Of Wild Dogs

by Jane Taylor

Something nasty is coming out of the woodwork at the Museum … and in the lonely bushveld, it’s not only Nature that’s red in tooth and claw. This sparkling first novel by respected academic Jane Taylor is a whodunnit with local flavour and postmodern flair. An artist at the Museum is sharp-tongued Hannah, a former exile, whose passions turn out to be fatal. Three very different people must combine forces to uncover her Ewan Christopher, Hannah’s former lover and a British journalist, out of his depth in the new South Africa; Inspector Cicero Matyobeni, the world-weary policeman from Khayelitsha, holding on to his compassion for dear life; and the beautiful but insecure pathologist, Helena de Villiers, who is becoming perhaps too personally involved …

The action moves from the Company Gardens of Cape Town to the wild grasslands of the Limpopo Province, in a complex and clever plot, full of red herrings and puns, and peopled by academics, chiefs, corrupt businessmen, sangomas, ex-security policemen, car-guards and a Greek goddess or two.

255 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

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Reviews

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aside from finding the wordplay, particularly early on, a bit much, this was a great mystery and an even better social satire. Works pretty well as a one-stop overview of South Africa post-2000....

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

very nice, "literary" type novel and mystery and social critique of 21st south afica. Also a wonderful evocation of cape town, and the different societies there: black, white, and in-between, gay, straight, and in-between, rich, poor and in-between. The last 4/5ths are much better than the opening, so don't let it turn you off at first. i think only library of congress has this book in usa, so if you go to za, pick up a copy and bring it back to your local library :)

[Stephen Hayes · Rating 4 out of 5]

An above-average crime novel set, like so many South African crime novels, in Cape Town, which, in the case of this one, leads to one of its chief weaknesses -- that though the focus of the story does at some points move out of Cape Town to Limpopo province, the story at those points becomes blurred and sketchy, lacking in the detail that makes it interesting at other points.

In the story Ewan Christopher, a British journalist, travels to Cape Town to meet an old flame, Hannah Viljoen, whom he had met when she was in exile in England. Hannah is working as an artist in a museum, but Christopher arrives to find she has just died, and murder is suspected. He befriends Helena de Villiers, the pathologist, and Cicero Matyobeni, the detective investigating the case, which becomes more complex and involved the more they investigate it.

There are some nice descriptive passages, one that caught my fancy being

Helena's father had marked his European cast of mind by marrying Athena Papandreas, a dark beauty who caught his imagination when he first saw her, in a ruched fuschia-pink bathing suit and floral swimming cap, bobbing like a frosted tea-cake upon the contained tide at St James

If it weren't for the skimping on the Limpopo bits, especially towards the end, I'd have given it five stars.

[Aileen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book sacrificed plot for painstaking (though at times enjoyable) descriptions of the characters thoughts, actions and motives.
The ending was rushed and quite an anti climax. Some character development had barely any bearing on the story and left me wondering what the point of even including them was.
Overall it read like a first draft and not an edited manuscript.