The story of Captain Benny Griessel continues into author Deon Meyer’s sixth fictional instalment The Last Hunt of the series based on the life and experiences of the Hawks elite police unit captain.
Meyer sat down for a heart-to-heart with local fiction writer Ekow Duker on Griessel’s journey and the road to the last hunt on 14 November at Exclusive Books in Hyde Park.
The book follows a race against time as Griessel and his patient partner Vaughn Cupido must stop an assassination by international hit-man Daniel Darret while investigating the cold case of an ex-policeman Johnson Johnson.
Both strands of time effortlessly transitioned from South Africa to Bordeaux which took a lot of research, Meyer said.
“My wife and I have been travelling to Bordeaux for the past 10 years and instantly fell in love with the city. It is wonderful because when you first start doing research for a book, all these little stories start to come at you.”
Meyer added that there were a number of trialling times during the research process. “I know Paris really well but for me, the more difficult part was that I have never looked at Paris as ‘where can we kill a president’,” he laughed.
He added that on a separate occasion, he had to go to the embassy to ask a few questions without disclosing his true motives. “It was a unique new perspective because I had to find out where South African presidents stayed on state visits and visit each hotel.”
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But where did it all really come from? Meyer admitted that his emotions were of major influence to his writing ability which is why this book, in particular, fell on the backdrop of state capture. “I devised and wrote the book very much when [Jacob] Zuma was still president and there was no hope of him not being president anymore.
“I was extremely angry because I felt that my trust, faith and my positive attitude has been betrayed. This book was born in anger and frustration which is why it was such a pleasure to write.”
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