26 Years Online
••• The International Writers Magazine - Book Review

Leo by Deon Meyer Publisher  - Hodder Paperbacks Publication date 14 Aug. 2025 Print length 464 pages ISBN: 13-978-1529375626 • Sam Hawksmoor review

This is Number 8 in the Benny Griessel and Vaughn Cupido detective series set in South Africa. Benny has mastered his alcoholism at last yet we find this pair of ace cops now demoted to Warrant Officers and languishing in Stellenbosch, the university town north of Cape Town. (You would have to read the previous books The Dark Flood and The Last Hunt to discover why). They are desperate to be readmitted to the Hawks, South Africa’s elite cops but they are very much on the outs and corruption is embedded deeply into all law-and-order aspects, as well as everything else in post-apartheid society. It all rots from the head, the former President and on down where everything that can be stolen has been stolen and cities are literally fall apart with sporadic electricity, contaminated drinking water and general despair of trusting any politician or cop anymore. 

This story begins with a female student found dead on a mountain trail with bite marks and the suspect, a local reclusive businessman who was walking his dogs nearby at the time, is later found murdered in a most grisly fashion.  Meanwhile, a small group of former Special Forces have organized an audacious heist that goes horribly wrong.

What is the connection to the dead student, the businessman and state capture – the legacy of the former president who has stained the life of the whole nation? Benny and Vaughn are on the case but have no idea of the whole picture yet and will struggle to connect the dots - all the while Benny is fretting about his upcoming wedding that is putting a very severe test on his ability to resist a drink or two to steady his nerves.

We flit between the detectives slowly putting the case together and the Special Forces plotting and scheming for their heist.

Deon Meyer writes with flair and great pace leaving intact the local slang (there is a glossary at the back). All his fiction is written in Afrikaans first and then translated. His understanding of the severe damage that the former president and his cronies have done to South Africa is comprehensive and the Griessel thrillers have been a kind of documentary of the great fall and fail of the ANC to save the nation; or do anything at all for the people of South Africa, or it’s infrastructure. His books are filled with technical detail and incredibly fine-tuned characters.  The tension is on every page and the heists are brilliantly planned. 

Yes, it would be helpful to know something about South Africa and how politicians were allowed to loot the country at will but don’t let that put you off. You’ll understand pretty quickly as Trump is doing the exact same thing in the USA right now.  Leo is a great read and a puzzle to me that Hodder haven’t been able to get the paperback on the shelves of Waterstones. This will be the best crime novel you will read all year. Order it now.

© Sam Hawksmoor - November 2025
Author of ‘The Days After She Went Dancing’ and ‘We Feel Your Pain – so you don’t have to’.

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