The Past, Present, and Future of African Crime Writing

Michael - Alternate Thursdays 

Every year in December Catalyst Press hosts Reading Africa Week. The focus is on literature of all types written by Africans and usually about Africa. It includes events, live panels, and discussions online. For this year's event, I was asked to meet (electronically) with four crime writers from Africa to discuss what makes African crime writing different and special. The discussion took the form of a number of questions to kick it off followed by the responses from the authors and possible comments from them and other questions. Although it sounds a bit cumbersome, it actually worked really well and we came up with a very interesting discussion.

The roundtable, titled The Past, Present, and Future of African Crime Writing, was published on CrimeReads, and you can read the whole of it HERE.

To whet your appetite, here's an introduction to the authors and a sample question to each of them:

Mike Nicol is one of South Africa's most successful crime writers, and one of my favourite crime writers anywhere. Falls the Shadow, the first book in a new series featuring a female cop who cops the cops is out in February. I was fortunate to receive an advance copy from Catalyst Press and I loved it - one of my best crime fiction reads of the year.

Mike, your books all involve local issues that are real and serious. It’s been suggested that African crime fiction is about social justice issues. Would you agree with that? How does it affect readers abroad?

Mike Nicol: Absolutely agree with that. Crime fiction has both a political and a historical dimension. This might make things challenging for readers elsewhere as South African crime fiction doesn’t plough the serial killers and drug lords furrows. Well, not often and only as part of larger stories. One of my concerns is that because of the social justice issues, African crime fiction might not find a ready market elsewhere on the grounds that our societies are too complex and different for the Western readership.

Ciku Kimani-Mwaniki is a Kenyan journalist and author. Her latest book is NaiRobbery Cocktail, and I'm looking forward to reading it as soon as it's available here. 

Ciku, what brought you to writing a thriller?

Ciku Kimani-Mwaniki: My genre of choice is romance. Not your typical good-girl next door type. I write about love lives of the so-called society pariahs. Damaged people, if I may. When I decided to write Nairobbery Cocktail, the idea was to write about the love lives of criminals. I wanted to play with the idea of humanising them. What ended up happening was the book becoming more of a crime novel than a romance. I’m still surprised.

Iris Mwanza is a Zambian American author whose debut novel, The Lions’ Den, is a legal thriller based on a case where a fierce young, lawyer Grace Zulu is defending a queer teenager  charged with crimes against the order of nature (the Zambian law criminalizing same-sex relations). When Bessy disappears from police custody, Grace’s case becomes a larger quest for justice, and she must confront larger forces – the legal system, government, corruption, religion and the societal norms that allow and enable discrimination and human rights abuses. It was a stand-out debut, and I'm looking forward to more novels from her.

Iris, human nature is pretty much the same everywhere, but culture will affect character, behavior, aspirations, and motives. How central is this in your work? Do you feel constrained by social attitudes whether self-imposed or legal?

Iris Mwanza: I live in the US where I’m experiencing in real time what happens when legal protection, justice and social norms around equality, fairness and basic decency are under attack. It’s terrible and frightening to live through; however, I feel that the work of a writer is to explore the dark interiors of characters in ways that can explain and expose how these things happen. In my novel, the lead character Grace is someone with a strong moral compass and sense of justice who takes on corrupt people and systems, but I could also see making the same strong case for social justice through a lead character who was the opposite — immoral and depraved. For me authenticity is the key to unlocking a character and so censorship, especially self-censorship, is furthest from my mind. 

Leye Adenle is no stranger to Murder Is Everywhere, he used to be one of our bloggers until other time demands forced him to drop out. His Amaka thrillers set in Nigeria are all first rate with a powerful sense of place and social themes. In his latest book, Unfinished Business, Amaka is in London when one of the sex workers she tries to protect sends her a distress call from Lagos. The young lady has witnessed a high-profile double murder, and she has gone into hiding. Amaka must return to Lagos to rescue her before the assassins, their bosses, and the police find her friend.

Leye, how much does setting drive your stories? Could you imagine setting your books anywhere else?

