Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time
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Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

Lady’s Man? Check. Doctor? Check. Master Tracker? Well, OK!

Present Darkness by Maslla Nunn

January 8, 2026 by elderberrywine Leave a Comment

This is the last of series I’ve been reading starring Detective Sergeant Cooper, Detective Constable Shabalala, and Doctor Zweigman in 1950s apartheid South Africa, or, as I have come to think of them, as Kirk, Spock and Bones (assuming Spock were a family man).  It is that family that is in the thick of this book.  Shabalala’s teen aged son has been accused of the murder of a white couple by their teenaged daughter.  That seems to be hard to believe, but she is sticking […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: 1950s South Africa, Complicated family issues, Cooper/Shambalala series, Maslla Nunn, Oh yeah there are murders, Police correption, Racial issues, Teens are gonna do what they do

elderberrywine's CBR18 Review No:3 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: 1950s South Africa, Complicated family issues, Cooper/Shambalala series, Maslla Nunn, Oh yeah there are murders, Police correption, Racial issues, Teens are gonna do what they do ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

A Whole New World – At Least to Me

A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn

September 24, 2025 by elderberrywine Leave a Comment

cbr17bingo TBR This was fascinating, a murder mystery set in a time and place that was unfamiliar to me.  In the early 1950s, South Africa had just entered into its apartheid era.  What had been previously informal, now became rigidly structured by law.  The population was strictly divided between the whites (original Dutch settlers and the mostly English settlers that followed – two distinct groups), the native Africans, and the colored population (for the most part settlers from India and anyone who was of a […]

Filed Under: Fiction, History, Mystery Tagged With: 1950s South Africa, Are we just going by looks?, beginnings of strict apartheid, British detective who also has a secret or two, cbr17 bingo, Death of local Afrikaner patriach with many secrest, Gorgeous country, Malla Nunn, Who is anyone anyhow?

elderberrywine's CBR17 Review No:51 · Genres: Fiction, History, Mystery · Tags: 1950s South Africa, Are we just going by looks?, beginnings of strict apartheid, British detective who also has a secret or two, cbr17 bingo, Death of local Afrikaner patriach with many secrest, Gorgeous country, Malla Nunn, Who is anyone anyhow? ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments


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