James McClure’s first crime novel featuring Lieutenant Tromp Kramer and Constable Mickey Zondi, The Steam Pig, appears on a couple of Top Ten lists for police procedurals. The setting, like that of my first crime story, is South Africa. So I was very keen to read the book. Doing so, however, wasn’t the unmitigated pleasure I had hoped for. The reasons are complex.
It is clear from the first line that McClure is a witty writer: For an undertaker George Henry Abbott was a sad man.
If that’s not a great first line, I don’t what is. The Steam Pig has a great many equally delightful sentences and some wonderful twists, though partly offset » Read the rest of this entry «