Leye Adenle: Considering that I have set my stories in Lagos in Nigeria, on the moon, in various impossible dimensions, in Berlin, and lately in London, I would say that the setting and the story are, for me, sometimes inseparable but, with tiny tweaks, could be made to work anywhere on Earth. In the Amaka thriller series, I set out to write about violence against women, thieving corrupt politicians, and police brutality, but as I’m not American, I decided to set my work in Lagos.

I hope you're now convinced to take the time to enjoy the full discussion. It's right HERE on CrimeReads.

Happy Holidays everyone! See you next year.

Michael.

Getting the science right: guest post from Brian Price

Brian Price

Pic courtesy of Pixabay

I’m delighted to be a guest on this blog—many thanks to Leye Adenle for letting me have his spot.  I’m a long-term fan of crime fiction and a chemist/biologist.  I’ve found a way to combine my reading pleasure with my interest in science which I hope will be both interesting and useful.

Perhaps I’m a pedant. Maybe it’s my scientific background. But I do like to see crime writers getting things right!  I’ve no problem with alternative realities in science fiction or fantasy where the normal laws of science are broken.  But in crime novels, I like to see scientific accuracy and sometimes, alas, mistakes creep in.

Rather than sitting here grumbling, or writing complaining letters to authors like one of the “picky-ass readers” Stephen King has described, I thought it would be useful to help crime writers to avoid some basic, common, scientific mistakes.  I set up a website (www.crimewriterscience.co.uk) providing tips on poisons, weapons, explosives and other topics and was then encouraged to develop this into a full-length book. The result is CRIME WRITING: HOW TO WRITE THE SCIENCE, published in the UK by Studymates this month.

The book covers a range of scientific topics relating to crime and assumes no scientific background on the part of the reader.  It starts with how poisons work and the effects of specific toxins and dispels some myths along the way (nothing is instant and cyanide does not make you blue, for instance).  

It looks at knocking people out (don’t bother with chloroform, and trying to inject someone in the back of the neck to produce instant unconsciousness won’t work either). I cover explosives and fires, without giving too much away as I don’t want to end up charged with assisting terrorism, and I describe the basics of firearms which are often misdescribed by non-U.S. writers (a 38mm handgun, anyone?) or shown inaccurately on screen.  Blowing someone backwards through a window with a shotgun while remaining stationary yourself breaks the laws of Newtonian physics (as well as the window) and you can’t actually “silence” a revolver.

Getting rid of a body is not as simple as is sometimes depicted and, despite Dame Agatha’s assertion that Murder is Easy, killing someone is not always that straightforward. Nevertheless, humans are fragile, especially when stabbed or repeatedly bashed over the head, so I try to bring a little biological reality to violence. 

DNA transformed detection and I outline the basics but also point out where it can be misleading—the fact that someone left DNA at a crime scene doesn’t mean they are the villain: the when and the how are critical.  I mention some exciting developments in forensics and also point out the drawbacks of some long-accepted forensic techniques.

The book isn’t a practical guide for a would-be murderer, divulging arcane secrets from the laboratory which will enable someone to poison a rival with a houseplant or make a bomb from shaving cream and cocktail cherries.  

Run!
Pic courtesy of Pixabay

I don’t name and shame authors—I respect crime writers too much.  But I do point out mistakes I’ve come across without identifying the source. I also point out where someone has got something right (referring to tobacco tar stains rather than nicotine, for instance).  

I hope that the book will be useful to crime writers and fascinating to crime readers.  If it helps, I’ll be delighted—and I’m happy to assist further if needed.

