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    Wake Up Dead: A Thriller
    Wake Up Dead: A Thriller
    Wake Up Dead: A Thriller
    Audiobook8 hours

    Wake Up Dead: A Thriller

    Written by Roger Smith

    Narrated by Justine Eyre

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A split-second decision with no second chance: get it wrong and you wake up dead.

    On a blowtorch-hot night in Cape Town, American ex-model Roxy Palmer and her gunrunner husband, Joe, are carjacked, leaving Joe lying in a pool of blood. As the carjackers make their getaway, Roxy makes a fateful choice that changes her life forever.

    Disco and Godwynn, the ghetto gangbangers who sped away in Joe's convertible, will stop at nothing to track her down. Billy Afrika, a mixed-race ex-cop turned mercenary, won't let her out of his sight because Joe owed him a chunk of money. And remorselessly hunting them all is Piper, a love-crazed psychopath determined to renew his vows with his jailhouse "wife," Disco.

    As these desperate lives collide and old debts are settled in blood, Roxy is caught in a wave of escalating violence in the beautiful and brutal African seaport. With savage plotting and breakneck suspense that ends in a shattering cataclysm of violence, Wake Up Dead confirms Roger Smith as one of the world's best new thriller writers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 8, 2010
    ISBN9781400186297
    Wake Up Dead: A Thriller
    Author

    Roger Smith

    Roger Smith is Senior Lecturer in the History of Science at Lancaster University, England. He is the author of Trial by Medicine: Insanity and Responsibility in Victorian Trials (Edinburgh, 1982) and co-editor (with Brian Wynne) of Expert Evidence: Interpreting Science in the Law (Routledge, 1989).

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    Reviews for Wake Up Dead

