6 posts tagged “germany”
Translated by Mike Martin.
Thumbprint is the first novel in a series written in the 1930s by Friedrich Glauser; a series so influential that Germany’s main crime-fiction award is the Glauser prize. The novel is a highly readable affair, opening with the imprisonment of Erwin Schlumph, a young man arrested for shooting Wendelin Witschi, a travelling salesman and father of Schlumph’s sweetheart, Sonja, in the woods late at night. Schlumph is visited in prison by the man who arrested him, Sergeant Studer, who discovers that the young man has attempted suicide. After rescuing him, Studer decides to look into the case in more detail, as he’s fairly convinced that Schlumph didn’t commit the crime.
First, Studer has to convince the investigating magistrate to authorize him to take this course, which Studer realises isn’t going to be easy as the man is a stickler for procedure and wants the case tidied away with no fuss.
“Sergeant Studer, I would like to ask you, in all politeness, what you think you are doing? Could you explain how you cam to involve yourself without authorization – I repeat, without authorization -- in a case which…”
The examining magistrate broke off, though he couldn’t have said why himself. The man on the chair before him was a detective, a simple policeman. He was middle-aged and there was nothing special about him: a shirt with a soft collar, a grey suit that had gone slightly baggy in places because the body inside it was fat. He had a thin, pale face with a moustache covering his mouth so that you didn’t know whether he was smiling or not. And this simple policeman was sitting there in the chair, legs apart, forearms resting on his thighs, hands clasped…
The Magistrate himself couldn’t have said why he suddenly adopted a slightly warmer tone.
Sure enough, Studer is allowed to investigate the case, and so travels to Gerzenstein, a microcosm of Swiss village life, where everyone listens to the radio all day and sounds like the announcer, and where every other building is a shop or small business. Studer is somewhat stifled by the atmosphere:
God, people were the same everywhere. People in Switzerland tended to keep their little indiscretions very much to themselves, but as long as they didn’t impinge upon other people’s lives, nothing was said…….Unless something unexpected happened. Such as a murder. And a murder needed a murderer, like bread needed butter. Otherwise people would complain. And if the presumed guilty party tries to hang himself, and a detective comes along who is stubborn as a mule, then it can happen that al the little irregularities there are in everyone’s life suddenly become important. You work with them, like a bricklayer with bricks, to erect a building. A building? Let’s say a wall just for the moment.
And later:
“Perhaps you remember the case of that dental technician in Austria? Put his leg on a chopping block and hacked away at it until it was left hanging by a scrap of flesh, just to pocket a huge sum from the insurance. There was a big trial.”
“Well yes,” the examining magistrate said, “in Austria. But we’re in Switzerland here.”
“People are the same everywhere”, Studer sighed.
For the rest of the novel, Studer, helped by the local police chief, works on the shooting, with a mixture of forensics, witness interviews, psychological insight and dogged persistence. Dreams and hallucinations begin to come into play – Studer’s wife and Sonja both have a tendency to stay up all night reading novels – which renders them into a dream-like state by day. Studer himself drinks too much and later becomes ill with an infection, causing him to vividly imagine various scenarios that may have led to the murder, and providing some flashes of inspiration.
At its heart, though, the book is a classic story of a murder, some suspects, some social observations, and a neat solution. What makes it special, and fresh more than 70 years later, is its straightforward truthfulness, lack of pretension and yet, despite these pragmatic aspects, its hints of other worlds through which Studer’s perceptions are filtered.
What had people done with their own voices? Had they been infected by the radio? Had the wireless sets in Gerzenstein triggered off a new epidemic: voice-swapping?
My final words of the review part of this post are in praise of the translator, Mike Martin, through whose interpretation the novel reads as if it were written yesterday. I also put in a note of thanks to the publisher, Bitter Lemon Press, which since 2004 have published all five of Glauser’s Studer novels in English translations (all, I believe, by Mike Martin).
