Today I am excited to be bringing you a review and giveaway as part of the Dying to Live blog tour. Also on today’s stop is Emma the little Bookworm. 

 When the body of a Bushman is discovered near the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, the death is written off as an accident. But all is not as it seems. An autopsy reveals that, although he’s clearly very old, his internal organs are puzzlingly young. What’s more, an old bullet is lodged in one of his muscles … but where is the entry wound? When the body is stolen from the morgue and a local witch doctor is reported missing, Detective ‘Kubu’ Bengu gets involved. But did the witch doctor take the body to use as part of a ritual? Or was it the American anthropologist who’d befriended the old Bushman?

As Kubu and his brilliant young colleague, Detective Samantha Khama, follow the twisting trail through a confusion of rhino-horn smugglers, foreign gangsters and drugs manufacturers, the wider and more dangerous the case seems to grow. A fresh, new slice of ‘Sunshine Noir’, Dying to Live is a classic tale of greed, corruption and ruthless thuggery, set in one of the world’s most beautiful landscapes, and featuring one of crime fiction’s most endearing and humane heroes.

 I found this a very intriguing story, the quest for eternal youth and how far someone would go to get it.

We have mysterious deaths that are seemingly over a plant, yes folks a plant! This is no ordinary plant, it has ‘magical’ powers that people come from far and wide to obtain – The Fountain of Youth so to speak! A Traditional Healer uses this plant in his Muti (medicine) and is well known for it but has never shared the plant with anyone.

I have never read a story like this. I am not talking about the content but the style in which it is written. The pace is even through and that is what made this different for me, I quite liked it. We have goings-on in the personal life of Kubu, trying to discover why there are murders and disappearances and there is also some smuggling of Rhino horn (believed to be an aphrodisiac).

Reading about how people value the traditional remedies and how far folks will go to get their hands on the secrets (even the Western World for monetary gain) is amazing. While living in Hong Kong I saw first hand how traditional medicine is valued yet I would never consider consuming the most of it, however, the family I lived with used these remedies before evening considering modern medicine. As I know how important these traditions are I can, somewhat, understand why this plant of long life was sought after.

If you like ‘seedy underbelly’ style books you will love this!

Hit the giveaway button to win a copy of Dying to Live  by Michael Stanley –>

 Michael Stanley is the writing team of Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip. Both were
born in South Africa and have worked in academia and business. On a flying trip to
Botswana, they watched a pack of hyenas hunt, kill, and devour a wildebeest,
eating both flesh and bones. That gave them the premise for their first mystery, A
Carrion Death, which introduced Detective ‘Kubu’ Bengu of the Botswana Criminal
Investigation Department. It was a finalist for five awards, including the CWA
Debut Dagger. The series has been critically acclaimed, and their third book,
Death of the Mantis, won the Barry Award and was a finalist for an Edgar award.
Deadly Harvest was a finalist for an International Thriller Writers’ award, and book
5, A Death in the Family, was an international bestseller.