While the rains lashed down recently - to such an extent that a river curled round the house for a couple of hours during one of the downpours - I took comfort before a fire with two recently published local krimis: A Deadly Trade by Michael Stanley and Exhibit A by Sarah Lotz. Every now and then as the rain drummed on the corrugated iron roof I would look up and gaze at the sea which the gale had turned into a maelstrom. Cape of Storms certainly with the Flying Dutchman forever attempting to round the Cape not thirty kilometres south of where I sat. You could almost hear the wind thrumming in the sheets. The sort of winter's day I love.Two things in those books got me gazing out to sea. The first was a reference in A Deadly Trade to the war that had ripped through Zimbabwe for two decades to independence in 1980; and the second was the rape theme that is the focal point of Exhibit A.
The war reference first. One of the long-established things that crime novels do particularly well is show how the past unravels in the present. It struck me while mulling over A Deadly Trade that the past has been very much with us in some recent SA crime fiction. Deon Meyer's Blood Safari (due for release in the US in the coming months) centres on a major political incident (which I won't mention for fear of someone shouting spoilsport) except to say that the incident in question is believed to have been orchestrated by rogue forces in the apartheid government.
Then last year Margie Orford's Blood Rose dealt with weapons grade enriched uranium that had been secreted away in the Namibian desert pending on-sale to a terrorist organization. Once again the spectre of the past rose up as Orford's fictitious drums of death were a by-product of the apartheid state's clandestine nuclear programme.
And in Andrew Gray's 2007 debut novel, The Fence, the blood diamond trade in Angola was a major concern, so it was a fascinating reminder to have the Zimbabwean war once again placed in the foreground. As I was engaged in an email Q&A with the duo who make up Michael Stanley - Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip - I asked them why they'd decided to open one of the sub-continent's still festering wounds.
Back came their replies:
Michael Sears : Zimbabwe has become topical once again, and the conventional wisdom is that if Mugabe goes, the problem is solved. We think it's much more complex than that. The problems go back a long way. We were trying to illustrate that in the story. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge and there's a lot more to go yet.
Stanley Trollip: We were also trying to show the disappointment and betrayal many Zimbabweans must feel, who sacrificed much many years ago only to find themselves without freedom now. There are also ironies in that South Africa supported the Smith regime during the Rhodesian war, and the South African government today has done little to help the people of Zimbabwe under Mugabe.
Which seems to reiterate (if that were needed) that crime fiction is about a lot more than tracking down the baddies. And as if to further bolster the point about the social relevance of the krimi and its connection to our everyday lives, Sarah Lotz's novel takes rape as its central theme. The case seems simple enough: a woman gets raped in a police cell. Yet as the story unfolds what appeared cut and dried is made increasingly complex and one senses looming at the back of the narrative the rape trials of one of our cricketers and our president. I asked Sarah if these incidents had sparked the idea?
Partly, she responded. 'The incident in the novel was sparked off by the rape of a friend of mine, but of course the cases you mention were ticking away at the back of my head while I was writing. I suppose I started writing this in the first place because I was furious at what had happened to my friend, seething at the [very high] rape statistics, and reeling at the almost casual cruelty of the violence perpetuated against children and women daily.
'One of the characters asks Georgie the most pertinent question in the book: "What happens to all the other women who have been raped? Do they get justice?" And Georgie gives her the only honest answer he can: "No."
'The courts are heaving under the strain, the percentage of rape cases that even make it to trial are woefully small. During my research the full impact of this really hit home. I also wanted to look at the over-stretched and under-funded forensics departments, the underpaid and overworked cops, and the extreme trauma and reliving of the event that the survivor has to go through en route to court. And what constitutes justice? An eye for an eye? Banging perpetrators up in prison for life? The death penalty? Does anyone know? I guess we do the best with what we have, but unfortunately for many survivors this is nowhere near enough. I tried to tell the truth as I saw it. It came down to the injustice of justice.'
By the time I got through these books darkness had fallen and the rains had abated somewhat. The wind was still up, and a glass of red wine seemed to be the best response to these thoughts of the past and the realities of the present.
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.
Michael Sears : Zimbabwe has become topical once again, and the conventional wisdom is that if Mugabe goes, the problem is solved. We think it's much more complex than that. The problems go back a long way. We were trying to illustrate that in the story. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge and there's a lot more to go yet.
Stanley Trollip: We were also trying to show the disappointment and betrayal many Zimbabweans must feel, who sacrificed much many years ago only to find themselves without freedom now. There are also ironies in that South Africa supported the Smith regime during the Rhodesian war, and the South African government today has done little to help the people of Zimbabwe under Mugabe.
Which seems to reiterate (if that were needed) that crime fiction is about a lot more than tracking down the baddies. And as if to further bolster the point about the social relevance of the krimi and its connection to our everyday lives, Sarah Lotz's novel takes rape as its central theme. The case seems simple enough: a woman gets raped in a police cell. Yet as the story unfolds what appeared cut and dried is made increasingly complex and one senses looming at the back of the narrative the rape trials of one of our cricketers and our president. I asked Sarah if these incidents had sparked the idea?
Partly, she responded. 'The incident in the novel was sparked off by the rape of a friend of mine, but of course the cases you mention were ticking away at the back of my head while I was writing. I suppose I started writing this in the first place because I was furious at what had happened to my friend, seething at the [very high] rape statistics, and reeling at the almost casual cruelty of the violence perpetuated against children and women daily.
'One of the characters asks Georgie the most pertinent question in the book: "What happens to all the other women who have been raped? Do they get justice?" And Georgie gives her the only honest answer he can: "No."
'The courts are heaving under the strain, the percentage of rape cases that even make it to trial are woefully small. During my research the full impact of this really hit home. I also wanted to look at the over-stretched and under-funded forensics departments, the underpaid and overworked cops, and the extreme trauma and reliving of the event that the survivor has to go through en route to court. And what constitutes justice? An eye for an eye? Banging perpetrators up in prison for life? The death penalty? Does anyone know? I guess we do the best with what we have, but unfortunately for many survivors this is nowhere near enough. I tried to tell the truth as I saw it. It came down to the injustice of justice.'
By the time I got through these books darkness had fallen and the rains had abated somewhat. The wind was still up, and a glass of red wine seemed to be the best response to these thoughts of the past and the realities of the present.
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.
