James McClure: The Steam Pig (USA 2010)

From the Publisher:
WINNER OF THE CWA GOLD DAGGER
The award-winning debut mystery in the Lieutenant Kramer and Sergeant Zondi series is now back in print. A beautiful blonde has been murdered in apartheid-era South Africa. The method of killing was a bicycle spoke through the heart, a Bantu gangster signature. It's up to Lieutenant Kramer and Sergeant Zondi to figure out who killed her and why.

Praise for The Steam Pig:
"James McClure's first novel arrives like a slam in the kidneys.... [A] gripping style, real characters, and an exotic locale. Few first novels make this kind of impact. The Steam Pig will not only keep the reader's nose to the page, it will also make the reader think." - The New York Times Book Review

"More than a good mystery story, which it is, The Steam Pig is also a revealing picture of the hate and sickness of the apartheid society of South Africa." - Washington Post

"That it takes place in the apartheid setting of South Africa, that it has a black and white police team so artfully conceived as to engender cheers, that it uses the power of subtlety over brash bias to make its points, sets it up as a memorable mystery." - Los Angeles Times

"From South Africa comes one of the best of the lot, The Steam Pig. It introduces as weird and sinister a group of malefactors as you will find anywhere, and maybe nowhere else." - St. Louis Post-Dispatch

James McClure was born in Johannesburg. He published eight wildly successful books in the Kramer and Zondi series. He died on June 17, 2006.

James McClure: The Steam Pig. A Kramer and Zondi Investigation Set in South Africa. Soho Press, ISBN: 9781569476529 (July, 2010), 258 p., $14.00, eBook $9.99.

James McClure: The Steam Pig (UK 2006)

From the Publisher:
Murder with a bicycle spoke. A technique perfected by Bantu gangs. 'All quite simple if you have the stomach for it,' Dr Stryrdom explained. "You take your spoke, and slide it in here between the third and fourth rib.' It looks like a flea bite. Theresa Le Roux was a pretty young music teacher, who gave private lessons. But for a mix-up at the undertaker's no one would have known she had been murdered.

James McClure (1939-2006) was born and raised in South Africa, working as a photographer and teacher before becoming a crime reporter. As the political climate changed, he and his family moved to Britain in 1965 where he worked for the Scottish Daily Mail, and later the Oxford Mail and the Oxford Times.

His first novel, The Steam Pig, was awarded the Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger and is one of five featuring detectives Kramer and Zondi. Set in the 1970s, they subtly brought the reality of apartheid-era South Africa to an international audience. He enjoyed the esteem of fellow writers and critics and his novel Rogue Eagle won the Silver Dagger Award.

James McClure: The Steam Pig. Black Dagger Crime, ISBN: 1405685549 (November, 2006), 222 p., £15.99.

James McClure: The Steam Pig (UK 1994)

From the Publisher:
A murder mystery set in South Africa, where Kramer and Zondi come across Bantu gangs that murder with bicycle spokes and hear whispered references to "the Steam Pig". McClure has written four other Kramer and Zondi novels - "The Song Dog", "The Caterpillar Cop", "Snake" and "Gooseberry Fool".

James McClure: The Steam Pig. A Kramer and Zondi Mystery. Faber & Faber, ISBN: 0571171249 (January, 1994), 224 p., £5.99.

James McClure: The Steam Pig (UK 1983)

From the Publisher:
MURDER WITH A BICYCLE SPOKE. A TECHNIQUE PERFECTED BY BANTU GANGS
'All quite simple if you have the stomach for it', Dr Strydom explained. 'You take your spoke, and slide it in here between the third and fourth rib'.

It looks like a flea bite.
Theresa Le Roux was a pretty young music teacher, who gave very private lessons. But for a mix-up at the undertakers no one would have known she had been murdered.

WINNER OF THE 1971 CRIME WRITERS' AWARD

James McClure: The Steam Pig. For an undertaker George Henry Abbot was a sad man... He made mistakes... Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1983, ISBN: 0140037039, 223 p., £1.50.

