Final stop is Turkey on the whirlwind tour of crime fiction throughout Europe. I have selected Mehmet Murat Somer, a Turkish writer whose highly unusual detective novels feature a sassy and nameless transvestite who begins her career as amateur sleuth in a funny and surprisingly poignant crime thriller called The Prophet Murders. By day a whiz of a computer consultant, by night a night club owner who sports Audrey Hepburn look-alike outfits our hero (and heroine) stumbles upon a series of murders. The victims are all transvestites who all bear the given names of Islamic prophets. The book is not as successful as a whodunit and the mystery is less than gripping. However, the story of these marginalized men who love to dress as women yet still know how to be men in a culture where being out and proud can lead to imprisonment and even execution is the most fascinating part of the book. And the plot takes advantage of some very topical elements (fundamentalist Islamic beliefs, bigotry, gay life as a cultural phenomenon) to show off a world few readers would ever encounter had the book been published as a mainstream novel. By adding a crime plot Murat Somer cleverly manages make material that might be unpalatable to some reading audiences more easy to swallow...so to speak. Added to all that are the lively and hip translations from Kenneth Dakan that make the books all the more accessible and entertaining.
The protagonist is not anything like a stereotype of the tranny with the heart of gold, or worse, the blowzy lampoon of a drag queen who tends to show up in comedy films and gay fiction way too often. She is just as tough in her guise as Audrey as he is in his day life as the brilliant computer geek. He's as handsome in the daytime as glamorous in his Audrey alter ego at night. And she's a literal kickass having mastered some killer moves in Thai kickboxing. You'll not come across anyone like her in the your usual pile of crime books.
The series has been given two nicknames since the lead character is as yet unnamed. The US publisher attempted to dub it the Turkish Delight series, but I prefer the more relevant Hop-Çiki-Yaya series. According to the author Hop-Çiki-Yaya is a Turkish derogatory term for queer people derived from a cheerleading chant popular on Turkish colleges in the 1970s. I like it because Murat Somer uses it he way the word "queer" has been taken back by gay activists - an insult turned around by the oppressed to be an empowering term just like the way our hero and heroine finds crime solving to be empowering.
The Hop-Çiki-Yaya series The Prophet Murders (2008) The Kiss Murder (2009) The Gigolo Murders (2009) The Wig Murders (coming in 2012)
Every time someone orders flaming saganaki in a Greek restaurant out here in Chicago the entire restaurant shouts out "Opa!" I think this is something oddly peculiar to Greek restaurants in the Windy City, especially if you happen to be eating at The Parthenon, a 40 year old restaurant in GreekTown where the dish of cheese set on fire originated. Anyway, I couldn't resist that since we're in Greece this week for the EuroPass Challenge sponsored by Mysteries in Paradise. For your reading pleasure I have found a few books set in both ancient and modern Greece.
Gladys Mitchell wrote two books set in Greece. They are slightly related to each other. First is Come Away, Death (1937) which takes Mrs. Bradley on a tour of Greece along with twelve others including the tour host Sir Rudri Hopkinson who plans to recreate rituals at the ruined temples in hopes of summoning the goddess Demeter. Mysterious happenings with a statue, poisonous vipers, blood sacrifice and a severed head all play a part in this typically odd detective story from the eccentric Gladys Mitchell and her equally eccentric psychiatrist sleuth Dame Beatrice Bradley.
Over forty years later Mitchell returned to Greece in Lament for Leto (1971). As with Christie who re-used a character from At Bertram's Hotel in her later book Nemesis, Mitchell recycles a character from Come Away, Death. It is Ronald Dick (one of the travelers in the earlier book) who fortuitously runs into Mrs. Bradley. He tells her he is organizing another tour of the islands this time as a cruise. Mrs. Bradley agrees to join his group and no sooner are they at sea then strange events take place. There is a jewelry theft on board ship and later the body of a woman is found at the foot of the sea cliff known as Sappho's Leap. Mrs. Bradley does her usual inimitable turn as detective to reveal the culprit.
For those who enjoy historical mysteries I can highly recommend the trio of books by Paul Doherty which feature Alexander the Great and his physician/advisor Telemon. I previously reviewed at length the second book The Godless Man which you can read here. Each of the books features at least one impossible crime and sometimes also a locked room mystery. There are multiple crimes committed by various gruesome means. Often the books will have more than one murderer at work. It is war time and there is much skulduggery and espionage working their insidious way into the intricate, sometimes complex, but thoroughly engaging stories.
In the first book, The House of Death, Telemon must discover the identity of a mysterious killer who leaves behind puzzling messages alluding to passages in The Iliad and the playwright Euripides. The Godless Man is similar with a master spy calling himself The Centaur plaguing Ephesus with killings. The last book, The Gates of Hell, takes place during Alexander's siege of Halicarnasus and involves the search for a manuscript in code that holds the key to a hidden treasure and the secret to capturing the city. Of course, several murders occur throughout the story including one committed in a sealed and haunted room. I like this series, but they may not be for readers who shy away from books with high body counts and graphically described murders and violence. War ain't a pretty thing, my friends, and it was nastier than Hell in ancient times according to Doherty.
We’re in Italy this week as part of the Crime Fiction on EuroPass Challenge and I’ve picked a writer who has been described as "one of Italy's most popular authors and a major exponent of the Mediterranean Noir novel." I’ve never heard of the term Mediterranean Noir. I guess noir can come from all parts of the world and have some adjective tossed in front of it to distinguish it from regular old Noir which I guess is American Noir. In any case Massimo Carlotto is as dark a crime writer as you can possibly get. A moniker like the "Italian Jim Thompson," another nickname Carlotto earned that I’ve seen plastered over the internet, is an accurate description of the kind of book you’ll get should you be daring enough to dip into these Mediterranean noir waters.