Friedrich Glauser was born in Vienna in 1896, and died aged 42, a few days before he was due to be married. He was a schizophrenic, addicted to morphine and opium, and spent much of his life in psychiatric wards, insane asylums and in prison for forging prescriptions. He spent two years in the Foreign Legion in North Africa, and worked as a coal miner, gardener, labourer and hospital orderly.
Der Bund: Glauser has elevated his material to an exquisite artistic level, a master of psychological analysis, a warm, sensitive and wonderfully observant writer.
Nationalzeitung Basel: Perfect characterization, brilliant portrayal of humour and irony against the dark, brooding background of small-town life.
Bayerische Rundfunk: Friedrich Glauser is a remarkable discovery. An ability to translate an erratic, obsessive life into language that seduces by its intimacy. A reflection of his suffering and compassion.
Glauser at the Bitter Lemon website.
Glauser's books reviewed at Euro Crimeand Reviewing the Evidence.
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.
ICE COLD (translator: Anthea Bell) is the second novel by the acclaimed author of THE MURDER FARM; both novels have won the German Crime Prize in consecutive years. ICE COLD tells the story of a serial killer in the Germany of the Weimar Republic. The book opens with the execution of Josef Kaletis, and the rest of the book tells the story of events leading up to that point, from the perspectives of several different people either directly involved in the story or as witnesses to various parts of it. As in the earlier novel, the various voices are signified by different typefaces.
This grim tale is told amid lives of extreme poverty and ignorance, with the political propaganda applied to the population by the government always in the background. The atmosphere of working class Munich is well-conveyed, reminding me of L'Assommoir and Nana in Emile Zola's Rougon-Macquart series, which explored poverty and squalor in Paris 50 years before the events of ICE COLD.
Andrea Maria Schenkel conveys vividly the hopes of the young Kathie, a farm girl who escapes her boring village and strict parents to start a new life in the bright city. On arrival, Kathie's aspirations are immediately dashed, as both families to whom she at first turns are struggling themselves, each having to let out their meagre spare room to lodgers to make ends meet. Cast off on her own, and seemingly with little education, intelligence or common-sense, Kathie soon falls in with some men who spend their time drinking and who have wives at home.
This novel is vivid, bleak and short. It is also very graphic: in unsensational terms it describes in considerable detail horrific violence in passages I wish I had not read. The novel certainly has power, and the story of the murderer (ignorant, violent and yet passive when confronted by authority) and his victims, as well as the other characters, is starkly memorable, not least because of the ability of the author to convey experiences from her characters' perspectives and with their emotions.
The Sinner by Petra Hammesfahr (translated by John Brownjohn) fulfils its early promise: it is a brilliant portrait into the dark places of one woman's memory. There are one or two hints that things are not as they should be in the opening section. For example, Cora and her husband Gereon work for Gereon's parents: their young son is not only looked after by his grandmother during the times his parents are working, but he stays with his grandparents during the week, only sleeping at home at weekends.
The book begins with Cora's strong desire to commit suicide, an impulse triggered by an attempted sexual approach from her husband. The impulse becomes an obsession, but before Cora can fulfil her objective, she is distracted into committing a terrible crime. The rest of the book concerns Cora's treatment by the police, doctors and lawyers as "the system" grinds into gear and the people in command - invariably male - decide what to do with Cora and how her case should be handled. Is she insane or should she be in prison?
Cora herself is in no doubt: she wants to be imprisoned and makes this very plain in her voluntary statements to the police. But Rudolf Grovian, the police commissioner, is less sure. Cora has suffered a terrible head injury in her past and has no memory of how it came about. She constantly changes her story. She says things, for example when describing the details of her crime, that don't ring true compared with other criminals Grovian has interrogated over the years. She's tense and obsessive: she waters the plants in the interrogation room and criticises the police for their unclean coffee maker in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy.
