Author
Growing up in apartheid-era South Africa Eben Beukes experienced at first hand the turbulent transition period of that country to a modern democracy. A University of Stellenbosch graduate he worked as a young surgeon in several of the country’s “black hospitals” after completing his compulsory military service in the SADF.
In later years he worked as a surgeon at a large military hospital in Saudi Arabia, two years in New Zealand and for the five years leading up to 2006 was a senior surgeon at the Armed Forces Hospital in Kuwait City, the base hospital at the start of the Iraq War in 2003.
His experience during the six weeks war led to the publication of Pockets of Resistance documenting the often farcical and always chaotic inner workings of a large military hospital with Americans and Arabs reluctantly rubbing shoulders while in the throes of a hot war. A total of seven years in the Middle East provided the background for both The Mask of Louka (Saudi Arabia) and its sequel, Devil’s Tumble, both featuring British educated Kuwaiti detective, Riad Ajmi.
Earlier novels were political thrillers set against the background of a newly democratic South Africa. These feature Harry Dance in the Shadows of a Rainbow trilogy: The Cherry Red Shadow, The Lily White Shadow and the recently published The Blue Ice Shadow.
Other novels include Any Way the Wind Blows, a noir detective novel as well as A Straitlaced Man.
Eben Beukes lives in Australia.
The Cherry Red Shadow
Nobody has ever bought a black market nuclear weapon. A miracle, but a fact nonetheless.
In December 1991 South Africa announces to the world that she has terminated her nuclear weapons program and plans to destroy the existing six thermonuclear devices.
July 1994: Weeks after the Government of Reconciliation takes power the newly appointed Director of National intelligence learns that a nuclear weapon has surfaced in the hands of an international arms dealer. With investors scrambling for a slice of the new market the country cannot afford anything that would rock the boat. The bomb has to be found and nobody must ever know it existed.
But who to trust? In charge of the very organization that put him behind bars on Robben Island, he needs outside help. Enter Harry Dance, ex-special forces and sometime fellow prisoner on The Island. And just to keep Harry on the straight and narrow he teams him up with his own man and Harry can’t stand terrorists, not even newly respectable ones.
Soon Harry discovers they are dealing with far more than an old-fashioned atom bomb; then again Harry had been lied to before and was still around for one simple reason, he new all the dirty tricks plus a few that hadn’t made it to the book. But he had never been up against a stone killer who made death an emotional experience with a silver handled stiletto…
The story behind Red Mercury and the race for the ultimate weapon of terror.
The Lily White Shadow
Deadly lily white. The final solution prepared by the puppet masters of the apartheid serpent. A plan so deadly it could plunge the fledgling rainbow nation into a bloodfest of raging civil war.
The source of president nelson mandela’s recurring nightmare. The order: ultra. Find and destroy. Details never to be disclosed.
It was going to be a one off deal. What with the guns lying limbo in that warehouse in Morocco and four million dollars sitting in a secret bank account in Lusaka it was simply a matter of arranging a marriage of true minds. Bring the two together, willing seller and willing buyer and what could go wrong?
It is two years since Harry Dance last tangled with the demons from his past. Two years after the deadly race that was Cherry Red finds him living the good life in the south of Spain, Harry not being exactly persona grata in his native South Africa after hijacking the Rainbow Nation’s mini nuke and selling it to the Americans. It seemed a logical move to take over the lucrative arms dealing business of the late Don Luis Sanchez and in this venture he finds ready partners in ex- Spear of the Nation hardman Vusi Mkhize and his old nemesis Alfred Sepeng, one time ANC head of National Intelligence.
For once even Selena, Harry’s long suffering secretary and more recently wife, agrees that it all makes sense and perhaps after this last big bounce they could think about retiring from this taxing albeit exciting way of life. Just to give their life expectancy a bit of a boost.
