A Beautiful Place to Die
SynopsisPlot
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. 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. 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. 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. But Detective Cooper isn't interested in political expediency and has never been one for making friends. He may be modest, but he radiates intelligence and certainly won't be getting on his knees before those in power. 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.
Story
About this book
A Beautiful Place to Die is a crime novel set in 1952 South Africa, shortly after the first apartheid laws took effect. Detective Emmanuel Cooper, an Englishman, is sent to Jacob's Rest, a small town near the Mozambique border, to investigate the death of an Afrikaner police captain found face down in a creek. Several of the dead man's sons are at the scene, and one belongs to the feared political police.
Cooper's inquiry puts him at odds with the Security Branch, whose officers are focused on hunting suspected black communist radicals rather than solving a murder. Working largely alone, he follows a trail into the private life of the dead captain, whose dealings with the black and coloured residents of Jacob's Rest were less straightforward than his public role suggested.
The case maps the tensions of the period: rivalry between Afrikaners and English speakers, segregation enforced by new laws, and personal ties that cross official boundaries. Malla Nunn, a screenwriter before writing fiction, places the story in a border district where state authority and small-town closeness press on the same people.
