IoS paperback review: The Hour of the Jackal, By Bernhard Jaumann (trs John Brownjohn)

Truth, guilt, morality, vengeance and murder ... so, sue me

A killer suffering from terminal lung disease drags himself through Namibia and South Africa, coughing blood as he guns his victims down.

DI Clemencia Garises is on his trail, and soon realises that the assassin's hit-list has connections to the murder of the white Namibian lawyer, political activist and Swapo member Anton Lubowski 20 years earlier. Jaumann's reconstruction of this real-life, unsolved case makes for a tense, atmospheric, political crime thriller. It's also a vivid picture of a society in which a sense of nationhood is still a work in progress. In an afterword, Jaumann says that anyone who disputes his version of events is welcome to sue. But so far, nobody has.