Summary and Reviews of Dead at Daybreak by Deon Meyer

Book Summary

Deon Meyer recreates the beauty, wildness, and danger of modern Africa with an immediacy and force no other writer has achieved.

An antiques dealer in Cape Town is found dead, killed execution-style with a single shot to the back of the head. The contents of his safe are missing, suggesting robbery, but the weapon used in the killing is an M16-a gun that's generally the choice of mercenaries, not burglars.

Zed van Heerden is a former police office with connections to the world of soldiers and mercenary fighters from South Africa's battles for independence. And when he's called in to find out more about the victim, he quickly learns that this man in his fifties has no traces of a life earlier than 1983. Who was Johannes Jacobus Smit, and how did he invent a new life for himself out of nothing? What are the secrets that might have gotten him killed?

Van Heerden's probe stirs a fast and violent response, and before he has any idea what he's involved in, there's a seven-day countdown for his own survival. He has stumbled into the minefield of Africa's secret forces, a world where true loyalties are buried deep and treachery and violence are the only certainties. He must trust the instincts developed in his own frightening past to help him learn the truth-and use that truth to save his own life.

Deon Meyer recreates the beauty, wildness, and danger of modern Africa with an immediacy and force no other writer has achieved. Winner of Le Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere 2003, his work is undeniably "a cause for celebration" (Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph).