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The Ryder Quartet
The Ryder Quartet E-reader Boxset
Four hot crime thrillers in a single boxset. Each volume is also separately available in paperback, on Kindle or as an audiobook. Although they are independent stories, together they form an overall cohesive narrative. Detective Jeremy Ryder and his colleagues pursue heinous criminals into the depths of the criminal underworld. Hundreds of five-star reviews of the individual volumes testify to their reputation as action-packed thrillers steeped in authenticity and plausibility, reflecting the real world of police encounters with the dark world of crime.
813 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 1, 2015
245 people are currently reading
886 people want to read
About the author
Ian Patrick
9 books61 followersAfter working as an actor, director and teacher in theatre, film and television, followed by a long academic career, Ian is now a full-time writer. His years as an actor, director and scholar play a modest part in his writing, he says. 'My fiction is based to the best of my ability on research and field work. I have to believe every word my fictive characters say, every action they undertake,' he says. Which explains why he has accompanied detectives to the front line, interviewed forensics investigators, taken courses on forensics, crime scene management, and DNA analysis, and spent many hours scouring actual locations for his crime scenes: many of them based on actual events.
'I endeavour to make my fiction plausible and authentic. It takes me up to a year to write an eighty thousand word crime thriller. In my view, although it is clearly desirable to arrive at one's destination by bringing a work to publication, it is the journey that is the really exciting and enjoyable part of writing. I can only hope that readers will also enjoy the journey of discovering my characters and their foibles, their actions and their experiences. I hope, too, that they will inform me about and forgive me for any lapses in my work or any errors of detail.'
'I endeavour to make my fiction plausible and authentic. It takes me up to a year to write an eighty thousand word crime thriller. In my view, although it is clearly desirable to arrive at one's destination by bringing a work to publication, it is the journey that is the really exciting and enjoyable part of writing. I can only hope that readers will also enjoy the journey of discovering my characters and their foibles, their actions and their experiences. I hope, too, that they will inform me about and forgive me for any lapses in my work or any errors of detail.'
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 92 reviews
February 1, 2016
Four books in one. This needs a slightly longer review from me.
OK, so this quartet of four down-and-dirty but stylish crime thrillers is refreshingly new and different. For one thing, the physical setting of these stories in a non-American, non-European locale is a good thing. I’m a real fan of all the big guys and gals writing in those territories, of course : Peter James, Michael Connelly, Lee Child, Donna Leon, Kathy Reichs, James Patterson, Patricia Cornwell – they are all sustenance to my constant craving for exciting crime-based thrills and spills, dark criminals and quirky good guys.
But here is something really different. Firstly, the location – the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa - is exotic, dark and menacing and we know from media reports almost every day that it is very much a front line in the war against crime. For comparison, think Los Angeles South Central in the late 1980s to early 1990s at the height of LAPD’s war against crack cocaine (I was there, I should know! I was a teenager!) Or think Honduras or El Salvador during their reigns as murder capitals of the world (I wasn’t there, I don’t know!).
What is scary about current South African crime (I am there, I should know!) is the brutal carnage that takes place in the context of first-world life-styles, state-of-the art infrastructure and financial institutions, along with the rest of everything that money can buy. This should be a country celebrating the start of its third decade as a thriving modern democracy born from the evils of apartheid and surging ahead as a progressive ‘rainbow nation’. It should be a country content with its magnificent achievements, and it should be a country where the institutions of peace-making and the preservation of law and order are jewels in the crown of this mineral-rich territory with a first-world economy backed by state-of-the-art financial institutions.
It’s not. These four books show why, and in a compelling way. These are, in one sense, four simple text-book police procedurals (with an impressive grasp of crime scene forensics), and in another sense they are dark and depressing noir fiction and original crime thrillers. Viewed from a third perspective, they are intelligent analyses of the morality-dilemmas underlying themes of crime and policing, justice and retribution, vengeance and reparations. From yet another angle they will probably be of some interest to sociologists and historians and political theorists looking at the legacy of race-determined political economy over more than a century.
In these stories cops struggle with the morality of policing criminals as dark and evil and heartless as any that one might have encountered in the real world anywhere, any time. The action is frequently reminiscent of a Lee Child thriller with Jack Reacher at his very best (though the hero in this case is deeply troubled, unlike Reacher, with the morality of his actions). The hero of this quartet of novels is a man called Jeremy Ryder and he gives his name to the series. He is surely destined to grow on readers in the same way as Jack Reacher has. I, for one, look forward to meeting Ryder in a fifth book. I hope he next takes on a Police Commissioner or two.
The Ryder Quartet takes us on a journey that, it is claimed, does not necessarily require reading these books in sequence. My own recommendation, despite the author’s suggestion in his preface that they are all independent narratives and can be read in or out of sequence, is emphatically to ignore the author on this score. What does he know? I’m a reader and I know better: the reader will profit by reading these books each in proper sequence.
Devil Dealing introduces us to Ryder and his detective colleagues early on, and we immediately see them in action as with considerable expertise they take down some really bad murderers high on nyaope, the equivalent (but possibly more dangerous) drug to the crack-cocaine that swamped LAPD in the eighties. But even before we meet the cops we are given an introductory glimpse at the key villain in this series, a man called Skura Thabethe. At first I thought from a glance at the cover of the book that the devil’s eyes peering out at us were somewhat caricature. Not a whit. They are anything but that. As one reads, in fact, one realises just how damned good the cover of this book is. The essential characters and ingredients are all captured in the image, and this grows on one throughout the series. In fact, the gradation of different colours on what is essentially the same front cover for each of the four separate books (they are each also available as individual paperbacks, according to the Amazon site), is a nice touch as we go from – I suppose – Spring through Summer and Autumn to the death of Winter. Maybe that’s not what was intended but for me it certainly feels that way as one reads further into the quartet and the blistering heat and humidity of Durban in the earlier books starts giving way to colder and darker malevolence as the series approaches its climax.
What I liked about the first book was its freshness, something different, something exciting and new. It introduces intricate characters, a lovely mix of accents and slang and local dialects, but all perfectly understandable to the English reader with no knowledge of the local conventions (there is a glossary if anyone needs it, but the meaning of the few slang words seems clear enough from their context). If there’s a downside it’s the fact that the writer seems to be finding his feet in the first book and there’s a bit of extraneous information that he feels he needs to provide for the foreign reader who might not know enough about African conditions. A bit of pruning would have been useful. But the relative brevity of the books – each about 200 pages – ensures that these are quick reads anyway. By the end of the first book one is satisfied and it certainly can stand alone, as the author suggests, but in my case I was immediately in need of the second book in the series in order to see what happened next.
Gun Dealing shows us what happens next, and it does so in as explosive a manner as you can find in any thriller you’ve ever read. The first page opens in lyrical innocence but there is immediately a brooding darkness about the description. Then there occurs – one page later - a devastating act of criminal cruelty. Once again our cops are called in and off they go in search of clues: primarily clues from ballistics tests on the guns used in the action. They follow the gun-dealing actions of the bad guys and in due course some extraordinarily infectious characters come out of the woodwork (well, out of the bush, actually, in a literal sense). There’s lots of humour here, amidst the dark and the pain, and the characters start growing on the reader. Cops, robbers, victims, parents and grand-parents: the author gives us a rich tapestry of real life in this amazing country and one can guffaw and giggle one moment and then shed a tear the next. Page-turning, this was. But, like the first book, a little gentle pruning would not have damaged the narrative. Too much information, Mr Patrick!
The third book is blemish-free, in my view. It is entitled Plain Dealing because it focuses on a plain-dealing cop who sees himself as judge and executioner and knows how to deal plainly with criminals. We think he is a real bastard at first, but then we learn things about him and we find our feelings and attitudes changing. Then we realise that the author is testing our own moral judgements. Would we behave any differently had we gone through what this guy has been through? No political correctness here: only damned difficult propositions. On the way through this journey I became increasingly impressed by Patrick’s attitudes to race and gender politics. The banter between spouses and partners, and among detective colleagues, is refreshingly in touch with the best of progressive thinking without ever being politically correct in a banal way. Above all, no pruning needed here. The author seems to have found his proper niche and this feels like a smooth but terrifying roller-coaster ride all the way to the end. The last chapter but one is a car chase, shoot-out and cliff-hanging roller-coaster all the way. Followed by a denouement that is utterly satisfying, with another thrill or two thrown in for good measure.
The series rounds off with Death Dealing. It starts off by thrusting us headlong into a startling opening scene in a prison and closes with a spectacular conclusion in a private residential home (no spoiler here from me), with the action spilling out into the local neighbourhood. The final scene of all is my very favourite in the entire quartet, and it is richly indicative of the emotional underpinning that takes us through the four books, while exhibiting the same care and attention to detail that permeates the series.
Apart from the thrills, this is good writing. There are some beautiful descriptions leading us into some of the more climactic encounters. Things like:
‘… There was a distant roll of thunder, drawing near. The black cloud lay thick and low, unbroken, stretching its tentacles wide to the horizon like some gigantic spider embracing its prey before injecting its deadly poison into the earth...’
and the gathering storm is brilliantly sketched out for us in passages like:
‘… the first of the colossal raindrops began to fall. They exploded with dull thuds onto the dirt tracks running between the houses. Where they fell into the dust they left imprints as large as saucers. For the first two minutes the drops were five or six seconds apart, spurting up dust and steam as they plodded into the still over-heated earth. Then they came faster, racing one another to bury themselves into the ground, cascading over one another to join and mingle and create rivulets and puddles. Soon the drops transformed into sheets of water. The dust turned to mud. Visibility fell to no more than a few feet as they approached the house, Tabethe peering through the gloom beneath the window. …Suddenly a thunderclap, crisp and crackling and angry, shattered the heavens…’
This was a satisfying collection of short, sharp thrillers, and they combine to create an enthralling read, one that gives useful insights into a troubled country capable of far more than it is currently delivering to its embattled citizens.
OK, so this quartet of four down-and-dirty but stylish crime thrillers is refreshingly new and different. For one thing, the physical setting of these stories in a non-American, non-European locale is a good thing. I’m a real fan of all the big guys and gals writing in those territories, of course : Peter James, Michael Connelly, Lee Child, Donna Leon, Kathy Reichs, James Patterson, Patricia Cornwell – they are all sustenance to my constant craving for exciting crime-based thrills and spills, dark criminals and quirky good guys.
But here is something really different. Firstly, the location – the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa - is exotic, dark and menacing and we know from media reports almost every day that it is very much a front line in the war against crime. For comparison, think Los Angeles South Central in the late 1980s to early 1990s at the height of LAPD’s war against crack cocaine (I was there, I should know! I was a teenager!) Or think Honduras or El Salvador during their reigns as murder capitals of the world (I wasn’t there, I don’t know!).
What is scary about current South African crime (I am there, I should know!) is the brutal carnage that takes place in the context of first-world life-styles, state-of-the art infrastructure and financial institutions, along with the rest of everything that money can buy. This should be a country celebrating the start of its third decade as a thriving modern democracy born from the evils of apartheid and surging ahead as a progressive ‘rainbow nation’. It should be a country content with its magnificent achievements, and it should be a country where the institutions of peace-making and the preservation of law and order are jewels in the crown of this mineral-rich territory with a first-world economy backed by state-of-the-art financial institutions.
