Shadow City, Natalie Conyer

The second novel in the Schalk Lourens series, SHADOW CITY uses his home of South Africa as one location for the story, introducing a new character, Sergeant Jackie Rose to lead the action in Sydney. The story begins with the discovery of the body of a battered and tortured young woman in a food court in Sydney's Chinatown. To Jackie Rose, initially it looks suspiciously like yet another drug murder, but there is an odd tattoo on the young girl and some complications when it comes to identifying her. 

What Rose doesn't know is around the same time, in Cape Town in South Africa, a young girl supposedly with a scholarship to study in Sydney has disappeared, her family very worried about where she could have gone having supposedly started at the college before vanishing. Lourens, meanwhile, has been suspended from duty with the South African police force, and unable to ignore the distress of the young girl's mother, takes on a background investigation, which can coincide with a visit to his daughter and her partner, who recently moved to Sydney to pursue work opportunities. It turns out that there are a lot of South African's who have recently moved to Sydney, and via a series of connections, Schalk finds himself with somewhere to stay, something to drive, and time on his hands when he arrives. Although, as a suspended cop, he didn't expect to find himself drawn into Rose's investigation team, and neither of them could have dreamed of just how depraved, powerful, and desperate to rid themselves of any opposition, the forces they find themselves up against could be.

Interweaving politics, policing, corruption and crime, Conyer has tackled some horrendous subject matter in SHADOW CITY, culminating in the discovery of a ring of modern day slavers. Readers may find the sparse, carefully described details of what is happening to young women and men who think they are coming to get an education, and a future, confronting to say the least. It's an awful story, that somehow comes across as even more uncomfortable when you compare it with the happy home / happy relationships / love affairs that go on around the two main characters. Schalk and Rose find themselves attracted to each other and his daughter is soon in a new relationship with the laid-back, Aussie bloke whose home includes the granny flat Schalk is staying in. Convenient, and a touch of soap opera maybe, but by the same token it wasn't totally unbelievable. His daughter's previous partner is a bit player at best in this story, but he is part of the ex-pat community and the gateway for Schalk to come across some people who are shoulder-deep in corruption. It turns out that many of the reasons for so many people to be participating in some pretty depraved behaviour are depressingly inter-generational, speaking of some serious, long-term, damage and patterns of repetition.

The investigation teams in Sydney and South Africa work in cooperation with each other and there are elements that kick off on both sides of the equation, to be clarified or finalised on the other. Both investigations, however, do settle around who and what Schalk in particular knows. He's the glue that brings both these teams together, and the impetus for much of the action, particularly in the later part of the book.

SHADOW CITY needless to say is exposing some complicated issues, but it's doing it in a novel that's both powerful and surprisingly engaging, given the subject matter. The dialogue is believable, and the mixing of Aussie slang and South African terminology gives it a lighter touch when required. Schalk's part tourist viewpoint of Sydney works and the comparisons between there and Cape Town give the reader a real sense of the foreigner in a foreign land, a nice combination of nothing dividing like a common language, and a love for home despite the challenges. The plot moves along at a reasonable clip, although some of the elements of the ending are a bit drawn out, but then there's enough twists and turns to keep you engaged. There's also a big twist at the end that, upon reflection, makes enormous sense, setting up some potential for surprises come book three.