Brian Price

brian@crimewriterscience.co.uk

Brian Price is a chemist and biologist who retired from the Environment Agency in 2016. He is the author of CRIME WRITING: HOW TO WRITE THE SCIENCE and runs a website offering tips on science for crime writers (www.crimewriterscience.co.uk). He is an avid reader of crime fiction and has also written a number of short stories, one of which was a runner up in the Weston-super-Mare Literary Festival 2019 and another was short listed in the Chorley Writers Circle competition in 2018. He taught science and technology courses for the Open University for 26 years. Previous books include P FOR POLLUTION and C FOR CHEMICALS (with Mike Birkin)

Murder in Africa

Michael - Thursday

As the year crawls to a close through the hiatus between Christmas and New Year, I thought back over some of the mysteries I’d read in 2017.  Most of them are African, and that’s partly because every month I write a piece called Africa Scene for the International Thriller Writers e-magazine The BigThrill.  The idea is to feature books (and their authors) set in Africa.  Most of the authors do live on the continent, but there are several who live elsewhere, but choose Africa as their setting for a variety of reasons.  I’ve discovered some really good authors, and have an excuse to fire questions at them. It’s been a lot of fun and I’ve met many of them and enjoyed that a lot as well.

Hopefully, readers of the magazine are intrigued enough to try some of the books, and experience a bit of sunshine noir.  African thrillers and mysteries have a lot to offer, and they are different!

So here’s a rundown of this year’s articles to give you a flavor. If any catch your fancy, click on the month for the author interview and more details about the book.

January.

Lagos island

Our own Leye Adenle talked about Easy Motion Tourist, his debut thriller set in Lagos. Prostitutes are being murdered. It seems to be for muti—witch doctors’ potions.  But there’s a lot more to it than that as Amaka, whose mission is to keep prostitutes safe, and Guy, from the UK and the easy motion tourist, discover. Nigeria provides a fascinating backdrop for an original plot with a twisty ending.

February.

Antipoaching team

February featured Paul Mendelson’s The History of Blood.  Paul has such a deep grasp of South Africa’s history and culture, to say nothing of Cape Town itself where his thrillers are largely based, that you’d have to believe he’s lived here all his life. No. He’s from England, but this is South African crime fiction at its best.

The body of a girl is discovered at a seedy motel with slit wrists. Suicide is assumed, but the autopsy reveals she has swallowed masses of cocaine wrapped in condoms. The hunt for the mule runners leads to other smuggling and the remains of an elite military group from the apartheid days. Paul’s detective has to unravel this nasty mixture, with lots of surprises along the way.

March.

Kibera, Kenya

Michael Niemann was born in Germany and now lives in Oregon, but along the way he’s spent a lot of time in Africa. His protagonist Vermeulen investigates fraud for the UN, and pretty soon it leads him into very hot water. Legitimate Business was set in the refugee camps of Darfur; Illicit Trade, the second in the series, concerns human trafficking from Africa.

April.

Uranium ingots

April brought us back to South Africa with Jassy Mackenzie’s heart stopping thriller Bad Seeds. During the apartheid era South Africa developed nuclear weapons, I guess for the same paranoid reasons that North Korea does today. After the government changed, the weapons were dismantled, but the nuclear material is still around. This story is as believable and scary as tomorrow morning’s headlines.

May.

Any time Mike Nicol comes out with a new book, it’s an event. Agents of the State is very close to home, and its honey-loving president-for-life (of South Africa) is very close to someone else we know around here. Mike explores how this sort of state operates, and how the agents of the state get away with what they do. We’re not sure who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, and real life is like that. If you like sunshine noir and haven’t read Mike Nicol, you’re missing out.

June.

Sally with friend

For a complete change of pace, take Sally Andrew’s second Tanie Maria mystery, The Satanic Mechanic. Everyone loves Tanie Maria and her luscious recipes from the Karoo. But she has real issues too, and the crimes she needs to solve are anything but cozy. Alexander McCall Smith called her first book “a triumph.” 'Nuff said.

July.

One of Hayden Stone's problems

Arthur Kerns started his career in the US Navy, spent many years with the FBI, and then consulted with the intelligence agencies. He doesn’t like to say which ones, but there are no prizes for guessing the answer.  If anyone knows how this stuff works he does. His freelance agent, Hayden Stone, gets into all sorts of trouble with his unconventional methods of sorting out the bad guys. He’s all over Africa in The African Contract.

August.

Weather map by Alex Latimer

Something completely different. Diane Awerbuck and Alex Latimer, both South Africans who usually write in other genres, team up as Frank Owen to write South, a dystopian and scary alternative history thriller set in the US. Okay, I said all the books are set in Africa, but I lied. Yet the book has very African roots. You’ll recognize apartheid in the South, walled off and isolated from the North as deadly viruses are blown in by the wind. And the wall across the country precedes Donald Trump.

