tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152582762024-03-14T04:47:09.017-07:00International Noir FictionInternational Noir Fiction includes reviews and ideas on crime novels (mostly from outside the U.S.)Glenn Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04869155065647936216noreply@blogger.comBlogger782125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15258276.post-16331688159598174082023-09-22T17:26:00.002-07:002023-09-22T17:26:39.943-07:00Ayesha Manazir iddiqi: The Centre<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy_G4pzsFkuUwNzYfwpii6OC8qNEiUkXYBI846YjV3z6AQpPCHmAgu5eepxv8Dz9bzTmSYRmbOMDH_M9IWdiB1ZlD9EPSFFZXGT7DM9Vuxd3QpwY6AHxCKiZtieqZTvXT3eKmPjs72r3Hi6rcAc8Jr-qBnenQ3f_ElAZdJ9ijeeb0Y--JYBTYO/s500/51GDT6au2KL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy_G4pzsFkuUwNzYfwpii6OC8qNEiUkXYBI846YjV3z6AQpPCHmAgu5eepxv8Dz9bzTmSYRmbOMDH_M9IWdiB1ZlD9EPSFFZXGT7DM9Vuxd3QpwY6AHxCKiZtieqZTvXT3eKmPjs72r3Hi6rcAc8Jr-qBnenQ3f_ElAZdJ9ijeeb0Y--JYBTYO/s320/51GDT6au2KL.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">Ayesha Manazir iddiqi: <i>The Centre (</i><span class="a-list-item"><span>Gillian Flynn Books)</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi’s <i>The Centre</i>
is a thriller, a horror story, and a satire, but above all else an
investigation of the relationahip of selfhood and language. The horror element
comes not from an alien or supernatural source, but from the depths of human
nature, with a reference not to technology but to anthropology and human
history, myth, and ritual. Siddiqi’s novel occupies the fraught line between
fascination and disgust, between the satiric and the gruesome. Siddiqi, like
some other writers working in or adjacent to the horror genre, tends to hold
the terrifying elements at arm’s length for a large part of the novel, to shift
abruptly away from thrilling or shocking possibilities, withholding them<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>until a climactic moment later in the story.
This deferral of horror has the effect of highlighting, alongside the shocking
elements of the story, the ordinary conflicts, struggles, and terrors of
everyday lie.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The novel is strictly from Anisa’s
point of view (and at one point there is a sly hint of association between the
narrator and the author); that narrative choice emphasizes the core of the novel,
the insistence that subjective experience is impossible to communicate
transparently—all communication involves a translation that is distorted by the
point of view and experience of each party to the conversation. This
incommunicability is most obvious in Anisa’s relationships with two friends and
a lover. At the heart of the novel, though, is a mysterious process that seeks
to break down this barrier to understanding by providing a process of acquiring
languages and adopting other people’s experience. The institution that sponsors
this process is The Centre of the book’s title.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The story<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>follows three primary arcs. The first is Anisa’s
relationship with her friend Naima, who makes a living from tarot readings,
tantra, and ayahuasca workshops for women of color. Anisa met Naima when she
first moved to London at 18 to attend college, and they are now in their 30s. This
part of the story is the most conventional, two friends struggling for love and
for a place in the world, a storyline that ends with a wedding (though not the
most reassuring of literary weddings). Naima is not only Anisa’s anchor, her
best friend and confidant, but their relationship is also, despite Naima’s
unconventional way of making a living, the “normal” against which Anisa’s
stranger experiences can be measured. The second narrative arc deals with Adam,
a man whom she meets at a seminar on literary translation: Adam is the person
who introduces her to the Centre, a cult-like language school that claims to
achieve for its adherents total fluency in a language in 10 days. The third
narrative deals with the Centre itself and with<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Anisa’s relationship with Shiba, a staff member at the Centre who
becomes her guide (her Virgil, even) through the the Centre’s mysteries,
possibilities, and even horrors.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Anisa,
dissatisfied with settling for a life that falls below her personal and
literary ambitions, begins her journey, though, with a tarot reading that Naima
does for her (with a comic touch: Naima consults the instruction booklet that
came with the pack of cards for her interpreatation): according to Naima (and
the instructions that came with the cards) Anisa is ”searching for the reasons
for her discontent outside yourself, when the discontent itself is the reason
for the discontent.” Thinking about her discontent leads Anisa to consider
translation as a profession and an art form, meditating on the difficulties of
finding an emotional equivalent for even the most basic elements of language.
