First, I will discuss the novel’s female protagonist, Clare Hart. The very decision to place a woman at the centre of a crime novel can be seen as a feminist act. As outlined in my introduction, the genre’s long history has tended to be dominated by conservative ideology and male protagonists. Kathleen Klein’s book, mentioned above, traces the history of female detectives as well as their literary depiction through history. She argues convincingly that “[m]odelling the female protagonist on a male prototype establishes the conditions for her failure as either an investigator or a woman – or both” (Klein, 1988: 162). She goes on to assert that, in crime fiction:
[a]s the protagonist is not simply a man but the glorification of masculine traits, the substitution of a woman with her own feminine virtues or incompletely assumed masculine ones, leaves the novel without its centre. But, it is not the decentred genre which is mocked. Rather, it is the deficient hero/ine. A conflation of literary, economic and political motives has led authors to reduce her to less heroic, more manageable and familiar terms. (Klein, 1988: 162)
While Klein makes a valid point about the tendency for crime fiction to be dependent on a masculine centre, her work was first published in 1988 and I would argue that contemporary crime fiction is no longer as conservative as she claims. This dissertation will show that, certainly in the South African crime fiction scene, there is far more work that is progressive, if not radical, in its social implications, than ever before. I would agree with Gill Plain that “[a]lthough superficially conservative in its reliance upon resolution and the restoration of the status quo, implicit in the [crime] genre is a considerable degree of resistance to reductive gender categories” (2001: 6). At some points Klein’s argument, quoted above, verges on the conspiratorial, and I prefer Plain’s more exploratory way of expressing a similar point:
Whether the detective is male or female, straight or gay, she or he always exists in negotiation with a series of long-established masculine codes. The extent to which the detective conforms to or challenges these models is thus essential to understanding of crime fiction and the changing role of the investigator within the genre. (Plain, 2001: 11)
38 So how do Orford and her female protagonist, Dr Clare Hart, ‘negotiate’ these ‘masculine codes’?
Orford’s approach is captured in a brief conversation between fellow woman detective, Rita Mkhize, and the protagonist, Clare Hart. Mkhize is Faizal’s new police partner, and she is battling to be taken seriously by her macho department. She complains:
‘All I have is feminine intuition. And how am I going to table that as a point on the agenda?’ ‘Call it “gut feel”, said Clare ‘That’s what they call it.’ (Orford, 2009: 221)
This exchange shows how Orford does not attempt to make her protagonist fulfil the hardboiled expectations of the genre. Hart is a woman who is most definitely not trying to be ‘one of the guys’ which is the fate of many female protagonists before her. Rather, she is represented as a capable woman who is physically, mentally and emotionally up to the task of investigator.
Hart is a white, middle-class investigative documentary maker with a PhD on the subject of rape and femicide. These factors alone within the status quo of the novel give this protagonist access to places and people not generally granted to the majority in South Africa. Beyond these, Hart is street- wise, and she has an incisive intellect which is served by both her intuition and scientific expertise. She uses her attractiveness and the assumptions made about her blonde hair and slim physique to her advantage, even assuming a disguise with them to investigate a strip club. Hart is disciplined and exerts herself by running regularly. She drives a sporty green Mini Cooper and has knowledge of how to handle a gun from growing up on a farm. While Hart is physically adept and capable of defending herself with violence, she is never depicted within a scene of gratuitous violence or in a way that allows her physical actions to trump her thoughts and ideas. In her personal life, Hart is seemingly tied down by little other than her pompous cat, Fritz. She is well-off financially, has no ostensible dreams of family, and does not take to domesticity as the contents of her fridge demonstrate: “a punnet of strawberries, a jar of mayonnaise, whiskey” (Orford, 2009: 33). At the beginning of the novel, Hart is single with a history of several casual partners. Both of her parents died when she was a student, but she has two sisters who
39 live nearby. Her twin, Constance, who features in Blood Rose, was raped and beaten during a gang initiation and lives on an isolated farm outside Cape Town in a community of violated people and carers. Hart’s elder sister, Julia, is a vision of domesticity with a husband and two young daughters who adore Hart.
Many of these attributes such as toughness, independence and sardonic dialogue are inherited from the hardboiled genre. But that is where the similarities end. As mentioned above, Klein argues that women detectives in fiction have been compromised as characters:
[a]ttempts to raise the “detective” script to a paramount position by abjuring the conventional image of women and creating a woman detective who followed the male pattern failed as the inevitably conflicting script for women intervened; the unity of the novel’s formula was then destroyed. Similarly, attempts to raise the “woman” script undercut the necessary elements of the detective formula. To succeed commercially, authors decided that their character was either not a proper detective or not a proper woman. Occasionally, they drew both conclusions. (1988: 4) While many of Klein’s ideas still hold, I believe Orford’s uniquely crafted position for her protagonist as an independent criminal profiler hired by the police for complex cases highlights the development of the genre since Klein drew these conclusions.