September.

Kwei Quartey lives in Los Angeles, but spends time in Ghana researching his novels and visiting friends there. Death by His Grace is the next in his police procedural series featuring Darko Dawson. We’ve been amazed at how his themes and ours often overlap although Ghana and Botswana are so far apart. Great sense of place when you join Kwei and Darko to visit Ghana.

October.

Meeting of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Paul Hardisty is a Canadian who lives in Australia, but he shares with Paul Mendelson a deep knowledge and grasp of South Africa. Reconciliation for the Dead, based on the real story of “Dr. Death” from the apartheid era, exposes a gruesome plan from that time. Paul’s novels are passion driven; this one may be his best so far.

November.

Martin Steyn is a young South African Afrikaans writer and Dark Traces is his first book in English. It’s a dark serial killer novel—he admits they fascinate him—but it’s the struggles of his detective with his past and the death of his wife who was the center of his life, and his problems fitting into the new police system, that make this book memorable.

(By the way, Michael Stanley's Dying to Live was also featured in another section of The Big Thrill in November.)

December.

Dam at Amanzi

The year finished with the remarkable book Fever by Deon Meyer, South Africa’s best known crime writer. It’s a standalone set in a small town in South Africa in the near future when most of the population has been wiped out by a virus. I’m betting it’s his breakout book. This is what the London Times said about it:

‘It’s a crime thriller, but it’s far more. The first sentence is: "I want to tell you about my father's murder." The actual crime takes place more than 400 absorbing, emotional and atmospheric pages later; the solution comes even later than that. The narrator, who is aged 47, tells of his teenage years when his father founded a small settlement, safe from a virus that has killed most of the world's population. But as the community grew, so did their problems, their jealousies and the moving relationship between father and son. There are shades of Cormac McCarthy's superb The Road, but Fever grips even more.’

What can I say? If you don’t like African mysteries and thrillers, you haven’t been reading them!

Happy new year everyone, and happy reading!

CWA Awards and London Fun

Annamaria on Monday

I am in London, where I travelled for the CWA banquet and a chance to meet up with some friends.  But the huge highlight of the trip was attending the CWA Dagger awards ceremony with Leye Adenle, one of Sunshine Noir's two (out of the six!!!) nominees for best short story.

Stan warned us that the affair was very posh, so Leye and I did our best to make a good impression.

The tables were set with place cards that put us pals opposite each other.  

When I picked up my phone to snap this picture through the candles..

I found Leye taking the same photo of me.

The competition for the our category was stiff, and the award went to LC Tyler, but we agreed that our Sunshine hotties snagging two of the six spots was a huge honour. (This spelling courtesy of my laptop knowing that I am in the UK at the moment.)

I noted that of the six nominees for the International dagger...

...the only Nordic entry won,...

...but I was encouraged to note that four of the six nominees were hot clime writers--two Italians and two Spaniards.

A huge THANK YOU to the delightful Ali Karim for the picture of
 Leye and me above.

I spent the ensuing two days in my usual guise, as a Nerd in Paradise, researching at the British Library:

A few of the front page images that grace the walls of the Newsroom in the library

Three of the four volumes of bound copies of British East African newspapers
that were at my disposal.

You know you're a nerd when you look at a huge book full of these and say,
"Yum."

Murder Out of Africa

Michael - Thursday

Paul deciding on the menu

We’re between events in the UK.  It started last Friday with the UK launch of A DEATH IN THE FAMILY, hard on the heels of DEADLY HARVEST, which came out in May.  Then on Tuesday evening we had a great session with Paul Mendelson, who sets his crime fiction in Cape Town, at Waterstones, Piccadilly, discussing South Africa and Sunshine Noir.  We followed the event with a scrumptious Chinese dinner where Paul chose a spectacular spread.

Yesterday evening we had fun at Heffers in Cambridge, meeting a delightful group at their crime book club.  Richard Reynolds hosted the evening and had interesting stories of his own to tell also.

