Following the popular success and critical acclaim of her first novel, Fiona Snyckers is back with the second book in the beguiling Trinity Luhabe series. The much-anticipated sequel to Trinity Rising picks up the story four years on, when Trinity is 23 and living in Johannesburg.
Trinity On Air is packed with all the charm and humour readers have come to expect from Fiona Snyckers – with just an added pinch of danger.
With her university days behind her, life couldn’t be better for Trinity Luhabe. She’s got everything a Sandton girl needs:
The Perfect Boyfriend: Ethan brings her (fat-free) breakfast in bed and takes her to craft markets on weekends.
The Perfect Job: Working at Jozi Talks radio is a dream come true for Trinity. She’s still only on the traffic desk, but one day she’ll be reading the news… just as soon as she can convince her boss that “15 Hot Hairstyles For Summer” is a serious news story.
The Neighbour: Ajala is six foot five inches of mysterious Nigerian. Trinity thinks he’s a pussycat. Her best friend Steph thinks he’s a man-eating tiger. Looking into his business dealings could be Trinity’s ticket off the traffic desk and onto hard news.
The Ex: An old flame from university days is back … and hotter than ever. He’s threatening to turn Trinity’s comfortable life upside down.
Join Trinity Luhabe for the ride of her life as all the elements in her perfect world collide.
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.
In TheBrowser.com’s excellent “five books” series, To Heaven by Water author Justin Cartwright takes readers through five novels, mainly by white writers, that play light over the concept of “African literature”:
Q: What is African literature?
A: It comes in different varieties. One is African literature written by Africans, and which in South Africa has a particular dimension. Another is white writers writing about Africa. Some people deny there’s any such thing as “white writing” but in fact there clearly is. White writing is a phrase used by John Coetzee [Nobel Prize for Literature 2003]. It’s about the predicament of the white person in Africa – people who have been dropped down, willingly or unwillingly, in an alien environment, and who try to make an accommodation with it. Now a writer like Nadine Gordimer [Nobel Prize for Literature 1991] thinks she’s made such an accommodation with Africa that there is no such thing as white writing at all, but when you look at her books they’re essentially about the same problem: the white man in Africa. It goes back to Conrad and probably further.
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.”
People often have a very romanticized idea of writing: a novelist seated behind a sun-lit desk in Tuscany, staring at his beautiful neighbour as she walks through the olive grove… Wake up! In truth the lives of writers can be fairly humdrum, – as evidenced by that of award-winning novelist Michiel Heyns, who has some ideas about what life might be like if he wasn’t a writer. Find out what they are:
Thursday August 20: I leave my home in Somerset West at 8.50 for a reading group in Constantia. Heavy traffic on the N2 delays me, and I reach Constantia at 10.20. I squeeze my Golf in between three Mercs parked in the street. Walking up the drive, I count eight more Mercs, plus two in the garage of the host.
I am here to talk about my novel, Bodies Politic. I count 15 attendees and two copies of my novel. I talk for 40 minutes
This March from Jonathan Ball:
