At last! A decent page turner set in Cape Town by a writer whose intent is to tell a story, rather than convince the readers of the ineffable superiority of the Mother City.

ANC stalwart, journalist and writer Tracy Gilpin has created in Dunai [pronounced Doonie] Marks a truly cosmopolitan heroine: a vegetarian, a greenie, an activist and a single mum, she works for an NGO called STOP – Strategies for Targeting Over-Population.

She arrives at the office to find the corpse of her boss Siobhan Craig, a woman whom Dunai regarded as both mentor and inspiration: police dismiss it as a robbery gone wrong, but Dunai is convinced it is no random killing and goes to PI Carl Lambrecht, a former special branch policeman, for help.

Although by no means a roman a clef, Gilpin has borrowed from recent events to lend her story credence, especially the arrest of US fugitive and former Symbionese Liberation Army leader James Kilgore, discovered in 2002 living a quietly productive life in Cape Town.

Dunai is a sympathetic character whose world extends from Greenmarket Square to the Bokaap: Gilpin has resisted the temptation to take the reader on detours to golden beaches, magnificent mansions or verdant wine farms, and concentrates instead on the story.

Intrigue, murder and conspiracy, an excellent sense of place and an all-too believable plot based on human greed and fallibility, plus an unusually competent command of basic English, make this book a keeper. ( )