What do you hope to capture about present day South Africa in your books? Do you view your setting as a character, and if so, what kind of character is it?

For many years the idea of a South African police procedural was untenable in a country where security forces were routinely involved in the grossest human rights violations. This has now changed. The country has gone through tremendous changes in just ten years, and anyone who has been to South Africa will agree that it is a cultural melting pot as exciting as it is explosive.

Dead-End Road and the books that precede it explore Johannesburg, the richest metropolis in Africa. It is a city of soaring wealth and abject poverty, of graciousness rarely seen and incredible violence. Jo'burg is as much a part of my work as Los Angeles is of Raymond Chandlers', or Michael Connelly's for that matter. It's still one of my favorite places in the world.
 
Wherever possible, I've tried to shy away from the ponderous and bleak literature that has characterized South Africa's literary landscape for so many years. That history has been written, and it is not entirely my own; I struggle to identify with it. I grew up in a brave new world, and it's this exciting time I most try to capture.

People are always intrigued by a writer's path to publication - tell us a bit about yours.

I've been extraordinarily lucky in my career. After I finished a seven year psychology degree with a fair amount of training in criminology, I had a choice: either I try something way out there, or I drop right into a professional research career. I bucked the trend, packed my bags and set off for London with a fifteen page manuscript under my arm and high hopes of achieving the nigh impossible.

I was on my last twenty pounds in London when I took a job at our local bookstore. Since I reviewed books for the shop, it wasn't long before I was attending many of the capital's legendary book launches and getting to know industry leaders. My proposal and scant manuscript where snapped up by the first editor and agent I approached. I'd never published anything before that and barely had an idea of how to write a novel, but in hindsight I realized how what a little luck and timing can do for a career.

My manuscript had grown to about fifty pages at the time, and it concerned the deadly trade in human body parts, which were sold as magical items, attached to ancestral worship. It's a fairly common practice in South Africa and western Africa, but at the time London had just experienced its first ritual murder. It was into this media frenzy that I stepped. It taught me that as much as you need talent to become a success, you also need to have your finger on the pulse of society. Bloody Harvests was published to strong acclaim and was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasy Award for Best Debut Novel, and though I didn't win it, I'm now three books on, with a fourth called The Price of a Country to be published in 2010.

Which writers have been most influential for you?

James Lee Burke's novels are wonderfully evocative of the Louisiana he lives in. I suspect when I finally get to see Baton Rouge myself, I'll have a sense of déjà vu. It's his ability to spell out the mood and atmosphere of a city and its people that I try to emulate. But Michael Marshall Smith continues to be one of those rare authors who dig just that little deeper into the psyche of the anti-hero. I don't think Raymond Chandler will ever become dated, purely because of his wonderful prose and ability to create characters that aren't only talking heads and plot devices that move the story forward. They're as much a part of the landscape he paints as the Los Angeles in which Marlow lives.

I read that one of your aims with Dead-End Road is to tackle the issue of vigilantism head on. Do you think there is an answer - can you fix violence with violence?

My personal view is that violence begets violence, but this is not the view of many South Africans. Vigilantism in that country is not an occasional occurrence. It is an institution supported implicitly and explicitly by the many people who have suffered extraordinarily from the rampant crime, including police officers.
   
At heart, I think many feel that vigilantism is the only way that ordinary people will ever get what is due to them. The criminal justice system is certainly not coping with the high levels of crime. But once you dig deeper, the idea of righteous crusaders for the weak satisfactorily pursuing criminals outside of the legal framework set down in a country becomes brittle and dangerous. Often these organizations become nothing more than mafias themselves.

For Dead-End Road I researched this manifestation in all its forms - whether it occurs in the police force or amongst the armies of migrant mine workers, who rely on strongmen to defend their villages and families while they are away. I'll tell you, once I got right into it, I realized how murky a subject this is, and what a wonderful story about humans it tells. Because at the end of the day, vigilantism only shows its face when people feel they need protection and that they're not getting it. I think Dead-End Road shows that good intentions have an evil face and that evil has a touch of goodness.

Contributing editor, Clare Langley-Hawthorne, was raised in England and Australia. She was an attorney in Melbourne before moving to the United States, where she began her career as a writer. Her first novel, Consequences of Sin, has been nominated for the 2008 Sue Feder Memorial Historical Mystery Macavity award. The second in the Ursula Marlow series is The Serpent and The Scorpion. Clare lives in California with her family.