Hart’s position allows her to navigate her way inside as well as outside the law enforcement establishment. Her job as a criminal profiler means that her methodology differs from that of a private eye or police detective. Her role is not only to decipher clues to solve the crime but, more importantly, to predict the next move of the criminal to assist the police’s detective team, as opposed to confront the culprit with violence as is common in the hardboiled mode. Hart’s background as a documentary-maker as well as her moral code and integrity allow her to get close to the community of the crime. She gains valuable information from sources often overlooked by others by giving her time to really listen. Her method is inclusive, as opposed to the lone quest of the hardboiled hero. To solve the case in Daddy’s
Girl, Hart works with police Captain Riedwaan Faizal, his partner Rita Mkhize, as well as Arno Pretorius in
the city’s surveillance hub, the Cyclops Centre, and Senior Superintendent Phiri in the law enforcement
40 establishment. She also works closely with her own contacts: Charlie Wang, an IT whizz kid, Danny Roman, a sound expert, and Pearl, a young woman interviewed in Hart’s documentary. Her compassion and thoroughness are rewarded in the novel when Hart receives an anonymous tip-off from the
kidnapper’s daughter, Calvaleen, because she is seen as a trustworthy aide.
The person who sacrifices the most to help find Yasmin, the missing girl, and the true heroine of the story is Pearl, featured in Hart’s documentary through her story of gang abuse and rape as the daughter of a gang leader. Orford subtly glorifies Pearl through the narrative, from her brave appearance in Hart’s film and her insightful hunches about the case (which often turn out to be correct), to her final sacrifice of sending a text message to Hart telling her where the missing girl is during a vicious attack by her father seeking revenge for his incarceration as a result of her cooperation with the police. The fact that ‘Pearl’ is the woman’s screen name, a false identity given to her to protect her from the gangs she talks about, as well as the fact that we never learn her real name, have an impact on the significance of this character. She is not represented as an individual but rather, one could argue, Pearl becomes a symbol of the many thousands of women like her in South Africa, who live in a world where male control and violence are the norm and who are unseen and unheard. I will address this status quo a little later in this chapter.
A final defining feature of the protagonist is Hart’s financial status. It seems that she can afford to be independent and is able to pursue her own agenda because of her apparently affluent financial position. While it is never stated, one must assume that Hart is paid by the police for her assistance, but it seems as though she does not depend on this income and so could reject the case if she objected to it or if it did not interested her. In fact, money is never represented as an issue for Hart, and so her investigation is not primarily driven by economic motives, but rather her desire to protect vulnerable women and children.
41 In terms of her character, Hart has emotional intelligence and integrity which make those she questions able to trust her. While she might occasionally act outside the law, Hart’s moral judgement is infallible and her drive in the series is always directed towards helping the victim. This almost always guarantees her the reader’s sympathy and support. This wholesomeness is echoed in her very name: Clare, from the French adjective, “claire”, which, according to the Oxford-Hachette French Dictionary, means “clear or bright” (2007: 278), and evokes the personal qualities of transparency and purity. Her surname, Hart, suggests the heart and the qualities of love, warmth and compassion.
While Hart is depicted as fully committed to her investigations, when she is not immersed in them a sense of alienation pervades her personal life. The reader is offered little of Hart’s background, and this sense of disconnection runs through her life like a thread. The reader only really encounters Hart in the present, but the little information one can glean about her past reveals much about her motivations as an investigator. We learn that Hart’s investigations carry heavy emotional significance for the young woman. Her work to protect women and children through her investigations and documentaries is something of a quest to achieve salvation. A conversation with friend and pathologist, Ruth Lyndall, reveals Hart’s desperation:
‘You’re running on empty, Clare.’ ‘I’m just running.’
‘It won’t fix things.’
‘It might fix me.’ (Orford, 2009: 40)
Hart’s motivation is perhaps her guilt and anger associated with her twin sister’s brutal attack. One could go so far as to suggest that Constance is a distorted reflection of Hart herself, maimed,
traumatised and reclusive. Looking over a map depicting the locations of where the bodies of murdered girls had been found in Cape Town that she created as part of her research, Hart considers her work and her life. She thinks, “[t]his work is what her life had become. Work she was good at, maybe the only thing she was good at. She didn’t seem to be good at life” (Orford, 2009: 83). In contrast, Hart’s other
42 sister Julia, a seemingly content wife and mother, can be seen as what she denies herself in her quest for salvation.
Hart also reveals moments of vulnerability which are closely linked to her compassion. When she is about to examine the body of recent victim, Ruth Lyndall checks on her:
‘You ready, Clare?’ ‘I’m ready.’
She wasn’t. The gurney was too big. And the body on the steel tray too small. (Orford, 2009: 42) Dr Clare Hart is something of an intriguing contradiction: down-to-earth fantasy woman whose work is the only way she knows how to battle her personal demons. Her strengths lie in her sharp mind, physical aptitude, confidence, drive and attractiveness, and her weaknesses such as her isolation and rejection of a balanced or family life are directly linked to the pain and guilt she feels for her sister and those whom she has failed to save. She has a wry sense of humour, an infallible moral compass and, on top of it all, she always gets her culprit. An exploration of Orford’s protagonist would be incomplete without her male counterpart, and father of the missing ‘Daddy’s Girl’.