NEW STUFF: An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good - Helene Tursten

An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good
by Helene Tursten
translated from Swedish by Marlaine Delargy
Soho Press
ISBN: 978-1-64129-011-1
185 pp. $12.99
Publication date: Nov. 6, 2018

I cannot resist any book about a badass biddy. I've written about the nasty senior citizen women characters found in novels of Shelley Smith, Anthony Gilbert, Ethel Lina White and even an old lady serial killer whose garden is a veritable poisoner's paradise. But not since my meeting Lucilla Teatime in Lonelyheart 4122 have I encountered such a wily, deadly and unexpectedly amusing old lady as Maud, Helene Tursten's 88 year-old spinster who will not have her tranquil easy-going life upset by anyone.

An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good is a collection of five short stories each of them detailing Maud's past life and her current reign of terror in an apartment building located in Göteborg, Sweden. Through a legal loophole Maud has been able to live in her apartment rent free her entire life and her neighbors are not too happy about it. They've managed to get her to pay a monthly assessment to help with upkeep and maintenance of the building, but as for any other expense Maud has managed to keep every krona since the end of World War 2. And she's not about to give up her home to anyone who ruffles her feathers in any way.

Each of the five stories begins with an inoffensive slight that most of us would dismiss as minor irritation. But not Maud.  Be it an intrusively friendly neighbor, a squabbling couple in the apartment above her, or the news of her ex-fiance getting married at the age of ninety Maud finds the highest personal affronts in the most innocuous events. In each instance she is compelled to take drastic measures, often to deadly extremes.

Conveniently, in most cases the slights Maud suffers turn out to be covers for more insidious designs and ulterior motives as in the first story about an obnoxious modern artist whose horrifying sculptures express her disdain for the patriarchy.  Jasmin is a figure of obvious ridicule, a parody of the worst of ultra feminism compounded by talentless dabbling in modern art. The story is both a satire of the insanity of modern art and a nasty story of revenge that calls to mind Roald Dahl's wicked sense of humor. Jasmin's latest creation -- a disgustingly laughable mobile of monstrous penises suspended from a height of sixteen feet and dubbed "Phallus III Hanging" --  inspires in Maud nothing vaguely approaching an appreciation of art but rather an ultimatum that deliciously sums up Tursten's ideas of art criticism.  In each of the stories Maud's solutions to her various "problems" become ever increasingly violent and deadly.

Helene Tursten
(photo ©Peter Knuston)

Along the way we get to learn about her rather pathetic life as caretaker to her older sister who suffered what appears to be a grandiose nervous breakdown.  Charlotte, Maud's elder sibling by eleven years, was a concert pianist but then fell victim to what Maud's mother described as "an attack of nerves" that left Charlotte unable to play music and helpless to care for herself. In later stories we discover that this breakdown was a serious mental illness aggravated by paranoia and intense phobias that made caring for Charlotte a truly hellish life for Maud. Added to these troubles is the sad engagement to a man she dearly loved that backfired and left Maud loveless and alone for the rest of her life.  The entire volume depicts Maud's lifelong mission of retribution for everyone who betrayed or wronged her.

As an added bonus the final two stories feature Tursten's series police characters better known from her novels - Irene Huss and Embla Nyström.  They investigate the death of an antique dealer who met a grisly death in Maud's apartment while she apparently was on vacation.  The murder investigation is told in two separate stories: the first ("The Antique Dealer's Death") is told from the viewpoint of an elderly neighbor, in the second ("An Elderly Lady Is Faced with a Difficult Dilemma") Maud's viewpoint sheds light on the ambiguous details of the crime with a two page coda told from the police women's viewpoint. These final two tales (which must be read in the order in which they appear in the book) reveal Maud at her most diabolical and criminally inventive self.

This is a slight book easily polished off in only a couple of hours.  Yet each story packs a wallop. Tursten can mix black humor with poignancy and have us rooting for Maud to commit the most horrific atrocities and long for her to get away with everything. Her victims may be truly awful people, but is Maud truly worse than them?  She is a woman who seems to no longer care about anything now that she is in her twilight years.  All that matters to her are life's simple pleasures -- travel to foreign countries, warm climates and cool breezes, peace and quiet in her rent free home, and a nice cheese sandwich and a bottle of Carlsberg while watching old movies on TV.

Here is a book highly recommended for those with a penchant for dark farcical comedy and evil thoughts of delicious revenge perpetrated on the ugly people who have wronged us.

HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: The Hands of Orlac - Maurice Renard

Horror enthusiasts, whether of the written word or the cinematic variety, may recognize the title I'm about to discuss.  Unless you've read the novel, however, you have no idea what Maurice Renard was getting at when he wrote The Hands of Orlac (1920).  Those who may have seen one of its many filmed adaptations have never seen the real vision of the novel which is more than the nightmare of two hand grafts gone terribly wrong.  Though populated with ghosts and occultists, several seances and necromancy and all sorts of supernatural trappings, The Hands of Orlac, in fact, is not a horror novel at all. Rather it is a brilliantly fashioned detective novel wherein a series of impossible crimes are made to appear to be the work of supernatural agencies and a spectral being.

Stephen Orlac is a concert pianist who is travelling back to Paris for a long awaited reunion with his devoted wife, Rosine.  En route to the City of Lights the train crashes and there are multiple casualties. Rosine rushes to the scene of the accident and finds her husband under the body of a man clad entirely in white.  The man in white later appears at various spots throughout the wreckage leading Rosine to dub him Spectropheles.  This ghastly figure will continue to haunt her throughout the novel appearing and disappearing at the most unexpected places.

Unlike the man in white, Stephen has survived but has also sustained terrible injuries and must be rushed to a hospital for immediate surgery. He is operated on by Professor Cerral, a celebrity surgeon specializing in neurology and transplants.  Stephen receives two hand transplants and his torturous recovery and attempt to regain his musical skills are the basis of the plot. Those who know the many movie versions know the secret of those hands and I'll not reveal it here. A fairly overused horror movie trope by now this gimmick of the hands seems to be an original idea of Renard's and he may be the first writer to use it in sensationalized genre fiction. The truth of Stephen's new hands is not revealed until the second half of the novel long after a variety of outrageous events occur ranging from ghostly manifestations, "externalized nightmares", an impossible jewel theft and the equally impossible return of the jewels to a safe in a locked rom, necromancy via a painted portrait as well as a seance complete with table tapping.

