Murder on Gotland

The second of Mari Jungstedt's Gotland crime novels is out, with the title Unspoken (not a translation of the Swedish title, which would be more like "In the Night's Silence" or even "In the Still of the Night"). The first novel in the series was Unseen--the tendency to give a crime series a repetitive title sequence of some sort is pure marketing, but I can attest that the Swedes do it, too. When Mel Brooks's film The Producers first appeared in Sweden, they used the title Det Våras För Hitler, or Springtime for Hitler. So when Blazing Saddles came out, they called that Det Våras För Sheriffen (Springtime for the Sheriff) and so on: Det Våras För Frankenstein (that one's obvious) and on and on--the strangest one, to me, is Det Våras För Världshistorien (Springtime for History of the World?!). These days, the distributors are more likely to just keep the English title for new films and TV shows released there (would an American distributor dare to keep a Swedish title? Could the moviegoing public in the U.S. pronounce a Swedish title?). Anyway, Jungstedt's Unspoken deals with the murder of an alcoholic photographer who has just won big at the harness-racing track. The police (led by chief detective Anders Knutas, who is a bit stiff, in a slightly comic way, even consciously so, within the narration that sticks to his point of view) pursue a widening series of leads, some provided by a TV journalist sent over from Stockholm (just as he was in the first Knutas novel, and his affair with a married mother of two continues--regardless of the fact that she's not involved in the case, as she was in Unseen). There's plenty of dark stuff in the book, in an unspectacular way--no serial killers, nobody returning from the dead, nobody plotting to kill the Prime Minister--but that, I think is one of the strengths of the majority of new crime novels coming from Scandinavia. The authors seem to find plenty of threat and drama in ordinary life (which is, as I've mentioned before, one of the characteristics of noir as a genre, and one of the reasons I'm drawn to that sub-class of crime fiction). For me, there's a bit too much "soap opera" here--the private lives of Knutas, the reporter and his girlfriend, and even those involved in the crimes threatens to tip the balance between the criminal proceedings and the problems at home, etc. But Jungstedt is skillful in rebalancing the story and moving the crime and its investigation forward. I like the fact that Knutas doesn't inspire awe in his team--they're irritated by some of his stiffness and his jealous reaction to a Stockholm detective brought in for the case (whom everyone else likes immensely). That, more than his arguments with his wife, give depth to the character and to the life of the police station. There is one device in this story that I find a bit awkward--one thread of the plot involves a 14-year-old girl who is lonely and suffers from what's called the Borderline syndrome (she's cutting herself, for one thing). Part of her story is told in the "now" of the narrative (each chapter is headed by a date), and part in irruptions of text titled "Several Months Ago." I think I'd have been less irritated if these sections were separated out more from the rest of the narrative, and it may be that it's the publisher rather than the author who is responsible for the way the story is textually laid out. But as is, it seems like a "make-do" device rather than an elegant way of integrating flashbacks. The novel ends with an unconventional cliffhanger (for a crime novel, anyway), so I guess there are more Knutas & co. novels to come. I'll keep reading them, for the almost sinister ordinariness of the characters and the stories, as well as the, to me, exotic setting. However, the "solution to the crime" in Unspoken seemed a bit contrived to me, though entirely in line with the crimes. There is a passage in the novel that illuminates in an interesting way one of the differences between Scandinavian and American or English crime fiction: we're used to hard-boiled detectives (and reporters) and the adherence of their Scandinavian counterparts to definite rules of behavior is a little startling. Johan, the reporter who has seduced a married Gotlander, is insistent about not crossing boundaries, like publishing a name that the police want kept secret or interviewing a woman who's in shock after the death of her daughter. The ethics are admirable, but we're so used to hard driving reporters (and cops) who ignore the rules that the humane and rule-bound Scandivian characters in crime fiction (with the notable exception of the novels of Jo Nesbo) mark a distinct cultural difference. That difference, too, is one of the exotic attractions of the current crime wave from the far North. A personal note: I will probably not be blogging for the next week or 10 days--I'll be sitting in a cafe in Barcelona with a Vazquez Montalban novel...

Yrsa Sigurdardóttir

Yrsa Sigurdardóttir's newly translated novel, Last Rituals, has a motto or subtitle on the cover (An Icelandic Novel of Secret Symbols, Medieval Witchcraft, and Modern Murder) that is very misleading, but does anticipate a key thread of the book. The leading character, Thóra Gudmundsdottor, shares a good deal with Erlendur, the central character of Arnaldur Indridason's estimable Reykjavik police procedurals, though Thóra is a lawyer rather than a detective. Both are divorced, both have problems with their children, and both are without a companion--but where Erlendur is depressed, Thóra is just harried; where Erlendur's daughter is a junkie, Thóra's 16-year-old son has gotten into a more typical teenage problem (though almost as disruptive for the family). Erlendur's private life is a mess (as is his apartment), but Thóra's is a more "normal" kind of mess (keeping track of the kids, the house, the ex-husband, her job, etc.)--and the normality of her life is frequently exploited for both contrast and comic effect amid the violent and bizarre discoveries in the story. Last Rituals also shares a couple of things with Arnaldur's: Iceland is itself an important element in the books; there are overtones of a dark past (much further in the past in Yrsa's book) and the story moves forward with the doggedness of an investigation rather than the trappings of a thriller. These are procedurals, though Last Rituals doesn't follow the police for the most part. The rituals of the title, as well as the subtitle on the cover, imply witchcraft and metaphysics, but Yrsa's novel is really more about academia than devil worshippers. But she skillfully uses the sensational aspects of the deceased student's life and research (and Icelandic history) to keep the reader interested through the slow accumulation of evidence (the victim is a "modern primitive," an apt description of the subculture of piercings and body modifications). In brief: a German student in an Icelandic university falls out of a closet, dead and with his eyes removed, onto the head of his department. The body also has a symbol carved on it. The family, not believing in the guilt of the drug dealer arrested by the police, sends a family lawyer to Iceland to locate a local lawyer who speaks German and is willing to help them investigate the circumstances of their son's death. The lawyer, alternately stiffly formal and sarcastically flirtatious, vies with Thóra for the novels center of gravity, though the German remains slightly opaque as a character. Thóra's naiveté ragarding the salacious and strange revelations of the victim's death and his academic interests parallels a frequent pattern in Scandavian crime fiction--as for example in the adventurous sexual escapades at the center of one of Helene Tursten's books, in which Detective Irene Huss reacts in a less than hard-boiled way to the salacious facts of the case. Though Scandinavia was once famous for its porn, Scandinavian crime fiction projects a rather tamer cultural milieu. But at least in the case of Last Rituals, Thóra provides a moral center that anchors the book. Yrsa's book is a solid entry, full of fascinating historical and cultural detail, in the Scandinavian crime wave. It avoids clichés, builds slowly, but pulls the reader along without the devices of pulp (such as, when the story flags, throw in another murder). The sensational elements are handled in a nonsensational way, and I found myself drawn in by the historical references and Thóra's investigative efforts more than the post-adolescent fascinations of the circle of students at the ostensible center of the story. So the subtitle or teaser on the novel's cover misleads to the extent that it suggests a novel focused on witchcraft, but does suggest the bloody history of Medieval and Renaissance Europe that anchors the story. I hope Yrsa's novels find other Maguffins that are as effective in her later books, and look forward to finding out.

Reply to a comment on earlier post

An anonymous reader of my running commentary (or blather?) in this blog has left a comment to my original post on Tana French's In the Woods. I'm reposting his comment and my reply, with a request for further discussion about the character of crime novels and/or mysteries. Here goes:
"Anonymous said...Dont you get it.....Ryan did the original murders and that is why he blocks out what happened....12:12 AM". My reply was "Anonymous thinks that the novel is a puzzle to be solved, and that the answer is Ryan as the murderer in the old case (the murder of his 2 childhood friends). I think the novel is more than a puzzle, and the obvious possibility that Ryan murdered his friends is no more certain (or essential to the novel) than the other possibilities, criminal or metaphysical. 6:52 AM". BTW, I'm not up reading blog comments at 6:52AM, that's California time and I'm on East-Coast U.S. time. But the exchange implies the question of what a crime novel or a mystery is "about," especially in the case of a complex story or a novel with literary aspirations. Is it important to know who murdered Ryan's friends? Some of the reviewers on Amazon thought so--they were disappointed by the novels conclusion. Are the metaphysical overtones that are if anything emphasized by the ambiguous conclusion a problem for a crime novel? And is the solving of a puzzle a necessary distinguishing characteristic between what we are these days calling "crime fiction" and mystery novels? Any thoughts?

