Dark Video sequel on the way
The long awaited sequel to Dark Video (Umuzi), ‘Black Mark’, has been delivered to the publishers, though the release date has not been finalised. Peter Church was ‘KGB’ about the content matter, but disclosed that it involves a Cape Town businessman (someone in our midst) who is utilising the services of an underground network of barmen (the Mickey Finn Club) to procure the services of unwitting young female students. Dark Video, released by New Holland in Australia, has struck a chord with local readers, according to the following review in the Sydney Morning Herald.
DARK VIDEO by Peter Church ( New Holland)
Readers appalled by recent revelations about university life will understand what South African novelist Peter Church means when he says of his novel Dark Video that its events could just as easily take place at the University of Sydney
or UCLA: “I wanted to write an international story but with a South African setting.”
It’s a tale of greed and amorality, whose theme is privilege and the damage that the privileged can do not only to other people but also to themselves. A gang of four “bad boy” students from a university college in Cape Town set up a scenario in which a fellow student is terrified; they record the scene and send the footage to a man who runs a thriving international business in online hardcore porn and snuff movies, in which the “money shot” is the victim’s expression of terror. Things progress, or regress, from there. Church is particularly good at group dynamics and the moral hazards of lifelong privilege. It’s a horribly unpleasant but gripping thriller with a brilliant twist at the end.
