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| © Zeki |
The British novelist James McClure
died of leukaemia on June, 17 th 2006 at Oxford Hospital. His novels – presented
on Europolar- will remain.
McClure grew up in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Having started
off as a commercials photographer, he then taught for four years
before becoming a reporter specialised in criminal news items. He
emigrated in 1965 to Great Britain and worked at the Daily Mail in
Edinburgh, and later at the Oxford Times.
With his first book, The
Steam Pig (1971), McClure begins a series headed by two South African policemen,
the Afrikaner Lieutenant Tromp Kramer and the Zulu detective sergeant
Mickey Zondi, from the Trekkersburg crime squad. The central point
of this series is to associate a black man and a white man in a
country segregated by Apartheid, and whose cooperation soon turns
to friendship. In this first book, they are investigating the murder
of a young female music teacher. Whilst reconstructing her past,
they discover that the lives of a brother and a sister were suddenly
turned upside down the day a blood test showed their “black” origins.
In the second book, The
Caterpillar Cop (1972), Kramer and Zondi are searching for the murderer of
a teenager who was strangled and mutilated. The victim belonged
to the “Detective society”, an organisation
financed by the Interior minister and inciting schoolboys to become
police informers. The series continue with The Gooseberry Fool (1974),
Snake (1975), The
Sunday Hangman (1977), The Blood of an
Englishman (1980), The Artful
Egg (1984).
The Song Dog (1991), published much later, is in fact the first
episode in the series. Lieutenant Kramer meets Zondi for the first
time, when the latter comes to help him solve a complicated investigation
in a village at the heart of Northern Zululand. The action is supposed
to be taking place in the early 1960s, as there is mention of the
forthcoming arrest of a barrister member of the ANC, named Nelson
Mandela.
With their efficient plots, punctuated with a touch of humour, his
novels keep you on your toes. Besides, they give the reader an opportunity
to discover certain aspects of everyday life in South Africa before
the end of Apartheid.
Bibliography
Four and Twenty Virgins (1974)
Rogue Eagle
(1976)
Tromp Kramer & Mickey Zondi series
The Song Dog (1991)
The Steam Pig (1971)
The Caterpillar Cop (1972)
The Gooseberry Fool (1974)
Snake (1975)
The Sunday Hangman (1977)
The Blood of an Englishman (1980)
The Artful Egg (1984)