Havana Noir

Next up will be another string of Scandinavian imports, one from Iceland (Yrsa Sigurdardottir's Last Rituals) and two from Sweden (Åke Edwardson's Frozen Tracks and Mari Jungstedt's Unspoken); but first, Havana Noir, the 17th in Akashic's Noir series, but the first based on a non-Anglo culture (anthologies from Ireland and the U.K. are the other non-U.S. books so far). Havana Noir, edited by Achy Obehas (who also translated most of the stories) deserves attention not only as noir and as a glimpse into a culture most of us have little access to--but also for the quality of the writing regardless of source or genre. In fact, a number of the stories are not conventional crime stories (though most qualify under Obejas's own definition of noir--see quotes from her introduction in my previous post). Few have police or detectives in central roles. But most are startling revelations of the darkness at the heart of not just the Cuban experience but modern life as a whole. The best of the stories (including Obejas's own "Zenzizenic") offer complex rather than simplistic appraisals of life in Cuba (and some, also including Obejas's story, employ considerable humor). Only one story, by Carolina García Aguilera (a prominent emigre writer) is disappointingly one-dimensional in its vision of Cuba. Among the rest, whether by emigres or writers living in Cuba, include many that are moving, evocative, and significant. Miguel Mejidas's "Nowhere Man" is surreal and nightmarish experience that made me think of the stories of the great Cuban poet Virgilio Piñera. Alex Abella's detective story is an exciting tale of revolution and escape (and the only "pulp noir" story in the collection), and the story that most clearly states the oppressive context for the revolution (Batista's dictatorial, corrupt-capitalist regime), as well as American support for that regime. Several stories deal with the Chinese legacy in Havana and several others with the influence of Santería. Several show a violent underworld from the point of view of the members of that world, and all the stories demonstrate the hollow claims of the government that there is no crime in Cuba's socialist state. One story, "La Coca-Cola del Olvido" by Lea Aschkenas, turns on violent politics in the emigre Cuban community of the U.S. This is a substantial collection, over 350 pages with 18 stories ranging from barely 3 pages to over 30. Altogether, the writing is excellent, the view of Cuba unparalleled, and the contribution to the literature of noir undeniable. Havana Noir will stretch in various ways readers' notions of noir, of Cuba, and of crime writing as a limited or limiting form.

Noir (and Havana)

I won't have my review ready for a couple of days, but I've been reading the new Havana Noir (edited by Achy Obejas for the Akashic Noir series), and I can't resist passing on the excellent thoughts on noir that Obejas offers in her introducton. She says that, "Descriptive rather than prescriptive, noirs explore the symptoms of an ailing society but rarely suggest remedies. They are frequently contestataire in their unblinking portraits but unnervingly apolitical. Their protagonists are alienated and at risk, caught in ethical quandaries outside of their control, and driven to the very edge." She adds that, "Crime stories, especially those with detective protagonists, try to find order, to right things; noirs wearily revel in the vacuum of values, give in to conflict not as a puzzle to be solved but as a cul-de-sac. Noirs explore and expose but refuse to solve." I've been seeking adequate definitions of "noir" since I started this blog, and Obejas goes a long way toward describing what is unique (and, at least to me, appealing) about the genre (if it is actually a genre rather than simply an attitude). Not that all of the stories in Havana Noir exactly fit her own definition, but at least the first half or so of the anthology (as far as I've gotten) is very good on its own terms (and the best of those among the Akashic series that I've looked at so far).

Two from Barcelona

Neither of these books is new, and one is not a crime novel, really. I dug them up because I'm going to Barcelona in a few weeks and wondered whether there were crime writers other than Vazquez Montalban who were from or set their books in Catalonia. Study in Lilac by Maria-Antonia Oliver was written in Catalan rather than Spanish, and is set in the pre-Olympics Barcelona of seedy dockside and fetid seas. It's a feminist tale, whose title refers to graffiti in that shade that recommend revenge of a particular sort for rape--something not revealed until very late in the book. With its Conan Doyle reference in the title, it shouldn't be a surprise that the novel has some metafictional overtones--not only Pepe Carvalho (from Vazquez Montalban's books, and the hero of an as yet untranslated series of detective stores written in Catalan make appearances, one playing a key role in the end. But metafiction and tendentious politics aside, Study in Lilac is an interesting journey toward a conclusion that is not politically correct in any conventional sense, but is satisfying in the context of the novel's own world. Benjamin Prado's Never Shake Hands with a Left-Handed Gunman is all metafiction, with the author as an essential character, one of four narrators giving their perspectives on a missing friend who was obsessed with literature, punk-rock, Elvis, and other cultural phenomena. Crime fiction is constantly referred to but never achieved in this book: It's literature, after all. But Prado recognizes explicitly that it's a failure as a crime novel, which
is one of the book's primary virtues (another being that it's a short book). The characters are itneresting, the setting lively if a bit vague, and the plot almost non-existant (one of the usual factors in the by now large library of too-literary crime novels). The splintered perspective of the 4 narrators is echoed in the discursive, meandering story, which both starts and ends in the middle. I can appreciate what Prado is doing (and his knowledge of and his own appreciation for crime fiction), but Study in Lilac is more fun.

New round of scandinavians: Arnaldur

Icelandic crime writer Arnaldur Indridason has a new book out in English translation,
The Draining Lake. Like all the Erlendur books, this one features straightforward investigation by the police plus insight into the minds of others involved in the crime or its aftermath. The new novel also has a certain similarity to the 2nd of the 4 books available in English, Silence of the Grave, in the sense that a very old corpse, really a skeleton, has been revealed (in this case by an ecological disaster: a lake whose level is dropping precipitously, probably because of an earlier earthquake). But where the earlier book deals with family tragedy and abuse, the new one deals with tragic love and espionage (with a uniquely Icelandic twist). The spy story is engaging, if occasionally didactic (on more than one side of the argument): a man in Iceland ruminates about his schooldays in Leipzig during the early years of the Cold War, and the story involves surveillance, the recruiting of spies, and concealed identities. Meanwhile, Erlendur and his cohorts Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg try to figure out who the body in the lake was, weighted down by Russian bugging equipment. Erlendur becomes obsessed with a side issue opened up by the investigation, one of the men who went missing about the time the body went into the lake. Who is in the lake, and what the identity of that missing man is, are the mysteries of the book, and as the cops pursue them, they, too, get on the trail of the espionage tale. As I said, the spy story is very Icelandic, very different in tone and emphasis from Le Carre, yet on that same wavelength in several ways. And as is usual with this series, a melancholy air pervades the book, even with considerable comic effects--in this novel both the mess of Erlendur's private life and the tragic love affair in Leipzig provide the melancholy, but in both cases there is a sense of resolution (more personal in Erlendur's case, more historical in the love affair, through the uprising in Leipzig that began the fall of the Berlin Wall). All in all, the book, as with all in the series, are very satisfying as police procedurals, in spite of the fact that the police don't really discover very much through their own efforts--the frustration of their search, and Erlendur's more personal search for the missing person (missing persons being a major obsession on his part, due to his personal history), are an essential element of the texture of the series. So if you're looking for a thriller or violent noir, or a cozy, this won't be your sort of story. But if you respond to dark tales of investigation and of darker (though sometimes funny or at least satirical) everyday lives (in the face of cultural and historical realities), The Draining Lake is very rewarding--and very well written in a straightforward style that seems to be the norm up there.

