DS Special Agent Hunter McCallum
Mission South Africa
Schalk van der Merwe
Independently published
Review: Karen Watkins
The mutilated body of a US Peace Corps volunteer has been found in a garbage dump in Soweto. She has been brutally raped, disfigured and tortured. Special Agent Hunter McCallum is among those who find her body.
This is one of the stories experienced by McCallum, some imagined and others inspired by true accounts of special agents who shared their stories with the author. Van Der Merwe has also incorporated elements from his own experiences during his time at the US Embassy in Pretoria.
After working in “one of the worst shitholes imaginable”, Equatorial Guinea, McCallum is hoping for a cushy post in a first world country.
To his horror he is assigned a three-year assignment in South Africa where he finds himself dealing with various crises, from a diplomat being followed on her way home to high-stakes diplomatic disasters, and shadowy figures lurking in the embassy’s underbelly.
And while his phone doesn’t stop ringing with emergencies, also finds time to get into love situations with women he comes across. Note that they never seem to lead to anything more than a first date but that’s our hero, a testosterone junky who hates minibus taxis, townships and USAID but loves some of our local musicians and Zoltan, a dog he rescued from being bullied by three youths.
Van Der Merwe writes with an intensity that sometimes made me smile but the pages quickly turned. It’s definitely a poolside read that will appeal to men and women alike.