Weeping Waters by Karin Brynard

Inspector Albertus Markus Beeslaar is new to his posting in a backwater town in farmland bordering the Kalahari Desert. A one-time big city cop in Johannesburg, he packed that all in for a quieter life after his life and career was waylaid by trauma. Now an outsider in this close-knit community, struggling with the oppressive heat, he is called to a farm where an artist and her daughter have been brutally murdered. The homicide comes at a time of rising tension in the area, a roving band of stock thieves spreading fear through the neighbourhood. 

Weeping Waters is a topical crime thriller, and likely to become more so as time passes. Farm murders are a contentious subject in South Africa, and increasingly so in the wider world. The Boer – Afrikaans farmers of Dutch descent – are synonymous in many people’s imagination with Apartheid. Indeed, as mentioned in the novel, a popular song amongst the youth wing of the ANC contains the lyrics “kill the farmer, kill the Boer”. This perception of the Boer as being unreconstructed racists responsible for the Apartheid regime might not be fair, but it is widespread. The spate of Boers killed on their farms has been blamed by many on economic factors – the perpetrators when caught almost exclusively being poor – but some have sought to weaponise the subject, pointing to Mugabe’s farm seizures across the border in Zimbabwe and suggesting that the murders are the beginning of something more sinister in the Rainbow Nation. The idea that South Africa might follow its neighbour and turn on its white minority is one that has been feared in some quarters ever since the fall of Apartheid. Indeed, the alt-right internationally has started to jump on the bandwagon and even Donald Trump has tweeted about farm murders. So, the author has chosen a subject of much controversy to centre her plot around.

This is a long novel, running to 512 pages and a number of threads run through the main plot. As well as the farm murders and the stock thefts, there is the historical treatment of the Griqua people, one of South Africa’s mixed-race ethnicities, superstition and the belief traditional magic, racial tension and corruption. It all comes together nicely and at no point did I feel the story stall or lose pace and it kept my interest throughout. Karin Brynard has been compared to Stieg Larson and Weeping Waters is her first novel to be translated into English from her native Afrikaans. I don’t know if future novels follow on from this or stand alone, but wither way I look forward to reading more from her soon

4 out of 5 stars