Original French edition 1920

The first half of the novel is told through Rosine's viewpoint. Though the novel is named for Stephen Orlac he is almost a minor character in this entire section. Everything we see is through Rosine's eyes and we read only of her perceptions. She is distraught that her husband is haunted by a grueling and painful recovery yet she is also terrorized by Spectropheles who she feels is responsible for a series of break-ins and crimes in their home. When the violence leads to murder the police are called in and the novel takes a sharp turn into the land of French detective novels.

It is here that the influences of French pulp writers Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, creators of master criminal Fantomas, can clearly be seen. The first half of the novel subtitled "The Portents" has faint whiffs of the popular Fantomas serials so popular only five years prior to the publication of Renard's book.  With its constant reiteration and recap of previous action and incidents the story bears obvious structural similarities to a serial and most likely did appear as one in a French newspaper or magazine. Central plot motifs like the ghost of a murderer being responsible for two deaths and the bizarre idea of a rubber glove bearing fingerprints of another person are two ideas that appear prominently in the third Fantomas serial published in book format in English as The Messengers of Evil (1911).  Renard must have been familiar with that serial. He even includes a mythical gang supposedly behind all the criminal activity. His dangerous group, La Bande Infra-Rouge (The Infra Red Gang), is pure French pulp fiction. Apaches and murderous gypsies roamed the pages of French crime stories as much as Italian thugs and Irish gangs would appear in US pulp magazines. When Inspector Cointre, the egotistical policeman who seems entirely fashioned after Eugene Valmont, begins to fasten onto the idea of faked fingerprints all hope of the supernatural has pretty much been thrown out the window.  Cointre has some of the best dialogue in the novel, too. After ripping apart a sofa and finding puppets and props that were used by the fake medium he expounds: "When dealing with mediums, never get you furniture re-covered, or at least keep an eye on your upholsterer."  

At this point it is almost certain that the crimes, especially the murders, will appear to be the work of human hands and not spectral ones. Renard does what the French do so well in the earliest forms of detective fiction. He adds twist after twist. Stephen meets with the murderer who confesses his crimes. Then Renard dares to reveal that this being is in fact a walking dead man!  But Renard is not finished with his twists until the final paragraphs when Cointre reveals the final solution to all the mysteries with an unexpected announcement.

Second English translation, the better one!
(Souvenir Press/Nightowl Books, 1980)

The Hands of Orlac is one of the finest examples of French sensationalist fiction that one can find.  The English translation by Iain White (Nightowl Books/Souvenir Press, 1980) is the second and better version for (unlike the expurgated previous English translation of 1929) it retains the full lurid details, the relentless melodrama heightened with lightning strikes of exclamation marks on nearly every page, and the nearly hysterical voice of Rosine Renard describing in grisly and horrible detail the living nightmare she is experiencing in her home. Dream imagery floods the novel. Omens are inevitable, practically inescapable. Rosine's dreams are prophetic; much of what she sees while asleep later comes true. The words "portent" and "phantasm" occur with such frequency that one often expects for the ghosts to waft off the pages.

The most surprising element in the novel not seen in any adaptation I've watched is that Stephen's father, Edouard Orlac has become obsessed with spiritism. He and his friend Monsieur de Crochans have been dabbling in communicating with the dead.  Though they are suspected of collaborating with fraudulent mediums and police are investigating their activities. In the climax of the first section one of the necromancy sequences seems to be genuine with a shocking surprise for Stephen when he spells out the name of the spirit they have contacted. And yet for all Renard's fascination with the macabre, the abundance of weird and paranormal activity, he is compelled to rationalize everything that occurred in the first half when he relates the second half entitled "The Crimes."

In the last chapters Rosine and Stephen face the inevitable and horrible truth, something the reader has most likely guessed at even if he has never seen nor heard of the several movie Orlacs. But a French detective novel has never been French without the ultimate surprise saved for nearly the final paragraph. When that gasper comes in The Hand of Orlac it is both satisfying for the reader and a godsend for Stephen and Rosine.

F@200: Frankenstein in Baghdad - Ahmed Saadawi

Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi
Penguin Books
ISBN: 978-0143128793
281 pp. $16
Publication date: January 23, 2018

For the first post in my year long salute to "Frankenstein @ 200" I've chosen a brand new book first published in Iran and winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Saadawi's novel is a phantasmagorical work that incorporates fantasy, Arabic folklore, and wartime horror in a unique retelling of the Frankenstein story. The novel is Saadawi's reaction to the inescapable violence and endless killing of a wartorn city. He envisioned a sort of Nemesis who would haunt the streets of Baghdad seeking out murderers, terrorists and soldiers responsible for innocent victims of war and bombings. In place of Victor Frankenstein we have the junk dealer Hadi who inadvertently creates a Frankenstein monster of sorts when he tries to find missing body parts for a friend's blown-up corpse. When Hadi travels to the Baghdad morgue he discovers that no attempt has been made to separate or identify any stray limbs and that they have been dumped together according to body part. The morgue attendant tells Hadi, "Just take any arm. What does it matter?" In wartime Baghdad corpses and severed limbs have become so commonplace they are just like so much junk to be piled into a bin and disposed of as quickly as possible.

Saadawi has found a way to take the basic concept of Frankenstein's thirst for god-like power and subvert it. The Creature in his novel is not as soulless as Shelley's monster. It is not without identity nor is it without purpose. Just the opposite, in fact, as Saadawi makes the perceptive point that being composed of so many body parts it is a collective of multiple identities. As for the soul there is an entire chapter devoted to the bodyless soul of a hotel guard who is the victim of a terrorist's suicide bombing attack. For the length of the chapter he travels looking for his body while Saadawi reminds us of the Muslim religious belief that without a body the soul will never be able to enter Heaven.

Ahmed Saadawi (photo: ©Safa Alwan)

The guard's soul discovers the body Hadi has reassembled and settles himself inside thus reanimating the corpse and simultaneously reawakening the many "memories" of the violent ends each separate body part endured. The soul of the hotel guard acts as a spirit of vengeance and the body sets out to find those responsible for its various destructions. As each "memory" succeeds in its act of retribution the body part dissolves making it necessary to find a replacement. What more perfect metaphor could be imagined for the relentless cycle of pointless death during wartime?