    3.5/5

    78 ratings27 reviews

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    • 2/5
      The book was good, but it is not for everyone. The story itself was great and well told. However, if you don't like gritty, graphic story telling you might not want to read this. I found I had a hard time reading this in one sitting. I read it and had to put it down many times. I am glad that I read the book and finished it. At times when I was reading the book I wondered if like in South Africa is as bad as the book made it out to be.
    • 1/5
      [Wake Up Dead] needs burying. The book world doesn’t need another thriller, laced with foul language, blood, and graphic violence, hoping to garner praise as “gritty” or “visceral.” Good thrillers are grounded in reality. And good, gritty noir writing subtly exposes the darkness of the human soul. [Wake Up Dead] is neither realistic nor subtle.Billy Afrika, a mercenary capable of the inhuman feat of knocking out 400 push-ups every morning, hits his home-town streets of Cape Town, South Africa, in search of Joe Palmer, a gun-runner who owes him money. Roxy, Joe’s wife, ruins any chance for Billy to collect when she shoots Joe between the eyes, using a gun left behind when she and Joe are car-jacked. The car-jackers, Disco and Godwynn, are none too happy to be pinned with a murder they didn’t commit, and they set out to exact revenge on Roxy, or at least earn a little more money from her. The pimple ridden detective investigating the murder, Ernie Maggott, suspects Roxy is the killer and begins haunting her. Billy, still hoping to cash in, signs on as Roxy’s one-man, personal security detail, trying to protect her from all of them. These characters feel like they were pulled from a 1980s B-movie that loops late night on free cable. Even the character names scream midnight, drive-in movie popcorn. The dizzying plot turns will make your head spin, until the last few pages, where the finale threatens downright whiplash. The prose of the book matches the fantasy and cheese of the plot and characters. Women are found “battling jeans that sliced into her flesh like a delicatessen blade into cold cuts.” Another clothing war was alliteratively described this way, “The bottle blonde battled brutally tight” jeans. Comparing people’s skin or body parts also seems to be a favorite, so that one character had “brown skin tinged gray like meat gone rancid” and another had “skin the color of strong tea left to stand.” At some point, Roxy notices two men staring at her with eyes “like oily kalamata olives.”To be fair, I know how hard it is to tell a story, how difficult it is to put words to paper. I frequently hear stories about struggling writers, endlessly sending manuscripts to editors and agents only to be met with an equally endless string of rejection notices. But I can’t recommend this book to anyone. I wouldn’t have made it past the first ten pages if I hadn’t promised to write a review. 1 bone!
    • 3/5
      For those of you who enjoy a fast, coarse, morally cryptic story this will be the book for you. For me; not so much. I guess I’m just the eternal optimist that expects good to overcome evil. Of course that doesn't always happen. This certainly does NOT leave you with that “feel good feeling”.
    • 4/5
      Very good thriller set in present-day South Africa, which appears to be, if this story and its characters are any indication, nearly unpoliceable. Two other Smith Cape Town thrillers were published after this one. I've read neither, but based on the quality of Wake Up Dead, I'm going to re them
    • 4/5
      This one is not for the faint of heart, Its set in the brutal world of South Africa and I am not sure there is a good guy in the whole book. A simple car jacking sets off a chain reaction with lethal results for everyone. Smith is an excellent writer and though its an ugly story, he brings it alive. I'm not sure enjoyable is the right word but its a worthy read.
    • 4/5
      Beyond hard-boiled - This brutal thriller set in the Cape Town Flats of South Africa is an uncensored view of poverty, gang violence, drugs, corruption, greed and racial disparity. Two gangbangers from the Flats out to score some easy cash stumble upon Roxy and Joe Palmer. Roxy is an ex-model who has been living off her looks and as they fade so has her easy lifestyle. Her current husband is a "private security broker" with a drinking problem, a bad temper, and worse friends. The couple drive a nice car, they eat in expensive restaurants, and they live in a very exclusive neighborhood behind locked gates. They are the perfect targets for Disco and Godwyn the meth heads that followed them home.Billy Afrika is also from the Flats. A former gang member and ex-cop turned mercenary he has just returned from Bagdad where he was fired after being injured on the job. Billy is determined to collect his back wages, a cool $30,000, from his ex-employer Joe Palmer. Billy has a long history with the Flats mostly scars, bad memories, and broken promises and he also has a few vicious enemies including Piper a lifer at Pollsmoor maximum security prison. Piper has brought the Flats with him to prison and he has his own plans which revolve around Disco and Billy. The opposite ends of his obsession -love and hate - Disco and Billy don't stand a chance when this ruthless killer breaks out of jail. Bad decisions, old crimes, greed and revenge spiral out of control in this unflinching crime thriller from Smith. So raw and relentless you'll love it or hate it. Absolutely guaranteed to make you cringe.
    • 4/5
