Wake Up Dead: A Thriller [Hardcover]

Roger Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2, 2010

An amphetamine-fueled thriller about a bombshell American widow on the run in Cape Town’s violent badlands—from a writer being compared to George Pelecanos and Richard Price

A split-second decision with no second chance: get it wrong and you wake up dead.

On a blowtorch-hot night in Cape Town, American ex-model Roxy Palmer and her gunrunner husband, Joe, are carjacked, leaving Joe lying in a pool of blood. As the carjackers make their getaway, Roxy makes a fateful choice that changes her life forever.

Disco and Godwynn, the ghetto gangbangers who sped away in Joe’s convertible, will stop at nothing to track her down. Billy Afrika, a mixed-race ex-cop turned mercenary, won’t let her out of his sight because Joe owed him a chunk of money. And remorselessly hunting them all is Piper, a love-crazed psychopath determined to renew his vows with his jailhouse “wife,” Disco.

As these desperate lives collide and old debts are settled in blood, Roxy is caught in a wave of escalating violence in the beautiful and brutal African seaport. With savage plotting and breakneck suspense that ends in a shattering cataclysm of violence, Wake Up Dead confirms Roger Smith as one of the world’s best new thriller writers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. At the start of this stellar thriller from South African author Smith (Mixed Blood), Cape Town meth heads Godwynn MacIntosh and Disco De Lilly hijack wheeler-dealer Joe Palmer's Mercedes. When the two black men shoot Joe in the leg, the reaction of Joe's gold-digging American wife, a former model, is to say the least, unexpected. While honest cop Ernie Maggott tracks the carjackers, and sociopathic killer Piper pursues Disco, once his jailhouse wife, half-white Billy Afrika, a former police detective and now a mercenary to whom Joe owed a ton of cash, is bent on revenge for Piper's savage two decades-old murder of Billy's mentor. Bad choices, not bad luck, drive human depravity in this brutal fable, where the human ideals of beauty and goodness and truth can't save their possessors and even fatally attract the soulless. One fundamental irony unforgettably lingers: that these characters, trapped in poverty, ignorance, and prejudice, have really had no choice at all. (Feb.)
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From Booklist

In outline, this pinballing ensemble tale of a mercenary, an ex-model, an ex-con, an arms dealer, a cop, a kid, a revolutionary, a prostitute, assorted gangsters, and a suitcase full of cash isn’t all that different from other entries in the crime subgenre birthed by Elmore Leonard. What sets this one apart is its setting—sunbaked, blood-soaked Cape Town—and its relentless intensity. Billy Afrika, back from Iraq, just wants the money he is owed for getting shot at. Unfortunately, the security broker who hired him just got carjacked. In his ensuing scramble for compensation, Billy must confront, in addition to the motley crew listed above, the physical and psychic scars of growing up in poverty-stricken Cape Flats. Smith (Mixed Blood, 2009) keeps the pacing brisk and the introspection brief in this gory tour, which surely won’t be on the recommended-reading list of the Cape Town tourism board. But his bullet points—which include racial tension, gang warfare, prison life, and witchcraft, with a nod to cannibalism—will make this thriller a prime destination for readers who like to detour from crime-fiction’s beaten path. --Keir Graff

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; First Edition edition (February 2, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805088768
• ISBN-13: 978-0805088762
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,418,143 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

"Roger Smith writes with the brutal beauty of an Elmore Leonard in a very bad mood." THE WASHINGTON POST

Smith's thrillers MIXED BLOOD, WAKE UP DEAD and DUST DEVILS have been published in six countries. His books have won the DEUTSCHER KRIMI PREIS (German Crime Fiction Award) and been nominated for SPINETINGLER MAGAZINE BEST NOVEL awards. MIXED BLOOD & WAKE UP DEAD are in development as feature films in the U.S.

Smith was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and now lives in Cape Town. Website: http://www.rogersmithbooks.com/

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This guy is VERY good..., April 24, 2010

By 

Dman4227 (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wake Up Dead: A Thriller (Hardcover)

This book flat out kicks a**! I think the most amazing aspect of Smith's writing style is how he allows you to see the characters in a certain manner for a few chapters and then he puts you into their heads and turns your impression of them completely upside down. The characters all have their own story to tell and Smith tells them all with a style that keeps you hungering for more of their narrative. Smith is one of those writers that switch narrators and when he leaves one perspective you feel angry because you are into that character's point of view, but then you start the next chapter and think "Oh...I couldn't wait to see what this character was up to". Smith is one of the newer hard-boiled noir authors along with Millar, Zeltserman, Flexer and Chaney that is giving the genre new life. Smith has already established himself as a force to be reckoned with in the noir field and his writing seems to have gotten even better in his second book.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Crime Thriller, February 13, 2010

By 

Dave Zeltserman (Needham, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wake Up Dead: A Thriller (Hardcover)

I don't know the etiquette about reviewing on amazon a book that you blurbed, but man, I love this book and its great compulsory vibe. With its large cast of characters that violently collide throughout the course of Wake Up Dead, this book reads a bit like very violent Elmore Leonard. Roxy Palmer is looking to escape a bad marriage and bad situation (as well as bad life decisions), soldier-for-hire Billy Afrika is looking for payment and redemption, a cold-blooded killer and gangbanger Piper is looking for his true love---and how these 3 lives are going to intersect in Cape Town, South Africa leads to one of the best crime thrillers to come around in years. Right now I don't think anyone is writing better crime thrillers than Roger Smith.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Dark Graphic Thriller, February 18, 2010

By 

Konrad Kern (OFallon, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wake Up Dead: A Thriller (Hardcover)

After a carjacking in Cape Town leaves Roxy Palmer's gunrunner husband dead, she must stay out of the sights of the carjacking gang members, Disco and Godwynn, two of the many dark and disturbing characters, an ex-cop turned mercenary, Billy Afrika; and Piper, a psychopath bent on renewing his vows with his jailhouse "wife," Disco.
Roger Smith definitely paints a dark image over Cape Town, especially the Cape Flats area. Dont' expect any heroes in this latest thriller. What you get is a dark and unsettling thriller that will make your stomach curl. The atmosphere the author creates is real and palpable. A crime thriller that will surround you with its bleakness. Don't expect a happy ending in the old fashion sense but more in an authentic sense.