Thriller News from South Africa
Not much happened on the crime fiction scene during May so here's an alternative true crime story in the making: I live on the slope of a mountain on what is called the urban edge. This means where my property ends wild mountainside begins. At the moment this wild mountainside is overgrown with alien vegetation. In other words thick bush. And we all know that in thick bush lurk the baddies.A couple of nights ago, at midnight to be precise, a house lower down the slope that also borders on this infested land was attacked by two men. I say attacked because the men threw rocks through a window and tried to force the front door open with a crowbar. The house was alarmed and connected to an armed response unit and the siren went off. Undaunted the men barged in. The owner's son tried to defend the house but his mother hauled him into a room and locked the door. As the house belongs to the owner of a security company (how stupid were these robbers or where they casing the joint because they reckoned he'd have guns?) it wasn't long - three minutes in fact - before he and his security operatives pitched up. But by then the robbers had fled into the thick bush, taking nothing.
The following night the attackers struck again, this time at a property higher up the slope. At three o'clock they hacked through the front door with a crowbar. Again the house was alarmed and the siren went off. Again the men barged in. The owner woke up and retaliated by hitting them with a baseball bat. Fortunately the intruders weren't armed and decided to withdraw before the armed response unit arrived. Again nothing was stolen.
An email is now circulating through the neighbourhood watch that we need to get these guys. Soon. This is a cliffhanger of a story and we're all rather anxious about the ending. See my July column for the next exciting episode.
Otherwise on matters fictional a graphic crime novel, Project H, appeared last month - another first. Drawn and written by Brandon Carstens it features a cop called Sam Hart trying to curb crime in the ganglands of Cape Town. Then this month Penguin publishes a new crime novel by a writer who hit the scene last year with a novel of a completely different sort but who now tells me she is hooked on the genre. Exhibit A by Sarah Lotz features a porky, shabby but dogged lawyer called Georgie who is hired to help a rape victim - the perp is a cop - and Georgie's subsequent battle to achieve some sort of justice for her. If you want to buy the book try the online store: www.kalahari.net - publication date is mid-June. Project H is already available at Kalahari.net.
On the hot air front a band of academics at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg have organised a colloquium called Crime Stories for June 10 & 11. The blurb says the discussions 'will consider the representation of post-apartheid South African crime in narrative non-fiction and polemic, literary and popular fiction, anecdote and urban myth, drama, film, visual art and in reportage'. Not quite sure why they want to mix up true crime and crime fiction but then the ways of academe can often be extremely strange. (And, while on matters academe, I have news from a PhD student in Germany that she is writing her thesis on SA crime fiction.) When the academics start paying attention it is usually time to duck and run for cover.
On a less serious note, a bunch of local crime novelists are going to be on a panel discussion at the mid-June Cape Town Book Fair talking about the 'dark and dangerous - the wild side of crime fiction writing. The usual suspects plus more talk, thrills and spills... Why crime fiction is taking off in SA.'
I'll report back on their answer to that question next time. Right now I've got to scope the mountainside for signs of the baddies.
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.
An email is now circulating through the neighbourhood watch that we need to get these guys. Soon. This is a cliffhanger of a story and we're all rather anxious about the ending. See my July column for the next exciting episode.
Otherwise on matters fictional a graphic crime novel, Project H, appeared last month - another first. Drawn and written by Brandon Carstens it features a cop called Sam Hart trying to curb crime in the ganglands of Cape Town. Then this month Penguin publishes a new crime novel by a writer who hit the scene last year with a novel of a completely different sort but who now tells me she is hooked on the genre. Exhibit A by Sarah Lotz features a porky, shabby but dogged lawyer called Georgie who is hired to help a rape victim - the perp is a cop - and Georgie's subsequent battle to achieve some sort of justice for her. If you want to buy the book try the online store: www.kalahari.net - publication date is mid-June. Project H is already available at Kalahari.net.On the hot air front a band of academics at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg have organised a colloquium called Crime Stories for June 10 & 11. The blurb says the discussions 'will consider the representation of post-apartheid South African crime in narrative non-fiction and polemic, literary and popular fiction, anecdote and urban myth, drama, film, visual art and in reportage'. Not quite sure why they want to mix up true crime and crime fiction but then the ways of academe can often be extremely strange. (And, while on matters academe, I have news from a PhD student in Germany that she is writing her thesis on SA crime fiction.) When the academics start paying attention it is usually time to duck and run for cover.On a less serious note, a bunch of local crime novelists are going to be on a panel discussion at the mid-June Cape Town Book Fair talking about the 'dark and dangerous - the wild side of crime fiction writing. The usual suspects plus more talk, thrills and spills... Why crime fiction is taking off in SA.'
I'll report back on their answer to that question next time. Right now I've got to scope the mountainside for signs of the baddies.
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.
ThrillerFest
ITW's annual celebration of the thriller world is the largest event of its kind, a meeting place for authors, readers, budding writers, and publishing industry professionals.
For 2011, we’ll be back in the heart of New York in July with the ThrillerFest conference including CraftFest and AgentFest.
ThrillerFest VI will be held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City.
The dates will be July 6-9, 2011.
More information to follow.
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