It’s not. These four books show why, and in a compelling way. These are, in one sense, four simple text-book police procedurals (with an impressive grasp of crime scene forensics), and in another sense they are dark and depressing noir fiction and original crime thrillers. Viewed from a third perspective, they are intelligent analyses of the morality-dilemmas underlying themes of crime and policing, justice and retribution, vengeance and reparations. From yet another angle they will probably be of some interest to sociologists and historians and political theorists looking at the legacy of race-determined political economy over more than a century.
In these stories cops struggle with the morality of policing criminals as dark and evil and heartless as any that one might have encountered in the real world anywhere, any time. The action is frequently reminiscent of a Lee Child thriller with Jack Reacher at his very best (though the hero in this case is deeply troubled, unlike Reacher, with the morality of his actions). The hero of this quartet of novels is a man called Jeremy Ryder and he gives his name to the series. He is surely destined to grow on readers in the same way as Jack Reacher has. I, for one, look forward to meeting Ryder in a fifth book. I hope he next takes on a Police Commissioner or two.
The Ryder Quartet takes us on a journey that, it is claimed, does not necessarily require reading these books in sequence. My own recommendation, despite the author’s suggestion in his preface that they are all independent narratives and can be read in or out of sequence, is emphatically to ignore the author on this score. What does he know? I’m a reader and I know better: the reader will profit by reading these books each in proper sequence.
Devil Dealing introduces us to Ryder and his detective colleagues early on, and we immediately see them in action as with considerable expertise they take down some really bad murderers high on nyaope, the equivalent (but possibly more dangerous) drug to the crack-cocaine that swamped LAPD in the eighties. But even before we meet the cops we are given an introductory glimpse at the key villain in this series, a man called Skura Thabethe. At first I thought from a glance at the cover of the book that the devil’s eyes peering out at us were somewhat caricature. Not a whit. They are anything but that. As one reads, in fact, one realises just how damned good the cover of this book is. The essential characters and ingredients are all captured in the image, and this grows on one throughout the series. In fact, the gradation of different colours on what is essentially the same front cover for each of the four separate books (they are each also available as individual paperbacks, according to the Amazon site), is a nice touch as we go from – I suppose – Spring through Summer and Autumn to the death of Winter. Maybe that’s not what was intended but for me it certainly feels that way as one reads further into the quartet and the blistering heat and humidity of Durban in the earlier books starts giving way to colder and darker malevolence as the series approaches its climax.
What I liked about the first book was its freshness, something different, something exciting and new. It introduces intricate characters, a lovely mix of accents and slang and local dialects, but all perfectly understandable to the English reader with no knowledge of the local conventions (there is a glossary if anyone needs it, but the meaning of the few slang words seems clear enough from their context). If there’s a downside it’s the fact that the writer seems to be finding his feet in the first book and there’s a bit of extraneous information that he feels he needs to provide for the foreign reader who might not know enough about African conditions. A bit of pruning would have been useful. But the relative brevity of the books – each about 200 pages – ensures that these are quick reads anyway. By the end of the first book one is satisfied and it certainly can stand alone, as the author suggests, but in my case I was immediately in need of the second book in the series in order to see what happened next.
Gun Dealing shows us what happens next, and it does so in as explosive a manner as you can find in any thriller you’ve ever read. The first page opens in lyrical innocence but there is immediately a brooding darkness about the description. Then there occurs – one page later - a devastating act of criminal cruelty. Once again our cops are called in and off they go in search of clues: primarily clues from ballistics tests on the guns used in the action. They follow the gun-dealing actions of the bad guys and in due course some extraordinarily infectious characters come out of the woodwork (well, out of the bush, actually, in a literal sense). There’s lots of humour here, amidst the dark and the pain, and the characters start growing on the reader. Cops, robbers, victims, parents and grand-parents: the author gives us a rich tapestry of real life in this amazing country and one can guffaw and giggle one moment and then shed a tear the next. Page-turning, this was. But, like the first book, a little gentle pruning would not have damaged the narrative. Too much information, Mr Patrick!
The third book is blemish-free, in my view. It is entitled Plain Dealing because it focuses on a plain-dealing cop who sees himself as judge and executioner and knows how to deal plainly with criminals. We think he is a real bastard at first, but then we learn things about him and we find our feelings and attitudes changing. Then we realise that the author is testing our own moral judgements. Would we behave any differently had we gone through what this guy has been through? No political correctness here: only damned difficult propositions. On the way through this journey I became increasingly impressed by Patrick’s attitudes to race and gender politics. The banter between spouses and partners, and among detective colleagues, is refreshingly in touch with the best of progressive thinking without ever being politically correct in a banal way. Above all, no pruning needed here. The author seems to have found his proper niche and this feels like a smooth but terrifying roller-coaster ride all the way to the end. The last chapter but one is a car chase, shoot-out and cliff-hanging roller-coaster all the way. Followed by a denouement that is utterly satisfying, with another thrill or two thrown in for good measure.
The series rounds off with Death Dealing. It starts off by thrusting us headlong into a startling opening scene in a prison and closes with a spectacular conclusion in a private residential home (no spoiler here from me), with the action spilling out into the local neighbourhood. The final scene of all is my very favourite in the entire quartet, and it is richly indicative of the emotional underpinning that takes us through the four books, while exhibiting the same care and attention to detail that permeates the series.
Apart from the thrills, this is good writing. There are some beautiful descriptions leading us into some of the more climactic encounters. Things like:
‘… There was a distant roll of thunder, drawing near. The black cloud lay thick and low, unbroken, stretching its tentacles wide to the horizon like some gigantic spider embracing its prey before injecting its deadly poison into the earth...’
and the gathering storm is brilliantly sketched out for us in passages like:
‘… the first of the colossal raindrops began to fall. They exploded with dull thuds onto the dirt tracks running between the houses. Where they fell into the dust they left imprints as large as saucers. For the first two minutes the drops were five or six seconds apart, spurting up dust and steam as they plodded into the still over-heated earth. Then they came faster, racing one another to bury themselves into the ground, cascading over one another to join and mingle and create rivulets and puddles. Soon the drops transformed into sheets of water. The dust turned to mud. Visibility fell to no more than a few feet as they approached the house, Tabethe peering through the gloom beneath the window. …Suddenly a thunderclap, crisp and crackling and angry, shattered the heavens…’
This was a satisfying collection of short, sharp thrillers, and they combine to create an enthralling read, one that gives useful insights into a troubled country capable of far more than it is currently delivering to its embattled citizens.
October 15, 2019
I cannot even do justice to this collection
It would be unfair of me to compare Ian Patrick to some of my favorite writers in the police procedural or action -thriller category. It's not because he does not come through favorably...he does. It's because he is on a fundamentally different level. What follows is part review and part catalog of why, if you are a fan of Reacher or detective novels, you need to learn who Jeremy Ryder is.
First, the four stories here move at a fierce pace. The stories take place over approximately one week each, and the "time stamps" keep everything in place. There is no question who, what, when, and where. I love this narrative approach.
Second, the central characters are incredibly well written. Here, the comparison to Reacher is apt. Who he was matters to who he is, and how he related to others before impacts how he relates now. As a side note, if Ryder is epic, Pillay will make you laugh at what a beast she is.
Third, and this is a matter of personal taste, I enjoyed immersion in post-Apartheid South Africa. Yes, there are language issues, so be sure to use context and maybe a Wiki page to help. But it is so worth it.
Fourth, the plots themselves may be in South Africa, but the themes are utterly universal. Racial issues, police corruption, criminal enterprises, drugs, and the whole list of human depravity are on display. But when S.A.P.S. gets a hold on a case, things happen and the reader has confidence that it is going to be challenged.
Lastly, Ian Patrick tells a story that makes the reader really cheer for his characters. I stayed up late several consecutive nights because I needed to know what was going to happen.
Seriously, get this collection. Don't wait until he's a global superstar. Read it now. You won't be sorry.
It would be unfair of me to compare Ian Patrick to some of my favorite writers in the police procedural or action -thriller category. It's not because he does not come through favorably...he does. It's because he is on a fundamentally different level. What follows is part review and part catalog of why, if you are a fan of Reacher or detective novels, you need to learn who Jeremy Ryder is.
First, the four stories here move at a fierce pace. The stories take place over approximately one week each, and the "time stamps" keep everything in place. There is no question who, what, when, and where. I love this narrative approach.
Second, the central characters are incredibly well written. Here, the comparison to Reacher is apt. Who he was matters to who he is, and how he related to others before impacts how he relates now. As a side note, if Ryder is epic, Pillay will make you laugh at what a beast she is.
Third, and this is a matter of personal taste, I enjoyed immersion in post-Apartheid South Africa. Yes, there are language issues, so be sure to use context and maybe a Wiki page to help. But it is so worth it.
Fourth, the plots themselves may be in South Africa, but the themes are utterly universal. Racial issues, police corruption, criminal enterprises, drugs, and the whole list of human depravity are on display. But when S.A.P.S. gets a hold on a case, things happen and the reader has confidence that it is going to be challenged.
Lastly, Ian Patrick tells a story that makes the reader really cheer for his characters. I stayed up late several consecutive nights because I needed to know what was going to happen.
Seriously, get this collection. Don't wait until he's a global superstar. Read it now. You won't be sorry.
January 20, 2016
It’s great to have these four thrillers gathered together in one book. I encountered the first one of the four stories that make up the quartet in August 2015. This was the result of communications I received from a “crime thriller reading group” in the South African Police Service. Most of the people in that group were cops in work. The discussions got so detailed that we needed a way of managing contributions. We also needed to sort out our online chat-room, establish rules for who could join the discussion, monitor contributions, etc. and it became so administratively complex that one of the group then suggested we simply migrate our discussions to GoodReads, where the infrastructure to manage different viewpoints already existed. It was a good move. We started in good spirit. Then day-to-day work got the better of us and we have now hit a bit of a pause (this is also to do with changes in our working environment and the politics surrounding that, it has to be said).
Back to the book. We started with Devil Dealing by Ian Patrick (well, before that we had already enjoyed wonderful informal discussions over books by Deon Meyer, Roger_Smith and others before we started getting into the idea of an online forum, as a result of the difficulty of discussing these things at work or in each other’s homes: distance and logistics required online solutions). We climbed into the book with alacrity. It was so close to the bone. It was almost as if the author was one of us, working under a pseudonym. We subsequently found out that he had indeed spent a fair amount of time investigating and nosing around our very working premises. It was uncanny, and it made for brilliant reading. We were really perturbed at one point (we’re a defensive group of cops and hate it when the press slams us and get the facts wrong) to hear that the book was dealing with corruption among cops. But when we got into it we had no problem at all, because the writer was telling the story from both sides, and he showed great balance and empathy.
Anyway, work pressures meant that not all of us could keep up with the reading, and indeed some of us were able to catch up face-to-face and continue our discussions whenever we met in the course of work or socially after work. Readers can see on GoodReads our (i.e. SAPS Readers) separate responses to each of the four books, and it is clear that we don’t always agree on the merits of each of the books. But there is no question that those of us who finished all four books thought that this was a great series and will intrigue not only cops but also victims of crime and the general public who are appalled at the way crime sometimes seems out of control. And maybe it will even impress the criminals who are perpetrating the bad stuff all around us.