I chose The Goodbye Kiss (original Italian title: Arrivederci amore, ciao) as the book to pop my Carlotto cherry. It was a brutal and savage read. Densely packed with incident and laconic in style the English translation is a bit jarring with its frequent smattering of swear words and American idioms. I was curious if the original Italian was as tough and earthy and if the translator felt it necessary to Americanize the prose because the Italian idioms lost something in translation.
The book is the story of an ex-con who fled Italy to join a terrorist group in Central America and is now planning to return to his homeland. A lengthy prologue acquaints us with his former life as a two bit crook in Italy, explains why he fled the country after a bank robbery went wrong, his joining the terrorist group and his subsequent expulsion from the group. He returns to Italy where he is exposed by the police for framing an innocent prisoner for his past bank robbery. The police reveal they know everything about his life as a terrorist in Central America, the plan for him to get off for his past crime, and they force him to turn police informer in exchange for keeping him out of prison where he most assuredly would've been killed by those inside.
The four violent chapters relate his adventures in dealing with the police as newly christened rat, and the variety of crooks, murderers and women he uses and abuses. I confess that two chapters of this slight book (it’s only 144 pages) were enough for me. The protagonist is a repulsive misanthrope who has resigned himself to take what he can wherever he can from whoever he can and to hell with the consequences. He trusts no one. Women in particular suffer the most at his hands. They are nothing but sexual objects to him. The sex scenes are loveless brutal rapes. No one matters to him.
Here is a passage the pretty much sums up the book:
Once upon a time I wasn't like this, but things I went through transformed my life. I changed. I felt like something inside me had snapped. Maybe some asshole psychoanalyst would've said prison had destroyed my sense of balance. The relation between the guards and convicts really wasn't so different from what I set up with Flora and the widow. [...] I could find some meaning in life and imagine a future only by constantly testing myself with extreme experiences. I liked being a bad egg. And I finally had a chance to become a winner.
This was obvious to me. I got that point long before I reached that paragraph. And I got it over and over. For me the book would go nowhere. To read multiple variations on the theme of the crook who cannot reform, who realizes that life outside of a prison is no different than the life inside, that all is corruption, that life is cheap and short so damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead, was not going to approach anything near a fulfilling reading experience. So I chose to close the book and leave it unfinished.
Massimo Carlotto
Carlotto has also written a series of books about Marco Burratti, an ex-con turned private eye dubbed the Alligator, who has a thirst for justice. Perhaps had I known there was an alternative to this book I would’ve selected one of the three "Alligator books" available in English translation. But that news came too late for me. This is the first and last Carlotto book I will read. If this is your kind of thing don’t let my dismissive review stop you from finding a copy and trudging through the dregs of humanity.
As for me, I need to read something funny and light now. Where is that L.C. Tyler book I put aside...?
Other Italian reads in crime and mystery fiction (most likely far better recommended than what I had to offer) can be found at Kerrie Smith's Mysteries in Paradise blog.
The 1st American edition
w/pictorial boards depicting Rivoli
I doubt anyone among our regular readers knows of or has read anything by John R. Carling. He belongs to the long faded school of Romantic fiction that also houses the works of George Barr McCutcheon, Jeffery Farnol and Arthur W. Marchmont among many others. These particular books are characterized by high melodrama, complex action-oriented plots, young lovers at odds with each other, and a florid prose style firmly rooted in their time period. While many Edwardian and Victorian writers can seem rather contemporary to 21st century readers Carling and his ilk belong to the past. If you willing to transport yourself back over one hundred years these books can be an entertaining, though sometimes intermittently cumbersome, read. The Weird Picture (1905) is one of the few exceptions free of boring passages in an era that was increasingly turning away from excessive melodrama in favor of realistic domestic drama. It's a book I was surprised to discover was on an equal with many of the potboiler thrillers of today.
Frank believes he spies his brother in Dover
(art by Cyrus Cuneo)
The book opens with the disappearance of George Willard on the eve of his wedding to Daphne Leslie. The novel is narrated by Frank, George's brother, who for years has also been in love with Daphne. Frank is confused and disturbed by his brother's having taken flight. Confused because he is sure he has seen George in Dover as he was disembarking from the boat train. Disturbed because later on the train home he shares a compartment with a mysterious veiled woman who is carrying George's monogrammed valise. The woman is mute and cannot explain how she came to be carrying the suitcase, but Frank pursues her to a boarding house. When the door is answered by an old Italian man he tells Frank there is no woman living in the house and no one answering George's description lives there either. Is that enough mystery for you? Wait there's more.
Daphne receives a letter from George in which he apologizes for his ungentlemanly behavior of the day before they are to be married. He says "terrible circumstances" have forced him to give her up. He cannot marry her nor ever "hope to look upon [her] face again. Do not seek me, you will never find me." So Daphne, Frank and Daphne's father Gerald do what anyone would do. They go off on a whirlwind tour of Europe. Forget George's melodramatic vanishing and self-imposed exile. Just dismiss his claims and the mystery of it all. Better to be distracted with the delights of a continental tour than bear up and discover the truth, right?
Daphne is visited by a mysterious figure
(art by Cyrus Cuneo)
It is in Rivoli, Switzerland that the story takes an even stranger twist. The trio meet up for the second time with painter Angelo Vasari who they had earlier met in England. He is being celebrated for a near masterpiece he created called "The Fall of Caesar." Vasari hints at a secret method he has borrowed from the Greeks that has allowed him to create a new type of vividly realized and striking painting. A variety of incidents lead Frank to believe, though he has not yet seen the painting, that it bears the image of his missing brother. He also suspects that Angelo is a fraud and that he is not the true artist of "The Fall of Caesar."
Then Frank believes he sees the old Italian man who answered the door at the boarding house where the veiled woman fled. He is in conference with a priest taking confessions. Later, this man is discovered dead at the foot of cliff. Frank and Uncle Gerald use their innate amateur sleuthing skills to point out wounds on the neck that indicate strangling and a button clenched in the man's fist torn form an article of gray clothing. They are sure that they man was murdered.
