Of Wild Dogs — Jane Taylor

Something nasty is coming out of the woodwork at the Museum … and in the lonely bushveld, it's not only Nature that's red in tooth and claw. This sparkling first novel by respected academic Jane Taylor is a whodunnit with local flavour and postmodern flair. An artist at the Museum is dead: sharp-tongued Hannah, a former exile, whose passions turn out to be fatal. Three very different people must combine forces to uncover her murderer: Ewan Christopher, Hannah's former lover and a British journalist, out of his depth in the new South Africa; Inspector Cicero Matyobeni, the world-weary policeman from Khayelitsha, holding on to his compassion for dear life; and the beautiful but insecure pathologist, Helena de Villiers, who is becoming perhaps too personally involved …

The action moves from the Company Gardens of Cape Town to the wild grasslands of the Limpopo Province, in a complex and clever plot, full of red herrings and puns, and peopled by academics, chiefs, corrupt businessmen, sangomas, ex-security policemen, car-guards and a Greek goddess or two.