Thanks to Norm alias Uriah Robinson of Crime Scraps, I have just finished Roseanna, the first of the Martin Beck series of books by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, written in 1965. The book is readable and compelling. A murdered girl's body is dredged up from a canal at the start of the book. Over the ensuing year or more, policeman Martin Beck and his colleagues tenaciously investigate until the girl's identity, and then that of her killer, are found. The book is spare and focused, and utterly compelling in an unglamorous, uncompromising way.
I've read a great deal of crime fiction in my time, and although the "mystery" element is almost absent in this book, I found it completely absorbing. Beck is unromantic but realistic, both in his personal/family life and in his work. It is also educational to be reminded what it was like for us before straightforward international phone calls, faxing, emailing and the internet.
Highly recommended --- and as Norm predicted, I'll now have to read the next nine books in the series (one of which, The Locked Room, is reviewed at Crime Scraps). Norm has also written a succinct analysis of all ten books here.
Henning Mankell, Karin Fossum and Lisa Marklund are all superb present-day Swedish crime-fiction authors who write in the tradition established by Sjowall and Wahloo -- plot-driven books that convey plenty of sociopolitical comment along the way. For me, the combination of police procedural with "placeism" -- the details of everyday life that create an authentic and true voice -- is what makes reading all these authors such a rewarding experience.
The edition of Roseanna I read is published by Harper Perennial. This edition has an excellent introduction by Henning Mankell (author of the Wallender series) about his love of the Sjowall/Wahloo books; and at the end are interviews with the authors and another analysis of the books, as well as a list of all the books in the series, all for £6.99. I was very impressed and wish that one found these additional items in books more often, to provide context for interested readers.
Ruth Rendell's Chief Inspector Wexford series is now about 20 books long. I first started reading these books as a teenager and enjoy them as much now as I did then. Over the series, we have followed the development of Wexford and Burden's own family lives: their marriages, their children and (in the case of Wexford), grandchildren. Sometimes these have involved drama, but most often, and most successfully, they simply involve the daily interactions between people, with all their small frustrations and pleasures. Wexford and Burden themselves, longstanding partners professionally, have become almost like an old married couple themselves, understanding each other well enough to know when to exercise tolerance or patience.
As well as the family developments, Rendell covers the change in police procedures over the years (the series begain in 1964): technological, political, social. New, young staff are hired who have the attitudes of their own generation, bringing challenges for Wexford and the old hands.
Finally, Rendell is interested in addressing changes in society's values. In this well-established series, and particularly through Wexford, who is both old (experienced) and open-minded (this is what makes him a good, intuitive policeman), attitudes to race, gender, religion, the developing world, consumerism, religion, morals and so on are bought into focus. Rendell has a strong liberal social conscience: Wexford, being both aware of his increasing age and the possibility of becoming more "out of touch", as well as having a sensitive and emotional personality, seems to represent the authorial persona.
I hope I haven't made this book sound heavy-going. It isn't. All this context is interwound into a readable, digestible plot. Rendell likes to explore one particular situation in each of these novels; in this case, "End in Tears" focuses on young children, parenthood, surrogacy, and the powerful feelings thus engendered -- using new and established characters to explore different angles. (This book, published in 2005, is certainly topical, bearing in mind the current media-induced hysteria over Madonna's adoption of a Somalian baby earlier this year, 2006.)
Of course, the book is a detective novel, and works well as such. The plotting is tight and many balls are kept in the air without one falling down that I noticed, even though the presence of twins is usually a bad sign in crime fiction. But in the end, the denouement is almost irrelevant (just as well, as I thought it stretched believability a bit too much). But as a whole, the book simply works -- the author is comfortable with the world she has created, the characters live outside the page, reading is effortless.
I will send a free, unread copy of this book to the first person who asks for it in the comments -- owing to advancing senility I inadvertently bought two copies. If you haven't read a Wexford novel before, I'd recommend starting the series from the beginning (they are all in print). If you have read a Wexford before and like them, you will enjoy this one too.
Here is a bibliography for Ruth Rendell, which includes the Wexford series in reading order.
"There's a song...."
" 'Losing my religion'. "
She screwed up her eyes, then said yes. "You know what that means: losing my religion?"
"I know what it means literally. Is there another meaning?"
"It's an idiomatic expression. It means something like: I can't take it any more".