Meanwhile Angelo rabidly pursues Daphne claiming his love for her, that she is the perfect model for his next great painting. He has already used her face for a Madonna that hangs in a local cathedral and she is causing a stir among the locals who recognize her face from that painting. Daphne shuns all Angelo's attentions. Frank is clearly jealous.
Frank at the mercy of the mad villain
When the trio return to England for a Christmas visit at the home of Sir Hugh Wyville the novel transforms once more into a Gothic imbued thriller. Silverdale Abbey, a 600 year-old ancient nunnery and former silver mine, has a haunted past. Nuns who broke their vows are said to have been thrown down an abandoned shaft and their ghosts haunt the abbey. It should come as no surprise that Angelo Vasari reappears and the mysterious painting "The Fall of Caesar" turns up in Sir Hugh's private art gallery. Just as Sir Hugh is about to unveil the painting to Daphne, Frank and Uncle Gerald it is discovered to have been stolen from the locked and sealed gallery.
All of the various mysteries, the murder of the Italian man, the meaning of the mute veiled woman on the train and most importantly of what happened to George are all revealed in a climax worthy of a Guy Boothby thriller. Madness is at the heart of the novel. And the macabre motives of the villain are rooted in - of all things - the demand for realism in art. Here are the words of the villain who performs a five page monologue/confession in the the last chapter fittingly titled "The Denouement!"
You see this is the age of realism. Nothing is now accepted in literature, art, or the drama that does not bear on its front the stamp of reality. Art, if it is to hold the mirror up to Nature, must not shrink any more than medical science from experimenting on the living frame, and analysing with delicate eye its varying of phases of agony.
I think that this was the point of Carling's book. He had recognized that the kind of book he liked to write was something of a dinosaur already in 1905. He had already written The Shadow of the Czar (1902), a swashbuckling adventure, followed shortly by a supernatural mystery called The Viking's Skull (1904). With The Weird Picture he seemed to have exhausted his imagination and waved the white flag in the face of realism. While some of his more successful contemporaries managed to carry on the trend of these fanciful, completely unrealistic stories well into the mid 1920s Carling seemed to have surrendered to the tastes of the modern reader. Fittingly, his last book was called The Doomed City (1910), a Romantic historical epic about the fall of Jerusalem.
The second US edition of The Weird Picture
This was a double duty post - both a Friday's Forgotten Book and a late entry in the Switzerland stop on the Crime Fiction EuroPass challenge. For more overlooked and forgotten books visit Patti Abbot's blog. For further reading by Swiss crime writers and mystery novels set in Switzerland visit Mysteries in Paradise.
I missed Switzerland last week, but I'll make up for that later this week. This week the scheduled stop is Czech Republic, but because this blog more often than not takes you into the past via books long out of print we are time travelling to Czechoslovakia and the days of the Cold War. Our stop is just outside of Brno where we join the Cernik Circus as they prepare to flee the communist regime and make a daring escape (breaking many laws along the way thus qualifying for a crime novel rather than a mere adventure novel) into Austria. The book is Man on the Tightrope (1952) by Neil Paterson, made into a far better movie of the same name directed by Elia Kazan with an exciting screenplay by Robert E Sherwood. This will be a side by side review and contrast of the book and the film.
The book is a slight one. Dubbed a short novel it's a very quick read at only 135 pages and large type. It was an expansion of a magazine article by Neil Paterson titled "International Incident" and was inspired in part by the escape of Circus Brumbach from East Germany to West Germany in 1950. Paterson has changed his circus to one in Czechoslovakia that happens to be travelling in the vicinity of the Austrian border and dedicates his book to all Czech people who has managed a cernik. I tried to find out if this is a slang term in Czech, but came up with nothing. Perhaps some linguist who stumbles across this article might be able to clue me in if Paterson chose Cernik as the name because it means something else. Please drop a line if you know.
While Man on a Tightrope is a fast paced story about the circus owner, his family, a run-in with the Czech police and a rival circus owner there really isn't much to the book. The actual escape is not even described. The escape plans are mentioned twice in dialog prior to the actual escape, but the escape itself occurs offstage. The characters, apart from Cernik himself and a well drawn portrait of his rival, Heinrich Cheb, who owns the only other travelling circus in Czechoslovakia, are little more than sketches or ideas of characters. The reader knows only names and their role as performer in the circus, or their relation to Cernik's family and very little else. While there should be ample opportunity to explore the dichotomy of an entertainment world existing in a Communist regime and all the pitfalls of living a nomadic life in what amounts to a police state Paterson chooses not to comment on that part of the story at all.
In contrast, the screenwriter Robert E. Sherwood who adapted Paterson's brief book skillfully adds numerous scenes filled with intriguing ideas and also shows us the escape. It is after all cinema - pictures and action should tell the story. Sherwood fleshes out the relationship between Cernik (commandingly portrayed by Fredric March) and his seemingly idle and trampy wife (sultry Gloria Grahame exuding sex appeal as she always does); adds an idyllic romance between Foster (renamed Vosek in the film and energetically played by Cameron Mitchell) and Cernik's daughter (a rebellious and feisty Terry Moore); and adds the much needed tension between the circus performers and the Communist government - especially a brilliant scene in which the Ministry of Propaganda reprimands Cernik for not adding their disinformation into his clown acts instructing the audience on the evils of capitalism.
Terry Moore as Tereza defies her stern father Cernik (Fredric March)
The movie uses most of what occurs in the book but rearranges the order slightly altering them. The film stresses the reasons that the circus needs to leave, underlines the oppressive life in Czechoslovakia with some brief and sometimes powerful scenes. The opening sequence where a police cordon forces the circus troupe and their caravans and cages of animals off the road so that speeding trucks carrying Czech dissidents marked with giant X's on the backs can be taken away no doubt to some prison or camp sets the mood perfectly and prepares the viewer for the domineering and bullying communist bureaucrats who will appear often to cause trouble for Cernik and his performers.
