I’m a big fan of Deon Meyer’s Benny Griessel and Vaughn Cupido thrillers, and it’s great news that his latest book, Leo, is now available in the U.S. Not only is it up to Deon’s usual standard, but this one won the prize for Best Adult Fiction at the South African Book Awards last year and also SA Book of the Year. The Sunday Times said, “One of the Best Thrillers of 2024: A masterly portrait of a nation in deep crisis,” and Publishers Weekly noted, “This intelligent page-turner confirms Meyer’s reputation as a master of the police procedural.”
In fact, Deon’s not so sure this is a police procedural, and at least half the book is from the viewpoints of characters engaged in two massive robberies. What’s more, we’re rooting for at least one of them, Chrissie Jaeger, a woman with a complicated past and unclear objectives who is a key player in both heists.
In his piece What really defines the subgenres of crime?, Deon used Anthropic’s AI system, Claude, and came to this conclusion:
“Leo probably is heist/caper fiction, amongst other things. But eventually, neither clever Claude nor the vast amount of information I gathered during the interaction, changed my basic philosophy: focus on the story. Make it captivating. And let other people worry about its place on the ever-extending genre family tree.”
In parallel, detectives Griessel and Cupido are trying to break what seems to be another case altogether. Deon is a master of the parallel plot, and the two cases come together in an exciting way. Deon explains it like this:
“We all write the books we’d like to read, and I love books with lots of things going on. When I start writing a book and I get these ideas, I think: it will be cool if they connect. Each must be strong enough and have a convincing conclusion to be satisfying. You have to be very careful not to force it and lose credibility. But if it does happen, it can give an extra little thrill.”
It certainly happens in Leo. Chrissie and her partners discover a stash of money in a secure warehouse belonging to criminals involved in the South African state capture corruption, and they set out to steal it. It seems a victimless crime and a pretty safe one since no one can afford to involve the police. Not everything goes according to plan, but Chrissie is able to settle in a quiet village, Poggio Nativo, near Rome.
Some months later, Griessel and Cupido are investigating the death of a young woman who was biking in the mountains near Stellenbosch. It seems that her death wasn’t deliberate, but resulted from an attack by dogs belonging to a jogger who tried to cover it up. Then the jogger is killed by a professional hit team but no one knows why. His sister suspects she knows the answer, but wants to keep it to herself and two of her brother’s associates. As the murders mount, the loop closes, and Chrissie and her team see the chance of a heist much bigger even than the first. The stories come together in a satisfying, tight knot.
Find out more about Deon Meyer and his books at www.deonmeyer.com
Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/DeonMeyer.Author