The Sinner is a dark book. Its interest for the reader depends on one's willingness to enter the journey to discover Cora's past, to repeatedly dissect her childhood up to the age of 19: sometimes fantasy, sometimes real, sometimes a mixture - who can know? Cora has at least two self-consistent mental landscapes, and is in strong denial about many events in order to protect someone or some people. Her parents have themselves changed dramatically for the worse by their experiences in the Second World War - Cora's father is said to have shot Polish children while in the army, and her mother to have been the "girlfriend" of many soldiers. He has become a passive yet dangerously repressed parent and she a deluded religious maniac.
Through Cora's paternal aunt, Grovian becomes aware of the existence of Magdalena, Cora's invalid sister. Magdalena's role in the story gradually comes to dominate, as Grovian and subsequently others involved in Cora's case try to find out what really happened that night six years ago when Cora received her injury. Which of the various accounts that Cora tells her interviewers, or herself, are true? Is there really a murder involved - and if so, who is the perpetrator and who the victim?
The Sinner is a compelling, unsentimental book for readers interested in the many deceptions and strategies of which the conscious and unconscious mind is capable. It isn't a conventional mystery or exciting thriller, but in my opinion far more satisfying than either. The author creates a fully rounded portrait of her protagonist, ties up the hints and fragments that have permeated the narrative from the first page, and carries her mission through right to the final sentence. I think The Sinner is a work of great merit that transcends any attempt to categorise it into a genre.
I have recently read the four available, translated books by Karin Alvtegen (Missing, Betrayal, Shame and Shadow). There are similarities between the two novelists, in that both of them dig deep into the souls of their characters, and both do not shrink from the bleakness of despair and disgust, showing the full effects of human cruelty. Alvtegen's novels are perhaps more conventionally exciting and "of the genre" than Hammesfahr, whereas Hammesfahr is more interested in pushing at the limits of how far the mental, dissociated state can take someone, and the effect of trauma on psychology and personality. Both authors are very confident at plot and pace. I find both of them absolutely wonderful at providing unflinching insight into the human condition while at the same time creating a plot-driven story; I congratulate them and their translators.
Fiona Walker's excellent review of The Sinner at Euro Crime.
Karen Meek tells me that Petra Hammesfahr's next book to be translated into English is The Lie, translated by Mike Mitchell, due to be published by Bitter Lemon Press in October. I hope that some of her other books will soon follow.
I was going to begin my review by remarking that this creepy little book is the IN COLD BLOOD of this century, but a glance at the blurb shows me that the publisher thought of it first. THE MURDER FARM is a complete dissection of the events surrounding a murder, but is also a rhythmic, ritualised poem conveying the seething emotions involved.
The plot is very simple, apparently is based on a true story (although this book is a fictionalised version of it). Old Danner, a farmer in a remote area of Germany, is murdered, together with his wife, his daughter Barbara, her two young children and the maid. Part of the book is written in narrative form, as a straight telling of the story; and part of it is a series of transcripts (in a different font) of "witness statements" by various neighbours, villagers and relations of the family and the maid to (presumably) the narrator who is trying to piece together what really happened. Through these statements, we absorb the atmosphere of the effects of the Second World War on this hard-working and somewhat impoverished community, the struggles to keep the farm going in an era where people were coming to terms with their defeat, and the mutual suspicions engendered by foreign workers.
The reader is constantly unsettled by the shifting perspectives of the different witnesses, young or old, educated or ignorant, confident or hostile; gradually a picture emerges of Danner as a brutal man, harsh to his family and boasting about his hidden fortune while forcing them to work all hours of the day for little thanks and no luxuries. As the book progresses, hints and accusations coalesce into the true extent of his cruelty.
Interspersed with the narrative and the statements are religious poems, or perhaps it would be more accurate to call them hymns, which shout from the page and add to the mounting unease. As the book nears its end, we learn that an itinerant criminal has previously learnt about Danner's stash of money and has decided to rob the family at night. He hides in the barn, and in the lead-up to the events of the final, awful night, the reader is constantly wrong-footed about the identity of the murderer. The book delivers a solution, both grisly and sad, though we don't learn why Danner became what he was.
