Murder, he wrote …

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By Diane de Beer

His earlier work in magic realism didn’t do well in this country, that is why Mike Nicol turned to crime.

In writing, of course, not reality.

He was fascinated by how well local author Deon Meyer was doing, but had always thought himself too superior for crime writing. Once he started delving deeper, he discovered there was far more to the genre than met his jaundiced eye.

And as Meyer sits across the table from now good friend Nicol, the then novice to crime writing tips a hat at the more seasoned author. In the meantime, Nicol has finished his first crime trilogy and might just have kept going with this particular gang if his partner hadn’t advised him to move on to something and someone else.

But he’s going to miss his two crime heroes (Mace Bishop and Pylon Buso) who scratched around in the underbelly of Cape Town as crime often sought them rather than they it.

When still researching the route he should go, Nicol was surprised to discover how many crime authors deal in social issues. But he also had to look at his style of writing.

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