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    Heart of the Hunter
    Heart of the Hunter
    Heart of the Hunter
    Audiobook11 hours

    Heart of the Hunter

    Written by Deon Meyer

    Narrated by Simon Vance

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Six-foot five-inch Thobela #8220;Tiny#8221; Mpayipheli was once a feared assassin and freedom fighter, trained by the Stasi and KGB. In post-apartheid South Africa, he#8217;s happily working in a garage. But Tiny#8217;s quiet domestic life is interrupted by a desperate plea from the daughter of a trusted old friend: he#8217;s being held hostage after taking an incriminating hard drive and needs help. Tiny#8217;s old training kicks in, and as he races across the South African landscape on a stolen BMW motorcycle to the rendezvous point, he is pursued by several interested and hostile forces, including South Africa#8217;s Presidential Intelligence Unit. None of them have a clue what they#8217;re up against.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateFeb 26, 2013
    ISBN9781622310050
    Author

    Deon Meyer

    Internasionaal bekende skrywer Deon Meyer woon op Stellenbosch. Sy publikasies sluit in dertien misdaadromans (onder meer Spoor, 2010, 7 Dae, 2011, Kobra, 2013, Ikarus, 2015, Koors, 2016, Prooi, 2018, en Donkerdrif, 2020). Orion, Proteus en Infanta is met die ATKV-prosaprys bekroon en Prooi met die ATKV-prys vir Spanningsfiksie.

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    Reviews for Heart of the Hunter

