Postmortem: Exploring South African Crime Fiction, by Alex J. Coyne
South Africa has a high crime rate , and perhaps ironically, its readers have developed a grand love affair with crime fiction. Broken cops, maverick detectives, gangland tales, and courtroom dramas set here are popular; redemption, justice, and crimes solved are all hopeful things compared to many of its true crime, hard news headlines. Crime fiction is especially popular where headlines are dominated by killings, heists, and slain detectives. South Africa’s ghosts don’t haunt graveyards, but gravitate to legal chambers, morgues, and prisons, where crime fiction is arguably just as popular as the country’s horror fiction library. Here’s a postmortem examination of South African crime fiction, going from its 1950s roots with Arthur Maimane’s stories in Drum Magazin e or June Drummond’s The Black Unicorn , through to modern crime stories driven by amateur sleuths and professional (or retired) detectives. Early South African Crime Fiction June Drummond’s The Black Unicorn...