Crime Beat: From the Hip with Joanne Hichens
In her column From the Hip, Joanne Hichens gets hyped up about the Not the London Book Fair. And then rounds off with a couple of krimis worth reading, including Wessel Ebersohn’s The October Killings.
‘I can taste it, I can feel it, I can almost read it, it’s all good…’ said Ben Williams, putting up a brave front, ‘we’re doing it on Skype!’ as he took NOT THE LONDON BOOK FAIR in his stride, recording Victor Dlamini and Helen Moffett interviewing writers and publishers the likes of Imraan Coovadia, Antjie Krog, Kapano Mtalwa, Colleen Higgs, Arthur Atwell, Phakama Mbonambi and Fiona Snyckers to name a few, all the time encouraging his side-kick Sophy Kohler to keep on tweeting.
Although the common lament was, ‘Too bad our guys didn’t make it to London,’ the stranded SA contingent was largely euphoric about the alternate event at the Book Lounge to which writers and readers flocked in support, and there was plenty of bravado and vino and upbeat chitchat on books and fate plus equally important conversations on subjects like Facebook profile photos. How many to have? How often to change? Whether to get capable seven-year-old offspring to airbrush away wrinkles and whiten teeth? Very sensibly, poet Ingrid Andersen has only one photograph. Dressed in black, leaning against a wall. She sounds like she looks every bit the poet.
And talking photos, Fiona Snyckers of the famed Trinity series, the second of which was launched on Friday, is not wearing her lingerie in her author pic. I asked her. ‘Must say you look verrry sexy in your pic,’ I said, ‘all pink satin and flesh,’ nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Fiona, a warm and witty force in the chick lit stakes, blushed modestly. ‘You look like a slutty teenager in your pic!’ I tried to get my foot out of my mouth. ‘It’s obscene!’ I said. ‘It’s not fair!’
Turns out that Fiona, heh heh, has a ball ‘n chain of her own and three kids. Colleen Higgs of Modjaji Books reported that her daughter Kate, all of eight years old, said she’s very pleased mummy didn’t have to go to big bad London so mummy could keep on reading her Anne of Green Gables. Colleen said, ‘You know, it’s worth missing the trip to feel the love.’
And sticking with the lovin’ theme, ‘OOOH,’ I said to literary man Imraan Coovadia, crowding him as he relaxed on an interview stool, ‘I got a verrry naughty email from you today!’ Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. But Imraan is not such a fan of Viagra that he sent out emails to his entire mailing list of over three hundred. He blames it on a Serbian hacker criminal element taking advantage of his contact list. So if you got one such email, don’t thing you’re special.
After squeezing Liesl Jobson’s biceps of steel – she’s strong I’ll tell you, from her rowing practice, and holding up her camera, and her bassoon – and having a weird conversation with a bookseller about the most stolen books in the shop – it’s the J.M. Coetzee novels that grow legs most often – another heavyweight Antjie Krog started off the scheduled event with a heart-felt and rousing poem on the state of the nation. Looking absolutely fab in her snazzy man-suit and tie, the thought crossed my mind that she should apply for a spot there in parliament next to Jeremy Cronin and not only write, but perform her poetry from the back benches. Maybe MP’s would wake up.
NOT THE LONDON BOOK FAIR will go down in history as more fun than the actual London Book fair with all its empty stands and glum faces, smell of ash in the air, teeth grinding on sediment, as at the best Book Lounge venue the atmosphere was heady with the indefatigable spirit of a special brand of South African resilience. So many great writers had messages to send a London audience: we’re a vibrant, complex nation, with stories of universal value and appeal. Ben Williams shrugged at one stage, the only thing left to be said was, ‘What can you do when you’re kaiboshed by Mother Nature?’ Book Lounge owner Mervyn Sloman replied poetically: ‘You certainly can’t argue with a fucking volcano.’
At least, on the krimi front, we were well represented at the Real McCoy by Deon Meyer and Dame Orford. What I really want to know, though, after all is said and done, is how do you do it, Colleen Higgs? Get your kid interested in the classics? My seven-year-old son has at last moved on from Captain Underpants adventures (though I will admit to really enjoying the madcap adventures featuring The Evil Doctor Nappy, The Evil Lunchroom Ladies, and The Evil trio Xorx, Klax and Jennifer.) He’s discovered the Bumosaur books. Just know this – we’ve jumped from the frying pan into the fire. ‘Oh,’ I hear Colleen saying, ‘Kate’s a girl.’
Back in the real world, I do have a couple of good krimi tips. For those who like their reading hard-core. How could I resist this blurb on the cover of a novel called No Dominion by Charlie Huston: ‘Among the new voices of twenty-first-century crime fiction, Charlie Huston…is where it’s at.’ (The Washington Post Book World.)
If you overlook the fact that the characters can’t go out in the daytime sun, and that they drink a cool pint of blood every once in a while from their stash in some hidden mini-fridge or other – oh, didn’t I say they’re vampyres? Yes, with a ‘y’ – they are as believable as any characters in post-modern crime fiction. The baddies are as totally familiar as your local hitman, or drug-dealer on the corner, and good-guy Joe Pitt is as appealing a good guy as you can get, especially because of his vulnerability as a vampyre.
Charlie Huston has an up-beat, immediate and sexy ‘voice’, a contemporary kind of fast read that I lap up. What others have to say about him? “Vicious…a heady mix of nourish hard-boiled dialogue and East Village scumminess…a refreshing rejiggering of vampire mythology…” (Entertainment Weekly.) “Joe Pitt is the sort of hard-boiled, one-liner-shooting character that readers of black-coffee detective novels and modern vampire fiction should embrace with a vengeance.” (The Examiner)
On the SA scene I read Wessel Ebersohn’s The October Killings, just sold to Minotaur in the US. Same St Martin’s Press imprint that published Out To Score under the new title, Cape Greed. Riveting story, as lawyer Abigail Bukula in association with eccentric Jewish psychologist Yudel Gordon, race against the clock to keep one ex-cop Leon Lourens from being murdered. Kept me enthralled and provided escape from my life for a day (phew, what a relief). For a weird little grey-haired bloke trying to find his feet in the new SA, Yudel Gordon ain’t half entertaining, and has a predilection, it seems, for biting into flesh himself, though not to draw blood – he sommer likes to nibble.
Joanne Hichens is the editor of the SA crime fiction anthology Bad Company and was a guest editor of the Wordsetc special issue on crime.
