Present Darkness: A Novel (Emmanuel Cooper Mysteries)
Nunn sets her procedurals in 1950s, apartheid-riven South Africa, infusing the natural drama of crime-solving with the added tensions between races and cultures. The details Nunn provides can be wrenchingly revealing. For example, when a dying black man is discovered in the garden attached to the home of a white couple, the cop on the scene doesn’t want to use a blanket from inside the home to cover the man; his hesitation speaks volumes about race. His superior, Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper of the Johannesburg Major Crimes Squad, has to cover his own anger by saying they can burn the blanket later. In this, the fourth in the series, set in 1953, Cooper is put to the test when the youngest son of his best friend and frequent partner, Zulu Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala, is accused of the savage assault of a white couple, a high-school principal and his wife. The investigation is halted by Cooper’s sadistic superior, who wants a quick close to the case. Cooper’s persistence, against orders, takes the reader into very strange and corrupt territory indeed. --Connie Fletcher