As evidence she references Harold Bloom’s discussion of the difficulty of adequately
translating the famous first line of Camus’s <i>L’Etranger. </i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">She is inspired to attend a seminar on literary translation,
where she first encounters Adam, who is also in the audience. She is impressed
by his seeming fluency in several languages, and after striking up a
conversation with him. When she asks how he has managed to learn so many
languages, he offers the stale line that he could tell her but then he’d have
to kill her, a line that serves as both a joke and a premonition. Their
relationship is tentative at first: he is shy and cautious, particularly about
sex, and he is also reticent regarding his skill in learning languages. As she
ultimately says, there’s something “off” about Adam, and otherness that
provides a lot of the tension in the first half of the story, and is finally
explicated in an angry confrontation between what is at that point the former
couple, toward the end.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For the
first quarter of the novel, the story is a frequently funny rom-com and
coming-of-age late story about thirty-somethings in London finding their way
through sexual, cultural, friendship, and family stresses—except for the
occasional mention of “the horror that was to come.” Anisa navigates her
ambitions, her sometimes fractious relationship with Naima, ad her slowly,
hesitantly developing relationship with Adam, up to an including the adoption
of a cat together (a big step, after all, toward shared domesticity). The break
in the narrative occurs when a Anisa and Adam travel to introduce him to her
family in Pakistan. Cultural and sexual tensions arise, from multiple
misunderstandings based in incommensurable personal experience of a man and a
woman from opposite ends of the colonial history of t heir countries. The
biggest shock to their relationship comes when Adam reveals that he has learned
Urdu, as a sort of gift to Anisa, but her reaction is not what he expects (not
the least of which is that he now speaks the language better than she does, a
fact that her family remarks upon). This insistence on the linguistic and
translational aspects of disconnections between individuals with differing
bodily experience of life prepares for both the couple’s breakup and the more
startling aspects of the tale in the chapters to come. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">After Adam provides Anisa with a
referral to The Centre (something that p[articipants are only eligible to do
once in a lifetime), almost as a parting gift upon their breakup, she undergoes
an odd interview and an even stranger physical exam, and then journeys to the
remote facility. The building is half 18<sup>th</sup>-century mansion and half
modern glass and steel, the two sections surrounding a central courtyard and
garden. The two halves of the building suggest the two tendencies of the story:
toward gothic mystery and speculative fiction (both, though, grounded more in
anthropology than in the supernatural or the technological).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The central garden: It seems perpetually lush and green,
regardless of the season, but more pointedly, there is in the center of the
garden a fenced-off section of poisonous plants. Their role in the Centre’s
activity is never specified, so they function as a menacing presence and, by
the end, a suggestion that there is more going on than the narrator is
revealing. The poisonous presence are also a first hint of Anisa’s growing suspicions
abut what is going on in the facility.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At first,
though, the program of The Centre is almost monastic. The regimen involves,
first, the confiscation of all communication devices, then a strict schedule of
meditation, meals, silence (except for occasional contact with staff), and long
hours of sitting in a booth listening to a “Storyteller” drone on and on in a
language that the learner does not (yet) understand. Anisa’s first crises are,
on the one hand, boredom (despite the excellence of the meals prepared by the
on-site chefs), and the forced withdrawal from Whatsapp and social media. At
one point, she breaks down in her cell-like room and is comforted by an elderly
cleaner (with whom she is not supposed to interact) who convinces her to go
back to her language booth. Her other, sanctioned, interactions are only with
Shiba, who encourages her but also echoes her life experience as a South Asian
émigré. Their bond grows to fill ghe gap left by Anisa’s growing distance from
Naima (who has become engaged to a man that Anisa does not approve of) and by
Shiba’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>isolation as the chief of staff
(she is not only in charge but is the daughter of one of the founders).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Their
friendship softens the cult-like atmosphere and the, suddently, Anisa begins to
understand Peter, Her German Storyteller, as he drones on and on in her
headphones, telling his life story in intimate detail. Her new facility in
Germanm though, also has a darker side: she realizes that her recent,
disturbing nightmares seem to be based on Peter’s story, even though she was
having the nightmares before she could understand him.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After
“graduating” from The Centre, Anisa seeks to fulfill her professional
ambitions, selecting a German literary novel (which is an allegory about
language and translation) and publishes a successful English version of the
text. Her feeling of success is mixed with her sense of inadequacy, which she
identifies as the imposter syndrome, and sheh reaches out to Shiba. They meet
and bond further, and then Anisa decides to go back to The Centre to learn
Ruissian. On her second visit, the institution’s linguistic labyrinth darkens.
She learns that her new Storyteller is in fact the elderly cleaner kthat she
encountered on her first visit, but she is told that she will not be able to
meet her this time, since the old woman is ill and in hospital. A further
crisis comes when Shiba invites Anisa to visit her in the private quatters that
are forbidden to leaners, and in a moment when Shiba is occupied and her laptop
is open, Anisa further violates the ru les by checking her email. Whe follows
is a thriller-like sequence of panic ,fear, and flight, ending abruptly when
she attempts to enter another forbidden area: whereupon the narrator and the
