Veteran cop Schalk Lourens wants a quiet life. Like the rest of the country, he?s trying to put the past behind him. But the past has a way of hanging on, and when Schalk?s old boss, retired police captain Piet Pieterse is murdered, Schalk must confront old demons. Pieterse has been necklaced. A tyre was placed over his head, doused in petrol, and set alight. Necklacing is a throwback to apartheid, an execution generally reserved for collaborators. Who would target Pieterse this way, and why now, 25 years after apartheid ended? Meanwhile, it?s an election year and people are pinning their hopes on charismatic ANC candidate Gideon Radebe. But there?s opposition, and this volatile country?s on a knife edge. A wrong move could generate a catastrophe. Schalk is drawn in to a world he no longer knows, where shadowy forces call the shots. He must tread a path between the new regime and the old, the personal and the professional, justice and revenge. The investigation will change his life, and could alter his country?s future.

Winner 2020 Ned Kelly Award for Best Debut Crime Novel.