Why James McClure's South African crime fiction is still fresh

James McClure's The Steam Pig violates one rule against which guides to mystery writing sometimes warn would-be authors, but in the end it doesn't matter much.

Why not? For one thing, the literary device in question may have been in greater fashion in 1971, when McClure published the novel, than it is now.

For another, as incisive as the book is in its portrayal of apartheid-era South Africa and the people who live in it, as worthy a winner as it was of the CWA Gold Dagger, it's a first novel. McClure may simply have been in the early stages of developing his craft. And finally, the writing, even in the passage in question, is vivid and compelling.

McClure may remind readers of William McIlvanney, with his breaks in the action for passages of description or reflection. That's a risk in a plot-driven genre such as a crime; the author has better have the writing chops to pull it off. McClure has them.

In his case, the breaks contribute to a sense of ironic amusement and detachment. These form a surprising, dynamic, occasionally shocking contrast with the harsh portrayals of apartheid-era life and hints of police violence. That contrast remains exciting almost four decades after the books' initial publication.

What other older crime fiction remains fresh today? What keeps it that way?

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Read about the second Kramer and Zondi novel, The Caterpillar Cop. Read more on South African crime fiction at Detectives Beyond Borders. (Click link, then scroll down.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

The Steam Pig: James McClure's South African reality check

How's this for a breathtaking bit of local setting? (It's from The Steam Pig, first of James McClure's Kramer and Zondi South African police procedurals, first published in 1971 and newly reissued in the U.S. by Soho):

"You were born in the Cape?"

Her scornful laugh brought his head up sharply in surprise.

"Why do you people always think coloreds are all born in the Cape?"

Again, that curious overreaction on her part.

"Where then?"

"Durban."

"And—?"

Kramer's ballpoint hovered, ready to set the date down. But the pad slid unheeded from his knee a moment later.

"And I was born white," Mrs. Francis said. "We were all born white. The whole family. And we lived white, too."

Not bad for a first novel, I'd say. It must be passages like that that moved a contemporary reviewer to call McClure "a writer of great skill and humanity."

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of McClure's apartheid-era novels to readers almost forty years later is the blend of breezy banter in the English style with acute portraits of the period's ugliness. The result may shock today's more sensitive readers, at least American ones, but I call it an impressive achievement.

Here's one example:

The Colonel was flattered.

"Put it this way, Lieutenant—I never allow a wog to touch my delphiniums," he said.

Here's another, the opening of the novel's second chapter:

A suspect in the next room screamed. Not continuously, but at irregular intervals which made concentration difficult. Then the typewriter unaccountably jammed. The report was not going to be finished on time.

That's good stuff, and more damning than a straightforwardly angry polemic would have been.

The Steam Pig won the CWA Gold Dagger for best novel of 1971. Read about the second Kramer and Zondi novel, The Caterpillar Cop, here. Read more about South African crime fiction at Crime Beat, and browse the table of contents and selected articles from Mystery Readers Journal's Spring 2010 issue on African mysteries. Finally, read this touching obituary of McClure, who died in 2006.

McClure was born in Johannesburg and educated in Pietermaritzburg, seen by many as the model for his fictional Trekkersburg. He moved to Britain with his family in 1965. Here's an intriguing footnote from Wikipedia's article about the Kramer and Zondi series:

Perhaps inevitably the books received lukewarm reviews in his home land. The mystery of McClure's Trekkersburg mysteries: Text and non-reception in South Africa Peck, R; English in Africa; May95, Vol. 22 Issue 1, p48, 24p

© Peter Rozovsky 2010