Reviews and Articles

Book Reviews & Articles

by Heinrich Böhmke

Embellishing the Jozi Underworld:A cracker of a novel

A REVIEW OF DUP DEPARTS: A TIME TO GO, BY GAVIN MILLS

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Dup Departs coverDup Departs: A Time To Go sees a likeable, middle-aged, financially harried, soft but resourceful suburbanite thrown into a maelstrom of drug warfare, police-corruption and gory murder. With the bank barking at his heels about debts and depressed about the modesty of his achievements as a filmmaker, Dup is ready for a big score. It will be his family’s ticket out of South Africa. When his enigmatic stripper friend, Louanne, introduces him to a shady nightclub boss offering good money to make lame porn, Dup jumps at the chance. But he did not bargain on shady becoming sociopathic.  Dup is swept into a plot populated by seriously menacing hardmen; Ivan Bazkaowzki, a sadistic Polish Don, goons on Harleys, two loathsome detectives up to their elbows in dirty money and a Nigerian crime kingpin gone straight (or maybe not). Along the way fists fly, evidence is planted, women are kidnapped and huge shipments of cocaine moved across the country.

To survive, Dup must draw on psychological reserves never used before, keep his panicked family safe, dissemble and lie and make crazy alliances. It’s a suspenseful ride through an underworld neighbourhood with a hero totally unequal to the task. And yet … there may just be a way out, if only Dup can hold his nerve.