Sounds utterly gruesome, right? Why read something so truly horrifying and gut wrenching? And yet it's a masterful satire, tinged with biting humor and powerfully moving sequences, never once is there the temptation to sentimentalize the story with grief stricken longing for the horribly butchered victims of war. One character combats her grief for her missing soldier son with an untold capacity for the hope of his return. It is this missing son's  nose that Hadi finds and attaches to the creature Saadawi has dubbed the Whatsitsname (or perhaps the term is translator Jonathan Wright's invention). Each chapter focusses on one of the many characters in the novel with a trio of them -- Mahmoud, one of several journalists, Hadi, and the Whatsitsname -- taking center stage in the weaving narrative. The most original aspects of the novel are the incorporation of fantasy and supernatural. Saadawi cleverly manages to draw on the rich history of Arabic folklore familiarly known to Western readers from the 1001 Nights.

Edmund Dulac painting, 1907 edition of The Arabian Nights

The novel opens with a sort of Iranian X Files division blandly called by the drab and bureaucratic name The Tracking and Pursuit Department, headed by an egotistical and nearly incompetent Brigadier Majid who is surrounded by muscular young male servants who trot out at a moment's whim to serve tea in his offices. Slowly we learn that the Tracking and Pursuit department is primarily in charge of preventing terrorist attacks by predicting possible violent plots and ending them before they ever occur. They employ not only soldiers but a complex network of astrologers, parapsychologists, mediums, soothsayers, and "people who can communicate with spirits and djinns." Mahmoud interviews the Brigadier about the department trying his best to understand why the army would call for help from what he thinks are a bunch of crackpots. Majid replies "It's work. You don't know how many weird stories we have to deal with. The aim is to get more control, to provide information about the sources of violence and incitement to hatred and to prevent a civil war." In one chapter the reader learns that even among these specialists in the occult there is a war for power. Several sorcerers manage to locate the creature known as the Whatsitsname and using their varied talents in spell casting are trying to control the creature in order to eliminate each other so each man can become the chief sorcerer. As the senior astrologer later says to Brigadier Majid: "What's the point of predicting where a crime is going to happen when you can wipe out the criminal before he becomes one?"

Original Arabic edition (Al Kamel, 2013)

Ultimately, it is the creature itself with its multiple identities, its amassed experience and perceptions of the world "remembered" through each body part who "emerges from a daydream" to deliver the true horror of the relentless violence: "There are no innocents who are completely innocent or criminals who are completely criminal." He realizes the most telling aspect that will undermine his mission " [that] every criminal he had killed was also a victim." His rampage is pointless and he longs to be destroyed.  Yet even as the One Who Has No Name realizes his futility he becomes an omnipresent threat.  He is seen everywhere and becomes everything.  Fear spreads and the Whatitsname is called a Shiite extremist, an agent of foreign powers, an enemy of anyone who has an enemy. Even the Americans working to preserve peace blame the creature on an ingenious man trying to subvert their case. Such is the chaos of life in wartime and such is the power of fear.

As in Shelley's Frankenstein a resolution of sorts comes about only with an ironic punishment of the creature's inventor. Only when a face can be put on the creature rather than a name can the hunt end and a criminal be caught. But recalling the creature's observation we are forced to ask ourselves was the true guilty party found and captured? Saadawi offers us no pat answers here. There is no real peace either.  There is only resignation and surrender as the violence subsides temporarily only to make way for more. 

NEW STUFF: The Rabbit Back Literature Society - Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen

Quick! Give me the name of a Finnish novelist. Or any  writer from Finland.

Aha! I thought so. Somehow Finland gets overlooked in the world of letters. I certainly couldn’t come up with someone. Not even an obscure writer of a forgotten award winning book though Finland does boast such a writer: Frans Eemil Sillanpaa, winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize in Literature. Just in case you’re wondering he wrote over fifteen novels, the most well known of which was Nuorena nukkunut translated into English as The Maid Silja (or Fallen Asleep While Young). News to me.

I do know one Finnish writer now. His name is Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen but this knowledge comes only after I’ve finished reading his first novel Lumikko ja yhdeksän muuta (2006), translated into English as The Rabbit Back Literature Society (English transl., 2015). Where has he been all my life? Well, he’s been writing short stories with a science fiction/fantasy bent for the past twenty plus years while also teaching Finnish language and literature in an “upper secondary school” which I guess is Finnish high school. A prizewinner himself of a handful of Finnish genre fiction awards for his stories Jääskeläinen's first English translated book will perhaps open the door for a wider audience. A quick look at the bookselling sites already turn up two works – his award winning short “Where the Train Turns” and another story in the Finnish speculative fiction anthology It Came from the North, both offered in digital versions only.

Jääskeläinen’s storytelling is riveting, his skill in creating a sinister atmosphere is palpable, and his writing reveals some trenchant observations that are deeply evocative. No doubt all these qualities are due in part to the efforts of translator Lola M. Rogers who artfully renders Jääskeläinen’s text in English without losing its Finnish flavor. On his blog Jääskeläinen has written: "It’s obvious that English isn’t my native language and I don’t feel completely comfortable using it this way. Finnish is my guitar and when using it I’m like Jimi Hendrix. On the other hand English is for me like a bagpipe in the hands of a rabbit when I try to express my thoughts with accuracy and precision." Nevertheless he was impressed with Roger's work as translator and feels it captures his intent better than he could had he translated himself. Yet to me this book should not be known only as Finnish writing; this is universal writing touching on resonant topics that we all experience regardless of our native tongue.

German edition title is
Laura's Disappearance in the Snow

The novel is an exploration of the art of writing (sometimes the artlessness of writing), the gift for storytelling, the act of creation itself all set in the context of a fantastical mystery involving the disappearance of a Finnish writer of children’s stories, the elite group of young writers she mentored and the possible murder of one of those writers over thirty years ago. This makes it sound like a mystery novel, and it is. To be more specific it turns out to be something of a literary detective story -- but it is so much more as well. In Jääskeläinen's own words it is also a love story, a ghost story and a fairy tale.

