Proving that South African apartheid could produce both international outrage and supernatural-tinged murder mysteries starring jowly character actors, City Of Blood follows a Johannesburg coroner (Joe Stewardson) as he probes a series of prostitute-clubbings that may or may not be tied to an ancient tribal rite. The sub-Saharan Quincy, whose investigation is occasionally slowed by the ghost of his wife, is soon puzzled even further when a blank death certificate appears on his desk. A pair of government agents, while attempting to coax him into signing it, reveal that it's intended to cover up the interrogation murder of a black activist, arguing that his true cause of death, if revealed, would lead to uprisings and senseless death. Torn between following his best intentions and caving into pressure from the government (including the prime minister and some hired thugs), Stewardson naturally turns to the quarter of society guaranteed to provide comfort: paranoid, tough-talking streetwalkers. Initially seeking clues to the murders, he later enters a relationship with Susan Coetzer founded on the bedrock of paid sex and terse conversation. But will it be enough to pull him back from the edge after he learns the horrible truth behind the 10,000-year-old skull of a murder victim who seemed to have been slain in precisely the same fashion as the dead prostitutes? The answer--which follows on the heels of more ghosts, more threatening government forces, and a spear-wielding man in a big scary mask--turns out to be "no."
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