Havana Noir part 3

I'm off to Scandinavia soon (in my literary travels--actually I'm off to Barcelona in a month in more literal travel terms), but taking a side trip to Cuba first, by means of Leonardo Padura's Havana Blue (that's the title in English of the third of his quartet-plus-one of novels featuring detective Mario Conde, the Count). All of Padura's books are melancholy, and all contain considerable social criticism of the socialist milieu of this not-very-cop-like cop. But Havana Blue seems even more melancholy (though Mario gets the girl, in a sense) and more critical (if I'm not forgetting some of the critical edge of the books translated earlier). Mario repeatedly refers to the "squalid story" that he wants to write, and the story of Havana Blue is pretty squalid. Corruption is the theme here, in a style that would be as corrupt in a capitalist system, but here has particular Cuban inflections. An old school acquaintance is missing, and Mario's reflections on his school years (and his infatuation with that missing friend's now-wife, Tamara) occupy a considerable portion of the novel, notable for both nostalgia and cutting satire of both the educational system of Communism and the still existing class structure of the school and the state. Padura's novels do not proceed directly, nor does the detective. Though mostly told in the third person, it's Mario's vacillation between attention to the case at hand and meditation on his disastrous personal life (plus his attention to a small circle of old friends) that form the structure and the surface of the story. A reader has to have a lot of tolerance for Mario's ruminations, which don't leave a lot of room for development of other characters who on the basis of the scant evidence seem very interesting, such as "China," the half-Chinese investigator who helps ferret out the financial corruption in this case. But as a window on Cuba, on a particular kind of Anglo-loving Cuban frame of mind (it's largely music and literature from the U.S. and U.K. that Mario returns to again and again, particularly Hemingway). One Americanism in the novel is botched by the translator (who is plainly British)--he gets the lingo of baseball all wrong, and baseball is important enough in this book that the mistakes are irritating. Nevertheless, Havana Blue is an essential addition to the crime fiction available from this setting and this writer.

Book covers, U.S. vs. U.K.

Less annoying than the bad habit publishers have of changing the titles of translated crime novels (and less than the even more annoying habit of publishing the same novel under different English-language titles) is the change in the book cover between the U.S. and U.K. editions. Usually, I find the cover of the U.K. edition more appealing, though the English edition of Tana French's In the Woods has a startlingly misleading pitch on the cover (playing to the Gothic impression they were trying to give of the story). Sometimes, U.K. publishers (and in particular Penguin) are amazingly creative in cover designs--as in the recent U.K.-only editions of Kafka. Between the U.K. and U.S. editions of Benjamin Black's Christine Falls, I'm surprised that Henry Holt, the American publisher, didn't keep the U.K. cover simply as a taste of Irish cultural nostalgia in the U.S. market. The U.S. edition is handsome, but emphasizes the title character (as she might perhaps have appeared on the slab in the morgue, while after all she is the "maguffin" or "mcguffin" if you prefer that spelling, rather than a character in the novel. I'm not buying a crime novel because of its cover, but covers that suggest the history of the genre or its origins in pulp fiction can have a certain appeal. Even better is a well designed book, including the cover--since a book in any genre can be an object of desire, if it's done right.

The first "Quirke"

John Banville's first crime novel, Christine Falls (under the pseudonym Benjamin Black) has a number of things in common with Tana French's recent In the Woods. Both include Gothic elements, both are tightly wound and elegantly written stories that don't suggest much possibility for a sequel (though both do have forthcoming sequels). French's novel is more tightly plotted; Banville's has a good deal more plot than some of his other novels, as well as a somewhat more straightforward style. He packs a lot of elements from the mystery and crime tradition into the book: a Jim Thompson plot about a young drifter in the U.S., a Ross McDonald plot about a rich family spanning the Atlantic, a good deal of material drawn from the Magdalene scandal (which has already appeared in the work of other writers, including Ken Bruen), and a lot of depressing material about the broader interface between the Catholic Church, the poor, and the very rich. One thing that is surprisingly not important, after the early pages, is the profession of Quirke, Banville/Black's central character: unlike other fictional pathologists who are amateur or part-time detectives, Quirke only discovers one fact (although a big one) through his medical skills, and it's the fact that sets the rest of the book in motion. But after that, Quirke's job is only used for metaphorical purposes (his relation to the dead, versus his step-brother's profession as an obstetrician). Quirke is trying to find out why his step-brother has falsified the death certificate of a young woman, whose name the novel bears, and it leads to a dangerous network of Irish and American folks involved in the manipulation of orphans and mothers. Quirke is attacked, a woman who confides in him (partially) is murdered, and there are many revelations and events--perhaps too many, especially toward the end, when events seem less to carry the story forward than to eliminate characters who are getting int he way or to keep the moody atmosphere at its gloomy heights. The novel is set in the early 1950s, seemingly to take advantage of some aspects of Irish and American society in relation to the Church at that time. But the gloom and Gothicism seems well suited to the '50s, better perhaps than the now booming city of Dublin (though surely there are still many of the characteristics of his story that would still be relevant). It's a tightly packed, involving, beautifully written, and somehow not quite adequate crime novel. Banville's brother Vincent wrote a few detective stories that satisfy as such, though perhaps without the literary heft of the Benjamin Black tome. Banville isn't quite slumming in Christine Falls, but he's also not taking a full and focused advantage of the genre elements that he summons for this book. As with Tana French, I'm looking forward to the next Quirke book, partly to see how the trick of a sequel will come off, and partly to see if he's more tightly in control of the structures that he's borrowing from the nature and history of the crime novel in future efforts.

Tana French and "Benjamin Black": A little news and a question

Unlikely as it may seem (to anyone who has read Irish writer Tana French's In the Woods), French is working on a sequel or maybe a series. The next volume, titled The Likeness, isdue out next spring, featuring the female partner (Cassie) of Ryan, the detective narrator of In the Woods. Cassie has her own dark past (to match Ryan's childhood secrets), both in her college years and in her undercover work prior to joining the fictional murder squad. I have to say I'm intrigued... And on another subject related to Irish crime fiction: is anyone else startled by the eruption of a Jim Thompson-esque subplot (set in Boston) in the middle of John Banville's pseudonymous, set-in-the-'50s crime novel, Christine Falls (written under a totally transparent pseudonym)? The style even seems to shift from the more elegant prose of the central tale of a Dublin pathologist (whose narration, though in the third person, is in the cultured tones of an Irish doctor) to the pugnacious reactions of a guy from Delaware who's trying to claw his way up into the working class in Boston... A review of Christine Falls follows soon.

Tana French (and is Benjamin Black actually John Banville when he's slumming?)

