Crime Beat

Every two months I punt some of the highlights from my krimi reading on FMR. Here are the April offerings: only three books out of a batch of at least four times that number that came in for review as the others were really just so much chewing gum. Top of the pile is an absolutely wonderful novel from Don Winslow who now heads the list of my all-time favourite crime fiction writers. That means he’s knocked Elmore Leonard and Ken Bruen off the perch and even beaten George V Higgins down a notch. With Winslow’s last book, The Winter of Frankie Machine, he got really close to taking the honours and now with The Dawn Patrol he’s done it by a long long chalk. More about the book in a moment but before that two local krimis that are demanding your hard-earned bucks.

The first is an anthology of crime fiction called Bad Company which features most of the names that can be found in the bookshops – assuming the publishers have kept the stock there and the bookshops haven’t shuffled it off to their backrooms.

Edited by Joanne Hichens, Bad Company includes short stories from Deon Meyer, Richard Kunzmann, Margie Orford and fourteen other writers. In his foreword the international thriller writer Lee Child says: ‘The stories themselves are fascinating in the way that they see universal themes through a uniquely African lens. As everyone knows, South Africa’s up-and-down history meant that much of its contemporary culture developed in isolation, but now it has half a generation that has been much more exposed to the world. The stories in this book reflect that evolution. Some resist the pull of American and British tradition only mildly; some subvert it wickedly; and some could have only been written in and about Africa. All are excellent.’

Bad Company is the first anthology of SA crime fiction and as such gives some idea of the breadth of the genre as it is practised locally: there are police procedurals, private investigators, cop stories, a forensic whydunit, thrillers, let alone bad people misbehaving. So if you want a glimpse of what’s going on before you take the plunge and buy the novels themselves seek out Bad Company and find out why UK crime writer David Hewson says that these are stories ‘written from the heart, with zeal, invention and an unblinking eye for honesty’.

And when you’ve read that move to Roger Smith’s Mixed Blood. Smith’s a Cape Town writer and this is his first book and clearly far from his last. Another one is due for publication next year and he’s at work on a third. At this stage the first two are stand-alones although he’s created a wonderful character in a cop called Zondi (yes, the name returns to our crime fiction after James McClure first gave it an outing) and Smith has hinted that Zondi might appear in his future novels.

Mixed Blood is right up the mean streets of those who like fast, tough, gritty crime fiction. It is hardboiled Cape Town in a novel that doesn’t pause for breath. Once you start – and the opening chapter is enough to hook you in – you’re not going to put the book down. If you want an idea of the plot: let’s say its about an American bad guy trying to escape his past by starting a new life in Cape Town. But his karma won’t let him go. And it’s a karma that comes walking in off the Cape Flats and in the form of a truly grotesque cop. Nuff said.

Lastly the truly brilliant The Dawn Patrol from Don Winslow. This is stylish crime writing, the best dialogue, and characters you can’t get enough of. I have to say I did not want this book to end and there are not many books where I’m happy to take up residence.

The Dawn Patrol is crime fiction for surfers as it not only has some fine descriptions of big wave riding but it’s a potted history of the Californian surfing scene. Hey, dudes, before you hit Long Beach or crayfish factory this afternoon go buy this book. What’s it about: a laid-back surfer PI mixing it with nasty gangs trafficking Mexican children. Once you start reading you mightn’t be too bothered that you’re not out in the line-up. This is seriously cool stuff.

Bad Company edited by Joanne Hichens (Pan Macmillan)
Mixed Blood by Roger Smith (Henry Holt)
The Dawn Patrol by Don Winslow (William Heinemann)