Short Synopsis
An amphetamine-fueled thriller about a bombshell American widow on the run in Cape Town's violent badlands—from a writer being compared to George Pelecanos and Richard Price.

Full Synopsis
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.

"Eyre chooses a cool matter-of-fact delivery that enhances the horror, and with a subtle shift of inflection she illuminates the softer moments, rare as they may be, to great emotional effect." ---Publishers Weekly Audio Review

"Violent, uncompromising, unflinching, Roger Smith's superb second Cape Town crime thriller...grabs you by the throat...and announces Smith as the new poet laureate of visceral, violent crime fiction." ---Dave Zeltserman, author of Small Crimes

"Smith keeps the pacing brisk.... A prime destination for [listeners] who like to detour from crime-fiction's beaten path." ---Booklist

"Highly recommended for those wanting their noir as hard-boiled as it gets." ---Library Journal Starred Review

"Roger Smith reaches another level of unrelenting Noir.... Dark and brutal, the novel has a focused, poetic style that stays with you long after you finish." ---Ken Bruen, author of The Guards

"The novel's flashbacks, narrative asides, and occasional political jabs, even the inflection of the characters' speech, contribute to a vivid sense of place." ---The Philadelphia Inquirer

"[A] stellar thriller.... Bad choices, not bad luck, drive human depravity in this brutal fable." ---Publishers Weekly Starred Review

Library Journal Review

Publishers Weekly Review