On crime fiction, and real crime

"The crime writer explains why South Africa is perfectly safe for tourists, and why he wouldn't write anywhere else Deon Meyer, far and away South Africa's best crime writer, likes to distance himself from the country he portrays in his novels. His books, often featuring Benny Griessel, an alcoholic detective, focus on a corrupt, violent underworld where bent cops, drug dealers, smugglers and assassins rub shoulders with unscrupulous modern-day African politicians.

Outsiders can be forgiven for believing he is simply holding up a mirror to contemporary South Africa — a country with one of the worst crime rates in the world outside of the drug-fuelled crises in Mexico and Colombia. After all, our interview is taking place in Cape Town — the same city where Shrien Dewani, the Bristol businessman fighting extradition, stands accused of having organised the honeymoon murder of his bride, Anni, last November by hiring killers to fake a carjacking.

Surely such events on one's doorstep provide inspiration?

Meyer rebuts the suggestion with gusto. "No, not at all, there is no relationship between real-world crime and crime fiction. I have never used real-world crime in any of my books. You have to invent crimes so they fit good storytelling," he says. And anyway, he says, the Dewani case is so odd that if he had written it as fiction, it would have been dismissed as implausible.

"We all talked about that a lot. It seemed strange. They don't kill tourists in the townships, they make money out of them, it just didn't add up. "Many tourists go there at all times of night and day and are perfectly safe."

Meyer, a 52-year-old Afrikaner, is a passionate and patriotic South African. He says that his stories no more reflect the reality of daily life in South Africa than Stieg Larsson's trilogy reflects Sweden today, or Michael Connelly's Los Angeles.

"If you take that argument, then Sweden is a country of corrupt corporations and sex offenders, and of course it is not," he says. "If you take Connelly at face value, you would be frightened to go to America.

"Eighty-five per cent of the crime in this country is domestic, among people who know each other, and takes place among the very poorest."

Far from reflecting the views of some of the more jaundiced characters in his novels, Meyer is proud of the progress the country has made since the end of apartheid in 1994. "South Africa today is a much better place than before. Huge challenges remain but we are making progress," he says. "I could never have had a white cop as a sympathetic character under apartheid."

Whatever the formula for success in his chosen genre of crime fiction, Meyer has found it. Married with four children, he is a prolific writer, averaging one book every 18 months since his first novel was published in English in 1997. His work is written in Afrikaans, his mother tongue, and has been translated into 25 languages.

His latest novel, Thirteen Hours, is shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association's prestigious International Dagger award, and he is a guest author at the CrimeFest convention in Bristol later this month.

Thirteen Hours is a fast-moving thriller about Rachel, an American backpacker, on the run from a gang of people trafffickers after witnessing a murder in Zimbabwe. Benny Griessel, separated from his wife and trying to build a relationship with an estranged daughter of the same age as Rachel, has to find the backpacker before her pursuers do. Set against the magnificent backdrop of Table Mountain in Cape Town it is, like all his novels, meticulously researched.

Meyer goes to great lengths to make sure that his characters cover the entire spectrum of South African society. "I try to present the different points of view of modern South Africa, but I don't express my own views in any of my books," he says.

His stories are peopled with colourful characters, from female Zulu cops to disenchanted white detectives complaining about positive discrimination and affirmative-action policies — and considering emigrating to Australia or leaving the force to set up private security firms. Journalists and editors make regular appearances. "I often receive e-mails from police and others saying I have got it just right and that pleases me.

Research is such a critical part of the job, even if in the end only some 10 per cent of it is actually used."

Meyer was born in the South African town of Paarl in the winelands of the Western Cape, but grew up in the goldmining town of Klerksdorp in North West Province. His father, who worked for a lift engineering firm, was a typical conservative Afrikaner, but "nowhere near a racist". Far from the big cities, apartheid barely functioned. "We were often unaware of it until the evening, when the blacks went to their side of town. My father's best friend was a black man.

The different communities knew each other and were not frightened of each other, which is why this 'miracle' of modern South Africa could happen." After military service and studying at Potchefstroom University, he joined Die Volksblad, a daily Afrikaans newspaper in Bloemfontein. Later he moved to Cape Town and worked as a copywriter for a major advertising house. "I always wanted to write, I started with short stories. It was a long learning curve. I never thought about writing crime thrillers but after 1994 things started opening up and new possibilities came along," he says.

Much of his work, particularly Thirteen Hours, presents a snapshot of a society in transition with its flaws and successes magnified. "South Africa is getting there. We can't be compared to Europe, we should be compared to somewhere like Russia, which also had a horrible system of government. By that standard, we are doing pretty well." Meyer wants to be part of that transition. After 1994 many whites left the country, believing there was no role for them. Affirmative-action programmes pushed many into early retirement and limited their opportunities in the state sector.

The exodus was known as the "chicken run". Some have come back but with crime still high, many are still said to be considering leaving. Not Meyer. "This country is still very much a work in progress and to sell my South African soul for more readers does not seem right," he says. "We all have a responsibility — particularly those who come from the cultural group responsible for apartheid — to make this place work."