Reading Matters (week 037) 9 Sept 2025

South Africa is crowded with serial murderers and rapists. Once arrested, how do the police get them to talk? I interviewed a detective who spoke gently, never raised a hand and treated them with dignity – Captain Jonathan Morris – who in some cases had them singing within hours.

South Africa is crowded with serial murderers and rapists.  Once arrested, how do the police get them to talk? I interviewed a detective who spoke gently, never raised a hand and treated them with dignity – Captain Jonathan Morris – who in some cases had them singing within hours.

Confessor Cop: The Detective Cop who Persuaded Killers to Talk’ (Kwela) told author Michael Behr his life story.  It includes details of the Sizzlers massacre murderers; spells out how Cape music legend, Taliep Petersen was murdered by his wife Najwa: and details how Morris had a 99 percent success rate in bringing dangerous, hardened killers to justice. An extraordinary man’s extraordinary 40 year career. Read it!

International bestseller, When the Cranes Fly South (Penguin Random House) by Lisa Ridzen is one of the most simple, yet powerful novels, on old age and approaching death I’ve yet read.

Set in Sweden, it’s about an old man being gently forced by a son, with whom he once had a dysfunctional relationship, to give up his beloved dog – a creature he loves more than anything on earth.  It’s a riveting, easy to read book, that will impact even your DNA.

Birds on the Brink (Penguin Random House) by ornithologist Alan Lee and conservationist Shamiso Banda, is what I call a soft-cover, hard-cover handsome book that looks at birds most at risk in South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini.

It’s devastating to learn how many of our beloved, feathered friends might soon become extinct.  I will return to this book in a future show.

Reading Matters with Sue Grant-Marshall