hnarrative go black. The secret behind the door will not be revealed until much
later (following the pattern of the novel’s thriller and horror elements: at
each stage, the narrative pulls back, postponing the full effect as the normal
(though still ominous) life at The Centre and beyond resumes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The resto
fthe story follows Anisa’s success as a translator, and a second trip to South
Asia, this time in the company of Shiba, to visit with Shiba’s father and the
other founders, who are coming together, from their various institutions around
the world, to conduct The Centre’s essential business and the plans for its
future. The visit is initially amicable, but rapidly falls apart in two ways:
The final revelation of The Centre’s secrets in their full horror become clear,
but Anisa’s final break with Shiba, her father, and the intstitution stem from
a more banal, but in a way even more horrifying and disgusting, incident. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Anisa’s flight from India and from
Shiba’s famiy does not quite resolve her relation to The Centre and its
horrors. A further revelation, in a conversation with Shiba during the novel’s
final weddiing scenes, both turns the screw further andn threatens to inveigle
Anisa again in the web of The Centre, despite her awareness of its dark heart.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As horror fiction, <i>The Centre</i> has much in common with
other historical and contemporary horror novels that are grounded in cults and
human history (rather than supernatural or alien forces). I kept thinking of
Charlotte Jay’s <i>Beat Not the Bones</i>, whose horror derives from essential
and powerful cultural misunderstandings and colonial domination of one culture
over another. The Centre is full of the same criticism of colonial domination,
but usually in a lighter and more satirical tone, but like Jay’s famous novel,
its horror is rooted in anthropology and history. Among more recent novels,
Siddiqi’s book has in common with Elisabeth Thomas’s <i>Catherine House</i> a
focus on cult-like enclaves and on female experience of the world. <i>The
Centre</i> also has themes in common with Alma <i>Katsu’s The Hunger</i>,
though without that story’s supernatural and historical elements. And John
Darnielle’s invocation of the disruption of ordinary means of communication and
the eruption of terrifying possibilities into ordinary (if unsatisfying) lives
in his <i>Universal Harvester</i> has parallels in Siddiqi’s contrast between
the ordinary conflicts and the awful potentialities of human nature.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">What <i>distinguishes The Centre</i>
from these books is partly tone: there is a lightness in Siddiqi’s evocation of
the social lives of thirty-something Londoners of varying backgrounds that both
contrasts and hightlights the anger and misunderstanding, both cultural and
personal, among her characters. Much of the narrative’s tension is based not on
exceptional circumstances but on ordinary life, not on the horror underneath but
on the banality on the surface of the characters’ lives. In Anisa’s heated
arguments with Adam, Naima, and Shiba, what is revealed is the
incommensurability of individual experience: our inner lives, and basic points
of view, and. Untranslatable across the gap between us. Anisa and the founders
of The Centre are, each in their own way and each with their own moral dilemmas
and lapses, trying to overcome that barrier. The question is whether total
understanding across the barrier between us, a kind of telepathic
communication, would result in horror and conflict or peace and understanding. Would
sharing another person’s consciousness lead to empathy or nightmares. Rather
than the style of horror that mines anxiety and shock as emotional forces, </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style> <br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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</script></div>Glenn Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04869155065647936216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15258276.post-3587758765059667652021-09-29T07:26:00.004-07:002021-09-29T07:29:28.430-07:00William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin: The last Laidlaw (and the first)<p> William McIlvanney's three novels featuring detective Jack Laidlaw.Laidlaw (1977), The Papers of Tony Veitch (1981), an Strange Loyalties (1991) are not only the foundation of Tartan Noir but distinctive and atmospheric additions to the crime novel as a genre. McIlvanney died in 2015, left an unfinished Laidlaw novel, a prequel to the earlier trilogy, and Ian Rankin (the other most prominent Scottish crime writer) has now finished the book, released as The Dark Remains by Europa Editioons in their World Noir series.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI5Dc71X8zc_l-_LGqP8CUTvE7E54bdfvhtCBJeRkXDla_SE2XIKGPEsa4_T2Hcn0glk9xr-IxMmSzlBk7oNzJ9u1fXntSLwIxqoqy0kjdPNM7W9mJMc3__nWTW-ym9sdIhG3P/s500/mcil.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="319" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI5Dc71X8zc_l-_LGqP8CUTvE7E54bdfvhtCBJeRkXDla_SE2XIKGPEsa4_T2Hcn0glk9xr-IxMmSzlBk7oNzJ9u1fXntSLwIxqoqy0kjdPNM7W9mJMc3__nWTW-ym9sdIhG3P/s320/mcil.jpg" width="204" /></a></div>This is not so much a "young Laidlaw" sort of thing: instead, Laidlaw has arrived in a new post but is aleady fully formed as a contrary cop with methods that constantly clash with his superiors. The gangsters who populate the original trilogy are also here, in an earlier stage of the conflict among them as they establish their territories in Glasgow. The narrativev voice is also consistent with the other books: Rankin is definitely channeling McIlvanney''s voice, I couldn't tell where the one left off and the other started. The plotting is also very McIlvanney, twisting through the gangland disputes and police assumptions until a final revelation that the outsider Laidlaw is the only one able to reveal.