159 posts tagged “eurocrime”
Translated by Laura A. Wideburg.
Six years after the events in GOOD NIGHT, MY DARLING, we re-encounter Justine Dalvik, still living in the house in the woods left to her by her father, the 'candy millionaire' whose 'Sandy Concern' bought material comfort if not happiness to his daughter and second wife, Flora. Justine is still with Hans-Peter, a middle-aged concierge at a small, traditional hotel in town, though unfortunately he is no longer portrayed as a bibliophile.
Justine is haunted by one of the events in particular of six years ago, described in GOOD NIGHT MY DARLING, and spends her days rowing out into the middle of the lake, peering beneath the surface to see if she can see the drowned body of Berit, the woman she knew from her schooldays and who now haunts her dreams. Berit's husband, Tor, has not worked since his wife disappeared, and is being romantically pursued by Jill, Berit's best friend. This fifty-something unlikely couple travel on a ship off the coast of Norway to see the whales, but Tor is too seasick and miserable to enjoy the holiday. Jill does shift-work as a pilot at the harbour, guiding the maritime traffic through the treacherous shallows of the canal. Relationships among the stunted and strange characters in this creepy novel are no less treacherous.
Many passages in THE SHADOW IN THE WATER repeat themes and incidents from the previous novel. Ariadne is the cleaner at the hotel where Hans-Peter works. Her blind daughter is now 16 and the picture of their domestic life with Ariadne's violent husband, Tommy, a policeman, is deeply disturbing and chilling. Tommy has inherited a suspicion of Justine. Not only was she the last known person to see Berit alive, but Justine's ex-lover Nathan, as well as a photographer called Maria, both either vanished or were killed on a Malaysian adventure holiday. The police can't prove anything, and nor can Micke, Nathan's feckless son who spends his life living with his shrewish mother, observing and plotting revenge on Justine, who he believes should be mourning Nathan instead of beginning again with Hans-Peter.
The novel revisits the lives of these and other characters, mostly elderly and all eccentric or damaged to a greater or lesser degree. There's a damp, claustrophobic air over the whole novel. Although Justine is the main character in the previous book, here she is far less central, appearing as quite a pathetic figure with her decrepit, smelly bird. And although she is obsessed with Berit, her nemesis comes from a different direction altogether.
Some degree of closure is obtained for some of the characters by the end of this book, but it is a very disturbing novel, clouded and obscured by perceptions and suspicions so that nothing is what it seems. I admire the translator, Laura Wideburg, for so ably conveying the many subtleties of atmosphere and character. Both this novel and its predecessor won the Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year for the years in which they were first published (1998 and 2005), and I can see why. THE SHADOW IN THE WATER is even less of a comfortable read than its predecessor, in showing the nasty things that go on under the surface of apparently ordinary, small-town lives.
Translated by Victoria Cribb.
HYPOTHERMIA is among the very best of the books I've read this year. It's the sixth of the author's Erlendur series to be translated into English; it is truly a mature, masterful and utterly fantastic book.
It's a story stripped bare to the bone. A young woman, Maria, commits suicide at her holiday cottage on the shores of Lake Thingvellier. About 30 years ago, Maria's father Magnus fell from his boat and drowned in the same lake. Ever since then, Maria has been extremely close to her mother, Leonora, still living with her even after graduating from university and her marriage to a doctor named Baldvin, who moved in with the two women after his wedding to Maria. Leonora died of cancer two years before the book opens, during which time Maria gave up her job to nurse her mother, constantly at her side. Everyone assumes that part of the reason for Maria's suicide was her inconsolable loss.
Erlendur is only involved in this case tangentially, in that he is told of Maria's death because Maria's main house is in his jurisdiction, so it falls to him to inform Baldvin of her death. Baldvin is devastated. A few days later, however, Maria's friend Karen, who discovered the body, comes to see Erlendur, convinced that Maria cannot have killed herself. Not only was Maria in a positive frame of mind, but Karen has a tape of a recent session between Maria and a medium, in which Maria talked of her comfort in being in touch with her mother from beyond the mother's grave - the two women had talked about this in the mother's final days, and agreed on a method of communication if there is "life after death".
