Pan Macmillan

This is the first of nine synopses of books eligible for the Citizen Book Prize.

The winner will be determined by readers’ votes. To help get your favourite published, vote and make your mark (see the voting box below the synopsis).

Voting for each synopsis will be open for the week following its publication in CitiVibe and on the Pan Macmillan blog. If you miss that, you will be able to re-read and vote for all ten synopses online from 12 – 18 November.

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The Citizen Book Prize Synopsis One

Turning Point

by Amanda Coetzee

IS it still murder when they deserve to die?

Nicolaas van Zyl is a Polish orphan who is adopted by an Afrikaner family when he is six days old. Growing up in the North West Province, he is groomed to take over the family farm when his mother unexpectedly falls pregnant with a boy child; destined to be the legitimate heir to the farm.

Determined to behave honourably, Nicolaas (known to everyone as Nicolai due to his Polish roots) chooses a career in law enforcement; leaving his step brother to inherit the farm.

Later, as an ex-Scorpion, Nicolai is reassigned to the Violent Crime and Robbery Squad; he is close to burnout. He drinks too much because he cares too much.

Along with his police partner, a taciturn African man named Lebogang, he is assigned to a complicated murder case in an up-market Johannesburg hotel.

A young English woman, Kate Gardener, is accused of shooting her ex-lover, Englishman Mark Chapman, in self-defence. It is discovered that Mark was in South Africa on business as a member of a far-right British political party (BNP) dedicated to offering financial and security support to beleaguered white farmers vulnerable to farm invasions.

An already volatile situation threatens to spiral out of control when it becomes clear that Kate is wanted as a witness in England after witnessing Mark and other BNP members commit a racially motivated murder of a local Muslim man.

Evidence of her own abuse at Mark’s hands is irrefutable and the South African police finally accept that she feared for her life when she shot him.

Kate is deported to England, however, on a minor charge of owning an unlicensed firearm.

The investigation has uncovered a series of similar cases connected to Kate’s lawyer, Lize du Preez, all of which involved abused women fighting back and fatally attacking their abusers. Lize falls foul of suspicion for involvement in these cases.

Tasked to prove a link between the irregular deaths and the lawyer, Nicolai is sent to the UK to persuade Kate to testify and to help build the SAPS’s case against Lize.

With Kate’s unwilling assistance, the shocking discovery is made that Lize du Preez is in fact the “spider” – the real life equivalent of a shadowy rural folklore figure that exacts revenge on behalf of victims that the justice system has not protected, by killing their wrongdoers. The women involved in the cases would plead guilty, arguing that they killed in self-defence.

The spider is forced to choose sides; surrender and face multiple murder charges, or do the unthinkable – kill Kate in order to continue protecting both the weak and herself.

She chooses to live; so begins a hunt between the two women with one man wondering how far he will go to protect the state witness with whom he has fallen irrevocably in love.

Nicolai steps into the unknown as his professional and private life collide with unimaginable results.

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The Citizen Book Prize: Turning Point by Amanda Coetzee(answers)

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