Crime Beat

The long awaited sequel to Dark Video (Umuzi), ‘Black Mark’, has been delivered to the publishers, though the release date has not been finalised. Peter Church was ‘KGB’ about the content matter, but disclosed that it involves a Cape Town businessman (someone in our midst) who is utilising the services of an underground network of barmen (the Mickey Finn Club) to procure the services of unwitting young female students. Dark Video, released by New Holland in Australia, has struck a chord with local readers, according to the following review in the Sydney Morning Herald. (more…)

Lots of stuff’s happening out there:

Margie Orford’s Daddy’s Girl has gone into a reprint and if you missed an interview with her on Litnet here’s the link.

Roger Smith’s Mixed Blood has been voted the number one crime novel of 2009 by the 19 German, Austrian and Swiss crime fiction revewers who make up KrimiWelt.

Jassy Mackenzie’s My Brother’s Keeper has been listed on the International Thriller Writers awards that will be presented at Thrillerfest V in New York in July in the Best Paperback category.

If you want to catch Deon Meyer in action this year he’ll be at the London Book Fair in April and at the Franschhoek Literary Festival in May.

For mad keen academics launching into the wild and weird terrain of crime fiction here’s a link to an academic journal called Clues which gives the highbrow lowdown on the genre.

The Schlock Horror series at UCT’s Summer School wraps up tonight with a panel discussion featuring Joe Muller as the choirmaster conducting Jane Taylor, Margie – The Dame – Orford, Longnight Angela Makholwa and myself as we sing for our supper. The Blue Cocktail – aka Deon Meyer – is expected to be hiding in the audience. Last night I was asked what schlock meant as it didn’t appear in the dictionary. But you will find it in Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang where it is given as ‘cheap, inferior, in poor taste, ie, a piece of popular culture in poor taste’. IE, it puts crime fiction at about as far a remove from the literary snobs as you can get. Meanwhile here’s Jane Taylor’s contribution to the series entitled Do not cross. (more…)

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NEWSFLASH: Jane Taylor’s talk at the Schlock Horror discussions will be up on Crime Beat tomorrow.
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Last night Margie – the Dame – Orford presented a brilliant lecture to the Schlock Horror audience. She had ‘em rivetted, gasping with, you guesed it, horror, and laughing at her idea that when you wake up in Johannesburg you stretch enthusiastically, shout, “Yay! I haven’t been killed. Let’s go shopping.” Her paper will appear here in due course, so, as they say, watch this space.

Talking about Johannesburg, today Longnight Angela Makholwa flies in from the big smoke to get acclimatised before tomorrow night’s panel discussion. Will she wake up tomorrow morning with the typical Joburg shout, I wonder?

Anyhow, she was a tad rude about Cape Town in an email, referring to it as the permanently pregnant city. You know, referencing the Mother City tag, the tour operators love to bandy about. Not a little affronted I asked for an explanation. She chirped back that it’s an old joke that it takes nine months for anything to happen here, and then at the end of the nine months still nothing’s happened, so the city’s perpetually pregnant. Yeah, I know, it’s a real Jozi out-to-lunch joke.

I’m up tonight at the Schlock Horror series with a look at the Naked City. If you’re a dirty mac type then pop along – I’ve got a sleaze-list to die for.

After a few choice threats of violence, Crime Beat is now able to present the first of the four lectures happening this week at UCT’s Summer School. This one, entitled Gutted: an amateur exhumes the corpus is by Honorary Professor of Crime Fiction, Joe Muller. The title was recently conferred on him by a secret organisation. Tomorrow we’ll post Jane Taylor’s lecture: Do not cross: reading the evidence. (more…)

Cape Town as our krimi capital is much on my mind today – mostly because I have to put together some thoughts for my Thursday night session of the Schlock Horror talks. So I thought that some short takes on the city might be in order. (more…)

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From left: Chanette Paul, Rob Marsh, Roger Smith, Margie Orford, Michael Sears, Jaco Fouche, Deon Meyer, Peter Church, Riana Mouton, Brandon Carstens, Joanne Hichens, Sarah Lotz, Sue Rabie, Richard Kunzmann
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Chill time. And how better to chill out, if not with a krimi. So I rounded up the usual suspects and asked for the crime novel/thriller that had fired them up the most this year in the hopes it’d provide a useful list. Which it does. Interestingly, only one mention of Stieg Larsson (but then perhaps the cognoscenti realise he’s not all he’s cracked up to be). And before I let the hotshots have their say, my vote for the year goes to Don Winslow’s The Winter of Frankie Machine (actually published in 2006 but I’m a slow reader), followed in rapid succession by Neville Stuart’s The Twelve and Richard Price’s Lush Life (2008). Also don’t forget to read local. All you have to do is click on the author’s title to order. (more…)

In her final column of the year, Joanne Hichens gets into some of the stuff that goes on in the backrooms where stories are edited and authors are interviewed. Her next column will appear in the heavily freighted year of the vuvuzela. (more…)

There are more flavours of crime novel than colours in a box of Smarties says Barbara Ludman in a recent column in the Mail&Guardian. Protagonists in police procedurals range from tough American cops to highly civilised British policemen, from deeply depressed Scandinavian detective inspectors to the Italian inspettore who tracks down the bad guys in a world where nearly everyone is corrupt. (more…)

Wanna know how the reviewers are responding to the home-grown crime novel? Then here’s a take on how they’ve raved over Margie Orford’s latest – Daddy’s Girl. In case you’ve been in prison for the last few months (or maybe the last three years) and haven’t been aware of her Clare Hart series let us put you in the know: you see Daddy’s Girl is the third in the series but a prequel to the previous two, Like Clockwork and Blood Rose. So get with the programme. If you’re a television nut then you might want to check out Margie on Carte Blanche this Sunday evening. And on Monday Crime Beat releases the transcript of a quiet chat we had with her under the interrogation lights. Meanwhile, take a decko at what the reviewers had to say: (more…)