Margie Orford features in the M&G’s popular “talking authors” series:
Describe yourself in a sentence.
I don’t believe in stopping working just because I’m tired: I stop when what I’m working on is as perfect as I can make it.
Describe your ideal reader.
One who buys their own copy of Daddy’s Girl, reads it and then goes out and buys my backlist.
What are you working on?
The Quarry, the fourth in my Clare Hart series. The subject matter is chilling — it’s a stalker book, but is taking me in a new direction. Away (perhaps) from drugs and gangs and politicians.
Crime writer par excellence Margie Orford chatted to 702’s Jenny Crwys-Williams about her latest book: Daddy’s Girl.
Daddy’s Girl, the third novel in Orford’s Clare Hart series, is a prequel. In what she describes as an action-meditation about being a father in a society that kills little girls, Orford’s book takes us to the scenes where Hart and police maverick Riedwaan Faizal first meet.
Meanwhile, Sue Grant-Marshall conducts The Weekender’s final crime fiction interview with SA’s krimi queen:
MARGIE Orford, queen of South African crime thrillers, has cracked it.
Her third book in the Clare Hart series, Daddy’s Girl, has delivered the “ball-crushing fear” she aims for. It’s what her readers have come to expect.
This novel is the most gut- wrenching of the series and she believes the third one establishes her as a professional writer. Michael Connelly, the acclaimed thriller writer, says it takes 10 books before you truly arrive, but Orford’s short-circuiting that .
Like Clockwork, her first thriller, sold 85000 copies in six months in Germany. She’s been translated into seven languages and is selling in nine countries.
“I’m frightening people all over the place,” she says with her quick wit and melodious laugh. Her nervous tension has been palpable for months as she anguished over the reception of Daddy’s Girl, so at last she can relax.
Crime novelist Margie Orford recently launched her latest hit thriller, Daddy’s Girl, in Sandton – where she had much to say about crime in the province. The Times columnist Laurice Taitz was there; here’s her amusing take:
Crime Writer Paints Joburg Red – Read Daddy’s Girl, the third book in the Clare Hart series written by Cape Town author Margie Orford who came all the way to Sandton City [with its ambience of "hell"] last week to launch it.
“Crime is like hair in Joburg — big and bling,” Orford said. In Joburg it takes 25 men with machine guns to rob the Spar; in Cape Town it takes one guy with a knife.” She described Cape Town as South Africa’s intellectual centre, and Joburg as its money capital.
So what turned Orford to crime? “I am properly educated and went through the JM Coetzee school.” [That would be the University of Cape Town, an institution that can truly claim its status as SA’s literary factory after having produced dozens of award-winning writers]. She then studied in the US returning to South Africa in 2001.
Just in time to mark the release of new editions of Margie Orford’s first two Clare Hart thrillers – plus the launch of the third book, the prequel Daddy’s Girl – Moira Richards interviews the author on Orford’s life of crime, with specific reference to the first novel in the series, Like Clockwork:
Moira: Hi Margie – I spent an entire Saturday reading ‘Like Clockwork’, and found it an unputdownable and thoroughly enjoyable whodunnit. The novel received similar reviews in the South African press, but I think too, that there is a lot more to it than the fast-paced serial-crime story.
I felt while reading this novel, a sense of … pollutedness encroaching on me. Perhaps this was because I am a woman, I don’t know. I noticed too, that your protagonist, the police profiler Clare Hart, was narrated many, many times taking a shower.
MO: I am glad that you the book kept you out of trouble for a whole Saturday. I often feel tainted, corrupted by how violent our society is – and yes this is a way of cleansing. I always have thought of rape victims who are told not to shower or wash after an assault. Their skin must crawl with the traces of their attacker.
Clare’s apartment too is a haven, almost a cloister. So washing is a way of cleansing. It is also a way, I think, of keeping herself separate. It is not always easy to keep a perspective – because rape (and murder, obviously) completely negates the humanity of the other person (the victim) it is hard to be surrounded by so many raped women and not feel that de-humanisation happening to you by association.
Jonathan Ball is pleased to invite you to the Johannesburg launch of Margie Orford’s Daddy’s Girl, the heartstopping new Clare Hart thriller.
Hear the fascinating stories behind Margie’s research and be one of the first to get your hands on the third book in this internationally acclaimed crime series.
In Margie Orford se boeke bestudeer sy geweld en die uitwerking daarvan op ons samelewing. Volgens Orford is “geweld die taal wat deur almal in Suid-Afrika verstaan word”. Die tema word dan ook verder bespreek in haar nuwe boek Daddy’s Girl.
Die kunstenaar Kathryn Smith het met Margie hieroor gepraat asook hul gesamentlike kunsuitstalling wat later die maand in die Kaap plaasvind – meer besonderhede is in die artikel:
Margie Orford doen dinge nie noodwendig volgens die reëls nie. Haar jongste boek, Daddy’s Girl, tel die storie van dr. Clare Hart aan die begin van haar verhouding met die speurder Riedwaan Faizal op. In haar eerste en tweede boeke Like Clockwork en Blood Rose het die twee reeds ’n verhouding – al is dit nie een wat in kalm waters vaar nie.
Daar is reeds ’n kunstentoon stelling en ’n video van ’n karakter in haar vierde boek – en die boek bestaan nog nie eers nie.