My own personal favourite scene in the entire quartet of books is a harrowing one, in the fourth book, when we read about the victims of a terrible crime in a family home. I have personally dealt with a situation like that and it still stays with me. When I read that scene I thought that the writer himself must also have been through something like that in order to write it. It was uncanny. It was awful. It was brilliantly written, and very moving.
There are also wonderful scenes that reveal an almost poetic sense of the physical beauty and danger of the countryside. Anyone who has experienced the stifling humidity and heat of a Durban summer, followed by a thunderstorm, will recognise the truth of a description like this in Plain Dealing :
'The afternoon sun reappeared over Durban as if from a short afternoon nap. The sky reverted to blue everywhere except in the west where, heading out to the Drakensberg, the bulging black clouds were turning their attention on Lesotho and on terrain beyond, out to the north and north-west. The streets in the city centre were giving off steam as the sun sucked the moisture up from the tarmac. There were already dried-out patches of road and pavement that gave no sign of any of the day’s heavy showers. …Humidity crept back into shirts and into armpits and across foreheads. Store managers were barking orders as brooms were marshalled against the dirt and refuse that had been washed up against their entrances and under their shop-front windows. Cats foraged. The evil cackling of birds, picking out from the garbage newly displaced worms, mingled with the delighted screams of children splashing in puddles...'
There are criticisms to be made, of course. There’s no doubt that there is a bit too much detailed description, at some points in the four books, of police history and background. This is by no means inaccurate information – the author has done his research well – but it tends to slow down the action. At such points one wants to just get on with the story and the characters. Then, in addition, the audible versions are not as good as the written texts (I have only heard one that I liked - Devil Dealing - and part of another one that I didn’t like - Gun Dealing - because it needed more than one voice doing all the characters)
There is also perhaps a little too much teasing of white male Afrikaners – we’re not all rugger-buggers.
But it has to be said that those features that I criticise are balanced by some refreshing insights into women’s perspectives. There is also – best of all – no caricaturing of anyone or any race or language group. In fact, these stories are not only crime thrillers. They are in many ways just simply good South African novels that happen to have crime as the thematic centre of really interesting stories. The books say a lot about cops and robbers but they also say a lot about crime and justice, and about morality and empathy. In other words, they are about real people trying to live in a world where there is a constant struggle between good and evil.
Back to the book. We started with Devil Dealing by Ian Patrick (well, before that we had already enjoyed wonderful informal discussions over books by Deon Meyer, Roger_Smith and others before we started getting into the idea of an online forum, as a result of the difficulty of discussing these things at work or in each other’s homes: distance and logistics required online solutions). We climbed into the book with alacrity. It was so close to the bone. It was almost as if the author was one of us, working under a pseudonym. We subsequently found out that he had indeed spent a fair amount of time investigating and nosing around our very working premises. It was uncanny, and it made for brilliant reading. We were really perturbed at one point (we’re a defensive group of cops and hate it when the press slams us and get the facts wrong) to hear that the book was dealing with corruption among cops. But when we got into it we had no problem at all, because the writer was telling the story from both sides, and he showed great balance and empathy.
Anyway, work pressures meant that not all of us could keep up with the reading, and indeed some of us were able to catch up face-to-face and continue our discussions whenever we met in the course of work or socially after work. Readers can see on GoodReads our (i.e. SAPS Readers) separate responses to each of the four books, and it is clear that we don’t always agree on the merits of each of the books. But there is no question that those of us who finished all four books thought that this was a great series and will intrigue not only cops but also victims of crime and the general public who are appalled at the way crime sometimes seems out of control. And maybe it will even impress the criminals who are perpetrating the bad stuff all around us.
My own personal favourite scene in the entire quartet of books is a harrowing one, in the fourth book, when we read about the victims of a terrible crime in a family home. I have personally dealt with a situation like that and it still stays with me. When I read that scene I thought that the writer himself must also have been through something like that in order to write it. It was uncanny. It was awful. It was brilliantly written, and very moving.
There are also wonderful scenes that reveal an almost poetic sense of the physical beauty and danger of the countryside. Anyone who has experienced the stifling humidity and heat of a Durban summer, followed by a thunderstorm, will recognise the truth of a description like this in Plain Dealing :
'The afternoon sun reappeared over Durban as if from a short afternoon nap. The sky reverted to blue everywhere except in the west where, heading out to the Drakensberg, the bulging black clouds were turning their attention on Lesotho and on terrain beyond, out to the north and north-west. The streets in the city centre were giving off steam as the sun sucked the moisture up from the tarmac. There were already dried-out patches of road and pavement that gave no sign of any of the day’s heavy showers. …Humidity crept back into shirts and into armpits and across foreheads. Store managers were barking orders as brooms were marshalled against the dirt and refuse that had been washed up against their entrances and under their shop-front windows. Cats foraged. The evil cackling of birds, picking out from the garbage newly displaced worms, mingled with the delighted screams of children splashing in puddles...'
There are criticisms to be made, of course. There’s no doubt that there is a bit too much detailed description, at some points in the four books, of police history and background. This is by no means inaccurate information – the author has done his research well – but it tends to slow down the action. At such points one wants to just get on with the story and the characters. Then, in addition, the audible versions are not as good as the written texts (I have only heard one that I liked - Devil Dealing - and part of another one that I didn’t like - Gun Dealing - because it needed more than one voice doing all the characters)
There is also perhaps a little too much teasing of white male Afrikaners – we’re not all rugger-buggers.
But it has to be said that those features that I criticise are balanced by some refreshing insights into women’s perspectives. There is also – best of all – no caricaturing of anyone or any race or language group. In fact, these stories are not only crime thrillers. They are in many ways just simply good South African novels that happen to have crime as the thematic centre of really interesting stories. The books say a lot about cops and robbers but they also say a lot about crime and justice, and about morality and empathy. In other words, they are about real people trying to live in a world where there is a constant struggle between good and evil.
May 11, 2022
Having read the first three of the books in this collection from August through to December, I couldn't wait to read the final one. I wasn't disappointed. This collection is absolutely brilliant. Seldom have I read crime thrillers that are not just action movies but are accurate studies of the real world. For a policeman, especially, this is so real and well observed. We work in a tough environment. There are bad cops and there are good cops. This book shows all of that, and each of the four stories shows how difficult it is for cops trying to do their job. At first, I didn't like the first book as much as I liked the other three. But having now read all of the stories again, as a series (even though the author says in his preface that the books are separate and 'independent' from each other, I don't agree with him: I think it is necessary to read all of them in sequence if you want to understand the whole picture properly). I think the academics will want to look at this book one day when they come to study the second decade of the twenty-first century in South Africa. This is a fantastic insight into the sociological and political history of the country. It is also a very powerful argument about the relationship between morality and justice and revenge. Above all, it is a wonderful piece of story-telling. What a Christmas present this was for me!
April 26, 2022
Amazing. This collection was an accidental read for me. I was intrigued by one rave review on Goodreads and I thought: let me just dip in. I was gripped. I read the four thrillers right through in a week. This is new and different and exciting and with a tongue-in-cheek humour that I really like. I like the main detective’s wife. Sharp woman. She comes into her own in the second book when she plays a great part in a great dinner-party scene. Speaking of dinner-parties, there’s another one in the fourth book. Very funny. Very apt. The host takes apart a pompous armchair critic – a guy so recognisable that everyone will know him. Very funny. Very serious collection, too, in many ways. It shines a light on a sorry situation in a country that is capable of so much more. This is a lovely collection of four lovely thrillers.
February 19, 2016
I see that there is a “Giveaway” competition on GR for this collection, but it has already attracted more than three hundred people trying to win it. I don’t rate my chances highly against those odds, so I’m writing this on the basis of having already read the four individual books that comprise the collection. I have also looked inside the full collection online.
Some time back I read James McClure’s book The Steam Pig. It was an absorbing book set in apartheid South Africa. I read it again in July last year and since then I’ve thought a lot about crime fiction set in South Africa. McClure’s book won the CWA Gold Dagger prize in the seventies. It’s a police procedural and more than that: it casts light on daily life in apartheid South Africa. The book turns on the relationship between two cops, Lieutenant Kramer and his African colleague Detective Sergeant Zondi. It might appear to be dated today but for me it still stands up there with the best and it reveals a wonderful sociological picture of life and death in apartheid South Africa. The Ryder Quartet comes as close to matching it as anything else I’ve read. Detective Jeremy Ryder gives his name to the quartet and his sidekick is Navi Pillay, an Asian woman of diminutive stature but as tough as any cop you will ever encounter anywhere. She is also faster than any of them. In Ryder and Pillay, the earlier Kramer and Zondi have now met their match. These two modern Durban crime-fighters are every bit as good as the earlier two in their capacity as sharp-eyed sleuths, and much, much tougher than the two apartheid-era cops. If The Steam Pig holds up the mirror to crime in apartheid South Africa, The Ryder Quartet holds up the mirror to crime in post-apartheid South Africa.
I came across the first book in the quartet, Devil Dealing, in October last year. It struck me immediately as an important account of the vile kind of crime that still takes place to this day in South Africa. For one thing, both this book and McClure’s book introduced me to the worst criminal weapon imaginable. A sharpened bicycle spoke. There are thrills galore in the book, and it is exciting and filled with action. Ryder is not unlike another hero of mine, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, and the entire quartet has a lovely unity to it as we follow the adventures of Ryder in his crusade against crime in a country that boasts some of the worst crime figures for any country not formally on a war footing. The first book is occasionally bogged down in too much unnecessary information – as some reviewers have noted – but there is no doubt that this is a small blemish on an otherwise thrilling ride. There’s a lovely blend of race, language, gender and cultural idiosyncrasies that is impressively and subtly represented, with the author clearly on top of the nuances of local dialects and accents (dialogue seems to be a particular strength of his) and he shows us just how far South Africa has managed to travel, since apartheid, into celebrating the rich multiplicity of its cultures and people. In addition, as police procedurals go, this is smooth and uncomplicated and confident and feels real and impressively researched. There is a plot-pivoting moment on the Thursday night that ranks among the finest narrative surprises that have been sprung upon me. It was a lovely moment that got me scolding myself for not having picked up earlier on it.
I originally read the fourth book next, and only got to books two and three after that. But, to now take them in – I suppose - chronological order: in Gun Dealing the author seems to me to have overcome the problems of information-imparting that distracted me to some extent in the first book. In this one Ryder and his wife are like Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Benedick in the way they display such maturity, charm and intelligence in their relationship and in their witty banter. One gets to know the team of detectives a little better, too, and along with their forensics colleagues they all come across as real down-to-earth people and experts in what they do. There’s a healthy mix of language and race and gender relationships, and – with a bit of jocular teasing - it all comes across as that “Rainbow Nation” that Nelson Mandela talked about. Funny at times, shocking at other times, and, all-in-all, very real and persuasive.
The third book, Plain Dealing , is riveting from the first page. We are plunged immediately into a horrific crime. Off we go on the morality roller-coaster. There are no simple answers here. Are the cops justified in executing criminals who are more evil than one can imagine? The author does not attempt to answer that. He just shows us the dilemma and leaves it to us and to his characters. It produces wonderful arguments and questions that linger long after the final lines of the book fade away.
