Karoo Dusk, by Johan Vlok Louw

Billy’s dragon tattoo will attract strange looks in the Karoo town his family now calls home. It’s difficult to blend in when your father’s the new police colonel and your mother’s strung out on pills and wine.

Before Billy meets Suzan, who makes him dream in a sideways world, the gangster Ou Joe’s roadside brothel provides strange comfort to truckers and curious youths alike. Ou Joe plans to leave a legacy before staging his final showdown with the cancer growing in his belly.

After a brutal night, the colonel sets Ou Joe’s place in his sights and Billy must take a stand when good and evil are yet to pick sides.

In the style of a modern western, Johan Vlok Louw’s novel is filled with youth, cars and guns. The book is an uppercut to the chin, its prose as evocative as the Karoo landscape of its setting.