DEADLY & DELICIOUS!

Tannie Maria may not be Sherlock Holmes, but could he bake buttermilk poppyseed rusks, dish out advice and solve a murder all before breakfast? I think not. The delightful agony aunt/ detective is back, sharing recipes and solving a murder

(or two) in Sally Andrew’s latest cosy mystery, Death on the Limpopo.

Life is too short not to wear ballgowns, but it’s too long to walk around in uncomfortable shoes,’ says Sally Andrew with a laugh as she shows me her red veldskoene. She’s not kidding: she owns even more ballgowns than pairs of vellies. The author of the bestselling Tannie Maria mysteries – Recipes for Love and Murder and Tannie Maria & the Satanic Mechanic – has left her mud brick house in the Karoo behind to promote the third instalment in the series,

Death on the Limpopo. We’re sitting in a kitchen with tea and cake – a granadilla and orange delight (see main picture) made by Verushka Louw that Sally is testing out for book four – because whether you’re reading or just discussing Tannie Maria, it’s always best done over something sweet.

Fifty-something, short and soft, Tannie Maria is the former food writer, now agony aunt at the Klein Karoo Gazette in Ladismith, where people write to her about their problems and she gives them a recipe that will help, with some advice on the side. When Tannie Maria isn’t solving problems with food, she’s solving a murder or two, all the while trying to navigate her complicated relationship with Detective Henk Kannemeyer.

‘People often ask me where I get my ideas and, to echo Agatha Christie, I always reply, “The Spar – they have an Idea Special every second Tuesday,”’ jokes Sally. But in all seriousness, the idea for Tannie Maria came to Sally while sitting under a camel thorn tree in Namibia after having a close shave with a leopard in a

cave (as one does). It’s a tradition that stuck: being in nature... not escaping leopards. ‘Whenever I write a new book, I go deep into the wilderness,’ she says. Her partner of the past 20 years, wildlife artist Bowen Boshier, also loves the bush and they head out into the wild whenever they need to get away from it all. In fact, the outline for Death on the Limpopo was written on Coetzer’s Island near the Mapungubwe National Park, where the final events of the book take place.

Yet, while nature inspires her, it was actually her myalgic encephalomyelitis (also known as ME or chronic fatigue syndrome) that pushed Sally to initially put pen to paper. ‘If I hadn’t been so ill, I wouldn’t have given myself permission to live where I wanted to live, be with the man I wanted to be with and do what I really wanted to do.’ For Sally, writing has always been an act of healing. ‘I spent nearly 20 years in bed, and this is what I needed to get me out of that.’

Since the success of her first book in the series, (Alexander McCall Smith called it ‘a vivid, amusing and immensely enjoyable read’ and ‘a triumph’), the rights have been bought by 24 publishers and it has been translated into 14 different languages. ‘My literary agent, Isobel Dixon (who represents writers such as Deon Meyer and Finuala Dowling), took me on just before the Frankfurt Book Fair, and made a deal quite quickly with

Tannie Maria came to Sally while sitting under a camel thorn tree in Namibia after having a close shave with a leopard in a cave.

publishers HarperCollins and Canongate,’ Sally recalls. ‘She said she had never seen so much love and enthusiasm bubble up so quickly about a book. I felt like the Cinderella of the ball.’

Sally is as surprised as anyone that a half-English, half-Afrikaans tannie from the Karoo resonated with so many around the world. ‘There’s always a mystery in what works and what doesn’t.’ Perhaps people simply need a good, cosy mystery in their lives. ‘We have enough heavy stuff in the news,’ says Sally. ‘I want us to have a chance to heal.’

Despite her early success, Sally wasn’t always sure there would be a second book. ‘It was so much to keep up with. I was on the phone interviewing publishers in New York at midnight. Don’t get me wrong: I quite enjoyed being a rock star, but I’m happy to be under my rock in the Karoo

99 percent of the time.’ Her illness had also pushed her to the brink. The turning point came during a trip to Zambia, where she’d spent the early years of her life. ‘My parents visited the house we used to live in, but I got so sick I didn’t go with them. On the way back I was weeping. I was in a wheelchair because I couldn’t walk and I thought: “I’m going to have to give it all up.”’ But she knew this wasn’t how she wanted Tannie Maria’s story to end.

To get back on track, Sally went on a journey of healing, doing everything from 17 days of fasting to flying to London to do a Lightning Process course. ‘[The course] really turned things around for me both physically and psychologically: it’s about changing your neural pathways to get out of the fight-or-flight reaction, which a lot of diseases related to the immune system are affected by.’

In Tannie Maria’s latest adventure, she meets Zabanguni ‘Zaba’ Kani, an investigative

journalist with a penchant for black leather and justice. A series of events unfolds and she leaves the safety of her stoep in the Klein Karoo for the Limpopo River, where she and Zaba have to escape not one but two assassins. But at least she has her old faithful blue bakkie, a new pair of veldskoene and delicious padkos for the journey.

As someone who is not at all a foodie, Sally admits that the recipes in the books are not her forte. Each recipe featured in her work is tested by a professional – this time, by the siblings behind the Cakebread Food Studio in Cape Town, Mari-Louis Guy and Callie Maritz – and Sally holds plenty of food tasting parties. ‘The recipes need to have something real in the flavour and some tradition, but most importantly they need to be moan-out-loud delicious.’

Her third book is more of a political thriller than a smalltown murder mystery, and something of a love letter to SA journalism. (You won’t miss the parallels between the corrupt officials in the book and a few scandals we’ve read about in real life.) In her acknowledgements, Sally writes: ‘I had to tone down much of the crazy reality to make it believable in my novel.’

Death in Limpopo was also a bittersweet project for Sally. In it, we learn more about Tannie Maria’s late father, who was an underground member of the ANC during apartheid. The book was strongly influenced by Sally’s own father, Paul. ‘He helped me with the research – pointing me in the direction of books and articles to read – and when he was on his sickbed, I read the manuscript to him.’ When her father passed away, she had to work on the book without him. ‘There was a bit of sadness when I finished it, because it was like I’d lost that link to him.’ His death threw Sally off so much that for her fourth book she’s toyed with bringing Tannie Maria’s father back. ‘I couldn’t distinguish what was right for Tannie Maria and what were my own needs; I might still come back to that, but even talking about it now makes me sad. It’s my way of trying to get my father back.’

Like Sally, Tannie Maria has gone through quite a transformation since the first novel. Sally has come to understand that her main character’s obsession with food may not be as light-hearted as we thought. ‘It was something I introduced as a humorous element and it has become clear to me that it’s linked to her own trauma.’ The second book centres on Tannie Maria’s PTSD – from the years of abuse she suffered at the hands of her late husband, Fanie. ‘I’m seeing how overeating is related to that stress. I’ve been looking more at Overeaters Anonymous groups, listening to podcasts about it and trying to get to grips with it.’ In book four, Sally says, it will become more of a crisis for Tannie Maria. ‘On some level, I feel a responsibility to help heal her and others who are going through the same disorder. It may seem egotistical to talk about your own characters in this way, but to me, they almost feel real. Although I’ve thought the plot out beforehand, what they say and the interactions they have is always a surprise to me.’

So what does the future hold for our heroine? ‘In book four I give her and Henk an even harder time!’ she says. ‘Maybe in book five they’ll be in a good place in their relationship but for now, they’re struggling.’ The untitled book is set to revolve around an antique store where vintage movies are shown. We’re guessing there will be a chalk outline on the floor at some point…