      This book is beyond gritty, it is razor-edged gravelly. Set in (exotic to me) South Africa it is a very quick-paced, multi-player tale of mercenaries, cops- good, bad and deluded, an American ex-model trophy wife longing for a child and charcters whose childhoods were so nightmarish I can't imagine how they have survived this long. If I hadn't previously seen a show on the gangs in South Africa's Pollsmoor prison it might not have had the same impact, but I couldn't put it down. Definitely not for the squeamish but a fascinating glimpse of a world very different and uneasily the same. I could see the South African Tourist Board trying to get this suppressed for its unflattering portrayal.
    • 1/5
      This novel based in South Africa, which has even been marketed as noir, is more a violent action thriller. The book includes eye-opening violence, approaching the type of stark examples one might find in a memoir of genocidal African violence.The book starts haltingly and follows the intertwining stories of a former American model who has migrated to being married to a gangster and the journey of a recently returned mercenary who is owed money by the gangster husband.Grisly portrayals of the slums, crime, prison life and various gangsters and alcoholics pepper the murderous travails of both as they are trying to find money, safety, security, and staying alive. Overall, the book fits together and is not terrible, but hasn't decided whether it is a statement on the conditions in poor South Africa or it is an action thriller.
    • 3/5
      A thriller, quite brutal and bloody, a bit more than I'm used to in this type of book. I expect it in a horror novel, but not always in this type of book. Wasn't a poorly written book, but not sure I'll come back to Smith. Just not enough to make me want to come back. If you like gritty writing, then you'll probably enjoy it, but I guess I could have passed.
    • 4/5
      I don't normally comment on the books I read but this one prompts me to do so. It's graphically brutal. It's no surprise it's written by a screenwriter because the book seems like a series of violent vignettes. Wake Up Dead would easily make a movie but I couldn't bear to see the violence, blood and gore described in the book's pages. I'm wondering if life in Cape Town is REALLY as horrible as depicted in Wake Up Dead. My husband quotes an unknown source as saying" South Africa is the most dangerous country in the world not officially at war." Despite all the book's violence, it kept me enthralled and the ending really worked for me.
    • 3/5
      One word...gritty. This novel is not the typical thriller/crime mystery you might be used to. Get ready for some in-your-face gore along with some fast paced and disturbing scenes. However, the story was well told. Anyone who can handle an author who teeters the line on graphic storytelling will actually enjoy this hard-nosed tale that takes place and is portrayed in a dark and gloomy South Africa. This was definitely not the norm for me, but I was expecting much worse from previous reviews. Not that bad after all.
    • 3/5
      "Wake Up Dead" is a dark and gritty noir by Roger Smith. Set in Cape Town, South Africa, the thriller focuses on former model Roxy Palmer, originally from the U.S. and now married to gunrunner and abuser Joe. The couple is carjacked, Joe is shot and Roxy makes a life-changing decision.Smith grips readers with his unblinking look at life in the streets and behind bars in South Africa. From prison "wives" to drugs and murder, Smith gives readers a glimpse at a way of life that is totally foreign to most people.Smith's characters are intense and colorful. Since it's a noir, there is a lot of blood and violent death involved. Swearing is rampant.I would recommend this book to anyone with a stomach for a gritty noir.
    • 2/5
      Wake Up Dead by Roger Smith begs to be made into a large-budget, famous-name cast, blockbuster motion picture, and I wholeheartedly look forward to that motion picture. It may not be a long wait. Mr. Smith's first book, Mixed Blood, has already been optioned for a movie staring Samuel L. Jackson.In book form, however, Mr. Smith's Hollywood style pacing becomes tiring. There is only plot, plot, and more plot. There are no actors here to fill in the scant characterization or cinematographers to fill in the setting. The proportions of the book are so carefully balanced that it's difficult to pinpoint who the main characters are before you reach the end, and see who's still breathing. I guessed wrong, and was disappointed. I would have liked to see substantially more detail about the promising South African setting, which was what attracted me to this book in the first place.Most of Mr. Smith's characters swear like adolescent boys trying to prove they're men. I've worked in a prison, a livestock company, and a modern elementary school, so I'm fairly thick-skinned, but at one point, the repetition became so distracting that I finally did the math: roughly three to four percent of the words in this book are profanities. The choice of profanities has an oddly Americanizing affect on the book, and detracts from a sense of place. A "bloody" stands out amongst a sea of "fuckens." Even more distracting is the fact that the female characters—a charming assortment of cops' wives, whores, and kept women—somehow manage to be more lady-like, so the habit never really fades into the background.With all of its problems, Wake Up Dead is like wading through tar. You may be in any number of exotic places, and you may meet some fascinating people, but in the end, you just want out.I'd wait for the movie.
    • 3/5
