Customer Reviews

Mixed Blood: A Thriller

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Mixed blood is just the kind of crime thriller I've been looking for as of late. I was getting more than a little tired of mainstream novelists that feel like they need to live up to the last guy that wrote something in the same genre. Roger Smith doesn't conform to most of the traditional crime trappings. This isn't an episode of CSI or NCIS where every problem is neatly wrapped up and solved when it's all said and done. And I love that. Thank you, Roger Smith. Keep it up and you have a reader for life.

Mixed Blood's South African setting is as oppressive as a midsummer's heatstroke. You can almost feel the wind and smell the foreign sweat spilling through the pages. Also a welcomed difference in popular crime novels. The characters are pretty well drawn and the dialogue is pretty spot-on. The atmosphere is dark and hopeless and there's always a sense of suspense and dread. We're never quite sure who is going to do what. Yes, there are some predictable moments but all in all this is an extremely solid outing. I loved every page of it, honestly.

Pick this up if you want something a bit darker, a bit original and a bit more like what crime/noir should be.

Ex-Marine Jack Burn, in debt to some bad guys, is forced to participate in a bank robbery that leaves a man dead and Jack on the run with three million bucks. He's gotta get far away and Cape Town, South Africa is just about as far as you can get. He gets himself a nice place for himself, his pregnant wife and their four-year-old son, but as luck would have it, bad luck in this case, a couple local gang guys pick his place to rob.

Jack isn't a pansy and the robbers wind up dead and now Jack has to get rid of the bodies, however Benny Mongrel, a night watchman has seen what he shouldn't have. However, for his own reasons, he just wants to take his dog and walk away. He wants no part of this. Sadly, life seldom works out the way we want and and it doesn't work out the way anybody wants in this book.

And now Jack is on the run again and there is a very bad Afrikaner fat pig of a cop (think a 1960s big bellied Mississippi sheriff) on his trail and this monster of a man who claims to love the Lord smells some dollars, three million of `em. This guy's name is Rudi Barnard, but he's not the only cop in the story, there's a good guy Zulu cop named Disaster Zondi who has a score to settle with Barnard.

And all of this goes on in with Cape Town as the backdrop. It's been a couple decades since I was last there, but the Cape Town I remember, the European style cafés, the South American style beaches, the ritzy hotels, the nightclubs, there all still there. Cape Town is a place you could spend the rest of your live in and never miss the place you came from. Well, there's the Flats, you maybe wouldn't want to spend your life there, maybe wouldn't even want to go there. And they make up much of the story, this underbelly part of the city that will suck you right into it's squalor. You'll become a resident through these pages and you won't like it.

This is a brutal, very violent and very fast-paced book that moves unrelentingly toward a climax where nobody really wins. There are a lot of bodies here, more than your average thriller and you're going to have to look really, really hard to find your typical good guy, but for all your looking you won't find him, he ain't here, but that's okay, you won't miss him.

Roger Smith has written a gritty, violent thriller full of deeply-flawed people trapped in bad luck and the violence of Cape Town, South Africa.

Some books slowly weave a tapestry of ideas. Mixed Blood is not one of those books. It's rapid roller coaster with scenes quickly moving through the ups and downs of his cast of characters. The background and flaws of the characters are fired with the staccato of a machine gun into the narrative.

You probably won't like any of the characters. Most of them are bad people. Jack Burn is bad gambler willing to kill. Benny is gang member who places little value on human life. "Gatsby" Barnard is evil cop, ruling the streets with violence.

Even not liking the characters, you do care what happens to them. They are flawed, but incredibly human. Several are either fighting for survival or for a chance at a new life. Will they find redemption or death of both? You will keep turning the pages to find out.

There is lots of death and violence in the book. It's gripping, but not for the faint of heart. If it sounds good, you can read the first chapter of Mixed Blood on line and see if you like it.

Mixed Blood is Roger Smith's debut thriller. I read his second, Wake Up Dead, back in January. The publisher was nice enough to send me this copy.

