Mixed Blood - Softcover

Roger Smith was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and now lives in Cape Town. Before turning to a life of crime writing, he was a screenwriter, producer and director.

South Africa is quickly earning a place for itself as an A-list setting for noir-tinged crime fiction. Following in the footsteps of Deon Meyer (Heart of the Hunter, 2004), first-novelist Smith finds in racially embattled Cape Town the ideal location for a classic wrong-man-in-the-wrong-place thriller. Jack Burn, a gambler turned reluctant bank robber, flees the U.S. with $3 million, hoping to start a new life with his pregnant wife and son in Cape Town. It all goes bad, however, when a random home invasion sets Burn on a collision course with Rudi “Gatsby” Barnard, an obese and very bent cop whose passion for violence is equaled only by his dedication to Jesus. Smith plays out the downward spiral of his plot skillfully, drawing on that chilling sense of inevitability that is at the heart of the best noir, but he really shines in the nuanced portraits of his secondary characters, especially those struggling to exist in Cape Town’s ghetto. Like George Pelecanos, Smith captures the humanity burning in lives trapped by poverty and prejudice without sentimentalizing those lives or downplaying the havoc they can produce. A fine debut. --Bill Ott