Under Laura White’s unorthodox, often nightmarish, tutelage the nine writers of the Rabbit Back Literature Society have matured into bestselling authors and household names each with their own cultish following. Enter Ella Milana, a substitute teacher with aspirations to write, though her first love has always been literary research. Her graduate thesis was on Laura White, the children’s author who gathered the nine young writers under her wing and guided them to the top of Finland's bestseller list. When White comes across Ella’s one venture in short story writing published in the local newspaper she invites Ella to become the honored tenth member of the Rabbit Back Literature Society. While at a party where Ella is introduced to the rest of the members Laura White vanishes. Ella wants to find out why the writer disappeared and where she might be. Her research background turns her into a literary detective as she digs into the buried secrets, both literal and metaphorical, within the cult group she has joined.

We get to know the group through a strange interrogation ritual known as “the Game”. Thankfully, Jääskeläinen veers away from the usual metafiction motif of the writer as demigod and all riffs of creating that usually follow. Instead, he seems to be satirizing the writer's life. These members, though successful and popular with their fans, are at their heart a secretive, reclusive bunch festering in a morass of prurient curiosity and career jealousy. He seems to be vilifying the writer’s life and not celebrating it. He captures perfectly the writer’s capacity for all consuming envy when confronted with an artistry he knows he can never achieve.

We listen as the Society members voice their regrets and confessions of failure when they compare themselves to the original tenth member, a super genius of a writer who wrote mind-bogglingly great stories. That they can never remember his name is telling -– his talent was more important to them than his personality or his identity. They never got to know him, nor did they want to, it was his words, his stories that they desired. He was a cipher of a boy, almost always silent until he was called upon to read from his notebook. Only then did he command their attention and they were awestruck by the power of his words. His notebook soon becomes an object to be coveted by the rest of the group. Her penetrating research and relentless questioning of the Society members leads Ella to believe that the boy’s sudden and violent death might well have been a murder. Who among the Rabbit Back Society was zealous enough to kill in order to possess the boy’s notebook filled with fantastic ideas and literally awesome writing?

Along the way we are treated to metaphysical discussions of identity, the perception of the self, the need for writers to rely on others’ lives for their stories, and the loneliness of living a life as a constant observer rather than a participant. Ella's dreams are revelatory and often prophetic. Dream imagery and mirror imagery dominate the story. There are vignettes about seemingly innocuous incidents as in the sequence when Ella finds herself fantasizing about a stranger based solely on his attractive profile until he turns his head and she sees his face in full. Then everything evaporates and her opinion changes to one of disgust and indifference. It’s a universal moment that we can all relate to eloquently captured and evocatively rendered. It says so much about how Ella thinks and feels and will have repercussions as she begins to uncover and make public the secrets of the Rabbit Back Literature Society.

Because Jääskeläinen’s first love is fantasy he finds a way to interweave elements of the surreal into his densely packed narrative all the while embracing the Nordic countryman’s love of ancient mythology and folklore. There are gnomes and wood nymphs and water nixies lurking within the town of Rabbit Back. Some of the citizens make a supplemental income as Mythological Mappers who will inspect your house and yard for any variety of creatures and let you know where it is safe to stroll and where you ought to avoid. A subplot involves an inexplicable "infection" that has changed the contents of books in the public library. Ingrid Katz, head librarian and a member of the Society, has made it her mission to destroy all the infected books for fear that the contagion will spread to other books. How can one have all copies of Crime and Punishment end with Sophie shooting Raskalnikov because she feels it her duty to rid the world of an undesirable? What else might happen to other great works of literature if that infected book were allowed to exist alongside others? Laura White is in love with folklore and mythology and her stories -- though she never intended them for children -- are populated with fanciful creatures and talking animals. Martti Winter's home is surrounded by marauding packs of dogs that never stop howling and seem to be on constant patrol guarding something hidden out in the forest.

The Rabbit Back Literature Society sets up many mysteries but does not answer them all. This may frustrate some readers who prefer to have no plot threads left hanging. For others who embrace the mysterious in everyday Life it offers many rewards, plus the opportunity to discuss possibilities for those unanswered questions. Like a gourmet meal it is a book meant to be savored, digested and contemplated. From its highly original opening to the final jaw dropping pages that completely transform the story's narrative this is wholly immersive reading experience. And to carry on with the food analogy it will have you craving more from the writer. Since this first book was published ten years ago Jääskeläinen has written three more novels, none translated into English. Let us hope that this changes. And very soon.

NEW STUFF: The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair - Joel Dicker

The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair
by Joël Dicker
translated from the French by Sam Taylor
Penguin Books
ISBN: 978-0-14-3122668-3
643 pp. $18.00
May 27, 2014

It may be unfair of me but all the while during the first 100+ pages of Joël Dicker's mammoth The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair I kept hearing the strains of the Twin Peaks TV theme music.  And I pictured the beaming face of Sheryl Lee as Laura Palmer each time Nola Kellergan appears in the many flashback sequences.  Both Dicker's novel and the cult TV show of the 90s tell the story of a missing girl, the discovery of her body, and the slow reveal of who killed her. But as the labyrinthine story unfolds the Twin Peaks similarities soon dissipate and give way to something more subtle and subversive and -- dare I say it -- impressive.

Unwittingly Joël Dicker, a young Swiss novelist, has unleashed a Frankenstein's monster with the publication of this book. Part whodunit, part satire of the publishing industry, and part writer's handbook it has essentially become a work of fiction come to life.  In Dicker's novel a young writer Marcus Goldman becomes a sensation in the literary world when he publishes a book called The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair.  (Oh yes, this is a also a work of metafiction.)  The book is an instant sensation and he becomes the darling of the media. So too has Dicker whose novel first published in Europe has become a mega-hit resulting in interview after interview and travel all over the globe to talk about this unique example of reality mirroring fiction. So much travel, in fact, that he has temporarily made his home in London to make air travel simpler rather than remaining at home in Geneva where direct air flights are at a minimum. Already an international bestseller for the past year Dicker's novel has at last been translated into English and is being simultaneously released in the UK and the US today, May 27.

Not only has Dicker become the flavor of the month in crime fiction, his book (only his sophomore effort no less) has won three European literary awards including the prestigious Grand Prix du Roman from the Academie Française. Has Dicker really written a mini masterpiece, whether it be mainstream or genre fiction? Well, not really. But it is an awful lot of fun trying to figure out both the mystery of the ridiculously complex plot as well as trying to understand the reason for all the hype attached to this new writer's book.

