In the Transvaal bushveld, Detective Roode investigates a policeman's death, seemingly a cobra attack but hinted at murder. He faces tribal fear ruled by a witch doctor and aggressive snakes. Roode suspects a human element behind the deadly "spirit."
Keywords9. THE SNAKES OF TUMARA - SA POLICE SERIES
In the unforgiving, remote bushveld of the Northern Transvaal, where superstition and harsh reality walk hand in hand, a young policeman is found dead beside his campfire. He is the latest victim in a series of bizarre and deadly cobra attacks. His last, unfinished diary entry whispers of murder, not an accident. The case lands on the desk of Detective Sergeant Kobus Roode, a formidable young detective from Johannesburg with a reputation for solving impossible cases.
Upon his arrival in the land of the Mkopo tribe, however, Roode is met by a wall of hostility and fear. The tribe is controlled by the cunning witch doctor, Tumara, who holds the superstitious people in his thrall with the legend of the “Great Serpent Spirit.” Anyone who questions Tumara’s authority, or speaks to the police, becomes the next target of the vengeful spirit and its lethal snakes.
The danger is not merely superstition. The cobras are unnaturally aggressive and seemingly everywhere. Roode himself narrowly escapes death when he is trapped in a hut by one of the reptiles, only to be saved by the timely intervention of the local farmer, Nicolaas Bredenkamp. Amid the tension, he also meets Bredenkamp’s beautiful and bold niece, Marie Naude, whose curiosity places her directly in harm’s way. As Roode delves deeper, he realizes that the attacks are too precise and too deliberate to be mere coincidence. Someone is using the snakes as a weapon of terror. Virtually alone, surrounded by hostile tribespeople and deadly reptiles that seem to strike on command, Kobus must unravel a web of lies, power plays, and cold-blooded murder. Is Tumara truly the mastermind, or is he merely a pawn in a larger, more diabolical conspiracy? In a land where the hiss of a cobra can signify a curse or an execution, Kobus must unmask the truth before he becomes the next name on the list of victims.
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Gerrie Radlof is the pseudonym of Gerrit Lubbe van Zyl (27/11/1923 - 20/9/1971) and is another one of South Africa's top writers who died at a relatively young age in a car accident outside Melkbosstrand. He is especially known for his extremely popular Buiter books (hardcover), but also reached great heights with his well-known Oloff the Pirate paperback series of stories. Then there is also his slightly lesser-known Ramala series, which is, however, his longest series of books, and also the Tamar series, which consists of only two books. Under Gerrie Radlof, he also wrote several books in the SA Police series and also the Swerwer Speurder (Wanderer Detective) series. Gerrie Radlof wrote six stories in the SA Police series. In short, the SA Police series is about a constable by the name of Kobus Roode. He is a strongly built man with brown hair that is always cut short, so that it looks like a crew cut. His story begins as a student when he and two of his best friends went camping in the Drakensberg. There they uncover a secret weapons arsenal and weapons factory hidden deep underground. In the process, Kobus's two friends die, but Kobus manages to apprehend the villains and thus bring the organization's illegal activities to a halt. These events had such a great impact on Kobus's life that he decided there and then to dedicate himself to becoming a constable. Kobus's career takes off quickly and he solves one major international case after another. He deals with kidnappers, murderers, animal smugglers, dagga (cannabis) smugglers and many more. Most of the time he finds himself in Natal, but at times he is also transferred to Pretoria and Johannesburg, to solve cases there that others before him could not solve. Many times Kobus refuses promotion, because it would mean that he would have to do office work. There is nothing he enjoys more than working in nature, on the back of a horse. It is precisely this love of his that leads him to discover the secret places of villains and to surprise and expose them there. Each of these stories is full of action, drama, suspense and also a little bit of romance in between. Every excellently written detective story captivates you from beginning to end and the stories stay with you long after you have finished reading them.
