A Beautiful Place to Die [Detective Emmanuel Cooper Series]. by Nunn, Malla - 2009

New York: Atria Books, 2009. 1st U.S. ed.. Hardback thick octavo, dustjacket, very good condition (in very good dustjacket), pages faintly toned, protected by removable semiarchival plastic sleeve (Brodart). 375 pp. Malla Nunn writes a darkly romantic crime novel set in 1950s apartheid South Africa, featuring Detective Emmanuel Cooper - a man caught up in a time and place where racial tensions and the raw hunger for power makes life very dangerous indeed. The story is a morally complex one rich with authenticity. The author sets the story in Jacob's Rest, a tiny town on the border between South Africa and Mozambique. An Afrikaner police officer is found dead, and Detective Emmanuel Cooper, an Englishman, begins investigating the murder. It is a tale of murder, passion, corruption, and the corrosive double standard that defined an apartheid nation.