Snoeiskêr | Crime & Thriller

Piet Steyn

The thumbs had been cut off with some sort of scissors or pliers, and judging from the marks on the finger bones the same instrument was used in each case. Possibly a pair of ordinary pruning shears, but very sharp. One of the bodies is discovered next to a Johannesburg mine dump, two more in the veld near the Mozambican border, and another in a blood-spattered room in a third-class hotel in Hillbrow, all with the severed thumbs placed on the chest.

The Crime reporter Patricia de Beer begins to connect the different cases. Is a serial killer at work here? She speaks to her friends in the Violent Crimes Unit and when Supt. Pine Pienaar and his team discover that many years ago a farm murder took place on a farm near Vrede in which a woman’s thumbs were cut off and left on her chest, they start to admit that Patricia might be right.

On a deserted dirt road in Mpumalanga a dark man with light brown, almost yellow eyes, brings his double-cab bakkie to a halt in a cloud of dust. He reads Patricia’s article about a murderer who satisfies his insatiable bloodlust with a pruning shears. He looks at her photo accompanying the article, listens to the ticking of his bakkie’s warm engine for a while. He turns the ignition and the bakkie growls. It will be easy to find her address. All roads lead to hell, and sometimes one has to hitch a ride to get there.

Piet Steyn’s suspense debut is a blow to the pit of one’s stomach. Crude, violent, knee-deep in the country’s most sombre realities. It is also written with an in-depth knowledge of the characters who live and die under these circumstances, and with a masterful control of tension and the unexpected.

The Pine Pienaar Series
Tou (2010)	Bottelnek (2009)