At its core ...Harry Quebert Affair is a literary detective novel. Quebert, a literary sensation himself in the world of the novel, was Goldman's college writing instructor, mentor and eventually a good friend. While visiting Quebert for some inspiration during Goldman's severe writer's block crisis a horrible crime is literally unearthed and Quebert is thrust into the limelight as prime suspect. The body of Nola Kellergan, a teenage girl who went missing back in 1975, is unearthed in a hidden grave located on the grounds of Quebert's New Hampshire retreat. Goldman is determined to clear the name of his beloved friend and writing mentor and for the next 600+ pages (!) we follow his dogged investigation into the past of Somerset, New Hampshire, a typical New England village with more than its fair share of dirty secrets.

Joël Dicker ©Jeremy Spierer

But Dicker is not satisfied only with telling a crime story with as many twists as the Kumba roller coaster in Busch Gardens. He has cast the novel in the framework of a handbook for writers complete with boxing metaphors that might cause Philip Roth to smirk in its obvious homage. Oddly, the book chapters are also numbered in reverse numerical order (a gimmick that utterly eludes me) with each chapter preceded by sage advice from Harry to Marcus as to how a rookie should proceed in writing the Great American Novel. Problem is the advice is thoroughly hackneyed. The obvious advice and words of so-called wisdom have been given to novice writers for centuries. Why do we need to read all this? Well, Dicker has a clever and subversive reason for couching this novel as a sort of handbook for writers. It turns out to be only one aspect of a multitude of ironies culminating in the true meaning of the title itself.

I could use this review to write about the tangled plotlines, the shifts in viewpoint, the dizzying twists that keep changing how Nola is perceived or how the relationship between Marcus and Harry undergoes rifts and changes more harmful than good. But that's what all the other reviewers are writing about. What really ought to be marvelled at is what Dicker does with the genre itself. The novel is an consummate example of the ultimate challenge between reader and mystery writer, a sure temptation for readers who loved to devour the old-fashioned puzzlers of the Golden Age. Once upon a time we read mysteries to be baffled, to be fooled and to have a clever storyteller pull the rug out from under us and leave us gasping for breath or laughing in admiration for having been outsmarted. Dicker mixes both hoary old clichés (anonymous messages, secret diaries) with contemporary thriller standbys (grisly crimes, psychosexual abnormalities, a hint of tawdriness) and comes up with a crackerjack tale that both entertains and manipulates the reader.

The world Dicker creates is wholly artificial as in the best of Golden Age detective novels. We are in an entirely fanciful world where writers are superstar celebrities instantly recognizable from their DJ photos. Everyone knows Marcus Goldman, everyone has read his book. Even Harry and his mega bestseller The Origin of Evil (ironically a love story) receives the same hyperbolic attention. This is a wholly mythologized world of the novelist, something that was barely a reality when celebrity authors regularly appeared on 1970s talk shows. Like the world of John Dickson Carr where ancient estates are haunted by ghosts and criminals commit elaborate crimes in baroquely sealed rooms meant to bamboozle and confound the police so too has Dicker created an entirely artificial world where novelists are hero worshiped as demigods and treated with both awe and sycophancy usually reserved for rock stars or professional athletes. It's a wish fulfillment kind of writing to be sure and yet it is done so with the primary purpose of misleading the reader just as the great Golden Age writers did.

There are faults and irritations as well. The simplistic Confucian-like writer's advice Quebert gives his student, the not so clever boxing metaphors, redundancies in the narrative when Dicker feels it necessary to recap the plot, a crucial character whose poorly reconstructed face after a horrific beating leaves him with a speech impediment that the translator renders in cutesy but more often offensive phonetics all began to wear down the reader's patience. Also Dicker has an obsession with characters vomiting that began to really annoy me. Everyone in the book seemed to have a weak stomach and would throw up at the slightest sign of stress not just when they saw a dead body.

However, when Dicker lays off his nausea motif, discards the gimmick of the novel within the novel (which is often ham-handed), and decides to focus on Nola's perplexing and contradictory life and her mysterious death the novel is utterly engaging. His plot pyrotechnics are his strength. They are audacious and preposterous and yet perfectly suited for his ultimate aim. The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair is one of the best examples of a retro style crime novel whose only goal is to fool the reader with a gasp inducing finale. Joël Dicker succeeds in pulling off one of the best literary deceptions in years and ought to be applauded for the sheer chutzpah of his 600+ page magic trick.

FFB: The Body Vanishes - Jacquemard-Sénécal

While the first book the French writing team calling themselves Jacquemard-Sénécal wrote was in fact the second book they had published (Le onzième petit nègre, 1977), their first published book was apparently considered to be more conventional by the publisher though no less ingenious. It won for them the coveted Prix du Quai des Orfevres, the French mystery writer's prize, in 1977. While The Eleventh Little Indian (as it was published in the US) was considered "too daring" I think Le Crime de la Maison Grün or, as the English publishers redubbed the book, The Body Vanishes (1976) is far more daring. The trickery employed in this debut (yet really their second book) and the gasp inducing solution surpass what the two men did in their Agatha Christie tribute.

A drowned woman's body disappears from a river bank. It reappears in the locked and burglarized workshop of Wotan Grün, an antiquarian bookseller. The only thing noted to be missing is a rare 15th century incunabulum, the envy of several collectors and the bookseller's competitors. The woman is soon identified as the lover of Wotan's son Denis, the morose and cynical black sheep of the Grün household. As the intriguing investigation proceeds the entire household is enveloped in a world of treachery and thievery, murder attempts and suicide, and -- believe it or not -- the search for an alchemy formula for turning lead into gold.

The book introduces their series character Lancelot Dullac (cute name, huh?), a police detective who works alongside another policeman named Holz. The detection in this book is mostly of the Q&A type, though there are several instances of Golden Age type originality and cleverness in the few scenes that involve physical evidence. Most notable among those portions is a second impossible murder disguised as a suicide that involves some rigged machinery that John Dickson Carr might have dreamed up.

Once again on display a plethora of plot devices and motifs found in the work of their idol Agatha Christie. There are allusions to Evil Under the Sun, Peril at End House, Murder at the Vicarage and the many stage related mysteries she wrote. The two writers come from a theater background and once again dig into their trunk of stage tricks and illusions to bamboozle the reader with dazzling misdirection. There is even some dizzying business with rifles and bullets that reminded me of Erle Stanley Gardner's gun crazy plots. All in all plenty of wizardry and plot machinations to appeal to any fan of the puzzle driven detective novel.

