Michael - Thursday
It’s hard
to believe that another year has reached its last month, but Christmas is
around the corner and the new year looms, no doubt with more problems and crises.
Before all that happens, I thought it would be good to look back on a selection
of African crime fiction from 2018. Some of you know that I write a monthly
piece called Africa Scene for the
International Thriller Writers online magazine The Big Thrill. It takes the form of an author interview (usually by
email) around her or his new book. The ‘rule’ is that the book needs to be a
mystery or thriller and set somewhere in Africa. I’m not claiming
that these are the ‘best’ such books of the year, but I do choose the ones I
think are good, and 2018 was a bumper crop. Rather surprisingly, only three of this
year’s authors are women, and despite my efforts to find more mysteries from
elsewhere in Africa, seven are set in South Africa, although only five of them
are by South African authors. (That’s fine, as long as the author knows the
country well enough to provide a strong sense of place.)
So here’s a
look back over the year. I strongly recommend all these novels, and if you’re
intrigued enough to want to find out more, I’ve included the link to the
original Africa Scene article. I hope
you’ll give at least one of these books a try, and enjoy a taste of African
Sunshine Noir!
January Sacrificed
by Chanette Paul (Congo, South Africa, Belgium)
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| Chanette Paul |
Sacrificed has a broad scope—starting in the Belgian
Congo in the sixties, the ripples of murder and the rape of the rich resources
of that country spread to South Africa and even to Belgium itself. Caz lives a
quiet, solitary life, having been rejected by her moralistic husband and family. Unexpectedly, she receives a
call from Belgium to say that the woman she thought was her mother is dying,
and wants to tell her the true story of her birth. Reluctantly she goes to Belgium and learns that the people she thought were her
parents were paid to bring her up by her real mother, who abandoned her at
birth. But while Caz searches for the truth about her past, others are
interested in her mother because of what she took with her from the Congo. The
fact that Caz responds to the phone call starts a chain of intrigue which threatens
all in her strange extended family.
The New
York Journal of Books said: “Sacrificed
places Chanette Paul among the classiest thriller writers of our day.” High praise indeed for her first novel in
English!
February The Inside-Out Man by Fred Strydom (South Africa)
The premise
of The Inside-Out Man is that a man is to be locked into a room in his house
for a year with absolutely no contact with the outside world, except having food
supplied through a slot in the door. It’s solitary confinement, but the twist
is that the rich, bored victim wants it, indeed is passionate about it. He
hopes to be able to find himself once all the world’s distractions are removed.
Then things go horribly wrong.
It’s really
impossible to pigeonhole this novel. It’s a psychological thriller, a mystery
and… Best read it and find out for yourself.
March Illegal
Holdings by Michael Niemann (Mozambique)
Michael Niemann’s
debut novel, Legitimate Business, featured
Valentin Vermeulen, a forensic investigator for the UN. It’s set against the arid
hopelessness of Zam Zam camp in Darfur. The sequel, Illicit Trade, addressed human trafficking from Kenya. Illegal Holdings is the third book in this
intriguing series. It takes place in Mozambique against the backdrop of the
vexed issue of land rights. Vermeulen is auditing a small aid agency, which has
apparently misappropriated five million dollars, but the corruption goes much
further than the missing money.
For over
thirty years, Michael has been interested ‘in the sites where ordinary people’s
lives and global processes intersect’, and he has travelled and written widely
about Africa and Europe as part of his academic work in International Studies.
April Sibanda
and the Black Sparrow Hawk by CM Elliot (Zimbabwe)
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| Gubu transport |
Inspector Jabulani
Sibanda is smart and dedicated, but he doesn’t have much to work with at his
small police station in Gubu in Matabeleland.
His boss is self-serving and uninterested in anything but his own
advancement, his assistant, Sergeant Ncube, is not the brightest and has his
mind mostly focused on his stomach and his three wives (in that order), and his
transport is an ancient Land Rover, lovingly cared for by Ncube. All of them
are fascinating and enjoyable characters.
The mysteries are clever and intriguing, too!
CM Elliott
has the perfect background for the series having spent forty years in Zimbabwe
with her game ranger husband pioneering a tourism business. She says she lived in
the Hwange National Park continuously for twenty years “in an assortment of tents, tree-houses
and assorted bush dwellings, dodging a hodgepodge of charging elephants, rhino,
buffalo and a rather angry spitting cobra” before moving to Bulawayo. Sibanda was optioned for a TV series this year.
May Apostle
Lodge by Paul Mendelson (South Africa)
 |
| View from Apostle Lodge |
Paul Mendelson’s
debut Vaughn de Vries thriller, The First
Rule of Survival, was described by Lee Child as: “An excellent,
uncompromising crime thriller made even better by its setting.”
Last year
the fourth in the series, Apostle Lodge,
came out. A group of boys discover the
body of a woman who seems to have been abused and then starved to death in an
empty house, Apostle Lodge. Because of
the circumstances, Vaughn immediately suspects that it’s not a single crime but
part of a series. He finds it hard to
attract the focus the crime deserves because a terrorist bomb blast has
recently shaken Cape Town and the police are hunting for the perpetrators. As
the cases progress, Vaughn finds himself sucked personally into both of them.
If you
think serial killer thrillers are formulaic, Apostle Lodge will change your mind. It’s a very different and
intriguing take on the subgenre. In my view this is the best book so far in an excellent
series.
