Book review: If The Dead Could Talk

If The Dead Could Talk 

Juliette Mnqeta

Kwela

Review: Karen Watkins

Juliette Mnqeta says this thriller is a product of her obsession with the mystery crime genre. And she’s done an excellent job with it, her debut novel.

What drew my attention to it, apart from the cover, is that it’s based in the Garden Route, mainly in Knysna.

The story begins with Azania Sethosa receiving a call from a lawyer notifying her of her father’s death. Former politician and retired advisor to the director of the South African Bureau of Intelligence (SABI), Joseph “Lefty” Mafu retired to the tourist town on the Garden Route.

Why would a father she never knew make her the sole heir to his estate? Her mother is secretive about the surroundings of her birth and about why her dad has supported her throughout her life. She decides to go to his home in Knysna to find out more. Starting at Knysna police station, she meets Detective Florian Welter.

He has been banished to the seaside town due to a physical affliction and is struggling with a burden from his past. Welter believes that the seemingly straightforward case is not one of suicide, as he notices inconsistencies in Mafu’s death.

Sidestepping interference by the four SABI members who arrive on the scene and interfere in the case he works with Azania to uncover a complicated web of conspiracies dating back to 1995. The truth is as elusive as whoever is behind it all. If the dead could talk, they would tell you what happened.

Mnqeta is the youngest of nine children and matriculated from Westerford High School in 2005. She is currently based in Plettenberg Bay and works as a freelance labour court transcriber and isiXhosa translator.