---------------
That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no, I've said too much
And I haven't said enough.
-------------
Gianrico Carofiglio's second novel, A Walk in the Dark, is even better than his excellent debut, Involuntary Witness. Although translated with more assurance than Witness (this time by Howard Curtis), the author has matured, adding depth to the characters who appeared in the previous novel and introducing new ones who are instantly real. The confident dovetailing of back-story and character development as the plot unfolds is unfaltering.
Against the background of a legal case -- this time Guido Guerrieri is prosecuting a well-connected man for abusing his girlfriend -- the book is a perfect jewel. The themes are addiction -- to alcohol, cigarettes, fear or to a behaviour pattern -- and coping with the premature loss of a relationship -- by illness, death or cruelty. The context is corruption. I have some personal knowledge of the baroque and sinister lunacies of the Italian legal system, obviously not by any means as extensive as Carofiglio's (he used to be a judge), but enough to know that his accounts of the machinations are realistic.
The result is a powerful, insightful and compelling account of a tragedy -- or two or three. If you only read one book for the rest of this year, make it this one
Denise Hamilton is the female author who most nearly made it onto David Montgomery's "top ten" detective novels list. I have enjoyed her previous books since reading her first, The Jasmine Trade, upon its initial UK publication as part of an Orion "new authors" promotion. Eve Diamond, an investigative journalist with the LA Times, struggles to make and keep a career in a city hypersensitive to ethnic and ethical tensions, and is as determined as hell to get to the bottom of things. The plot and outcome of The Jasmine Trade was original and moving-- all in all a great debut.
Although I have certainly enjoyed the subsequent Eve Diamond novels, which have built further on these themes, none of them has surpassed the first, and I am wondering if they are beginning to tail off a bit into formula. Savage Garden is once again set against the background of Eve's relationship with Latino boyfriend Silvio,a subplot that has got stuck, and hence irritating. Silvio is a cipher as in previous books: I think this is to keep the reader on edge wondering if he's going to turn out to be involved in the crime, but in fact it just makes him a non-character.
In Savage Garden, Eve is now more established at the paper; she is lumbered with an intern, hired on an "equal opportunities" programme. Eve's hypocritical superiors are pleased to have found an apparently ideal candidate but want Eve to keep a close eye on her to protect them from the possibility of a "Jayson Blair"-style plagiarism scandal. As ever, the author handles the politics of the newspaper, and more generally of Eve's struggle to stay on, let alone climb, the greasy pole, excellently.
However, the plot isn't that great, depending too much on people not telling Eve things until the second or third time she asks them. Silvio's silence/ambivalence is particularly unbelievable. The denouement relies on the old WIP (woman in peril) device about three times over, and when it is all sorted, stretches it a bit.
But I don't mean to sound grudging. Savage Garden is a perfectly competent, above-average, crime-fiction novel. I would not recommend reading it if you haven't read the earlier books in the series -- read The Jasmine Trade first. But if you have read and liked the earlier books, you'll probably like this one too. I hope that Denise Hamilton gets out of the Eve/Silvio rut for the next, though.
Originally posted at Petrona on 21 October 2006.
I am fairly sure by Crimescraps out of Eurocrime, or vice versa, I recently came across a book so highly recommended that I could do nothing but read it. Involuntary Witness is by an Italian author, Gianrico Carofiglio, who according to the blurb is "an anti-mafia judge in the southern Italian city of Bari". First published in 2002, the book has been translated into English by Patrick Creagh, and was published in the UK in 2005.
Guido Guerrieri's marriage is on the rocks and he's a corrupt lawyer, representing people whom he despises for the money. From the Sartre-like pit of existential despair when it all goes wrong, Guerrieri's life begins to turn around when he is finessed into taking on the defence of a Sengalese man, a beach-peddler accused of murdering a small boy. The "Mockingbird" court case plays out in parallel with Guerrieri's spiritual rehabilitation and redemption.
I loved this fast-paced and compelling story. Not only for all the above reasons, but because of its sense of place. I've written before about placeism, and in that context of how John Grisham, although usually weak on plot, excels at conveying it. Carofiglio's Bari is in the same mould --- the details of life in this small Italian town illuminate the eternal dramatic themes. And it is good on plot, too.
This is a perfect miniature of a book --much shorter than Grisham, and all the better for it.
