Following bloody clues to find the perp

I'VE read two detective stories and the first one appealed to me because it's about characters' aspirations and motivations rather than all sorts of technical details and procedures, as was the case with the second. Still, books on forensic pathology are extremely popular and fill the best-seller lists. That's why I read them, to report back.

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Attica Locke is an American writer and screenwriter whose books have won multiple awards. She has written Black Water Rising, The Cutting Season, Pleasantville, Bluebird, Bluebird, and Heaven, My Home. And now Guide Me Home. A beloved character in her books is African-American Texas Ranger Darren Matthews. In her latest book, he hands in his badge because there's a case pending against him. He is a righteous man, who in desperation has taken the law into his own hands.

Darren grew up with his two uncles. When his father died (in Vietnam, the uncles tell him) they simply fetched the newborn baby from his mother, who was very young and had a drinking problem. They never had a good word to say about her and he had little contact with her during his childhood. Her drinking had increased and she had a mean streak.

Now his mother, sober, shows up at his home. She wants him to investigate the disappearance of a black girl from the sorority house where she is a cleaner. Sera Fuller was a scholarship student who was barely able to fit into the blonde sisterhood. Nobody reported her disappearance and the sorority sisters claimed she had simply returned home. Her parents don't know where she is. Police and campus security deny that she is missing, but Darren's mother finds Sera's belongings, such as her cellphone and textbooks, in the trash cans behind the sorority house.

Dark secrets of the sisterhood

Darren initially does not trust his mother's version of events, but overcomes his disgust for her and becomes involved in the case, which is covered up by the university. He is no longer a Texas Ranger, flying solo. Endemic racism is exposed. In Sera's hometown, a boy who is in love with her shows Darren a bloodied T-shirt of hers that he found in the forest.

The dark secrets of the sisterhood come out, such as that their leader, an absolute bitch, enjoys offering unpopular girls to her misogynistic alpha-male American football hero boyfriend. Sera was drunk at a party she didn't want to go to. She was never seen again.

One reads to unravel the secret, what happened to Sera, but also for the complex characters and their relationships. Darren is in the early stages of a love affair, which is shipwrecked due to his obsession with the case, his increasing dependence on alcohol, and his unresolved aggression towards his mother. Eventually, he finds out quite a bit about his father and what really happened when he was a baby.

This is a writer who can create worlds and reflect a zeitgeist – Darren is discouraged and disillusioned after Trump's first term as president. Hatred is rampant again and people like him are marginalised. The state is teeming with corrupt politicians with hidden agendas.

It's a captivating portrait of a good man who is tested to the limit and a country in danger of losing its soul. I highly recommend it.

Guide Me Home by Attica Locke was published by Viper and costs $18.16 (~R328) at Amazon.

Identity Unknown is the 28th Kay Scarpetta novel. I've read one or two, although I'm no fan of forensic evidence and autopsies. I do not want to witness how a corpse is cut open and the organs taken out and weighed. I have the same problem with Kathy Reichs. But Patricia Cornwell's books, like Reichs's, are extremely popular.

Pathologist Kay Scarpetta stops at nothing. We assume she's good-looking, because in addition to her dreamboat husband, Benton, who is a member of the FBI, her partner, Marino (her sister Dorothy's, husband), also carries a torch for her and then there's an earlier love, Nobel laureate Sal Giordano, an Italian to whom she's remained attached over the years. Now he has been murdered and it is her job to cut open his body and hollow it out to investigate the cause of his death. His poor mutilated body is like a telegram: meant to send her a message.

Saws, drills and hacks cadavers

He died under mysterious circumstances. Giordano, who was also called The E.T. Whisperer, believed there was life on other planets and that they were trying to communicate with us. He appears to have been thrown from an unidentified craft, invisible to radar, and to have fallen to his death on the grounds of a little-used amusement park, Oz, which belongs to an unscrupulous villain. A circle of petals surrounded his body, and his skin was unnaturally red.

The FBI takes over the case and Scarpetta has to work under the utmost secrecy in spooky state morgues. In the background hovers her old nemesis, Carrie Grethen, who is collaborating with the Russians to sink America. She is a dangerous psychopath and an ex of Kay's niece, Lucy. Suddenly, Giordano is also under suspicion; the FBI suspects him of all sorts of things, as they do. Scarpetta also has to wonder how well she really knew him.

Kay Scarpetta saws, drills, hacks and stitches cadavers. After that, she tucks into greasy junk food (her diet makes me feel somewhat uneasy). There are many technical details about forensic science, aircraft, radar, weapons, extraterrestrial phenomena and pathology. If you have the stomach for it, I recommend it. I prefer less detail and more character development. Still, this is riveting, if it's your cup of tea.

Identity Unknown by Patricia Cornwell was published by Little, Brown Book Group and costs R392 at Graffiti.

What are we listening to?

Tracy Chapman sings “Crossroads":

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