June Steal a
Few Cents by Rupert Smith (South Africa)
 |
| Coal mine conveyor |
Mpho
Mamela, a young accountant for a coal mine, is found horribly mangled by a
massive conveyor belt that transports the coal. He had no reason to be in the
area, and what is at first accepted as a tragic accident starts pointing to a
homicide as Stephen Wakefield, the in-house lawyer, puts together the case for
the inevitable state enquiry. He discovers that Mpho’s lover was jailed for
‘stealing a few cents’, while Mpho himself seems to be involved with a senior
figure stealing a few millions.
Rupert
Smith spent 25 years as a successful corporate lawyer in Johannesburg before
joining a coal mining company as part of its senior management. By the time he
retired, he knew the mining industry from the inside – how things are supposed
to be; how they are presented publicly; and how they actually are. This is a
deep inside look at the mining industry, and an impressive debut.
July Our Fathers by Karin Brynard (South Africa)
 |
| Recovering a stolen vehicle |
Our Fathers is a book around big themes in South
Africa—the decay of family units, alienation by place as well as race, and
different views from different groups as to the relationship between races in
the country. The two
different stories in Our Fathers are
linked through Albertus Beeslaar, a captain in the South African Police
service. In the one, Beeslaar, who is on holiday in Stellenbosch, is sucked
into the vicious murder of the wife of a property magnate, and finds himself
supporting the investigation of a young and smart black woman detective. In the other, his previous girlfriend is
hijacked.
Karin
Brynard is one of South Africa’s best thriller writers in Afrikaans. It’s great
that her recent books can now find a wider audience in English.
August The Carnivorous City by Toni Kan (Nigeria)
 |
| Tailgating |
Abel Dike
leads a quiet life as a teacher in a regional town when he receives a brief
message that his brother, Soni, is missing. He knows that Soni is a
criminal—and a very successful one—and they have an ambivalent relationship,
but he immediately heads for Lagos to try to discover what has happened. He
takes on the carnivorous city. Although he moves into his brother’s mansion,
over the next few days he is exposed to the extremes of Lagos.
Toni Kan
lives in Lagos and has explored his city in poetry and short stories,
culminating with with this powerful novel.
September No Ordinary Killing by
Jeff Dawson (South Africa)
 |
| Cape Town circa 1900 |
No Ordinary Killing takes us to the Cape at the time of
the Boer War and seamlessly weaves a historical mystery and thriller. There are two interlinked threads. In
the one, Captain Ingo Finch – a doctor in the Royal Medical Corps – becomes
involved almost by accident in the investigation of the murder of his
commanding officer Major Cox in Cape Town on Christmas Eve. The other follows
Mbutu – a black man – who is dragooned into helping a mysterious lieutenant out
of Kimberley past the Boer siege. They see the war and its participants from
quite different perspectives, but their stories come together at Cape Town.
Jeff Dawson
is a well-known journalist and author of non-fiction. He is a long-standing
contributor to The Sunday Times Culture section. Turning his hand to crime
fiction has been no less successful.
October Madagascar
by Stephen Holgate (Madagascar)
 |
| Madagascar |
Robert
Knott is a diplomat at the US embassy in Antananarivo. He has spent his career
abroad, and has finally landed up in Madagascar. Having traded a drinking
problem for a gambling one, he is hardly the stereotype successful diplomat. Robert has
the unpleasant task of visiting Walt Sackett, who is being held in prison
essentially for ransom. The elderly man has an attractive young Malagasy
girlfriend Nirina and Robert dismisses her as a gold digger. Yet, she is
willing to do anything to help Walt. Walt and Nirina are the most sympathetic
characters in the book and the latter part of the story is their quest for
freedom. Much against his will, Robert finds himself sucked into their
problems.
I’ve
visited Madagascar and this is not an easy culture to weave into a book.
Stephen has done so with sympathy and affection, at the same time constructing
a dramatic thriller with rich characters and subtle humor. Publisher’s Weekly
–in a starred review—said: "Holgate has created a memorable lead character
and made Madagascar, where the 'implausible is not only possible, it is
mandatory,' palpable. Le Carré fans won’t want to miss this one." I have
no quarrel with that assessment!
November Absolution
by Paul Hardisty (Egypt)
 |
| Cairo |
Paul
Hardisty has made a name for himself with his powerful issue-driven thrillers
featuring Claymore Straker, a South African who discovered the horrible truth
behind South Africa’s war in Angola. In the first two novels The Abrupt Physics of Dying and The Evolution of Fear, we follow Straker
as he tries to find his way after those traumatic events. In Reconciliation for the Dead, he attempts
to resolve – unsuccessfully – his issues by relating his story to South
Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Absolution is the final book in the set, and Claymore has to find a
purpose to carry on. You can
read Absolution without reading the
other books first, but I’d be surprised if you don’t want to get your hands on
all of them.
December Sleeper
by Mike Nicol (South Africa)
Cool-cat
surfer Fish Pescado and his ex-spy girlfriend, Vicki Kahn, are back. The
minister of energy is murdered. His lover hires Fish to find the killer, but
then disappears herself. A much deeper game is going on, and one that sucks
Vicki back into her old profession. Spies, terrorists, a briefcase of enriched
uranium, and a sleeper all come to a head at a farm north of Cape Town.
 |
| Mike Nicol |
Mike Nicol
is the best stylist writing in the thriller genre in South Africa today – his machine-gun
language, tense plotting, and nice and nasty backdrop of Cape Town makes each
of his books impossible to put down. If you haven’t tried a South African
thriller, try Sleeper. You’ll be
hooked.
Posts
What a list! You’re one busy dude, and ITW’s members are lucky to have your column.
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