Many American writers have the Vietnam War carved deep into their hearts. In South Africa, there was the Angolan War, or the Border War as it is known to my father's generation. White South African teenagers, some as young as sixteen, were conscripted to fight a war against black communists supposedly threatening the last bastion of democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa. Some of the soldiers endured the loss of close friends. Others saw the horrible effects of war. Then there were the police's covert counter-terrorism units that operated outside of the conventions of war, units that would later emerge as some of the worst perpetrators of apartheid's atrocities.
Piet Steyn's newest novel, Bottelnek is the story of Joe Smit, scarred and damaged by his time on the border. As a bloody sun separates itself from a sticky mine dump horizon, he kicks down the door to his bedroom and fires twice, killing two lovers, before setting off north to finally face the demons that have plagued him all these years.
Tell us more about Bottelnek. It seems there are a multitude of threads running through this story.
Bottelnek is about Joe Smit who grew up a very poor boy in the backstreets of a mining boomtown called Odendaalsrust. Joe's parents were alcoholics and he grew up in the most unimaginable circumstances. He only made it through school because the church paid for it, and it wasn't long before he joined the South African Police Service's Koevoet battalion (meaning crowbar), the counter-terrorism force that fought alongside the army on the border. For the first time it seems his life is coming right - until Joe is viciously cut up with a broken bottleneck and an Ovambo tracker with him is killed. It turns out the perpetrators are the people he trusted the most.
What about your own history shaped your writing? Your past seems far removed from crime and the police, you being a retired headmaster, after a stint in the air force and working on the goldfields of South Africa.
I grew up amongst policemen but that is the nearest I ever got to a crime scene! I started writing when I retired, to keep the boredom at bay. Pretty soon I was writing rugby features for the local newspaper and then a novel. I didn't know I had a knack for it until Sheers was published. I suppose writing crime stories was the only way to go, as I am addicted to crime fiction.
How did you go about researching your two novels?
I owe a lot to Google for most of my research. I still know a lot of policemen, and they were more than willing to share information about the police's structures, especially of the new South African Police Service. I also read up a lot about the subjects I'm tackling and like to visit the places I'm writing about.
Though Bottelnek will only be published in Afrikaans this October, it seems that Piet Steyn's appetite for the genre is growing. A third book is already coalescing in his mind, so who knows what the future holds?
Richard Kunzmann is the author of the acclaimed Harry Mason-Jacob Tshabalala detective series, set in South Africa. BLOODY HARVESTS, his first novel, was shortlisted for the CWA's J.W Creasy Award for best new novel.