Cernik must contend not only with the oppressive government but dissension among his own employees. Zabek, the leader of tent men (somber and forboding Richard Boone) reminds Cernik that their are the labor force of the circus, the ones who are doing real work; the rest of the circus is made up of libertines and performers who do little to benefit the people's government. He also points out that the circus is no longer owned by Cernik in this new world, it is the property of everyone. More obstacles arise as the escape plan is overheard by an embittered employee who informs Cernik's rival Heinrich Cheb (in the movie renamed Barovic and played with showman-like gusto by Robert Beatty). Cheb then bargains with Cernik allowing the escape to take place without informing the police if only he can have tents, seating and a few animals.
The climax of the film is the escape itself and all members of the circus must do their best to distract both Czech and Austrian military personnel when they get to the border. It's a interesting blend of surreal circus entertainment and chaotic gunfire when the entire troupe makes a break for the border. There are acts of surprising heroism and sacrifices that must be made. After reading the book and having been robbed of the thrilling escape sequences it was rewarding to see Kazan, Sherwood and the remarkable cast pull off with skillful suspense what any book about an escape should never omit. I highly recommend finding the movie and watching it rather than reading the book. The film is more intelligent, more dramatic, and more suspenseful than Paterson's slight cheat of an escape adventure.
For other adventures in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic please visit Mysteries in Paradise, our host blog for this Grand Tour of crime fiction throughout Europe.
I hear yodeling, I smell amazing chocolate and baked goods, and I see mountains. They must be the snow covered, jagged peaks of the Austrian Alps. We have arrived in Austria - more specifically the state of Tirol, home of the grandest of the Austrian Alps. Hope you've brought along your ice axe, a warm anorak, sturdy rope and your crampons. We are in for some challenging and deadly mountain climbing in the pages of Lewker in Tirol by Glyn Carr.
When Abercombie Lewker's beloved vintage auto suffers an accident at the hands of a reckless lorry driver he takes "the Dowager" in for hopeful repairs. The mechanic gives him bad news. She's a goner. Then the mechanic, Ted Pirner, starts talking of his hobby as a mountaineering guide. He's looking forward to a trip to Austria, to be exact his parents' home province of South Tirol. Lewker becomes nostalgic for his more active globetrotting days and his own mountain climbing adventures, most of which included some unfortunate murders and some amateur sleuthing. A discussion with Georgie, his wife, and a fellow thespian in his acting troupe decides him to make one last climb. And so he heads off to climb the Zuckerhütl in the Stubai Alps of southeastern Austrian.
Technically, he begins in Italian territory and will cross over into Austria. For we soon learn of some interesting history about Tirol -- how it was split back in 1915 and the southernmost portion annexed to Italy. At the end of WW2 the Austrians were hoping that it would be returned to them, but somehow it was utterly overlooked at the treaty talks, though Italy and Austria worked out an arrangement to recognize the rights of the German speaking population that remained in South Tirol. But a rivalry bordering on hatred still exists at the time of the novel's action and there are signs of dangerous activism intermingled with terrorism.
Zuckerhütl, 3,505 metres (11,499 feet) The highest peak of the Stubai Alps
The Junge Adler (Young Eagles), a German speaking activist group who oppose the still valid annexation of South Tirol to Italy, are becoming violent. Bombs have been set off in the mountains, shootings have taken place at mountaineering parties. All of this in order that attention be drawn to the Junge Adler's cause of returning South Tirol to Austria. Lewker is warned of this activity prior to his setting foot on his tour. His guide, Josef Herkomer, was the most recent victim of these attacks. Josef assures Lewker he will be safe. He cannot imagine another attack would take place so soon. Little do they know.
The mountain climbing sections are intricately described. The climate, the terrain, the history are all neatly woven into the action sequences. We also get the inside dope on a rivalry that exists between Josef and Mario Papi, an Italian guide who happens to be in love with Josef's daughter. This can only mean trouble in a crime novel. When another shooting occurs and one of the guides is wounded in the mountains we know that perhaps there is something a little more than terrorist activity going on in the Alps. Lewker does a fine job of sorting out just who is trying to do in whom. When the expected fatality does occur he offers his assistance to the local police and gets to the bottom of the criminal activity.
Showell Styles, AKA Glyn Carr
"Glyn Carr" is in reality writer Frank Showell Styles, an avid mountaineer himself. Under his own name he has written several non-fiction books on the sport, two series of nautical adventure fiction, and a few espionage thrillers that sometimes incorporate mountain climbing in the plot. In his guise as "Glyn Carr" (a clever pun in Welsh) he created Shakespearean actor, mountaineer and amateur detective Abercrombie Lewker, or "Filthy" as his friends and wife call him. While most of Lewker's adventures are confined to his homeland of Wales he has traveled to Norway, Switzerland, France, Majorca, and even Nepal in his pursuit of his favorite sport and avocation of crime solving.
Several of the Glyn Carr books have been reissued by Rue Morgue Press and are marked with an asterisk in the bibliography at the end of this article. Lewker in Tirol is, however, not one of the reissued titles.
And what's a visit to Austria without some local music? Here are Die Mayrhofner singing about the Zillertal, their home, which is not actually featured in Carr's book but it's in the same Bundesland of Tirol.
For other visits to Austria and more criminal depictions in its gorgeous surroundings be sure to visit Mysteries in Paradise, our host blog for this whirlwind trip through Europe.