Too easy. Except there’s a fly in the ointment in the shape of a CIA man who’s still smarting from egg on his face after his last tangle with Harry and Co and sees the chance to even the score and an English spy with an agenda all of his own. And soon Harry finds himself back in the old business of supping with the devil, this time in the guise of a hard as nails tycoon who has his sights set on the prize of a lifetime and all he needs is the right man to fetch it for him. There’s only one snag, the prize is hidden in an icy South African Antarctic base and the only access is by having a man on the team about to depart for SANAE on board the icebreaker Agulhas. Not only would this man have to be a South African, he’d have to be a hard man and then there would be the small matter of making him see reason...
With Selena a hostage and his new life in ruins Harry finds himself flung back into belly of the beast and this time the lives of thousands hinge on him getting to Lily White first. Soon he finds there are others on board every bit as determined as he to get to the contents of that ice bound steel box first, others who would think nothing of killing whoever stood in their way. And when Harry finally learns what he is dealing with the sheer horror of it threatens to overwhelm his senses and more than ever before he has to bluff and trick his way through to a winning hand when all he holds is the Jack of Spades and facing Aces High...
The fast paced sequel to Cherry Red takes up the tale of South Africa’s grim legacy from the apartheid years. Secrets so deadly they can never see the light and have to be buried as far away from humanity as possible. And it doesn’t get more remote than the South Pole.
The Blue Ice Shadow
A chance meeting in a hospital kiosk. A stranger in a linen mask. And a voice from the distant past.
Harry wasn’t that way no more. The killing business. But sometimes a man’s past catches up leaving him no way out but to confront the old enemies one last time.
HA-LA-LI… What do old hunters do when the bugle sounds the end of the hunt? Tired from the quest that has dominated his life for so long now, a quest that has taken him from the desperate hunt for a rogue mini nuclear weapon to the chase for untold riches buried in the icy wastes of Antarctica, Harry Dance is looking forward to a little holiday back in sunny South Africa. Maybe hook up with a few buddies from a time when his life had been simpler, sit around a campfire and tell each other lies…
But Harry didn’t reckon with Blue Ice. That bolt of death from nowhere. Soon he finds himself dragged into the human whirlpool of the New South Africa where It’s business as usual and only the masks are different. And this time It’s about the children of Africa, the country’s ultimate prize and the evil men will do to grasp that prize…
And then there’s Savannah. Deadly Savannah. Yesterday’s faceless men, wearing new identities and back in business. The kind of business that will bring Harry on a collision course with deadly ghosts from the past. But this time it’s different, for Harry’s back on home turf and in the shadows of the Dark Continent nobody plays the game better than Harry Dance…
The Third in the Shadows of a Rainbow trilogy, the Blue Ice Shadow is a breathless ride to high adventure as the horrors of yesterday make way for those of today.
Any Way The Wind Blows
Mrs Charlotte De Granville wanted a quiet, unobtrusive, not too clever private detective for a very discreet little job. The nature of the assignment dictated a certain economy of truth when it came to briefing said detective.
He would detect and she would take care of the rest -- with extreme prejudice.
Anthony M Moretti, failed pro golfer, onetime Miami nightclub hustler, successful loser, and more recently PI specializing in divorce work, fitted the bill rather nicely.
So Tony got the job and a whole lot besides and what was to be a routine yawn with glossy prints quickly turned into the kind of bad trip he could have done without. The kind of trip that would take him from the glitter of Cape Town's jet set to the rotten underbelly of pulsating Durban to the tropical paradise of Grand Comoros.
Except there was something very wrong in paradise and it would take some fancy footwork to put together the pieces of the puzzle and still be in one piece when the masks, and the gloves, finally came off.
No problem really; not for a man who through the years had shed every illusion, seen every dream do a smoke and mirrors act, learned all of life's seedy small jokes in the hard school of the real world. But somewhere along the way things had become complicated, even for a cynic like Tony Moretti. Things like a hard as nails beauty who could do what no man should ever be exposed to. Or a woman who could stomach a revolution but not a man's betrayal and an ageing soldier of fortune who really should have known better.
And a soft eyed woman with a voice like Nina Simone who would open up old long forgotten wounds that would have been so much better left buried in the barren patch that was the heart of Tony Moretti.