Although Erlendur is sceptical, he is irresistibly drawn to situations involving the missing and the disappeared. He's already looking into three old cases of young people who have suddenly and inexplicably vanished, reflecting on the impact these events have had on the families of the departed. Family members tend to get in touch a on birthdays or anniversaries of the disappearances to find out if there is any news, and Erlendur sees how time takes its toll as the parents of these vanished teenagers become more infirm and eventually die. Erlendur largely lives in his own past, as his own life was shaped by a traumatic event when he was 10 years old. He and his younger brother (aged 8) were out on the hillside in a blizzard, and both boys became lost in the storm. Only Erlendur was found, nearly frozen to death.
Reflecting on these events, Erlendur visits the friends and relations of Maria, the dead young historian. He becomes more interested in the accident in which her father drowned, and digs out the details of the old police investigation, which seemed to have been carried out in a rather perfunctory fashion. At the same time, in a familiar theme in these books, he pursues new leads in the cold cases with characteristic focus.
The events of HYPOTHERMIA occur in a bubble removed from any official criminal investigation - although Erlendur interacts occasionally with his colleagues, the story focuses on his "private" investigation of Maria's death and the old disappearances. Although Erlendur does not believe in the afterlife, he's driven by his own inner need to speak for the lost and the missing, and perhaps above all to seek to thaw out some of the hypothermia of the souls of those who are left behind - including himself.
Erlendur's family life is also a fairly significant part of this book, as his own two children gradually switch roles with Erlendur and his long-ago divorced wife. Eva Lind (mainly) and Sindri want their parents to meet and to reconcile themselves to the break-up of their relationship, but it is quite clear that they are incapable of even the slightest understanding of each other's point of view. Perhaps because of Eva Lind's determination that her parents achieve some closure, or perhaps because of the investigations he's involved in, Erlendur reads to Eva Lind from a book describing the events in which he and his brother were lost, and he reflects on the impact the events, and the book's publication, had on his mother and on his own decisions at the time of his mother's death - directly relevant to Eva herself.
It is hard to convey the sadness and depth of HYPOTHERMIA. The book's plot is completely solid, being an apparently simple tale of a man going round talking to various people, but underneath there are so many layers of the past, of emotion and mood, of different ways of looking at death, disappearance and the lost, descriptions of the ways of life on this bleak island, and how past ways are changing.
There are no dramatics in this story, no exciting set-pieces or thrilling climaxes. The book is simply a rich, thoughtful, mature and compelling work, sympathetically translated. These Icelandic books have much in common with Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series, in particular the lonely perspectives of the protagonists Harry and Erlendur in speaking for the dead and disappeared of however many years ago - but each is a unique creation. I loved HYPOTHERMIA, with its ageless, deeply sad stories lying beneath its pages.
Translated by Laura A. Wideburg.
GOOD NIGHT, MY DARLING tells the life-story of Justine, a lonely woman in her mid-forties who lives on her own in an isolated house in the woods near a lake, somewhere in Sweden. Justine is trying to move on with her life after what seems to be a disaster involving her boyfriend Nathan, but we are not sure exactly what has happened. She decides to begin running to get some exercise, but most of the time she wanders round the house with her tatty raven, who flies freely around, and muses on her childhood with her father, owner of a sweet factory, and her stepmother Flora. She has some dim recollections of her French mother, who died suddenly of a cerebral stroke when Justine was very young.
Gradually we realise that Justine had a deeply unhappy childhood, being bullied and ostracised at school, as well as having to cope with Flora's bitter jealousy and abuse. Justine was a withdrawn child, becoming even more so as a result of this misery. Her father loved her but failed to take any real interest in her. More is revealed about the traumatic events of Justine's early life, and we become more aware of how her past informs her present behaviour.
Interspersed with Justine's story, we also get to know some people who live in the nearby town, particularly a divorced man called Hans-Peter, a bibliophile who works as a night porter in a local hotel; the stepmother Flora, now totally disabled and in a nearby care home; and Berit, who works for a local publisher. I loved these character sketches: the author has a wonderful ability to draw the reader right in to her subjects' lives and preoccupations.
