Margie Orford's Daddy's Girl and the Possibilities of Feminist Crime Fiction

This article considers feminist crime fiction and its possibilities in a contemporary South African crime novel, Daddy's Girl (2009) by Margie Orford. In the light of definitions of feminist writing, the article shows how Orford depicts feminist concerns in both form and content in three ways. First, in terms of characterisation, Orford uses the tough police Captain, Riedwaan Faizal, to fulfil the hardboiled expectations of the genre, which allows her female protagonist, Clare Hart, to infiltrate the mode and draw focus to the experience of being a woman in our society. Secondly, in terms of the world of the novel, Orford depicts a relentless climate of violence against women and children and oppression of the poor. Thirdly, in terms of the form of the novel, instead of the cerebral approach traditionally associated with the protagonist of detective fiction, Orford writes through the site of the body, employing physical experience as a lens into this world.