The Abercrombie Lewker detective novels
*Death on Milestone Buttress (1951) *Murder on the Matterhorn (1951)
*The Youth Hostel Murders (1952) The Corpse in the Crevasse (1952)
*Death under Snowdon (1954) A Corpse at Camp Two (1955) Murder of an Owl (1956) Swing Away, Climber (1956) The Ice Axe Murders (1958) Holiday with Murder (1960)
*Death Finds a Foothold (1961) Lewker in Norway (1963) Death of a Weirdy (1965) Lewker in Tirol (1967) Fat Man's Agony (1969)
Deutschland, Deutschland, über Alles! The train is pulling into Germany this week on our grand tour of Europe as depicted in crime fiction through the ages.
Decades ago, in my teen years, I traveled to the Rhineland area and Bavaria for three weeks. Germany will always bring back memories of peppermint tea, reckless driving, my first visit to a farm of any kind (pigs, cherries, apples and bees), my first taste of unhomogenized, unpasteurized milk that sent me running to the bathroom, a visit to a German movie theater for Krieg der Sterne (the German dubbed version of Star Wars), and lots of drunk teenagers in Munich (that would be us Americans behaving badly).
But when I think of Germany in terms of crime fiction I think of two things immediately - spies and Nazis. Sorry, Germany, but you just can't escape your past as far as thriller fiction goes. Travel with me into the cobweb enshrouded section of the Pretty Sinister Books' vault while I drag out a few dusty and forgotten tomes that capture Germany in fictionalized terms from the 1920s through the 1960s.
Francis Beeding was the pseudonym created by British writers Hilary St. George Saunders and John Palmer. Palmer was a drama critic and Saunders was an ex-military man. They met while at the League of Nations. Naturally, when they decided to collaborate as novelists they wrote about wartime and espionage. Their main contribution to crime fiction was Colonel Alistair Granby, of the British Intelligence Service who was primarily involved in battling wicked German spies all over Europe. His adventures in Germany included The Secret Weapon (1940). The other 16 books were set in Geneva, Italy and France but with quite a cast of double agents and duplicitous characters in disguise who would almost always turn out to be German spies. They also created German master criminal Professor Kreutzmark who first appeared in The Seven Sleepers (1925), also Beeding's first novel. It's a roller coaster ride of a thriller, heavily populated with vivid characters, action galore and a plot similar to the pursuit adventure novels of John Buchan.
Dennis Wheatley loved to write about Nazis and Satanism. His genre blending thrillers incorporated spybashers and ghostbusters. The books could convince you that Adolf Hitler had no part in the nefarious work of the Nazis and that they were actually in service to the Devil himself. They Used Dark Forces (1964) although written in the 60s was set in 1943 and featured Gregory Sallust, a sadistic British spy, who does battle with Ibrahim Malacou -- hypnotist, astrologer and Satanist. They form an unlikely partnership in the war against Nazi Germany. Two earlier books with Sallust as the series protagonist were also set in Germany -- Faked Passports (1940) and The Scarlet Impostor (1940) -- but were more mainstream espionage thrillers lacking any of Wheatley's usual fascination with the occult.
Finally, Sax Rohmer wrote another of his over-the-top thrillers with supernatural overtones but which turns out to be more science fiction/fantasy about a criminal mastermind who sets up shop in the Black Forest and uses the superstitions of Eastern Europe to his advantage. In The Day the World Ended (1929) Brian Woodville discovers an army of bat-like creatures thought to be vampires terrorizing the citizens of a village outside of Baden Baden in the Black Forest. Here is his first encounter with one of the creatures:
Descending with hawklike motion was a gigantic bat! It had a sort of vague luminosity. The incredibly long body as well as the extended wings were of a gleaming purplish-gray colour: I can only liken it to that of a meat fly or common bluebottle. The wing span, I was prepared to swear, was no less than four yards; the legless body of the thing, which, as it descended, resembled less a bat than a monstrous dragonfly, was close upon six feet! [...]
"Merciful heaven!" I whispered. "What does it all mean?"
Woodville will eventually team up with series character Gaston Max and together along with some other do-gooders will discover a criminal organization headed by yet another of Rohmer's mad scientist/evil geniuses with world domination on his mind. The bat-like creatures thought to be vampires turn out to be something altogether far worse and bizarre as only Sax Rohmer could dream up.
For more sampling of thrillers, mysteries and crime fiction set in Germany (with and without Nazis) please visit Mysteries in Paradise, our host site for this tour of spy-ridden, criminal Europe. Beer and schnitzel will be served in the dining car promptly at seven.
Poul Ørum's intriguing book focuses on a Danish police investigation into the brutal murder of a nurse in the country side of West Jutland. Detective Inspector Jonas Morck, a senior officer with the Copenhagen police department, is summoned to a remote town in what an American might call the boonies. He is accompanied by his crass and jaded partner Detective Inspector Einarsen. More of a contrast in policeman's style and personality could not be imagined. While Morck displays respect for his fellow police officers, shows a kinder gentler method of questioning suspects, Einarsen has a loud-mouthed, sarcastic, in your face, utterly insensitive manner. He'd rather toss down a couple of beers, forget about even the slightest of pleasantries and skip to the chase. He hates the countryside and shows open disdain for the people who live there. Morck has more than his fair share of troubles in trying to keep Einarsen in check.
The investigation of the death of Kirsten Bunding keeps leading to a young man who works as a gofer in a local hotel. He is a somewhat slow witted and quiet young man who acts more like a boy and is described as strange and odd by most of the townspeople. He appears to have had some kind of obsession with the dead woman. And it may be that Kirsten was so lonely that she encouraged his unusual form of showing attention. When Morck interviews the boy's mother she is reluctant to give the police any information. She sees all fingers pointing at her son and the accusations sting:
"There are some people who are always being got at by others... I don't care if that makes sense or not. But that's how it is; and this is not the first time he's been got at. Maybe he's not...not quite like other people in certain ways..." She had to struggle to make herself say this; for a split second her lower lip trembled, but she managed to control herself. Was this as near as she could get to acknowledging her son's habit of running round at night in search of lighted windows? It might even be the nearest she had come to facing the truth herself. But he's never done anyone any harm. He's not like that at all. He's more of a softy – too soft, in fact – and always being defeated by things. He just couldn't bring himself to do such a thing."
