The communists hunted her family, she was forced to work as a worker in a factory, but she would become the mother of Romanian police novels. The story of Rodica Ojog-Brașoveanu

Angela Rodica Ojog-Brașoveanu was born on August 28, 1939, in Bucharest, being the daughter of a teacher named Ana and a lawyer named Victor Ojog.

Years later, she would be dubbed Romania’s Agatha Christie.

What is less known is that his father was captured several times as soon as the communist authorities took power because of his affiliation with the National Liberal Party.

During that tumultuous period, Rodicăi’s family was forced to ensure their existence by selling the valuables they had, including paintings, carpets, jewelry, including pieces of furniture.

The communists kicked her out of school

The future great writer began her educational journey at the Maison des Français, later completing her high school cycle at the Domnița Ileana High School.

After obtaining the graduation diploma, he steps on the threshold of the Faculty of Law of the University of Bucharest. But, in 1956, fate has an unpleasant surprise in store for him.

She is expelled from the student ranks and taken into custody on the charge of supporting the anti-communist insurgents in Budapest.

In fact, many of her colleagues would share the same fate, but the peculiarity, as far as she was concerned, was that she had played a direct role in the coordination of student demonstrations within the Faculty of Law.

The events in Hungary attracted the attention of Romanian students. They used to receive information from Radio Free Europe or other sources about developments in Budapest.

In Romania, the students did not organize themselves into committees that could be qualified as clandestine organizations, but they formed initiative groups, structured based on the faculties they belonged to.

The most active movements were registered within the faculties of Legal Sciences, where Rodica Ojog was a student, Philology, Theatre, Medicine, Architecture, Polytechnic, Philosophy, as well as at the Medical-Military Institute.

The names of the participants were only partially recorded, being mentioned in the judicial processes following the suppression of the movement and in the meetings to reveal the identity of the protesters.

Both Rodica, as well as numerous colleagues from Legal Sciences and other faculties in Bucharest, were expelled from their studies during that period.

After she was expelled, in order to secure a future, she chose to marry a man from Timișoara. However, the ambition to build a career never left her.

He applied to the Ministry of Education to be able to return to the academic environment, but was informed that the return was conditional on rehabilitation, requiring him to work for a year in a factory, in a non-skilled position, and to become a performer in production.

He worked at the Galenica drug factory

So, she worked as a simple worker at the Galenica medicine factory, and in parallel, divorced her first husband.

Then, in 1962, the way was opened for him to the Faculty of Legal Sciences in Iași, where he successfully completed his studies, finishing them in 1967.

During 1963, Rodica Ojog knew Cosma Brașoveanu, the two making the decision to unite their destinies in the same year.

Later, after six years, he debuted on television with a script entitled Crime from Cișmigiu.

Her first detective novel, called Death signs indecipherably, was born at the insistence of her husband and saw the print in 1971, at the Albatros Publishing House.

“A detective novel is more difficult to write than an ordinary one. It assumes, of course, the quality of the pen, but it must have a structure of reinforced concrete, a well-cohesed action, in which everything unfolds according to a subtle dosage, have a crescendo of the narrative, the chaining of facts leads to a logical end.

I could make literature of any kind, but I combined the features of serious literature with action that would interest readers of all social categories and all ages. Basically, the detective novel is a fairy tale for adults in which the Good Boy, the good, defeats the Dragon, the evil.

I admit, it bores me to read, on dozens of pages, the description of an inner movement, that’s why I like Proust, Joyce less, to whom I prefer Cronin, Maugham, Capote, Katharine Mansfield. The danger of police literature is to fall into the cheap or superficial”, Rodica Ojog-Brașoveanu confessed, in an interview from 1990, published by Femeia magazine.