Without question one of the year’s most ambitious, suspenseful, tightly controlled and expertly executed novels . . . Lucius is a Cape Town Raskolnikov . . . In a dizzyingly dazzling complication of before and after, Winkler implicates the reader as judge, jury and executioner in a wider set of criminal entanglements, both forging intense sympathy for the troubled Lucius, and forcing the reader to consider whether this disaffected man is capable of much greater, more disturbing acts of violence . . . Winkler’s lean, lithe sentences ripple with allusive intensity and gritty detail.