Memo From Turner
Published on 2. August 2018
Book
Paperback/Softback
352 pages
978-1-78733-089-4 (ISBN)
Description
What happens when a man of absolute integrity finds himself trapped in a world of absolute corruption?
During a weekend spree in Cape Town a young, rich Afrikaner fatally injures a teenage street girl with his Range Rover but is too drunk to know that he has hit her. His companions - who do know - leave the girl to die.
The driver's mother, a self-made mining magnate called Margot Le Roux, intends to keep her son in ignorance of his crime. Why should his life be ruined for a nameless girl who was already terminally ill? No one will care and the law is cheap. But by chance the case falls to the relentless Warrant Officer Turner of Cape Town homicide.
When Turner travels to the remote mining town that Margot owns - including the local police and private security force - he finds her determined to protect her son at any cost. As the battle of wills escalates, and the moral contradictions multiply, Turner won't be bought and won't be bullied, and when they try to bury him he rediscovers, during a desperate odyssey to the very brink of death, a long-forgotten truth about himself...
By the time Willocks's tale is finished, fourteen men have died. He shows once again that he is the laureate of the violent thriller.
During a weekend spree in Cape Town a young, rich Afrikaner fatally injures a teenage street girl with his Range Rover but is too drunk to know that he has hit her. His companions - who do know - leave the girl to die.
The driver's mother, a self-made mining magnate called Margot Le Roux, intends to keep her son in ignorance of his crime. Why should his life be ruined for a nameless girl who was already terminally ill? No one will care and the law is cheap. But by chance the case falls to the relentless Warrant Officer Turner of Cape Town homicide.
When Turner travels to the remote mining town that Margot owns - including the local police and private security force - he finds her determined to protect her son at any cost. As the battle of wills escalates, and the moral contradictions multiply, Turner won't be bought and won't be bullied, and when they try to bury him he rediscovers, during a desperate odyssey to the very brink of death, a long-forgotten truth about himself...
By the time Willocks's tale is finished, fourteen men have died. He shows once again that he is the laureate of the violent thriller.
Reviews / Votes
It's 24 years since Willocks's Green River Rising was published. Memo From Turner is even better. It's a devastating indictment of modern South Africa. -- Mark Sanderson * Evening Standard * Marked out by the elegance of the writing coupled with the brutality of the action... A ferocious read. * Mail on Sunday * A violent thriller that pits integrity against corruption in an arid, pitiless landscape. As the corpses and moral contradictions multiply, Memo from Turner ticks all the boxes for righteous machismo. -- Laura Wilson * Guardian * Delivered with unrelenting impact... there are echoes here of the late American novelist Robert Stone in this picture of endemic corruption. -- Barry Forshaw * Financial Times * A brutal tale that is part modern Western, part Jack Reacher adventure. * The Sun *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 153 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
588 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78733-089-4 (9781787330894)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Tim Willocks is a novelist, screenwriter and producer. Translated into twenty languages, his novels include The Religion, Bad City Blues, Green River Rising and Twelve Children of Paris. He has worked with major Hollywood directors, dined at the White House and holds a black belt in Shotokan karate.