Margie Orford’s Daddy’s Girl Launched at Kalk Bay Books

by Claire on Oct 6th, 2009

At the launch of Margie Orford‘s third novel, Daddy’s Girl, held at Kalk Bay Books on Saturday, eager fans learned about what happens behind the scenes of this intriguing writer’s life.

It so happens that when Margie Orford pitched her first crime novel, Like Clockwork, to then head of Oshun, Michelle Matthews, she assured the publisher that she had completed at least half the novel. “In reality, only the first chapter had been written,” said Matthews, who learned this fact later. “Margie, undaunted, made good on her promise, and delivered in just a few months an amazing book with amazing characters.” Characters like Ridwaan Faizel and Dr Clare Hart.

Matthews recalled Orford’s editor, Martha Evans, working on that book. “She would answer her telephone when I called, saying, ‘Hello Clare, um, Michelle…’ which I saw as a compliment, because the character is one feisty, awesome tought cookie; just like Margie.”

While unpacking a box recently, Matthews discovered an empty bullet casing and recalled the research Orford had done at a firing range, learning to shoot in order to make sense of the forensics. “What Margie writes about, she gets intensely involved in.”

Orford paid tribute to the two SAPS officers from Mitchells Plain, Director Jeremy Vearey (present at the launch) and Captain Harry Brickles who helped her with her research. While travelling with one of these officers, a call came in advising of a hijacking that had just occurred in the area.

The writer was suddenly immersed in the first-hand experience of a high-adrenaline top-speed car chase. “The driver slammed on brakes and said, ‘Run’. Only as I was gasping for breath in pursuit of the hijacker did I wonder what I was doing, galloping through the flats, unarmed and untrained, after a tik addict car hijacker who, I might add, seemed equally perturbed at the idea of a middle aged white woman following him. We were both quite relieved to lose each other and happily, the stolen car was retrieved and safely returned to its owner.”

The author noted that she is often asked why, in a country like ours with so much crime, she elects to write crime fiction. “What else could I write about?” she laughed. “It’s action stuff and learning to shoot was the best fun. My favourite gun,” said Orford assuming the pose, “is an AK47. Du-du-du-du-du…”

She explained that if one is planning a cash-in-transit heist what is required is a random spray so as to hit the most targets as quickly as possible. By contrast, if you’re planning a bank robbery, you fire in short bursts in order not to overdo the chaos. “If the teller is too frightened, she can’t hand over the money.” With all this newfound expertise, Orford said she was happy to advise Jacob Zuma on matters of security: “Shoot slowly to kill slowly.”

On a more serious note, Orford reflected that the SAPS are often expected to be “armed social workers”, diffusing situations, preventing tragedies. This particular book came to her in a two-week period when a spate of murders of young girls occurred in South Africa, including Sheldean Human and Anastacia Wiese.

“Most of the perpetrators were caught. They weren’t Jeffrey Dahmers or Ted Bundys. They were somebody’s uncle or brother, father or cousin, who found it necessary to turn against society’s future, its most defenceless citizens. “My character, Ridwaan Faizel, grapples with the issue of how to be a good man in a country when 25% of men claim to have raped a woman at some time in their life.”

Another reason Orford has chosen to write crime fiction is that she has lived on a farm. “There’s really nothing there,” she promised. “In order to write literary fiction you need to set a bunch of characters with unbelievable amounts of time to stare into distant koppies and reflect on how they should have, could have, wanted to (but didn’t) get a life. The characters in Daddy’s Girl got pissed off with the farm folk, moved to town, and got a life.”

By contrast, Orford has elected to represent violence and how it exists in the action and drama of the moment and the interaction between people. “How to show grief, survival, and resilience in the wake of trauma requires one to move the characters along very quickly. How they talk to each other after a crime, how they live together after the event – therein lies the real challenge.”

Margie Orford said, “I’d be nowhere without my editors, Martha Evans, who also called me ‘Clare’ and Lynda Gilfillan, who sets the highest standards for Daddy’s Girl.” Concluding, she said, “Crime writing draws me into the media, into the present. It’s vibrant and exciting. And people are so nice. People are always so nice, unless they’re trying to kill you.”

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