Local Crime Writer Masterfully Reveals Our Own ‘Dirty Laundry’ in his second thriller, Wake up Dead
Roger Smith was born and raised in Johannesburg and currently resides in Cape Town. Before he decided to dedicate himself to crime writing, he was a screenwriter, producer and a director. Smith’s debut thriller, Mixed Blood, was published in over six countries in 2009, winning the the Deutschen Krimi Preis 2010 in Germany and it was nominated for a Spinetingler Best Novel Award in the states.
Wake up Dead was published internationally in 2010 and is in the run for the Krimi-Blitz Reader's Award in Germany, as well as the Spinetingler Best Novel Award.
Both novels are in the process of being made into feature films, with Samuel L Jackson due to appear in Mixed Blood. Smith’s latest novel, Dust Devils, will be released in 2011.
‘With savage plotting and breakneck suspense that ends in a shattering cataclysm of violence, Wake up Dead confirms Roger Smith as one of the world’s best new thriller writers’ Amazon.com
‘You can't put it down and you also can't sleep after the horror you have just read. Wake up Dead is shocking, brutal and the plot twists will leave you breathless. Roger Smith has renewed my faith in crime fiction. That is for sure.’ Michelle Anslie, Women24.com
The major themes that Smith deals with are the issues South Africa faces regarding poverty-stricken gang territories and the increasing crime rate we witness on a daily basis.
The ongoing themes dealt with in this book are racial and cultural differences, underground politics, gang warfare, homosexuality, South African witchcraft, poverty, greed, revenge, abuse, violence, fraud, corruption in the police force, crime and most of all survival.
Through his different and precise characters that link and communicate with each other in a ring of danger, the negativities of the themes he introduces to the reader are so blunt and realistic that you are forced to stop reading for a few seconds and process the previous words you have just read.
The basic plot sketches a rich South African businessman and his American supermodel wife who are hijacked one summer evening in Cape Town, leaving her a widow. Through his death and the process of burying him, she is introduced to old business partners and employees of her late husband, forcing her into an extremely dangerous and unknown territory, brutally governed and protected from the poverty-stricken Cape Flats.
The story is about two different cultures and racial classes who are intertwined through fraud, business, crime, unsettled old scores and the dangerous gangs, the 26’s, the 28’s and the Americans. The reader will quickly realize that different cultural backgrounds are not aspects that set us apart from the harsh reality of the underground world we are completely naive of which operates in our own back yard.
The author has an exceptional talent of ‘showing-not-telling’ throughout the entire story. He describes every character’s actions in specific ways and it gives way to a complete visual for the reader. ‘acrid sweat ran from him like he sprung a leak, and his joints joined in a chorus, singing along with his nerves and his cramping gut, pleading for the sweet relief that only tik could give him’
He delves deep into his characters and their surroundings, making the reader believe that he was once part of one of the mentioned gangs. There is so much detail and insight into this particular lifestyle and while enjoying the story, the true grit and the harsh reality of this culture are bluntly portrayed. ‘He would be adding a new teardrop, number nineteen, to mark his latest killing. Gutted the man like a pig that he was. The lights had still burned the night before in the communal cell block B, Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison – thirty brown men crammed into a cell made for ten. All members of the 28s prison gang. ‘ The only aspect I could find wrong with this book is that foreigners would not be able to entirely grasp the culture of the set up as well as South Africans would.
Roger Smith will restore anyone’s faith and interest in crime fiction and South African writers as a whole.
Research:
The Roger Smith Book website:
Amazon book reviews quote:
Women24.com reviews quote:
http://www.women24.com/BooksAndAstrology/BookClub/Wake-Up-Dead-by-Roger-Smith-20100910Written and reviewed by Gemma-Louise Wright
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