Crime Beat: The grilling of Sarah Lotz
You read Exhibit A. And now you’re pondering about whether to buy Tooth and Nailed for your book club? Or your twenty-something’s birthday? Well, ponder no further. Crime Beat put the bright lights in her eyes, and made Sarah Lotz answer some questions. She did. Through gritted teeth.
Crime Beat: One of the things about Tooth and Nailed that is immediately obvious, is its sense of vitality. To a degree this was the case with Exhibit A, but that book was undercut by a truly nasty incident. In a sense Tooth and Nailed is less serious, although still satiric, and imbued with this sense of vitality I mentioned earlier. Vitality in many respects: the extraordinary characters, the descriptions of the city, the contrasting landscapes – Cape Town and the vineyard environs, and the bush of Botswana. There’s even a short jaunt to the sticky heat of Durban. Leave the characters out of it for the moment, was the contrast in landscapes deliberate or a useful serendipity as the story progressed?
Sarah Lotz: Many thanks for the compliments! And you’re right – Tooth and Nailed is far less agenda-driven than Exhibit A. I didn’t have so much of an axe to grind with this one, which made it both harder and easier to write. My main concern has always been to entertain the reader; I’m under no illusions that the Exhibit A books are high literary art. I strongly believe that South Africa needs more readable commercial fiction, and our local genre writers are leading the field in this regard. As for the contrasting landscapes, I love Botswana and had just returned from there so that was a natural destination for Georgie and Patrick, and plot-wise it didn’t make sense to have all the action taking place in Cape Town – hence Georgie’s quick jaunt to Durban’s mean streets. So I’d say it was serendipitous and deliberate. Sorry to be so wishy-washy.
Crime Beat: Okay, let’s get to your bunch of characters, most of whom we met in Exhibit A. Firstly your protagonist Georgie Allen who sounds like a sadsack, dresses badly, drives a skedonk and yet he’s actually pretty successful as a lawyer, lover, brother, friend. Why did you choose to cloak his talents in this shambolic presentation?
Sarah Lotz: Who wants to read about a super-successful sharp-suited lawyer who has it all? Big yawn. I like flawed characters, the Rebuses, the Benny Grissels, the Harry Boschs of the krimi world. I don’t have much time for wish-fulfilment characters who can kick the shit out of the baddies while simultaneously shagging the gorgeous blonde. Georgie may dress like a Bree Street bergie, but he shines where it matters (a bit like my husband).
Crime Beat: Of course the other thing about Georgie is that he has a soft spot for cars, and has a financial interest in a dealership. Well, he actually put up the capital for the business. He’s generous that way. At one point he waxes lyrical over a Ford Perana, in fact you render his dialogue about the technicalities of cams and carbs as pure poetry. Are cars close to your heart too?
Sarah Lotz: I love driving, and am much more likely to be found reading Auto Trader than Style magazine. For years I drove pieces of shit, but as my husband also has a stake in a second-hand car business (he’s dodgy that way) I get to try out all sorts of V8 and straight six models (sorry, environment). We currently have a Nissan 350Z, named Steve after Steve McQueen, and I shall mourn him when he’s sold, as will my dad, who takes him for a spin whenever my mom isn’t looking.
Crime Beat: Yes, well. Let’s not get sidetracked here. Now for the main cast: Georgie’s advocate sidekick, the Poison Dwarf; his divorced wife, the Witch; not to mention his PA Chesray, the Machine, and his new associate Shane the Pain and his PA the stylish Noluthando. You couldn’t ask for a richer bunch. They bring with them a considerable energy and certainly keep the narrative moving. Again, a reflection of your enthusiasm for the novel?
Sarah Lotz: Absolutely! I like quirky, left-field characters such as Chesray and Patrick who can get away with saying outrageous things. And I brought the perfect Shane into the picture deliberately. I think everyone identifies with that niggling sense of inadequacy that comes with being around someone seemingly perfect, talented and fabulous (Lauren Beukes and Sam Wilson, I’m looking at you!). Noli and the Machine are basically the kinds of women I admire – people who get on with it even when the odds are stacked against them. As for Georgie’s ex, the Witch, after reading your Revenge Trilogy I’ve kind of got it in my head that she’s the good North Witch to your evil East Witch: the sinister Sheemina February. As they’re both kick-ass ball-busting laywers of note, I’d love to be in court to see them go head to head.