<p></p><p>Because Laidlaw would rather be on the street than in the station, we get a vivid view of a Glasgow that once was, from the dark interior to the lush suburbs. Laidlaw takes buses rather than police cars, a lot of the time, and the panoramic view of the city is enthralling. The book </p><p> The Dark Remains is a marvel of quirky, witty prose (much like Laidlaw himself). Laidlaw leaves books by foreign philosophers on his desk in the station, but he keeps them handy not because he frequently refers to them: rather they are props to reinforce his persona as the odd man out, so that the other cops will leave him alone with his thoughts. His one friend (or almost friend) makes some attempt to understand him but Laidlaw keeps even him at a distance. For that matter, he also keeps his wife at a distance: when on a case, he prefers to stay in a low-rent hotel in the city rather than return to his home on the periphery, partly to stay close to the case and the streets, partly not to stay close to his wife. He loves his kids, but his dedication to eh job has severly strained his marriage (a prominent factor in the trilogy as well). </p><p>The novel is funny, philosophical, gritty, dark, and very deep in its portrayal of human interactions and failings. There is considerable violence (mostly just off[-stage) and even more threats and implications of violence. The gangsters are fully human, but there is not a "heart of gold" among them: This is noir territory, nothing cozy about Laidlaw's Glasgow. If you haven't read McIlvanney, you could start with this wonderful "prequel" in collaboration with Rankin or with the triogy: one way or the other, I encourage you to experience McIlvanney's deep and involving exploration of Glasgow and of the literary possibilities of noir.<br /></p><p><br /></p><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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</script></div>Glenn Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04869155065647936216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15258276.post-33101278297828900972021-08-26T07:11:00.000-07:002021-08-26T07:11:05.444-07:00More (late) summer reading: Laura Lippman etc.<p> Laura Lippman has recently been releaseing some of her most ambitious and succesful novels: I'm thinking in particular of the new-noir Sunburn and the new Dream Girl. Dream Girl is a twisty combination of horror (a la Stephen King's Misery, explicitly evoked in the book), a literary thriller, an academic comedy, and a meditation on resentment, revenge, andn authorship. Highly recommended and both compelling and fun.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Good Turn, by Dervla McTiernan, was the kind of hidden gem that sometimes turns up on the digital galley websites, offering previews to bloggers and critics. This is the third novel in a series that I hadn't heard of, but it seemed interesting enough to have a look. In fact, this is an excellent police procedural with numerous distinctive features preventing it from settling into the groove of the average cop story. The characters are well-drawn, the plot complex and forward-moving, and the story involving. The setting, the west of Ireland and a bit in Dublin, is drawn vividly, and offers insight unavailable to a tourist. I went out and bought the first two novels in the series--how much more recommendation do you need?</p><p> </p><p>Another Irish novel, by another author I was not previously aware of: 56 Days, by Catherine Ryan Howard. There are too many twists in this one for me to reveal anything about the story (almost any preview would be a spoiler) except that it's very contemporary--set in the first Irish Covid lockdown, providing a claustrophobic background to the stor. I can only say that it starts out as a rom-com, shifts into horror and police procedural, and very effectively shifts back and forth in time to unpeel the story layer by layer, up to the final revelation. All along, you suspect that there's more going on than you can see, but Howard sustains both suspense and surprise all the way through. Ultimately it's a psychological thriller, an early crime-fiction take on the pandemic, and an entertaining read all the way to the end.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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</script></div>Glenn Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04869155065647936216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15258276.post-63762664301438251622021-06-28T15:45:00.000-07:002021-06-28T15:45:25.014-07:00Giarico Carofiglio review<p> https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/nourishment-from-good-stories-on-gianrico-carofiglios-the-measure-of-time/</p><p>#lareviewofbooks <br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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Jo Nesbø's The Kingdom has a lot of music in it, being referred to or played in the background of the main story, but it's more of a matter of texture fot ehis book, rather than a. main theme. The Kingdom is not one of the Harry Hole books, it's a stand-alone about a pair of brothers who have endured a lot of abuse and tragedy. One has gone to America to escape amd make his fortune, the other stays on the famil's "kingdom," a farmstead (not a working farm) on the outskirts of a small Norwegian town. The prodical son's return, with a scheme for the development of the town and an American wife, kicks off a series of memories about the past (mostly unpleasant, sometimes grisly) and a series of events in the present (arson, murder, assault), with the two threads coming together in unpredictable ways. There are twists that you may expect, and yet sometimes when you think you have something figured out, Nesbø turns them around into something else. It's an intriguing story about love, sex, ambition, regret, and above all else family.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjezV2_RLLT5goD8TAYl8RmMRG2tgtP6YtJUlEwiLd6f0OwlbmUt7aF2fcfC8U49eQbGbcc8VyP3PhdxlCN_79iE5cq4cHq6N1D50XAoPZA4l_BdC5vzGl3xJtoPmr1x677A2qO/s500/51Tm3sGRhlL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="326" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjezV2_RLLT5goD8TAYl8RmMRG2tgtP6YtJUlEwiLd6f0OwlbmUt7aF2fcfC8U49eQbGbcc8VyP3PhdxlCN_79iE5cq4cHq6N1D50XAoPZA4l_BdC5vzGl3xJtoPmr1x677A2qO/s320/51Tm3sGRhlL.jpg" /></a></div>Staalesen's running character in his long-running detective series is Varg Veum, an untypical detective (his backgtound is in social work) often involved in cases featuring children. In Fallen Angels, though, we go back to Veum's own past, in memories and connections set in motion by the funeral of a school friend. We learn a lot about Veum, but even more about the local music scene of the '60s, in the detective's youth, when soe of his friends were in a regionally succeful band. The story leads us to the bandmembers in the present day and into an elaborate revenge. plot, along wiht a glimpse of the music scene of present-day Bergen. The pacing of Fallen Angels is different from the typical Veum story (and different from the average crime novel), delving into the character's youth before showing (or inferring) the murders that will show up about halfway into the book. From there, the pace picks up and we are back in crime fiction territory, in a moving story that involves the dark side of families, even evidently happy ones.