Reading Matters (week 035) 26 Aug 2025

The occult. Satanism. Topics which so often make us sit up and listen.  Author and Wits University professor, Nicky Falkof in The Devil Made Me Do It (Penguin) tells me that South Africans, fearful, confused and living as we are in a sea of crime and uncertainty, blame it on the devil.

In this easy to read book she investigates, inter alia, the Krugersdorp cult killings of 2012, the muti murder of a girl (6) and the satanic panic that gripped SA in the 1990s.  She analyses why police divisions were created specially to confront satanism. Intriguing and horrifying.

Taylor Jenkins Reid’s new book Atmosphere (Penguin) set in space, with women astronauts struggling to get a foot in the door at 1980s Nasa, is spellbinding. Reid spent months at Nasa researching a novel that’s gripping in its intensity and adherence to facts.  Don’t miss this one.

There are thrillers and crime books and then there’s Not Quite Dead Yet (Penguin) by Holly Jackson.  She writes that the hardest murder to solve is your own. Jet Mason is attacked from behind, resulting in horrendous brain injury, giving her seven days to find out who wants her dead.  Unputdownable.

SA author Marita van der Vyver and her French husband sold everything they owned after Covid and set out to travel the world. My Year of Fear and Freedom (Tafelberg) could make you want to do the same.

Reading Matters with Sue Grant-Marshall