The Crime Beat blog is BOOK SA’s neighbourhood watch for a unique and suddenly flourishing genre in South Africa: crime writing.
Crime Beat has now been running for more than two years and there are upward of 450 posts on the blog.
Here’s a guided tour of our stash: On the ‘Shelf’ page you’ll find news of the latest releases and a backlist of the crime novels that’ve appeared since 2008. In the left hand panel is a menu listing the latest posts and below that links to authors’ websites and to other good crime fiction blogs.
On the Blog page is the daily hot stuff. On the right hand panel under Crime Beat Regulars you’ll find links to interviews with most of the writers who’ve published since 2007. Under the link Top Ten Krimis these writers recommend the crime novels that got their pulses racing. As you’ll see there are also interviews with Afrikaans crime writers and news about the Afrikaans crime fiction scene. And then there are our columnists, Jassy Mackenzie with Thriller Talk and Joanne Hichens with From the Hip.
If you click on the ‘Pages’ button you’ll find a short history of SA crime writing and a Who’s Who of SA crime and thriller writers including biogs, titles and their crimefighters.
As we’re in the business of posting anything that ups the profile of local crime fiction, if you have news, gossip, tittle-tattle notes, death threats, hit lists send these gems and nuggets to crimebeat@book.co.za.
Crime Beat editors:
Barbara Erasmus is a nomadic free-lance journalist who has decided to grow old with a mountain view in Cape Town. Her novels Kaleidoscope and Even with Insects were published by Penguin, while her third novel Chameleon has moved into the electronic era, starting life as the Crime Beat blook and now published under the BOOK SA imprint using POD technology through Electric Book Works.*
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Mike Nicol is a full-time writer, born in Cape Town but with a soft spot for Johannesburg. He has written a handful of non-fiction titles, some poetry (although admittedly that was a long time ago) and a number of novels, most recently Payback – a crime novel set in Cape Town, the first in his Revenge Trilogy. Number two, Killer Country, is set to hit the streets in February 2010. Before that he wrote (with Joanne Hichens) the private investigator krimi, Out to Score.
In her 13-year writing career Chanette Paul has produced 32 books, experimenting with a number of genres while writing romances to keep the pot boiling. Recently she found her true niche, romantic suspense – albeit a quirky interpretation of the genre. She lives in a cottage on the banks of the Kleine River, Stanford. The novels featuring her detective Gys Niemand are Springgety, Fortuin, and Boheem.
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Columnists
Different takes on the krimi scene
Joanne Hichens in From the Hip.
Jassy Mackenzie in Thriller Talk