*   *   *

UPDATE:  I have eliminated a sentence above that is untrue. There is no "rigged machinery that John Dickson Carr might have dreamed up" in this book.  I confused this with another book that had a similar death, misinterpreted a sentence including the phrase "machinery the murderer had constructed" to be taken literally, and completely misremembered the final death in the book. Utterly embarrassed by this blatant example of my often addled memory.

The Ancestral Precipice - Jan Ekström

"The John Dickson Carr of Sweden" proclaims the dust jacket of the first UK edition of Ättestupan (1975) translated as The Ancestral Precipice and published nearly ten years later.  Takes a while for the English language speaking world to catch on to a great writer, doesn't it? While there is a baffling locked room murder in this cleverly constructed detective novel its central theme of family secrets and adulterous affairs has more in common with Ross Macdonald than Carr.

Charlotte Lethander, calls to her home her surviving nieces and their families to celebrate her ninetieth birthday. The entire multi-generational family arrives bringing with them plans for blackmail, scheming, adultery and murder. On the very first day of this rocky reunion we learn that the black sheep Victor, a womanizing photographer who likes shooting women nude, has a letter with incriminating information he wants to sell to his father, Martin, and demands 15,000 kronor for its delivery into his hands. Additional avaricious behavior is on display from the nieces, their husbands and children as they vie for the attention of the dying aunt Charlotte. In the midst of all this fawning adulation and scheming a murderer plots a revenge years in the making.

Before the weekend has hardly started Victor and Martin are dead.  It appears to be a murder/suicide. Martin having shot Victor apparently returned to his bedroom, locked his door, and allowed the extinguishing flames in the bedroom fireplace to suffocate him with carbon monoxide. But Martin's children - especially his sharp-witted and sharper tongued daughter Vera - know that the strong-willed man would never submit to Victor's demands and that the suicide has to be a cleverly disguised murder.  But how then did the murderer escape the room? It was locked on the inside. When the police investigate the scene the damper on the flue is open making it seem impossible for Martin to have died from carbon monoxide inhalation. And yet he did.  Further complicating matters is the fact that gun found in Martin's room though recently fired is not the gun used to kill Victor. The case takes an even stranger twist when a second gun is found in the attic with fingerprints of another family member who was thought to have an alibi the night of the deaths.

"Can't tell the players without a scorecard!"
The very necessary family tree I referred to frequently while reading

Hovering over these two crimes is the death of Mauritz Corn's wife, Stella, who accidentally fell to her death and was discovered at the foot of ättestupan, the ancestral precipice of the title. The letter Victor had in his possession revealed the truth about her fatal plunge long believed to be an accident. Aunt Charlotte delivers a jarring description of the foreboding feature of the ättestupan and also the Nordic legend that attaches itself:

Do you know what was here before the house was built, just where we're standing now, I mean? An ancestral precipice. It's been here since Viking days, though I don't suppose any Vikings lived here, you know, only cultivators. Nature is harsh. [...] You know what an ancestral precipice is, Inspector? Some of the old ones threw themselves down the precipice. Others were given help when they asked for it. I wonder if anyone would want to give me help without my asking for it. For an ancient old hag it would be eminently suitable.

Inspector Durrell, in charge of the murder investigation, must not only get to the truth of the curious events surrounding the death of Victor and Martin, but also the mysterious death of Stella now looking more and more like a murder. Will the letter from Victor's blackmail scheme ever be found?  Who does it name as Stella's killer?  Will the killer strike again?

The story is filled with the kind of brooding aura and dark family secrets that fill the pages of the cases of Lew Archer. When I saw the Swedish film version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo I also noted the pervading MacDonald-like atmosphere that imbued that film.  I wonder if Stieg Larsson was familiar with the mystery novels of Ekström who appears to have been influenced not only by Carr but by Ross Macdonald.  Fans of Larrson, Carr or Macdonald will find plenty to admire in The Ancestral Precipice, a real puzzler with plenty of twists and a good example of the least likely suspect revealed as the killer in the final pages.

AVAILABILITY:  The book was first published in the US in 1982 under the blase title Deadly Reunion.  Copies of both the UK and the US editions are readily available through the various internet bookselling sties. To date this is the only novel of the popular Swedish writer Jan Ekström that has been translated into English.

FFB: The Third Lady - Shizuko Natsuki

The paperback cover of this excellent crime novel from the "Agatha Christie of Japan" proclaims that it "recalls Stranger on a Train." That quote comes from none other than Edward Gorman, who goes by a less formal moniker these days. And while there is a slight similarity to Highsmith's novel in this very different murder by proxy tale I would say that if you were going to look for a better analogy in the Hitchcock vein it would be in the obsessive romance of the private eye in Vertigo. For in the end The Third Lady is not so much a thrilling suspense novel about murder as revenge, but rather a subtle and haunting study of the illusions of love and the folly of pursuing the fantasy of an ideal lover.

Kohei Daigo is waiting in a salon of a Parisian hotel when he is drawn to a woman. He does not see her face but hears only her hypnotically entrancing voice. He is also intoxicated by her unique perfume. They have an enigmatic conversational exchange and suddenly the lights go out throughout the entire hotel. The two are told by a passing hotel employee to remain in the room until the lights can be turned back on. And so Daigo talks with the strange woman who reveals that she is longing to revenge herself on an evil woman she knows to have murdered a dear friend.

Daigo finds himself ever more attracted to the woman – the darkness of the room, her voice and her sincerity all allow him to become far too intimate all too quickly. He also confesses to know an evil man– a professor in a chemical research lab who inadvertently used a poisonous ingredient in the manufacture of a popular brand of cookie then covered up the mistake with forged documents released to authorities. The ingredient caused cancer in several hundred children and their families. Many of the children died. Daigo admits that he would like to murder the man. The woman tells him her name and a few details about her work as a translator and after a brief moment of shared intimacy makes a quick exit. He has never seen her face throughout their brief meeting, but he is certain he has fallen deeply in love with her. What he does not realize is that he has also created a fatal bond between them that will lead to murder.

