South African Crime Fiction in the Wide World

Michael - Thursday

We've had a couple of very interesting pieces around mystery fiction writing this week, and it made me want to weigh in on the South African crime fiction front.  When I thought about it, I realized that a piece Stanley and I had written as an afterword to a collection of South African mystery short stories summed it up pretty well - or at least as well as I was going to do from scratch. Furthermore, the collection was never distributed outside South Africa so most people probably haven't seen the piece before. So I thought I would update it and present it here.

Alexander McCall Smith at home

Over the last fifteen years there has been an explosion of authors writing contemporary crime fiction in South Africa.  How have readers elsewhere in the world reacted to this new and rich perspective on the country?  We have great writers and a few have made the breakthrough into the international arena.  No easy feat with book markets shaky everywhere.  Our previous US editor, bemoaning less than stellar sales, told us that Americans aren’t interested in Africa or South America.  But can that be true?  Look at the remarkably popular No1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series.  Surely it is the strong sense of place and culture, as well as the good feelings generated by a simpler and more predictable world, that has made Mma Ramotswe an international favorite.  Alexander McCall Smith was born in Zambia, spent several years in Botswana, and his first book was published in South Africa.  So he is an African author writing about Africa, even though now he lives in Scotland.

 The UK has deep historical ties with Africa in many ways, and one of them is crime fiction.  Among the earliest mysteries set in Africa were those of Elspeth Huxley’s Kenya series.  The first serious attempt to focus on South Africa using crime fiction was James McClure’s Kramer and Zondi series written from England during the apartheid years.  (The books have recently been reissued by Soho Crime.)

James McClure

Although McClure was born in Johannesburg, he wrote his books some time after he’d emigrated to England.  Why did he choose the crime novel as a vehicle to display the situation in South Africa?  McClure had this to say about it in a 1988 interview: “I wanted to write about South Africa in a context which would allow South Africa to become incidental to the story.  Which doesn’t mean it isn’t very much part of the story.  Unlike some other writers about South Africa, I try to make sure that the action is peculiar to that environment and arises out of it.” 

The Song Dog

His series of novels is set in a fictitious town called Trekkersburg and revolves around the exploits of Lieutenant Tromp Kramer and his assistant, Bantu Detective Sergeant Mickey Zondi.  The relationship between the two men, and their interactions in the conservative Afrikaans town, do as much to illustrate and denigrate apartheid as the works of many, much bigger name South African writers.  With the crime novel being such a natural way of exposing society and its issues, why were local writers ignoring the genre at the time?  Perhaps they had more serious things to say?  McClure was quite dismissive of that, saying: “That way, you preach to nobody but the converted, usually – or to the so-called intellectual reader.  You’re not reaching the ordinary guy at all.”  In fact, he didn’t enjoy their work (except for Charles Herman Bosman), questioning – among other issues – their lack of humor.  “It’s all as deadly serious as a political meeting.  I always hear laughter as well as sobbing when I recall life in Africa.”

But McClure only recalled life here.  From within South Africa, Wessel Ebersohn wrote three grueling psychological thrillers exposing the reality of the security police and exploring the nature of evil.  They were initially banned.  Chris Marnewick did so too in his award winning novel Shepherds and Butchers, originally written in Afrikaans.  And the exposé of that grim era through crime fiction continues today with Malla Nunn’s historical crime novels written from Australia. 

Deon Meyer at home

It was Deon Meyer who took up McClure’s cudgel, using crime fiction set in the post-apartheid era, albeit steeped in its aftermath, to illustrate present day South Africa.  He writes in Afrikaans, and ten years ago in an interview he lamented the isolation of writing in a neglected genre and a parochial language.  But he persevered, and now he has won a slew of prizes, and his novels have been translated into twenty languages.  Over that ten year period there has been an explosion of crime fiction written and set in South Africa, much of it very good.  Deon was joined by Andrew Brown, Wessel Ebersohn (who re-emerged after a long silence), Joanne Hichens, Richard Kunzman, Sarah Lotz, Jassy Mackenzie, Sifiso Mzobe, Mike Nicol, Margie Orford, Roger Smith and several others.  Local readers and critics have been enthusiastic.

Every writer wants recognition and acceptance from his or her home market; usually it’s the readers in that market who can vouch for the reality of the sense of place, the natural behavior of the characters, the believability of the plot.  (Sometimes an external perspective can be interesting and even successful.  French writer Caryl Férey’s Zulu, set in South Africa, won numerous prizes, but wasn’t that highly regarded here.)  But how is the new wave of crime writing in South Africa to move to the international arena?  Do we even want that to happen?  South Africa has a wonderful flair for mixing languages and concepts that is hard to translate.  But the market here is small.  Writers want to be read and paid enough to make it a profession rather than a hobby.

