The Torso ~ Helene Tursten

Thank goodness!  I really enjoyed Helene Tursten's first crime novel, Detective Inspector Huss, but you know what it's like, you get a first novel that is absolutely wonderful and then the second disappoints and the author just never seems to manage to push those same successful buttons again.  Not Helene Tursten, who is without a doubt the best of the Scandinavian crime writers I've discovered over the past couple of years.  Her second book, The Torso, is every bit as good as her debut and my frustration at discovering that the library only has one copy of her third novel and that there is a long queue is immense, although not entirely unexpected.

Irene Huss and the other members of her investigative team are called in when the torso of a body is discovered on the Swedish coast line wrapped in a black plastic bag.  Not only has the body been dismembered, but it is clear from the obscenities inflicted on the remains that the victim has been horrendously tortured and mutilated.  Searching across Europe to try and identify the corpse, Huss discovers a similar crime in Denmark and so is sent by her Superintendent to Copenhagen to see if there is any evidence there as to who the body parts may have belonged to.  The information that Irene is able to pull together suggests that a necrosadist is operating in both countries, killing in order to get sexual satisfaction from the desecration of the bodies.

Very quickly, it becomes apparent that the killer is aware of the police's interest in him and that he appears to have some level of access to the investigation.  A succession of people identified as having likely connections with the murderer turn up dead or are viciously attacked and the fear grows that he will target members of the team themselves.  There is also the possibility to be faced that it may be one of their own who is the perpetrator.

One of the things that I find admirable in Tursten's work is that she doesn't glory in the horrors that she has to describe.  She doesn't hold back, but there is no sense of her using the terrible scenes that are involved to draw the reader in.  And believe me, in this book she could well have fallen prey to that temptation.  The point is made on several occasions that necrosadism is extremely unusual and for that we should all be extremely thankful.  Nevertheless, while she leaves us in no doubt that the actual murderer is a monster, Tursten is also careful to explore the manner in which more 'normal' humans can find themselves drawn into the environs of such appalling practices and, for the most part, these people she depicts with a welcome level of sympathy and understanding.  It would be all too easy to judge.

As before, there are certain things about Tursten's work that don't necessarily translate well in either the literal or figurative sense of the word.  I'm fairly sure that only one translation has been commissioned and it is definitely an American one.  Even so, I think something audacious takes 'the biscuit' rather than 'the cake' in both versions of the English language and there are several other incidents of such infelicitous renditions.  And then there is the detective set up.  Do the Scandinavian police really not ring each other up after five o'clock because everyone would have gone home?  I find that rather scary.  And do they really turn a blind eye to some of the excessive drinking on duty that goes on and the behaviour towards colleagues that results.  There are a couple of Tursten's detectives who, if Quintin Jardine's Bob Skinner was to ever to have them under him, would find themselves back pounding the beat before they could blink.  That is if he didn't throw them out of the force altogether.

However, these are relatively minor points and I wouldn't want anyone to be put off this series, which I think is one of the best to come out of Scandinavia in recent years and certainly one I hope continues through many more volumes.

Detective Inspector Huss ~ Helene Tursten

Hard on the heels of the Martin Beck novels I've come across another Scandinavian Crime writer whose first book, at least, I've really enjoyed.  Detective Inspector Huss is the initial novel by Swedish writer, Helene Tursten, in a growing series about her eponymous heroine, Irene Huss.  The copy I have  says on the jacket that she is Sweden's Prime Suspect.  I can only say that whoever wrote that has either not read the book or not seen the British TV programme because Irene Huss, happy in her home life with husband and twin daughters, is about as far from Jane Tennison as it is possible to be.  Neither does the book glory in violence in the way that the television series can seem to.  Yes there is violence in this story, but for the most part it is kept at a distance.  We see its after effects, but there are no long drawn out descriptions of the attacks to which various members of the force are subjected.  In fact, if the book made me think of any English writer it was P D James.  Tursten's insistence on the day to day routine that is behind most police work and the need to follow through with all the necessary legwork is reminiscent of Dalgliesh at his best.

Irene Huss is called in to help investigate when an apparent suicide turns out to have been something more sinister.  The victim, Richard von Knecht, rather than jumping from his balcony appears to have been helped on his way and the case only becomes more complex when there is a bomb blast at von Knecht's office and an explosion in the car of one of the chief suspects.  When it becomes apparent that there is also a link through drugs to roaming gangs of Hells Angels the police team have to ask whether there is some wider criminal conspiracy going on, especially as all the family members who might have had reason to want von Knecht out of the way have what appear to be cast iron alibis.

