Black Heart

By Mike Nicol

CAPE TOWN: winter. A wealthy Native American couple, looking to invest in a local casino development. A German weapons scientist, on the run from a gang of Eastern European thugs. Ordinary enough security jobs for Mace Bishop and Pylon Buso, it seems, but when one of the Americans is kidnapped and a local reporter starts showing too much interest in the scientist's murky Balkan past, things quickly spiral out of control.
Mace, raw from the murder of his wife, soon finds himself fighting for his own survival while struggling to hold onto his grief-stricken teenage daughter. Behind the scenes, everywhere and nowhere, the beautiful and sinister Sheemina February pulls the strings, stalking him at every turn, intent on revenge for past misdeeds. Mace's only hope is to find her before she gets to him . . .
A razor-sharp thriller, a devastating portrait of political corruption and featuring an exquisitely nasty villain, Black Heart is a stylish, unmissable entertainment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Old Street Publishing
• Release date: May 25, 2011
• ISBN: 9781906964818

Reviews for Black Heart

[adpaton · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Black Heart is the final book in a trilogy so perhaps not the best place to start - however, I found it a grand read and plan to go back and read Payback and Killer Country. Mike Nicol is wonderful - exciting, pacey and with a sure ear for the local dialect and a great sense of place. No wonder ex-pats all over the world get all misty-eyed when they revisit Cape Townm through his prose. Former stugglistas and gun-runners to the ANC Mace Bishop and Pylon Busi have a rather below par security company and are in deep trouble when the wife of one of their few clients is kidnapped: her abductors are working for the cie-blue-eyed Sheemina February, the villain in previous books.Back in the day, Sheemina was it seems a Government spy sent into the ANC camps: Mace and Pylon distrust her and in a failed attempt to get her to admit her treachery, smash her hand with a sledgehammer. Understandably miffed, the beautiful Sheemina is now a kingpin in the underworld with powerful contacts all over the contry, including the government. And she's out to get the pair, especially Mace for whom she harbours some kind of sick psycho-sexual obsession. In the previous book, Killer Country, she had Mace's beautiful Malinese wife, an award-winning potter, murdered, and now Mace is left to raise his troubled teen-age daughter Chris who is self-mutilating and making unvoiced emotional demands he is unwilling or unable to meet. Added to this Pylon's wife Treasure [a bit of a harridan] is having their first child and wanting him to spend more time with her and the new baby just when Mace needs him most. No wonder thriller writers from Michael Connolly to John Connelly are singing Nicol's praises: the man is a national treasure.