Pale Horses

The death of aid worker Sonet Meintjies, who took a fatal plunge from a Johannesburg high-rise, propels Mackenzie’s gripping fourth thriller featuring flinty South African PI Jade de Jong (after 2012’s The Fallen). Red flags start popping up almost immediately when Jade discovers that a tribal farming community whose members Sonet was mentoring has vanished without a trace—as has Sonet’s sister, Zelda, a muckraking journalist. With bullets whizzing and bodies falling, Jade contacts her on-again, off-again lover, Supt. David Patel, even though he has problems of his own between his bitchy pregnant wife and anonymous threats. As the novel hurtles toward a devastating climax, Mackenzie pumps up the suspense with a secondary but eventually intersecting story line centering on Ntombi Khumalo, a gutsy widow and mother who proves every bit as intrepid as Jade. Despite giving readers such appealing women to root for, Mackenzie paints a decidedly dystopian view of contemporary South Africa. Agent: Hannah Ferguson, the Marsh Agency. (Apr.)