Shadow City by Natalie Conyer

Title: Shadow City

Author: Natalie Conyer

Genre: Crime

Publisher: Echo Publishing

Published: 3^rd September 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 368

Price: $32.99

Synopsis: Every city casts a shadow, where evil flourishes.

Sydney, Australia: The body of a young woman is found in Chinatown. She’s been beaten, tortured – and tattooed with the image of a sun. Called to the scene, Sergeant Jackie Rose asks herself whether this was a drug murder, or something else. But before her investigation can get under way, she is ordered to hand the case over to the Australian Federal Police. 

 Cape Town, South Africa: A local girl recruited to study in Australia has fallen off the radar. Veteran detective Schalk Lourens – recently suspended from duty – has already made plans to visit his daughter in Sydney, with emigration in mind. He decides to search for the missing girl while he is there. 

 Jackie and Schalk join forces, exposing a trail of corruption and crime stretching from the foreshore of the city’s iconic harbour, back to South Africa and across the world. 

 Together the pair must navigate a minefield of deceit and manipulation set by an enemy more powerful and depraved than they can imagine. And failure isn’t an option, because not only their own futures, but those of hundreds of vulnerable young people, hang in the balance.

Shortlisted for the 2025 Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction

Shortlisted for the 2025 Danger Award for Crime Fiction

~*~

Sergeant Jackie Rose has been tasked with investigating the death of a young woman. She’s been murdered after being beaten and tortured, and has been found in Chinatown. Jackie is keen to get started, yet she has to hand things over to the AFP before she can start because there’s a connection that makes things much harder.

Over in Cape Town, veteran detective Schalk Laurens has been suspended from duty, and is ready to go visit his daughter in Sydney. But he’s drawn into a mystery, were a local girl has been recruited to study in Australia, but things seem dubious. Ad in his discussions with his friends in Cape Town, they’re talking about safety, crime in South Africa and how it has changed since the days of apartheid, reflecting on the role that racism has played in South Africa’s history.

When I first read the separate sections, I did wonder how they two police would meet each other, and how they would end up working together. But it delivered an interesting angle involving slavery and human trafficking, and finding a new place to live and be part of a family who now lives so far away from you. The mystery connects Cape Town and Sydney well, toying with the role of international students in our university ecosystem, and what happens when dubious companies take advantage of students like Alina, making them promises and then forcing them into a life of servitude. It’s not something that a lot of people know about, nor may they think about it these days. Slavery to many people is a thing of the past, yet the echoes of slavery systems still exist. It’s just that people have found new ways to exploit people and hide it.

These themes highlight the impact of poverty, sex trafficking, and how the shadows of apartheid have affected people and generations. It brings racial tensions into the novel, showing that there are lots of tensions still, and many reasons for people leaving South Africa. This side story builds on Schalk’s story and motivations as well.

But in the end, it’s about how Schalk and Jackie navigate bureaucracy, deceit and deception in Sydney’s underbelly, a world that nobody would ever really have thought existed. It’s hidden, but look a bit deeper and into the shadows, and it’s there. Both have their lives and their jobs on the line, which helps to drive the novel and maintain the tension. And there’s always a threat lingering. A threat to their lives, a threat to their jobs, and a threat to the hundreds of girls who are in danger, and who have been drawn into a dark world that they didn’t think would be there when they agreed to study in Sydney.

I was pulled along, wanting to find out what happened next, and wanting to get to the bottom of what was going on. It was compelling, and intriguing, getting everything balanced well with a great diverse cast, and themes that I feel are often not explored in fiction, because they are uncomfortable topics. Topics that people don’t really want to talk about or acknowledge for a range of reasons.

But it’s also a story about how even the shiniest cities have evil smouldering beneath the glitz and glitter. Beneath the fun and everything that everyone recognises about it. Everything in the novel is used well and plotted well to create a story that has lingering questions about the things we don’t know about, the things that are hidden, and the harsh truths that reveal something about the places we live.