I'm not going to write a book report synopsizing the plot on this one as I got around to reading it quite late due to my other review obligations. If you want to know extensive plot details read the other fine Vine reviews. But early into this terrific suspense thriller, one of the best I've read in years, I could not help but be reminded of John Maxwell Coetzee, who also is known for setting some of his novels in and around his native Cape Town. Coetzee won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003 which is never going to happen to "Mixed Blood" author Roger Smith. That's OK. There's plenty of prizes for this genre of entertainment fiction, and Smith deserves every applicable one for this stunning, page-burning debut novel. There's a movie here for sure (Smith is a screenwriter himself and I hope this one gets made, especially with the most recent crops of mediocre cinema). The plot is intricate, the characters well-developed and unforgettable, and the street dialogue is, as another reviewer pointed out, worthy of Elmore Leonard. And Smith does stick to Leonard's "Ten Rules of Writing" -- no annoying descriptions of weather conditions here. And as to the major characters, unlike some of the reviewers who found them all despicable, the only one I really hated was the brutal corrupt cop Rudolphus Arnoldus Barnard (nicknamed "Gatsby" for his addiction to that Cape Town fast food pastiche). I'm fence-sitting on Jack Burn's wife Susan. She underwent her share of misery as a result of Jack's gambling losses forcing him to participate in a Milwaukee bank robbery gone bad and causing their exile to Africa and the freakish nightmare that awaits them there. I did find myself rooting for not only Burn but also ex-con Benny Mongrel, whom I found to be a sympathetic character. As it has already been mentioned in the previous posted review, I don't consider this a spoiler -- Smith indeed does leave it open as to whether Burn is killed on the final page. Remember that fateful day in 1891 in "The Final Problem" when Arthur Conan Doyle supposedly killed off Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls, but left enough loopholes to insure his subsequent reappearance! Although someone has gone so far as to call this the "first in a series" -- someone who obviously has not read the book --the author details state Smith's second novel will be a "stand-alone". So I wouldn't look for Jack Burn in that one. As to his appearance in Smith's future work. we'll have to wait and see.

Jack Burn loves his beautiful young wife and son and looks forward to the upcoming birth of his daughter. In America, he took what he thought was an easy way to make loads of money but ended up indebted to a gangster. His involvement in a horrendous crime left him wealthy but on the run to save the family he loves. Changing their identities, the Burn family moves to Cape Town, South Africa, and begins to live out what they hope will be a quiet life.

Rich and white, Jack and his family live in relative luxury in beautiful, touristy Cape Town, but they are unable to escape the horrible reality that is the dark underbelly of the legacy of Apartheid - racial classism, heart-wrenching poverty, drugs, and early death. Jack is forced into violence to save his family and must fight before he loses them all.

Benny Mongrel is a former gang member and ex-convict. Thrown into a dumpster shortly after his birth, Benny grows up mean out of necessity in an environment of kill or be killed. His soul cleansing comes in the form of an aging guard dog, with whom he develops a loving friendship.

Rudi Barnard, aka Gatsby, is a grossly overweight, corrupt Afrikaner cop. He kills on a whim and rules over an insane kingdom of guns, betrayal, and death. He fancies himself a man of god and metes out his own brand of skewed justice.

With wildfires raging in the background, these three men are brought together - Jack, frantically trying to save his son; Benny, seeking vengeance; and Gatsby seizing upon an opportunity for wealth and escape. Thrown into the mix is Disaster Zondi, a black cop who prides himself on his personal grooming, self control, and professionalism. Disaster himself has a score to settle, and it is a race to see if his investigation will conclude before everyone goes down in a hail of bullets.

This is an in-your-face violent thriller. It's a fast read, and I was pulled in within the first few pages. I thought that Susan's character was rather one-dimensional, and I expected more from Carmen, but the action and the fast pace of this story more than make up for these little flaws. There are no good guys or bad guys here. Everyone acts out of self-preservation, usually crossing over into outright greed. Smith's descriptions of Cape Town's less desirable areas are so real that I could almost smell the hopelessness and despair. Given the setting and the characters, the ending is inevitable.

It's no surprise that this novel has been optioned for film. After reading it, I'll be one of the first to line up with my popcorn to watch the theatre version.

This book is pretty violent and would probably be enjoyed most by men. That said, I really did enjoy the book, as I enjoyed the cultural insight into life in South Africa - Cape Town to be specific. There are a number of different stories threaded together in the novel and it takes a little while to see how they connect with each other.

Jack Burn is a fugitive from justice, living in an affluent, white area of the city with his pregnant wife and 4-year-old son. In the poor, "flats" area of the city, live the mixed blood people who eke out a living, often only so they can scrape together enough money for the next "tik globe", to obtain a high to aid in escaping the misery of their daily lives. And then there is the crooked cop who preys on the city, in the fanatical, zealous belief that God put him on earth to act as judge, jury and executioner to the people who dared to be born of "mixed blood". As investigators close in on him, needing money and an escape, he kidnaps the 4-year-old son of the fugitive American and the story takes a dramatic turn as the boy's father leaves no stone unturned to find his son, while his now estranged wife delivers their daughter and prepares to turn herself in.

With a surprise ending - definitely not a story that leaves you with warm, fuzzy feelings - the book is nevertheless a good read and I'm glad I had the opportunity to try something new.

If you enjoy lurid pulp fiction thrillers then you should enjoy this seamy expose of Capetown's underbelly. Jack Burns is a tough American with a good heart on the run from gambling debts and worse. He's taken his pregnant wife and young boy to hide out in Capetown but once there finds himself embroiled in even deeper jeopardy that makes being on the FBI's most wanted list seem like the least of his troubles!

