Decisive by David Hickson (early reader books txt) 📕

determination to put his damaged past behind him, and to build a new life for himself despite his uncanny ability to see the corruption that surrounds him.

Treasonous is the first full-length book in the series and tells the story of Gabriel’s struggle to discover the truth behind allegations that the new president of South Africa might be a killer.

He turns to his erstwhile captain Chandler for help, discovers that he and Robyn have joined forces on a new venture, and Gabriel soon finds himself spiralling into a life of crime.

Sometimes the path to the truth is more than a little crooked!

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Author’s Note

Burkina Faso is a country that holds a special place in my heart. I travelled there for the FESPACO film festival in the early 2000s with a film I had directed called Beat the Drum. The city of Ouagadougou was as hot as an oven, dry and smothered with dust from the Sahara. I had a wonderful time at the film festival, inspired by the extraordinary enthusiasm that the people of Burkina Faso have for film and for stories in all forms.

The people that I met in Ouagadougou were so welcoming and friendly. They were proud of their city and their beleaguered, landlocked country. I thought to myself at the time that Ouagadougou was a place deserving of an entertaining and probably slightly crazy story. Something that captured the madness of post-colonial Africa.

The opening ceremony of the film festival was held at a huge football stadium and attended by tens of thousands of people. The incident mentioned by the character of Bibata in this short novella, in which several people were killed in the crush of the crowd, happened when I attended that opening ceremony. I will never forget that evening; the mingled emotions of enthusiastic passion for film, and the horror of the deaths. I had left the hotel in the company of several other filmmakers from around the world, and we were driven through the chaotic streets of Ouagadougou. No one seemed to have a clear understanding of which side of the road they should drive on. We arrived at the stadium to see the biggest crowd I have ever witnessed, all waiting to gain entrance to the stadium, which was being searched for bombs before the arrival of the country’s president. This was before the terrorist attacks that have occurred recently, but even then the country was no stranger to violence. I joined the outskirts of the crowd with my fellow filmmakers and observed from there the increasing impatience of the crowd to gain entrance to the stadium.

A dignitary arrived in a stretch Mercedes, and some kind of disturbance started at the front of the crowd. There was the sound of gunfire, and police in full riot gear fired teargas canisters and rubber bullets. The vast crowd scattered. It was an extraordinary experience; standing in that open space, the sound of gunfire, and the billowing smoke of the teargas. The only people not fleeing for their lives were foreigners. And the only reason for that was because we had little understanding of what was actually happening. I probably had a little more, having had teargas thrown in my direction several times when I was a student in South Africa. But I was standing beside a French filmmaker, and I did not want to abandon him. And so we stood and waited for the panic to settle.

The character of Bibata’s grandmother in this novella is inspired by a woman I met on my last day in Ouagadougou. My film had won several awards at the festival, and one of them was an honour from the government, a kind of ‘key to the city’, which was presented to me by a government dignitary in his office (which inspired the general’s office in this story). The dignitary presented the award and then held onto my hand in the African way, as he asked whether anyone had a camera. It turned out nobody did, and so he released my hand and we waited twenty minutes while someone went to find a camera. While waiting, the grandmother of one of the festival liaisons – mostly students and film enthusiasts who worked as tour guides and translators for the foreign filmmakers – came up to me. She said that my film would win many further awards. Over thirty awards, she said, which seemed fairly specific. I thanked her, and her granddaughter said I should celebrate: her grandmother was known to be able to see into the future. I didn’t take her comment seriously, but years later, after I had flown around the world to many further festivals with Beat the Drum, and the film had won over thirty international awards, I remembered that comment and wondered whether indeed the grandmother had seen into the future.

A little of the wonder that I discovered in the place and people of Ouagadougou inspired this story.

Also by David Hickson

Have you read them all?

Treasonous – The Gabriel Series – Book One

A journalist’s dead body is pulled from the waters of Cape Town harbour, and disillusioned ex-assassin Ben Gabriel wonders whether he died because of questions he was asking about the new president. Gabriel knows that sometimes it takes one killer to stop another, and will do anything to discover the truth, even if that means stepping outside the law.

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Murderous – The Gabriel Series – Book Two

When a massacre in a small country church shatters an Afrikaans farming community, the message that this is “only the beginning” sparks the fear of genocide. The Department asks Ben Gabriel to apply his unconventional approach to discover the truth behind the massacre – a task made more difficult by the intensive search to find a large number of gold bars stolen from one of the country’s most powerful men.

Get Murderous now

Vengeful – The Gabriel Series – Book Three

A series of prominent members of South African society are being brutally murdered. When the