The question in my title is only half serious, and I've just started reading Christine Falls, the new crime novel written by John Banville under a transparent pseudonym. So I'll let you know what I think about that question after a while. In the meantime, there's another crime novel from Ireland that was preceded by p.r. and reviews that tout it as a "literary crime novel," so this post and the next will be related. All that p.r. and some of the reviews made French's novel sound like a dark, brooding Gothic thriller, which it isn't. It's for the most part a straightforward "policier" with one or two differences. First, the narrator, detective Rob Ryan, is a very chatty speaker, and his story moves forward with sly jokes, and a lot of silly banter with his partner, Cassie Maddox--the two are joined at the hip, soul mates one might think (but that relationship is ultimately a major factor in the plot). Rob's chatty manner takes the story over after a florid opening chapter (fortunately--I'm not sure I could have stuck with the overheated prose of the novel's beginning, which is much more Gothic than the body of the book). Rob even explains the quality of the prose in an offhand comment that he has a knack for imagery of the cheap flashy sort (as well as warning the reader that he, like all detectives, lies--a gesture toward the classic literary technique of the unreliable narrator, which remains part of the novel but not in a blatant fashion). The story itself is part of the reason that the book sounds so Gothic, when the story is outlined: Ryan is actually the sole survivor of a group of 3 children apparently attacked in a semi-rural wooded area 20 years previously. The other 2, his closest childhood friends, were never seen again. The return of this story, as gradually remembered by Ryan as well as given in references to the original case notes, does add a Gothic note at odds with the breezy narrative, and when the case at the core of the present-day narrative heats up, the 2 levels or tones of the book converge to some extent. The "current" story involves the body of a young girl discovered on a prehistoric, sacrificial stone in the middle of an archaeological dig that is hurrying its task in advance of road construction. The stone (and body) are in the same woods into which Ryan's friends disappeared. I have to admit that the setup was offputting to me at first. I've read a couple of crime stories set in Ireland with similar "Celtic" overtones, and they were mostly pretty bad (as well as mostly being by non-Irish writers). French's book fortunately concentrates on the procedural aspects of the investigation, along with the detectives' struggle against depression as the case moves forward without success over the course of a month. The archaeologists, the murdered girl's family, and local developers come under suspicion, but no evidence points clearly to any of them. Something is wrong in the girl's family, but Ryan and Maddox can't prove anything. And evidence and overtones of the story keep bringing back the 20-year old case (as well as Ryan's professional risk in not stepping off the case, in fact keeping secret his identity as the sole witness in the earlier case). The matter-of-fact quality of the present-day story, and the almost gossipy tone of the narrator keep the book grounded and fresh rather than overwrought, even when supernatural or magical elements drift past the tale, remaining well in the background. I have several problems with the book, but before getting to that I want to address a complaint made by several of the people who have posted reviews on Amazon--and this is a bit of a spoiler alert. The ending does not wrap up some of the threads of the tale, and that has confounded and annoyed some readers--if this is a mystery, why isn't everything tied up in a neat bundle at the end? And if this is not a mystery in that sense, is that because it's really a literary novel in disguise (or slumming as a detective story)? While there is a sophisticated structure underlying the book, I didn't get the sense that it was condescending to the genre. But Ryan's voice can get a little annoying, and the oblique clues to the unresolved parts of the story have a metaphysical tone that you have to take on whatever terms you are willing to do so--French does not tell you how far to go in accepting that aspect of the book at face value, or even how far she's willing to assert it. And the relationship of the 2 detectives, important as it is to the book, can be a little annoying--they're a bit cute together, until they stop being that, as the case moves into its final phase. Still, I liked the book much more than I anticipated, and followed it closely through a long-ish 400+ pages without it seeming too long. I'd appreciate hearing from others who've read this one--do you think it measures up as a crime novel? or does it seem pretentious in its literary ambitions? Questions I expect I'll have to return to in the next post, about Black/Banville.

New Karin Fossum

Karin Fossum's newly translated Black Seconds seems to be the fulfillment of the clever and effective false start of her first novel to be translated (actually the fifth of her Inspector Sejer series), Don't Look Back. In that novel, everyone thinks a very young girl has been abducted, but the search party discovers instead the body of a teenage girl. That initial twist away from a particular kind of crime novel, the child abduction, and perhaps Fossum has been waiting to write that story since using it as such a clever feint earlier in her distinguished career. But there are twists here as well. Fossum is frequently compared to Ruth Rendell, and there is certainly some common ground there, particularly in Fossum's close attention to family dynamics and their attendant horrors. Fossum's novels are not whodunits. In Black Seconds, for once a literal translation of the original Norwegian title, we know early on who the likely perpetrators are: but there is considerable tension built up around the questions of what exactly happened, and why (also the key questions in most of Fossum's other novels). Fossum's sympathy for her characters is another key aspect of this series: she wants to understand the people, criminals and victims alike, as much as the what and why of the events. In Black Seconds, even the people responsible for the violence to the missing girl are eligible for Fossum's considerable sympathy, and ultimately ours. Fossum is also skillful in constructing the books, using parallels (in Black Seconds some of these have to do with silence or a choice not to speak) to create a well-formed tale. At least one of the earlier novels in the series, Calling Out for You, verged on gothic horror (without the metaphysics), but Black Seconds is a return to the bleak realism of which she is a master (mistress?). The Scandinavian crime wave seems to specialize in bleak emotional landscapes, and Black Seconds qualifies for inclusion in that category, but Fossum imbues the tale with humanity, and in the ending, even a little glimmer of hope for a positive future for some of her characters. About the plot, for those who are interested: a beautiful little girl disappears, an autistic middle aged man on a three-wheel-truck is glimpsed by the mother, out looking for the girl, and the mother's sister sits worrying at home while her son arrives home disgruntled because he's just dented the fender of his new car. All the elements are already in place, and the rest of the novel follows each of those characters as well as the police (detective Sejer and his uniformed younger colleague Skarre) move slowly forward in piecing together the facts of the case. Another thing the Scandinavians (since the estimable Sjöwall and Wahlöö) seem to be good at following the police in a systematic investigation that moves forward in fits and starts, giving the northern romans policiers a particular rhythm and style. Black Seconds qualifies for the top rank in that company.

McGilloway's Borderlands

Borderlands, the title of Brian McGilloway's first crime novel, evokes a wide range of associations, particularly in the northwest of Ireland, where the novel is set. Detective Ben Devlin and the rest of the characters cross repeatedly over the national border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and both the police and the various criminals and suspects cross back and forth over the line between social norms and antisocial behavior. The story deals with the discovery of a young woman's body in circumstances that suggest that the murderer may have been one of the travelers (formerly known as tinkers), Ireland's gypsies. The social lines between the settled population and the travelers, between petty criminals and businessmen, between the police and the murderers are never completely clear, and McGilloway manages the multiple ambiguities of the story very skilfully. Devlin is the narrator, but he's no superdetective: he muddles along, frequently aware that damage is being done because he hs made the wrong move or remained a step behind those responsible for the original murder, vicious beatings (of which he is more than once the victim himself), and crimes of the present and the past. The long, sad history of Irish political entanglements is one of the subjects of the novel, but it remains in the background, as McGilloway and his narrator focus instead on the people who have inherited that history and those entanglements. McGilloway's style is clear and direct, even when the story is not, giving a real sense of Devlin's puzzlement and the process by which things are clarified. The various policemen and women involved interact with believable and human qualities, and the rest of the society of small-town Northwest Ireland and western Northern Ireland is drawn with subtlety and compassion. This is a short but powerful crime novel, and a sympathetic portrait of a "borderland" that is too often obscured in cliches or ruralisms in fiction of the present and the past. McGilloway conveys a believable portrait of a real, troubled, and coping-as-best-they-can population in the new Ireland, with all its contradictions and complexities.

Another Italian: Carofiglio

Gianrico Carofiglio is another Italian crime writer who writes what he knows. Michele Giuttari is a detective and Carofiglio was an anti-mafia prosecutor. His character is a defense lawyer in Bari, but has frequent cause to delve into the world of prosecutors, detectives, and mafias (mostly that of Calabria, also the former stomping ground of Giuttari). But Carofiglio's writing is understated and natural, without the (sometimes unfortunate, to me) dramatics of his fellow countryman's writing. In this third novel featuring Guido Guerrieri, the lawyer is dumped into a case that includes a former Fascist thug who may be a murderer and is now charged with drug smuggling (he says he was framed), a beautiful Japanese-Italian wife and mother, a mafia lawyer, and his own continuing funk (he's now been left by two women). Guido is a charming guide to his legal quandaries and his disastrous private life, and part of his charm is his self-effacing attitude--he's always uncertain, guilty, and tentative in his dealings with both women and the law. He's also no detective--he relies on informants in the police and the prosecutor's office, and his inquiries on behalf of his clients move forward naturally, without much effort on his part (but with much worry and consternation). Along the way, we get to see the daily life in Baria, the chief city of Puglia, a region of Italy not often open to us through fiction (much less crime fiction). These novels are low-key masterpieces of the form--I don't often read legal thrillers, but Carofiglio's are not limited by the typical theatrics of that genre. Reasonable Doubts doesn't turn on the uncovering of key evidence or revelations on the witness stand: it proceeds by means of Guido's determination, his occasional insights, and the genuine conviction of his arguments in court. As is occasionally mentioned by his clients and others who know him, he's a good man. Highly recommended (as is Giuttari's novel, see below, but Carofiglio is a better writer).

