‘[Venter’s] crime threads are complex and nuanced, and her female characters are as richly rounded as male characters in thrillers usually are.’ – Cape Town ETC

MAN DOWN

In Irma Venter’s follow-up to the electric Hard Rain, Ranna Abramson returns home to the lion’s den to resurrect a long-dead past and save the man she loves.

Ranna Abramson wants to disappear.

But she knows she can’t keep running when a former enemy tracks her down in Mumbai with dire news: her onetime lover, journalist Alex Derksen, has disappeared back home in South Africa.

Torn between her desire for him and fear of a homecoming, Ranna knows she’s the only one who can find him. But only two things in South Africa would welcome her—the inside of a cell or the bottom of a grave. There, to the police she’s the prime suspect of three murders. To the press she’s the serial killer Black Widow.

Despite her instincts to stay away, Ranna makes the journey. But the key to finding Alex lies in her painful past. And to uncover it, she’ll need to unravel a web of secrets tied to a long-forgotten crime.
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Even if she finds Alex before it’s too late, Ranna must answer for past sins…or risk losing him forever.

Also available as an audio book at Audible.com
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HARD RAIN

Journalist Alex Derksen’s new assignment in Tanzania should be easy, but he soon finds himself on the wrong side of the news. It starts when he meets Ranna, a beautiful photographer with something to hide. Alex stopped believing in love a long time ago, yet here in the middle of East Africa, it’s found him again.

Alex knows a thing or two about chaos—wherever he goes, it follows. When an IT billionaire washes up onshore after seasonal flooding, he finds himself at the center of an investigation with Ranna as the main suspect. It turns out she may have a good reason for hiding her past.

Wherever she goes, murder follows.

Alex should be used to these cat-and-mouse games, but this time it’s different. Should he listen to his heart and help Ranna throw off the bloody trail leading to her? Or should he use his head and run for his life?
 
Hard Rain is the first book in the Rogue series. The second book is expected in April, 2021.

Also available as an audio book at Audible.com
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BLUE SUNDAY

Christmas Eve. Three people vanish without a trace. 
Captain AJ Williams is investigating a break-in at the Stables Estate in Pretoria East. Well-known businessman Lafras van Zyl is left for dead and his family has disappeared.

After six long weeks there are still no clues.
Journalist Alex Derksen and photographer Ranna Abramson are on the trail of seventeen-year-old Martina Buitendag. She went missing in Johannesburg and all that's left behind is a worn suitcase with R20 000 and a handful of family photographs.

The City of Gold can be a dangerous place.
Two crimes, too many secrets.

CIRCUS

It's the eighties in Johannesburg. Adriana van der Hoon is 18.

Her father, an anti-apartheid activist and Dutch citizen, smuggles money for the ANC using a non-profit trust as a front. But then things change . . . and suddenly South Africa's security police blackmails Adriana into following the money trial from Berlin to Johannesburg. As political change sweeps across Europe and South Africa, Adriana acquires a new skills set, a lover and an enemy.