The Glass-Sided Ants' Nest - Peter Dickinson

“That was the whole trouble with police work. You come plunging in, a jagged Stone Age knife, to probe the delicate tissues of people’s relationships, and of course you destroy far more than you discover. And even what you discover will never be the same as it was before you came; the nubbly scars of your passage will remain.”

I seem to be on a roll with anthropological mysteries. First, The Glass Spear taught me all about aboriginal Australia, coming soon a visit to Peru and the ancient Incans, and now I get the amazingly inventive world of the Ku tribe as imagined by Peter Dickinson in his debut mystery novel. Dickinson is a much underappreciated writer, something of an acquired taste, and always surprising in how different each book can be.

James Pibble is a Scotland Yard inspector who is assigned the oddball cases. The murder in The Glass-Sided Ants' Nest (1968) is typical of the strange crimes that have become his specialty. In a house where the last surviving members of a little known tribe from New Guinea have settled one of their members has been found bludgeoned. The weapon is a wooden balustrade ornament in the shape of an owl. What makes the crime so unusual is that the tribe have been living according to their laws and cultural mores and the victim is a revered elder. Men and women live in separate areas of the house in dorm-like bedrooms and it is forbidden for either sex to visit the quarters of the opposite sex. The rules of tribal interaction are complicated but strictly adhered to and it seems that no one among the Kus could have committed the murder. Who then did in the old man? It's an impossible crime of sorts which make the sharp witted inspector imagining bizarre entries into the house. He even contemplates the possibility of an outsider having climbed up the side of the stone house and entering through an easily opened window.

The imagination involved in creating an entire culture is impressive. Dickinson invents social customs, tribal rituals, a hierarchy of members and gender role rules that make the Ku tribe seem to be as real as any group studied by Margaret Mead or Richard Leakey. The murder investigation reveals multiple hidden relationships and ulterior motives among some the tribe members. The youngest Ku, for instance, seems to be exploiting beliefs in magic for his own ends. But no one is talking and Pibble is continually frustrated by the reticence and stubbornness of the Kus.

One of the most bizarre aspects of the story is the relationship between Eve Mackenzie, daughter of Scottish missionaries who was raised in New Guinea, and her husband Paul Ku. She fell in love with Paul as a young girl while still living in New Guinea and becoming an anthropologist there. The Kus forbid marriage outside of their tribe but oddly male/male relationships outside of the tribe are allowed. In order to allow Eve and Paul to fulfill their love the tribe members decide to view and treat Eve as if she were a man, referring to her as him. They make her undergo a special ritual that allows for a male/male love relationship. Paul is then somewhat of an outcast and viewed less than a man, but he and Eve are allowed to "marry."

Flagg Terrace, the metaphorical glass-sided ants' nest (ant farm to us Americans) of the title, becomes a prominent character too. All of the tenants suddenly become suspects in the murder of Aaron Ku. When it is learned that he served as member of the trust that owns the property and that he was intent on selling the entire building Pibble begins to see motives multiplying. Other real estate schemes are uncovered. Pibble needs to sort through skulduggery in the business world as well as the intricacies of the Kus' tribal life and their reluctance to reveal the truth of their relationships to the outside world.

There is a lot of good character work here. Notable among the supporting players are Mr. Evan Evans, a real estate agent; and Nancy Hermitage, an "actress" and "professional escort". They are the most colorful and fascinating of the large cast of characters. Dickinson also has a great skill at creating character through dialogue, a talent that is all too often lacking in contemporary fiction of any kind. People talk and we immediately know who they are, not just in what they say, but how they say it. Vocabulary changes drastically from character to character. This is the hallmark of a genuinely talented novelist.

Pibble went on to play the lead in five other detective novels. Each one is unique and strange. Dickinson concocts mystery novels like no other writer of his era...or any era for that matter. The Old English Peep Show tells of a murder in a Victorian country house turned into a theme park, long before the theme park craze took over popular culture. ESP and telepathy are side effects of a mysterious disease afflicting the children in Sleep and His Brother. Pibble must attempt to free his friend Sir Francis who seems to be a prisoner of a weird cult awaiting the apocalypse in The Sinful Stones. Readers looking for something truly different and original in mystery fiction ought to investigate the James Pibble novels or any of the many unusual crime novels by Peter Dickinson. Unique is the best adjective I can come up with to describe his books, but even that word seems an understatement.

James Pibble Detective Novels
The Glass-Sided Ants' Nest (1968) (aka Skin Deep)
The Old English Peep Show (1969) (aka A Pride of Heroes)
The Sinful Stones (1970) (aka The Seals)
Sleep and His Brother (1971)
The Lizard in the Cup (1972)
One Foot in the Grave (1979)

*     *     *  

Reading Challenge update: Silver Age Bingo Card, space E6 -- "A book you have to borrow." I found this one in my local library.

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.