Jake Tromp's wife has left him. But he still has his guns. He makes do, operating as a private eye from a second-floor office, next to a prostitute's parlour. What else is an old South African to do in a new country? Tromp chooses his clients unwisely. Like the man who instructs him to kidnap a shady businessman's daughter. Only, is it the right girl Tromp and his fumbling assistant Frikkie capture? Soon they shackled with two kidnapped girls, one of whom is more street-savvy than Tromp and Frikkie put together. Not only does the sassy lass hit it off with Omo, her Nigerian keeper, she also starts managing her own kidnapping. From Florida her rich Cuban dady — believing Fidel Castro to be behind everyting — send two heavies to find his girl. Soon, Cubans are crawling all over Cape Town. Or are they? Tromp, who has been known to try as a few tricks of his own, condidently plays the two sides against each other. When he's hired to track down the very girls he kidnapped, life becomes really complicated. And when the police get wind of the whole thing, there's no end to the confusion. Tromp's Last Stand, a comical romp through the Cape Town underworld, is very unlike the conventional speeding, gun-toting, girl-grabbing crime novel. In these delightfully irreverent pages you should rather expect slow-motion car chases, raids that backfire and girls that don't want to be rescued.
