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Describe your latest work. Blueprints of the Afterlife is a novel about the following things: giant heads that appear in the sky, a mystical... Continue »
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    Blueprints of the Afterlife

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Wake Up Dead: A Thriller

by Roger Smith

Wake Up Dead: A Thriller Cover

ISBN13: 9780805088762
ISBN10: 0805088768
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

An amphetamine-fueled thriller about a bombshell American widow on the run in Cape Towns violent badlands—from a writer being compared to George Pelecanos and Richard Price

A split-second decision with no second chance: get it wrong and you wake up dead.

On a blowtorch-hot night in Cape Town, American 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 fateful choice that changes her life forever.

Disco and Godwynn, the ghetto gangbangers who sped away in Joes convertible, will stop at nothing to track her down. Billy Afrika, a mixed-race ex-cop turned mercenary, wont let her out of his sight because Joe owed him a chunk of money. And remorselessly hunting them all is Piper, a love-crazed psychopath determined to renew his vows with his jailhouse “wife,” 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. With savage plotting and breakneck suspense that ends in a shattering cataclysm of violence, Wake Up Dead confirms Roger Smith as one of the worlds best new thriller writers.

Review:

"At the start of this stellar thriller from South African author Smith (Mixed Blood), Cape Town meth heads Godwynn MacIntosh and Disco De Lilly hijack wheeler-dealer Joe Palmer's Mercedes. When the two black men shoot Joe in the leg, the reaction of Joe's gold-digging American wife, a former model, is to say the least, unexpected. While honest cop Ernie Maggott tracks the carjackers, and sociopathic killer Piper pursues Disco, once his jailhouse 'wife,' half-white Billy Afrika, a former police detective and now a mercenary to whom Joe owed a ton of cash, is bent on revenge for Piper's savage two decades-old murder of Billy's mentor. 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) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Synopsis:

On a blowtorch-hot night in Cape Town, American ex-model Roxy Palmer and her gunrunner husband, Joe, are carjacked, leaving Joe in a pool of blood. As the carjackers make their getaway, Roxy makes a fateful choice that changes her life forever. Soon she is caught in a wave of escalating violence in the beautiful and brutal African seaport. With savage plotting and breakneck suspense that end in a shattering climax, Wake Up Dead confirms Roger Smith as one of the world's best new thriller writers.
 
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About the Author

Roger Smith, an accomplished screenwriter, director, and producer, was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and now lives in Cape Town. He is the author of the thriller Mixed Blood, and is writing a third novel.

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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Mack Lundy, February 2, 2010 (view all comments by Mack Lundy)
I owe my interest in South African crime writers to Roger Smith. I was hooked with his first book, Mixed Blood, and I enjoyed Wake Up Dead even more. Smith's novel is set in Cape Town South Africa, mostly the Cape Flats area. It reminds us that apartheid ended less that 20 years ago and the effects of creating a dumping ground for non-whites are not going away any time soon. This is a tightly plotted, fast paced, and very violent crime thriller. Many thrillers are of the read and forget variety but Smith's books combine three criteria that make a book last for me: story, characters, and location. Wake Up Dead shows that the author has taken the lessons learned from writing his first book and produced a work that nails my three criteria. He doesn't sacrifice character for story instead he populates the book with well developed, interesting people that include common variety street thugs and ex-cons, a scary psychopath in love, a former model from the U.S named Roxy, and an ex-cop/ex-mercenary product of the Flats with the great name of Billy Afrika. Billy is back in town to get what is owed (legitimately) to him and Roxy is the means to that end. He is a little better than the forces he is up against but he has a depth that makes him intriguing. Smith keeps several plot threads working and the body count mounting as he brings everyone together for a satisfying ending. The location of the story is very important. The vivid descriptions of the Cape Flats area of Cape Town brought me forcefully into the story. The Flats were apartheid's dumping grounds, where the government forced non-whites to live. It is also home to gangs and drug trade. Think of the Baltimore of the HBO show, The Wire, only much more dangerous. Wake Up Dead does have scenes of brutal physical violence but the violence is a reflection of the environment and not there for its own sake. If you want to give yourself a taste of the local color you will find in the book, do an Internet search for "okapi 907e". This is a knife that plays an important part in the story and having a mental image will be a boost to the reading experience.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780805088762
Subtitle:
A Cape Town Thriller
Author:
Smith, Roger
Publisher:
Picador
Subject:
Suspense fiction
Subject:
Cape Town (South Africa)
Subject:
General
Subject:
Thrillers
Subject:
Criminals
Subject:
Mystery & Detective - Hard-Boiled
Subject:
Popular Fiction-Contemporary Thrillers
Edition Description:
Trade Cloth
Publication Date:
20110104
Binding:
Electronic book text in proprietary or open standard format
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
304
Dimensions:
9.54 x 6.59 x 1.065 in
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Related Aisles

Wake Up Dead: A Thriller New Hardcover
0 stars - 0 reviews
$27.57 In Stock
Product details 304 pages Henry Holt & Company - English 9780805088762 Reviews:
"Publishers Weekly Review" by , "At the start of this stellar thriller from South African author Smith (Mixed Blood), Cape Town meth heads Godwynn MacIntosh and Disco De Lilly hijack wheeler-dealer Joe Palmer's Mercedes. When the two black men shoot Joe in the leg, the reaction of Joe's gold-digging American wife, a former model, is to say the least, unexpected. While honest cop Ernie Maggott tracks the carjackers, and sociopathic killer Piper pursues Disco, once his jailhouse 'wife,' half-white Billy Afrika, a former police detective and now a mercenary to whom Joe owed a ton of cash, is bent on revenge for Piper's savage two decades-old murder of Billy's mentor. 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) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
"Synopsis" by ,
On a blowtorch-hot night in Cape Town, American ex-model Roxy Palmer and her gunrunner husband, Joe, are carjacked, leaving Joe in a pool of blood. As the carjackers make their getaway, Roxy makes a fateful choice that changes her life forever. Soon she is caught in a wave of escalating violence in the beautiful and brutal African seaport. With savage plotting and breakneck suspense that end in a shattering climax, Wake Up Dead confirms Roger Smith as one of the world's best new thriller writers.
 
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