<p></p><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje0_1CtYdFtnahGZ-_k731HlH9UzAATp9ZOcG3hRgb-AiHq-edHw5dOXkr9Tm6Nm0LVhjtEsKzcVLYt5WQTEGajgzxZMvezFwXTdHq9952YZlMYE8l0aM__q78cs-UkKn3Sg7G/s960/71cAPbptq9L._AC_UL960_QL65_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="617" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje0_1CtYdFtnahGZ-_k731HlH9UzAATp9ZOcG3hRgb-AiHq-edHw5dOXkr9Tm6Nm0LVhjtEsKzcVLYt5WQTEGajgzxZMvezFwXTdHq9952YZlMYE8l0aM__q78cs-UkKn3Sg7G/s320/71cAPbptq9L._AC_UL960_QL65_.jpg" /></a></div>Bobby March will Live Forever is the third Harry McCoy book by Alan Parks, and here, too, a musician's past, mostly regional, success is the backstory that punctuates the contemporary tale (of gangters, murder, rape, and general mayhem that readers of Parks's previous novels will surely expect to see. Parks's portrayal of the Glasgow of the recent past is gritty and evocative, and his cops and gangsters are credible and complex. The interspersed music plot seems to be mostly an unrelated portrait of the trials and pitfalls of success and near-success in rock and roll's classic period (Bobby March, the guitarist who gives the book its title, once played with the Rolling Stones in a recording session, along with his participation in an almost-succesful band and his release of less-than-succesful solo recordings). The music plot does circle around to find its link to the main plot of the story, in more of a metaphorical than a literal way, in an unexpected solution to the event that kicks off the whole novel: McCoy's discovery of the body (and possible murder) of March in a Glasgow hotel. The story is propulsive, even in its digressions (and the digression about the world of rock is compelling), and develops in unexpected shifts (sometimes a victim is not so clearly a victim, for instance) and changes of direction that will keep a reader on their toes.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p></p><br /><p><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB8veYkkkU7TyXq4cXfPIXyzgQ0Uyojd8EsWb0iQhb41BqrFBQrGkqG57EUB9SYCsXj0M6C8Wb2u7PiJPpKFz5Q1tEL_VxNM9izLSdUDvGfRDbFc2RiCMnlE69awLW_5vb0Wvb/s1600/Less+Dead.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="323" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB8veYkkkU7TyXq4cXfPIXyzgQ0Uyojd8EsWb0iQhb41BqrFBQrGkqG57EUB9SYCsXj0M6C8Wb2u7PiJPpKFz5Q1tEL_VxNM9izLSdUDvGfRDbFc2RiCMnlE69awLW_5vb0Wvb/s320/Less+Dead.jpg" width="206" /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizlFjE3xsGVPMUkN_FWpubSjVGPyolceUQCoL-9T-yMy_nPQhRkGaAxwQqiN5neL_6Disd1rSz_Ru3Ue6sfAqYJhPlR8IMd0z6-gHERAVC2Kzmwm34dN2aZiSMcRLOqRVRhwS-/s1600/ivar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1584" data-original-width="1032" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizlFjE3xsGVPMUkN_FWpubSjVGPyolceUQCoL-9T-yMy_nPQhRkGaAxwQqiN5neL_6Disd1rSz_Ru3Ue6sfAqYJhPlR8IMd0z6-gHERAVC2Kzmwm34dN2aZiSMcRLOqRVRhwS-/s320/ivar.jpg" width="208" /></a>A couple of well written, complex, and entertaining novels, one new and one from last year. Denise Mina's The Less Dead, from Mulholland Books (available this coming August in the U.S.) delves into Glasgow streets across two generations. Dr. Margo Dunlop's adoptive mother has just died, and she discovers a link to her birth mother. The novel actually begins with a fraught visit to the social service agency that is mediating between the birth mother's family and Dr. Dunlop, but shifts quickly into a dangerous journey into the underworld of pimps, prostitutes, dirty cops, and a (possible) serial killer. The book's title comes from a Scottish term equivalent to the famous "NHI" term used by the LAPD to indicate that no humans were involved in murders of prostitutes. Dr. Dunlop gets a very deep lesson in the lack of attention given to the murders of prostitutes in Glasgow. The material sounds very heavy, but Mina manages to make the text surprisingly funny at times, and at all times the story is tense and compelling.<br />
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Katja Ivar's Evil Things also deals with the death of a mother and the fate of an orphan, but in the far northern Lapland of Finland, in the early 1950s, close to a recently contested border with the Soviet Union. Hella Mauzer is the first woman to have achieved the status of detective in the Helsinki police but is now disgraced (because of an event that only becomes completely clear at the novel's end) and sent to the mostly rural far north. After the report of an elderly man even further north an closer to the Russian border, Hella becomes determined to investigate, despite her new boss's conviction that there's no case, the old man has just wandered into the forest and has probably encountered a bear. Hella's own story comes out in small bursts of her recollections, and the truth of the case comes out slowly at first, and then in rapidly increasing momentum. The story deals with murder, envy, bureaucratic refusal to consider the lives of people living in distant villages, and international conspiracy. There is also a striking echo of a current pharmacological and governmental scandal in the U.S. (watch for it, it will show up late in the book). There is, even in this tense and emotional book, some lightness and comedy, and a resolution that shifts the story from a dark pessimism into a cautious optimism about humanity and the future.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOfMUFtyoCaEgLuL30m3NHCuo-fsAUzPi981kAEPwnT0tJUSgCStq44TITlhfl1vaKIN0Z_pQU_aXbb7yxxojzrZSdVwEZxDzql5VJm97vZIWpUf0VewDW7PrAS_7Sh1Q07INF/s1600/leon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="227" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOfMUFtyoCaEgLuL30m3NHCuo-fsAUzPi981kAEPwnT0tJUSgCStq44TITlhfl1vaKIN0Z_pQU_aXbb7yxxojzrZSdVwEZxDzql5VJm97vZIWpUf0VewDW7PrAS_7Sh1Q07INF/s320/leon.jpg" width="209" /></a>Donna Leon, famous outside Italy, refuses to allow her excellent series featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti to be published in Italian translation. Her intended result is that to her Venetian neighbors, she's simply a fellow resident of this magnificent, troubled city, not a famous writer. Her newest book in the series, Trace Elements, was written before the pandemic, but centers on a death in hospice, a death to which the police are called because the dying woman has a confession of sorts. Her death inspires Brunetti and his fellow "poliziotti" to follow a slim thread regarding the death by accident (or perhaps suicide) of the dead woman's husband, whose job is the inspection of water quality in a privatized segment of the water supply system of Venice. The novel follows the usual process of the series, including the key involvement of the Questura's genius of information gathering (legal or illegally obtained), Signorina Elettra, as well as Brunetti's associates and his family. The sad story is nevertheless involving, right up to the typically complex resolution.