Crime Beat: Head to head. The mind boggles. But let’s not be distracted. Let’s bring in Carmen, the Witch’s PA. Now Georgie doesn’t come across as a sexy man, but he obviously has his sexy side to him – he likes dogs, for instance. It is difficult to talk about Carmen without revealing the plot but her relationship with Georgie opens up a longing in him. In fact his relationship with Carmen and his fascination with the voice on his Garmin are two of the features that endear him to the reader.
Sarah Lotz: Does liking dogs make you sexy? I’m not sure what that says about you Mike, seeing as I know you’re not a fan of our four-legged friends.
Crime Beat: Yes, well, I was trying to be kind to animals.
Sarah Lotz: Poor old Georgie. He badly needed to get laid, and although he always goes for women out of his league, I thought he deserved to hook up with a cool, independent, sexy woman. Carmen does have one fault however – she drives a Ford Ka. But we can’t all be perfect.
Crime Beat: And then there are the baddies. First off the pervy professor Benjamin Nyathi. The abuse of women is a major concern in your novels, the rape in Exhibit A, Benjamin’s transgressions here, in fact, the revelations about Benjamin overshadow the major storyline about the hyena attack.
Sarah Lotz: I wanted to write a character whose ego overrode his intelligence. I think Nyathi might come across as a bit of a caricature, the kind of self-involved egomaniac you often find hanging around the fringes of the high-end literary set, but he was fun to write; pompous people always are as they’re asking to have the piss taken out of them. I asked stellar poet Tania van Schalkwyk to come up with the sort of up-your-own-arse type of poetry a character like that would write (and which he performs at the Book Lounge, much to Patrick’s disgust), and she outdid herself. His storyline initially revolved around a plagiarism case, but I just didn’t have the skill to make that work; it wasn’t anywhere near exciting enough. Hence the twisty blackmail/murder plot.
Crime Beat: If there is an out-and-out despicable character in the book it is Deon du Toit, the step-father of the boy who gets bitten by a hyena. Du Toit behaves irresponsibly, lies, and seeks to profit from his step-son’s misfortune. This is one character who seems to have no redeeming features. Why are you so hard on him?
Sarah Lotz: He’s a bully who clearly lords it over his wife and two kids, and I loathe bullies of any age. In my experience, they can often be superficially charming, but rarely have other redeeming qualities. Deon is also a coward, one of those vile wannabe Wilbur Smith hunter types who thinks that spending 20 grand to shoot a lion trapped in a cage makes him a man. In my opinion, people who engage in that sort of so-called recreation deserve to be shot (and I mean that literally). Canned hunting is beyond barbaric.
Crime Beat: Let’s look at the main story now. Greg, Georgie’s brother, runs a safari operation in Botswana that gives his clients a taste of the wild side. It is during one of these trips that young Werner gets savaged by the hyena. The result of this is that Greg is sued for negligence. Interesting idea, based on a true story?
Sarah Lotz: There have been several cases of children being attacked, unprovoked, by hyenas in Botswana, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, but as far as I know, there hasn’t been a case where the actual tour guide has been held to account. Perhaps the most publicised case was that of an incredibly brave South African girl who was bitten and dragged away by a hyena while she was sitting with her family around a campfire in Botswana. Despite horrendous injuries, she survived, and thankfully made a full recovery. It’s quite difficult to estimate the number of animal attacks that actually take place each year – it’s not in the hunting concessions’ interests to publicise every (if any) of these incidents. Rich American tourists are far less likely to shell out the dollars if they suspect they might be trampled by an errant buffalo while bagging a trophy for the den wall.
Crime Beat: When Georgie and the Poison Dwarf take a trip to Botswana to visit the scene of the crime they have a terrifying encounter with lions one night. Didn’t this happen to you?
Sarah Lotz: Yeah. My family and I were camping wild in Botswana, and a pride of lions attempted to claw their way into our tents. I’ve been in some hairy life-threatening situations in the past, but I have never been so terrified – the fear I felt was primal in its intensity. We later found out that my daughter had secreted a plate of lamb chops in her tent, which might partly explain why the lions were so determined.
But we weren’t the only ones to run into this problem that season. Two weeks after our incident, an American tourist camping in Savuti was dragged out of his tent and eaten by a lion. And after we’d left the lion camp (and wisely holed up in a budget-busting lodge for a couple of nights), we came across a group of shell-shocked British tourists whose safari vehicle had been gored by an elephant. Its tusk had sheared straight through one of the seats, narrowly missing skewering a tourist. Wildlife experts such as Quinton Martins and Ian Michler believe that this unusually aggressive behaviour is a result of wild animals becoming habituated to the presence of humans and losing their natural fear. Habituation has major consequences for the future of wildlife tourism.