“Ek het nie beoog om so te skryf nie. Met die internasionale welslae van die eerste boek moes ek ’n reeks ontwikkel, maar ek moes terugkeer na die begin om die oorsprong van Clare en Riedwaan se ver houding te skets. Riedwaan se dogter word ontvoer en hy is die hoofverdagte. Ver houdings tussen pa’s en dogters fassineer my. Ek stel geweldig belang in hoe ’n man uitwerk hoe om ’n pa te wees in ’n gemeenskap so gewelddadig en hatig teenoor vroue soos ons s’n.”
At the launch of Margie Orford’s third novel, Daddy’s Girl, held at Kalk Bay Books on Saturday, eager fans learned about what happens behind the scenes of this intriguing writer’s life.
It so happens that when Margie Orford pitched her first crime novel, Like Clockwork, to then head of Oshun, Michelle Matthews, she assured the publisher that she had completed at least half the novel. “In reality, only the first chapter had been written,” said Matthews, who learned this fact later. “Margie, undaunted, made good on her promise, and delivered in just a few months an amazing book with amazing characters.” Characters like Ridwaan Faizel and Dr Clare Hart.
Matthews recalled Orford’s editor, Martha Evans, working on that book. “She would answer her telephone when I called, saying, ‘Hello Clare, um, Michelle…’ which I saw as a compliment, because the character is one feisty, awesome tought cookie; just like Margie.”
While unpacking a box recently, Matthews discovered an empty bullet casing and recalled the research Orford had done at a firing range, learning to shoot in order to make sense of the forensics. “What Margie writes about, she gets intensely involved in.”
Orford paid tribute to the two SAPS officers from Mitchells Plain, Director Jeremy Vearey (present at the launch) and Captain Harry Brickles who helped her with her research. While travelling with one of these officers, a call came in advising of a hijacking that had just occurred in the area.
The writer was suddenly immersed in the first-hand experience of a high-adrenaline top-speed car chase. “The driver slammed on brakes and said, ‘Run’. Only as I was gasping for breath in pursuit of the hijacker did I wonder what I was doing, galloping through the flats, unarmed and untrained, after a tik addict car hijacker who, I might add, seemed equally perturbed at the idea of a middle aged white woman following him. We were both quite relieved to lose each other and happily, the stolen car was retrieved and safely returned to its owner.”
The author noted that she is often asked why, in a country like ours with so much crime, she elects to write crime fiction. “What else could I write about?” she laughed. “It’s action stuff and learning to shoot was the best fun. My favourite gun,” said Orford assuming the pose, “is an AK47. Du-du-du-du-du…”
She explained that if one is planning a cash-in-transit heist what is required is a random spray so as to hit the most targets as quickly as possible. By contrast, if you’re planning a bank robbery, you fire in short bursts in order not to overdo the chaos. “If the teller is too frightened, she can’t hand over the money.” With all this newfound expertise, Orford said she was happy to advise Jacob Zuma on matters of security: “Shoot slowly to kill slowly.”
On a more serious note, Orford reflected that the SAPS are often expected to be “armed social workers”, diffusing situations, preventing tragedies. This particular book came to her in a two-week period when a spate of murders of young girls occurred in South Africa, including Sheldean Human and Anastacia Wiese.
“Most of the perpetrators were caught. They weren’t Jeffrey Dahmers or Ted Bundys. They were somebody’s uncle or brother, father or cousin, who found it necessary to turn against society’s future, its most defenceless citizens. “My character, Ridwaan Faizel, grapples with the issue of how to be a good man in a country when 25% of men claim to have raped a woman at some time in their life.”
Another reason Orford has chosen to write crime fiction is that she has lived on a farm. “There’s really nothing there,” she promised. “In order to write literary fiction you need to set a bunch of characters with unbelievable amounts of time to stare into distant koppies and reflect on how they should have, could have, wanted to (but didn’t) get a life. The characters in Daddy’s Girl got pissed off with the farm folk, moved to town, and got a life.”
By contrast, Orford has elected to represent violence and how it exists in the action and drama of the moment and the interaction between people. “How to show grief, survival, and resilience in the wake of trauma requires one to move the characters along very quickly. How they talk to each other after a crime, how they live together after the event – therein lies the real challenge.”
Margie Orford said, “I’d be nowhere without my editors, Martha Evans, who also called me ‘Clare’ and Lynda Gilfillan, who sets the highest standards for Daddy’s Girl.” Concluding, she said, “Crime writing draws me into the media, into the present. It’s vibrant and exciting. And people are so nice. People are always so nice, unless they’re trying to kill you.”
Daddy’s Guests
Daddy’s Girl will also be launched at the Book Lounge and in Johannesburg on the 21st
Hear the fascinating stories behind Orford’s research and be one of the first to get your hands on the third book in her internationally acclaimed Clare Hart series.
We’ll see you there!
Event Details
Date: Wednesday, 07 October 2009
Time: 5:30 PM for 6:00 PM
Venue: The Book Lounge, 71 Roeland cnr Buitentkant Cape Town | Map
In what she describes as an action-meditation about being a father in a society that kills little girls, Orford’s new book sees the return of the sharply intelligent and beautiful investigative journalist-turned-profiler Dr Clare Hart, in a search for a missing child.
Mindful of the resistance to crime fiction in a crime-ridden society, Orford will discuss the ethics of writing and reading thrillers in South Africa. Please join us for what is sure to be a lively discussion.
Margie Orford features in the M&G’s popular “talking authors” series:
