The Last Hunt

Stonking book!

I've followed Deon Meyer since I read Cobra, some years ago, regulalrly checking for his latest novel. I was genuinely delighted with this one, which has been worth waiting for

The plotting is excellent and I just love the way this book starts slow and then moves up the gears to tense and explosive finale. He pulls no punches about institutional corrruption in South Africa and the way that the Police service has become degraded and ineffective as a civic body.

There's also the personal angle - will Alexa agree to marry Benny? How will Cupido cope with Desiree's obnoxious son? Will Cupido be inspired by Colonel Kaleni's weight loss regime to get his own waistline under control? Yes, the characters are so real!

The only disappointment now is the wait for Meyer's next Benny Griessel novel - or perhaps I'll check out a couple of early Meyer novels that I've not read yet...?

A new Deon Meyer book = celebration time in my house. I think Meyer is criminally underread outside his native South Africa (although on a recent visit to friends in the Netherlands, I discovered he's popular translated into Dutch) and have been known to physically force copies of his books onto readers of my acquaintance. So hopes were high for The Last Hunt, and it did not disappoint. As in the recent Benny Griessel novella, The Woman In Blue, the action here is spread across continents, and international conspiracy plays a central role. Meyer's trademark dry wit, high stakes tension, and incisive commentary on contemporary Cape Town life are all present and correct, too. A superb thriller, very highly recommended.

Deon Mayer returns us to drought ridden Cape Town in South Africa with his brilliant series featuring traumatised and recovering alcoholic Captain Benny Griessel and his partner, Vaughn Cupido of the elite Serious and Violent Crimes Unit, its members known as the Hawks. This is a thrilling and complex addition from Meyer, reflecting the dire political state of South Africa, the corruption, kleptocracy, betrayal, treachery, and greed infecting every institution, with the rot emanating right from the top with the President, one of the many old ANC warriors who have shifted to the dark side, selling out the country and its people. Unsurprisingly, this scenario has been viewed with horror, particularly by those who fought in the struggle with their vision of a fairer, more equitable and diverse democracy and now seeing that dream disintegrate. Those with integrity, honest and are incorruptible, dissidents who challenge and question this state of affairs face smear campaigns, death threats, trumped up charges, fake news articles, isolation, exclusion, loss of employment, labelled traitors and much worse.

It is amidst this troubling background that Benny and Vaughn are handed the investigation of the death of an ex-cop turned bodyguard, Johnson Johnson, thrown out of a luxury train. The trail has grown cold, with the case docket they receive sparse in details and no leads whatsoever. It is clear the local police made mistakes and the crime scene was contaminated. As it becomes clear that the victim was not a suicide but a murder, the police face political interference and cover up. The head of the Hawks, Lieutenant Colonel Kaleni, normally a woman who does everything by the book, is unprepared to let this go with the damage it does to their reputation, so authorises a below the radar investigation. After a life of fighting for the struggle and personal tragedy, Daniel Durret has settled for the quiet life in Bordeaux, France, finally finding a precious measure of peace. However, the past and old comrades refuse to let him rest and Daniel finds himself unable to let go of old loyalties.

The two storylines remain separate for most of the book and it is only late on that the connection of Benny and Vaughn's case in Cape Town with that of Daniel in France becomes clear. Meyer writes a gripping and riveting novel, intricately plotted, with his terrific central protagonist in Benny, here worried about how he should propose to fellow recovering alcoholi, Alexa Bernard, a dilemma that often occupies his mind during the case, terrified that she will turn him down. This is a superb series with its pulse on the complicated and turbulent state of South Africa, providing insights and information for the reader, all of which is integral to the smart crime fiction that Meyer gives us. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Hodder and Stoughton for an ARC.

I thought The Last Hunt was excellent. I have enjoyed Deon Meyer’s books in the past and I think think is one of his best.

Benny Griessel (now sober and living with Alexa) and Vaughn Cupido are sent to investigate a dodgy death on a luxury train and immediately come up against secretive obstruction from other agencies. Meanwhile we also get a seemingly unrelated narrative of Daniel Darret in Bordeaux who turns out to be an ex-fighter for The Struggle, trying to make a new, peaceful life for himself. What follows is a beautifully paced and completely gripping mix of excellent police procedural and a sort of Day Of The Jackal story, all of which I found believable and involving.

The great strength of the book is its characters in Daniel and, of course, in Vaughn and especially Benny, who is at his most human as he tries to raise the courage to ask Alexa to marry him. The other fine aspect is the picture of South Africa under Jacob Zuma and the frightful extent of corruption and “state capture” by Zuma and the Gupta family who are never named but often referred to. The writing and translation (by K.L. Seegers) are excellent and I was wholly absorbed from start to finish.

Even if you haven’t read any of the previous books in this series, this is a very fine novel and a great read. Very warmly recommended.

(My thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for an ARC via NetGalley.)

I have a little (well okay a massive) confession to make. Yes yet another one. Although I have several of Deon's books on my every increasing 'to be read' pile, I haven't actually read one...………...until now that is. I was invited to take part in the blog tour for 'The Last Hunt' and I thought that it would be an ideal opportunity to acquaint myself with Deon's work. Now I am rather annoyed at myself that I left it this long to discover how brilliant an author Deon is. I thoroughly enjoyed reading 'The Last Hunt' but more about that in a bit.
It took me a little while to get into 'The Last Hunt' but that has more to do with the fact that I was getting used to a whole new set of characters and to a different sort of writing style and shouldn't be taken as a criticism of the book or the storylines. Once I got into the story then that was it, I couldn't get enough of the story. Every opportunity I got to read the book, I took. I would pick the book up only intending to read a couple of chapters and read for half an hour but that intention soon flew out of the window because I was enjoying the book so much that I just couldn't bear to stop reading. I managed to binge read the book over the course of a couple of days, which is pretty good going for me at the moment. I seemed to race through the latter half of the book as my desperation to find out how the story concluded steadily grew and grew. I didn't really want to get to the end of the book because it meant that I would be saying goodbye to the character of Benny Griessel but I soon cheered up because I then realised that I had another 5 books in the series to catch up with.
'The Last Hunt' is brilliantly written. The author grabs your attention from the start and he keeps that attention for the duration of the book by keeping the characters interesting, the story intriguing and by keeping you guessing. That's how I felt at any rate. The author uses such powerful and vivid descriptions that I really did feel as though I was part of the story myself. The story takes place in two continents and whilst I was reading the book, if I closed my eyes I could easily imagine that I was in the country that I was reading about at that particular moment in time. I found 'The Last Hunt' to be gripping stuff, which kept me guessing and on the edge of my seat throughout.
When I agreed to take part in the blog tour for 'The Last Hunt' I didn't realise that it was actually the sixth book in the series featuring Benny Griessel. This book works perfectly well as a standalone but as I am a bit OCD with book series', I will definitely be reading the Griessel series in order and from the beginning to get the full lowdown on the legend that is Benny Griessel.
In short, I thoroughly enjoyed reading 'The Last Hunt' and I would definitely recommend it to other readers. I will be reading more of Deon's work in the future and I fully intend to catch up on the rest of the Benny Griessel series just as soon as I can. The score on the Ginger Book Geek board is a very well deserved 5* out of 5*.