I suspect that the reason I enjoyed this book so much more than many of the other Scandinavian novels I've tried is because it concentrates on the police rather than the victims or suspects.  I felt I really got to know the officers concerned in a way that has not been the case with several other writers.  In that respect, this is much more like a British crime novel.  However, one thing that it does have in common with many other swedish novelists is an exploration of some of the social and political problems that beset the country.  In particular this book considers the rise of the Nazi Party among Swedish youth and their denial of the Holocaust.  It doesn't impinge on the case - it is one of Irene's daughters who becomes involved - but nevertheless, Tursten makes it clear that any impression we may have in the UK of Sweden as a haven of political neutrality and liberal minded thinking is little more than a fantasy.

As far as I can see there are two more Irene Huss books available with a fourth due later this year.  If you want to try Swedish crime fiction without straying too far in style from what you're used to then I very strongly recommend you start here.

Trick of the Dark ~ Val McDermid

For some reason I simply can't imagine I missed the publication of Val McDermid's latest stand alone novel, Trick of the Dark and consequently I've only just got round to reading it.  Never mind, If I'd read it on publication I wouldn't have had the pleasure of curling up over it during the past few evenings although, as usual where McDermid is concerned, now that I've finished it I feel completely bereft.  I don't know any other writer of crime fiction who is as good in her one off fiction as she is in her series work.  Much as I look forward to a new Tony Hill novel this autumn, McDermid is the one writer who doesn't elicit a groan with the announcement of a non-series publication.  Her last novel, A Darker Domain, which recalled memories all too vivid of the social devastation of the Miners' Strike, was brilliant and this latest is just as good.

Charlie Flint is a senior lecturer in Clinical Psychology and Psychological Profiling accredited by the Home Office to work with the police as a profiler.  Or rather she was.  All that is now in limbo as her suitability is called into question following a trial that has gone spectacularly wrong.  Brought in to give her opinion as to whether or not the accused had committed the crime for which he was indicted, she (correctly as it turns out) states that she thinks he was not.  However, despite her warning that while he may not have killed on this occasion he is likely to in future, the accused is set free and goes on to kill four times before he is brought up before the courts again.  In as spectacular piece of unfairness as you could imagine, Charlie is publicly held to blame for this and while the General Medical Council considers her position she is banned from practising.

Going stir crazy, Charlie is almost relieved to receive a mysterious package in her morning post containing cuttings about the murder of a man on his wedding day and the subsequent trial and conviction of two of his business associates.  The case is especially intriguing as it involves people she knew during her student days in Oxford and so, encouraged by her partner, Maria, she decides to follow up the case simply to give her something else to occupy her mind.

Gradually it becomes apparent that the package has been sent to her by the mother of the bride, her old Oxford tutor, Corinna, and when Charlie challenges her about this she confesses that she has indeed deliberately set out to involve Charlie because she is convinced that the wrong people have been convicted.  Her daughter, Magda, far from being the traditional grieving widow, has taken up very rapidly with another ex-student, Jennifer (Jay) Stewart and is now living with her.   Corinna, although uncomfortable with her daughter's apparently overnight conversion to lesbianism, is actually far more concerned because she claims she has reason to believe that Jay has committed murder in the past in order to get something she desperately desires and is certain that she has done so again in this instance.  She challenges Charlie to find out the truth of the situation, throwing out the bait that by proving there has been a miscarriage of justice in this case, Charlie will be able to redeem herself in the eyes of the public, the police and her academic peers.

As much to get the persistent Corinna off her back,  Charlie agrees to at least look at the evidence, the more so because it allows her to be in Oxford and near to the enigmatic Lisa Kirk, a woman she has recently met and who is exercising a hold over her that even she realises is too strong to be healthy.  And from there everything else unfolds.  But I am saying not a word more.  You need to read this for yourself.  But I strongly suggest you don't pick it up unless you have a couple of days when you don't have to meet any other commitments.  While there were one or two plot points I was a bit sceptical about, the characters are fascinatingly drawn and I was throughly involved from the first page.  This is vintage Mcdermid and I can't recommend it too strongly.

Every Breath You Take ~ Michelle Spring

I've had a number of false starts this week with books by crime writers I hadn't encountered before.  As an article in last weekend's Sunday Times pointed out, everyone and his dog is writing crime fiction these days and, in the case of some of the books I've tried over the past few days, the authors would have been best advised to leave their dogs to get on with it.

