Featured image: Recipes for Love and Murder is set in Ladismith, rural South Africa | Photo by Winfried Bruenken (Amrum), CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Landscape mirrors mood in this South African cosy mystery

by Sally Jane Smith, Book club co-host

Set in the rural community of Ladismith, in South Africa’s Western Cape province, Recipes for Love and Murder starts with simplicity and unfolds into something more. There is humour in the pages of this cozy mystery – sometimes, the narrative even verges on the slapstick – but there is also complexity. In the grim cracks between the laughs, we glimpse violence: from the intergenerational violations of South African race relations, to the mean worm of abuse that squirms behind the façade of a family home.

Tannie Maria (Tannie meaning Auntie, the respectful Afrikaans address for a woman older than you) is a middle-aged widow who likes to cook—and eat. She shares her culinary love as a recipe columnist for the local paper—until The Gazette decides its readers are hungrier for advice on matters of the heart rather than ideas for lunch and dinner. Tannie Maria doesn’t like the change, but soon discovers she has a knack—and a passion—for helping people. Of course she shares her recipes and culinary advice whenever she can!  

The matter-of-fact references to ethnicity** as a defining characteristic may feel uncomfortable at times, but they ring true for a society which has, for centuries, been organized along racial lines. There is a more subtle reminder that hit me harder: just about every white South African male now over the age of 50 once faced military conscription. When teenage boys are used to prop up a brutal regime, the damage caused is immeasurable. The consequences can still impact psyches, attitudes and behaviours decades later.

But there is also something inexplicably wonderful about the people of South Africa. Where common sense tells us there should be only resentment, division and hate, we find love, humour, spontaneous connection, and authentic friendship flourishing between the toxic weeds of our violent past.

Tannie Maria navigates this terrain with a Tupperware container of baked goods on the passenger seat of her old Nissan pickup truck, easing her way into houses, hospitals and hearts with her homemade treats. And all the while, the landscape looms silently, its appearance sometimes grim and sometimes benevolent, reflecting the shifting moods of Tannie Maria and the letter-writers of Ladismith.

** A note on terminology: “Coloured” is not a derogatory label in South Africa. It is also not purely a racial descriptor; it is an ethnic identifier that brings with it a rich cultural heritage. Around five million South Africans self-identify as Coloured.

About Sally Andrew, the Author of Recipes for Love and Murder

Sally Andrew is the author of the Tannie Maria mystery series, set in the Klein Karoo, South Africa. These include: Recipes for Love and Murder, The Satanic Mechanic, Death on the Limpopo, The Milk Tart Murders and Recipes to Live For (A Tannie Maria Cookbook).

Book Club Discussion Questions

1. The story is set in South Africa. Have you ever visited there? Did the setting feel familiar to you from your own travels?

2. What was your favourite passage in the book, and why?

3. Tannie (Auntie) Maria explains that “I taste in Afrikaans and argue in English, but if I swear I go back to Afrikaans again.” Do you have a similar relationship with any non-English languages? How did you feel about the Afrikaans words sprinkled throughout the story? Was their meaning generally clear?

4. Tannie Maria presents as a very simple character at the beginning of the story. Do you think she developed as the plot progressed?

5. What do you think about Tannie Maria’s relationship with food?

6. The narrator frequently introduces other protagonists in terms of their ethnicity, using labels that might not translate well across cultures. How did you feel about this?

7. Did you pick up on any ominous echoes of South Africa’s apartheid years?

8. Have you seen the television series of Sally Andrew’s books? How do you feel the show compared with the book?

9. What was your favourite Tannie Maria recipe? Did you try to prepare any of the food described? Have you enjoyed other books that centre around food in this way?

10. In Chapters 8 and 9, Tannie Maria describes how mourning the death of Nelson Mandela brings the townspeople of Ladismith together. Have you ever experienced a similar moment, when a community is united by an event that happens a long distance away?

11. Were you surprised to realize that the story was set in 2013, the year Nelson Mandela died? Did you find anything anachronistic about the time period? How do you explain this?

12. How did the author use the landscape to enhance the story?

13. What did you think of the character of Henk Kannemeyer?

14. In the after-matter, the author encourages people to use game meat in her recipes, as an ethical alternative to factory-farmed livestock. “Make sure the meat and dairy you use come from a proper farmer: a free range or game farmer,” she writes. “Animals should live in the sunshine and eat from the veld.” What did you think about this?

15. Did you learn anything about South Africa that surprised you?

16. Did the book make you want to travel to South Africa?

17. Can you recommend any other novels set in Southern Africa, especially if they have great travel themes?

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