The second part of the book flashes back to Justine's holiday with Nathan, her lover briefly introduced at the start of the novel. He is handsome and feckless, having had three wives, various less formal liaisons with women, and a lot of children. He's decided to start a business running adventure holidays to the Malaysian jungle, so he and Justine decide to go on a trip to check out the locale and logistics. As the couple arrive and join up with a party of fellow-trekkers, Justine is subject to Nathan's mental bullying and unpleasant behaviour, under the surface of his false bonhomie. She cracks, and has to return home - but not before cracking again when she is yet further provoked.
The final section of this excellently translated, haunting novel weaves together all these elements, as the complete picture of Justine's life and character comes into focus from all the previous hints and fragments, as she decides to take decisive action. The author deliberately does not allow the reader to sympathise with or condemn most of the characters, which gives this atmospheric and gripping book a satisfyingly unsettling air. The treatment of the police investigation into various incidents is also told with a dry humour and a rather different perspective from the way in which the police are usually portrayed in crime novels.
Translated by Mike Mitchell.
THE LIE is an "identical twins" thriller, though the two women concerned, Suzanne Lasko and Nadia Trenkler, are apparently not related. Suzanne is down on her luck - her marriage has failed, she's lost her job as a bank teller due to confusion she experiences after a years-ago car accident, and is living in a meagre apartment for which she has trouble finding the rent. She's close to her mother, who is ailing and now lives in a home, and for the old lady's pleasure she makes up an interesting life for herself in which she has a good job and a boyfriend (in reality an odious, sexually abusive neighbour).
Suzanne is eventually reduced to dipping into her mother's nest egg to pay her rent despite the many job applications she fills out, so she's relieved when she finally scores an interview at the firm of Behringer and partners. While in the building, she briefly encounters a very smart woman who could be her double. The interview goes well and Suzanne feels confident about being offered the job, so is devastated when she is rejected. Enter Nadia, the rich double who sees an opportunity in the fortuitous likeness, who pays the desperate Suzanne to stand in for her with her husband for a weekend while she goes off for a fling with her lover.
The premise is not new, but is given interest and depth by the character and life of Suzanne. At this stage I was intrigued to continue with the novel. I'm afraid that I then rather rapidly lost interest, as what transpires is a mish-mash of "lives of the rich and famous" told at the level of a mediocre TV movie or magazine-inspired romance, together with some casually described scientific research aspects and financial manoeuvres. The two women swap identities again and again; Michael (Nadia's husband) veers between illogical positions; and the constant shifting of suspicions is confusingly superficial - is Nadia really having an affair, or is she conducting a financial scam - and who are the mysterious hit men she's apparently involved with?
Somewhere in all this there is a good little psychological thriller struggling to get out, but unfortunately, for me it never does. If the novel had been revised (again) and shortened before publication, ironing out some of the inconsistencies and cutting some of the to-ing and fro-ing between Suzanne, Michael, Nadia and various bit-part scientists, neighbours, business associates and cardboard villains, the result would have been more focused and involving. Suzanne is the only character with life or depth, and the aspects of the plot concerning her non-Nadia life are the most interesting.
Petra Hammesfahr has written many novels, only one other of which has been translated into English (at time of writing this review). That novel, THE SINNER, is a dark and excellent journey into the depths of the human soul; it is in a different league from THE LIE and in my opinion a much better demonstration of this author's talents.
Translated by Reg Keeland.
The long-awaited final part of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy reaches an English-language readership in 2009, five years after its first publication in Sweden. And it is certainly worth the wait. The story of Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist (after earlier hints, here explicitly adult versions of Astrid Lindgren's children's characters Pippi Longstocking and Kalle Blomqvist), pulls you right in on page 1, and is terrifically difficult to leave behind on page 600, especially as so many aspects of their stories (particularly Lisbeth's) have not begun to be explored - and never will be, owning to the sad early death of the author.
THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNETS' NEST begins directly after the dramatic finale of THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, the first 100 pages reflecting the confusion of deaths, illnesses, attacks and conspiracy that culminated in the confrontations at Gosseberga. Most of these 100 pages take place in hospital where Lisbeth lies critically injured, where Zalachenko, her father, is also severely wounded, and where the police, security personnel and other vultures are circling round the pair. Anyone who has not read the previous two books will probably find this long introduction almost incomprehensible in its details - those who have read the predecessors will need good memories but will have no difficulty being drawn into Lisbeth's predicament as she lies paralysed in the knowledge that her father, lying in a nearby room down the corridor, is trying to finish his malign task - while other forces are keen to try her, label her as insane and send her back to the secure institution where she spent her unhappy adolescence - assuming she survives her terrible injuries.
Next, the canvas of the book expands to a compelling history of Swedish politics post-1964, consciously continuing from the social analysis of the Maj Sjowall/Per Wahloo Martin Beck series, charting the failures of Swedish democracy from within the security forces by the formation of the SSA, an unofficial secret police within the official secret police (Sapo), known only to one or two people in the country. Real and fictitious events and characters are seamlessly juxtaposed, though there's an essential brief glossary to help the non-Swedish reader grasp the non-fictional essentials.
In this novel, SSA consists of a small, secret core of very hard-liners, determined to uphold and protect what its members consider to be the country's best interests. Primarily, it seems, this task has consisted of containing Zalachenko, the most important Soviet defector to the West ever. The grey men of the SSA have created a new identity for him and over the years have given him free rein and protected him from the consequences of his criminal activities and gross abuse of his wife.
This army of old men from another time come together in the realization that the Zalachenko affair is likely to blow wide open once he and his daughter Lisbeth are able to communicate with the authorities. Although they have lost one of their main means of controlling Lisbeth (how she disposed of her guardian is part of the plot of book 2), they enlist the help of psychiatrist Peter Taleborian, the man who locked Lisbeth away after her pyrotechnic actions when aged 12, and whom she has good reason to hate. Only Dr Jonasson, the surgeon who is currently caring for Lisbeth, seems to stand between her and the strong forces who want her silenced.
The book bursts into real life after this long prologue, history and setting-of-scene, when an odd coalition including Mikael, Lisbeth and her hackers' group form the online ‘knights of the idiotic table' in their first real act of striking back. Mikael begins to dig into the story of Zalachencko, gradually becoming to suspect the existence of ‘The Section', as he calls what the reader knows to be SSA. When a crucial report is stolen from his apartment, he uses this circumstance to find out more than the perpetrators had bargained for, and to strike back at them, in a clever game of double bluff.
In THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNETS' NEST, Lisbeth (who until the final chapters is a relatively insubstantial figure in the novel) serves as an allegory for Sweden itself - both the woman and the country have been betrayed over many years by secret allegiances of people bound together by delusions and evil impulses. Just as the young Lisbeth is wrongly diagnosed with mental illness and incarcerated in an isolation cell, so the young Swedish democracy is betrayed by people whose actions can only be explained by Mikael as being like those who have a mental illness and have separated themselves from normal society (p 475). Mikael is as much driven by his journalistic, crusading need to expose political corruption as his friendship and gratitude to Lisbeth compel him to expose the corruption that is continuing to threaten her by this coalition of "men who hate women".
Yet the novel is not a mere spy thriller - what gives it such massive heart are the characters - Mikael, Erica, the Millennium journalists, the Armansky operation, the police, Sapo agents, asylum seekers and others who give the novel such life - and the immense amount of absorbing, authentic details - of the workings of a newspaper office, a secret police organisation, computer hacking, police operations, investigative journalism, the security business, the race to publish Mikael's discoveries, and far more than can be covered in this review - a rich, dense and compelling context for the gradual uncovering of Lisbeth's story, cumulating in her trial where the main players take turns on centre stage.
