A FAREWELL TO FISH
Local crime writer Mike Nicol is switching gear again, he tells Claire Keeton
Acclaimed author Mike Nicol has been conjuring up crime fiction since 2008 and the final book in his latest hit series — featuring the surfing PI, Fish Pescado, and his smart partner Vicki Kahn, whose mysteries even he can’t crack — is now in bookstores. Hammerman: A Walking Shadow marks the end of an era and leap into a new one for Nicol.
“The transition to crime fiction in South Africa started in the new century,” says Nicol, of a genre that has taken off worldwide. “I started with a security guard, Mace Bishop, and I was trying to do a novelistic history from ’94 to about 2012. I wanted to put my finger on the pulse of the times. The Fish and Vicki series covers from about 2012 to 2019.”
Cape Town is the backdrop for Nicol’s fast-paced thrillers, which reflect the sociopolitical undercurrents of SA, flagging everything from corruption and greed to homelessness. For example, in the Fish series he has a feisty ally in Janet, a homeless woman with whom he shares coffee or meals and from whom he gets neighbourhood intel.
“The characters in the series get so familiar, like old jerseys, and that is part of the problem. I did not want to get trapped,” says Nicol, on why he has walked away from the popular characters of Fish and Vicki, despite crime series being very marketable.
“Now I need to do the cop novel, the police procedural,” says Nicol, who wasn’t ready for this when he first immersed himself in crime writing. A journalist for The Star in the ’70s and Leadership magazine in the ’80s, he knew what a repressive force the police were under apartheid. “The cops were always an invading army.”
Before his switch to crime fiction, Nicol had published four literary fiction and 14 non-fiction titles, including Nelson Mandela’s authorised biography, two volumes of poetry and another five literary fiction titles. “I was a snob and had not even read any crime fiction. I had to start with Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes and work my way through to the present day,” he says.
“Crime fiction has a more structured format and conventions to adhere to, and stylistically it is very different to my first four novels. I would write sentences eight pages long,” says Nicol, whose thriller style is the opposite. Sometimes these sentences are so short they rattle past like gunshots.
“They still sound like proper sentences. It is really important to get the rhythm and the voice right,” says Nicol. “I wrote two duds to get to Mace and it suddenly happened. At the end of the dud book, I found a genuine voice and the character found himself. I remember that moment.”
A renowned writing instructor, Nicol has coached about 30 writers into completing more than 20 published books online. “The short courses are not the same intensity as the masterclass, which is in its 10th year,” he says, describing the work as wonderful.
Nicol’s own routine is to write from 6am to 8am every morning in his study, even in the dark, rainy winters, while his greenfingered partner is asleep upstairs. He switches off the internet at bedtime and starts his writing day with no distractions.
“I am not a fast writer and try to do 250 words a day. Sometimes it takes an hour, sometimes many hours,” says Nicol, who expects to finish his debut cop novel by the end of this year. The character of Cape Town, with its gorgeous, split personality — which reminds Nicol of Berlin, Germany, where he did a fellowship soon after the Wall came down — will be back.
“Cape Town is still an apartheid city in many respects,” says Nicol of the place that provides him with an ideal setting for his stories — with its natural beauty, urban infrastructure, and contrasts between the rich suburbs, gang-afflicted Cape Flats and neglected townships. He creates mobile characters “to try to get the whole city into each book and not just the beaches”.
But the gritty details of contemporary SA — and the world — may be losing their appeal for fiction readers.
Nicol says: “I got a call from a publisher who said it is becoming difficult to sell fiction that is too realistic. Now they are interested in historic fiction, from about the ’50s backwards. Maybe it’s time to try this.”