Deon's latest book
 - one of his best for my money 

Deon Meyer is now well-known in the US, and his primary publisher is in the UK.  Roger Smith and Jassy Mackenzie are also building momentum in the US.  They attend mystery book conventions, do book tours and signings, and have been shortlisted for, and won, international awards.  There can be no question that their novels are being well received.  But some of our writers have to rely on the ebook market, as publishers hesitate to take on unknown authors.  The problem is getting known and there is no avoiding author marketing in the forms of meeting readers and doing signings, participating in internet chat groups and blogs, and linking with authors already better known overseas.  The US market is flooded with novels, and there is no doubt that South Africa is struggling to make its voice heard over the volume of excellent European and British writers.  Nevertheless, there is fashion in crime novels just as there is in everything else, and there is some feeling that African crime fiction may be the next fashion.  On our book tours around the US, we have found independent mystery bookstore owners interested in South African crime fiction and keen to find out about other writers and how to obtain their books. Europe is a different story, but Deon Meyer, Roger Smith, and Mike Nicol have their books in the top league in Germany.  

When asked in an interview what makes his books transferable over continents and cultures, Deon Meyer replied, “I think stories are an international language.  Characters too.”  That’s certainly true, but there may be more to it.  Some readers are looking for an understanding of other countries and other cultures.  Sick of the sound bites on television, they turn to fiction that might reflect reality in a more balanced way.  Others are armchair travelers seeking a strong sense of place.  Perhaps the most important group is looking for a style different from that of its own writers.  Think about the wildly successful Scandinavians – Mankell, Nesbo and, of course, Larson.  The cold seeps into your bones, the darkness seeps into your heart.

Watch this space...

A counterbalance to Nordic Noir is Sunshine Noir where the unrelenting heat and glaring light challenge the the cold and snow. Most southern African crime fiction fits into that space.

From Auckland to Durban (and back again)

Today’s guest post is by Chris Marnewick, who has just completed a tour of southern hemisphere book conferences. Chris is a retired South African advocate (barrister) who now lives in Auckland. His debut novel SHEPHERDS & BUTCHERS won the Johannesburg University Prize and the K Sello Duiker Prize of the South African Literary Awards and is due to be turned into a feature film this year.  Chris' later novels – THE SOLDIER WHO SAID NO and A SAILOR’S HONOUR feature an expat SA soldier turned policeman who lives in Auckland but returns to South Africa every second year or so to settle old scores and to solve crime.  Hopefully Chris will be back over here more frequently than that! 

I coordinate a Newsletter from South Africa for The Big Thrill e-magazine of ITW (International Thriller Writers) and Chris was invited to write this piece for that.  But I thought it too good for MIE to miss, so here’s Chris’ literary journey from Auckland to Durban (and back again):

I recently did a round of literary festivals. I went to the University of Stellenbosch’s Woordfees – March 5 to 10 – and the University of Kwazulu-Natal’s Time of the Writer – March 19 to 24 in South Africa and then returned to Auckland, New Zealand, for its Readers & Writers Festival – May 9 to 13. My career as a writer had started at the Auckland Readers & Writers Festival in 2003. Jeffery Deaver and Jonathan Frantzen were the celebrity authors at that festival. My notes of the Deaver’s session list his comments and advice as follows:

1. I try very hard to tell a story.
2. I took my philosophy of writing from another writer, Mickey Spillane, who said that people don’t read books to get to the middle. They read to get to the end, so you have to drag them along to the ending. (I have a true Mickey Spillane story of my own later in this article.)
3. Where do I get my ideas? I buy them from a farmer in Pennsylvania!
4. I rely heavily on structure. I spend 6 months on structure and first write an outline of 150 to 160 pages.
5. Pace is absolutely vital.
6. Then choreograph the ending. Bring all of the subplots and characters to their natural ending.
7. Then write the prose and rewrite, editing sentence by sentence, eliminating tautology, excess words, the passive case and errors.

I left that session to write my own book. It took 5 years before SHEPHERDS & BUTCHERS (Umuzi Random House 2008) was published. In SHEPHERDS & BUTCHERS I used the medium of a fictitious criminal trial to tell the truth about the manner in which capital punishment was administered during the apartheid years.

It seems to me that, in South Africa at least, crime writing based on true crime has become very popular. The star of Woordfees was undoubtedly Hanlie Retief, an investigative journalist. Her BYLEVELD: DOSSIER OF A SERIAL SLEUTH tells the story of Brigadier Piet Byleveld, a hardened policeman once attached to the notorious Brixton Murder & Robbery unit in Johannesburg. Byleveld’s forte was – he is now in retirement – bringing serial killers to trial. According to Retief, Byleveld had a 100% success record in closing his dockets – the dossiers of the title – to arrest and conviction, and that by pure detective means. None of the tactics of the old Brixton Murder & Robbery for this policeman – at least one of the old guard, a Captain la Grange, ended up on Death Row for the murder of a drug dealer. Byleveld used guile and a good grasp of psychology to close his cases.