There are certainly gaps in this book. One glaring weakness is that we never know why Zalachenko was so useful to the SSA, and why he continued to be so uniquely valuable for so long after he defected. We learn little of his criminal empire. Lisbeth, the very core of the trilogy, plays a passive role for almost all of the book. Some plot lines, for example the police search for the cop-killer Niedermann, are never developed. Other stories are hinted at but never told - we can only imagine that the author intended to pick those up in future books.
The Millennium Trilogy is a fantastically exciting and original set of books, admittedly with flaws, but with a great breadth and intelligence - of the characters as well as of the story - and with an ability to draw the reader in to an exciting narrative so that one is lost in the book, not knowing whether to turn the pages rapidly to find out what happens next, or to turn them slowly to prolong the totally mesmerising read, so ably conveyed to English readers by the translator, Reg Keeland.
Translated by Laura Vroomen. BACK TO THE COAST is an excellent little thriller, an easy read that can be raced through in a couple of hours and that leaves a haunting impression. The protagonist, a young rock singer called Maria, has a somewhat chaotic life. She has two children by different fathers, and you can immediately tell she's an unconventional person by the names she has given them, Wolf and Merel (meaning blackbird). At the start of the book she's just had an abortion - her boyfriend Geert (Wolf's father), a musician in Maria's band, is depressed and can't get his life together; Maria, who has already watched Steve, Merel's father, ignore his parental responsibilities, just can't cope with the prospect of looking after three young children on her own and decides to break up with Geert who needs too much looking after himself. Maria is struggling to come to terms with her decision and recovering from the operation when very nasty letters and packages start to arrive. The police (rather realistically presented, I imagine) are not interested in these threats in the absence of any crime.
Maria verges from being unsettled to paranoid about who is responsible, suspecting her children's fathers, her band members, even her nosy neighbours, but she's completely thrown when an undertaker arrives at her front door, having been booked to conduct her own funeral. Not only do the police remain uninterested in protecting Maria (they seem prejudiced about her lifestyle), but she herself is sued by the funeral directors for the outlay and the waste of their time.
Unable to continue performing in the band because of her terror, suspicious of all her associates and with no help from the police, Maria decides to flee to the coast – to her childhood home and sister Ans, who still lives there with her husband (and Maria's manager) Martin. There, the tension ratchets up even more, with both Maria and the reader being constantly wrong-footed as yet more nasty and dangerous events occur.
Although it might be obvious to the reader what is going on before it becomes clear to Maria (partly because of a dearth of suspects), this does not one jot spoil the enjoyment of this exciting novel. Even minor characters like Geert, Steve, Martin and Harry (a man who tries to help Maria), are strongly presented, rounding out this deceptively simple tale. The author's ruthlessness and her sharp social observation (particularly her witty dissection of psychobabble, small-town life and the politically correct) combine to make this book a very satisfying read on several counts. At the same time, our prejudices about stereotypes are neatly turned on their head more than once.
The past history of Ans and Maria and their parents (particularly their mother) is gradually and cleverly revealed, leaving the reader, after turning the last page, wondering just how much went on in the family's past that even Maria herself has not realised.
Translated by Leon Vincent. Margot Laine is an office-furnishings salesperson who calls herself an interior designer. She's recently been dumped by her husband of seven years, John, and has moved from the village where she's lived since childhood to a new apartment, helped by her brother and a couple of friends. She's put on a lot of weight over the past few years, feels stifled by her uncomprehending parents, and as the book opens is stood up by a girlfriend with whom she's arranged to go to London for a rare weekend away.
Margot decides to go anyway, and while on the plane a handsome fellow passenger opens up a conversation with her. As they disembark, he gives her his mobile phone number, encouraging her to get in touch if she's at a loose end during her weekend. After struggling to find her way to the city centre, being ripped off by the taxi driver and discovering her hotel to be little short of disgusting, she contacts the man in desperation. He turns out to be a well-known art photographer called Leon, and seems to be very keen on Margot, to her surprise (her self esteem is rock bottom).