Although Morck is open to her opinion he still is convinced that she is merely being an overly protective mother. The boy was seen spying on Kirsten, he was caught sitting in her car, he seemed to be morbidly obsessed by her. And yet... There were those open curtains in Kirsten's house. Could they have been an invitation? Could she have been something of an exhibitionist? Morck tries to figure all angles and not be biased by the thinking of the close-minded townspeople.
A scapegoat, he mused. The boy's made for the part, with his gauche and reticent manner. Isn't it always the same? When a crime of this magnitude is committed, not only do we want to track down and punish a criminal, but equally there is an urge to find a scapegoat, someone to be punished – a whipping boy.
Poul Ørum
Morck spends lots of time in the dead woman's house thinking about what kind of person keeps framed photographs of herself, receives huge floral bouquets, and seemed consciously to leave her curtains open at night. More importantly he wants to find out the identity of an athletic older man who appears in a beach side photograph with Kirsten. They are both in swimwear and are having a pleasant and apparently intimate time together at the moment the photo was taken. His dogged investigation will turn up the name of that man and with it a Pandora's box of secrets explode upon the story making it quite a combination of character study, detective novel and psychological suspense.
This book came out when Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö were at the top of their game with their series about Swedish policeman Martin Beck. Pantheon – the American publisher of the Martin Beck series – saw this as an opportunity to introduce more Scandinavian crime writers to the English language reading public. Scapegoat (or The Whipping Boy as it was published in the UK) was their first choice in this early wave of Nordic noir. This was Poul Ørum's first crime novel after several other mainstream works of fiction, his first book translated into English, and the winner of the Danish Poe Association's award for best crime novel of the year. If you are a fan of the current trend in Nordic crime fiction I urge you to check out this early example from one of the Scandinavian trailblazers in the genre. You will find it more than satisfying and at a mere 255 pages a compact, tightly told, story compared to the epic length of those Stieg Larsson books.
This is my delayed entry in this week's trip to Denmark on the Crime Fiction Europass. Other visits to the land of Hans Christian Andersen and innovative furniture design can be found at Mysteries in Paradise.
The train is pulling into Centraal Station in Amsterdam. Already I can smell the fragrant aroma of local baked goods and local baked people. Everyone knows Amsterdam is home to all those brown cafes where coffee and pot are sold in equal quantities, right? Well, maybe total sales tip the scale in favor of the magical weed. People tend to think of two things when Amsterdam is mentioned - pot and sex. But do you ever think of jazz music? Maybe you will now.
Evan Horne is a jazz piano player who happens to have an unfortunate habit of getting involved in music related crimes. He was created by Bill Moody, writer and jazz musician himself, and appeared in seven books so far. In his fourth outing, Looking for Chet Baker, Horne finds himself in the European playground for pleasure seekers of all types which also happens to be the city in which Baker died.
Seems a university professor acquaintance, Ace Buffington, is researching the mysterious death of Baker who fell out of a window at the Hotel Prins Hendrik back in 1988. He hopes Horne will meet him in Amsterdam and join in his adventure. When Horne arrives at the hotel Buffington is nowhere to be found. He seems to have vanished without a trace. He did, however, leave behind a portfolio with all his research on Baker stuffed behind a radiator in his hotel room. Horne is faced with a mystery again. What happened to Ace? And is his disappearance related to his work on Chet Baker and Baker's violent and seemingly accidental death?
Chet Baker memorial plaque outside Hotel Prins Hendrik
What I most enjoyed about this book was all the jazz music history and the parts dealing with music and the musician's mindset. You learn that Amsterdam has been the chosen city of exile for several ex-pat musicians in addition to Baker. You also get insight into the creative life of a jazz musician and what makes him tick. The writing about Horne's improv sessions perfectly encapsulates this kind of thinking. And one of the characters -- Fletcher Paige, an American sax player living in Amsterdam -- has some insightful comments about Horne's skills as a piano player ("...you looked like you were going to climb right in that piano.") reveal him to be the perfect personality type to sit back, reflect and observe, and take everything in. Interestingly, these are also the qualities of a good detective. No surprise that Horne is compelled to solve the mystery of Ace and Chet Baker.
The city comes alive in a different way than most books set in Amsterdam. Jazz music colors every scene. There's even a side trip to Rotterdam. But the presence of Chet Baker's ghost takes over. There are sections devoted to the trumpeter's final days interspersed within the mystery narrative. At one point Horne succumbs to the temptation of the magical weed, buys a particularly strong strain at one of the cafes and after smoking it, has a similarly strong hallucination. He imagines he sees Chet climbing up the drainpipe outside of the Hotel Prins Hendrik and Horne chases after him, but under the influence of the drug he doesn't make it up the pipe very far.
Bimhuis - Amsterdam music venue known for jazz
I liked the jazz music portions more than the crime story plot. I may check out others in the series, but a warning to anyone unfamiliar with this series. Do not start with this one. The previous book Bird Lives! will be completely ruined for you if you do. Evan Horne talks about that book in which he faces a mad serial killer and the killer's identity is revealed along with much of the story in that book. Also, Chapter 2 consists of a flashback of sorts where he seeks out a therapist who specializes in post traumatic stress disorder and he talks even more about he experiences in Bird Lives! as well as two other books in the series.
Evan Horne Jazz Music Mysteries Solo Hand (1994) Death of a Tenor Man (1995) Sound of the Trumpet (1997) Bird Lives! (1999) Looking for Chet Baker (2002) Shades of Blue (2008) Fade to Blue (2011)
We're headed on a whirlwind tour of France in this leg of the EuroPass Challenge. I'm bypassing Paris altogether for the less travelled parts of the country and - of course - less well known French writers of mysterydom.
