Sunset over Loxton

I have never been to Loxton, or indeed anywhere in South Africa. I discovered the town through Blood Safari, a crime novel of Deon Meyer. I blogged about it here. I am reading at the moment Thirteen Hours, so I thought about Loxton, even though the novel is not set there. I also remembered Meyer shot a movie in Loxton, and he had taken a lot of pictures and uploaded them on his Facebook page. A lot of beautiful pictures. So I shamelessly downloaded one to put here on Vraie Fiction. The most picturesque I could find. I don't like to share pictures I did not take myself (or at least a member of my family), but the town of Loxton has fascinated me since I started reading about it that I had decided to upload it. Its name is kind of banal, yet it looks so genuinely exotic, a small town in the middle of nowhere, at the edge of the world, on the other side of the world. So yes, I decided to upload this picture. In the end, it is a beautiful sunset.

Crimes and places (and Deon Meyer)

I was thinking about this post about the Swaziland coin that ended up in my pocket, and wondering where I had heard of Swaziland before. And then I (re)discovered, or remembered that it is mentioned in Blood Safari, the crime fiction novel by Deon Meyer I am reading at the moment. Boy I can be clueless. Deon Meyer is high on my list of crime writers, although not nearly as high as George Pelecanos. I follow him on Facebook, where I learnt he is shooting a movie in Loxton. Loxton is also, incidentally, mentioned in Blood Safari. I have now a strange feeling of familiarity reading about those places, one because I have a coin from there as a lucky charm, the other because I can now see on Facebook all the pictures the author has the kindness to share with his readership. Crime fiction suddenly takes a different colour, texture, something more palatable, if that makes any sense.