Not sure how this got into my stack from the library. I was drawn to the setting (Jo'berg) where I visited in 2016 and a feisty female protagonist. But it was too grisly, and the over-the-top violence toward most everyone in the tale of human trafficking kept me awake. Worse yet, I finished it, heart pounding. ( )

P.I. Jade de Jong is hired as a bodyguard by a woman, whose husband disappears from their home. As it turns out, he is the owner of strip clubs, who has been involved in human trafficking. Jade and is found tortured almost to death. The human smugglers are trapped in South Africa and trying to arrange passports to escape, resulting in the kidnapping of David Patel's (Jade's ex-lover) young son. Good taut plot about vengeance. Looking forward to reading book #3. ( )

During a raid on a brothel in the London suburbs, the Human Trafficking team of Scotland Yard, unearth a nest of young teenage girls from South Africa. By following a lead from a seriously beaten young girl as to a friend that was abducted and sold into private slavery the British police engage in a joint operation with their counter-parts in Johannesburg.
Mackenzie, a journalist living is South Africa, has concocted a fine thriller featuring private investigator/bodyguard Jade De Jong. Recently out of her on again off again relationship with police detective, David Patel, Jade takes what looks to be a cushy assignment watching over Pamela Jordaan, whose husband has disappeared. However when within the first hour of driving he charge an attempt is made on Pamela’s life Jade discovers that she is in for long hard haul. Pamela’s husband, a brothel owner and trafficker in people, “the third most lucrative criminal activity in the world” has many enemies. When they discover his maimed and tortured body and his daughter, who was also involved in the ‘family business’, is discovered missing Jade teams back up, in and out of bed, with Patel to discover who was responsible for shipping these young girls out to parts unknown.
Other mysterious forces are at work as the back story builds solidly to catch up with the flow of the human traffic and Mackenzie does a grand job of guiding us expertly through this dangerous world and then dropping us in the middle of mix in an effort to gather clues, along with the police investigators, to find the missing heiress of the Jo’burg porn world and discover which of the players are lying as we are left twisting and grasping at straws as the novel explodes in the final few pages.
This, not to be missed debut novel, will entertain, enthrall and enlighten and all at lightning speed.
( )

This review was first published in Belletrista.

Jassy Mackenzie's sequel to her 2010 Random Violence is simultaneously more engaging and less so than its predecessor. The series' protagonist is Jade de Jong: a young, South African private investigator who has lived as an expatriate for many years following the murder of her famous police inspector father and who has returned to South Africa at the behest of a friend, also a police inspector.

Overall, I enjoyed that first book. There was a raw vividness to it that distinguished it from other series of the female private investigator subgenre. My quibbles with it were that the plot was structured a bit awkwardly, requiring a small amount of suspension of disbelief, and that the villain had a whiff of caricature Hollywood Slasher Psycho rather than coming across as 100% Real Sadist. However, Mackenzie got both of those fixed in this time around. The human trafficking story line of Stolen Lives shifted smoothly up through the gears, never causing me to raise my head and say, "Hmmm…I dunno…" Jade's antagonists are appropriately repellent without stepping over the line to become clichés. My opinion is that one book's worth of practice made Mackenzie a noticeably better mystery writer.

On the other hand, some of the complexity of Jade's character has been toned down. In the first book, she was an intriguing character: she admired her father and was anxious to partner with the police to solve the crimes; yet, she was planning a bit of murder on her own. The disparity between her two selves—moreover, her concern that she was actually okay with this disparity—separated her from the run-of-the-mill series detective. In Stolen Lives, this turmoil seems to have drained away. Somewhere in the interval between the two books, Jade has accepted her dual nature, regretting only the problems it causes in her love life. In fact, in a subplot twist at the end of this book, it appears that Jade's killer side might become somewhat of a signature hook for future stories. I like these formulaic approaches less than I do the complexity of character.

These are not books for the squeamish. Mackenzie has a talent for giving you a brutal picture of the underside of life, whether it's the actions of a sadist in the first book or the reality of what happens to trafficked women in this novel. It's not unrelenting violence; the moments are intermittent but, when they occur, they are telling. They form part of her larger perspective that gives (assuming it's accurate) a thoughtful glimpse into the wild and contradictory nature of post-apartheid South Africa. Her stories have an element of social consciousness to them that caused me to engage more than I might have with just a suspense novel.

This series has three things going for it: competent plot lines, an intriguing protagonist, and a perspective into modern South African society. The first is sine qua non for any series that expects to have some longevity. The third, perhaps, may be of more interest to non-South African readers for whom it might be unfamiliar—but the majority of readers worldwide fall into that category. The future of the second aspect is likely to determine whether the series becomes one where the next book is highly anticipated or only something that will be picked up casually if you happen to notice it has come out. If Mackenzie can keep Jade from becoming a formulaic Willing to Walk the Dark Side for Justice character and keep her rich and complex, Jade will be a character worth following. For now, I'm anticipating the third episode, The Fallen (Worse Case in South Africa), due out next April. ( )

Completed 5/10, a two day read, 4 1/2 stars. A very good book, 2nd in the series and a good follow-up to the first, Random Violence. This is also a very interesting, well paced story, dealing mostly with human trafficking. But it is told with more focus than other books on what happens to the women whose lives are stolen, and the violence behind prostitution. The heroine Jade manages to survive, and this story just as the first goes back to her roots. And it raises again the baggage her policeman lover carries, namely a separated wife and young son. This story also introduces a police team in the UK working the same case, sharing info with the Jo'burg team. Stolen Lives flaws are relatively minor - I don't care for a heroine who executes criminal, no matter how evil, and no matter how different Jo'burg is from my world. And this family business with the boyfriend has to get resolved quickly, or it will bring the whole series down to a soap opera. Looking forward to #3. ( )