A few days later the professor is found dead in his home. He has been poisoned and a mysterious woman was seen in the vicinity of the dead man's' house. Several clues and coincidences eventually lead Daigo to believe that Fumiko, the woman he met in the hotel, is most likely responsible for the man's death. He starts to receive strange phone messages from a woman, a post card from a hotel is sent to his house and it dawns on him that all these things are related to the "evil woman" alluded to in Fumiko's conversation with him weeks ago at the hotel. Is he to track down the woman and kill her as well? He is devoted to Fumiko and vows to prove his love for her by doing just that. His life becomes increasingly complex as he adopts a variety of assumed identities, tells exaggerated lies to gather information about his intended victim, and stalks her like a predatory animal. Simultaneously he tries to locate Fumiko using clever detective work and an arsenal of alter egos.

The novel is mostly told from the point of view of Kohei Daigo. An alternating narrative is added by the halfway mark when the reader is allowed to follow a police investigation by two teams of detectives from two different cities. They begin to make amazing connections between the poisoning of the professor and a crime in the past. Slowly the police begin to suspect a conspiracy involving murder by proxy and are soon hot on the trail of Kohei Daigo.

It is not often that a crime novel packs so powerful a punch as this one does. The finale includes a gasp inducing twist that is poignant, sorrowful, and tragically inevitable. In the end this story of a frenzied obsessive love based on the slightest of contact but mostly the tortured imaginings of Daigo becomes a tale of remorse and shame that is deeply tied to the cultural mores of Japan. It is hard to imagine that this could have been written by a Westerner and turn out as believable and as moving as it is told here. If you have never read a Japanese crime novel here is the quintessential work. Cleverly plotted, imaginatively realized, beguiling and intriguing on so many levels The Third Lady transcends the genre to reveal the complexities of not only Japanese culture and Japanese philosophy but the intoxicating and mysterious power of love.

The Inugami Clan - Seishi Yokomizo

My knowledge of Japanese detective novel is limited, but if I am to believe what is written on the jacket blurbs of every Japanese mystery novel translated into English, then every Japanese mystery writer is a bestselling and extremely popular author in their homeland, a claim that seems farfetched. I have read the strange stories of Edogawa Rampo ("considered the dean of modern Japanese mystery writers") and a handful of novels by Shizuko Natsuki (dubbed "the Agatha Christie of Japan" on one of my books) who are supposed to be bestsellers. I have also read The Tattoo Murder Case ("among the most read of Japanese detective mysteries") and The Tokyo Zodiac Murders ("still one of the best selling mystery novels in Japan") by two more popular authors and two excellent spins on the locked room/impossible crime subgenre. One week ago through sheer luck I found a copy of The Inugami Clan, a book that is not only written by a best selling author, but is touted as a classic in Japanese detective fiction and the most popular title of the author’s 80 plus books. For once I agree with all the hyperbole on the jacket blurb. This is one Japanese detective novel that all devotees of the Golden Age ought to seek out. I would dare to call it iconic in the mystery and crime fiction of Japan.

Seishi Yokomizo in his final years

The author, Seishi Yokomizo, began writing detective fiction in the late 1940s. The Inugami Clan is his tenth book and was originally published serially between 1950-1951. The story itself is set in 1949 with post-World War 2 Japan fueling a major aspect of the plot. His detective Kosuke Kindaichi is practically an icon in Japanese popular culture having appeared in the movies, TV and graphic novels. The Inugami Clan was filmed twice (1976 and 2006), both times by renowned director Kon Ichikawa.  So popular was Yokomizo's detective that a spin-off character was created who is purportedly the grandson of Kindaichi. I went to YouTube and watched countless video clips from a long running TV series about Kindaichi -- none of it dubbed, all of it completely incomprehensible to me, yet fascinating all the same since I was by then familiar with the character of Kindaichi. I even watched a trailer for a video game version of The Inugami Clan which visually I did understand even if I couldn’t read any of the Japanese phrases being flashed across the screen. The illustrations and characters depicted in that video game trailer accurately and vividly depict what I read in this fascinating and grotesque mystery novel.

Based on the other books I have read (most published in the 1970s) it appears that Seishi Yokomizo truly is the forefather of the modern Japanese detective novel. On display are all of the characteristics that you will find in any Japanese crime novel from the 1940s and onward: an intricate plot that is fairly clued, grotesque murders, family secrets, disguised individuals, false identities, an eccentric detective with wily methods, and efficient policemen clever in their own right but easily baffled by the fantastic elements that accompany the crimes. The Inugami Clan is rife with the bizarre and the grotesque, has a smattering of Japanese lore and culture, and shows more than a few nods to the detective novel tropes so well known to Western readers. The opening scenes, for example, are reminiscent of Peril at End House with a young woman who tells Kindaichi that she barely escaped three outrageous attempts on her life. Yet in its essence the novel is utterly Japanese. The motives of one of the characters make perfect sense in Japanese culture though would strain credulity in a mystery written by a European or North American.

Matsuko Inugami takes a handprint of her son Kiyo in the 2006 film remake

The basic plot is familiar to any devotee of golden Age detective fiction. A family of greedy relatives awaits the reading of the will of recently deceased Sahei Inugami, wealthy owner of a silk factory. The will turns out to have convoluted rules requiring Tamayo, a non-blood relative, to choose her husband from Sahei's three grandsons. She must do so within a required time period or risk losing her inheritance. If she chooses none of them, she forfeits the entire fortune and it reverts to the mysteriously missing Shizuma, a young man rumored to be Sahei's illegitimate son. Needless to say the will infuriates all the relatives, mostly Sahei's daughters - the mothers of the men Tamayo must consider for her husband. Soon the grandsons are being stalked by a fiendish killer who seems to be re-enacting a curse set down decades in the past.

Discovery of the decapitated head of Take Inugami in the chrysanthemum garden (2006 film version)

The story reminded me of an old Gothic sensation novel with creepy settings, frenzied characters, mutilation of dead bodies, and bizarre murder methods employed. The bodies are discovered in unusual places like the eerie garden with life sized dolls all wearing kimonos made of chrysanthemums, or submerged upside down in a frozen lake. One of the most unusual characters is Kiyo who has returned to his home horribly burnt and disfigured from the recent war and wears a life-like rubber mask that resembles the features of his face prior to his hapless service in the war. And of course there is Kindaichi himself - described as a sort of Japanese Columbo elsewhere on the internet. He is an odd man who always dresses in a traditional, albeit shabby and rumpled, Japanese kimono and wears a beaten woolen hat, and for the most part he is of unkempt appearance. He scratches his tousled hair in a fidgety manner when mulling over strange clues, and is given to excitable stammering when on the verge of solving one of the many puzzles attached to the numerous crimes.

