“The novel is a gripping and dark investigation into one man’s journey from apartheid West Rand life to the bowels of the Johannesburg underworld”. The Sunday Times

Little Ice Cream Boy tells the story of Gideon Goosen, an inmate of Pretoria Central Prison, condemned to serve three life sentences for murder. The monotony of his life in jail is at first upset when Debbie, a mother of three, begins writing to him in prison. Though he tries to deny it, an unlikely romance ensues and soon Goosen finds himself compelled to confess to Debbie about the many atrocities that he endured as a child and committed as a troubled teenager, and depraved adult. 

Pauw draws on his knowledge of the worst of the apartheid assassins to paint this fictionalised account of one of their number. As the plot unfolds the reader is shown, in shocking and unpalatable reality, the seedy side of Johannesburg’s West Rand suburbs in the 60s and the underbelly of Hillbrow’s escort agencies and brothels in the 70s.The book combines fact with fiction and is largely based on Pauw’s extensive research into the CCB (Civil Co-operation Bureau) and the atrocities they committed, however, the details of Goosen’s childhood and the interweaving of the events are Pauw’s own creation. It is an absolutely compelling read that will leave you struggling with the knowledge that despite everything, it is possible to feel empathy for a cold blooded killer.

Jacques Pauw is one of Africa’s most prominent and decorated journalists. He exposed apartheid’s death squads in South Africa, and was a founding member and assistant editor of the anti-apartheid Afrikaans newspaper Vrye Weekblad (Free Weekly). Little Ice Cream Boy is his first work of fiction.