Deon Meyer is a South African gem who, despite publishing in Afrikaans, is in danger of being more recognised outside these shores. Like Jan Smuts! He is rapidly becoming a highly respected thriller writer and to me has evolved considerably since 'Dead Before Dying', which was a fantastic debut, but 'Devils Peak' is his best, most mature work yet.

It is gripping. One can find crime fiction thrillers far more entertaining when you are reading of South African cities as opposed to downtown New York or Chicago. The caveat for this is that they have to be well written and South African-original. Not just transposing a lazy alcoholic PI who talks of ‘broads’ onto the Cape Flats.

Much has been made of the rise of crime fiction in South Africa and, in particular, the explosion of the past few years led by the likes of Meyer, Mike Nicol, Andrew Brown and Margie Orford. Meyer wrote originally in Afrikaans but has now found himself with an extensive international order book and translations into eleven languages. Brown won the 2006 Sunday Times Fiction Award with 'Coldsleep Lullaby', although the book did offer something beyond the norm of this genre with its part period setting in eighteenth century Stellenbosch.

But, like the majority of this genre in South Africa, 'Coldsleep Lullaby' did contain the mandatory booze sodden cop in Eberard Februarie. In fact so mandatory is it that Februarie even makes a cameo in Orford’s 'Blood Rose', set in Namibia, to afford us two alcoholic policemen in one book. Every cop protagonist has a drinking problem, even in Orford’s case when he is Moslem, refuses to eat pork but has the half jack of whisky in the top draw of his desk.

Few surpass Meyer’s Benny Griessel, though, who has drunk away his wife and kids, is the butt of every joke on the police force and, by all our accounts, should have been fired several times over.

I suppose therein lies the challenge facing these authors — that is to avoid the clichéd, largely American crime novels in a significantly different society. Sometimes you can be forgiven for thinking that this is too much of an Elmore Leonard or Ed McBain clone, which open with lines like "The city was hot."

The other issue, which is oft dealt with clumsily, is that of political correctness. All strive to be politically correct in a fashion that doesn't always reflect the realities of the society in which we live. I'm not sure how realistic that is, especially in the world of the South African police service.

So too the border between formula and cliché can be a very blurred one. The fourth estate, as formula dictates, often plagues Meyer’s heroes. And the irritated police superior giving our heroic, yet flawed, policeman one more chance is pretty standard stuff, as they say. We just lack the eventual, traditional, exacerbated request from the police captain to hand in his gun and his shield. It would be refreshing to see a police team working in harmony with the superior and foot soldier ad idem on the approach.

But my nitpicking aside, 'Devils Peak' is an outstanding read raising the standards of any crime thriller with a plot more original than most. There is a vigilante killer on the loose, but a vigilante who is also, oft, our hero. Meyer has written about former freedom fighter Thobela Mpayipheli before ('The Heart of the Hunter'), and again the reader has enormous sympathy with his plight.

He is on the vigilante trail (with the intellectually challenging nickname of Artemis)after his eight-year-old adopted son is gunned down in an armed robbery. Meyer relentlessly (and possibly too comprehensively) exposes the dark side of modern South African society with child rapes and murders, drug and human trafficking, epidemic-proportioned crime, and rampant corruption. Meyer does not in this novel overindulge his passion for BMW motorcycles.

Intriguing too, is the introduction of the middle-class prostitute as we see three initially separate, intriguing plots (with the three flawed heroes — Mpayipheli, Griessel and Christine van Rooyen) come together in a gripping, if inevitable climax. All three plots and characters hold up well. The tension is such that you want to skip pages to get to the ending which is surely the sign of a superb thriller.

The odd cliché aside, Meyer transports the genre brilliantly into South Africa and even if it has the occasional apocalyptic feel, it still feels and reads as being totally South African. I cannot wait for Meyer’s next work.