I was on a French crime fiction kick last month. I've already written about Boileau & Narcejac here, here and here. Also recognized are Hubert Monteilhet and the writing team of Jacquemard-Senecal. But there are plenty of others I can clue you in on. Here's only a sampling of some of the most unique:
Death from the Woods by Brigitte Aubert
Aubert's novel features Elise Andrioli, one of the most original detectives in all of the genre. She's a blind and mute paraplegic confined to a wheelchair, the victim of a terrorist bomb when she was visiting Northern Ireland. She can communicate only with her eyes and later in the book one finger. You may think it impossible for an fairly immobile, non-seeing, non-speaking character to be a detective but Aubert manages to pull it off. The gimmick is that Elise is the narrator and we read all her thoughts. She's sarcastic and no nonsense. It's a mixture of the terrifying and the wickedly satirical. Truly an enviable feat to have such a seemingly incapacitated character solve a series of murders and communicate it to others. I was stunned by the book. There is also a sequel featuring Elise in her second outing as amateur sleuth called Death from the Snows which I own but have not read yet.
Death in the Dordogne by Louis Sanders
An ex-pat Bristih painter turns amateur detective when his neighbors keep dying under suspicious circumstances. Wry humor and oddball characters add interest to a very different type of crime novel. It does tend to have a dark and bleak tone that reminded me of Highsmith and I guess that's not to everyone's taste. I thought it unusual and better than average.
The Double Death of Frederic Belot by Claude Aveline
Once again I'm reaching deep into my trusty trunk of vintage and out of print books to present you with one of those nuggets well worth seeking out. This was Aveline's first novel published in France in 1932 and then in an English translation in the 1940s. It's an impossible crime mystery with some innovative plot machinations. The French writers excelled at this kind of thing.
Finally, I wholeheartedly recommend the novels of Fred Vargas who wrote The Chalk Circle Man, a book that is the closest to a Harry Stephen Keeler novel in a foreign language that I have ever encountered. Her books often deal with surreal and bizarre elements like the possibility of a werewolf on the loose in Seeking Whom He May Devour. The rest of the series featuring her eccentric police detective Commissaire Adamsberg are just as good especially Have Mercy on Us All which deals with murders traced to a strain of bubonic plague. She has written about a group of unlikely detectives dubbed "The Three Evangelists" (their names are Matthias, Marc and Lucien) who appear in two books. Only the first, fittingly titled The Three Evangelists, has been translated into English and is also includes surreal elements that recall the old-fashioned impossible crime novels of the Golden Age.
Hop aboard the other trains headed for France at our host site Mysteries in Paradise where you should be able to find links to the other posts.
The train has headed for Spain this week according to the itinerary laid out by our host Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise. This particular train is headed for the northeast of Spain, specifically Barcelona and the surrounding towns of Catalonia and the beaches of Costa Brava. There is also rather an extensive side trip to the Netherlands which came as a complete surprise to me as I read Tattoo, the completely engrossing second crime novel by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. Amsterdam, the Hague and Rotterdam were included in this private eye story that had much to offer in local color of two countries and - probably the best part of the book - in the discussions of food.
Pepe Carvalho is a private eye who lives and works in Barcelona who is hired by Senor Ramon, the owner of a hairdressing salon, to help identify the faceless corpse recently pulled from the ocean. The young blond man had a distinctive tattoo on his back that reads "Born to raise hell in hell" that should make the identification somewhat easier if only Carvalho can find out who did the tattoo. His search conveniently leads Carvalho to Amsterdam -- a city he knows all too well. He was formerly a CIA operative there in an antique shop that covered as a station for monitoring communist activities and illegal immigrants.
I can't speak for the original Spanish, but the English translation by Nick Caistor beautifully captures a European flavor both figuratively and literally. Carvalho is in love with food. The passages describing his own cooking and the meals he rapturously enjoys in the restaurants of both countries are some of the most poetic and evocative in the book.
Take this visit to the House of Lords, a restaurant Carvalho chose for their offering of gigot of lamb:
He tucked into the lamb without holding back. Well cooked meat is first and foremost a tactile pleasure to the roof of the mouth. [...] When the aroma of the burgundy hit the delicate skin of his palate and rose to fill his nostrils with the heady perfume of red wine, it was like having a velvet fluid wipe away the tiny wounds that the pieces of meat had caused.
There are also philosophical observations rendered in a witty offbeat manner:
A pleasure shared can become a spectacle, but never one enjoyed in private. ... [S]howing too plainly how much enjoyment a meal is giving you has a direct influence on the size of the tip you leave. Waiters are subtle psychoanalysts. As soon as they see from your expression that you are approaching ecstasy, they ask you to confirm it out loud, and peer into the recesses of your mind and your wallet with the intensity of a soul mate who will not achieve their own orgasm unless you leave at least fifteen per cent tip.
As Carvalho makes his way through Amsterdam where he enjoys rollmops (raw herring with onions in black bread), genever (a powerful Dutch gin) and other local fare he makes contact with all his old cronies. This leads him to the tattoo artist who created the hellish design. The tattooist also reports the dead man was employed with other Spanish immigrants at a local Philips electronics factory. There he finally gets a name for the dead man: Julio Chesma. Carvalho then must travel to the Hague and Rotterdam for further interviews with the many women in Chesma's life. After gathering all this information (and consuming several hearty memorable meals) he heads back to Barcelona.
It is a very basic plot with more question and answer scenes than legitimate detection. However, the pull of the story is not so much in the plot as it is the writing itself: the 1970s details and atmosphere of a hippie laden Amsterdam, the colorfully drawn aspects of hidden lives of the working poor in Catalonia, the odd nature of Spanish relations between Andalusian, Catalan, and Galician cultures, and ultimately his discussions of food.