A good crime novel is not easy to write.  It has to excel in terms of both plot and character.  The former has to be believable while at the same time having enough suspense to keep the reader turning the pages and the latter have to have psychological reality despite the fact that some of them at least will, of necessity, eventually have to be shown to be distinctly flawed human beings.  It isn't enough to excel in one area.  To write even readable crime fiction you have to be good at both.  To write outstanding crime fiction you have to be a master at both.

Well, Michelle Spring isn't exactly a master as yet, but at least her first novel featuring the private investigator, Laura Principal, Every Breath You Take, kept me reading until the end and was satisfying enough to send me back for a second helping.  Running for Shelter is on the shelf waiting.

Laura Principal, once an academic herself, now shares a weekend cottage with her friend Helen, a librarian at Eastern University.  When financial considerations force them into taking a third into their arrangement Monica Harcourt, the art lecturer who applies, leaves Laura feeling uneasy.  However, as Helen does not seem concerned by Monica's jumpy behaviour, Laura decides to go ahead with the arrangement and calls in to Monica's Cambridge home to finalise the agreement.  Glancing in through a lighted window she sees the artist tied up and brutally assaulted.  It seems that whatever Monica had been so concerned about has finally caught up with her.  In the days that follow Laura is forced to track down Monica's assailant not only in an attempt to bring about justice but also to protect herself, Helen and Helen's daughter, Ginny, as they receive threats that they may become targets of the attacker themselves.  Tracing back Monica's time at the University, Laura discovers that there have been several lecturers who appear to have been targeted in ways that have left them at best uncomfortable and at worst, unable to continue in the profession they had loved.  The misconduct that she eventually uncovers is unpalatable to say the least, but is it what lies at the heart of the mystery, or is there something else behind the attacks?  As all the best summaries say - now read on.

In terms of plot and character Spring doesn't do too badly.  I felt the plot was brought together very well.  I thought I knew who the killer was and was wrong, but even so I didn't feel as if the plot that was eventually revealed was misleading or in anyway implausible.  Indeed as an ex-acadmic myself, I'm afraid I knew that given the right characters it was all too credible.  However, I did have some qualms not so much about who the assailant turned out to be, but about the depth of characterisation that that person had been given.  (I'm having to be careful here, because I got the gender wrong, so I don't want to use singular pronouns.)  They had been so lightly sketched in that they didn't seem to have anything other than a supernumerary role until the very end of the book.  I don't think this is fair on the reader.  To pull an unexpected rabbit out of the hat at the end of a story is all very well and good, but it does have to be a rabbit that has at least been hopping about in full view for a reasonable amount of time.   I hope that that is a failing which will have been corrected in later books because otherwise I did enjoy this and it would be comforting to be able to think that some good had eventually come out of an otherwise rather substandard week's reading.

Making Connections ~ The Other

A librarian friend of mine is convinced that books talk to each other because she so often finds that a subject she has been reading about in one will then find echoes in whatever volume she picks up next.  Well, I certainly wouldn't want to disagree with her.  In fact, one of the reasons that I first took up blogging was precisely because I wanted somewhere that I could explore those connections as and when they arose, although then, as now, I was interested in connections across all disciplines rather than just in books.  My weekend decision to do a bit of weeding and try and get back to reading for more than just escapism prompted me to think about that early resolve again and so this is going to be the first of what I hope will be a series of posts about making connections and the 'added value' such thematic 'echoes' can bring to the enjoyment of a book, a play, a piece of music or a work of art.

Over the past few weeks I've gone back to some of my earliest dramatic roots and have been re-reading the Greek Tragedies.  One of the issues that has come up time and again has been the problems that the 5th Century BCE Athenians so obviously had with anyone who was in some way 'other'.  You might have thought that this would be predictably with someone who was foreign, but far more often it was  with someone who was female.  Pity then poor Medea, who being both foreign and female was on a hiding to nothing before she ever set foot in Greece.  OK, so what she did, killing not only her rival for Jason's love but also the children she, herself, had borne him, was perhaps not the ideal way to endear herself to the populous, but nevertheless she just didn't stand a chance. 

