Paul Mendelson has written for the theatre and television and is the author of eleven non-fiction titles concerning mind-sports such as bridge and poker, as well as being a crime novelist whose first novel, The First Rule of Survival, was short-listed for the CWA Golden Dagger Crime Novel of the Year in 2014. His second novel, The Serpentine Road, was long-listed for the same prize in 2015. Both have been translated into several languages and a television adaptation is already in preparation.

Excellent and gripping novel . . . Like all the best fictional detectives, De Vries is brave, intuitive, stubborn and always ready to disobey an order. He, his colleagues and Cape Town itself seem vividly real

Paul Mendelson has written for the theatre and television and is the author of eleven non-fiction titles concerning mind-sports such as bridge and poker, as well as being a crime novelist whose first novel, The First Rule of Survival, was short-listed for the CWA Golden Dagger Crime Novel of the Year in 2014. His second novel, The Serpentine Road, was long-listed for the same prize in 2015. Both have been translated into several languages and a television adaptation is already in preparation.

Excellent and gripping novel . . . Like all the best fictional detectives, De Vries is brave, intuitive, stubborn and always ready to disobey an order. He, his colleagues and Cape Town itself seem vividly real