Cirrus@Austlit

'The day Abram and his mother arrived at Auschwitz death camp they both knew it would be her last. In their final moment together, Abram's mum urged her nineteen-year-old son to 'do everything humanly possible to survive, and tell people what happened here'. Then she was taken to a gas chamber and murdered. Abram had already endured and survived so much until that moment, but with his strength of hope, sometimes reduced to a flicker, he survived.

'After liberation, Abram eventually found his way to Belgium, where he met the love of his life, fellow Auschwitz survivor Cesia. The young couple came to Australia, where that flicker of hope grew as bright as the sun, illuminating everything they touched and everyone who came into their sphere. Without bitterness and always with perspective, Abram has never forgotten his mother's last words to him. And in their seventy-five years of marriage, Abram and Cesia have remained dedicated to educating people about the Holocaust and to living their lives to the fullest in tribute to its victims.'  (Publication summary)

'What if justice isn't enough?

'Schalk Lourens got out his phone and started filming, something Pieterse taught him years ago. Keep a record. Do it yourself, boykie, every time. That way you can be sure. Cover your arse. Don't trust any of them.

'Schalk began with Pieterse himself, what was left of him.

'Cape Town, South Africa.

'Retired police chief Piet Pieterse has been murdered, necklaced in fact. A tyre placed round his neck, doused with petrol, set alight. An execution from the apartheid era and one generally confined to collaborators. Who would target Pieterse this way, and why now?

'Veteran copy Schalk Lourens is trying to forget the past. But Pieterse was his old boss and when Schalk is put on the case, he finds the past has a way of infecting the present.

'Meanwhile, it's an election year. People are pinning their hopes on charismatic ANC candidate Gideon Radebe but there's opposition and in this volatile country, unrest is never far from the surface.

'Schalk must tread a difficult path between the new regime and the old, between the personal and the professional, between justice and revenge.

'This investigation will change his life, and could alter his county's future.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.