Soon, however, a team from what is called the Security Branch arrives to take over the investigation, relegating Cooper to a back-up role and ensuring that no white or Afrikaner person will be accused.
Caught in the middle is Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper, who has been sent to solve the crime. The murder of a rural Afrikaner police officer sets in motion a series of explosive encounters and events between white, blacks, “coloureds,” and the local Afrikaner community. It is a tale of murder, passion, corruption, and the corrosive double standard that defined an apartheid nation.A Beautiful Place to Die brings to life a 1950s South Africa, when new apartheid laws have just been enacted and when justice is in turmoil.
The first in her Detective Emmanuel Cooper series, A Beautiful Place to Die marks the debut of a talented writer who reads like a brilliant combination of Raymond Chandler and Graham Greene. Instead, he strikes out on his own, following a trail of clues that lead him to uncover a shocking forbidden love and the imperfect life of Captain Pretorius, a man whose relationships with the black and coloured residents of the town he ruled were more complicated and more human than anyone could have imagined. He may be modest, but he radiates intelligence and certainly won't be getting on his knees before those in power. But Detective Cooper isn't interested in political expediency and has never been one for making friends. When Detective Emmanuel Cooper, an Englishman, begins investigating the murder, his mission is preempted by the powerful police Security Branch, who are dedicated to their campaign to flush out black communist radicals.
Tensions simmer as the fault line between the oppressed and the oppressors cuts deeper, but it's not until an Afrikaner police officer is found dead that emotions more dangerous than anyone thought possible boil to the surface. It is 1952, and new apartheid laws have recently gone into effect, dividing a nation into black and white while supposedly healing the political rifts between the Afrikaners and the English. In a morally complex tale rich with authenticity, Nunn takes readers to Jacob's Rest, a tiny town on the border between South Africa and Mozambique.
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