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSocs5o9TunwvJb81Avr5xycV30kF7jsy8xLmv-fiF7Alltl3hrzCdJRs_wIGJJt_rWCYnPrTSQz55X8GXftUROFsisp6CisTMtU3NvwJojCGSVERGygVIbagF3iRpRsdhHJMk/s1600/meyer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSocs5o9TunwvJb81Avr5xycV30kF7jsy8xLmv-fiF7Alltl3hrzCdJRs_wIGJJt_rWCYnPrTSQz55X8GXftUROFsisp6CisTMtU3NvwJojCGSVERGygVIbagF3iRpRsdhHJMk/s320/meyer.jpg" width="213" /></a>Another very successful series, by Deon Meyer, featuring Benny Griesel of the South African Police Service's major crimes division, the Hawks, in Cape Town, has a new and propulsively readable addition in The Last Hunt. One of Meyer's specialties is action that pulls the reader along with rapidly developing events. In The Last Hunt, we get a couple of those, with intertwining plots that at all points reflect the current political and social problems of South Africa, in a plot with echoes of The Day of the Jackal. Along the way, Benny's relationship with a once-famous singer reaches a key hurdle that the detective is nervous about crossing (this relationship has been developing steadily across the past several books in the series). Meyer gives us a lot of insight about the daily struggles of the police in the troubled nation, as well as the larger milieu. Meyer has a lot of fans around the world, and deserves a look by any reader who is looking for an excellent police procedural combined with a thriller with a vital glimpse of the post-apartheid reality of South Africa.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik4-dETFFUJJmBvej_oy0werBYccTUcZUUze2J_4IeMOuUqn3vLxPgGnpQkkDAGsR6_0iZ_XvuqTc4EJ_xnskIvJXK3QqATf5BpvETRT1rE_rD_QCiwpeltv_nX4D5g7cB4jLp/s1600/miss+laila.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="327" data-original-width="213" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik4-dETFFUJJmBvej_oy0werBYccTUcZUUze2J_4IeMOuUqn3vLxPgGnpQkkDAGsR6_0iZ_XvuqTc4EJ_xnskIvJXK3QqATf5BpvETRT1rE_rD_QCiwpeltv_nX4D5g7cB4jLp/s320/miss+laila.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>
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Manu Joseph's Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous seems at first to be a satire, and it ends up with a more sobering indictment of contemporary India. A building collapses, trapping a man who has knowledge of a developing terrorist attack, and the only person who can reach the area where he is trapped is a woman who is a journalist specializing in ambush interviews of well-known political figures. This is the India of Hindu nationalism, thoughh the leader of the movement is the fictional, rather than the actual, prime misister of India. The central figures of the terror side of the plot is the titular Laila, who makes the mistake of taking a ride with a friend, and as the plot progresses, with a sudden shift at the end, she becomes the focus of a terrible indictment of India today, framed as if in a comic novel. Miss Laila is a quick read, though the story is complex--and it gives a picture of India more stark and contemporary than many novels from the sub-continent that have appeared here in recent years.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiotYMQG-5NKcrcEDmoFGENU9g7dDfmf0pInqo0wBYi31aFqFCJDHEPWMPIT6McbeL-LEz5bq5WtwrJi8YIYB-MbO3hmI0ygS_LTl7VlQ2eA7dDWHLBA7lKOX7xl4DBN7-fEPAy/s1600/manchette.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="281" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiotYMQG-5NKcrcEDmoFGENU9g7dDfmf0pInqo0wBYi31aFqFCJDHEPWMPIT6McbeL-LEz5bq5WtwrJi8YIYB-MbO3hmI0ygS_LTl7VlQ2eA7dDWHLBA7lKOX7xl4DBN7-fEPAy/s320/manchette.jpg" width="199" /></a></div>
Jean-Patrice Manchette reinvigorated French noir fiction in the 70s and 80s, and a string of his novels have been appearing in English over the past. decade or so. The most recent, No Room at the Morgue, is a recasting of classic private detective fiction. The plot is appropriately complicated (Manchette evidently had Dashiell Hammett in mind<b>)</b>, and though there's a lot of blood spilled, the tone is light and quick. Manchette's detective, Eugene Tarpon, is a former cop who is about to abandon his brief, unsuccesful career when a young woman appears at his apartment appealing for help int he matter of the death of her roommate. Very soon, Tarpon is drugged, beaten intimidated, and ensnared in network of shady filmmakers, gangsters, journalists, and corpses. Manchette's contributions to the French graphic novel, and the connection with that art form are obvious in this novel. As transated by Alyson Waters, the prose is quick, colloquial, and full of quicky dialogue. Manchette's novels typically have a social depth at the heart of the noir story, but his politics are well hidden behind the spectacular plot and the down-and-out stoicism of his hero. For fans of Manchette, No Room at the Morgue is a bit more like Fatale than his other books translataed so far. For fans of classic noir, the book will be a treat, even if they don't know the author's other books.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj3U24oCx2F3X2mV_3bIO5DUepc-e7ysk7UuZZ5JctoQhH7P-y1UKaoTTT8o-EKlZd2XbYLejoMjvUIfvQKjIp5lEMVOh_9_I78yE5krgdymiCbdk9_Cb3XwNsSew3oedL65Lr/s1600/51ymgiyF0dL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="326" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj3U24oCx2F3X2mV_3bIO5DUepc-e7ysk7UuZZ5JctoQhH7P-y1UKaoTTT8o-EKlZd2XbYLejoMjvUIfvQKjIp5lEMVOh_9_I78yE5krgdymiCbdk9_Cb3XwNsSew3oedL65Lr/s320/51ymgiyF0dL.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>
