Steven Sidley’s latest novel takes a detour into murder mystery

One of South Africa’s most celebrated literary fiction writers has taken a detour into death, mystery and crime.

Steven Boykey Sidley, award-winning and internationally published author, has written a startling new work which will hit the shelves this month.

Leaving Word is a literary mystery in which the mysterious death of Buddy Rappaport, the CEO of a major publishing company, sets off a probing, occasionally comic, occasionally tragic and intellectually wide-ranging search for plot, meaning, reason and motive.

Heroine and protagonist Joelle Jesson, the 40-year-old senior editor of the publishing house, although having been fired by the CEO only hours before his death, is determined to find out what happened.

She is smart, confused, sexy, sassy, lonely, ambitious and determined – an explosive and memorable character on the page.

Steven Boykey Sidley. Picture: Supplied

Was Buddy murdered? Or did he commit suicide? And who was involved?

Is it the detective and aspirant author who has just sent Jesson a manuscript with a plot that is eerily similar to the circumstances of Buddy’s death?

The dark and inscrutable brother of the CEO painting nudes in his nondescript apartment? Or the sad and deluded loner failing to sell his scribblings?

Or maybe Buddy just died. Maybe life doesn’t always have a plot.

Sidley has been compared by reviewers here and abroad to Ian McEwan, Philip Roth, Martin Amis, Richard Power and Joseph Heller. He is widely admired for his writing, dialogue, humour and plots.

Leaving Word will please his loyal fans and find a new audience among lovers of crime and mystery.

Sidley has divided his adult life between the US and South Africa. He has meandered through careers as an animator, chief technology officer for a Fortune 500 company, jazz musician, software developer, video game designer, private equity investor and technology entrepreneur.

He currently lives in Johannesburg with his wife and two children.

Entanglement, his first novel, was sparked by a whisky-fuelled dinner party debate and Stepping Out is his second novel. His third, Imperfect Solo, was released in 2014.

Entanglement won the 2013 UJ Debut Prize and was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize. Stepping Out was shortlisted for the UJ Main Prize in 2014. Imperfect Solo was longlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize in 2014 and selected for Le Grand Livre du Mois upon its publication in France in 2015.

Sidley recently formed a literary publishing alliance with award-winning publisher, Melinda Ferguson.

Leaving Word will be released under Ferguson’s imprint, MFBooks Joburg. The book has also been picked up by the prestigious literary agency, Liza Dawson Associates, in New York, and is currently on submission in the United States.

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