I became absorbed in Margot's world while I read this excellent little thriller. Although I found some of her helplessness during the weekend stretching it a bit (wouldn't she at least have taken a tourist guidebook with her?), the author provides a convincing view of the world through a lonely, insecure woman's eyes. Her gradual awakening as a result of Leon's attention and interest is meticulously told. Although Leon is a rather cliched Mr Rochester type (secretive, autocratic), he seems to be not only genuinely devoted to Margot but also, by encouraging her to quit her job and providing her with contacts for her fledging designer business, seems to be helping her to be independent.
I write "seems" because of course there is a catch. Leon's previous girlfriend, who inevitably looks uncannily like Margot, committed suicide by cutting her wrists while in the bath. Leon has never recovered. We, the reader, know that the death was not suicide but murder, and we know that Margot is in the killer's sights. What follows is a kind of dance between Margot's gradual build-up of self-confidence and improvement in all aspects of her life (I particularly liked her changing relationship with her parents), and the slow development of the killer's plans to kill her. Is Leon the killer, or is it someone else? I'm not going to reveal the answer here, of course, but if you like your crime fiction suspenseful, erotically romantic, tense and pacy, this is definitely a book for you. It is confidently written, smoothly translated, with a believable, attractive protagonist.
FEVER OF THE BONE is the sixth in the author's series about DCI Carol Jordan and criminal psychologist Tony Hill, but you don't need to have read the previous novels to appreciate this one. It is written with multi award-winning Val McDermid's usual professionalism, dependability, style and apparent effortlessness. Although some parts stray into formula and are even slightly tired, the book is replete with tiny, fascinating character sketches and barbs of insightful observations of modern mores that lift it way above the average. It's a perfect holiday or weekend piece of light reading (despite the dark central theme) that leaves plenty of issues to ponder after the last page is turned.
The main plot concerns the deaths of some young teenagers in and around the fictional town of Bradfield in northern England. Carol and her team find themselves looking for a person or people who stalked the youngsters by first befriending them on a social networking website called RigMarole, then luring them into a direct meeting, and then killing them. Very few details of the abductions and deaths are provided, thankfully, but it is harrowing to read about the impact of the disappearances on the children's parents, who seem to have done all they can to protect their offspring. While paying due respect to the emotions involved, the book shies away from covering much of these aspects and focuses mainly on the investigation: how Carol's "cold case" team discover clues via old-fashioned police work as well as by following the internet trail. One part of their multi-specialist approach is missing, however. Carol's new and unsympathetic boss, James Burke, will not let her call in Tony Hill to work on profiling the criminal, ostensibly for cost reasons but Carol senses egos are involved. Instead, Burke tells Carol to make do with one of the police force's own profilers, ironically a man trained by Tony. Of course the man is useless, leaving Carol and her colleagues pretty stuck as to how to proceed when the tangible leads run out.
Tony is not sitting around moping while all this is going on. At the end of the last book, he discovered that his estranged father had died, leaving him a considerable amount of money. Tony has no wish to learn anything about the life of the man who abandoned him as a baby, but he can't avoid sorting out his father's estate, having to sell his house and narrow boat in Worcester. By coincidence, Tony is contacted by the Worcester police who are at their wits' end over the killing of a young teenager and so hire Tony to create a criminal profile for them. Curious about his father's life despite himself, Tony agrees to take on the job and travels to Worcester, in the process ending up spending the night in his father's old house and beginning to discover unexpected things about his own past. (Helped without his knowledge and against his will by Carol, who confronts Vanessa, Tony's evil mother, to try to find some answers about the past lives of father and son.)
Carol and Tony are intensely involved with each other on an astral plane but can't admit their feelings openly (a longstanding theme). The action is stalled for a while because Carol is too principled to discuss details of her cases with Tony even though they live in the same house, because Tony is not officially involved. Eventually, they put their heads together and realise that the case Tony has profiled in Worcester is likely to be an earlier crime committed by the same person who killed the two teenagers in Bradfield. Tony is allowed back on the team and by joining forces with the attractively portrayed Alvin Ambrose of the Worcester police, Carol and her colleagues begin to narrow down their list of suspects. Val McDermid is bang up to the minute (or, rather, nanosecond) with her social media and technological know-how, providing a whistle-stop tour of security breaches and data-protection issues as the hunt becomes more targeted.