Death Dealing is a sensational book and a superb way to end the quartet. It’s a tear-jerker, too, and the author plays skilfully with our emotions in an effort to get us to consider tough moral judgements so often made too easily from the comfort of an armchair. What would we do if we were faced with the devil? Would we really refer first to all our principles on human rights and civil liberties when dealing with the worst possible criminal savagery? Does retribution leave any room for justice? I still don’t know the answers posed by this extraordinary book. What I do know is that there is no sentimentality in the final chapter of the entire quartet. It jerks us back and forth emotionally but it does so with such brutal realism that it would be misplaced to reduce this to being no more than playing with the reader’s emotions. When I reviewed the single volume on Good Reads I argued that the action at this point was brutal, clear, exciting, heart-rending, and at the end it was strangely comforting, once all the chaos and the trauma fades away. After reading this collection of crime thrillers one can feel, in the final analysis, that beneath the violence and terror that lurk around us, all is well with the world.
To be churlish: I think the collection would benefit by having footnotes rather than a glossary at the end. There are not a great many slang words but I’d rather glance down at the foot of the page than turn to the glossary. There’s also a trifle too much swearing for my taste, although I recognise this as probably being “authentic” in context. In addition, in the Kindle versions of each book I think that the preface – as interesting as it is – should be relegated to the back end of the books so that one can plunge straight into the story in the first couple of pages. With those few misgivings, then, I’m rating this at four stars. Maybe it deserves more. I might change my mind after hearing the audio versions, one of which I have started listening to, and which I think adds lovely flavour to the text.
Some time back I read James McClure’s book The Steam Pig. It was an absorbing book set in apartheid South Africa. I read it again in July last year and since then I’ve thought a lot about crime fiction set in South Africa. McClure’s book won the CWA Gold Dagger prize in the seventies. It’s a police procedural and more than that: it casts light on daily life in apartheid South Africa. The book turns on the relationship between two cops, Lieutenant Kramer and his African colleague Detective Sergeant Zondi. It might appear to be dated today but for me it still stands up there with the best and it reveals a wonderful sociological picture of life and death in apartheid South Africa. The Ryder Quartet comes as close to matching it as anything else I’ve read. Detective Jeremy Ryder gives his name to the quartet and his sidekick is Navi Pillay, an Asian woman of diminutive stature but as tough as any cop you will ever encounter anywhere. She is also faster than any of them. In Ryder and Pillay, the earlier Kramer and Zondi have now met their match. These two modern Durban crime-fighters are every bit as good as the earlier two in their capacity as sharp-eyed sleuths, and much, much tougher than the two apartheid-era cops. If The Steam Pig holds up the mirror to crime in apartheid South Africa, The Ryder Quartet holds up the mirror to crime in post-apartheid South Africa.
I came across the first book in the quartet, Devil Dealing, in October last year. It struck me immediately as an important account of the vile kind of crime that still takes place to this day in South Africa. For one thing, both this book and McClure’s book introduced me to the worst criminal weapon imaginable. A sharpened bicycle spoke. There are thrills galore in the book, and it is exciting and filled with action. Ryder is not unlike another hero of mine, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, and the entire quartet has a lovely unity to it as we follow the adventures of Ryder in his crusade against crime in a country that boasts some of the worst crime figures for any country not formally on a war footing. The first book is occasionally bogged down in too much unnecessary information – as some reviewers have noted – but there is no doubt that this is a small blemish on an otherwise thrilling ride. There’s a lovely blend of race, language, gender and cultural idiosyncrasies that is impressively and subtly represented, with the author clearly on top of the nuances of local dialects and accents (dialogue seems to be a particular strength of his) and he shows us just how far South Africa has managed to travel, since apartheid, into celebrating the rich multiplicity of its cultures and people. In addition, as police procedurals go, this is smooth and uncomplicated and confident and feels real and impressively researched. There is a plot-pivoting moment on the Thursday night that ranks among the finest narrative surprises that have been sprung upon me. It was a lovely moment that got me scolding myself for not having picked up earlier on it.
I originally read the fourth book next, and only got to books two and three after that. But, to now take them in – I suppose - chronological order: in Gun Dealing the author seems to me to have overcome the problems of information-imparting that distracted me to some extent in the first book. In this one Ryder and his wife are like Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Benedick in the way they display such maturity, charm and intelligence in their relationship and in their witty banter. One gets to know the team of detectives a little better, too, and along with their forensics colleagues they all come across as real down-to-earth people and experts in what they do. There’s a healthy mix of language and race and gender relationships, and – with a bit of jocular teasing - it all comes across as that “Rainbow Nation” that Nelson Mandela talked about. Funny at times, shocking at other times, and, all-in-all, very real and persuasive.
The third book, Plain Dealing , is riveting from the first page. We are plunged immediately into a horrific crime. Off we go on the morality roller-coaster. There are no simple answers here. Are the cops justified in executing criminals who are more evil than one can imagine? The author does not attempt to answer that. He just shows us the dilemma and leaves it to us and to his characters. It produces wonderful arguments and questions that linger long after the final lines of the book fade away.
Death Dealing is a sensational book and a superb way to end the quartet. It’s a tear-jerker, too, and the author plays skilfully with our emotions in an effort to get us to consider tough moral judgements so often made too easily from the comfort of an armchair. What would we do if we were faced with the devil? Would we really refer first to all our principles on human rights and civil liberties when dealing with the worst possible criminal savagery? Does retribution leave any room for justice? I still don’t know the answers posed by this extraordinary book. What I do know is that there is no sentimentality in the final chapter of the entire quartet. It jerks us back and forth emotionally but it does so with such brutal realism that it would be misplaced to reduce this to being no more than playing with the reader’s emotions. When I reviewed the single volume on Good Reads I argued that the action at this point was brutal, clear, exciting, heart-rending, and at the end it was strangely comforting, once all the chaos and the trauma fades away. After reading this collection of crime thrillers one can feel, in the final analysis, that beneath the violence and terror that lurk around us, all is well with the world.
To be churlish: I think the collection would benefit by having footnotes rather than a glossary at the end. There are not a great many slang words but I’d rather glance down at the foot of the page than turn to the glossary. There’s also a trifle too much swearing for my taste, although I recognise this as probably being “authentic” in context. In addition, in the Kindle versions of each book I think that the preface – as interesting as it is – should be relegated to the back end of the books so that one can plunge straight into the story in the first couple of pages. With those few misgivings, then, I’m rating this at four stars. Maybe it deserves more. I might change my mind after hearing the audio versions, one of which I have started listening to, and which I think adds lovely flavour to the text.
April 24, 2022
There’s a temptation, in the writing of some recent crime fiction, to conflate an understanding of the tools necessary for the prose writer’s creative imagination with the tools necessary for believable television-style documentary realism. In much of contemporary crime fiction prose writing we see the influence of television crime drama. Montage, cut-away, short-and-sharp action scenes, mumbled and unfinished sentences… a developing paradigm that largely post-dates the world of, for example, Inspectors Morse or Dalgliesh, or Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade. Perhaps with one eye on the potential film or television contract, writers of crime thrillers are frequently writing texts that need very little additional work to turn them into screenplays. There’s both an upside and a downside to this, in my view. The upside is a kind of brutal realism running alongside breathless pace and excitement that certainly makes for a reading experience that is gripping and page-turning. The downside is sometimes a loss of the core experience that comes from an engagement with the book: those literary nuances and the juxtaposition of words and phrases that spark one’s imagination as the author turns a phrase or paints an image or teases with words.
In much contemporary crime fiction I have enjoyed these visceral ups and down, as if I were not reading but engaging in a spectacular Hollywood version of a car chase. But at the same time I have experienced a loss of opportunity. The characters and the action might be satisfying at one level, in the moment of action, but they are then quickly forgettable. In much current fiction I find it hard to remember the emotional engagements characters have had with each other. I have failed to hang on to startling descriptions or insights. The action has been over-whelming and the writing under-whelming. The characters haven’t got under my skin.
There are exceptions, of course. To spread my net, for the moment, I can admit to finding Lee Child, for example, fully satisfying on both levels: he frequently gives us visceral excitement as well as occasional penetrating insights into human nature and human behaviour. His characters – and not only his invincible Jack Reacher - do indeed live on in my memory, and indeed the actions they engage in fade quicker than do the facets of their personalities that have engaged me in the act of reading. The same might be said of James Patterson’s characters – notably in his Alex Cross series. And many others. Their characters stay with me.
And now some new ones, too. I was trying to work out what it is, exactly, that I like about Jeremy Ryder and the cast of characters that surround him (both villains and good guys). These are characters that live on in my memory way beyond the experiences they shared with me. Having read all four of the books in this quartet – although I confess to not having purchased the anthology, I have indeed read each of the four parts of that volume – I think back on them as a satisfying whole, and the characters keep looming large in my consciousness. Perhaps it is that I have since read quite a lot about the real crime that these cops are facing each and every day in their blighted country. I have become quite interested in the politics of the country and that led me to read more about the crime that is associated, to some extent, with those politics. But what brought me to this interest? Not newspapers (although the facts about the country’s leaders and figureheads were there in the background, of course: who hasn’t heard about Mandela and Tutu and Zuma?). No. What has stirred my interest has been these four works of fiction. Somehow, for me, they have taken me beyond the visceral experience of car chases and hit-squads and murder and mayhem – which these books have in breath-taking abundance. Long after reading these stories I found myself thinking back on the characters. They disturbed me. They entertained me. But above all, they made me think about their tragic world. I went and read up more about their world. They have now become part of my consciousness about that world.
I can forgive the occasional lapses in the writing of these four books. I could quibble about a bit of sentimentality here and there. I could say that Jeremy Ryder is a little too much like Jack Reacher. But there are many things to compensate for such minor quibbles. For example, I find the writing in these books culturally and ideologically mature and refreshingly devoid of any racial stereotyping or gendered deficiencies. But more than that, these are such lovable human characters. And above all, their dialogue is what is so thoroughly engaging and real. Their accents and their slang and the occasional interpolations of vernacular words add such flavour! I think they all belong on a stage somewhere: I keep on imagining actors and actresses taking on these characters. Idris Elba looms large as Captain Nyawula, for example.
Anyway, I took about four months to read these four books. That was by no means because it was a chore. Other things got in the way. But I kept on thinking about these characters, dammit! So I couldn’t stop. I had to see where they ended up. Well, to tell the truth, I read them out of sequence, so I knew where they ended up chronologically by the time I was a quarter of the way through. But it was good to get some closure on all the characters and themes.
But now I feel some kind of loss. I hope they come back and tease me some more. Give us another quartet, Mr Patrick. Or at least put these people on the television screen so that we can have more of them. They’ve got under my skin.
In much contemporary crime fiction I have enjoyed these visceral ups and down, as if I were not reading but engaging in a spectacular Hollywood version of a car chase. But at the same time I have experienced a loss of opportunity. The characters and the action might be satisfying at one level, in the moment of action, but they are then quickly forgettable. In much current fiction I find it hard to remember the emotional engagements characters have had with each other. I have failed to hang on to startling descriptions or insights. The action has been over-whelming and the writing under-whelming. The characters haven’t got under my skin.
