Zinzi is a zoo with a blackmail problem who gets drawn into investigating the disappearance of a teenage pop star and winds up uncovering a much more sinister plot.īeukes, who lives in Cape Town, is an enchanting writer, but the last third of her novel becomes disconnected from the tight first segment and grows so fantastical that it’s hard to stay engaged. The animal stands between the guilty and the Undertow, a force that swallows up any zoos whose animals are killed. In this alternate-universe version of South Africa, murderers (called “zoos”) carry their guilt with them in the form of a spirit animal that’s bound to them and gives them magical powers. Clarke Award for the best science-fiction novel went to Lauren Beukes’s Zoo City.īefore it is a science-fiction novel, “Zoo City” is a detective story, the tale of a woman thrust into the middle of a mystery. But there are annual prizes in genre fiction that catch everyone’s attention, and two were given out last week: The Edgar Award for the best mystery novel went to Steve Hamilton’s The Lock Artist, and the Arthur C. Anything tarred with the labels mystery, western, sci-fi or fantasy goes on its own separate shelf, far away from the high culture of literary fiction.
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