Lights, Smokes & Shadows is a thriller hard to put down once you start reading it  

This story is a story of love, the underworld working within legitimate state structures, betrayal and drug dealing within a city that has several faces that show up in contradiction to each other within a day.

By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor

Lights, Smokes & Shadows, this is a book that will take you into a world of drugs, seedy inner- city bars, crooked and obviously illegal shenanigans of members of a state security agency. 

This debut novel by Makhetha Floyd Mohlomi set in inner-city Johannesburg and its swanky suburbia, will connect easily with those readers who are familiar with Johannesburg and its surroundings, its darker side and its light side. A city that never stays the same even within a day’s time span. In 24 hours, the city has the capacity and propensity to change it complexion several times. Johannesburg, since the times of the Gold Rush in 1886 has always been a city that refuses to be boxed into a particular way.  It is an intriguing city. Johannesburg’s complexity is well captured in this book, a debut by the author.

The novel’s scenes are several places around Johannesburg that own they own have an intriguing life.

The scene that I found to be especially interesting is the Zulu Bar, somewhere in the inner city of Johannesburg, corner Commissioner and Delvers streets.  This is where the events that shape this book, which is about contemporary Johannesburg, its amazing characters, its good side and bad side, starts.

A bored and dodgy private investigator, who after being dismissed from work as a leading police investigator under unfair circumstances finds himself without a job. However, a cop will do what he knows best, which is to solve crime. This time as a Private Investigator, a potentially lucrative business, only when it is done well.

On this particular day the investigator leaves his offices where he is regularly tormented by creditors who call him constantly, and instead of answering his landline deciding rather to leave for his usual fix nearby. The Zulu bar where one will find a fading poster of the Africa Cup of Nations winning Bafana Bafana team on its walls, uninspiring Rastafarian graffit on its walls and a big screen TV where drunks watch their favourite TV soapies and of course soccer on weekends. This is a kind of place that is at a nondescript corner of a building whose owners have since bolted and left the country when democracy dawned. Unsure of their future in a new South Africa, such building often remain neglected and crumbling, and in some cases falling into the hands of building jackers who charge exorbitant rent to those desperate for accommodation in the city.  In the Zulu Bar, an empty crate is all you will get for a place to sit.

But here the bored Private Investigator Joe Mlambo, besides his fix of whiskey tots, has other more interesting interest. He finds the part-time bar lady interesting. Lindiwe, is a failed model who left her Khayelitsha home in Cape Town for greener pasture in Johannesburg, only to have her ambition dashed. She ended up here at the Zulu Bar, working for a stout and strict owner of the place, who is notorious for taking on unrude drunks causing trouble in her establishment.  She however is protective over Lindiwe, especially when it comes to horny men like Joe Mlambo.

However, Joe Mlambo and lindiwe’s fate is sealed here. Love that sees them witness the worst and best in Johannesburg, including finding themselves being held hostage by an angry and vengeful Nigeran drug lord in Hillbrow, owed money by the recovering drug addict Joe Mlambo.  The same Nigerian drug lord whose parting shot with the indebted druggie was to give him a good hiding using a knobkerrie that has left Joe Mlambo with a permanent limb, aa sad reminder of his drug taking days that he is fighting to leave behind him.  

However, Lindiwe and Joe Mlambo’s love under these difficult circumstances miraculously survives. Actually, thrives as they overcome danger posed on their lives and relationship on one hand by the drug dealers that still have business with their one-time customer now on a recovery path, and on the other hand, corrupt and dangerous members of the South African Social State Security Agency whose activities are outside the law. You better read and get to witness the complicated intersection between law enforcement officials gone rogue and a determined Private Investigator who now wants to clean the city of its social ills and the bad characters that give Johannesburg its bad reputation.  Be warned though that you will need to be strong to read this part of the novel because extreme violence unfolds among the characters and betrayal assumes a new definition.

This story is a story of love, the underworld working within legitimate state structures, betrayal and drug dealing within a city that has several faces that show up in contradiction to each other within a day.

This is a book that goes beyond the genre of crime, telling a story of a city that is on one hand, a beautiful city attracting the best brains looking for a fresh start and opportunities, while on the other it attracts the worst in society. They too looking for opportunities within the underworld. Both of these are bizarrely accommodated in Johannesburg, making this book a must read for those who want to understand the city better and its contradictions. This is a thriller hard to put down once you start reading it.

.Lights, Smokes & Shadows is published by Reach Publishers, a publisher who assists independent authors to publish their books in South Africa.