James McClure: The Steam Pig (USA 1982)

From the Publisher:
The first book in James McClure's highly acclaimed South African detective series, The Steam Pig is a landmark in international crime writing.

Theresa Le Roux was the victim of one of the simplest yet most sophisticated murder tech-niques ever conceived-a precise incision with a bicycle spoke, direct to the aorta. Her case is a perfect challenge for McClure's ingenious South African detective team, Kramer and Zondi. And the more they investigate, the more they discover about the brilliantly concealed double life of the beautiful Miss Le Roux.

"A gripping style, real characters, and an exotic locale command the attention here....Few first novels make this kind of impact." - Newgate Callendar, The New York Times

"A first-rate mystery with a solution that is a shocker. The pace is relentless, the prose riveting, and the pair of detectives remarkable. Not to be missed, it is the essence of what the best of the genre aspires to be." - Saturday Review

James McClure: The Steam Pig. A Kramer and Zondi Mystery. Pantheon International Crime, ISBN: 0394710215 (March, 1982), 247 p., $2.95.

James McClure: The Steam Pig (USA 1974)

From the Publisher:
DEAD
That was Theresa le Roux.
The weapon -- a sharpened bicycle spoke, shoved through the armpit, skewering the aorta, then with-drawn. Not an unusual murder weapon in South Africa... except when used on a white woman. And for Lieu-tenant Trompie Kramer, of the Trekkersburg murder squad, it meant a series of excursions into the harsh realities of South African life: Kaffir gangsters, a necrophile mortician, exotic underworld subcultures where death is sharp and quick.

"REMARKABLE... An engrossing mystery story, com plete with turns and twists and a completely logical solution, put into a contemporary setting of shocking reality-and into the hands of one of the most interest-ing flesh-and-blood detectives to join the ranks of fic-tional sleuths!" -- Judith Crist

"THE STEAM PIG arrives like a slam to the kidneys... Agripping style, real characters, and an exotic locale..." -- THE NEW YORK TIMES

James McClure: The Steam Pig. Avon Books #20651, ISBN: 0380001349 (October, 1974), 224 p., $1.25.

James McClure: The Steam Pig (USA 1972)

From the Publisher:
The Steam Pig won the British Crime Writers' Gold Dagger for Best of Year.
STANLEY ELLIN says: "James McClure does not superimpose his crime story against the South African background, he extracts the narrative from it. The Steam Pig is a completely engrossing, entirely revealing book from start to finish."

E. J. KAHN, JR., says: "Not only a crackling suspense story, but for anyone familiar with South Africa a singularly evocative reminder of that strange and fascinating place."

The Financial Times of London says: "The first thriller by a writer of great skill and humanity."

The London Times Literary Supplement says: "This is James McClure's first thriller and first class for pace, originality and nastiness. Any white fool in South Africa could enjoy it and see nothing subversive in it."

The startling beauty of the remains did not distress the undertaker, Mr. Abbott. His eyes felt none of the chill of the taut white skin. But, when he got to the toes, and found the name-tag there, he was deeply distressed. He had thought he had been working on Elizabeth Bowers, but there was some mistake the body was not Elizabeth Bowers' but Theresa le Roux's.

"Some bastard's going to pay for this, you have my word for it," said Dr. Strydom, the district surgeon.
It turned out to be a case for Lieu-tenant Kramer of the Murder Squad and his Zulu assistant, Sergeant Zondi.

Kramer reported it. "Kramer here, just back from Abbott's place. White female le Roux definitely murdered. Stab wounds. Suspect Bantu intruder." Slowly the investigation found out things about Miss le Roux. She had been an ideal tenant, had kept herself much to herself, which was odd in a young girl, but then truly artistic people...

"You can read this remarkable novel in two ways: as a detective story or as a shrewder portrait of South Africa than many a work of nonfiction." - Oxford Mail

James McClure: The Steam Pig. A Joan-Kahn Harper Novel of Suspense. New York: Harper & Row, 1972, SBN: 06-012896-8, 247 p., $5.95.