See here for the book's entry on the Italian Mysteries website.
Eurocrime reviews this book here (Karen Chisolm) and here (Karen Meek, who is Eurocrime herself).
Amazon UK listing is here, and Amazon US here. Go on, buy it!
How's about this for a crazy premise: man pays organisation to kill him painlessly if he should have progressive fatal disease or accident rendering him comatose. Changes his mind, but the organisation won't let him. Organisation is ruthlessly efficient at killing assorted passers-by but hopelessly inefficient at killing the man. Man meets previously unknown son. Son gets fatal disease and goes into hiding. Man tries to find him, while at the same time avoiding the paid assassins.
Well it does sound crazy, and it is. The shark is definitely jumped more than once in this book, Kill Me by Stephen White. Yet it doesn't matter. The book does its job at drawing in the reader -- it almost lost me after the unappealing first chapter, but because I've enjoyed all White's previous books, I persevered. And although the plot did indeed become more ludicrous as the book progressed, I was carried along by the persuasiveness and immediacy.
This book is a departure for White in that he writes from the point of view of one of Alan Gregory's clients, so we don't see the action through Gregory's sometimes rather prim, even smug, perspective. For my part, I would have enjoyed the book without the "thriller" element, or if the thriller element were inevitable, would have preferred there to be a twist or two (I can think of a couple) rather than for the plot to be quite so predictable. But in the end I didn't mind, because White can write (and, to touch on a contemporary theme, and as he says himself in the end notes, his editor can edit).
I can't write anything distinctive or profound here about why people (eg me) like crime fiction so much, as many academics have gone before me and can write with far more insight than I. After all, a book like Kill Me is well insulated from the believable world. But for my small part, I would suggest that a book centred on the therapists' encounter with the client (think early Jonathan Kellerman for the epitome), including the challenge of how to deal with a known fatal condition (as here), enables the reader to travel to places that aren't too comfortable in this hard old unforgiving world of reality. The fact that it is unbelievable that this character would take out such a "death insurance" policy, or that an organisation would exist to fulfil it, doesn't matter. The fact that the character sets the policy to kick in at a very preliminary stage of illness is also neither here nor there. The strange rules that the organisation has, for example not killing any clients in their homes in case it looks suspicious, but being quite happy to kill via sniper on a scaffolding in a blocked under-mountain tunnel with a car set on fire as a smoke cover -- totally bonkers. Yet none of this matters, because these plot devices allow the reader to explore some uncomfortable questions. Under what circumstances is choosing death better than living a life? Put a family in the mix, how does that change things? What factors would make such decisions change? These are the underlying issues addressed in "Kill Me", and I guess they are the reason why the book "works" despite its plot.
I think I went on holiday fairly recently, didn't I? One of the many unwritten posts in my head arising from about that involves Harry Potter. Regular readers of Petrona may remember an optimistic posting about Cathy's and my hopes that Dumbledore is not, in fact, dead. These hopes were fairly soon afterwards snuffed out by J K Rowling herself, via a post on her website.
Well, I have to report that Cathy and I are both now convinced. (Cathy has already posted about it on Oasis.) Professor D is definitely no more. It's all in the book (6, that is).
Because we had many hours of driving to look forward to on our trip to France, I had prepared by obtaining the CD of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (aka HP6). As predicted, Stephen Fry's wonderful reading of the book had all four of us utterly absorbed for every moment it was on (and it is a long book, there are a lot of moments). Even though, of course, we had all read the written version previously.
The rest of this post follows on the continuation sheet, partly for length reasons and partly because although it gives away as little as possible, it does reveal some bits of the plot of this and previous HP books.
The length of our actual journey allowed full appreciation of the metaphorical journey so clearly taken in the book. As gradually becomes clear, Dumbeldore is finding out all he can about Tom Riddle's (Voldemort's) past, in the knowledge or hope of finding information that will help to defeat him. After the events of book 5, Dumbledore understands his previous, well-meaning mistake of treating Harry as a child (which did not in the event protect him), and now includes Harry as a full partner in this enterprise.
The main plot, amid diversions and distractions, involves set pieces in which Dumbledore and Harry, via the Pensieve, gradually discover what Voldemort has (probably) done to ensure his own immortality. (Actually, I should say that Dumbledore gradually realises what is probably going on, Harry being a far braver soul than he is bright.) In the process, Dumbledore realises that he must take huge risks to find out enough to counter Voldemort. Perhaps the ultimate risk. And he is unflinching about that.