The Mask Of Louka
November 2001. The holy month of Ramadan. With the world reeling from the attack on the Twin Towers, A Delta Team is furiously hunting a master terrorist amongst an isolated expatriate community high in the mountains of Saudi Arabia. The carefully planted bait, a family matter of honor.
Visiting his estranged wife and child on the military hospital compound Riad al Ajmi, British educated homicide detective, realizes a serial killer- A shadowy spectre of a cat – has been prowling for more than a decade, the authorities in denial for reasons of their won. His own family in imminent danger, Riad investigates the exotic expat community, uncovering deeply buried dark secrets. His journey takes him into the world of virtual slavery, prostitution and drug trafficking in The Kingdom where to be caught can mean a public beheading. Then there’s the equally corrupt world of the local princes where a thing is only a sin if it found out…
Realising the final clue to the unmasking of the cat killer Al Hada lies in the past, Riad find himself hunted as powerful forces close in and things come to a terrifying head in the all revealing Night of Power…
Pockets of Resistance
Kuwait City. March 2003. The Iraq War is in full swing and the Armed Forces Hospital finds itself at the battlefront.
Dr Laurentius Love, Head of Surgery and a man whose mission in life has become a grim series of daily disasters as he desperately strives to cling onto his precarious position, finds himself desperately dealing with as motley a gang of misfits as ever fouled the corridors of a major medical establishment. Normal people, people with choices, do not usually find themselves thrown together in a virtual prison where old rivalries and culture misunderstandings quickly come to the boil.
Before long madness reigns as an American colonel finds himself hunting an exclusive “Charlie” all over again and the Pakistani cricket team finally gets to play those cheating Indians in the test to end all tests. Soon life on the compound descends into chaos where strippers rub shoulders with conscientious objectors and fast food delivery men in pizza costumes fight it out with rivals in chicken outfits.
And then there’s Charlie Five Belly, the omnipresent Bengali porter and Laurentius Love’s nemesis and ultimate nightmare…
Devil's Tumble (Sequel to The Mask Of Louka)
My cousin before the stranger. My brother before my cousin ...
The Scud missile did not bring the dreaded sarin gas but it did point the way to the first dead body. The first in a trail of blood that would lead Kuwaiti homicide detective Riad al Ajmi from the world of the rich to the slums of the underworld as a war rages on the horizon and old wounds are opened once more. Kuwait City, March 2003. The Iraq War - the city swarming with American troops as refugees start streaming in, bringing with them tales of horror. Some going all the way back to the earlier rape of the city and uncovering old secrets - terrible secrets - that some would do anything to keep hidden. Even murder.
Then there's the ritualistis slaughter of a young nurse at Kuwait's Armed Forces Hospital, the killer dressed in the Class A uniform of a ranking American officer - shades of a serial killer previously encountered in Seoul.
Enter CWO Sally Kendrick and WO Troy DuBois, American Military Police CID, flown in to find this killer before it threatens to spill into the realm of civilian Kuwait, straining the uneasy relationship between host city and foreign troops.
A second murder on the military compound raises the possibility of Kawaiti involvement and soon the duo find themselves working with a reluctant Riad, who prefers to do things his way, which is not quite the army's way. As the body count mounts, the scene is complicated by the unexpected arrival of Riad's uncle, the scion of a well-known Lebanese crime family. What is he doing there? How did he even manage to get into a city in total lockdown? Could he be linked to what was happening on that hospital compound and on the streets of the city?
Still struggling to deal with the violent death of his wife at the hands of a jihadist, leaving him the sole carer for a young daughter, Riad finds himself drawn into the circles of the city's rich and the arms of a sultry seductress, whose motives might just hold the key to the biggest secret of all.
As the hunter becomes the hunted, this fast-moving thriller builds to a shattering climax, where Riad faces the fine line between the law and that most elusive entity of all - justice.
Winter's Day
Currently in preparation with Austin Macauley Publishers London
April 1945. As the war in Europe shudders to a halt and Germany lies in ruins, Hitler launches a last strike at the heart of America ... your brother is alive ...
