Mike Nicol
Autor von payback: thriller
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Wissenswertes
- Geburtstag
- 1951
- Geschlecht
- male
- Nationalität
- Südafrika
- Geburtsort
- Cape Town, South Africa
- Wohnorte
- Cape Town, South Africa
- Kurzbiographie
- Mike Nicol lebt als Autor, Journalist und Herausgeber in Kapstadt, wo er geboren wurde, und unterrichtet an der dortigen Universität. Er ist der preisgekrönte Autor international gefeierter Romane, Gedichtbände und Sachbücher, zuletzt einer autorisierten Biografie über Nelson Mandela, mit einem Vorwort von Kofi Annan. Vor einigen Jahren begann er sich intensiv für die südafrikanische Kriminalliteratur einzusetzen und beschloss, selbst Thriller zu schreiben. 1997 verbrachte er ein Jahr als Stipendiat des renommierten Berliner Künstlerprogramms in Deutschland, 2002 hatte er eine Gastprofessur als poet in residence an der Universität Essen inne.
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De eerste 200 pagina's vond ik het boek niet interessant. Nadien begon er meer vaart en spanning in het verhaal te komen.
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: An audacious departure for the internationally acclaimed South African novelist--a thriller with all the searing immediacy of today's headlines.
Who was Christo Mercer, and why was he brutally stabbed to death in a remote Saharan town? For Robert Poley, an unhappy writer of political thrillers, the welcome distraction posed by this question has become an obsession. With the mysterious delivery of a laptop computer and a cryptic email message, he finds himself slowly entwined in the vagaries that constituted Mercer's life and death. An illegal-arms trader haunted by his nightmares, his past, and his clandestine involvement with a ruthless rebel-- and with Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great --Mercer lived on the grand stage of history, yet remained obscured by shadows until his seemingly fated demise. Now, piece by piece, in a complex web of social, political, personal, and fictional disclosures, the intricacies of Mercer's troubled psyche begin to reveal a pattern as corrupt as South Africa's in the aftermath of apartheid--years of judicial inquiry, the Truth Commission, and continued social unrest.
With alchemical bravura, Mike Nicol turns history into fiction and fiction into history, bringing to allegorical life the haunting story of a murder emblematic of South Africa's recent past.
My Review: Well...that piece of publisher puffery isn't, in my opinon, supported by this highly literary and relatively suspenseless, badly miscategorized "thriller." There is nothing thrilling about the narrator's life. The thrilling subject of the narrator's research project is all flashback and invention, barnacled with notes, digressions, irrelevant faux-research-paper citations...it gets tedious.
But what makes this read a good one for me is the thing that I suspect would turn off the mass of American readers: Untranslated Afrikaans words, unexplained geography, facets of South Africa's rich and complex culture that will be unfamiliar. I am a little better versed in these things, as I dated a South African for a good while; but I would hope that avid readers would find it an interesting chance to learn about this amazing place.
Mike Nicol has a considerable reputation as a thriller writer. A novel of his, HORSEMAN, was hugely and internationally acclaimed. As THE IBIS TAPESTRY is the first of his works I've read, I think I'll try it before reaching a conclusion about Mr. Nicol's readerly chemistry with me. Based on this book alone, I don't think I'd be a fan. But there's a lot to be interested in here.
The arms trade is a scourge on the world. South Africa, after an arms-sale embargo was put in place by the UN in 1963, developed a gigantic and sophisticated war-machinery manufacturing sector. Industries require sales and sales require customers and customers are thick on the ground among the hate-fueled warriors infesting Africa. So it's only logical that a well-connected "Englishman" with a serious psychological problem...what we'd call in the here and now PTSD...that fixates him on the world of power players and influence peddlers in his native South Africa. The Marlowe play he obsessively reads, analyzes, revises in his own words is the epitome of England's 16th-century expansionist, imperialist self-image building. It's not too much of a leap to see this man's fascination for our narrator, a writer of thrillers in the airport-book mode. His own life and family have blown up in his face and he badly needs a complex puzzle to work out.
The complexity of the puzzle is a big part of the book's appeal for me. As our narrator moves through the steps of solving his subject's murder, he takes steps that lead him into contact with the underside of South Africa's arms trade, supplying warlords with destructive capacity and to hell with the consequences. The South African arms trade is global, but by focusing on Africa and its warring factions, Nicol manages the tough trick of illuminating the horrors and consequences of war with the minimum of gore. It is the gift of the talented storyteller to make a subtext of violence. I see the gift in Nicol's story of THE IBIS TAPESTRY. But it takes a love of puzzles to get the most from this book's complicated world.… (mehr)
The Publisher Says: An audacious departure for the internationally acclaimed South African novelist--a thriller with all the searing immediacy of today's headlines.
Who was Christo Mercer, and why was he brutally stabbed to death in a remote Saharan town? For Robert Poley, an unhappy writer of political thrillers, the welcome distraction posed by this question has become an obsession. With the mysterious delivery of a laptop computer and a cryptic email message, he finds himself slowly entwined in the vagaries that constituted Mercer's life and death. An illegal-arms trader haunted by his nightmares, his past, and his clandestine involvement with a ruthless rebel-- and with Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great --Mercer lived on the grand stage of history, yet remained obscured by shadows until his seemingly fated demise. Now, piece by piece, in a complex web of social, political, personal, and fictional disclosures, the intricacies of Mercer's troubled psyche begin to reveal a pattern as corrupt as South Africa's in the aftermath of apartheid--years of judicial inquiry, the Truth Commission, and continued social unrest.
With alchemical bravura, Mike Nicol turns history into fiction and fiction into history, bringing to allegorical life the haunting story of a murder emblematic of South Africa's recent past.