There are exceptions, of course. To spread my net, for the moment, I can admit to finding Lee Child, for example, fully satisfying on both levels: he frequently gives us visceral excitement as well as occasional penetrating insights into human nature and human behaviour. His characters – and not only his invincible Jack Reacher - do indeed live on in my memory, and indeed the actions they engage in fade quicker than do the facets of their personalities that have engaged me in the act of reading. The same might be said of James Patterson’s characters – notably in his Alex Cross series. And many others. Their characters stay with me.
And now some new ones, too. I was trying to work out what it is, exactly, that I like about Jeremy Ryder and the cast of characters that surround him (both villains and good guys). These are characters that live on in my memory way beyond the experiences they shared with me. Having read all four of the books in this quartet – although I confess to not having purchased the anthology, I have indeed read each of the four parts of that volume – I think back on them as a satisfying whole, and the characters keep looming large in my consciousness. Perhaps it is that I have since read quite a lot about the real crime that these cops are facing each and every day in their blighted country. I have become quite interested in the politics of the country and that led me to read more about the crime that is associated, to some extent, with those politics. But what brought me to this interest? Not newspapers (although the facts about the country’s leaders and figureheads were there in the background, of course: who hasn’t heard about Mandela and Tutu and Zuma?). No. What has stirred my interest has been these four works of fiction. Somehow, for me, they have taken me beyond the visceral experience of car chases and hit-squads and murder and mayhem – which these books have in breath-taking abundance. Long after reading these stories I found myself thinking back on the characters. They disturbed me. They entertained me. But above all, they made me think about their tragic world. I went and read up more about their world. They have now become part of my consciousness about that world.
I can forgive the occasional lapses in the writing of these four books. I could quibble about a bit of sentimentality here and there. I could say that Jeremy Ryder is a little too much like Jack Reacher. But there are many things to compensate for such minor quibbles. For example, I find the writing in these books culturally and ideologically mature and refreshingly devoid of any racial stereotyping or gendered deficiencies. But more than that, these are such lovable human characters. And above all, their dialogue is what is so thoroughly engaging and real. Their accents and their slang and the occasional interpolations of vernacular words add such flavour! I think they all belong on a stage somewhere: I keep on imagining actors and actresses taking on these characters. Idris Elba looms large as Captain Nyawula, for example.
Anyway, I took about four months to read these four books. That was by no means because it was a chore. Other things got in the way. But I kept on thinking about these characters, dammit! So I couldn’t stop. I had to see where they ended up. Well, to tell the truth, I read them out of sequence, so I knew where they ended up chronologically by the time I was a quarter of the way through. But it was good to get some closure on all the characters and themes.
But now I feel some kind of loss. I hope they come back and tease me some more. Give us another quartet, Mr Patrick. Or at least put these people on the television screen so that we can have more of them. They’ve got under my skin.
July 9, 2022
I assume I'm entitled to review this quartet, even though I don't have a copy of the collection. I've read each of the four single volumes that comprise the collection (including an audiobook version, too), and have 'looked inside' at the collection online. So I feel I've actually read everything that comprises the quartet even though I've never actually had sight of the paperback collection. I got information today that there was a giveaway on GR of the collection, and I'll certainly have a go at that (fat chance), but in the meantime I thought I'd try and improve here on my earlier somewhat cursory reviews of individual volumes that comprise the quartet.
I liked the first one, 'Devil Dealing', back in September. It was fresh and different and exciting. The different accents and idiolects and slang words were exciting, in retrospect, and introduced me to a whole sub-culture that was really new and different. It was only later that I read an interesting discussion on GR about crime fiction and politics related to this book, and I learnt a lot from the various commentators there. I thought it was a great discussion. It made me think further.
When I read 'Gun Dealing' I was blown away by the violence and the tenderness, alternating in very moving ways in the book, mixed in with humour and witty comments and tender relationships. The women characters, especially, were intriguing. Sharp and clever and running rings around the men, not just because the author was trying to be politically correct, but genuinely because these were such fully-realised characters that just grew and grew on me. It was about then that I thought that the advice in the descriptions about the relationship between the different books was wrong. They said that you could read these in any order you wanted. But, no, in thinking back, these books really need to be read in sequence. It was great picking up references from one book to subtle mentions in earlier books. I went back time and time again to look at the clues and it was a really satisfying experience to follow these characters in chronological order.
The third book is the best, in my opinion. There are two pairs of women that choked me up in books three and four: two constables and two forensics officers (it's not clear whether or not they are cops as well as forensics people). In 'Plain Dealing', the third book, there are two car chases that are so amazing that I thought of these scenes in purely cinematic terms and they were cliff-hanging amazing chase scenes. The brutality of the criminals and the moral questioning of the cops as they chase down the crooks, was amazingly effective. And there were some really painful scenes as victims dealt with crime.
The fourth book, 'Death Dealing' is, on further reflection (I had thought it not as good as the others, at first), a perfect way to end the series. There is a final chapter that is completely and utterly tear-jerking, in the best possible way. It might be a bit wordy in the beginning (after a great stunner of an opening scene, that is), but it certainly makes up for it later on, and it draws the series to a satisfying conclusion.
So there's a cohesion about all of this. I liked reading - in the preface - about the author's own detective work in researching these four books. It certainly shows. These are really totally absorbing books and one feels that they hold up a mirror to nature, becoming almost documentary in feel, rather than being pure fiction.
I hope there is a fifth episode with these characters. What would they call it? 'The Ryder Quintet'? One can only hope.
I liked the first one, 'Devil Dealing', back in September. It was fresh and different and exciting. The different accents and idiolects and slang words were exciting, in retrospect, and introduced me to a whole sub-culture that was really new and different. It was only later that I read an interesting discussion on GR about crime fiction and politics related to this book, and I learnt a lot from the various commentators there. I thought it was a great discussion. It made me think further.
When I read 'Gun Dealing' I was blown away by the violence and the tenderness, alternating in very moving ways in the book, mixed in with humour and witty comments and tender relationships. The women characters, especially, were intriguing. Sharp and clever and running rings around the men, not just because the author was trying to be politically correct, but genuinely because these were such fully-realised characters that just grew and grew on me. It was about then that I thought that the advice in the descriptions about the relationship between the different books was wrong. They said that you could read these in any order you wanted. But, no, in thinking back, these books really need to be read in sequence. It was great picking up references from one book to subtle mentions in earlier books. I went back time and time again to look at the clues and it was a really satisfying experience to follow these characters in chronological order.
The third book is the best, in my opinion. There are two pairs of women that choked me up in books three and four: two constables and two forensics officers (it's not clear whether or not they are cops as well as forensics people). In 'Plain Dealing', the third book, there are two car chases that are so amazing that I thought of these scenes in purely cinematic terms and they were cliff-hanging amazing chase scenes. The brutality of the criminals and the moral questioning of the cops as they chase down the crooks, was amazingly effective. And there were some really painful scenes as victims dealt with crime.
The fourth book, 'Death Dealing' is, on further reflection (I had thought it not as good as the others, at first), a perfect way to end the series. There is a final chapter that is completely and utterly tear-jerking, in the best possible way. It might be a bit wordy in the beginning (after a great stunner of an opening scene, that is), but it certainly makes up for it later on, and it draws the series to a satisfying conclusion.
So there's a cohesion about all of this. I liked reading - in the preface - about the author's own detective work in researching these four books. It certainly shows. These are really totally absorbing books and one feels that they hold up a mirror to nature, becoming almost documentary in feel, rather than being pure fiction.
I hope there is a fifth episode with these characters. What would they call it? 'The Ryder Quintet'? One can only hope.
July 25, 2022
I started off reading this series thinking right from the beginning of the first book that it was fast, exciting, punchy and very menacing. I felt that it got a little bogged down in some unnecessary descriptive detail about who these cops were and what their background was, but that was a minor distraction because then a friend pointed me to some newspaper excerpts from the real world in which these cops work. It was mind-blowing. I realised that this was more than simple fiction. It was very real in so many ways. Anyway, I liked Devil Dealing and I also liked reading the discussion on Good Reads about the book in relation to crime and politics. Later on I also listened to the audiobook and that was amazing because I got much more of a feel for it all.
Gun Dealing was even better, I thought. This time the author showed us, in a very clever way, the menace that underlies the apparent beauty of the land (maybe that’s a really serious point right now, given the country’s political tensions). But this time the book takes us through some really amazing encounters. It was great to see the women playing a major role in taking down the bad guys, and it was also refreshing to see nice mature relationships among the characters – especially the women. There were some really sad moments, too, as people had to deal with their lives after traumatic incidents.
I thought that things couldn’t get better, but the third book was even better. Plain Dealing is shocking in so many ways. Police all over the world are getting a bad press and it seemed from the start of this book that they were going to get even more of that. But I soon started to see the other side of things. In fact, I completely changed my mind about the methods of the police after reading this. It was so shocking and so exciting. I’ll have to go back to this one and read it again. I wish there was an audio version, but there isn’t. Not yet, anyway. Maybe they intend to do one.
The best came last. The fourth book, Death Dealing, was so moving and traumatic. It was incredibly sad at one point, especially, and then at a couple of other moments too. I was seriously upset about it. But the plot takes us back out of these depths and there is some real optimism in the book. The message, if there is one, is that there will always be a struggle between good and evil and we need more people like the heroes in this story to ensure that something good comes out of it all. I hope that the character of Mavis goes on to some heroic deeds. She’s my favourite. Maybe I identify with her because she is so quiet and unassuming when we first meet her and then, like all the characters, really, she grows and matures through the course of the later books. That’s the real joy of a series that works so well.
Gun Dealing was even better, I thought. This time the author showed us, in a very clever way, the menace that underlies the apparent beauty of the land (maybe that’s a really serious point right now, given the country’s political tensions). But this time the book takes us through some really amazing encounters. It was great to see the women playing a major role in taking down the bad guys, and it was also refreshing to see nice mature relationships among the characters – especially the women. There were some really sad moments, too, as people had to deal with their lives after traumatic incidents.
I thought that things couldn’t get better, but the third book was even better. Plain Dealing is shocking in so many ways. Police all over the world are getting a bad press and it seemed from the start of this book that they were going to get even more of that. But I soon started to see the other side of things. In fact, I completely changed my mind about the methods of the police after reading this. It was so shocking and so exciting. I’ll have to go back to this one and read it again. I wish there was an audio version, but there isn’t. Not yet, anyway. Maybe they intend to do one.
The best came last. The fourth book, Death Dealing, was so moving and traumatic. It was incredibly sad at one point, especially, and then at a couple of other moments too. I was seriously upset about it. But the plot takes us back out of these depths and there is some real optimism in the book. The message, if there is one, is that there will always be a struggle between good and evil and we need more people like the heroes in this story to ensure that something good comes out of it all. I hope that the character of Mavis goes on to some heroic deeds. She’s my favourite. Maybe I identify with her because she is so quiet and unassuming when we first meet her and then, like all the characters, really, she grows and matures through the course of the later books. That’s the real joy of a series that works so well.
May 20, 2025
I read the first of the four books that make up this collection way back in August last year. In the eight months since then I have thoroughly enjoyed the rip-roaring adventures of these cops and robbers in each of the four volumes. In between reading the four books I read a whole lot of other things ranging over different styles and types and genres, but I have to say that each time I came back to this particular series I once again revelled in it. Especially when I heard the audio versions of the first three (I haven’t yet got to the fourth audiobook, but I will). With a distant family history in the country where all of this takes place - which made this quite special for me - it was so intriguing to re-visit in my imagination so many different locations and character types that I had heard about from my dad and others, and, in a couple of cases, to remember specific types of people that I had met and interacted with.
