The Steam Pig

Now that the South African apartheid system has been dismantled, James McClure's mystery novels are historical artifacts, but they remain well-written, absorbing portraits of a society obsessed with racial purity. In The Steam Pig, McClure, a South African who left to live in England, takes some incredible-sounding incidents (based on things that actually happened in South Africa in those days) and makes the reader understand what it was like to live under apartheid. A young woman is murdered, and the investigation of her murder leads to her family of origin, who have been suddenly and arbitrarily reclassified from white to "Coloured" (mixed race) without explanation or appeal. The account of how this reclassification affects every aspect of their lives vividly illustrates why South Africa earned worldwide condemnation for its internal policies. In charge of the investigation is Kramer, an Afrikaner (descendant of early Dutch settlers), who over the course of the books has developed a respect for the detecting smarts of his Zulu driver, Zondi. While Kramer conducts investigations in the normal way, Zondi gossips with the suspects' black household servants and casually asks exactly the right questions to learn their employers' deepest secrets. We eventually learn who killed the young woman, and the solution has everything to do with the country's warped racial politics. While South Africa still has many problems, the society portrayed in McClure's novels no longer exists, for which we can be grateful.

the startling beauty of the remains did not distress the undertaker, Mr. Abbott. But, when he got to the toes, and found the name-tag had there, he was deeply distressed.