      If you have a weak stomach, this book is not for you.Wake Up Dead is probably the most violent, bloody, gore-splattered book I’ve read in ages, and that’s really saying something. A gang war in Cape Town, South Africa’s ghettos provides the setting and the gang-bangers, drug lords, junkies and an honest-to-goodness cannibal provide the action.On a steamy night in Cape Town, Roxy and Joe Palmer have dinner with a cannibal and his Ukranian whore. On the way home, they’re carjacked. Joe is shot in the leg and, in a panic, the carjackers drop the gun and take off in Joe’s car. What Roxy does next will cause more bloodshed than she can possibly imagine.Joe is dead and Roxy is being blackmailed by the carjackers, Goddy and Disco. Disco spent a few years in prison where he became the “wife” of Piper — crazy, bloodthirsty, uber-violent convict who will never set foot outside the walls of Pollsmoor Prison…unless it’s to bring his “wife” home.Read my complete review here.
    • 2/5
      I tried really hard to like this book. From the start, it seemed similar to the style of other authors I enjoy, like Charlie Huston. What Huston does that Smith can't pull off, however, is the fast-paced action with characters that you care about. "Wake Up Dead" is full of characters, but I just couldn't connect to any of them. Where characters in a Huston book are sleek and cool and funny, Smith's just felt flat on the page. Now, it may not be fair to compare the two, I'll admit. But because I didn't care what happened to any of the characters, I found myself having to really TRY to finish the book. To me, a novel has failed if you are taken out of the story and are not fully immersed in the world. It might be to other peoples tastes, but I couldn't bring myself to finish it. I made it about 130 pages in and skipped to the end to see what would happen. As a librarian by profession, I try to keep up on fiction for readers advisory purposes, so in doing that I try to complete every book I start. It's the rare occasion that I don't finish one, and "Wake Up Dead" is the first in a while. Two stars.
    • 4/5
      This thriller is one that keeps you up, and reading to the end! Set in South Africa, Roxy, an American model, and Joe, her gunrunner husband, a man with very unsavory friends, are carjacked, leaving Joe dead in a pool of blood. Disco and Godwyn, the carjackers, are meth addicts, who have no idea what they've gotten into. Joe owes money to Billy Afrika, a mercenary, and former policeman, who appoints himself Roxy's protector, hoping to cash in and get his money from her. Also thrown into the powder keg, is Piper, a convict doing several life sentences, who wants nothing more than to be reunited with his prison "wife" Disco.South Africa is like so many countries, divided into the "haves" and the "have nots". The grinding poverty is shown in great detail, along with the corruption and despair, that seems to hang in the air.All the ins and outs make for one exciting and unforgettable story that will make you think about what you might do, either the same or differently, in the same circumstances. I look forward to reading Roger Smiths other novel, "Mixed Blood".I received this book from Library Thing Early Reviewers.
    • 5/5
      This was a great thriller. The unique collections of characters kept me on my feet and the twists and turns never stopped. While this book was pretty violent and graphic, as far as fist-clenching, edge of your seat, action thrillers go...this one would be in the top 10.
    • 4/5
      An excellently developed story on many fronts. The author provides a competent dive into the south african drug life, prison system, and political corruption and weaves in the story of five major characters seamlessly.The character development is timely and unrushed, unlike many authors today who feel the need to give you a characters whole back story in teh first chapter, the author slowly reveals the layers to the main players just in time for you to need the information relate to what is happening and being said.
    • 3/5
      To use the term "gritty" for this hardboiled South African tale would employ gross understatement. The sense of despair in the circumstances of the characters' lives, as well as the great crulety and bloodlust of the villain(s) make this book an uncomfortable read, at best. And yet for all that, it was, to use a clichè, compelling.Opening with a car-jacking that leaves a gun dealer dead and his ex-model wife entering a new stage in her life, Smith swiftly ratchets up the suspense by introducing Billy Africa, a mercenary owed money by the dead gunrunner. Determined to get his money, which he uses to support the family of his late police partner, whose killer Billy let live, he finds the wife and sets about trying to collect. BUt the carjackers have unfinished busines with her, too, and they come looking. Then, add in the prison-break of the psychotic killer who had killed Billy's partner (and had tried to kill Billy, himself, when they were kids), and the stage is set for a bloody rampage where fun is had by all.Seriously, this book is not for the squeamish, but for those who can take it, it drives relentlessly to a (sort-of) conclusion.
    • 5/5
      I was a little taken aback when I first started this book, but this book dragged me deep into the world that was illustrated within this book. I have been broadening my horizons on the books that I read and I enjoyed this book immensely. It was a quick read, a fast-paced, ever changing, thriller that really actually kept you on the edge of your seat the whole time. I didn't have a slow moment within this book like in some - there really was none. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes thrillers, murder mysteries, strange happenings, however if you are a squeemish type person, I would not recommend this to you - I am not a squeemish person but I do have to say that I cringed a couple times with in this book but it was one of the best that I have read. The characters just come to life and I had all of them pictured in my mind even though there isn't much description of them - the occurances with in the book really create what you are looking at and the character of the people in the book. It was fantastically written even though I had an uncorrected copy of it there were very few mistakes and there may have been some that I was unaware of due to the slang with in the book - great read. I may have to read Roger Smith's other book - I would also like to thank the author for providing this to me to review. I noticed that others gave this book only a few stars - I had to give it five stars - it was that good - how many books can you say move you through them at the speed of a movie and keep you on the edge of your seat to see what happens next without giving some of it away - not many that I have read. Impeccable.
