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The New Book from
South African author
SARAH LOTZ
Exhibit A
Meet Georgie Allen: Cape Town’s self-proclaimed worst-dressed-lawyer-cum-used-car-dealer. Battling with nicotine and caffeine addiction, housemate worries and the revenge of the Witch, his vengeful ex-lover, the last thing he needs is to take on another pro-bono case. But when Rachel, a woman he meets in a bar, asks him to help her sister Nina, who has accused a policeman of raping her in a police cell, he can’t say no. Armed only with his irascible Scottish sidekick, Patrick, and a renegade township mongrel named Exhibit A, the threesome head into the Karoo to investigate the case.
From corrupt policemen to small-town discrimination and a local gossip grapevine, the scruffy but good-hearted Georgie battles his way through the reality of dealing with a rape case in the post-apartheid Rainbow Nation. Patrick, who eats his way through a seemingly endless stream of junk food, studiously avoids paying restaurant bills and consciously peppers his speech with Scottish burrs like “fooking hell, laddie”, loves nothing more than a fight against the establishment.
Exhibit A, the cocky mongrel with his own sense of justice who adopts Georgie, charms everyone from Georgie’s fashion-conscious PA Chesray, who is more concerned with his facial piercings and Paris Hilton’s latest dramas than his work, to flight attendant Clive and the well-muscled Lou, Georgie’s gay flatmates.
But it’s not as cut-and-dried as it looks, Nina’s claim that she was raped is questioned when forensic evidence conflicts with her version of events and Georgie and Patrick have to decide if the many holes in Nina’s story and her dubious past are enough to stop them from going ahead with the case.
Exhibit A is a fast-paced, exciting crime story that will keep you intrigued from the very first page and present you with characters who will remain with you long after you have put down the book.
 Sarah Lotz is the author of Pompidou Posse, published by Penguin SA in 2008.
She works as a screen-writer for Clockwork Zoo, Africa’s largest animation studio, and lives in Cape Town with her family and other animals. |