French version of The Inugami Clan.
(The ax, the koto & the chrysanthemum are
three family heirlooms that are part of the curse)

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and if I managed to figure out many (but not all) of the puzzles in the story it is not a strike against Yokomizo as a mystery writer. He has a Christianna Brand-like plot device with several characters attempting to protect loved ones whom they suspect of being the murderer and manipulating the evidence. Consequently, the crime scenes as discovered by the police and Kindaichi may not always be a reflection of the truth. This was one of the best parts of the book to me. Yokomizo's fertile imagination and plotting make for an entertaining and satisfying read. What is most frustrating, however, are the numerous allusions to previous books in the series which tantalize an English reader like me who would love to read those other stories. Who wouldn't want to find out why the murderer in The Honjin Murders (Kindaichi's first case published in Japan in 1946) displayed the victim hung upside down from a plum tree? Or discover the horrific secret of a body found stuffed inside a temple bell in Gokumon Island (1948)?  These are only two of the six other books mentioned throughout the telling of the strange murders in The Inugami Clan. But - you guessed it - this is the only Yokomizo book to have been translated into English. I'd have better luck if I could read French - there are at least three books translated into that language that I found, perhaps more. I guess I can only hope and wait for some enterprising translator to give us more of Kosuke Kindaichi's adventures in English.

Here is the trailer for the 2006 remake from director Kon Ichikawa. One of the rare versions I found with English subtitles. Enjoy, then go find a copy of the book and read it!

Crime Fiction on a EuroPass: Mehmet Murat Somer

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)

Crime Fiction on a EuroPass - Massimo Carlotto

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.

Crime Fiction on a EuroPass: Denmark, West Jutland

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.

Baantjer Tribute: DeKok & Murder in Seance

Hideous cover art!

As you will learn from our good friend TomCat at his blog Detection by Moonlight A.C. Baantjer died one year ago today, August 29. TomCat asked some of the readers and writers of detective fiction blogs to join in a tribute to the Dutch writer on this anniversary of his death. I intended to write on a trio of Baantjer's books, but alas I only managed to read one all the way through while the other two I abandoned about one third the way through each. But this third kept me interested as it was very much a retro-Golden Age detective novel. And so here is a review of DeKok and Murder in Seance.

One might be tempted to call this DeKok and the Handbook for Poisoners as it is entirely preoccupied with poisons as a means of murder for the first third of the book. It is the fifth or sixth book I have read this year in which hydrocyanic acid is used to kill a victim and the third or fourth book which once again goes into a lengthy discussion on the uses of the chemical in photography, as a pesticide, and other industrial purposes. There is a chapter in which DeKok and the younger policeman Dick Vledder discuss the variety of poisons, the ability to discover it in a corpse during autopsy, why the heavy metals linger in the human body and other poisons are harder to trace, etc. etc. Because I have been reading far too many books with poison as the means this was all a little tiresome to me. But I continued going because DeKok himself is an engaging character.

DeKok -- who loves to spell his name in these English translations "with kay-oh-kay" -- is hard not to like. Alternately irascible and affable he's sharp witted, good humored and wastes no time in getting to the heart of whatever case he is working on. Here he is challenged to unmask the devious killer among a spiritualist society.  During the middle of their weekly seance at the home of the blind medium Jennifer Jordan one of the members drops dead. The victim, known as Black Julie among the circle, appears to have not a single enemy yet her death uncovers some interesting secrets, notably her real name which turns out to be Jane Truffle.

Victor Reiner (l.) & Piet Römer as Vledder & DeKok

As DeKok proceeds in his investigation he is more and more troubled by the callous murder of Black Julie aka Jane. He begins to think that she was not the intended victim. This is subtly suggested through some of his questions which seem to be Columbo-like non sequiturs. He begins to ask all the women how they take their coffee. An astute reader will pick up on his reasoning for this line of questioning if he has been paying close attention to the discussion of poisons and how they can be administered. This is typical of the way DeKok runs his murder investigations. He allows the suspects to talk then takes them by surprise with an innocuous question but one that will prove to be instrumental in solving the case.

Orig Dutch edition  - there's a familiar face, eh?

I enjoyed some of the supporting characters who seem to  appear regularly in the series. I know from reading portions of two other books that the bar owner Lowy is definitely a recurring character. Here he not only serves as comic relief but also as a key player in the murder of Black Julie. Lowy, you see, was a former thief and he heard of the attractive art collection in Jennifer Jordan's house but he and his cronies avoided it as a target when they learned she was blind. "You don't steal from no blind lady" he tells Dekok. This line of dialog will come back to haunt the policeman as the case adds two more dead bodies and the possibility of art forgery into the case. A painter named Peter Karstens, who does forgery on the side, also is featured as is his shapely lover who serves as his model and who enjoys parading around his studio au naturel. These scenes are some of the best in the book, not for the nudity, but for the dialog between Dekok and Karstens. Vledder also proves to be a perfect foil for DeKok. He is younger, more strait-laced and less tolerant of his superior who is often irreverent and eccentric in his investigative style.

This is an interesting series that I may sample more of in the months ahead. It took a while for me to warm up to DeKok but I can now appreciate him after completing Murder in Seance.  It's easy to see how he and his creator enjoyed a long life as one of the best loved characters in Dutch crime fiction.  I'm glad we have been allowed to sample nearly all of his books in these English translations.

One thing more -- the translator, a certain H.G. Smittenaar, has taken it upon himself to add some very odd updated passages in these books. According to the publication history, clearly the books that I read were written long before the formation of the E.U. and the Netherlands' conversion to the Euro as its primary currency. Yet Smittenaar felt it necessary to talk of an amount in Dutch guilders in terms of contemporary Euros. This was in one of the books I didn't finish (Murder at Blood Mountain). In The Sorrowing Tomcat another one I didn't finish there is an equally bizarre discussion about an office machine that some workers refer to it as a fax yet DeKok still calls it a telex. If a book is written in the 1970s and the characters are using a telex machine, for Pete's sake call it a telex and not a fax! I was angered by this dumbing down for an English reading audience. Did the translator think Americans would have no knowledge of the past history of electronics and European currencies? I found no strange additions like this in Murder in Seance but I'm sure if two books had these weird updates then the rest of these English translations (and they number over 25) are sure to have a few more.