I couldn’t help comparing the writing to that of Colin Dexter. I love the Morse stories, especially as I have fond memories of Oxfordshire, but despite the brilliant plots and some really great dialogue I did find Dexter a little out of date in regard to matters of gender and a few other things. Especially in relation to this series, where I think the author is fully on top of all of this – as quite a few reviewers have remarked. These are such mature lovable characters (some of them not so lovable, of course) and the stories are so well plotted and so reflective of the real world. What a good time I had reading and listening. There are thrills and tears but also laughter and love and tenderness all the way.
I have so much to say about these four books – and will probably get around, some time, to doing individual reviews of each of them - but in essence I just have to say that this quartet is really excellent. I hope the quartet becomes a quintet. Then a sextet. Then a septet. Perhaps an octet? A nonet, anyone? Could Ryder possibly get into a dectet? More, please, Mr Patrick. I could go on with these characters indefinitely.
I couldn’t help comparing the writing to that of Colin Dexter. I love the Morse stories, especially as I have fond memories of Oxfordshire, but despite the brilliant plots and some really great dialogue I did find Dexter a little out of date in regard to matters of gender and a few other things. Especially in relation to this series, where I think the author is fully on top of all of this – as quite a few reviewers have remarked. These are such mature lovable characters (some of them not so lovable, of course) and the stories are so well plotted and so reflective of the real world. What a good time I had reading and listening. There are thrills and tears but also laughter and love and tenderness all the way.
I have so much to say about these four books – and will probably get around, some time, to doing individual reviews of each of them - but in essence I just have to say that this quartet is really excellent. I hope the quartet becomes a quintet. Then a sextet. Then a septet. Perhaps an octet? A nonet, anyone? Could Ryder possibly get into a dectet? More, please, Mr Patrick. I could go on with these characters indefinitely.
September 9, 2016
I took a year to read the whole quartet, but not because it was difficult. On the contrary, they were each totally gripping and thoroughly entertaining. In some cases I re-read one of the books before going on to the next one, and then stopped to listen to the audio version, too. I also paused on my way through this series to read other thrillers that I discovered through Goodreads once I had joined and started reading other reviews.
Introduced to the series by a victim of crime in Durban, I was spell-bound from the very first page of the very first one I read back in August 2015. I finally got to the last book in the series after a long delay.
My favourite in the quartet is Plain Dealing. I thought it was really outstanding, and it was the one where the action never seemed to stop. In all of the books the action is brilliant, but in Plain Dealing it was also frightening because it made me assess my own feelings about police work and the experiences I went through. The bad guys out there are truly bad. Does one execute the Devil if one has the chance, or does one try to bring him to justice? Plain Dealing caused me some anguish. I really loved it.
These books are real, totally convincing, and rooted in a reality that is a genuine reflection of life in South Africa. It is also a very accurate reflection of what life is like for cops in the front line in any country, anywhere.
I see that there’s a fifth book planned for release soon. I can’t wait. This kind of writing presents a view of my country that everyone should be looking at. Not a pretty view, but an important one.
Introduced to the series by a victim of crime in Durban, I was spell-bound from the very first page of the very first one I read back in August 2015. I finally got to the last book in the series after a long delay.
My favourite in the quartet is Plain Dealing. I thought it was really outstanding, and it was the one where the action never seemed to stop. In all of the books the action is brilliant, but in Plain Dealing it was also frightening because it made me assess my own feelings about police work and the experiences I went through. The bad guys out there are truly bad. Does one execute the Devil if one has the chance, or does one try to bring him to justice? Plain Dealing caused me some anguish. I really loved it.
These books are real, totally convincing, and rooted in a reality that is a genuine reflection of life in South Africa. It is also a very accurate reflection of what life is like for cops in the front line in any country, anywhere.
I see that there’s a fifth book planned for release soon. I can’t wait. This kind of writing presents a view of my country that everyone should be looking at. Not a pretty view, but an important one.
May 3, 2022
I shelved all of the books in this series last year and have been reading my way through them ever since (among the huge pile of other books next to my bed). I really, really like this series. There's something very special about the way in which the books have clues and connections with one another but you don't have to have read one to understand the other. Surely, though, he can't leave these characters to their own devices? Surely they'll come back in another volume? What does one do if you're writing a quartet of books and then you write a fifth one? Does it become added to the collection or does it start off on a new quartet? I want to see Jeremy Ryder and his friends carry on their good work. I hope they come back.
I loved the humour, the sadness, the tenderness between some of the characters, and I loved the violence and the action, too. Best of all, I loved the way the books capture the essence of what is actually happening right at this very moment in and around the area where these books are set. What a lovely collection.
If there's one criticism, then it must be this. I know cops swear and all, but the bad language used by some of the characters is a bit off-putting. But apart from that, I loved this.
I loved the humour, the sadness, the tenderness between some of the characters, and I loved the violence and the action, too. Best of all, I loved the way the books capture the essence of what is actually happening right at this very moment in and around the area where these books are set. What a lovely collection.
If there's one criticism, then it must be this. I know cops swear and all, but the bad language used by some of the characters is a bit off-putting. But apart from that, I loved this.
April 27, 2022
I finally read the whole collection. It took me a long time but it wasn't because there was anything wrong with the writing. It was because of work and other commitments (and because I battled to get the fourth book). I think this is really, really good.
Maybe because my own home turf of Empangeni is so like this. Maybe because I recognise all these character types. Maybe because I want the police to win this devastating war on crime. The stories are all so uplifting and exciting and real. I thoroughly recommend to anyone interested in crime thrillers on the one hand and real-life action on the other.
I think the best scene in the whole collection is the very last chapter in book four. I had a little weep, I have to confess, but I walked away so happy with the good that still exists in the world.
Maybe because my own home turf of Empangeni is so like this. Maybe because I recognise all these character types. Maybe because I want the police to win this devastating war on crime. The stories are all so uplifting and exciting and real. I thoroughly recommend to anyone interested in crime thrillers on the one hand and real-life action on the other.
I think the best scene in the whole collection is the very last chapter in book four. I had a little weep, I have to confess, but I walked away so happy with the good that still exists in the world.
July 20, 2022
I finally finished the quartet. I started reading the first of four in this series almost a year ago and it wasn't that it was hard to read the others, it was simply that I just had so much on my plate. But every now and then I would come back to these totally wonderful characters and have a really good time with them.
I loved the four stories. Really, really brilliant. The writing is so good and so real and believable. It's like reading the newspaper, seeing the horrifying things that happen to cops and to the good guys. What am I going to do now without these delicious characters? I hope they come back in a new series.
All the characters are great, but the dog is the best! The last scene of the whole quartet is the very best of all of them and left me weepy but uplifted.
I loved the four stories. Really, really brilliant. The writing is so good and so real and believable. It's like reading the newspaper, seeing the horrifying things that happen to cops and to the good guys. What am I going to do now without these delicious characters? I hope they come back in a new series.
All the characters are great, but the dog is the best! The last scene of the whole quartet is the very best of all of them and left me weepy but uplifted.
March 16, 2017
I see that these four books are coming out in one kindle collection, so I thought I'd review them all together, seeing as how I've already read all of them and reviewed each of them over the course of more than a year. In fact, just seeing the advertisement for the collection, I went back and listened to the second book again and read the fourth book again, then went back to my reviews and decided to put them together, now that I know the whole story of this collection. I also see that there is a fifth book coming out, so I'm going for that one next. I'm fascinated because all of this is about the place where I lived for many years and the kinds of people I know so well. And because I am so obsessed about the awful crime that surrounds us every day.
'Devil Dealing' was a real surprise. I read it second, actually, after having come across 'Gun Dealing' first. I liked Gun Dealing less, actually, and might not have got to the rest of the series. I'm pleased I did. So anyway, Devil Dealing, the first in the series, was such a good read. I loved it from the first page. The bad guy’s eyes are so brilliantly described, and then we are plunged into action that barely pauses long enough to catch one’s breath. The hero, Jeremy Ryder, is a straight no-nonsense cop but in (doubtless very deliberate) contrast to some of his macho friends and colleagues he’s a really sensitive man and very perceptive. His family life is deftly drawn with a few strokes of the pen (or clicks of the keyboard, I suppose) – subtle and real and believable – and his relationships with his colleagues are down-to-earth and warm and engaging. In a simple sentence or two we see him filled with admiration for the strong women in his life (like his wife and his up-and-coming detective partner – and then we see him being rescued by her, instead of the other way around, as is typical of macho writers). How refreshing to see the normal racial and gender stereotypes play no part in this story. Four of the five central villains are white men, and only one is a black guy. The Police Captain, Nyawula, a black man, is a sharp, intelligent and articulate leader and the central good guy. Ryder reports to him. The toughest cop on the block, and my favourite character, is a small Asian woman called Pillay. I read a couple of reviews that said people liked the book very much but said there was a bit too much talking at one point. In retrospect, maybe, but I still thought it was gripping all the way.
I read - well, I mean I LISTENED to the audiobook - of the second book in this series, 'Gun Dealing', before I had heard anything about the other books: that was on Christmas Eve 2015 during a memorable car journey. Although we liked it, I only gave three stars when I reviewed it, which in retrospect was probably a bit mean. For me, now, having listened to it again as well as read it, this book is a five star read all the way. Anyway, I originally listened to the audio version of this book in the car and really enjoyed it. It was a long journey so we also stopped to munch and have tea and coffee a few times, while continuing to listen. I made a couple of notes, too, when I wasn't the one doing the driving. There are some really lovely things in this book. Round about 35 minutes into chapter three there is the most brilliant grandmother spewing off in an angry monologue. So very funny. Reminds me of my old Nan. And then another grandmother doing the same kind of thing in chapter six at around 40 minutes. I just love the women characters in the book. There's a wonderful interrogation of constable Monaco by the detective Pillay woman. Gee whiz. Terrifying but quiet and menacing. I'd hate to be questioned by her. She's a really tough cookie. Oh, yes. There is the funniest, funniest scene about rugby, and it's about my favourite team, the Sharks. When the terribly teasing Koos von Rensburg man telephones Detective Ryder in chapter 7 at about 45 minutes into that chapter, it is just so funny. Teases him about his team just like my sister teases me all the time about what she calls my obsessive loyalty to the Sharks. We all just burst out laughing in the car. Really got the giggles. The scene was so good. I think the whole of this second book could have been better if it was read by three people, because there are so many characters, but the narrator is actually very good. He does the villains so, so well. He doesn't caricature the Afrikaners and the Africans and the crook. He does their voices accurately, I think, and with lots of attention to detail in the accents and the different dialects. All of those people speak exactly like I hear that kind of person speak every day all around me. But the women should be played by women actresses. Especially Ryder's wife. The author has created such a lovely relationship between the detective and his wife. Mature intelligent couple. Very loving and respectful of each other, and thank goodness there's no gratuitous sex. The couple have a lovely relationship and she is a top professional intelligent woman, and her husband - the tough detective - is highly respectful of her and they have an intelligent relationship. How nice. Most crime thrillers - especially by male authors - either have detectives with silly wives or silly assistants. This is really nice and different. I thought that the dinner party scene was very, very good. I know people like all of those characters. Anyway, I could go on. This was enjoyable to listen to.
