Short description
On a blowtorch-hot night in Cape Town, 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 choice that changes her life forever.
Long description
A split-second decision with no second chance. Get it wrong and you wake up dead. On a blowtorch-hot night in Cape Town, 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 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 hunting them all is Piper, a love-crazed psychopath determined to renew his vows with his jailhouse 'wise', 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.
Review
* '[A] stellar thriller... 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.' Publishers Weekly (starred review) * 'Wake Up Dead is proof that Noir is alive and flourishing. Dark and brutal, the novel has a focused poetic style that stays with you long after you finish reading' Ken Bruen * 'Violent, uncompromising, unflinching, Wake Up Dead grabs you by the throat and will haunt you long after you've finished its last blood-soaked pages.' Dave Zeltserman