Reconciliation for the Dead

Based on actual events, Hardisty’s searing third Claymore Straker thriller (after The Evolution of Fear), a tale of racial hatred, greed, and corruption, might break the reader’s heart—or tear it out. In 1996, Clay returns from exile to South Africa, where he testifies before Desmond Tutu’s newly formed Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the hope of being granted amnesty for alleged war crimes. Flash back to 1981, when Clay was a 21-year-old South African paratrooper fighting communist forces in Angola’s civil war. Clay and his best friend, Eben Barstow, witness and are forced to participate in torture, massacres of humans and animals, and warped medical experiments. In transcripts of his trial, Clay, who was suffering from delusions and other mental illnesses at the time he was dishonorably discharged from the army, asserts that the truth must be told. He testifies not only to seek forgiveness but to speak for the dead for whom he feels that he and his country are responsible, unforgettably personifying South Africa’s troubled history. The writing can be disturbingly graphic but it also at times achieves the level of genuine poetry. [em](Dec.) [/em]