A Florentine procedural

I'd been looking forward to Michele Guittari's A Florentine Death since I first hear of it some weeks ago, a police thriller by an actual detective, the head of Florence's Squadra Mobile and the uncoverer of at least part of the truth behind the famous Monster of Florence case. His first novel is set in Florence in the last stages of the Monster case, but the plot concerns a serial killer of a more literary sort. The book is fun, but a bit irritating--mostly because Giuttari is hardly as accomplished a writer as he is a detective. He is in parts reminiscent of Donna Leon and in parts reminiscent of (inevitably) Magdalen Nabb (particularly in the descriptions of Florentine street life). Giuttari sometimes narrates when he should dramatize, and there is some gratuitous sex (as well as some questionable portrayal of homosexuality of both gay and lesbian varieties). The novel reminds me more of some best-seller thrillers, in both positive and negative ways, than of the higher ranks of noir fiction (some cliches, some sensationalism, some too-easy plotting). And in a few spots, the character (obviously based to some degree on the author) is portrayed in a bit too glamorous terms to be taken too seriously (making the author seem a bit too pleased with himself). But the book is still fun to read, and a crime novel of Florence by a Florentine crime-fighter is irresistible. I'll wait anxiously for the next of Giuttari's novels to be translated, but also hope that he gets better at controlling his material.

Alicia Giménez-Bartlett's 2nd

Prime Time Suspect is Alicia Giménez-Bartlett's second novel to be brought out in English translation by the excellent Europa Editions press. The story includes a dysfunctional pair of cop partners, their dispeptic boss, a murdered gossip journalist, and a host of lowlifes (some of them in high places): all the elements of classic noir. Except that the tone is quite different. Petra Delicado is the lead detective in the case and the narrator of the novel. Her voice is as digressive as the method of her investigation--irresistably leading to an analogy with the architectural fantasies of Gaudi (as illustrated on the novel's cover)--though half the novel takes place in Madrid rather than Gaudi's (and Petra's) Barcelona. The meandering lines of Gaudi's architecture is a visual equivalent of the indirect narrative of Giménez-Bartlett's novels. But Petra is not as interested in food as that other first-person (and also meandering) detective, Pepe Carvalho (star of the Vazquez Montalban books, in which a substantial portion of the story involves Pepe's current meal). A good deal of what would be the "action" in a genre novel is off stage here, with the focus remaining on Petra's thoughts, attitudes, and relationships with her sister and her partner. The result is that while there's plenty of murder, there's not much bloody violence at the forefront of the narrative. That's not a disadvantage--Petra is a distinctive character and an atypical cop. Plus there's an interesting contrast (true or not) between the style of the Madrid murder squad and Petra's own Barcelona squad (led by her perpetually irritated boss). It's Petra, though, that keeps the novels lively and interesting, not the action or the plot. Her voice is frequently depressed (about her private life more than her cases), but she's like a friend that you like so well that you gladly put up with her moaning (or her departures from the expectations of the noir or policier novel).

Been a little slow lately

Not many posts lately (traveling too much--for work not play). But I'm currently reading the new Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett novel (I'll report on that soon) and there are copies of the new Karin Fossum and Gianrico Carofiglio novels in English translation on the way (looking forward to those). Anybody else reading any good noir or policier novels at the moment?

New noir from South Africa

I use the word "noir" in the title of this post, but Deon Meyer's newly translated and published (only in U.K. so far) Devil's Peak is partly police procedural, partly thriller, partly revenge tale. But it shares a good deal with the novels of George Pelecanos, particularly in that revenge plot, and Pelecanos is generally though of as "noir," so I feel justified in inlcuding Meyer's novel in that category. In fact, Meyer's book is better (in terms of the revenge plot) than most of Pelecanos's stories: Devil's Peak is more complex in the telling, providing several levels of contrast (through the eyes and voices of other characters) to the avenger's moral point of view. Meyer's plotting is also more complex, though the revenger has a similar motive to that of Pelecanos's heroes (a personal grudge elevated to an almost mythic level, the individual's violence becoming a kind of flawed justice for those neglected by society and damaged by the violence of others). The emphasis with Meyer is on the flawed part of the justice, which is emphasized by the police procedural segments of the book. I find it difficult to say much in terms of the way the plot works, for fear of giving something away and spoiling the reader's experience--suffice it to say that tone of each of the three main narratives, and the personality of the three characters at the center of those narratives, is handled carefully and variously, taking full advantage for the plot in the differences in the motives and lives of the three. In broadest outline, Thobela, a character from two previous Meyer novels, loses an adopted son to violence and becomes a vigilante fighting those who do violence to children. Benny, a drunk cop who has also appeared in other novels, crawls out of his alcoholic depths just in time to be assigned to chase the vigilante. The third strand deals with a character not at first obviously involved with the other two (though a reader may guess at the likely connection), an "escort" named Christine who is telling her story directly to a rural preacher, in the fashion of a confession, though the minister is not Catholic. Meyer sometimes alternates the three narratives and sometimes sticks with one for an extended period. The looseness of that aspect of the structure is used to good effect, whereas constant alternation would have been tedious after a while. And the delayed revelations about what's happening (and delay is after all the major function of good plotting) are more effective for the disappearance of some of the characters for large-ish portions of the story. Like the three previously translated novels by Meyer (Dead at Daybreak, Dead Before Dying, and Heart of the Hunter--though none of the titles correspond to the original Afrikaans titles) provides a fascinating tour of contemporary South Africa, particularly its most beautiful city, Cape Town. I've reviewed the other novels here, if you're looking for info about them, and if you want a brief visual tour of Cape Town, it's partially the setting for the film version of Mankell's White Lioness, the only one of the Wallander movies available on DVD in the U.S. (that seems to be the case for the U.K. as well). As in Meyer's novels, the view of Cape Town through Wallander's eyes includes the beauty and the ugliness (though Wallander's tour is a bit out of date, being very close to the end of apartheid). Back to Devil's Peak--the novel drew me forward through the strength of the characters and the power of the plotting, and surprised me at several points in that most effective novelistic manner: making me see the "truth" about what had happened before. Highly recommended (which goes for Meyer's earlier novels as well). He has a new novel called, I believe, The Invisible, that is in the process of translation now (about a white-trash bodyguard in the new South Africa), which I'm looking forward to eventually reading.

Bolivian noir?

Amerian Visa, by Juan de Recacoechea, comes with a blurb by George Pelecanos invoking the name of Chandler, as well as marketing that niches the book as a crime novel. There are certainly enough references to Chandler (and even more to Chester Himes, one of whose novels the main character steals)--but American Visa is really a picaresque rather than a noir crime novel. Not that that is a lesser thing (and the picaresque certainly has a long pedigree in Spanish-language fiction), it's just something different. The crime that the story leads up to is a theft and murder, but then so is the crime in Crime and Punishment (which is of course neither picaresque nor noir). That said, Recacoechea's book is a rare glimpse into Bolivian lower class society, and an insight (especially valuable for those of us living in the U.S.) into Latin American attitudes toward their northern neighbour. Plus the narrator-hero's voice is lively enough to keep the story going and the reader (even the dedicated crime fiction reader) interested, even though the crime plot isn't even hinted at until well into the second half of the book. There are a couple of cliches, particularly the happy whores with hearts of gold, that are undersandable in the context of the typologies appropriate to the picaresque, in which the plot is a string of incidents not necessarily related in any structural way, with characters who represent types rather than being completely individualized. Recacoechea in fact gives the characters more history than the picaresque necessarily calls for, and his setting is carefully portrayed in realistic terms (apparently in explicit revolt against the magic realism that we of the north have come to expect in the Latin American fiction that reaches us in translation. As such, American Visa is a valuable addition to the South American repertory available in English--and lest anyone th ink I'm damning the book with faint praise, that is not my attention. I enjoyed the book, though it was not quite what I expected from the marketing (and to give the marketing its due, the phrase "picaresque noir" does appear therein.