Back to the book: The publisher’s whole print-run of 27 000 was sold out in two weeks and sales have by now passed the 100 000 mark, when a bestseller in South Africa usually sells about 5 000. When I met the author in Stellenbosch, there was talk of film rights and a television series. The hall where Retief and Byleveld discussed the book was filled to capacity.

Non-fiction crime writing has received a good shot in the arm with the success of BYLEVELD. The success of Mandy Wiener’s KILLING KEBBLE can only add to the impetus. She tells the story of the killing of Brett Kebble, a crook of note, who arranged his own killing after taking out a very large insurance policy on his life. We have had a case like this before. In 1963 or thereabouts Baron Dieter von Schauroth paid a young man, Marthinus Rossouw, to kill him. Rossouw was hanged for that and Von Schauroth’s insurers successfully repudiated the policies the latter had taken out on his own life. (It should come as no surprise to the reader that someone then wrote a book about the case.)

My own non-fiction book, CLARENCE VAN BUUREN: DIE MAN AGTER DIE DONKERBRIL, (The man behind the mask) was released during Woordfees. It tells the story of Clarence van Buuren, who was hanged in 1957 for the murder of Joy Aken, an 18-year old secretary. The case has intrigued me from my early childhood when I first read about it in the newspapers. There are so many unanswered questions. Was Van Buuren really guilty? He never confessed. Was he responsible for the sexual disfigurement of the body? His lawyer blamed wild animals. And how did a psychic manage to find the body when the police had been unsuccessful? Yes, indeed. A psychic found the body first.

Hanlie Retief was the star of the show at Woordfees and there is not much more I can report about that event.

The next event was an animal of a different character altogether. Time of the Writer in Durban was a delightful experience for me. I met some wonderful foreign writers; each in his or her own way had a connection with Africa. I played the shepherd when a bunch of guys wanted to find something to eat late one night and took them to the casino near our hotel. We tucked into chicken and corn while the two Jamaicans – Kwame Dawes and Colin Channer - entertained us with their stories and egged each other on. My namesake Chris Abani could write about true crime too, if he were so inclined. He had started writing at age 16 in Nigeria, was locked up and suffered political persecution for it.

Not that we don’t have our own. Ronnie Kasrils is a crime writer’s dream. Here is a man who has actually done the crime. He sabotaged, amongst other things, some electricity transmission pylons and was hunted by the police for that. He could have got the death penalty, had he been caught. Actually, now that I think about it: he would have got the death penalty. The apartheid police and courts were not playing around in those days. Ronnie’s book, THE UNLIKELY SECRET AGENT, is a moving tribute to his late wife Eleanor, who was a co-conspirator in his fight against the apartheid regime. The book reads like a thriller, but it is based on true crime. And Kasrils is great company at the dinner table.

I shared a platform with Jassie Mackenzie, one of the queens of SA crime fiction. Her Jade de Jongh character is so, well, so South African; Jade is a woman who knows how to handle a gun.

After all the excitement of the two South African events, the Auckland Readers & Writers Festival was a bit subdued and far more serious in its pursuit of literary art as opposed to entertainment of the casual reader. Crime writing nevertheless featured in various sessions, including The Future of the Novel, A Mind for Murder, Creative Non-Fiction and most notably, An Hour with Peter James. James is a crime writer whose Inspector Roy Grace novels have sold many millions. Although not featured at the festival, the true crime story of the prosecution, conviction and ultimate acquittal – after he had served his sentence – of David Bain continues to attract sales for author Joe Karam and an ongoing debate in newspapers and magazines. Kiwis are fanatical readers of true crime, especially when the author suggests the man or woman behind bars has been wrongly convicted. The Weekend Herald of May 19, 2012 has a full page article on the murder of Susan Burdett in 1992. The report suggests that the wrong man – aged 16 years at the time - has been convicted of her murder. The conviction was based, so it appears, on his own contradictory confessions and on a jailhouse snitch’s evidence while another man – a serial rapist - was convicted of her rape but not her murder. There is a plot for a crime novel in the story.

I promised a true Mickey Spillane story. In late 1956 when Clarence van Buuren was being held in prison pending his trial, he tried in various ways to establish an alibi. One of them was to pin the blame on a specific person, one Morris who was in custody on unrelated charges. Morris, Van Buuren told the police, had made a full confession to the murder of Joy Aken and had done so in the prison yard. The investigating officer was obliged to take statements from the other men who had overheard the so-called confession. The man to whom they attributed the confession was Morris, whom they knew as Mike Hammer, the name of the private detective hero of Mickey Spillane’s novels I THE JURY (1947), MY GUN IS QUICK (1950), VENGENCE IS MINE! (1950), THE BIG KILL (1951) and KISS ME DEADLY (1951). When Morris was questioned about the incident he laughed and said, ‘It was a hell of a joke!’

True crime is no joke, of course, but it appears to me that it does provide authors with ideas. We don’t have to buy our ideas from a farmer in Pennsylvania!

Chris for Michael - Thursday