Orion | Crime & Thriller

Deon Meyer

An antiques dealer is burned with a blow torch, then killed, execution-style - a single shot to the back of the head with an M16. The contents of the safe are missing and the only clues are a scrap of blank paper and the unusual weapon used, the choice of mercenaries, not burglars. Now ex-cop Zatopek 'Zed' van Heerden has fourteen days in which to fill in the blanks in this dead man's past - a past which only seems to begin in 1983...Set against the backdrop of a society on the verge of breakdown, Orion spins the reader from the lush suburbs of Capetown, to a gripping climax in the searing heat of the Veldt.

Published in English as Dead at daybreak, Deon Meyer, author of Dead before dying and Heart of the hunter, became the first South African ever to be awared Le Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, the premier French literary prize for crime literature. (The French edition of Orion received the award for 2003.)