Finished
The Steam Pig by the late South African expat UK-immigrant author
James McClure, which is 1st in his Kramer & Zondi series starring cops in South Africa, and an award-winner back when it was published in 1971. This is currently one of Soho's $1.99 introductory specials and I started reading to see if I wanted to pick up the rest which are slightly higher price on discount sale, and I probably will, though some of it will be out of sheer morbid curiosity.
This actually does have a twisty, convoluted plot with a well-executed investigation in it and a strong sense of place, which makes full use of complicating elements that would probably only be possible in apartheid-era South Africa (or possibly the US Deep South in certain time periods). It's easy to see why it won the 1971 Gold Dagger Award.
It's also basically a time capsule of some rather glaringly retro racism (and sexism) both conscious due to the setting and I suspect unconscious due to common social attitudes of the time, contrasted with an attempt to present the Bantu sergeant Zondi as a capable, intelligent, and resourceful man who is a full partner in the investigations who also happens to be unfairly treated as a mindless dirty work-handling servant by pretty much every white around him (as are all the other black characters), even occasionally by his own investigative partner.
Anyway, this series apparently ran from the 1970s to the 1990s, and I'm curious as to how (or if) it changed in response to the changing times, and the
author's obituary over at the Grauniad says that one of the books was included on
The Times' list of 100 best crime novels of the century, and the lot of them are on sale, so I might as well get them and find out.