The criminal is eventually tracked down by a combination of traditional police detection and some (glossed-over) online gee-whizzery, with a dash of inspiration from Carol and Tony combined. Although the resolution is a logical and rational outcome of all the earlier clues, to me it did not seem credible in psychological terms, and nor did it seem likely that the criminal would have managed to obtain the specific information needed about which children to attack, despite the book's casual assumption that there is no security or code that cannot be hacked. For me, a stronger part of the book was the story of Tony's gradual discovery of his father, which is rather moving - and, one hopes, will enable him to move on a bit in his rather static relationship with Carol.
After reading this book, I learnt that Val McDermid and her publishers have created a social networking site called RigMarole, just as described in the book. In a spirit of curiosity I joined it, and have to admit it is an eerie experience to look around it and to see (and if you wish, interact with) the characters in the novel (some of whom meet sticky ends, and some of whom are distinctly unpleasant). I found this experience more unsettling than actually reading the book. If you want to look for yourself, the URL is http://rigmarole.ning.com/.
Translator: Marlaine Delargy. THE DARKEST ROOM is a wonderful book, framed as the story of a wooden house, Eel Point, on the coast of the small island of Oland, Sweden - an island where the population is small and the old traditions continue. The house has a long, tragic history associated with the building of the two lighthouses on the nearby rocks, shipwrecks and various residents. The brief stories of these old tragedies are told in short sections interleaving the book's chapters, showing how Eel Point has become regarded today as haunted. The reader is never sure whether the ghosts are real, or to what extent the house's sad, cruel past is influencing current events.
A family moves to Eel Point, ostensibly to start a new life away from the city and the pressures of work and commuting, but as we gradually realise, there is another reason for the move. Katrine and Joakim have been married for seven years and are a typically smug, professional modern couple - good jobs, two lovely young children, well-off, and spending their spare time renovating their homes, which has enabled them to gradually move up the property ladder to the extent that they can now afford to buy the enormous yet run-down manor at Eel Point. At first it is hard to like either adult in this self-satisfied couple, but we gradually see the cracks in their personalities as, little by little, their story is revealed, and they become more sympathetic. Some of the revelations are from Katrine's estranged mother, Mirja Rambe, an artist of some renown and a determined Bohemian, for whom truth is an elastic concept. Mirja and her mother, an even more renowned artist, lived at Eel Point for a time during Mirja's childhood, and their secret history is central to the mysteries of the present.
Another plotline involves a series of robberies on the island. Three bored young men regularly get high on drugs before stealing from and vandalising holiday houses whose owners are absent in their regular jobs on the mainland. The police are completely unsuccessful in solving the case until Tilda Davidson, a new recruit arrives. Tilda is the connection between THE DARKEST ROOM and the first novel in this loose series, ECHOES FROM THE DEAD, as she is the granddaughter of old Gerlof Davidson's brother Ragnar. Tilda is both determined to make her mark as a policewoman subject to patronising sexism from her male colleagues (and smarting from an unfortunate affair), and also is interested in her own family history, of which she knows only fragments. Her grandfather Ragnar is dead, so she visits Gerlof in his old people's home to tape-record his reminiscences of his brother and their lives on the island. These sections of the book are among my favourites, both in Gerlof's reactions to the tape recording project and the way in which he infiltrates himself into Tilda's investigations. He immediately provides her with some good leads to the burglary case, as he knows old people who live near the properties concerned, people to whom a car passing down the road is a major life-event. Sure enough, Tilda and her colleagues soon begin to track down the perpetrators based on this evidence, and a case is gradually built up.
There are so many wonderful aspects to this book that it is impossible to note them all in a brief review. Above all, the author himself is a wonderful storyteller; one becomes totally immersed in his Oland world and in the lives and personalities of the superbly well-observed characters, major and minor. He is also a great plotter - the main stories as well as the minor ones weave in and out of each other: apparently small details in one story turn out to be highly relevant in another. He also has fun with the ghost-story concept, keeping the reader guessing as to whether he'll pull a supernatural solution out of the hat or whether he can possibly create a down-to-earth explanation for all the disparate events.