My Review: Well...that piece of publisher puffery isn't, in my opinon, supported by this highly literary and relatively suspenseless, badly miscategorized "thriller." There is nothing thrilling about the narrator's life. The thrilling subject of the narrator's research project is all flashback and invention, barnacled with notes, digressions, irrelevant faux-research-paper citations...it gets tedious.
But what makes this read a good one for me is the thing that I suspect would turn off the mass of American readers: Untranslated Afrikaans words, unexplained geography, facets of South Africa's rich and complex culture that will be unfamiliar. I am a little better versed in these things, as I dated a South African for a good while; but I would hope that avid readers would find it an interesting chance to learn about this amazing place.
Mike Nicol has a considerable reputation as a thriller writer. A novel of his, HORSEMAN, was hugely and internationally acclaimed. As THE IBIS TAPESTRY is the first of his works I've read, I think I'll try it before reaching a conclusion about Mr. Nicol's readerly chemistry with me. Based on this book alone, I don't think I'd be a fan. But there's a lot to be interested in here.
The arms trade is a scourge on the world. South Africa, after an arms-sale embargo was put in place by the UN in 1963, developed a gigantic and sophisticated war-machinery manufacturing sector. Industries require sales and sales require customers and customers are thick on the ground among the hate-fueled warriors infesting Africa. So it's only logical that a well-connected "Englishman" with a serious psychological problem...what we'd call in the here and now PTSD...that fixates him on the world of power players and influence peddlers in his native South Africa. The Marlowe play he obsessively reads, analyzes, revises in his own words is the epitome of England's 16th-century expansionist, imperialist self-image building. It's not too much of a leap to see this man's fascination for our narrator, a writer of thrillers in the airport-book mode. His own life and family have blown up in his face and he badly needs a complex puzzle to work out.
The complexity of the puzzle is a big part of the book's appeal for me. As our narrator moves through the steps of solving his subject's murder, he takes steps that lead him into contact with the underside of South Africa's arms trade, supplying warlords with destructive capacity and to hell with the consequences. The South African arms trade is global, but by focusing on Africa and its warring factions, Nicol manages the tough trick of illuminating the horrors and consequences of war with the minimum of gore. It is the gift of the talented storyteller to make a subtext of violence. I see the gift in Nicol's story of THE IBIS TAPESTRY. But it takes a love of puzzles to get the most from this book's complicated world.… (mehr)
Mike Nicol is always a joy to read and his latest noir thriller is his best yet, with thinly veiled references to past crimes and present criminals as well as new characters in the form of PI ‘Fish’ Pescada, a hunky bronzed surfer, and his gorgeous girlfriend Vicki Kahn.
Nicol traces the activities of an apartheid death squad known as ‘The Icing Unit’ from the 1977 killing of a politician and his wife in Springs [Robert and Cora Smit, anyone?] to forced car accidents in the Eastern Cape, murder in an ANC safe house in Swaziland and the assassination of a female anti-apartheid activist in Paris.
In addition to these ‘fictional’ slaughters, we have a former police commissioner with links to organized crime, prowling Cape Town in his Hummer and his fancy clothes. Surely a case of art imitating life?
Rhino horns, revenge killers, Apartheid regime dirty tricks, endemic corruption, gangsters, illegal drag races and an engaging anti-hero combine with the surf off Muizenberg to create a delightful hard-boiled fantasy.… (mehr)
Nicol traces the activities of an apartheid death squad known as ‘The Icing Unit’ from the 1977 killing of a politician and his wife in Springs [Robert and Cora Smit, anyone?] to forced car accidents in the Eastern Cape, murder in an ANC safe house in Swaziland and the assassination of a female anti-apartheid activist in Paris.
In addition to these ‘fictional’ slaughters, we have a former police commissioner with links to organized crime, prowling Cape Town in his Hummer and his fancy clothes. Surely a case of art imitating life?
Rhino horns, revenge killers, Apartheid regime dirty tricks, endemic corruption, gangsters, illegal drag races and an engaging anti-hero combine with the surf off Muizenberg to create a delightful hard-boiled fantasy.… (mehr)
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Most characters are emotionally rather stunted, and prefer hard, raw sex (all heterosexual, with stereotypical big titted beauties and BBCs, no worries!). Lots of people die a violent death and there is a clear distinction between ‘good and bad’ guys n girls.
The plot engages basically with a set of ‘gang lords turned businessmen’ called the Untouchables, whose illicit value-chain on abalone is taken over by a combination of ANC chefs and their government spooks and a group of Chinese businessmen. To facilitate the transition one of the three untouchables sells-out; one gang gets hired to do the dirty job (involving one Russian hired gun who keeps spraying bullets, but killing no one; and several gang members who engage in gang rapes, torture, bodily mutilation and public shoot-outs, testimony of which is provided by one hard-assed McDonald burger); and one government spook cleans up those who are somehow left behind and kills those in a clinical manner. So far for the baddies.
On the good cause side there is a 'deep throat' kinda person (the Voice) who runs an ‘invisible’ spook (Velaze) who bears witness and helps the reader unravel what is going on (and occasionally he also helps the real plot a bit) and there is Krista and Tami, who run a private security outfit.
I think this thriller writer is exceptional in the sense that he provides good insight into the psyche of a male, coloured, South African inhabitant of Cape Town both in lingo, mind-set, popular (masculine) culture and political views (the ANC government is rotten and sells-out SA’s assets to the Chinese). This thriller is heavily populated with coloured characters and a few black guys and girls (Tami, Gumede) and only one whitie (the unfortunate hired gun from Russia). That is refreshing compared with Deon Meyer, the other crime thriller writer who situates his stories in CPT but mainly operates in an environment populated by whites.… (mehr)