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Blurb....When Johnny K is kidnapped and held to ransom, his daughter turns to his old friend Tiny. She has 72 hours to deliver a disc with sensitive data on it to the kidnappers. But some people are watching Tiny’s every move – waiting for him to trip up and lead them to what they want.Phew........ 420-odd pages of pure adrenaline filled, roller-coasting rocket fuel. I managed to read this in less than a day over the weekend, when I might typically read on average about 100-odd pages a day over the course of a month.There must be something in the water in South Africa as Meyer and his fellow countrymen, Mike Nicol and Roger Smith have churned out some of the best crime fiction I’ve read in the past 6 months. Heart Of The Hunter is one of Meyer’s earlier books originally published back in 2003. Since then he has attracted a wider audience with 13 Hours, Trackers and his latest book 7 Days. Of his 3 most recent books, I have only read Trackers which if I’m totally honest didn’t blow me away like this and last month’s reading highlight- Blood Safari. 13 Hours is on mount TBR along with his earlier stuff.Meyer gives us Thobela Mpayipheli – former fighter in the struggle for equality in South Africa. Thobela has a checkered past; previously loaned out by the ANC resistance, as a favour to operate for the KGB as an assassin; but now post-apartheid surplus to requirements. Thobela after a few years as an enforcer in the drugs trade has gone straight. With an ordinary Joe job and his love for a women and her son he has a dream of a farm where they can bring up the boy away from the dangers and temptations of the crime-ridden city; a place where he can learn to grow crops and see life flourish from his efforts, instead of choking it off at the core. Tiny’s plans are on track, until a former friend is kidnapped and he’s sucked back into the vortex. To save his friend he has to deliver a disc to Lusaka within 3 days. Before too long he’s fallen foul of the intelligence services seeking to recover the disc and stop the data falling into enemy hands. Thebola fleeing on a stolen motor-bike becomes a fugitive in a massive man-hunt organised by the authorities and fueled by the media which has broken the story.Does the interests of the state, over-ride the basic rights of her citizens? Can you be loyal to the state but retain your principles and behave according to your conscience? Can people fundamentally change and out-grow their past and become more?Sometimes you start reading a book that starts out in a promising fashion, but along the way loses its edge and ultimately crawls to an unsatisfactory conclusion. Not this book, and from the evidence of the last month or two, not this author. Pedal to metal from first page to last5 from 5Borrowed from my local library.
    • 4/5
      Tiny Mpayipheli wants nothing more than to live out the rest of his life with his wife and stepson. He is a good man. His plan is to save enough to purchase some land and farm. But he has a past and when he gets a message from an old friend to bring him a hard drive, it seems like an easy task. Unfortunately the drive contains information that may or may not be bait in international game of spies. Soon everyone is after him and he is trying to stay loyal to his new life and his friend. That may not be possible.This is a terrific book. It's a real page turner but with heart and feeling for the people and country of South Africa. It's also an examination of good and evil. Some passges:But disillusionment followed, not suddenly or dramatically—the small realities slowly took over uninvited. The realization that people are an unreliable, dishonest, self-centered, self-absorbed, backstabbing, violent, sly species that lie, cheat, murder, rape, and steal, regardless of their status, nationality, or color. It was a gradual but often traumatic process for someone who wished only to see good and beauty.“That is my problem with the media, Miss Healy. You want to press people into packages, that is all there is time and space for. Labels. But you can’t label people. We are not all good or bad. There is a bit of both in all of us. No. There is a lot of both in all of us.”And he had said: “You know, whitey, it sounds like the new excuse to me. All the great troubles of the world have been done in the name of one or other excuse. Christianization, colonialism, herrenvolk, communism, apartheid, democracy, and now evolution. Or is it genetics? Excuses, just another reason to do as we wish. I am tired of it all. Finished with that. I am tired of my own excuses and the excuses of other people. I am taking responsibility for what I do now. Without excuse. I have choices; you have choices. About how we will live. That’s all. That’s all we can choose. Fuck excuses.
    • 3/5
      "Heart of the Hunter" is the third book that Meyer has written, a stand-alone novel. His ninth book, and 4th in the Benny Greisel series will be released in the USA Oct 2, 2014. I am a big fan of Meyer, and have enjoyed virtually all of his books tremendously. And if there is an exception to that rule, it is with this book. Meyer is an excellent story-teller and he grabs the reader's attention from page one. There is usually plenty of tension throughout his books but it really ramps up in the last quarter. Not so with HotH. It was an interesting story, perhaps a bit unnecessarily complex. Too much had to be explained, and the timeline was all over the place. The story begins with a pone call from a kidnap victim to his daughter. The ransom is a hard drive hidden in his safe at home. She contacts a former colleague of her father and he agrees to deliver it, leaving his common law wife and her young son but promising to return in two days. However a South African intelligence agency has the phone tapped, and suspicious of what might be on the drive, they deploy forces to stop the delivery. Most of the story deals with the journey, and a number o flashbacks to fill in an incredible amount of history and other unknown detail. Don't read this as your first Meyer, instead read any of the last 4 or 5 books. I started with "Blood Safari", loved it, and I am eagerly awaiting "Cobra".
    • 4/5
      Can a man ever really change who he is, or be allowed to? This is a really enjoyable suspense thriller involving a dash against the clock across SA by one man in order to save another, and he chased and hunted by government forces with the media close behind. But what if the hunted has himself been a hunter? Its got pace, suspense, plenty of action and well developed characters. Plus interesting insights into the SA security forces, race relations, and the region's geography. I can highly recommend this book.
    • 1/5
      didn't li8ke. on page 27 an Alsation dog is kicked in the head and the ribs. can't read anything in which animals are abused.
    • 4/5
      Usually I am not that much into the suspense genre, but I sincerely enjoyed this novel by Deon Meyer. It contains the ingredients of an espionage story: a disk containing state secrets, police, secret services, a spy - or perhaps several spies - whose identity for a long time remains unclear and a former assassin who unexpectedly turns into the sympathetic protagonist of the story. Of course a journalist gets involved, and there are some romantic storylines.Even though this may sound a little predictable, I thought the book was not. Perhaps because it is set in post Apartheid South Africa, and set against the background of the violent history of this country. Perhaps because the male/female and black/white oppositions have been worked out in original ways. Or because the characters have depth. Or because the descriptions of the South African landscapes are lovely. It's a thrilling read (didn't want to stop reading) that is not superficial but gives you some food for thought on South Africa and on good and evil.