one of the countless jilted spouses? An aggrieved client? Before the week is out, an unexpected connection to a storied family winery comes to light, and Griessel's reputation is again on the line. Mounting towards a startling conclusion, Icarus is another exceptional novel from the "King of South African Crime."

The Woman in the Blue Cloak is a brilliant novella which will thrill and entertain fans of Deon Meyer's much-loved detective Benny Griessel. Benny Griessel is a cop on a mission: he plans to ask Alexa Bernard to marry him. That means he needs to buy an engagement ring-and that means he needs a loan. So Benny has a lot on his mind when he is called to a top-priority murder case. A woman's body is discovered, naked and washed in bleach, draped on a wall beside a picturesque road above Cape Town. The identity of the victim is a mystery, as is the reason for her killing. Gradually, Benny and his colleague Vaughn Cupido begin to work out the roots of the story, which reach as far away as England and Holland . . . and as far back as the seventeenth century.

When a cold case dossier lands on Captain Benny Griessel's desk, he and his partner Vaughn Cupido, fellow member of the Hawks elite police unit in South Africa, reluctantly set to work reviewing the evidence of the disappearance--and possible murder--of ex-cop Johnson Johnson on the world's most luxurious train line. Two fellow travelers might have the answers Griessel and Cupido need--but they too seem to have disappeared into thin air, and the few clues that exist suggest a cover-up. Meanwhile, Daniel Darret has settled into a new, quiet life in Bordeaux, far from his native South Africa and his revolutionary past. But when a man from that past reappears to commission his unique skills one more time, Daniel is forced to decide whether to remain anonymous or to strike a forceful blow against a corrupt government. The two storylines eventually crash together in an ending as dramatic as it is unexpected, leaving Griessel and Cupido uncertain of their own future. With its rapid-fire plotting and beloved characters, The Last Hunt shows one of today's great crime writers operating at the peak of his powers and makes a brave and powerful statement about the pervasive corruption that has stolen so much from Meyer's native country.

Having jeopardized their careers in an unauthorized investigation that threatened to reveal the corruption in South Africa's halls of power, Benny Griessel and Vaughn Cupido have been demoted from the elite Hawks police unit. While waiting to be transferred from Cape Town to seemingly mundane duty in Stellenbosch, Griessel receives a disturbing, anonymous letter: "I can only trust you and Captain Cupido. There is an adder in our bosom. Be careful of phone calls." Assigned to investigate the disappearance of Callie de Bruin, a young university student and brilliant computer programmer, they hit dead ends until the trail, including the death of a fellow officer, leads to a series of gun heists and the alarming absence of certain weapons from the police registry. As Griessel and Cupido intensify their search for de Bruin, real estate agent Sandra Steenberg confronts her own crisis: state corruption has caused the real estate market to crash, exacerbating the dire financial straits facing her family. When billionaire Jasper Boonstra contacts her to represent a major property he wants to sell, she pushes aside her concerns about his reputation as playboy and swindler. And then Boonstra himself disappears, and Griessel is forced to juggle between Boonstra's bitter wife, protective lawyer, and Steenberg, the last person to see him alive.