Man Down

In Irma Venter’s follow-up to the electric Hard Rain, Ranna Abramson returns home to the lion’s den to resurrect a long-dead past and save the man she loves.

Ranna Abramson wants to disappear.

But she knows she can’t keep running when a former enemy tracks her down in Mumbai with dire news: her onetime lover, journalist Alex Derksen, has disappeared back home in South Africa.

Torn between her desire for him and fear of a homecoming, Ranna knows she’s the only one who can find him. But only two things in South Africa would welcome her—the inside of a cell or the bottom of a grave. There, to the police she’s the prime suspect in three murders. To the press, she’s the Black Widow serial killer.

Despite her instinct to stay away, Ranna makes the journey. But the key to finding Alex lies in her painful past. And to uncover it, she’ll need to unravel a web of secrets tied to a long-forgotten crime.

Even if she finds Alex before it’s too late, Ranna must answer for past sins…or risk losing him forever.

Irma Venter is a journalist and thriller writer. She loves traveling, Labradors, good coffee, excellent whiskey, and expensive chocolate—not necessarily in that order. She writes books about strong women, interesting men, and that fascinating space between right and wrong. She lives in South Africa.

Karin Schimke won both the South African Literary Translators Award and the Sol Plaatje Translation Award for Flame in the Snow, a collection of love letters from Ingrid Jonker to André Brink. She has translated various texts from Afrikaans and German to English. Man Down is her third translation of Irma Venter’s crime thrillers. Schimke works as a journalist and an editor. She is also a poet. Her first book of poetry, Bare & Breaking, won the Ingrid Jonker Prize for a debut collection.