German engineering corps major Alex Winter is desperately constructing a pontoon bridge as the defeated Wehrmacht fights a rearguard action against the rapidly advancing Russians when he is summonded to Hitler's bunker in Berlin.
His identical brother, Max, did not die in an accident aat sea in 1938 but was given a new identity by his Nazi controllers and is working as a nuclear physicist on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the world's first atomic bomb is about to be tested. Surgically separated at birth but sharing a special bond, the young brothers were subjected to a series of mind-control experiments by their fanatical Nazi parents with only Max, the weaker one, being found suitable.
With the dying days of the Third Reich approaching, Hitler orders Max to activate the model version of the weapon he had secretly been working on; his final revenge.
But there's a problem. Max is refusing to respond, blocking with the word "Ivan" when his controler, a New-York-based psychiatrist, gives the command.
Does the answer lie in a secret pact between the twins? Winter refuses to help but the Nazis have powerful tools of persuasion and within hours, he find himself on a U-boat and heading for the USA and Los Alamos in the company of a sinister SS Colonel, soon to face the borther he never wanted to see again.
For there is unfinished business between the brothers and when the woman they both loved suddenly appears, old wounds are re-opened and the body count starts mounting as events roll on to a terrifying climax.
When The Moon Was Blood
More than a mile away and turning, a silvery shadow momentarily etched against the rising sun, the Zero was readying for a return, the beat of its radial engine drumming across the water as it prepare or another strafing run. And with all options seemingly exhausted Dawber knew that this time there would be no escaping the certain death spitting from its wing mounted machine guns…
The Pacific. August 1942. As a Special Forces "Z" team desperately try to escape a Japanese ambush and reach the relative safety of Milne Bay Papua New Guinea, a drama of a different kind is playing out at the Australia Army's military HQ in Townsville. A well placed spy is feeding vital information to the enemy jeopardising every mission behind enemy lines as the threatened invasion of Australia looms large.
As part of a desperate attempt to put the marauding Imperial Japanese Forces on the wrong track and hopefully in the process unmask the traitor known as The Bird, Mick Dawber and his small team of irregulars are sent back into the impenetrable jungle on one last mission and this time the stakes are higher than ever before.
For Mick has been lied to, set up, by his own side in the dirtiest game of all. But then, when it comes to playing dirty, Mick, Preacher and Face wrote the book.
Failure was not an option. Not when revenge was name of the game.
A Stone For Maddie Green
Four months after she was taken, there is still no word on the disappearance of Maddie Green, daughter of international supermodel, Sarah Green, and the police search has stalled. Disturbing images of a young girl start appearing on the Dark Web; could this be Maddie?
Riad, a homicide detective with PTSD joins the search, but he has problems of his own and other cases to work.
As details of Sarah's past emerge that complicate matters, Riad has to assume the identity of a paedophile and enter the Dark Web. What he finds there will scar him forever.
The Lorelei Exchange
October 1962. Mc Cuban Missile Crisis.
With the world teetering on the brink of nuclear war between the USSR and the USA a different flashpoint is rapidly evolving in West Berlin, the small western enclave surrounded by an increasingly aggressive Russian Bear.
A series of unexplained explosions on the Polish-Russian border is followed by someone called Lorelei demanding a large ransom in exchange for revealing the location of more bombs before they are exploded.
Will the increasingly nervous Russians see these explosions as a prelude to an invasion by the Americans and use that as an excuse to annexe West Berlin?
Charlie Spicer, West Berlin based army explosives expert, is assigned by British Intelligence to find Lorelei and neutralise the threat. He finds himself in an unlikely alliance with KGB major Nikolai Buirski as the race to find Lorelei escalates. The trail leads them to a Wehrmacht operation dating back to 1938 now brought to life by a vengeful returning Russian prisoner as well as a cell of deadly Neo-Nazis.
As more explosions occur and the body count mounts while tension between the two superpowers reach a climax Spicer finds himself in a deadly race against time to avoid a catastrophe that threatens to destroy West Berlin and ignite a nuclear doomsday.
Contact
Marco De Luca
PO Box 1879, Mount Gambier, SA, 5290, Australia
