Cape Greed

One major crime dovetails violently into another in this accomplished page-turner set in exotic Cape Town, South Africa, though ex-cops-turned-PIs Jeffrey “Mullet” Mendes and Vincent Saldana hoped to concentrate strictly on the “no-gun stuff.” The two-man agency has been open only four months, with Vincent spending the time drunk and Mullet making ends meet by selling dope on the side. Suddenly, two cases come across the transom, a shadow job on a cheating husband and—score points for originality—high-ticket theft from local abalone farms. And related to those are urban hunting parties and the bodies of the street kids found ritualistically buried in the oceanside dunes. The novel features great villains in Jim Woo, trying to con his triad brothers, and Arno Loots, who laughs “as if someone had told him about laughter but he'd never actually heard it.” Cole—the pseudonym for Mike Nicol (The Ibis Tapestry ) and Joanne Hitchens—keeps the prose clipped, the action fast. (Nov.)