This bleak, short novel is one that will stick in your mind for a while, but there is little in it to smile about.
An Iron Rose, In the Evil Day, Bad Debts
These three books by Peter Temple, read in a post-Broken Shore wave of enthusiasm, are gripping, unputdownable and highly recommended. An Iron Rose is set in the cold, wet countryside near Melbourne. “Mac” Faraday is an ex-policeman with a broken marriage, still mourning his father after some years. He’s a part-time blacksmith and part-time landscape garden-labourer, when he isn’t playing for the local football team. The book opens with the apparent suicide of Mac’s neighbour and friend Ned Lowey, and continues with Mac’s and the police’s parallel, but not mutually friendly, investigation of the death. Many of the elements of The Broken Shore are reprised here in slightly different guise: the strong, silent hero irresistible to women (and he to them), the poetry of the land and working with one’s hands and institutionalised corruption. Like The Broken Shore, the solution to the mystery in An Iron Rose lies in a children’s home, this time for “wayward” girls. These similarities should not put you off from reading both books, but don’t do as I did and read them too close together.
In the Evil Day is a surveillance thriller of breathtaking pace and fiendishly convoluted twists and turns. Set mainly in Germany and the UK with a prologue in South Africa, the main protagonists are John Anslem, a freed hostage who can’t return to full mental or physical health since his ordeal; Caroline Wishart, a journalist trying to break the story of the decade but instead being manipulated by just about everyone; and Con Niemand, a South African ex-mercenary who has the information that everyone seems to want to kill him for. You really won’t be able to put this book down once you start it, it is like John LeCarré on speed: if you can keep up with the plot then I admire you – but more than that, the characters are sympathetic and their plights moving. Definitely not a book to miss.
Temple returns to the same structure as The Broken Shore and An Iron Rose in Bad Debts, the first of his Jack Irish novels. Jack is a hero in the same mould as Mac Faraday and The Broken Shore’s Joe Cashin; in fact some might reasonably say they are indistinguishable once you’ve substituted a smithy for a furniture-making workshop and horse racing for soccer. All the men have loyal friends who are specialised at just the skill that is needed at a given time. Jack Irish, a widower and “retired” lawyer, is a less sympathetic protagonist than the other two, though – he’s not that principled and is genuinely cowardly. However, I warmed to him in the last part of the book when his girlfriend, a feisty reporter, makes him do the decent thing. The plot of Bad Debts concerns the death of after his release from prison of a petty criminal who had been poorly defended by Jack. In a fit of conscience, Jack begins to investigate the man’s death and uncovers a nest of corrupt vipers. All great stuff, and the horse-racing syndicate adds an extra dimension.
The Chicago Way by Michael Harvey is a different kettle of fish – a noir thriller in the mode of Chandler or Ellroy. Michael Edwards, private eye and ex-cop, is asked first by an old colleague and then by a suspiciously beautiful young woman to find out what really happened when she was viciously attacked some years ago. Edwards works by using his contacts to delve into the Chicago police force’s various archives – it seemed to me to be slightly stretching it to think that the answers to unsolved murder cases were simply sitting on a dusty shelf because everyone was too busy to follow them up, but the modus operandi gives the author chance to air his expertise in these matters. As time goes on, it seems more and more likely as if a serial killer is at work. Although I felt that the book was not entirely credible, especially when things come to a head regarding Edrward’s childhood friend from the streets and the unconvincing, somewhat clichéd, denouement involving his client, the book is a lean, mean read – with his knowledge of the windy city, Harvey has the potential to move up to Connelly or Crais territory if he reduces the slight “made for TV” taste in favour of tighter plotting..
Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell is a poetic novella set in the Ozarks – the impoverished and (in this book) icily cold mountain region of Missouri and Arkansas. Ree Dolly is a 16-year-old member of one of the clannish and impoverished families of the area, and the book describes her Homeric search for her missing father, who has put up the family house as security against a court appearance. The privations experienced by Ree as she pursues her apparently hopeless quest, against a background of trying to keep her small family together, are horrific. The hideous ramifications of “crank” (methamphetamine) production, the modern moonshine, are so intensely conveyed that I sometimes could barely read on. Yet the book is not gratuitous – rather I kept wondering why Ree let herself suffer so. We know she dreams of joining the US Army, but why does she stay in this closed community – closed to the assistance of education, medicine and the law? I was answered by the end of the book, when Ree’s Greek tragedy is played out: like Frodo, she has played by the only rules that can matter for her, and she receives her reward. A desperately sad book, brilliantly conveying the histories and culture of these people, and one that won’t leave you in a hurry.
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn is a very different novel of the deep south. Here is melodrama in full: Joan Crawford-like mothers, Lolita-like daughters, soap-opera and teen high-school mixed in Grand Guignol of the first order. The plot is driven by a young and, we are told, second-rate reporter, Camille Preaker, who is sent by the grandfatherly editor of her Chicago newspaper to her hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri, when a young girl is abducted and killed. The idea is that Camille will break the story and regain honour both for herself and for her lesser-known paper. Because she has no budget, Camille has to stay with her estranged family: her obsessively houseproud and remote mother, her uninvolved stepfather and her precocious teenage half-sister. Everyone in her family, and everyone Camille meets, whether police, old school friends, or various members of the community, are universally strange or downright weird. This is one of those books where you could almost strangle the heroine yourself because she acts like a child and refuses to take control of the situation she’s in, being a passive victim of her circumstances. (Her body is covered in words made by cutting herself over a period of many years.) But she perseveres (or maybe I should write stumbles) to a solution of sorts. Without a doubt, the parodic account of the apparently perfect small town seething with vice under the surface is a page-turner, and the book probably deserves its enthusiastic cover blurb from Stephen King. This one is best-seller, not literary, crime.
The Murmur of Stones by Thomas H Cook is a claustrophobic little account of the death by drowning of a severely autistic boy. The tale is told by David, the boy’s uncle, and through him we gradually learn of his ghastly childhood, being bought up by a megalomaniac failed author whose wife has left him. Scarred by these experiences and his shattered family, David has a deliberately dull life with his wife Patty and daughter Abby. His sister Diana, however, is brilliant, and is completely distraught when her autistic son dies on one of the rare occasions she’s gone out and left her husband in charge. Cook builds up the tension beautifully in the book—did the boy’s father murder him? Did Diana? Diana’s behaviour becomes increasingly erratic and obsessive, zeroing in on Abby for her theories about memory in inanimate objects. Although the eventual solution is a bit of a cheat, this creepy tale reverberates in the mind. Diana is a particularly vivid creation.
Giles Blunt’s The Fields of Grief continues his excellent Algonquin Bay series, featuring detectives Cardinal and Delorme. I don’t recommend reading this one if you haven’t read the previous books, as this one starts with a real shock to regular readers whose impact will be lost if you aren’t aware of the history of the characters. I am not going to reveal the shock here, but plenty of other reviewers have done, and the book’s blurb reveals it, too. The investigation is very sad, and gradually reveals one of the creepiest and nastiest villains I’ve encountered (fictionally) for some time. I particularly liked Delorme’s thoughts on decorum – I would not agree with her in such a wholesale way about Americans, but I share her view that a return to more decorous ways would both be pleasant and go some way to avoiding some of society’s ills.
Finally, Still Life by Louise Penny is a bit of a romantic fantasy. A murder occurs in a beautiful little village in Canada (near Quebec), one of those villages where everyone is an artist or a perfect cook. There are nice touches, for example the female police graduate recruit who messes everything up in such an unaware fashion, and who isn’t a heroine. But although the book is a pleasant read with some nice echoes of Miss Marple, I could not get too involved in its “cosy” ambience. A lot of people have liked it, though, as it won the “best first novel” Arthur Ellis award from the Crime Writers of Canada (I presume in 2005 when the book was first published).