Crime Beat: Your novel encompasses the gamut of a lawyer’s life: the case, the research, the time in court. Your court scenes are vivid and dramatic. Do you plot the argument before hand or does the scene progress as you write?
Sarah Lotz: The argument has to be carefully worded and plotted beforehand, and goes through several rewrites where my husband and I ‘act’ it out to see if we can find any contradictions. The last thing I want is for a sharp attorney or advocate to read one of Patrick’s arguments and gleefully pick holes in it.
Crime Beat: The judge comes off a tad badly. Being known as the Crypt-Keeper, and continually sucking your teeth is not the sort of image judges strive for?
Sarah Lotz: The Crypt-Keeper is a throwback to the old regime and has somehow held on to his position (by the skin of his false teeth) even though he should have been put out to grass years ago. He’s my little dig at the appallingly unjust legislation that underpinned our justice system for decades.
Crime Beat: You have opened a corner entirely your own in our nascent crime scene, that of the satiric and funny legal thriller. Why did this side of the genre appeal to you, given that you also double as a horror writer?
Sarah Lotz: Opportunity. I’m married to a lawyer and I’m very fortunate to have access to incredible stories – most of which I can’t use because they’d be too unbelievable if fictionalised. Thank you for saying that the novels are funny – that’s down to the characters, nothing to do with me.
Crime Beat: Will you venture elsewhere in crime fiction, say, into the ambit of a private investigator? Or a police procedural?
Sarah Lotz: I’d definitely be more inclined to write a PI novel than a police procedural, as I have serious issues with authority. I’m more of a Jade de Jong or Mullet Mendes than a Benny Grissel (although I love Benny and think he’s a wonderful creation). There is another crime novel on the back burner, involving those disturbingly realistic sex dolls you can buy online (if you’re so inclined). I wrote a short cell-phone sized version of the story for the Novel Idea initiative, brainchild of Michelle Matthews, and really got a kick out of it. The concept is, however, (as Stephen King quotes in On Writing) ‘as dark as a carful of assholes’. Which is possibly too dark.
Crime Beat: Unless they’ve been cleared for colonoscopies, of course. However. One of the features of your two legal novels is the nil body count. There is violence in Exhibit A, but aside from the professor’s tacky behaviour in Tooth and Nailed there are no guns, knives, garden shears, or even men beating one another up. Do you deliberately avoid violence in your books, or is it happenstance that this hasn’t been necessary in your stories?
Sarah Lotz: I honestly don’t plan it that way. Thing is, my main character is a workmanlike attorney, and unless he’s driving a case for the Russian mafia (or, possibly, the fellows behind the arms deal), he’s unlikely to run into fisticuffs or be threatened by seedy underworld types. It’s really just a matter of not stretching the truth too far and shoe-horning violence into the novel for the sake of it. In my experience, lawyers generally don’t encounter personal violence as a result of their work, although I think my husband would benefit from a short, sharp visit from the fashion police.
Crime Beat: If you were to off a character, would that character be male or female?
Sarah Lotz: That would depend on circumstances and plot. Clearly the majority of violence is perpetuated by men on women, and I think this is reflected accurately in crime fiction – especially local crime fiction. Margie Orford handles this side of things particularly brilliantly. But I’d never be able to write a novel in which children or animals are butchered. I’m a wuss that way.
Crime Beat: Would you consider torturing a female character? You could say that you’d already done this with the rape in Exhibit A, but I mean characters seriously behaving badly towards other characters and causing pain and suffering?
Sarah Lotz: My first reaction is to say no, but again, it would depend on the storyline and plot. I’m generally not a fan of gratuitous violence in fiction and film. I may also write horror but I loathe torture porn. Stuff like Hostel and the endless Saw movie franchise bore and nauseate me, and exhibit a spectacular lack of imagination. To my mind, where gruesome violence is concerned, less is more. Sure, there are serial killers out there who do torture and abuse victims, but in real life it happens far less than Eli Roth and James Patterson would have us believe. There are countless ways to hook the reader without resorting to endless graphic descriptions of rape or mutilation or whatever for cheap shock effect. When Louis Greenberg and I are plotting our horror books [their first, The Mall, will be published by Quercus next year], we’re more concerned with creating a sense of creeping dread, or warping the everyday. Sure, there are maggoty and gory bits in our books, but it’s never gratuitous for the sake of it.
Crime Beat: Finally, you leave a huge issue unresolved at the end of Tooth and Nailed. Does this mean that you are planning a return for Georgie Allen? If so are we in for a series?
Sarah Lotz: You’ll have to ask my publishers, but I hope so.