I got the text of the third book, 'Plain Dealing', after having listened to the audio last year and really loved it, so I then re-read the text. Reading it brought back to me all the enjoyment of the audio version. The characters are fabulous and the accents are really nicely done. The best thing about it, for me, was the moral argument in the book. The poor policemen and women are under such pressure dealing with awful criminals and one has to wonder how it is that they don't go around dealing with these awful people in a clandestine way. The detective Mashego here is a really interesting character, and it was really interesting reading this as part of the whole series.
'Death Dealing' was the last of four books I read by this author, back in September. But I didn't so much read it as listen to it. The voices are so good in the audiobook that I put off reading the text until recently. But reading it brought it all back to me - when I had listened to it, late at night last year, I remember that I was so upset by the violent action, but at the same time I was gratified by the knowledge that the police finally get their man. It's a real dilemma for me: I don't believe in capital punishment but when one reads about evil people like those in this book, one questions one's judgement. Maybe people like this just have to be dealt with in the way that the detectives do. Anyway, it really was nice reading, exciting and thrilling.
'Devil Dealing' was a real surprise. I read it second, actually, after having come across 'Gun Dealing' first. I liked Gun Dealing less, actually, and might not have got to the rest of the series. I'm pleased I did. So anyway, Devil Dealing, the first in the series, was such a good read. I loved it from the first page. The bad guy’s eyes are so brilliantly described, and then we are plunged into action that barely pauses long enough to catch one’s breath. The hero, Jeremy Ryder, is a straight no-nonsense cop but in (doubtless very deliberate) contrast to some of his macho friends and colleagues he’s a really sensitive man and very perceptive. His family life is deftly drawn with a few strokes of the pen (or clicks of the keyboard, I suppose) – subtle and real and believable – and his relationships with his colleagues are down-to-earth and warm and engaging. In a simple sentence or two we see him filled with admiration for the strong women in his life (like his wife and his up-and-coming detective partner – and then we see him being rescued by her, instead of the other way around, as is typical of macho writers). How refreshing to see the normal racial and gender stereotypes play no part in this story. Four of the five central villains are white men, and only one is a black guy. The Police Captain, Nyawula, a black man, is a sharp, intelligent and articulate leader and the central good guy. Ryder reports to him. The toughest cop on the block, and my favourite character, is a small Asian woman called Pillay. I read a couple of reviews that said people liked the book very much but said there was a bit too much talking at one point. In retrospect, maybe, but I still thought it was gripping all the way.
I read - well, I mean I LISTENED to the audiobook - of the second book in this series, 'Gun Dealing', before I had heard anything about the other books: that was on Christmas Eve 2015 during a memorable car journey. Although we liked it, I only gave three stars when I reviewed it, which in retrospect was probably a bit mean. For me, now, having listened to it again as well as read it, this book is a five star read all the way. Anyway, I originally listened to the audio version of this book in the car and really enjoyed it. It was a long journey so we also stopped to munch and have tea and coffee a few times, while continuing to listen. I made a couple of notes, too, when I wasn't the one doing the driving. There are some really lovely things in this book. Round about 35 minutes into chapter three there is the most brilliant grandmother spewing off in an angry monologue. So very funny. Reminds me of my old Nan. And then another grandmother doing the same kind of thing in chapter six at around 40 minutes. I just love the women characters in the book. There's a wonderful interrogation of constable Monaco by the detective Pillay woman. Gee whiz. Terrifying but quiet and menacing. I'd hate to be questioned by her. She's a really tough cookie. Oh, yes. There is the funniest, funniest scene about rugby, and it's about my favourite team, the Sharks. When the terribly teasing Koos von Rensburg man telephones Detective Ryder in chapter 7 at about 45 minutes into that chapter, it is just so funny. Teases him about his team just like my sister teases me all the time about what she calls my obsessive loyalty to the Sharks. We all just burst out laughing in the car. Really got the giggles. The scene was so good. I think the whole of this second book could have been better if it was read by three people, because there are so many characters, but the narrator is actually very good. He does the villains so, so well. He doesn't caricature the Afrikaners and the Africans and the crook. He does their voices accurately, I think, and with lots of attention to detail in the accents and the different dialects. All of those people speak exactly like I hear that kind of person speak every day all around me. But the women should be played by women actresses. Especially Ryder's wife. The author has created such a lovely relationship between the detective and his wife. Mature intelligent couple. Very loving and respectful of each other, and thank goodness there's no gratuitous sex. The couple have a lovely relationship and she is a top professional intelligent woman, and her husband - the tough detective - is highly respectful of her and they have an intelligent relationship. How nice. Most crime thrillers - especially by male authors - either have detectives with silly wives or silly assistants. This is really nice and different. I thought that the dinner party scene was very, very good. I know people like all of those characters. Anyway, I could go on. This was enjoyable to listen to.
I got the text of the third book, 'Plain Dealing', after having listened to the audio last year and really loved it, so I then re-read the text. Reading it brought back to me all the enjoyment of the audio version. The characters are fabulous and the accents are really nicely done. The best thing about it, for me, was the moral argument in the book. The poor policemen and women are under such pressure dealing with awful criminals and one has to wonder how it is that they don't go around dealing with these awful people in a clandestine way. The detective Mashego here is a really interesting character, and it was really interesting reading this as part of the whole series.
'Death Dealing' was the last of four books I read by this author, back in September. But I didn't so much read it as listen to it. The voices are so good in the audiobook that I put off reading the text until recently. But reading it brought it all back to me - when I had listened to it, late at night last year, I remember that I was so upset by the violent action, but at the same time I was gratified by the knowledge that the police finally get their man. It's a real dilemma for me: I don't believe in capital punishment but when one reads about evil people like those in this book, one questions one's judgement. Maybe people like this just have to be dealt with in the way that the detectives do. Anyway, it really was nice reading, exciting and thrilling.
Want to read
August 27, 2018💝FREE on Amazon today (8/27/2018)!💝
July 27, 2022
So I entered the Giveaway for this collection and - surprise, surprise - had no luck. So I thought, what the hell, I'll get the thing myself and see what the fuss is about.
Legitimate fuss, I have to say. These four books are neat, tidy thrillers. The first one, called 'Devil Dealing', introduces us to some interesting detectives with big hearts and nice repartee (and fine rugby minds, it has to be said) and lots of courage and skill as they behave as courageous cops on the front line. The second one, 'Gun Dealing', takes us along another journey with the same cops as they chase down a few weapons used in various crimes. The third one, 'Plain Dealing', takes us to the edge of morality - on the precipice of the notion of 'execution as justice' - as the cops start to question themselves and question to what extent they can deal 'plainly' with really evil criminals. The fourth and final book, called 'Death Dealing', comes close to answering that question.
All along the way, the cops meet hardened criminals of all stripes while pursuing one key villain who is more like the 'Devil' of the first title than any of them. What happens in the big final confrontation between good and evil is for this reader to know and for those who haven't yet read the books to find out.
I recommend that readers set out to find out for themselves what happens, because they will enjoy the quest. These are lovely action-packed crime thrillers that are different from the norm. They are new and exciting and these are really well-crafted stories with a simple and effective moral underpinning. They are all also very gender-mature without being politically-correct. The women are particularly sharp and tough-minded and witty, and run rings around the men. They're even better shots than the men when it comes to having a little shoot-out now and then with the bad guys. How nice, for a change.
OK, so I could argue a bit about there being a little too much narrative explanation in the first book, a few too many tears in the second book, one fist-fight too many in the third book, and a far too goody-goody policewoman in the fourth book. But there's a lot to offset those minor failings. Above all, for example, there is a dog just like mine, who is the real hero and makes the whole series extra-special.
I recommend all four of these little 200-page gems, all wrapped up nicely under one cover and comprising in total just over 800 pages of page-turning fun and action.
Legitimate fuss, I have to say. These four books are neat, tidy thrillers. The first one, called 'Devil Dealing', introduces us to some interesting detectives with big hearts and nice repartee (and fine rugby minds, it has to be said) and lots of courage and skill as they behave as courageous cops on the front line. The second one, 'Gun Dealing', takes us along another journey with the same cops as they chase down a few weapons used in various crimes. The third one, 'Plain Dealing', takes us to the edge of morality - on the precipice of the notion of 'execution as justice' - as the cops start to question themselves and question to what extent they can deal 'plainly' with really evil criminals. The fourth and final book, called 'Death Dealing', comes close to answering that question.
All along the way, the cops meet hardened criminals of all stripes while pursuing one key villain who is more like the 'Devil' of the first title than any of them. What happens in the big final confrontation between good and evil is for this reader to know and for those who haven't yet read the books to find out.
I recommend that readers set out to find out for themselves what happens, because they will enjoy the quest. These are lovely action-packed crime thrillers that are different from the norm. They are new and exciting and these are really well-crafted stories with a simple and effective moral underpinning. They are all also very gender-mature without being politically-correct. The women are particularly sharp and tough-minded and witty, and run rings around the men. They're even better shots than the men when it comes to having a little shoot-out now and then with the bad guys. How nice, for a change.
OK, so I could argue a bit about there being a little too much narrative explanation in the first book, a few too many tears in the second book, one fist-fight too many in the third book, and a far too goody-goody policewoman in the fourth book. But there's a lot to offset those minor failings. Above all, for example, there is a dog just like mine, who is the real hero and makes the whole series extra-special.
I recommend all four of these little 200-page gems, all wrapped up nicely under one cover and comprising in total just over 800 pages of page-turning fun and action.
July 20, 2022
I read Devil Dealing, the first in this series, after having listened to the audio version, and really liked it. I had already read Gun Dealing because was recommended to me by a cop, and it blew me away, it was so good. Then I read the rest of the books. But it was only after I had read the rest of the series that I thought maybe the first one wasn’t quite as good as the ones that followed it. The third book, Plain Dealing, is a complete mind-blower. Hit squads and all. Uncanny in its reflection of what is really happening. It’s all definitely thoroughly researched and very accurate in so many ways, and I like the characters a helluva lot. They really grow on one. The Afrikaners were brilliant creations, and the mix of slang and vernacular works brilliantly. Maybe there’s a bit too much cop-canteen discussion in the first book, but then I found this a useful way of providing information to the reader without it being too obvious that the author was giving them facts they needed to know. And the main thing is that that’s what it’s like in the canteen! But once one is in to the second book there’s no turning back. Devastating stuff happens and brilliant police work and for the reader lots of action and great characters. The fourth book caps it all off so nicely. Fantastic action, very sad scenes, lovely interactions between interesting characters. The collection is brilliant. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I suppose I’m allowed to repeat myself from my own review on the third book by saying that all of this is such balanced writing. There is no sentimental posturing about rights and wrongs. Every argument you can think of is in the different range of characters and how they speak and act. In addition, there is light-hearted fun and witty repartee, and touching scenes between close friends and lovers and family members. These are not only crime thrillers. The whole collection is like one beautiful novel about life in current-day South Africa, as the country grapples with a new phase of transformation and strives to be born as a genuine democracy.
