Voinjama Johnson, 28, is an ambitious investigative journalist at the Cape Town magazine Urban. Her life is messy, and to top it all, Vee’s been seeing things: a teenage girl in a red hat, more specifically, an unsettling hallucination that goes hand-in-hand with debilitating episodes which Vee is loath to call “panic attacks”. When Vee spots a photograph of the girl from her visions at a local hospital, she quickly launches an investigation, under the pretext of an article about missing children in Cape Town. She’s soon delving into the secretsof the fractured Fourie and Paulsen families, with the help of her assistant Chlöe Bishop. Why can’t anyone answer their questions? What happened to Jacqui Paulsen, who left home two years ago and hasn’t been seen since? The Lazarus Effect is a gripping new addition to the Cape Town crime genre from a very talented debut author. Deon Meyer calls it a «wonderful debut» that is «brimming with intelligence, wit, and real heart. Enormously entertaining».
