A Beautiful Place to Die is the debut novel

Debut novel

A debut novel is the first novel an author publishes. Debut novels are the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to publish in the future...

 of award-winning filmmaker Malla Nunn

Malla Nunn

Malla Nunn is an award-winning screenwriter and author who was born in apartheid South Africa. Her works include the murder mystery A Beautiful Place to Die and Let the Dead Lie.-References:...

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Characters in A Beautiful Place to Die

Det. Emmanuel Cooper is the main character in the book. Chris Nashawaty describes the character as "an English WWII veteran who emigrated to Johannesburg in the early '50s, a toxic time when the country's racial divisions couldn't have been more black-and-white. He's a stranger in a strange land, not only because he doesn't use skin color to determine guilt or innocence but also because he barely understands just how deep these fault lines go."

Major themes

Kirkus Reviews explains that race "is a major issue in the narrative; Afrikaners and people of color eye each other warily owing to the recent advent of laws that prescribe how whites and blacks can and can't interact....The author sets his story in Jacob's Rest, a small village with rigid racial distinctions."

Literary significance and reception

Publisher's Weekly compares the book to Charles Todd

Caroline and Charles Todd

Charles Todd is a pen name used by the American authors Caroline and Charles Todd. This mother-and-son writing team lives in the eastern United States, in North Carolina and Delaware respectively....

's Inspector Rutledge series and calls it "a welcome addition to crime fiction set in South Africa." USA Today declares the book "a great beginning to a series that mixes crime-solving with South African history." Graeme Blundell praises the book as "lovely" and commends Nunn for setting "her characters brilliantly within a complex psychological portrayal of a particular time and place." Jay strafford writes that the book "will long echo in your mind" and that "Nunn brings this entirely plausible work to a close and leaves the reader eager for the next case facing her winning, troubled protagonist." Nashawaty writes that "as a character, Cooper's no Sam Spade

Sam Spade

Sam Spade is a fictional character who is the protagonist of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon and the various films and adaptations based on it, as well as in three lesser known short stories by Hammett....

 or Philip Marlowe

Philip Marlowe

Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep published in 1939...

. He feels sketchy, half-drawn--not quite alive yet. Next time out, we'll need...more cluses about what makes this new sleuth tick." Nevertheless, Nasawaty still gives the book a B overall. Sarah Weinman writes, "Nunn teases out a complex tale of sexual depravity and family members prepared to protect even the worst of secrets in beautifully layered prose, but what makes A Beautiful Place to Die a debut to savor is the interplay between the cusp of social change and how then-socially accepted values seem monstrous to the modern reader."

Publication history

• 2009, United States of America, Atria ISBN 1-4165-8620-2 ISBN 978-1-4165-8620-3, Pub date 6 January 2009