MIXED BLOOD is a page-turner that will simultaneously fascinate and revolt you with its unflinching close up examination of poverty, violence (LOTS of violence!) drugs, brutality, crime, corruption and greed running wild in the South African heat.

Roger Smith is an excellent atoryteller. He knows his locales and characters very well, and his writing is always believable (even if sometimes a little predictable). Personally, I think he goes a little too far in the gore department. (His descriptions of rotting corpses may have you puking along with his characters!) But if you like that sort of thing, then you should enjoy this book.

I won't give away the ending other than to say that it certainly leaves the door open for a sequel. And I look forward to reading more adventures of Jack Burns!

This is a well-written thriller that paints a picture of such violence and savagery in the slums of Capetown, South Africa, that it stunned me. Jack Burn is an American Mister Ordinary, with a job, a small son that worships him, and a pregnant, loving wife. But Jack is secretly addicted to high-stakes gambling. After he loses the family's money, he still makes a big bet and loses. To pay for it, the Mob forces him to participate in a robbery of millions of dollars that results in the death of a policeman. With three million dollars and a charge of murder against him, he flees with his family to Capetown. There, he hopes to live in peace, but fate decrees otherwise when two, young men try to burglarize his home. He kills one. The other, weaponless, begs for his life, but Jack, fearing the youth will talk, executes him in front of his wife and son. He hides the bodies, but they are soon found. This brings Jack under suspicion by Rudi "Gatsby" Barnard, a cruel detective who takes pleasure in killing suspects. It begins a cat and mouse game that ends in horrible tragedy. If you don't mind the violence, this is an engrossing thriller.

I waited a good while before writing this review, because I wanted to really think about this book before committing myself to this review, and after thinking about it, I still believe what I did when I first finished it - while the book is technically good, well-written, rounded characters, and lots of action - it is quite simply not to my taste. Why is that? Because, really, not a single character is that likable. There should be at least one character to whom one can relate when reading a book, and there was none such in this novel. In fact, I found Jack Burns' wife particularly unlikable - everything that man did, he did for her. It was for her comfort that he did what he did back in the U.S. - to make sure that she had plenty of money and a nice house to live in. It was to protect her (and their child) that he did what he had to do in Cape Town. Is she grateful? Does she appreciate it? No. Instead, she announces her plans to go to the U.S. Consul after having their 2nd child and turn him in.

But I digress. The product description provides a nice, succinct description of the plot of the text, so I won't waste your time going over that again. The only character I sort of liked was Benny Mongrel - at least he loved his dog.

This story is gritty, dark and very difficult to read at times because of that. But, as mentioned above, it is not that which turned me off to the book - I've certainly read my share of "dark" stories and enjoyed them - it was the lack of a character to whom I could relate, or who I at least liked, that kept me from enjoying this book more than I did. If that isn't a problem for you, please do feel free to check out this book, because it is a technically very well-written thriller.

MIXED BLOOD is a story about a fugitive named Jack. Ex-military, Jack has had to flee to Cape Town, South Africa with his young son, Matt, and his pregnant wife, Susan, in tow. Their life on the lam goes well enoug until, one night, a violent incident puts them on the radar of a whole cadre of gangsters and cops (both corrupt and honorable).

There are no surprises to this book's paint-by-numbers plot. Although it is peppered with deceit and some truly grotesque violence, it is an annoying story to read, if for no other reason than because it sounds like it would be better suited to a four-page spread in TIME magazine or The New York Times. It's a piece of bad news you'd normally spend ten or twenty minutes reading about, then another fifteen commenting on with your friends, before forgetting altogether. As a novel, it drags on and on without innovation, without insight, without intrigue.

Maybe this is the fault of the characters, none of whom make anything other than the worst impressions. Jack is a dough-boy of a man, someone who is hounded by bad decisions and who moves like a shadow through his own life, as if he were afraid of waking up God. The corrupt cop that hunts him down -- a fat "boer" named Gatsby -- is detestable in every way a human can be. Even the author spends an inordinate amount of time denigrating him, elaborating in unnecessary detail Gatsby's hemorrhoids and various rashes. Gatsby also believes in God, but he's a hypocrite of a Christian who prays with the same fervency that he puts bullets into teenagers. One gets the overwhelming impression that Smith absolutely detests religion of any kind.

Smith writes with passing functionality, but he only occasionally adds a dash of creative flair or depth to the actions and people he is describing. His prose is straightforward, but unlike the equally simple writing of people like Cormac McCarthy, Smith's is also boring. It lacks any kind of consistent tone or originality. It's as inventive as your everyday news article, which -- as I mentioned -- this thing is better off being.

If you want a book that requires absolutely no mental or emotional connection from you, a book that is brimming with horrific scenes that still manage to be tepid, then try MIXED BLOOD.