Sally Andrew (1)

Though it was way back in 2015 that I read the first book of Sally Andrew’s debut cozy mystery series featuring Tannie Maria, an agony aunt for a rural South African newspaper, who dispenses advice and recipes, when the Crossing Continents Reading Challenge called for a book set in Africa, the series immediately came to mind.

The Satanic Mechanic picks up not too long after the end of Recipes for Love and Murder. Maria has grown more comfortable with her role as the Love Advice and Recipe Column for the Klein Karoo Gazette, a position which she takes very seriously, dispensing common sense and comfort to those who write in, always coupled with a recipe that reinforces her support. If you are a foodie, the dozen or so recipes Andrews includes in Satanic Mechanic including West African Chicken Mafe, Venus Cake and Mosbolletjie Bread, will surely delight.

Maria’s romantic relationship with Detective Henk Kannemeyer has also progressed, however Maria, who experienced terrible domestic violence at the hands of her late husband, is finding intimacy difficult due to PTSD. Recognising her need for help, Maria joins a somewhat unconventional support group run by a man nicknamed the Satanic Mechanic, who has an interesting backstory. Andrews writes sensitively of Maria’s issues, and her struggle to resolve them.

The PTSD support group is the setting for one of the murders, which is preceded by the poisoning of a Bushmen representative involved in a legal stoush with corporate interests at a local fair. Finding herself at the scene of both events, Tannie Marie can not help but get involved, much to the chagrin of a worried Henk. To be honest I felt the mystery plot didn’t have the impact it probably should have, but it still held my interest.

One of the main elements I really appreciate in this series is how well the story’s are grounded in their setting. Not only with regards to descriptions of Tannie Maria’s physical environment, but also how smoothly Andrews interjects snippets of Afrikaans into the narrative. In Satanic Mechanic Andrews also touches on some of the cultural and political issues that affect the country, particularly with regards to tension surrounding the rights of Bushmen (or San peoples).

I enjoyed revisiting this series, and though I don’t feel immediately compelled to move on to the last two published books featuring Tannie Maria, I would like to read them eventually.… (meer)

The follow up to the first Tannie Maria mystery, Recipes for Love and Murder, this sophomore entry started off with the same lyrical voice and fabulous atmosphere, but a very disjointed plot.

As the synopsis says, the satanic mechanic is a counsellor specialising in PTSD, whom Tannie Maria consults about her past as an abused spouse. But he doesn’t make an entrance into the story until Chapter 24, page 92. In the meantime, the book starts almost immediately with the murder of a tribal man whose tribe just won a major land case against a diamond mining company and a cattle company. He’s poisoned right in front of Tannie Maria and her now-boyfriend Henk, the chief detective. Her experience with food and cooking gives her the ability to spot how he was poisoned and this opens a rift between her and Henk.

This murder has, seemingly, nothing to do with the satanic mechanic, but his reputation as a suspected former satanist makes everybody suspicious, though Tannie Maria finds her group sessions to be the only thing that’s helped her to date, and several incidents, including another murder in the middle of a group session keeps the focus on the titular character.

Everything comes together in the end, but the journey is not, from a writing perspective, a smooth one. The connections revealed at the end make complete sense, but getting there was a clumsy exercise in plotting.

The romance started off a bit sweet – in a good way – but veered into the eye-rolling with Henk’s manufactured drama. I realise attractiveness is entirely subjective, but the author seems to delight in creating male characters that not only defy common stereotypes of attractiveness, but are firmly planted as far away from them as realistically possible. But perhaps I’m totally wrong, and waxed handlebar moustaches and hirsute men are what’s hot in South Africa. It matters little, as the characters are all well drawn with magnetic, if not attractive, personalities.

Once again though, what pretty much kept me glued to the page is the evocative atmosphere of the Klein Karoo and the little side stories that develop from letters written to Tannie Maria in her role as Advice and Recipe columnist. I also enjoyed the somewhat spiritual, somewhat hallucinogenic connections with the African wildlife.

A lot of these first two books is built around Tannie Maria as a victim of spousal abuse (the spouse is dead when the series begins), but by the end of this book, she’s well on her way to putting herself back together, which makes me curious about what kind of book the third one will be. It’s out now, but my library doesn’t currently have it. Might have to go on the to-buy list for 2022.… (meer)

I found this at my local library and the synopsis had me excited to read it. About 25% of the way in, I wasn’t sure I was going to get through it; at the end, I’m eager to get to the library and check out the second book, and likely buy them for my personal library.

The biggest hurdle for me with this book is my almost total ignorance about South Africa. I know it’s in Africa; I know it’s in the south; I know it was colonised by the Dutch, and I know about apartheid and Nelson Mandela. Oh, and they (and the rest of Africa) are tied with Australia for coolest animals. Beyond that, I got nuthin’. That made a lot of the cultural references a mystery to me and there was a time or two where I struggled to understand. The list of things I need to research to cure just a tiny fraction of my ignorance is long. I was helped a bit by a familiarity with Dutch, which allowed me to decipher some of the Afrikaans vocabulary that is liberally sprinkled throughout the text.

The other hurdle I initially had with the book was understanding the MC, Tannie Maria. I just couldn’t get a handle on what kind of character she was meant to be; a time or two she came across as slow of mind, but she’s not. She’s got a tragic background she survived, but she has this kind of passive strength and spirit that frankly leaves me confused. This could be fallout from my cultural ignorance in the same way that my BFF’s husband sometimes leaves me confused (he’s Dutch) and a few Aussies too. Different environments influence different personalities. I liked her; I just didn’t understand her.

I really waffled between 4 and 4.5 stars, but ultimately settled on 4 because of the above and because there was a bit too much sentiment about the power of love towards the end. It’s beautifully written, but not the kind of thing that resonates with me. The mystery itself was pretty good, though I’d argue it’s not strictly a fair-play plot. The style is what I’d call a ‘gritty cozy’ if forced to describe it. There’s a dark side to the crimes and spousal abuse is a strong theme, but the characters and mood are uplifting, with food playing a major role in the story. There’s a side story that almost stole the show for me at the end, and there’s a low-key romance brewing between the mc and the detective that I have a hard time getting excited about because, frankly, he has a handlebar moustache and those things creep me out.

But what really makes the book is the atmosphere; the author brings the veldt to life on the pages in a way that kept me glued to the story when the language and cultural references left me floundering. When I wasn’t sure I cared about the characters, the Klein Karoo kept me coming back for more. By the end, it was the characters, the writing and the Karoo that makes me want to pick up the next book in the series, The Satanic Mechanic.… (meer)