July 9, 2022
I read the first of the 4 books in this series - actually, it was the second one and only then did I read the first one - back in December last year. I liked it but gave it only three stars. I dunno why. When I think back on it maybe my standards were too high. Anyway, I then read the rest of the series - books three and four only very recently. So I think the whole "quartet" is really a four to five star read. I loved the ways they characters developed from one story to the next. Real action and real characters and witty repartee and lovely mood all the way through. Easy reading. Exciting reading. A good collection of thrillers.
August 29, 2022
I read the third book in this series three years ago, then I read a few short stories by the same writer. In both cases i promised myself I'd read more of this guy, but |I never got around to it.
Until this last weekend. Wow. This collection is very exciting and very well written. I know this terrain very well and it was such a pleasure to see the author getting all the facts and the details so accurate. The weapons and the locations and politics and the race-gender-language issues all make this not only a great crime thriller but a wonderful analysis of the society at a very tense time in its history. This was really good.
Until this last weekend. Wow. This collection is very exciting and very well written. I know this terrain very well and it was such a pleasure to see the author getting all the facts and the details so accurate. The weapons and the locations and politics and the race-gender-language issues all make this not only a great crime thriller but a wonderful analysis of the society at a very tense time in its history. This was really good.
June 23, 2025
Wonderful. Classy thrillers, very different from the norm. Characters to believe in and forensic details that are totally accurate.
I thought each of these four books was well plotted and with a fine balance between horrible crime and uplifting humanity and humour. The jokes about rugby are priceless - and also very well researched and accurate.
I thought each of these four books was well plotted and with a fine balance between horrible crime and uplifting humanity and humour. The jokes about rugby are priceless - and also very well researched and accurate.
Read
January 24, 2018I can’t rate this, the narrator, author himself apparently, is too over the top for me, I can’t focus on the actual story.
Sadly a DNF.
Sadly a DNF.
January 21, 2024
Just read this whole collection again. Almost exactly a year ago to the day I read the first book I'd read by this author. It happened to be the fourth book in this series. I only gave it three stars. That was a mistake. Once I began to read the series it all fell into place. I now think that his is the best series of thrillers I've ever read. The characters grow on you and the detail is fantastically accurate, (according to some detective friends of mine who also love the stories).
The first one - Devil dealing - sets the scene with the bad guy introduced and the good cops introduced. As well as some bad cops. Then Gun Dealing shows the forensics and ballistics behind the detective work, while they chase the really bad guy behind all the trouble. There's a spectacular fight at a dinner party that is really good. Plain Dealing is probably the best, on reflection. It is a damn fine book with a new cop character introduced who, by comparison, shows us how principled the main team of cops are. Then Death dealing ends the whole thing. By the title you can tell what happens. But there is lots of fun too. There is a wonderful dinner party scene where people talk about the world of crime writing while the author shows us the real crime out there. Very funny.
All in all, I thought this was a five star series. Only when I read them all through again did the whole thing fall into place, but that was worth it.
The first one - Devil dealing - sets the scene with the bad guy introduced and the good cops introduced. As well as some bad cops. Then Gun Dealing shows the forensics and ballistics behind the detective work, while they chase the really bad guy behind all the trouble. There's a spectacular fight at a dinner party that is really good. Plain Dealing is probably the best, on reflection. It is a damn fine book with a new cop character introduced who, by comparison, shows us how principled the main team of cops are. Then Death dealing ends the whole thing. By the title you can tell what happens. But there is lots of fun too. There is a wonderful dinner party scene where people talk about the world of crime writing while the author shows us the real crime out there. Very funny.
All in all, I thought this was a five star series. Only when I read them all through again did the whole thing fall into place, but that was worth it.
April 10, 2022
These were four police procedurals that I had expected to be British and rather in the mould of Colin Dexter or PD James. But they aren’t. They’re more exciting, in my view. Not the cool detached British detective looking quietly and relentlessly for clues, but the fisticuffs, kick-boxing, and violent engagement that one has come to expect from Hollywood detective stories. And? Guess what? I love that.
It seems altogether more realistic to me that these detectives should be talking about their favourite rugby teams one minute, teasing each other the next, then engaging in rip-roaring action with the worst criminals you can imagine. I thought it was very good, and each of the four stories seem to me to be rooted in the real world of contemporary post-democratic South Africa that has come to signal itself in the news items that I have seen in the form of blood-curdling murder and mayhem.
The stories are gripping and believable, and I found myself very engaged throughout. The accents in the audiobook help a lot, and contribute to a very colourful and realistic experience.
It seems altogether more realistic to me that these detectives should be talking about their favourite rugby teams one minute, teasing each other the next, then engaging in rip-roaring action with the worst criminals you can imagine. I thought it was very good, and each of the four stories seem to me to be rooted in the real world of contemporary post-democratic South Africa that has come to signal itself in the news items that I have seen in the form of blood-curdling murder and mayhem.
The stories are gripping and believable, and I found myself very engaged throughout. The accents in the audiobook help a lot, and contribute to a very colourful and realistic experience.
April 26, 2019
A great discovery
Friends, you'll want to share my discovery. Trust me. And this is the best way to do it. The Ryder Quartet let's you read the four Ryder books in sequence, no waiting for the next installment.
These exceptional stories are set in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), South Africa. The characters work in South Africa Police Service (SAPS) and they are quite a team. Each character has a unique, fully developed personality which makes them seem like close friends. I would like to meet them all.
The titular character is Captain Jeremy Ryder, who works closely with his team to solve crimes both large and small. The real violence takes place off the page and is dealt with more clinically than sensationally.
I delayed reading these books because, being a non-speaker of Zulu, I assumed they would be difficult to understand. However, between X-ray and the glossary provided, I was able to fully enjoy the stories.
It's always a delight to discover a new and really good author.
33
Friends, you'll want to share my discovery. Trust me. And this is the best way to do it. The Ryder Quartet let's you read the four Ryder books in sequence, no waiting for the next installment.
These exceptional stories are set in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), South Africa. The characters work in South Africa Police Service (SAPS) and they are quite a team. Each character has a unique, fully developed personality which makes them seem like close friends. I would like to meet them all.
The titular character is Captain Jeremy Ryder, who works closely with his team to solve crimes both large and small. The real violence takes place off the page and is dealt with more clinically than sensationally.
I delayed reading these books because, being a non-speaker of Zulu, I assumed they would be difficult to understand. However, between X-ray and the glossary provided, I was able to fully enjoy the stories.
It's always a delight to discover a new and really good author.
33
December 3, 2021
Just re-read the text, having listened to the audio three years ago. I like it even better than my comments last time, which were as follows.
These four thrillers were immensely satisfying. The second was perhaps not as good as the other three, but I have to say that all together they make a compelling set.
The reality of crime in the area where I live made this particularly satisfying for me. Without spoiling anything, although the criminals win some, the cops also win some. That is the name of the game in the real world. For me, I want to levy serious primitive justice on these awful thugs.
The fact that the cops show some real metal in dealing with them is what I particularly like. But more than that, the way the characters are created, the way that light-hearted relationship bantering is interwoven with fast-paced action and thrills, makes this a thoroughly good entertaining thirty hours of listening pleasure.
These four thrillers were immensely satisfying. The second was perhaps not as good as the other three, but I have to say that all together they make a compelling set.
The reality of crime in the area where I live made this particularly satisfying for me. Without spoiling anything, although the criminals win some, the cops also win some. That is the name of the game in the real world. For me, I want to levy serious primitive justice on these awful thugs.
The fact that the cops show some real metal in dealing with them is what I particularly like. But more than that, the way the characters are created, the way that light-hearted relationship bantering is interwoven with fast-paced action and thrills, makes this a thoroughly good entertaining thirty hours of listening pleasure.
March 2, 2022
I have a friend in Durban who is a real detective. I listened to a lot of this collection in his company and his conclusion is that it must be written by a detective. The facts and details are true to life, and every detail of behaviour, the weapons, the forensics, etc. are all on the nail, according to my colleague. He didn’t listen to all of it because he had to go back home from holiday before the end. But I did. And I enjoyed the experience. It was better than a lot of the stuff we see on television. This is the real world of policing and it is sensational in parts and very thought-provoking throughout. The battle between good and evil underlies it all. Cry, beloved country: this kind of crime is all around us, and thank goodness for cops like these detectives.
I listened to the audiobook. He could have done a bit more with the female voices, but in general the narrator does a superb job.
I listened to the audiobook. He could have done a bit more with the female voices, but in general the narrator does a superb job.
April 19, 2021
Beautifully plotted. I listened to the audiobook. I had read a couple of the individual stories in this quartet, but it was very good to go through them all in sequence from the beginning, and hear the author read them himself. The accents are good and – although I would prefer to have had a man and a woman’s voice to share the different genders between them – it was altogether very satisfying.
The way the hunt for the evil criminal unfolds is expertly handled. By the time the great climax comes in the final chapter of the final book, one is ready for some big-action martial arts. The author doesn’t disappoint.
I found the writing very well laid out, beautifully plotted, with lots of warm and believable human characters throughout. Most enjoyable. Some great discussions about rugby, too. Very funny.
The way the hunt for the evil criminal unfolds is expertly handled. By the time the great climax comes in the final chapter of the final book, one is ready for some big-action martial arts. The author doesn’t disappoint.
I found the writing very well laid out, beautifully plotted, with lots of warm and believable human characters throughout. Most enjoyable. Some great discussions about rugby, too. Very funny.
May 10, 2025
My neighbour drew my attention to this. She played a piece to me so I went and bought my own copy of the audiobook. That spelt the end of my weekend. I couldn’t tear myself away. The four volumes of this series hang together very well, and there are lots of cross-references which are intriguing. It’s like a puzzle coming together, yet you don’t have to make all the connections because each story is a good thriller in its own right.
I liked the different accent of the narrator-author. It was refreshing to have something not quite British, not American, and not middle Atlantic. It is kind of “other”, with a deep and enticingly exotic feel. The characters are very different from the norm – especially the criminals – and it is worth getting into their accents to see what kind of characters they are. This was altogether most enjoyable.
I liked the different accent of the narrator-author. It was refreshing to have something not quite British, not American, and not middle Atlantic. It is kind of “other”, with a deep and enticingly exotic feel. The characters are very different from the norm – especially the criminals – and it is worth getting into their accents to see what kind of characters they are. This was altogether most enjoyable.
September 22, 2021
After reading the first 2 books in the series a year ago I decided to get the full set of 4 in one audiobook. So I started again. It was well worth it. Having some sense from the first 2 books of what it was all about, it was thoroughly entertaining to follow the characters chronologically through the whole set of 4 books. Jeremy Ryder emerges as a superb detective who can teach the British detectives a thing or two. He is a modest man, a family man, and a deeply troubled man as he ponders the dilemma of where justice draws its red lines. Should he shoot down the Devil, the most awful hateful criminal imaginable? Or must he bring the man to justice? What exactly is justice?
These questions are very troubling, and the writer grapples with them superbly, in my opinion. The accents work, and there’s a comforting laid-backness in the narrator’s voice that works very well, too.
These questions are very troubling, and the writer grapples with them superbly, in my opinion. The accents work, and there’s a comforting laid-backness in the narrator’s voice that works very well, too.
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