For the past three to four years, new South African thrillers have been arriving like a great river pouring through the sluices of local publishers and providing much entertaining reading as well as a window on to everyday life.
As we all know, crime is an everyday matter in South Africa, and thrillers, though they do not occupy a high spot on the ladder of literary genres, provide fiction that seems light yet deals with some horribly serious subjects.
They are, in a way, a positive spin-off of murder: vengeance, retribution and justice are powerful storymakers. Though still relatively new names to readers, Deon Meyer, Mike Nicol and Margie Orford are the old guard in this new wave.
One of the newest crime writers, Jassy Mackenzie, has previously published one thriller, Random Violence, and her new book, a real page-turner, is My Brother’s Keeper (Umuzi).
The central characters are two brothers whose only similarity is their appearance. Nick is a paramedic with many years of training and experience, which includes his years as a medic in the defence force in Angola. But his brother and his father are bad news, pathologically violent criminals, with whom he hopes to have lost touch.
When he is called out to a car crash he takes a badly smashed-up girl to hospital and in the ambulance she begs him to phone someone for her. This is how he finds himself involved with a murderous gang that includes his brother, recently out of jail.
The novel is set in Johannesburg and has several subplots that come together with a terrific twist in the tail and an intentionally troublesome ending. It’s not deep, but it’s intelligent and believable.
The October Killings by Wessel Ebersohn (Umuzi) is much more politically and socially complex and is set in the present, or the very recent past, as it refers, somewhat obliquely, to the national prosecuting authority and a vice-president relieved of his post because of a corruption charge.
The main character is Abigail Bukula, a lawyer working in the department of justice. She is a survivor of the raid on ANC people in Maseru, educated in exile and back in South Africa.
Out of the blue a man she remembers from the raid (she was 15 at the time) visits her to ask for her help. As he was the one who saved her life, though he was with the raiders, she feels she must help to find out who is killing them off, one by one, every year on October 22, the date of the raid.
Those who have read Ebersohn’s previous books will remember Judel Gordon, state psychologist attached to the prison service, a character in more ways than one.
The writing is pleasingly shrewd in its observations of life in the (not so) new South Africa; Ebersohn excels in delineating the old guard in Pretoria in prisons and police, as well as the new guard of ANC appointees. The ending is an extremely clever surprise — or it was to me.
Beasts of Prey by Rob Marsh (Human & Rousseau) is set in the late 1970s and early 1980s and starts with a half-eaten human body found at a water hole in the Kruger National Park.
Even though the evidence at the scene suggests it was a suicide, the apartheid-era South African Defence Force is involved and the investigator soon finds his inquiries blocked and deflected by a colonel in military intelligence.
But the investigator, Russell Kemp, is an old hand; his character is both credible and deeply engaging insofar as he naively believes that a good cop can really make a difference to society — he continues to stick to his principles even when battling a pethidine addiction.
The novel looks at various ethical issues, including guns-for-ivory and rhino-horn trading in Angola in which the military is implicated. Marsh has a real gift for dialogue, which raises this political thriller way above the average.