What happens to Medea, especially the way she is set aside by Jason when he wants to take another wife, and the attitude expressed towards her, epitomises the often expressed regret of the Greek male that women had to exist at all.  In a strictly patriarchal society and one which saw women as inferior beings, it was a source of great concern to the men of Athens that it was unavoidable that they had to consort with women in order to perpetuate their family through the production of a male heir.  You get the feeling that if it hadn't been blasphemy to say so they would have told Zeus he'd got it wrong somewhere.  All babies should spring fully formed out of their father's heads as Zeus's own child, Athena did - except, of course, such children should always be male.  They might be able to get rid of a foreigner, but the dreaded woman they had to keep about them.  

Coincidently (or not, as the case of the whispering books may be) I've also been doing a lot of work on The Taming of the Shrew this past few weeks.  It's proving quite a frustrating play to study, mainly because wherever you look for academic discussion you find only two subjects being given any great attention, the relationship between The Taming of the Shrew and The Taming of a Shrew and the question of how you interpret what happens to Kate in that final scene, where it seems she capitulates completely to Petruchio's mastery.  I might come back to the first of those issues at some point because I think the answer to why there are two very different but clearly related plays probably accounts, to some extent at least, for the disappointment brought about by the second, however, the interesting aspect of my study in relation to this particular set of connections was the extract I came across from Jack Holland's A Brief History of Misogyny printed in the programme for an RSC production of the play.

For men, women are the original 'Other' - the 'not you'...woman presents a...complex problem for those who designated her as 'the Other'.  She is 'the Other' that cannot be excluded.  Racists can avoid interaction with the despised group.  But intercourse with women is in the end unavoidable, even for misogynists...intimacy with her is as unavoidable as it is essential.  The very maintenance of human life and society depend upon it.

And there we have it again, this idea that there are some instances of 'otherhood' that you can avoid, but the 'otherhood' of gender is inescapable.  I'm not certain, by the way, that this is a particularly helpful approach towards understanding what is going on in either A Shrew or The Shrew as texts, but clearly there was one RSC director who thought that it might provide a way of approaching the play when it came to trying to make sense of it on the stage.

Then along came instance the third, Julia Spencer-Fleming's second book in her Clare Ferguson series, A Fountain Filled With Blood.  Spencer-Fleming is one of those crime writers whose works I shall not be throwing into the compost bin.  Not only is this second book definitely better than the first, but she is also a writer who offers you subjects that require some serious thinking on the part of the reader, demanding that they consider their own position in relation to whatever issue she has chosen to raise.  I suspect the fact that Clare is an Episcopalian Priest is not purely coincidental.

In this book the people who have been assaulted, and in one instance killed, are all homosexual.  Clare is convinced that this is not a coincidence and that the fact that they are hate crimes should be made public.  Russ Van Alstyne, the local Police Chief, disagrees, arguing that to do so could cause unnecessary panic.  However, eventually he admits to Clare that this may not have been his only reason for refusing to publicise the sexuality of the victims.

"I guess I'm afraid that, deep down, all my reasons for not issuing a general warning or going to the press with the gay-bashing idea are because of ... who the victims were.  Because I don't, you know, feel comfortable around gay guys."

"Bur Dr. Dvorak was - is - a friend of yours.  That doesn't make any sense."

"We were friends at work.  I knew who he was and what he was, but it never impinged on our relationship.  He never talked about Paul, just like I never talked about my wife.  The fact that he was gay was like having a friend at work who's Jewish, or vegetarian.  You know about it, but you don't have to think about it, because what you do together never intersects with that other part of the person's life."

Here then is the other side of 'otherness', the 'other' you can pretend doesn't worry you because you can avoid ever having to face what marks that person out as different.  (Or for that matter, what marks you out as different.  Difference works both ways, although we rarely manage to recognise the fact.)

It makes you think, doesn't it?  How many prejudices do we deny simply because we've never been put into a position where we've had to intersect or interact with the people who embody them?  If we found ourselves in Russ's position could we be that honest?  Unless I hie me to a nunnery, I have to acknowledge the gender 'other', but other 'others'?  I'm not so sure.

The Burning ~ Jane Casey

To Whom It May Concern:

Thank You.

I had great difficulty with Jane Casey's first novel, The Missing, so much difficulty, in fact, that I didn't finish it.  I'm not certain what it was about the book that I found so off putting.  Perhaps it was the theme, but I've read books about missing children before.  Perhaps the plot or the characters just didn't grab my attention.  For whatever reason it didn't strike a chord with me and as a consequence I wouldn't have picked up her second novel, The Burning, if it hadn't been for the fact that I read several very complementary reviews out there in the blogging world.

And, I'm very glad that I did, because if this book is anything to go by, Casey is going to be one of those writers who improves with successive volumes and in DC Maeve Kerrigan, she has a character who will definitely be worth knowing over a long period of time.

