Travelling Jack
New Member
Reaching Discontent is the enormously entertaining first novel of Hagler, the pseudonym for a South African writer now living in New Zealand.
It is an action-packed crime novel from start to finish, with traces of Don Pendleton’s Mack Bolan, Marvel Comics’ Punisher series, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, but with a massive dose of social conscience.
The main character is Iron, a former heavyweight boxing contender, now English teacher, who is trying to dampen a seething anger that has clouded his life ever since he could remember.
Iron has been trying to do the right thing ever since. Now at school, seemingly older and wiser, he discovers a young student Riaz Chohan is dealing in drugs. He confronts the youngster and his fellow cronies, in a move that will change his life forever.
From the desolate and desperate streets of the Cape Flats’ townships of Manenberg and Lavender Hill, to the plush houses of the rich and crooked gangsters living the high life in Wynberg and Constantia, Iron heads on a mission with his close friend Heed, a sleek fighting machine trained by MK and the Tuareg in the Libyan desert, on a mission to do the right thing.
The Minister is relentless and vicious, and Iron, to his consternation finds, yet again, within himself the same bloodlust that he so despises in his nemesis. He struggles to hold onto his convictions as a Muslim, and to look the other way by living the quiet life. But it is impossible. It is as if he knows he will not be able to do so, that to fight the good fight, to strive for justice, to face up to evil, sacrifices will have to be made, to the extent of losing close life-long friends, and even the love of his life, the beautiful Mazida.
Hagler has an unerring eye for detail. The Cape Flats comes alive under his writing.
The background is gritty, the action sometimes ultra-violent, as blood is spilt, limbs are shattered, lives are lost, leading to a riveting and intense climax.
This book does many things right and is an emerging, fresh new voice on the crime fiction scene.
It is an action-packed crime novel from start to finish, with traces of Don Pendleton’s Mack Bolan, Marvel Comics’ Punisher series, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, but with a massive dose of social conscience.
The main character is Iron, a former heavyweight boxing contender, now English teacher, who is trying to dampen a seething anger that has clouded his life ever since he could remember.
Iron has been trying to do the right thing ever since. Now at school, seemingly older and wiser, he discovers a young student Riaz Chohan is dealing in drugs. He confronts the youngster and his fellow cronies, in a move that will change his life forever.
From the desolate and desperate streets of the Cape Flats’ townships of Manenberg and Lavender Hill, to the plush houses of the rich and crooked gangsters living the high life in Wynberg and Constantia, Iron heads on a mission with his close friend Heed, a sleek fighting machine trained by MK and the Tuareg in the Libyan desert, on a mission to do the right thing.
The Minister is relentless and vicious, and Iron, to his consternation finds, yet again, within himself the same bloodlust that he so despises in his nemesis. He struggles to hold onto his convictions as a Muslim, and to look the other way by living the quiet life. But it is impossible. It is as if he knows he will not be able to do so, that to fight the good fight, to strive for justice, to face up to evil, sacrifices will have to be made, to the extent of losing close life-long friends, and even the love of his life, the beautiful Mazida.
Hagler has an unerring eye for detail. The Cape Flats comes alive under his writing.
The background is gritty, the action sometimes ultra-violent, as blood is spilt, limbs are shattered, lives are lost, leading to a riveting and intense climax.
This book does many things right and is an emerging, fresh new voice on the crime fiction scene.