Carvalho is a gourmet - not a gourmand - whose highly developed tastes have become his religion. His altar is the dining table and each meal cannot be complete without the ritual drink - the perfect wine, the crispest beer, the most potent potable - each to be served in its appropriately chosen glass. Early in the book, for example, he prepares a caldeirada and he chooses a Fefiñanes that must be served in a tall elegant wine glass. He likes people even more -- women especially -- when they truly enjoy their food. He takes note of one woman eating her meal and is "pleased to see her make short work of her barbecue ribs."
Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
Violence and food are genuine turn-ons and often they go hand in hand. In the midst of one of the most suspenseful scenes in the book -- pursuing Fat Nuria, a teenage girl employed by Senor Ramon at the hair salon -- he cannot stop thinking of food. While spying on her family who may be involved in the death of Chesma he overhears someone mention chitterlings and is sent off into a reverie of sense memory as he tries to recall the taste and texture of a "glazed pottery dish heap full of them." After a knife fight outside a bar Carvalho "could feel a warm glow in his chest as if he had drunk a glass of fine french brandy of Black Label whiskey."
The other characters are well drawn, earthy and memorable from his prostitute girlfriend Charo who must squeeze in time for her Pepito in between client appointments to the paranoid shoeshine man, Bromuro, who acts as Carvalho's informer on the seedy underworld of the Catalan neighborhoods. There is also Teresa Marsé, a typical femme fatale found in all private eye novels. She is suitably cynical and sexy and immediately attracted to Carvalho who stimulates her insatiable appetite for sexual dalliances. And there are quite a few of them.
Tattoo uses as a framework the lyrics of a popular song from the 1940s which sets to music a poem called appropriately "Tatuaje" by Rafael De León. The English translation of the song includes a line about a young man who is "bold and blond as beer"-- a phrase which recurs throughout the story and that Carvalho also uses to describe the faceless Julio Chesma. The rest of lyrics also are peppered throughout the story which made me curious to hear the song. It has been recorded by many singers, but I was fortunate to find one of the earliest filmed versions. The performer is Concha Márquez Piquer and she can be seen and heard passionately singing in the clip below.
For the complete list of this week's crime ridden journeys through Spain (and Portugal), please visit Mysteries in Paradise.
I've committed to another challenge. I finished Bev's Vintage Mystery Challenge easily. I started her Color Challenge and it went out the window after two books. Maybe I 'll finish it by the end of the year
But this one -- the idea of Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise -- has a built in deadline of every Monday for the next 12 weeks so I think I'll be able to commit and deliver. Plus it's not strictly about reading and reviewing a single book. I can write about the setting used in a book or an author from that country or create a reading syllabus (lists are easy) of books featuring the country. A wide choice is available. It made it for a very attractive challenge. So here goes...
Stop #1 is England. Too much to choose from. Where do we go? Who do I pick? I feel I need to write about someone or some book well deserved of reading but utterly forgotten. So how about Christopher St. John Sprigg? His books have been out of print for decades, two of them are nearly impossible to find, and all of those I have read were witty, puzzling and far from your average whodunit.
C. St. John Sprigg
Sprigg wrote only seven mysteries and had one series detective Charles Venables, a gossip columnist turned crime reporter, who appeared alongside Inspector Bray. The duo appear in only three books. I've read one of those. In the US it was published as Pass the Body (The Crime in Kensington in the UK) and includes an impossible crime. The novel takes place in the Garden Hotel – a fancily named boarding house that is home to quite a motley crew and run by the Budges, a husband and wife who don’t get along very well.When the wife disappears from her locked bedroom on the third floor foul play is suspected.One of the boarders who was keeping the woman company is suddenly whisked away from the door by a mysterious someone and later turns up locked in a wardrobe.The search for Mrs. Budge is on but when her head turns up in a hatbox the search turns instead for a clever and cruel killer.
I also enjoyed The Corpse with the Sunburnt Face which for the most part takes place in West Africa. The story is a blend of the crime novel and the supernatural and plays up some black magic and African folklore elements in the story of a Britisher caught up in the activities of great Kwana festival (utterly fictional). The ending may well remind hardcore detective fiction devotees of the controversial ending of The Burning Court by John Dickson Carr.
Death of an Airman includes an impossible crime as well. It has a tendency to ramble a bit. But the detective character, an Anglican bishop, makes up for the cumbersome passages with his wit and insightful observations.
The Six Queer Deaths incorporates occult and supernatural aspects, but also reveals Sprigg's Marxist leanings. By 1935 he was avowed Communist and wrote political treatises under the pseudonym "Christopher Caudwell." He even wrote a Marxist interpretation of poetry. The story is more somber than his previous six detective novels, but still has some imaginative aspects in the plot.
Someone should reprint most of these titles in easy to afford paperback editions. Sprigg's work is entertaining and unusual. It stands out from the majority of the work in a period of the Golden Age known for formulaic stories and cardboard characters. I'd class him alongside Christianna Brand for he shares her talent for wit, an arch prose style and clever plots.
The Detective Novels of C. St. John Sprigg Crime in Kensington (1933) aka Pass the Body Fatality in Fleet Street (1933)* The Perfect Alibi (1934) Death of an Airman (1934) The Corpse with the Sunburnt Face (1935) Death of a Queen (1935)* The Six Queer Things (1937)
*These two titles are the most difficult to find. I have yet to find either title anywhere.
For the complete list of posts celebrating England as Stop #1 in this Crime Fiction EuroPass Challenge go to the Mysteries in Paradise blog.
The protagonist is not anything like a stereotype of the tranny with the heart of gold, or worse, the blowzy lampoon of a drag queen who tends to show up in comedy films and gay fiction way too often. She is just as tough in her guise as Audrey as he is in his day life as the brilliant computer geek. He's as handsome in the daytime as glamorous in his Audrey alter ego at night. And she's a literal kickass having mastered some killer moves in Thai kickboxing. You'll not come across anyone like her in the your usual pile of crime books.