The Fragility of Bodies is a crime novel from Argentina, and Sergio Olguin's story is a departure from the usual crime fare. Veronica Rosenthal is a magazine writer who decides to look into the suicide of a commuter-train operator in downtown Buenos Aires. What she. uncovers, over the 377 pages of this Bitter Lemon edition translated by Miranda France, is a bizarre betting game that preys on young would-be soccer players in the slums around the city, particularly those along the train lines. Veronica is a woman in control of her life, single and intending to keep that way, and in her professional life she is determined and implacable.<br />
<br />
<span class="author notFaded" data-width="">She finds a train operator who is willing to talk to her and embarks on a journey of personal and professional import. Olguin's text is lively, shifting among the various character and the sites in the city relevant to the tale, so we get a vivid story as well as a 3D view of Buenos Aires today. At some points in the story, I became as frustrated as Veronica with the lack of progress in her research, but stick around for the satisfying, if also quite dark in the way of most noir visions of conteporary life. Olguin's story is fascinating, and his novel is unlike anything else you will find in crime fiction.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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This book starts with two cases: a teacher suspects that one of her students is being molested by her father and a brother and sister are found murdered in his apartment, with no suspects of motive that the cops can discover. Most of the book follows the frustrating investigations by the team, with various cops coming into the primary focus, rather than a single detective. The result is a "collective novel, a bit like Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series, or the Martin Beck novels of Sjöwall and Wahlöö. Were it not for the pervading misery, I would almost call the Pizzofalcone novels "cozies," since there are certain social norms reinforced by the stories (also the case, with, for example, another very dark, noir author, George Pelecanos.<br />
<br />
All in all, De Giovanni is a very interesting writer, and I'm grateful to Europa Editions for making. his work available. One note--the "stand-alone" novel by the same author, The Crocodile, is in part a "prequel" to the bastards series, setting up one character who will become part of the team in the series--you might want to read the Crocodile before <br />
starting on the series.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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The machinations of Sebastiano and Chiara, the gangster at the center of what's happening (as long as his mentor, Saurai, is still in jail) and the leftist politician on the rise in local politics are a fascinating dance of violence, fading ideologies, sexual attraction, and old and new alliances. There is indeed violence, and the novel begins with a particularly vivid assault on an innocent employee of the intended recipient of the message behind the attack). Once beyond this stomach-churning passage, most of the novel keeps the violence at arms length, or at least in a less vivid register.<br />
<br />
The Night of Rome corresponds, roughly, to the time frame of the 2nd season of the Suburra TV series (available on Netflix with subtitles), but the story is completely different, an alternate reality with some characters overlapping both. The Suburra film is also an overlapping reality, but ends in a way that would prevent a film of The Night of Rome being possible without, again, changing almost everything. This Italian practice, transforming a novel into a filmic equivalent and then transforming it again in a multi-episode TV format, is both interesting, providing insight into the process of reimagining a story several times, and frustrating (keeping up with the characters from one story to another, one sequel to another, can be confusing). But The Night of Rome on its own is a powerful vision of a recent, almost contemporary Rome in which tensions of politics, organized crime, and organized religion is powerful and fascinating.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRCZrZSwrC_FWVd-_ziSkmDCQdzc8Z-jLduwg56VOBHrfnBnfaZc5Ll9sYusNn15J1I9uVqikFPKO9sX7BnqHsy3cWUZu7PFQJ7kGD_zohQqUlTPlHWVheEGHWNfnuizm6jk29/s1600/51plHfnrbhL._SY346_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="230" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRCZrZSwrC_FWVd-_ziSkmDCQdzc8Z-jLduwg56VOBHrfnBnfaZc5Ll9sYusNn15J1I9uVqikFPKO9sX7BnqHsy3cWUZu7PFQJ7kGD_zohQqUlTPlHWVheEGHWNfnuizm6jk29/s320/51plHfnrbhL._SY346_.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
<br />
I recently read Pierre Garnier's C'Est la vie and Tioachino Criaco's Black Souls, both of which are unusual takes on noir tropes. Black Souls is less like a novel than an epic, delineating the history of a crime family in central Italy in the voice of their leader, as he rises from shepherd to crime boss and then crashes in an epic sacrifice that fades out in a cloud of mythic proportions. It's a compelling read, but without a central thread of plot, other than a string of incidents along the thread of the hero's life.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIolnkoadpc5hJNTG0iile9VGVcXzCMVC7_UsFJIi8Vr-eDvwE6EumQxlCdrRwf_gORcVK4nQNOUnWxgKf720DFCZKQAh5qvnC_M33dOTIXNdpveXJgGgN-qAqvZMVxeQskyId/s1600/41Bcr1fiA4L.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="325" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIolnkoadpc5hJNTG0iile9VGVcXzCMVC7_UsFJIi8Vr-eDvwE6EumQxlCdrRwf_gORcVK4nQNOUnWxgKf720DFCZKQAh5qvnC_M33dOTIXNdpveXJgGgN-qAqvZMVxeQskyId/s320/41Bcr1fiA4L.jpg" width="208" /></a>C'Est la Vie on the other hand begins as a traditional novel, in the voice of a writer who is dissatisfied with his life despite having finally had success with his new novel. The intricate plot revolves around his son, one of his former wives, his current (much younger) wife, leading toward (like Black Souls) a final conflagration that achieves a surrealist, dreamlike version of noir in which the hero retreatsf rom life (almost) into a trapped-in mental state he maintains seemingly by force of his will.<br />
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Both these books are fascinating, and both defy the expectations of readers: adventurous crime fiction readers should take a break from conventional fiction and have a look.<br />
<br />
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@lreviewofbooks<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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Antonio Manzini: Spring Cleaning (Italy)<br />
Peter Church: Crackerjack (South Africa)<br />
