About Mike Nicol

Mike Nicol is a journalist and writer, and convenor of two online writing courses. He lives in Cape Town. He has had writer-in-residence positions at UCT and the University of Essen, Germany, and in Berlin under the German Academic Exchange Service’s Artists-in-Berlin grant.

His Revenge Trilogy (Payback, Killer Country, Black Heart) featuring Mace and Pylon is published by Umuzi in South Africa and Old Street in the UK. Payback appeared in November 2011 from btb Verlag with Killer Country scheduled for later in the year. Payback will be published in France under Flammarion’s Ombres Noires imprint.

Out to Score appeared in the US in November 2009 retitled Cape Greed and under the pseudonym, Sam Cole.

For crime fiction news and interviews go to Crime Beat which is devoted to SA krimis, and more.

BACKLIST
Crime fiction
Black Heart, Umuzi, Cape Town, 2011
Killer Country, Umuzi, Cape Town, 2010
Payback, Umuzi, Cape Town, 2008
Out to Score (co-written with Joanne Hichens), Umuzi, Cape Town, 2006

General fiction




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The Powers That Be, Bloomsbury, London, 1989
This Day and Age, Bloomsbury, London, 1992
Horseman, Bloomsbury, London, 1994
The Ibis Tapestry, Knopf, New York, 1998

Poetry
Among the Souvenirs, Ravan Press, Johannesburg, 1978
This Sad Place, Snailpress, Cape Town, 1993

Non-fiction
A Good-Looking Corpse, The World of Drum – jazz and gangsters, hope and defiance in the townships of South Africa, Secker & Warburg, London, 1991.
Commissioned by Secker & Warburg, this is a historical tribute to a group of black journalists who worked on Drum magazine in Johannesburg during the 1950s. The book consists of an overarching historical account within which are featured original pieces from the magazine as well as interviews with the journalists and some of the personalities who made that decade a particularly vibrant time in the black townships.
The Waiting Country, A South African Witness, Gollancz, London, 1995.
A commissioned memoir of the 1994 first democratic election that also sought to address the issue of violence and the need to confront South Africa’s historical legacy.
The Invisible Line – the life and photography of Ken Oosterbroek, Kwela Books and Random House, Cape Town, 1998.
A commissioned short biography of the newspaper photographer who was killed in Tokhoza township shortly before the 1994 election.
Sea Mountain, Fire City – Living in Cape Town, Kwela Books, Cape Town, 2001.
A memoir of a year in Berlin and subsequent return to Cape Town.
Nelson Mandela: the Authorised Portrait, Wild Dog Press, Johannesburg, 2006 (originated by PQ Publishers, Auckland, 2006).
A commissioned forty thousand word biography of Nelson Mandela as part of this book including interviews, photographs and reproductions of historic documents.
Monkey Business: The Murder of Anni Dewani – the facts, the fiction, the spin, Umuzi, Cape Town, 2011. A chronological account of events after the murder of tourist Anni Dewani while on honeymoon in Cape Town as told by the media.