Nor, I was to learn, could the black middleclass and intelligentsia.  So the Time of the Writer Festival became a measure of the political temperature.  And although I have never believed that a Zimbabwe situation looms in South Africa's future, it seems now, given the young people I've spoken to, even less likely.  I heard whisperings, too, that although the new cabinet will comprise a number of members who have been sentenced for fraud and corruption (charges still facing Zuma), their term of office will not be long.  Come the following election they will be out, it was predicted.  What does this mean?  A palace coup?  Another breakaway from the ruling ANC?  I don't know.  But we live in interesting times.

All this said, what has it got to do with crime and thriller writers?  Well, not much I suppose, except it does give some indication of the background noise against which we write.

Much to my delight the festival programme gave us two panel discussions during the week: in the first Angela and Margie spoke about the intricacies of thriller writing and opened up a whole new range of writing possibilities (and books to be read) to an audience that has never contemplated anything beyond the 'literary'.  Our heavily political apartheid past meant that the only writing possible had to be of a literary nature.  But now we've matured as a society and can write books that are fun to read and don't bludgeon our readership with moral lessons.

The next night Margie chaired a session with Deon and I as the panelists.  Turned out to be great fun and many of our fellow writers came up afterwards and said things like: 'I didn't know crime fiction could be so entertaining.  I didn't know you could talk about violence that way in a thriller.  I didn't know that as a reader you could get so involved with characters from book to book.'  They also looked at us and said, 'But you're having such a good time, the four of you.'  Sounds odd maybe, but actually when I started writing crime fiction that's when the fun started.  And the crime writers are just such good people to be with.  No aggro, lots of help and support.  Click here to find the first of four blog entries that detail the crime writer shenanigans at the festival.  And click here for more pictures and reports.

To close: it was an eye-opener realising how little our peers knew about the genre.  However it was encouraging hearing their enthusiasm for what we're doing.  As there are three crime thrillers scheduled for publication this month we're not doing too badly.  Those books are Beasts of Prey by Rob Marsh, Black Petals by Bryan Rostron and The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu by Michael Stanley. The Michael Stanley will be available in the US, and the UK as A Deadly Trade.  The other two novels can be bought at Kalahari.net or Loot.


The photograph shows Deon Meyer, Margie Orford, radio book show host Karabo Kgoleng, Angela Makholwa and Mike Nicol.  Photography by Sade Adeniran

ITW International Committee Chair for South Africa, Mike Nicol, is a journalist and writer and now a hard-core crime fiction addict. He's published two crime novels - Payback and Out to Score (a co-authorship), and is a founder of the blog Crime Beat.  He lives on Cape Town?s peninsula, up a mountain, in the teeth of the wind.