We were living on the edge of the Knysna forest on the southern coast of Africa when my lovely old Olivetti typewriter and I parted ways in a traumatic fashion. When my eldest daughter presented me with a computer for my birthday I realised the personal computer had arrived, turning
This is the seventh novel of the Yudel Gordon Series. Yudel Gordon is an eccentric prison psychologist working in Tshwane (Pretoria), South Africa. More about the Yudel Gordon stories can be found here. Almost everyone agreed the end of Apartheid was inevitable and necessary. But there were those who felt
Under the Common Purpose doctrine anyone who was present at a homicide and was judged to be of one mind with the killer was also guilty. If Common Purpose is applied, instead of being found guilty as an accessory, the onlooker can also be judged a murderer. Judge Meyer was
As the old political order started to fall away in South Africa, the changes in the country affected everyone. Many of the unfranchised majority, especially young people, who were going to feel themselves free for the first time, were seized by a great urgency. Was it possible, they wondered, that
The first Yudel Gordon story was entitled A LONELY PLACE TO DIE. At the time there had been a succession of attacks on well-known opponents of Apartheid. Some of them resulted in assassinations. I was still unpublished, but in these attacks I saw plenty of material for thrillers and also
Writing a thriller is different to writing any other kind of novel. The story’s structure is everything. Scenes have to follow each other logically and they have to draw the reader in so that he or she simply cannot put the book down. The reader simply must know what is
Nights are quiet in Bultfontein. The occasional lowing of cattle, or the complaint of a calf that has found herself separated from the herd, perhaps the cry of a startled kiewiet: these just add to the sense of peace. But we do have nights when our peace is ruptured. Somewhere
I am writing this in early August, fire season in our part of the bushveld where it is generally referred to here as Winter sport. In recent weeks I have been reading about heatwaves and the resulting fires in Europe. Although this is their summer, for an outsider from the
Our house is right at the back of our small-holding, only twenty paces or thereabouts from the fence. On the other side of the fence is a cattle farm, commonly called the Beesplaas by the locals. Over some months our fence suffered an invasion, but it was conducted by the
I started writing novels on an old Olivetti portable typewriter. I loved my Olivetti. At that time the IBM electric typewriters were the latest and most desired technology, but they were out of my price range. Also, they were heavy, whereas I could take my little portable with me wherever