As we know, Voldemort's weakest aspect is his inability to understand love, personal sacrifice and honour. Dumbeldore uses this fact. If he has to die to ensure Voldemort is defeated, he will die in a way that will give Harry the best chance at survival.
In HP6, Dumbledore is a mentor and teacher to Harry, patiently explaining and sharing all his knowledge (and to be fair, Harry does eventually manage to obtain the most important piece of evidence for Dumbeldore's Voldemort theory). But he has also become Harry's only remaining parent/guardian figure: a combination of Lily, James and Sirius. Dumbeldore uses the sacrifice of his own life to ensure (he hopes) that Snape's credibility with Voldemort is maintained, and hence that Harry is protected.
Harry Potter is more than the sum of its parts. Some of the book is so moving that three of the four listners were reduced to tears. J K Rowling is not the world's greatest stylist, or creator of characters, but her unparallelled plotting ability combined with her breathtaking ability to convey layers of emotional meaning and intensity, not on just one theme but on many --- sacrifice, love, fate, hate, death -- is pure Greek tragedy. If that woman doesn't get a Nobel prize when book seven is finished, then there is no justice in the world.
Frank Wilson on Books, Inq. posts about today's book reviews in the Philadelphia Inquirer. The interesting collection includes my review of Henning Mankell's book The Man Who Smiled. I like the title of the review (not mine): "Nabbing the villain is the weakest part of a strong book". Here's a direct link to the review. Thank you very much to Frank for asking me to write it -- what a truly kind and generous man.
Mankell's book is published in the USA by The New Press: I hadn't previously heard of this outfit before receiving the book, but having checked out its website during the course of writing the review, I recommend a look. Here is what it says about itself:
"Established in 1990 as a major alternative to the large, commercial publishers, The New Press is a not-for-profit publishing house operated editorially in the public interest. It is committed to publishing in innovative ways works of educational, cultural, and community value that, despite their intellectual merits, may be deemed insufficiently profitable by commercial publishers. Like the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio as they were originally conceived, The New Press aims to provide ideas and viewpoints under-represented in the mass media."
Originally posted at Petrona on 17 September 2006.
My review of the book in the Philadelphia Inquirer (17 September) can be found here.
I had my faith in crime fiction restored by Lisa Marklund's Paradise, which I read after the five books I posted about the other day.
Paradise features most of the elements I love the most about crime fiction: a female journalist heroine, and a subeditor to boot! (Hooray!) She is simply true to herself without artifice, knows no other way, and has great instincts for her work without being aware of this on a conscious level -- and of course, this is why she tenaciously unravels the convoluted mystery rather than the more experienced types around her.
There are plenty of apparently disparate plot strands that caused me some initial concern, but I soon relaxed: this author is totally in control of pulling them all together and of doing so in a paced manner -- full marks on both counts. Then there are politics: the book was written in 2000 but only translated into English from the Swedish last year and published (in England) in paperback this, so the then-contemporary setting of the impact of the break-up of Yugoslavia and associated mafia and military crime has an added perspective for the reader aware of the events of the past five years.
Not only are there European politics but also the politics of journalism and newspapers: the author is an ex-journalist and thoroughly understands the "men in suits" mentality, writing about it well and with insight. Not only are there European and publishing politics but sexual politics: the politically correct Swedish women bankers and TV shows (very funny), and the dilemma of the accountant who becomes, passively yet inevitably, the catalyst for the various snaking strands of the book.
Paradise is an organisation, or channel, by which people can disappear from official records and become "hidden". It was set up for abused women. But is there a more sinister aspect? This is the central dilemma which journalist Annika feels compelled to answer, as she's not the kind of person who can take it as read. She's not particularly sympathetic for the first few chapters, but she's a real person, imperfections included, and certainly grows on you.
Just read the book -- if you like crime fiction, you'll love it. I was delighted to learn afterwards that there are two earlier novels featuring the same character, and a new one due out later this year (in translation, that is). What a find.
And as an addendum, Tribe has picked up on earlier comments about Winter's Bone, also highly recommended by Sarah Weinman, and has posted his review of the book. It is on my "waiting for paperback" Amazon list.
