Crime Beat

The scene: UCT’s Summer School
The time: Next week every evening at six
What’s going down: talk about crime
We’ve heisted a spot at Summer School to talk about the stuff that matters in writing crime fiction. There are still some spare seats so if you’re a crimehead or an occasional reader or a wannabe writer next week is when you’ll get the lowdown.

Here’s the blurb:
Crime fiction is now the most popular category in international publishing. Readers want the white-knuckle chase, the gruesome crime scene, the sense of euphoria that comes when the baddies get their comeuppance, often while the judicial system looks on, ineffective, inappropriate. But crime fiction is more than cheap thrills. The baddies are no longer all bad and the good guys – and increasingly gals – not all good. It’s a morally ambiguous universe – which is the allure of crime fiction and why we keep coming back for more. We are fascinated by evil. Like voyeurs we thrill to read about killing, about the horror of the moment and about the evidence left behind and what these clues mean. We have come to love the characters that continue in book after book. We live in their cities, lurk on their dark streets. And now, in the last five years local crime novelists have brought this story close to home. Some of these writers will explain what engages them most when they write or read crime fiction. Bang, bang, you’re dead.

LECTURE TITLES
1. Gutted: an amateur exhumes the corpus – Prof Joe Muller
2. Do not cross: reading the evidence – Prof Jane Taylor
3. I like to watch: killing for others – Margie Orford
4. The naked city: exposed on the pavements of fear – Mike Nicol
5. Writing murder and mayhem: panel discussion with Mike Nicol, Angela Makholwa, Margie Orford & Jane Taylor chaired by Joe Muller

To book phone 0216502888 or email ems@uct.ac.za.
See you there. Or else