Crime Beat

On Monday Crime Beat posted a critics choice of local krimis thanks to an arrangement with WORDSetc. Editor Phakamba Mbonambi and guest editor Joanne Hichens have just produced a special edition of the magazine devoted to SA crime fiction. Buy it from any good bookshop. Here, once again in no particular order, is part two the critics’ must-reads. (more…)

Last year WORDSetc commissioned a bunch of reviewers to write about their local krimi of choice. They did, and Crime Beat’s been given special permission to post the reviews. The current edition of WORDSetc is devoted to SA crime fiction and has been compiled by the publishing editor Phakamba Mbonambi and guest editor Joanne Hichens. The magazine is available in all good bookshops. In no special order here are the first five notices. The others to follow on Wednesday (more…)

Trawling round the net recently I came across this fascinating article by Barbara Fister called ‘Copycat Crimes: Crime Fiction and the Marketplace of Anxieties’. Fister’s an American academic librarian turned crime novelist with some trenchant things to say about our beloved genre. Here are the opening paras and a link to the full article. (more…)

Here’s a clue to the direction Jassy Mackenzie’s next thriller’s gonna take. Shhh, she ordered, on the internet, nogal, a book on guarding. Or maybe she’s opening up an agency? Either way it’s a peek into the dark and mysterious corners of a writer’s mind. (more…)

Stray doppies

First up, there’ve been some changes at Crime Beat as the super sleuths will have noticed. For starters co-founder and opening blogger Barbara Erasmus has decided enough is enough. Almost three years ago, July 2007, she started putting up the first posts for Crime Beat (along with a blook version of her intriguing novel, Chameleon) as I was intent on keeping away from the technical end. But then the whole thing took off and I had to get Ben to give me lessons in posting. For two years Barbara and I (with help from first Dirk Jordaan and now Chanette Paul on the Afrikaans side) kept up a steady stream of info but that has cut back this year to three posts a week. No question about it without Barbara’s energy from the get-go, Crime Beat wouldn’t have got under way as early as it did nor would it have made the in-roads it has done internationally on the crime fiction blogging scene. So thanks, Barbara, for all the help and enthusiasm. You’ll still see her byline from time to time as she now has an emeritus position on the blog.

This evening at the Book Lounge witness the Dame (Margie Orford, who else!) chatting up international bestselling author Peter James. Be there at 5.30 pm to hear dark and dangerous stuff.

And finally Celine Jacobson at a blog called Court Reporter has posted one of those always fascinating 100 best crime reads which you can check out on her site.

Coming up in the weeks and days ahead: a bunch of krimiheads write on their best SA crime fiction; and an as yet unpublished short story from the man who begat the local version of the genre, James McClure.

It has always irritated Andrew Brown that the tag of crime fiction writer trails in the wake of his books. He is willing to concede that maybe Coldsleep Lullaby could be placed in the thriller ghetto but certainly not his new(ish) – it was published late last year – Refuge. No dispute there. But just to irritate him, Crime Beat sat him down other, turned on the interrogator’s bright light and made him squeal. In the course of the interview he threatened to us with dire consequences…

HOT NEWS UPDATE Refuge has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize! (more…)

Stray doppies

Good to know that there is some krimi representation at the London Book Fair in the personages of the Blue Cocktail (aka Deon Meyer) and Longnight Angela (aka Angela Makholwa) but what about those krimi khicks Jassy Mackenzie and Sarah Lotz, not to mention the Dame herself?

Here’s a thought from that stern critic Leon de Kock: Is this kind of narrative representation [he means our krimis], implying a severely foreshortened range of inferiority and perceptual/experiential variation, what our literature has come to? Jislaaik!

It always pays to give time to the masters now and again so here is a rule of thumb from Raymond Chandler: ‘When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.’

And finally Herr M (a cop) talking to the narrator about crime fiction in Friedrich Durrenmatt’s The Pledge: ‘…to be honest I have never thought very highly of mystery stories … Sheer waste of time. What you had to say in your lecture [on the art of writing detective stories] yesterday was worth hearing, no doubt; since the politicians fail us in so reprehensible a fashion … well, since the politicians are such failures, people hope that at least the police will know how to keep order in the world. I must admit that I myself can conceive of no rottener hope than that. The trouble is that in all these mystery stories an altogether different kind of fraud is perpetrated. I am not even referring to the fact that the criminal has his punishment meted out to him. Such pretty fairytales are morally necessary too, I suppose. They are in the same class with the other lies that help preserve the State, like that pious phrase that crime does not pay, whereas anyone has only to look at human society to find out just how much truth there is in that. But I would let all that ride, if only out of strict commercial principles – for every audience and every taxpayer has a right to his heroes and his happy endings, and we of the police and you of the writing profession are equally obliged to supply these.’

In her column this month, Joanne Hichens takes a look at the importance of the victim and what the implications are if the victim is killed off by page three – a strategy suggested to Ian Rankin by a US agent as a way of pulling in more readers. Now there’s a proposition… (more…)

If you love your krimis to take off knee deep in blood and you like gaining insight into several sides of the South African psyche, then Plaasmoord is your book. It’s a …um… bloody good read.

Karin Brynard het die Afrikaanse krimi-wêreld met die trefkrag van ’n asteroïede uit die Baptistina-gordel geslaan. Om Izak de Vries aan te haal: Plaasmoord is ’n bliksem van ’n boek wat spanningsvrate hulle toonnaels sal laat kou van die lekker. (more…)

A mystery lurks at the heart of Jassy Mackenzie’s latest column: what is a proper bookshop? Admittedly she does drop a hint of sorts: ‘One that sells new books.’ What bookshop can she mean? Does it have a name? If you can give the investigators at Crime Beat a clue please drop us a line on the qt, we’ll keep it hush hush. (more…)