There is so much that could be said about this excellent novel, packed full of subtleties and stories, but my main advice is to read it and experience it for yourself. I wonder if, like me, you will be left thinking that there is more to the "solution" that the main protagonist, Joakim, realises? Does the author intend us to conclude that Joakim and Katrine have paid a price for a misdeed they themselves have done? I think so - for I believe that the couple has committed a terrible crime but are in total denial about it, and I believe that Johan Theorin wants us to see the novel as a story of acknowledgement and retribution.
A final note: I appreciated the translation by Marlaine Delargy: the collaboration between her and the author makes the book read as if it were written in the language in which I read it. THE DARKEST ROOM was a number one bestseller in Sweden and won the 2008 Glass Key award for the best Nordic crime novel of the year. If there is any justice in the world, the book will be winning many more awards now that it has been translated into English and so eligible for a greater number of them.
Translator: Stephen Sartarelli. If there is one thing that AUGUST HEAT, the tenth in the Inspector Montalbano series, does without a doubt, it is to make the reader feel the titular heat. The sweat and power of the sun is a constant presence, dominating the investigation and forming an oppressive, ubiquitous miasma: "Sitting on the veranda at Marinella, he thought he felt a hint of cool, but it was mostly a hypothesis of cool since neither the sea nor the air was moving."
Montalbano's girlfriend, Livia, is coming to stay for the summer season, but because of her extensive experience of being ignored by her paramour while he is called away on urgent police business, she commands him to find a holiday let for her friend Laura, together with Laura's husband Guido and their young, hyperactive son Bruno, so she will have things to do instead of being bored and alone. Montalbano attends to his task with his customary vigour, eventually lighting on an isolated but suitable villa by the sea, long abandoned by the German couple who own it as a result of various tragedies in their family. One senses that these tragedies were not entirely coincidental and are a harbinger of future complications, but more oblivious than the reader, Montalbano goes ahead and rents the villa on behalf of Livia's friends, who duly move in. Disaster constantly strikes, manifested by invasions of cockroaches, mice and then spiders - however, these are nothing compared with the terrifying disappearance of young Bruno and the family cat, together with a sinister discovery made by Montalbano while he searches for the lost boy.
Realising that the visitors' presence will needlessly complicate his investigations, Montalbano manipulates events so that they, including Livia, leave for home, clearing the way for him to interrogate a series of shady Sicilian builders, property speculators, and estate agents, uncovering all manner of dodgy practices. Despite the blistering heat, Montalbano and his regular band of assistants pursue their course with their usual zeal. Although I followed the plot with my usual enjoyment of Camilleri's novels, the typically offhand style is occasionally just too perfunctory. The central event took place some years ago, and most of the action once Livia and co have left consists of various shady suspects being summoned to the police station and investigated in an attempt to trip them up.
Montalbano is ever susceptible to female charms but, in loyalty to Livia (who has proved a useful excuse for escape on previous occasions) has never succumbed. However, in this story, he meets his match, which perhaps sets things up for some movement in his rather static relationship with Livia in future books.
Eventually, "The light breeze on the veranda had matured from infancy to adolescence and was making itself felt. He decided to seize this favourable moment when his thoughts weren't log-jammed by the heat, and consider rationally the investigation he had on his hands." The metaphor continues, and Montalbano, mainly by pursuing a few avenues that he'd omitted earlier, closes in on his man. Nevertheless, the denouement is engineered by someone else, rendering him a mere spectator, and a frustrated one to boot.
AUGUST HEAT is not the strongest of this charming series of books, though the superb translation and sheer good humour raises many a smile, not least in the passage of homage to Maj Sjowell and Per Wahloo, the Swedish writers of the ten-book Martin Beck series. If you have read the previous books by Camilleri, you'll enjoy this one regardless, but if you haven't, the story may seem somewhat flat and the finer points will be lost. As usual, the translation is utterly sympathetic and a work of art in its own right. The final footnote by the translator is well worth reading, in describing Camilleri's efforts to support the victims of Mafia violence.
