The way some people die ... and die ... and die
134. 135. 75. 10. 0.That's how many people die in some popular South African crime novels by the authors' own counts. Well, in one case the author relays tallies combined by a reviewer. (134? 135? I've read both books, and the tallies seem a bit high.)
Read all about it on Crime Beat (South Africa) courtesy of the bloodthirsty Mike Nicol.
© Peter Rozovsky 2011
Labels: Africa, Mike Nicol, miscellaneous
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 11:24 PM
7 Comments:
Can't seem to get there from here.
I was just thinking, having sampled a couple of South-African and one Australian police procedural, how much they seemed like those set in the U.S. Local color for some reason doesn't put me there. Many of the street names are English, and the people I meet seem no different from those here. In other words, I don't really feel I've left home. The agendas also match: racism between whites and blacks, greedy developers, a decline in educational standards, kids on drugs, and an exploding suburbia.
Hmm, I just tried the link, and it worked, though it took a few seconds.
I find that I've very much left home when I read South African crime fiction, whether because of physical descriptions of weather and topography, as in Roger Smith's books, or precisely because tension between whites and blacks is matched by that between mixed-race "coloreds" and other groups, between Afrikaners and whites of English descent, or even between Xhosa and Zulu.
It appears AOL is blocking the site.
Perhaps the books make me feel a bit hopeless. Hopeless isn't good. I don't go for noir. I like to think that man's struggle has some pay-off.
That's odd. Maybe staff cutbacks have kept AOL from staying up-to-date with the news, and they still think South Africa is the object of international boycotts.
As far as noir and hopelessness, you might check out some of the comments toward the bottom of my recent Ray Banks discussion string. Noir, if I can sum up, is the practice of maintaining hope in the face of hopless circumstances.
I don't know if this will work any better for you, but here's the URL of that South Africa discussion: http://crimebeat.bookslive.co.za/blog/2011/06/22/crime-beat-body-count/
Nope. It flashes on, goes "oops" and takes me back here. Weird.
Weird, all right. The link works on my computers at home and at work, both clicking it directly, and copying and pasting. Well, computers are a force for good overall, so I wouldn't worry about this one glitch.
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