Well-drawn characters, plenty of surprises

Seven years ago Colonel Vaughn de Vries, of the South African Police Service, worked on a case in which three small boys were abducted. The case was not solved.

Now, in 2014, the bodies of two of the boys are found dumped in a rubbish container, and all the failures from the past are revived again as de Vries sets out to solve the mystery once and for all.

De Vries is a detective in the vein of Ian Rankin's Rebus, though he swears a good deal more, and doesn't have Rebus' sense of humour.

But he has the same obsessive need to find the villains even if it costs him his job, and the same willingness to walk a fine line between proper police procedure and his own instinctive off-the-cuff approach. And of course there are superiors who don't understand him and others who want him ''retired'' from the force.

Mendelson provides a range of well-drawn characters, plenty of surprises, and excellent tension-filled scenes.

The ending is unusual, with the ''big'' climax coming some time before the last page, but this doesn't undercut the value of the book as a whole.

There are hints that Mendelson has more stories featuring de Vries up his sleeve. Let's hope so.

- Mike Crowl is a Dunedin writer, musician and composer.