Going forwards and backwards: Declan Burke's 2nd novel and Declan Hughes's first

I've already reviewed Declan Hughes's second crime novel, featuring private detective Ed Loy, but have just gotten around to reading his first, The Wrong Kind of Blood. And I've already reviewed Declan Burke's first novel, but am just getting to his second, The Big O. First, the Hughes: The Wrong Kind Blood is a bit more straightforward than its sequel, The Color of Blood, but still very much tied up with family dramas, rich folks, and Ross McDonald-style noir. And there are lots of bodies, though the "blood" in the title refers more to blood diseases and family histories. Perhaps a bit more prominent in this one is a tour of the new Dublin, quickly leaving its past behind. Whereas Hughes's books are very similar, Burke's The Big O could hardly be more different from his earlier Eight Ball Boogie. The Big O moves out of classic pulp-noir territory into a kidnap caper with style and plotting more like Elmore Leonard (or maybe Donald Westlake) than Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler. The narrative is actually mostly dialogue: even the non-dialogue sections, if you look closely, and internal monologues by the various characters. The voices are snappy, and the novel is divided into short sections, each from the point of view of one of the characters. The result is a kaleidoscopic narrative that moves forward at a rapid pace--and the result is also quite funny, in the way that Leonard's novels are frequently funny: expectations are overturned, characters move inexorably toward an unforeseen climax, and we glide past unbelievable coincidences without hesitation. Another writer I might mention for comparison is Timothy Watts, whose three novels (that's all he has published to my knowledge) are very realistic portrayals of ordinary people caught up in criminal situations, none of them more honest or truthful than they need to be, and often as involved in personal relationships as violent crimes. Burke's book is similar, in that none of these characters are master criminals, they're very much "ordinary decent criminals," a wonderful phrase that the Irish have bequeathed to the rest of the world, and the attraction of some of them for others is that of ordinary men and women (also a feature of Elmore Leonard's books, to their credit). The Big O is, ultimately, a crime farce of the first order (that is to say, it stands up very well to the Leonard comparison, or to comparison with one of my favorite Italian crime novels, the very funny and very violent Night Bus, by Giampiero Rigosi). The violence is postponed, riding along with the converging characters and plot lines until the ending that, though impossible to entirely foresee, seems inevitable once you've gotten to it. The unforeseeable aspect comes from another aspect that the novel shares with Leonard: the plotting seems casual, unplanned, with the random pattern of life--but looking back, the story is as tightly structured as a jigsaw puzzle (not that it's a puzzle novel in any way, except for the reader's curiosity about the meaning of the book's title, only clear nearly at the end). I may not be making myself perfectly clear, here, but The Big O is a lot of fun, hence the earlier mention of Westlake--it's not overly comic, as Westlake sometimes is, but the elements of the plot lock together as the story moves forward with an increasingly comic effect (as, for example, the plot of Pulp Fiction moves forward), and the "blackout" quality of the short sections and alternating voices adds an additional liveliness. I frequently talk about the settings of crime novels, and this one has a carefully ambiguous setting--sometimes it seems like Dublin, but not clearly or overtly so, in the fashion of Declan Hughes. Sometimes The Big O's story could be happening in the U.S., except that some idioms are clearly not U.S. English ("chemist" for what would be "drug store" here, among other examples). The ambiguity works effectively with the technique of the novel, though, focusing our attention on the progressively complicated story rather than on a definite setting. I highly recommend The Big O, and wish for the sake of its potential readership that it soon finds wider distribution--in the U.S., for example...

Declan Burke's 1st

There is classic noir popping up in what would once have been unusual places. Alan Guthrie, for instance, is creating the contemporary equivalent of the pulp noir of Jim Thompson or David Goodis but on the mean streets of Scottish cities. And Declan Burke creates, in Eightball Boogie, a hard-boiled, sharp-tongued (or smart-mouthed) "research consultant" (part freelance reporter and part private detective) Harry Rigby, who lives in the northwest of Ireland (in a small city that seems to be Sligo, though it's never named). Harry, as a first-person narrator, is the wisecrack-laden voice at the heart of the book, and Burke walks a careful narrative line: The other characters speak in a less wise-ass and less allusive language, if occasionally almost as hard-boiled as Harry. The contrast foregrounds Harry's Marlowe-ish/Bogart-esque voice whose every phrase comments on the action, the scene, and the other characters, balanced by the self-aware tone of his voice and the comments from other characters (in the words of one of them, Harry watches too many movies). Those characters become a sort of Greek chorus commenting on both Harry and the novel itself, which along with Harry's own awareness of the depression or self-hatred explicitly lurking behind his smart mouth prevent the style from descending into parody. And when the story turns to Harry's estranged wife and their son, the smart talk recedes as the emotional depth increases, and it's this family drama that actually drives the story. Harry's own hard man facade is actually mostly just that--he keeps a .38 in his desk, but it turns out to be a replica, incapable of shooting anybody (as is Harry, though the violence he suffers and the threat to those he loves will push him beyond his limits). The arc of the story leading to that ending is a foot-race between Harry's tough-guy language and the circumstances that may turn his soft heart to stone. But most of the time, at least, Harry is almost as funny as he thinks he is, and the comedy keeps the story rolling along between the sudden eruptions of violence. If Harry's imitation of the voice of a hard-boiled private eye isn't your cup of tea, stick with the book anyway--Burke's novel is not just a pulp revival, it's genuine neo-noir.

Håkan Nesser and a word on blogs

There was recently a comment about blogging quoted by Richard Schickel in the L.A. Times, in his article about blogging versus criticism. He quotes D.J. Waldie as saying that blogging is a form of speech, not of writing. I agree with that comment, based on reading lots of blogs and "writing" this one. Others may disagree--what do you think? The distinction doesn't have to be seen as a criticism of blog-criticism: but a blog doesn't go through an editorial process, isn't solicited by a publisher, and is usually more immediate for those and other reasons. So what we get (or give) in a blog is a discussion, a conversation, rather than formal writing (no matter how immediate a good writer can be in that form). And in fact that's what I find attractive about the better blogs--they're a way to talk about something, with a circle of people who might be interested in the same topic, however geographically dispersed they may be. The blogosphere is like a huge bar, with multiple overlapping discussions, and with your own selection of beverage rather than some bar owner's offerings.
On to the subject at hand: Håkan Nesser's second crime novel has been published in English (out of the sequence of the original Swedish publication, as is becoming annoyingly the norm). The Return is based on Inspector Van Veeteren's home ground, the city of Maardam in an unnamed North European country (the first novel in the series to be published in English, Borkmann's Point, occurred in a provincial town some distance from the city, and the police chief and detectives in that town replaced most of Van Veeteren's usual team in that book). As in some other series, the detectives are narrowly drawn characters, a device that throws into relief the personalities of the witnesses, victims, and murderers that populate each novel. The lead character is Van Veeteren, basically a thinker more than an investigator, and in that he resembles Nicolas Freeling's Van Der Valk a bit, (perhaps Nesser's character's name is meant to suggest Freeling's--Van Veeteren's French in-laws and grandchildren, for example, echo Van Der Valk's French wife), and the ending of The Return suggests Van Der Valk's off-center sense of justice. Münster, VV's more-or-less partner, is more of a field investigator--and a key factor in Münster's characterization is his relation to his wife, who's always calm and happy and sensual (and Münster often reflects on his luck in being married to her). The dialogue (particularly in the witness interviews) is lively and interesting, as are the plots. The plot of Borkmann's Point hinged on a surprise ending that was a bit Agatha Christie, from my point of view, but The Return is less reliant on surprise and more of a procedural, involving as it does the full complement of Van Veeteren's team. A headless, hand-less, and foot-less body is found rolled up in a carpet, and identified as a man named Verhaven who was recently released from prison after murdering two women. The police have almost nothing to go on and pursue the case by going over the presumed victim's murder trials and interviewing anyone they can find (while also questioning the identification of the body and Verhaven's guilt in the two crimes for which he was emprisoned). I've mentioned before that there is a "neverland" aspect of Nesser's setting. It's "Northern Europe," sort of Netherlands but also with suggestions of Denmark or Flemish Belgium. He draws the portrait of the fictional country well, without being obtrusive about it, but the pan-North-European quality of place and character names throws me off a bit--it's hard to decide how they should be pronounced, even--should we use a Swedish inflection, though the names sound more Dutch or German, even Slavic? Should we imagine this to be a thoroughly multi-cultural place, with Slavic pronunciation of Slavic names, Dutch pronunciation of the more Dutch-looking names, etc.? Is this a game the author is playing with us? That would be OK, but I miss the local color that is the part of any crime novel--local expressions, local slang, food, attitudes, etc. Nesser invents criminological/sociological/judicial facts that the characters refer to or have to deal with, creating a full sense of a culture that the cops live in and have to deal with, but little details like the kinds of cookies that an old woman who is being interviewed serves the detectives, or the brand of beer that a detective drinks, are vague and ethereal rather than specific and grounded in local culture. On the other hand, some books are so steeped in the local culture that references to TV personalities or consumer products can be puzzlingly opaque to readers from outside the local orbit. Nesser's unnamed country is more invented than the Eastern Europe of Olen Steinhauer's books or McBain's 57th Precinct, since after all McBain's Isola is a parallel-universe New York), and the invention may allow him latitude in dealing with cultural specificities like historical relations with Germany or where along the Protestant/Catholic divide his characters have grown up (and perhaps the depths of his invented country are revealed over the breadth of the series, most of which is after all not available in English). In any case, his fictional country is rewarding to enter for a while, and his stories compel the reader's interest. Plus he can be quite funny, as in a chapter in which VV is simultaneously conducting an interrogation and figuring out how his fancy new office chair works. There's an irony of a sort that's worth noting: The Return deals with events punctuated by two 12-year prison sentences, and the novel itself has taken 12 years to arrive in English. We can hope that the rest of the series doesn't languish that long before being available in the English-speaking world...

