Pale Horses

A “gripping” crime thriller set in modern-day South Africa, by the New York Times–bestselling coauthor of Private: Gold (Publishers Weekly).

At first, the case appears to be one of simple misadventure. Sonet van Rensburg, a base jumper, falls to her death while attempting to parachute off a newly built sixty-five-story Johannesburg skyscraper. But Sonet’s jumping partner insists that this was no accident—and he hires private investigator Jade de Jong to uncover the truth.

Welcoming the distraction from her conflicted and seemingly doomed relationship with police superintendent David Patel, Jade immerses herself in the case. She discovers that Sonet worked for a charity that helped impoverished communities become self-supporting farming units. Sonet’s ex-husband, though, has nothing good to say about his wife or the work she has done. He tells Jade that Sonet’s efforts were a useless waste of money and that the farming projects were not sustainable. When Jade travels out to the Siyabonga community’s farm in Limpopo, hoping to prove him wrong, she finds it not just abandoned, but razed to the ground. Digging deeper for answers about where the residents went and why they left their fertile valley, Jade begins to uncover a complex and twisted truth . . .