Donna Leon: Unto us a Son is Given (Italy)<br />
Ilaaria Tuti: Flowers over the Inferno (Italy)<br />
Jussi Adler-Olsson (Denmark)<br />
Deon Meyer: The Woman in the Blue Cloak (South Africa)<br />
Gioachino Criaco: Black Souls (Italy)<br />
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I'm not promisingn to review them in that order, and not promising how soon...<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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I recently read, or rather heard, two audiobooks by Laura Lippman: her current standalone novel Sunburn and a previous book in her Baltimore private detective series (Hush Hush). The detective novel worked OK as an audiobook, and having read several earlier books in the series, the story offers a new investigation as well as updates on familiar characters and settings. But Sunburn particularly shined in the audio version (though I can imagine it is also satisfying as words on paper). Lippman has turned noir inside-out in her reimagining of the genre as practiced by James M. Cain and other pioneers of small-town, truckstop noir. Lippman begins with a stock scenario, two strangers in a bar, who've stopped as they passed through this small town in lower Delaware, a town not close enough to the beach to be prosperous. Their interaction is relayed in both their points of view, in alternation (as is much of the book), and their voices tell the story as much in what they leave out as what they tell: the key events in the story, murder, arson, fraud, conspiracies of several sorts, occur in the in-between spaces, referred to obliquely rather than portrayed directly. The effect is a tightening web woven by the characters out of their own personal lives and struggles. Sunburn is a departure for Lippman, both from her detective series and from her previous standalones, which are psychological thrillers. Sunburn, on the other hand, is a satisfying plunge into purest noir, told through the spiralling voices pulling the characters through twists and revelations toward the sort of final crash that not everyone can survive.<br />
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</script></div>Glenn Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04869155065647936216noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15258276.post-23078730546950919522018-11-25T16:59:00.004-08:002018-11-25T16:59:50.536-08:00Three short takes from Norway, Italy, and Alaska<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0zN351WbODMNIDvLVAYjU-CFWkdW44C9iYXnzM9t12acnRIVkrU-scuakWlqLIhKtEkaLg6Xzg7iEkS6uVKdrG32R2gwcuUdQEbPq4M_np2Jb1eK8tLQjNinPjgtAjuW7p96T/s1600/holt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="331" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0zN351WbODMNIDvLVAYjU-CFWkdW44C9iYXnzM9t12acnRIVkrU-scuakWlqLIhKtEkaLg6Xzg7iEkS6uVKdrG32R2gwcuUdQEbPq4M_np2Jb1eK8tLQjNinPjgtAjuW7p96T/s320/holt.jpg" width="211" /></a>Catching up on a few recent books of note. First, Anne Holt's In Dust and Ashes, the 10th and purportedly last in the series featuring brilliant detective Hanne Wilhelmsen--and to my mind the best of the series. Hanne has usually had a colorful sidekick, and for this novel it's a young, bright detective trying to claw his way up out of the autistic spectrum--among her sidekicks, I think he's the most interesting. The case at hand involves a cold case (and since Hanne is retired, she now only deals with cold cases), a recently released convicted killer, the suicide of a right-wing blogger, and the kidnapping of a young girl. The story includes a twist on the lcked-room mystery as well as the trope of the brilliant investigator who rarelly leaves her home, but the novel is unique in the way it draws all the threads and the tropes together.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMi3fWGLZbTopmQu_2Ppm44qVeD2hOr3WVKPMOAGuOwTBOHkA6HZwPmv8AtiaSw_GIjmwNV22_cJ2IRVdU0AcMo4fDG8LFC2a7guin6KdvCsPopF-mYT2fudMAYgfu4FzKqqM0/s1600/varesi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="218" data-original-width="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMi3fWGLZbTopmQu_2Ppm44qVeD2hOr3WVKPMOAGuOwTBOHkA6HZwPmv8AtiaSw_GIjmwNV22_cJ2IRVdU0AcMo4fDG8LFC2a7guin6KdvCsPopF-mYT2fudMAYgfu4FzKqqM0/s1600/varesi.jpg" /></a>Valerio Varesi's series featuring Commissario Soneri is set in Parma, a foggy city on the Po river in the north of Italy. An older woman comes to the Questura seeking Soneri, but he doesn't see her--and a complex set of events is set in motion that takes the Commissario back to his yuoth in unexpected and unpleasant ways. He discovers the landlady of the boarding house where his deceased wife had lived before they were married, and for the rest of the novel, his wife's life before he met her, the boarding house, and the later denizens of the building haunt Soneri, as he wanders back and forth through the past and present of a city much changed. Although the story can seem a bit static at times, the musings of the detective and the story that emerges slowly are fascinating.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Wz18vUz8q-G-s_cLH1AIpV8PamCCm4UIfBVOjsnNRcnN4gh4wpXnz5FRbTzvoTQZLEerTg8OALr29BiQyxSWS83yJwiP6qLQS6EdA87IcSldn_WidC3qYf4CqnD3ctQ6waZm/s1600/51MByglLhcL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Wz18vUz8q-G-s_cLH1AIpV8PamCCm4UIfBVOjsnNRcnN4gh4wpXnz5FRbTzvoTQZLEerTg8OALr29BiQyxSWS83yJwiP6qLQS6EdA87IcSldn_WidC3qYf4CqnD3ctQ6waZm/s320/51MByglLhcL.jpg" width="213" /></a>Stan Jones has been publishing a series for some years based in the small town of Chukchi in rural Alaska, featuring policeman Nathan Active, who though a native Alaskan was raised int he white community in the city, and is an outsider in both communities. The latest installment, written with Patricia Watts, is The Big Empty, alterntes between the vast interior of Alaska, a setting that Jones has always been effective in portraying, and the gritty small town at its edge. After a plane crash taht had been declared caused by pilot error, Active is persuaded to investigate what turs out to be murder and the novel follows his pursuit of the truth from a unique method of killing through a web of revenge, guilt, and troubled families (including his own. As with all the Nathan Active books, this is a great read and a fascinating look at an environment (both town and wilderness) that few of us have the chance to experience.<br />
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https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/meaning-to-chaos/<br />
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