The conclusion of the Marseilles Trilogy

Solea, the third volume of the Marseilles Trilogy by Jean-Claude Izzo, continues the melancholy, violence, love, and beauty of the first two volumes but adds Sciascia-like documentary material that grounds Izzo's portrait of the Mafia in actual contemporary history. Fabio Montale, the cop and then former cop who is the center of the series, is pursued by death throughout the novel. Babette, a former girlfriend has been investigating the mafia, and she has acquired some documents that the Mafia wants back--and they're killing Fabio's friends one by one until he finds Babette and hands her over. The plot is simple, but the narrative is complex, with overlapping reminiscences of Fabio's friends dead and alive. And at the center of everything is the city of Marseilles, its light, its changing streets, its mix of ethnicities, and the sea. The trilogy is a powerfull evocation of the city and of a tragedy that only becomes clear in the third volume, with Babette's revelations of the extent of the mafia's penetration into "straight" society and politics. Fabio's melancholy becomes despair, and all those around him are sucked into it. Izzo's language is sinuous and emotional. The novel is rich and rewarding, and its impact is beyond that of most crime fiction.

"noir," "pulp," Declan Hughes, and Ken Bruen

There have always been two strains in noir fiction, one more oriented to the crimes of the upper class: the template for this sub-genre is The Big Sleep, and the stories often feature private detectives (logical enough--the rich clients can afford to hire them). Perhaps the culmination of this subset of noir can be found in the novels of Ross McDonald, with their atmosphere of the corrupt rich threatening to destabilize the smooth operation of capitalist society. The other strain of noir is (more associated with "pulp" publishers) focuses on working class people struggling against corrupt cops and small-time gangsters--this strain leads from James M. Cain to William Goodis to Jim Thompson; these books provide a critique of capitalist society no less than the portraits of corrupt rich folks in classic noir, but from underneath, where there isn't much evidence of a stable order in the first place. I myself am more drawn to that segment of noir, having been blown away by the likes of Thompson and Goodis when I first started reading crime fiction. In Irish crime writing, the prime representative of pulp noir has recently been Ken Bruen (though perhaps a better Irish representative of the working class crime novel, and certainly a better writer, is Gene Kerrigan). Now there's a series that is very much in the Ross McDonald mold, in the crime novels of playwright Declan Hughes. Hughes is hardly hiding his debt to McDonald--his detective, Ed Loy, has just returned to Dublin after 20 years in Los Angeles (California being the stomping ground of McDonald's detective, Lew Archer). And the second novel in the Ed Loy series, The Color of Blood, begins with the detective being hired by a classic Ross McDonald client: the rich, screwed up, decadent Howard family. McDonald is also the most literary of the early noir/detective authors, both in the style of writing and the metaphorical weight of his plots. Plus Hughes uses a quote from McDonald at the head of one of the novel's three sections (the others begin with quotes from Dante and St. Matthew, pretty grand company and a pretty big hint as to his opinion of McDonald). Hughes, as an established playwright, may have been drawn to this more literary model of noir, but in any case the style of writing is self-consciously literary (not stripped down in the terse style of Simenon or the journalistic style of Kerrigan, and not full of references to fiction and pop culture like Bruen, but full of descriptions, metaphors, and allusions in the voice of the first-person detective narrator. His dramatic sense is evident in that first-person narrative, and his skill with dialogue forms a counterpoint to the allusive prose. The Color of Blood moves briskly along: the characters are three-dimensional, and the extremely complicated plot is lively and not predictable. One of the interesting aspects of the book is its explicit analysis of Irish culture: in these days of the "Celtic Tiger," an Irish noir story requires an explanation (or a leap of faith). Either you show the underside of the succesful social development (much as Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö did in the boom years of Sweden's welfare society, in which the lives of those left out of the social-democratic miracle are portrayed and some of the characters refer to the society's failure with bitterness). Hughes operates in a similar mode, and among the Irish crime novels I've seen, Hughes offers the most explicit analysis of who's left out of the Irish miracle, and what the sources are of the miseries that linger in Irish society--he puts it in the mouth of a therapist who has been treating the disfunctional family at the center of The Color of Blood, and this passage is important to the success of the book, as well as several less explicit hints concerning, for example, babies born in fields as a result of Church-bound attitudes toward sex and birth control. These sociological threads provide a grounding for the discomforts, perversions, and miseries portrayed in the novel: all of which rise in Faulknerian, apocalyptic tensions vividly described in the novels final chapter. The Color of Blood is more noir than mystery, but there is a complex series of revelations in the final sections--the book satisfies on many levels and across several sub-genres, making good use of the McDonald model.

I mentioned Ken Bruen's books, and his new American Skin has arrived in the U.S. The usual Bruen style is here, but in what could be seen as a more "American" plot but is actually a self-conscious homage to the pulp noir that I described above. Bruen's Irish-criminal-on-the-run, American psycho murderer, and a few other desperate characters are resolutely working class, as is usually the case with Bruen's books, whether in the Galway private detective series, the London police procedurals, or the miscellaneous other novels (Bruen is nothing if not prolific). American Skin displays some of Bruen's usual mannerisms, including the multiple allusions to popular music, movies, and literature (Bukowski, among others). The timeline of American Skin is more splintered than is usual with Bruen's books, and the point of view is divided among the first-person Galwayman who is the main character and third person narrative focusing mostly on the American psycho. But Bruen's virtue is in the author's voice, not his characters or plots. A reader has to be convinced by or interested in that voice in order to get anything out of Bruen's books, and for me it's just not interesting enough. For me, in spite of Bruen's fidelity to "pulp noir," American Skin's story lacks the lively characters of the Brant novels or the atmosphere of despair in the Galway novels. And in spite of my allegiance to pulp noir, I enjoyed Hughes's new novel much more than Bruen's.

Passport to Crime

There's a new anthology (titled Passport to Crime) from the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine that acknowledges the growing importance in English-speaking countries of mysteries of all genres that are translated from other languages. Since EQMM is broad in its definition of "mystery," the anthology contains everything from cozies to Poe homages to noir and (appropriately enough) an Ellery Queen-influenced story. For some reason, I'm not normally a fan of mystery short stories (although I enjoyed the DC Noir anthology, I haven't obtained its cousins from Brooklyn, Baltimore, etc). But the authors included in Passport to Crime are mostly not available in English at all, the anthology is an invaluable window on other worlds. Some of the writers are available in English (and some have been mentioned or reviewed here, including Kjersti Scheen, Baantjer, Ingrid Noll, Dominique Manotti) most are revelations. Some are not to my taste (since I'm primarily interested in noir fiction), a few are mystery-esque stories by novelists who have primarily literary aims, and some are not up to the standard of the best recent translated crime novels (the Scandinavian wave is under-represented, as well as the excellent new books from Italy), but EQMM should be applauded for their public service in bringing this book (and the series in the magazine on which it's based) to us. And even if a particular story is not to your taste, the glimpse into the world of what a recent symposium called "bloody foreigners" is great fun.

