The survivor of a bank robbery gone bad flees the United States for Cape Town, South Africa, where he takes refuge with his pregnant wife and son and lives well off his loot -- until a couple of native gangsters invade his household and he is pulled into the sordid underbelly of the city, where life is cheap, short and brutal.

The result is "Mixed Blood," a first novel by Cape Town native Roger Smith, whose major characters include the fugitive couple and their domestic difficulties, a native ex-convict who sees too much as a night watchman, and an obese corrupt killer cop who represents the worst of both worlds.

It's an unpleasant book, and could be nothing else with its depiction of the dark side of what is often perceived as a glamorous city.

The reader will not expect things to work out well for any of the characters, and will be almost right. But the reader will also come away with a riveting portrait of this part of the world, and be drawn inexorably onward page by page to see how it all turns out.