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Deon Meyer has been something of a surprise to me. His 13 Hours was undisputedly the most exciting book I've read in years. The added flavour of South African culture, though unknown to me, made it and his other books I've read since then really something new. Most important of course is that Meyer is an excellent writer, who knows how to build up suspense.
So that brings us to Trackers, which is set up differently than the Benny Griessel stories (he is only casually mentioned in this one).
Trackers consists of three separate stories, that all have to do with tracking down people, hence the title.
The stories are so different, that it will be down to your personal taste which one(s) you enjoy most. The first one deals with a terrorist threat and the way the SA secret service deals with that. The second one concerns smuggling, in more ways than one. And finally we get a glimpse of the new life of Mat Joubert (Benny Griessels former boss), in which he has become a private detective and goes out to look for a missing person.
Ultimately the stories come together, which shouldn't be too much of a surprise. Meyer does this cleverly, leaving a few loose ends to the very end.
Though this gives you a satisfying and exciting read, I couldn't help feeling that he wanted to put too much into one story. The amount of characters is staggering. The stories are written well enough to be able to follow them quite easily, but I did have to page back quite a few times to keep track of who did or said what. And though the whole story ties up nicely, one or two less plot points wouldn't have harmed it, in my opinion.
This probably is a luxury problem, because Trackers is still very much better than some of the fare I've read over the last few months. But when you expect such a high standard, it's easier to find fault.
There's one other thing about the writing, that I'm adding more out of curiosity than anything else. In a certain part of the story, two male characters are engaged in a lot a dialogue. The younger one refers to the other man as "oom", a respectful way to address someone, as is explained in the glossary. What surprised and after a while irritated me slightly, was that this expression is used in every single sentence. Compared to, say, American English, the equivalent would be that someone is addressed with "sir" every time he is spoken to. Probably this is normal in Afrikaans, but doesn't really work in English. Perhaps a point of attention for the translator?