New from Japan, not so new from Ireland

Two books that I've recently read don't really qualify as noir, for different reasons, but I'll talk about them briefly anyway. John Galvin's Bog Warriors is a comic mystery published a few years ago, dealing with the Irish police (the gardaí) and a murder in a rural town. There's a good deal of comedy dealing with relationships both among the townfolk and among the police, but for the most part this is a rural cozy, played out in the form of a police procedural preceded by a portrait of small town life and followed by a couple of plot twists more typical of the mystery genre. During the procedural section, the novel takes on a forward drive missing in the other sections, but overall the book is enjoyable both for the comedy and the police portraits (Galvin is a working garda, still on the force--his second novel is a serial killer thriller that has not had glowing reviews). One thing I cannot understand (maybe somebody can help me!) is the cover of the paperback as issued by the Irish publisher. I could not find any reference to cowboys and horses in the book--and when I do an image search, I find this photo popping up in other places in the Celtic world. Does it have local reference to the "bog warriors" of the title (either the drinkers or the defenders of order)? Somebody please help. The Japanese novel, recently published in English translation, is Asa Nonami's The Hunter, featuring a female detective named Takako Otomichi and her older male partner, Tamotsu Takizawa (the point of view fluctuates between them and also to a narrative voice that describes the crimes). There are hideous crimes described (attacks by a wolf-like animal, fires started by arson and by a terrible chemical weapon) but the focus on Otomichi and Takizawa is hardly of a "hard-boiled" character, which may be due to Japanese culture, to translation difficulties, or indeed to the aims of the author. But whatever the case, I find my attention drifting away from the difficulties of the two partners in adjusting to one another, the problematic home situations of both of them, and so forth. Too much soap opera (a term I've mentioned before--it's the word I use to explain to my wife why I like Law & Order but didn't like NYPD Blue, to use a TV-series example). I want to shake both the principal characters by the shoulders and get their attention back on the case--I don't really care whether they ever get along with one another (though we know they will gain each other's respect by the end of the book, it's that kind of story). Even on the case, there are cultural differences that prevent the story away from the noir tone: The detective squad spends a condiderable time deciding the name of the case (what they come up with sounds sort of like a Perry Mason book title, or even a Hardy Boys title)--it's difficult to tell if this process (and the title itself) are intended for comic effect, since there's little other attempt at humor in the book. Still, I don't want to just complain about The Hunter; it's a window on a very different culture and its police, its crimes, and its attitudes toward women. If it doesn't delve as much into the underside of Japanese culture as, say, the books of Natsuo Kirino or Ryu Murakami, and is more an old-fashioned copy/mystery novel than the neo-noir that the book's cover suggests, it's still a well-told story that a lot of people will enjoy.

De Luca trilogy, part 2

Carlo Lucarelli's 1940s-noir series featuring Detective De Luca began with Carte Blanche and now continues (in English) with The Damned Season. Where as the first novel (or novelette, since each of these books is barely over 100 pages) dealt with De Luca's experience in a corrupt, decadent, and fading Fascist Italy, and ended with De Luca on the road attempting to escape from Allied troops that might not have any sympathy for a cop in the political squad, The Damned Season deals with De Luca on the run and hiding under false identity papers. He quickly falls under the control of a small-town policeman who represents the Partisan, anti-Fascists who are taking over control as the Fascists flee north along with the Nazi troops. De Luca was caught in the web of the politics and influence in Rome in the first book, but still had some scope for independent action. Here, he has lost his independence completely. The local cop doesn't know who he is, but knows he's a carabinieri or policeman from Rome, enough to sentence him to death. But the cop, who has little investigative exprience, is using De Luca to solve a murder case, and the solution to the mystery threatens to make things worse for De Luca as the case reveals the fault lines of the Partisan takeover. Who's in charge changes, but how business is conducted doesn't. This series, brief as each novel is, is very dark, brooding even, and no one escapes the misery and fear that envelopes everything. The brief prefaces, explaining the source of the author's interest in and information about the Italian police of that era, are essential to understanding what's going on. In a sense more palpable than in most crime novels, the author's starting point informs and expands the reader's experience of the books. My only complaint is that as short as the novels are, I wish that they could have been made available in English at the same time, or at shorter intervals. I'm impatient for the next installment--less to see what happens to De Luca than to see how Lucarelli's insight about the professional policeman at the core of his story plays out in the era of the re-imposition of state power over the near anarchy of the society depicted in The Damned Season.

Fred Vargas's Adamsberg

The style of French author Fred Vargas is similar to the investigative style of her detective (Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg): intuitive rather than logical. Looked at from a logical perspective, some of the plot elements in the new Vargas translation don't make much sense. But readers who appreciate Vargas's work will be swept along in spite of the illogicalities, since what makes the books distinctive and enjoyable is Vargas's language and her characters (which can verge into caricatures that are used for both comic effect and plot advancement). Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand is the book's title (originally titled Sous les vents de Neptune--and one my ongoing peeves with the publishers of crime novels in translation is their persistent habit of giving the books titles that don't relate to the original titles; the practice can, as in Vargas's case, make it difficult to track down exactly which books have been translated, and in what order they were originally published). Vargas, as is well known now, is the pseudonym of archaeologist Frédérique Audouin-Rouzeau, whose twin sister is a painter who uses the name Jo Vargas. The new book has a plot as gothic as the two previously translated Adamsberg books (which dealt with werewolves and the plague, among other things): the detective is struck by fits: he is either having a breakdown or being possessed. What has set him off is a series of reminders of a killer from his past whose murder weapon is a trident (and who died 16 years previously). Adamsberg has a family connection to the killer, who skilfully frames others for his murders: one of those framed was the detective's brother, when both were young. The family connection and the fact that the serial killer is dead complicate Adamsberg's conviction that the same man has killed again, and the killer is now pursuing the detective, in France and in Canada (where Adamsberg's team has gone on a forensic training course). Vargas always richly laces her narratives with incidental characters that are Dickensian in their characterization and their function, and this book is no exception. What is most inviting about these books is the rich texture created by these characters and by the detective's non-linear mind. Neither noir nor cozy, the Adamsberg books inhabit a sort of alternative universe (such as the world evoked in Jack O'Connell's excellent and very different novels), a world with its own internal consistencies that are not bound by simple logic or reason. To enjoy them, the reader will need to abandon him/herself to the rules of that world, and once that is accomplished, the rewards of this atmospheric and frequently funny series can be appreciated.

Irish noir

There's a boom (or boomlet anyway) in Irish crime fiction lately. I reviewed Gene Kerrigan's wonderful Little Criminals a while ago, and I just finished his Midnight Choir, which is a great book--not as much fun as the first novel, but deeper. More on that in a minute. The noir-est Irish crime writer up to now was Vincent Banville, whose detective-on-the-edge novels have just been joined by his brother John's first crime novel (written under a pseudonym, Benjamin Black). There are also two novels (very bloody, I hear) by the playwright Declan Hughes. There are some others, too, that I'll get to sooner or later (as well as the excellent John Brady, whose novels are a bit less noir than the current crop). Midnight Choir is structured much like Little Criminals: there is an incident that serves as a frame, with intro and coda for the novel as a whole; events and phrases pop up with no explanation but are brought into the reader's knowledge of what's going on gradually; there are numerous strands of the plot that come together only gradually. In Midnight Choir, the character development is accomplished so carefully and gradually that the portraits of several key characters are only complete at the very end. In fact, the whole novel is more an examination of character than of incident. The process that the author leads us through is carefully and skillfully constructed and the language is straightforward but doesn't give away much. Much of what's going on is between the lines, and that indirection makes the awful concluding events less shocking than inevitable (events that in less skilful hands would be shocking indeed, even repulsive). Few crime novels are as well written as this, and few as ambitious in scope and depth.

Swedish crime tour

I just heard that Kjell Eriksson, Håkon Nesser, Inger Frimansson, and Helene Tursten will be on tour in the US/Canada from April 17: NY, Toronto, LA, San Francisco, and Seattle. That's a good portion of the Swedish crime wave: something to watch out for!