Now on to the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate for a panel on Murder Out of Africa with Deon Meyer, Paul Mendelson and Leye Adenle.

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind trip, but a lot of fun.  It’s also made me think about African mysteries and the developing interest in them.  On one occasion we were told, “Americans aren’t interested in Africa or South America.”  It seems to me that’s changing.  Think about the wildly successful No. 1 LADIES’ DETECTIVE AGENCY series by Alexander McCall Smith.  Long before that, James McClure kicked off the interest in South African crime fiction with his Kramer and Zondi novels that won the Silver and Gold Crime Writers Association dagger awards.  (The McClure books are still well worth reading and are currently being reissued by Soho.)

In post-apartheid South Africa, Deon Meyer has emerged as a major talent and his books have gained recognition and a serious following around the world.  He's won a number of prizes and is currently short listed for the Crime Writers Association International Dagger for ICARUS, based on the shenanigans in the wine industry during sanctions days.  So plenty of interest there.  Deon is by no means alone.  Mike Nicol, Jassy McKenzie, Paul Mendelson, Malla Nunn, Roger Smith, and many others delve into modern South Africa using crime fiction as a vehicle. Then there is South African author Lauren Beukes whose breakout thriller THE SHINING GIRLS combined the thriller and speculative fiction genres.

Elsewhere on the continent, Leye Adenle has a searing  debut novel of Lagos, EASY MOTION TOURIST, Kwei Quartey’s Detective Darko Dawson tries to set Ghana to rights, Richard Crompton has a Masai detective trapped in the modern day problems of Kenya, while Annamaria Alfieri looks back into Kenya’s colonial history with her Justin Tolliver series.  There are many more, and I’m sure there are a lot that I’m simply ignorant about.  Murder is coming out of Africa, and the backstories are often intriguingly different from those of Europe and America.

I mentioned Mike Nicol before and he deserves a lot of credit for putting South African crime fiction on the map.  Not only does he have a number of powerful books to his name, but he set up a website, Crimebeat, in the early days that showcased the development of the genre in South Africa.  With the inauguration of the International Thriller Writers Association in 2005, he volunteered to write a monthly newsletter from South Africa, once again helping his fellow authors gain exposure.  After five years, he needed a break and passed it on to me.  With Joanne Hichens I tried to expand it from South Africa (look, it had to include at least Botswana, right?) and we changed the title to Africa Scene.  Each piece introduces a new author or a new book, and features a synopsis, interview with the author, and a few pictures illustrating his or her African location.  Last month, I discussed NOWHERE with Roger Smith.  In the next few months I’m interviewing  Annamaria about her second book in the Kenya series, THE IDOL OF MOMBASA, and Sally Andrews, whose debut, RECIPES FOR LOVE AND MURDER, leaves you drooling both for Tannie Maria's Karoo food and for more books.  Next month Michele Rowe, who won the Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger for her debut, will be talking about the second book in her trilogy, THE HOUR OF DARKNESS.  It has an intriguing premise. While we're doing our bit for the environment by turning off the lights for Earth Hour, that gives the perfect opportunity for criminals to act unseen. Then Paul Mendelson has agreed to discuss his new book THE HISTORY OF BLOOD.

Africa Scene is one of the articles each month in ITW’s The Big Thrill e-magazine and you can sign up for it (and ITW for that matter) for free.  I’ll also post the pieces on Facebook.  And if you follow any of the links here to the authors mentioned, you'll see the pieces about them and their recent books.

Any published authors interested in participating are invited to contact me. The only requirement is that you set a substantial part of your book in Africa.

So, thinking about Caro’s piece last Friday, I’ve been asking myself why I undertook this and have stuck with it for almost five years.  Well, I get the opportunity to discover and read a lot of authors who are new to me.  ITW has quite a big circulation for The Big Thrill so I hope that it helps some new authors get exposure and broaden their readership outside Africa, and beyond that, I hope that it may attract a few readers to try out African mysteries.  There are a lot of really good ones out there.  And, yes, of course, I hope it raises the Michael Stanley profile a bit too. But most of all it’s fun!