The Kramer and Zondi Mysteries Series

Gold Dagger Award–winning series: Two puzzling murders in apartheid-era South Africa may be linked—and have roots in the Second World War . . .   For six days, Tromp Kramer of the Murder Squad and his Bantu assistant, Mickey Zondi, have been searching for the man who put a .32-caliber bullet into a South African antique dealer, and they still don’t have a single lead. Then on the seventh day, Mrs. Digby-Smith opens the trunk of her car and discovers the hideous, tied-up corpse of her younger brother.   The two violent crimes are seemingly unconnected. But as Kramer and Zondi pursue their investigation, startling connections turn up in the sordid underworld of Terkkersburg—and in the secret, unresolved enmities of World War II . . .  

A South African’s murder reveals surprising secrets in “one of the finest police series to begin in the 1970s” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine).   Hugo Swart, faithful churchgoer and respected citizen, is found stabbed to death on the floor of his kitchen just before Christmas, on the hottest night of the year. If Mr. Swart’s reverend is to be believed, no one in the world could have a reason to kill him; the murder was most likely a robbery gone ugly, and the chief suspect is Swart’s black servant, Shabalala, who has fled to the countryside.   But Lieutenant Kramer suspects that not everything is as it appears. While Zondi pursues Shabalala in what turns out to be a treacherous tour of miserable outlying Bantu villages, Kramer tries to wring the truth out of some of Swart’s acquaintances in Trekkersburg and Cape Town. It seems not everyone liked the victim quite as much as the reverend did . . .  

The author of The Steam Pig delivers a “powerful picture of South African society . . . The pace is fast, the solution ingenious” (The New York Times Book Review).   When a twelve-year-old boy named Boetie is found strangled to death with multiple stab wounds, his killer is assumed to be a pedophile. Lt. Tromp Kramer and his sidekick, Bantu Det. Sergeant Mickey Zondi, begin to investigate and soon learn that the boy had been involved in a detective club that encouraged children to spy and snitch on people—and no one likes a snitch. Whom was Boetie spying on? As the two men look into possible leads on the case, they must also navigate increasing tensions surrounding racism in the seventies in South Africa, and Kramer finds himself on the receiving end of much of the hatred himself.   “McClure’s first novel, The Steam Pig, was one of the most memorable books in the genre last year . . . The Caterpillar Cop may prove to be even better.” —Newsday   “The Caterpillar Cop . . . unusually enough—is just as good, if not better, than its predecessor.” —St. Louis Post Dispatch   “The integrated South African police team of Lt. Tromp Kramer and Sgt. Zondi did a good job in McClure’s The Steam Pig. They’re even better this time . . . The gathering of clues is described with McClure’s special blend of humor, cheerfully sexy scenes and startling realism. Good to see a second novel come out so well.” —San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle

“Afrikaner Tromp Kramer and Bantu Sergeant Zondi [are] two detectives who are as far from stereotypes as any in the genre” (P. D. James, bestselling author of Death Comes to Pemberly).   The year is 1962. Young Lt. Tromp Kramer of the Trekkersburg Murder and Robbery Squad has been ordered up to Jafini, a small, dusty town in northern Zululand, to investigate the “hero’s death” of the town’s chief detective, Maaties Kritzinger—another Afrikaner maverick, and one with many secrets. Kramer finds himself increasingly identifying with the victim as the investigation proceeds.   And then his path crosses that of Bantu Det. Sgt. Mickey Zondi, who is trying to locate a killer whose summary execution will quiet the spirits of his ancestors. Despite racial differences, the two men sense a kinship—one that might prove dangerous in rural South Africa in the year of Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment.   This riveting entry in the Gold Dagger Award–winning series reveals how the team of Kramer and Zondi first met, set against a fascinating historical backdrop.  

Two detectives hunt for a woman’s killer in apartheid-era South Africa: “The pace is fast, the solution ingenious” (The New York Times Book Review).   Named one of the 100 Best Crime Novels of the 20th Century by The Times (London)   Naomi Stride was a wealthy woman, and her death has left several people richer—none more so than her twenty-six-year-old son, Theo, with whom she long had bitter differences over money. She was also a controversial woman, a writer whose novels had been banned in South Africa. But was it for money, politics, or some other unknown reason that she was killed? And why was her naked corpse strewn with flowers and herbs?   These are the questions South African Lt. Tromp Kramer and his Zulu partner, Mickey Zondi, must answer. But the task becomes much more difficult when Kramer is unexpectedly taken off the case. Ordered by his superiors to discreetly “wrap up” a fatal accident that could be embarrassing for the South African police, he is plunged into a second investigation—and he and Zondi find themselves moving inexorably toward a haunting and horrifying climax.   Gold Dagger Award winner James McClure is “a distinguished crime novelist who has created in his Afrikaner Tromp Kramer and Bantu Sergeant Zondi two detectives who are as far from stereotypes as any in the genre” (P. D. James, bestselling author of Death Comes to Pemberly).    

A detective team in apartheid South Africa suspect a vigilante is on the loose, in this novel from the Gold Dagger Award–winning historical mystery series.   Tollie Erasmus, an unsavory bank robber on the run, is hung from the neck until dead. Unfortunately, execution was administered without the benefit of South African judge or jury.   Somewhere there’s a killer who knows far too much about the hangman’s craft, and Lt. Tromp Kramer and his Bantu assistant, Mickey Zondi, must find him before his trail of death continues . . .