    • 3/5
      "When you took a life, you lost some form of protection you didn't even know you had until it was gone. Left you in a place where bad people started tuning in to your frequency."To me, this quote summarizes the theme of this book. All the characters have lost or given up a piece of their humanity, whether from greed or desperation. No adult is innocent, no child is safe.Fans of action movies will enjoy this. It moves from violent scene to violent scene with little introspection to slow the narrative. The violence and foul language seem right in this context, I can't imagine these characters acting any other way. I received an ARC of this book through the Early Reviewer program.
    • 3/5
      This brutal, violent thriller offered an interesting peek into a world I knew nothing about - drug/class/race warfare in Cape Town, South Africa. Smith does a great job portraying the various players in this story, few of whom have any redeeming characteristics. They are all liars, thieves, drug dealers, and murderers; however, through the book we come to know their backgrounds and understand their motivations. In this world, good does not win over evil. The victors left standing at the end are those who dodged bullets, watched the other idiots make more mistakes, and ultimately got lucky. It's an exciting, fast, gritty, morally ambiguous tale and a satisfying read. Just don't expect to feel good about it.
    • 3/5
      This is a fast-paced book set in Cape Town, South Africa. It starts out as the story of Roxy Palmer but quickly expands to include two car-jackers ... then drug dealers, cops, former cops, and numerous innocent bystanders. The story is very fast and very violent. In a way it reminds me of A Simple Plan (by Scott D. Smith) ... where the action starts with a single decision and then spirals quickly out of control.Overall, I enjoyed the book and finished it in only a couple of sittings. The blood and violence get to be a bit much at times ... but ultimately I wanted to know how it ended.Note: I received this book as part of LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program.
    • 2/5
      Set in the squalid, racially-tense environment of the Capetown Flats, Roger Smith’s new novel revels in violence and vulgarity. There are really no redeemable characters in the book (save the boy, who is more pitiable than anything). Most of them wind up dead anyway in this page-turning bloodbath. And those who survive – maybe they shouldn’t have. The “heroes” all had their own death toll.I would have liked the book a little more had the vulgarity of the characters (which may or may not have been over-the-top, Smith was advised on local flavor) didn’t carry on into Smith’s prose. It is one thing to for base language to be part of characters who simply are that, quite another to extend it to narrative. I still probably wouldn’t have found much value in the story, but at least I wouldn’t have been angry with how the write chose to tell it.
    • 3/5
      The descriptions of South Africa and its crime ridden neighborhoods make this book worth reading. The South African setting is intriguing and well detailed. However, despite the the nonstop action in this thriller, the characters are all so flawed it is hard to care. Overall the novel is too much of a downer to be recommended.
    • 4/5
      Not for the faint of heart. Roger Smith's descriptions of violence and desperation are vivid and disturbing. Money and love are the motivators for the characters, each one searching for one or the other or both. The reason I gave this four stars instead of five is because I don't think it's a book you can read over and over again, which to me is a compliment-it means it sticks with you, like it or not.
    • 4/5
      Looking for a page-turning crime thriller? Wake Up Dead is violent crime story, full of bad people doing bad things.With a book title like that you shouldn’t be expecting puppies, ponies and rainbows.Two meth addicts on the streets of Cape Town decide to carjack a Mercedes. They pull ex-model Roxy and her husband out of the car and shoot him in the leg, leaving behind the gun in their meth-induced haze. Roxy decides on a quicky divorce and uses the gun to end her marriage. “Till death us do part.”That opening leads us through the steamy underbelly of Cape Town, South Africa. The action is unrelenting as Roger Smith peels back the story like the layers of an onion. The story drives you forward as each vignette has you wondering where it will take you next. The characters are interesting enough to keep you involved. None of the characters are likeable. Each is deeply flawed, if not down-right psychopathic.This is Smith’s second book. His first, Mixed Blood, has been optioned as a movie. Reading Wake Up Dead, it felt like a Guy Ritchie movie. Criminals coming together because a misfortune of events pulls them together. The murder and mayhem ensues.The publisher provided me with a copy of the book in the hopes that I would review the book. It was very good, so I am willing to spread the word. The book goes on sale February 2.If Wake Up Dead sound interesting, you can also read read the first chapter of Wake Up Dead (.pdf) on the Roger Smith Books website.