Maeve is part of an elite murder squad investigating a series of murders, each of which has ended with the victim's body being set fire to following a brutal beating.  When Rebecca Haworth's body is found in apparently similar circumstances the first thought is that she is victim number five.  However, as evidence is gathered and forensic reports are studied an element of doubt begins to grow and the team has to face the possibility that they may have a copy cat killer at work.  Already under extreme pressure from the press and public to make progress in identifying and catching the killer they have named 'The Burning Man', the police have to decide whether to go public with their fears or carry on the investigation as if there were only one killer while keeping an open mind on the question of Rebecca's attacker.  It falls to Maeve to follow up the possibility that there may be something in Rebecca's past that has led to an old enemy taking advantage of the publicity surrounding the serial killings to rid themselves  of her unwelcome presence.  Key to Maeve's enquiry is Louise North, Rebecca's roommate when they were students and, for the most part, the story is told alternately from Maeve and Louise's point of view.

The picture that Maeve builds up of Rebecca is very different from that which the world in general saw and the further she delves into the young woman's past (and present) the more the DC questions the apparently close relationship that Louise claims the two had continued to share.  Certainly something happened in their last shared term at Oxford that has cast a shadow over their friendship and as the investigation continues it begins to look as if finding out what that was might provide the key to identifying Rebecca's killer.

Casey's development of the characters of these two very different women is probably the best thing in the novel and it is Maeve who will take me back to her next book, which it seems will also feature the young policewoman.  I'm less sure of her ability to handle plot.  She sets herself up with a very complex premise, because the hunt for the serial killer has to continue and in many ways her narrative choices signal the resolution of that story as the climax of the book, which it is not.  I'm also slightly concerned that she may feel that she has a good thing going in the two different first person narrative voices and it may become a pattern.  And you all know my feeling about pattern.  It gets its effect when you break it.  Stick to it too rigidly and you become straitjacketed by it.  Nevertheless, this seems to me to be a far better book than The Missing and I am very much looking forward to the appearance of The Reckoning later in the year.

Roseanna ~ Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo

I haven't been particularly successful with Scandinavian Crime Fiction over the past few months. I certainly haven't come across any writer whose works I have wanted to explore past the first sampling. At first I was inclined to put this down to poor translation, but as the numbers mounted I began to think that there must be something in the Scandinavian approach to the genre which just didn't work for me. However, several friends had urged me not to give up until I had tried the Martin Beck series by the husband and wife team, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo and last week I finally managed to get hold of the first novel in the sequence of ten, Roseanna.  The preface to my copy stresses the importance of reading the books in order as they were, apparently, conceived of as one long narrative in ten chapters. I have, therefore, just completed chapter one and surprisingly, I think I shall be going back for chapter two. Surprisingly, because there are many of the same features in the Beck novel that made the other Scandinavian books so disappointing, however, there is also something else about it which takes it out of the ordinary and makes this a series worth coming back to.

The body of a young woman is dredged up out of a lake and it is clear on closer inspection that she has been murdered. However, there have been no reports of missing persons who might fit her description and there is no evidence as to how her body came to be in the lake in the first place. Martin Beck thought by some to be the country's most capable examining officer, is called in to help his colleagues discover who the woman is, where she comes from, how she got into the lake and of course most importantly who put her there. There is no quick and easy solution to the mystery and one of the things which is most characteristic of the book is the way in which it stresses the daily grind of police work; the hours spent pouring over reports or shivering through surveillance duties are spelled out in meticulous detail. Even when the police feel certain that they have identified the culprit there is no immediate confrontation. Martin Beck and his fellow officers still have to spend weeks constructing a situation that they can only hope will lead to his giving himself away. And when the case reaches its resolution there is no sense of triumph, simply of a job completed.

It is this attention to the realistic detail which most clearly characterises the novel and which to some extent separates it from many of the other Scandinavian crime fiction I've read which, with the exception perhaps of Larsson, has been fairly short on detail. However, that isn't why I think I enjoyed this more than the works of other writers, in fact, coupled with the narrative voice evoked, it could have been fatal.  Because, as in so many other instances I still found the narrative voice worked to keep me at a distance. As a reader you are never more than an observer of the reported events that comprise a narrative, but it is up to the author just how close an observer you are allowed to be. Scandinavian fiction always seems to want to keep me at arms length. I often feel as if I am reading an official police report rather than a narrative intended to involve and entertain me. When I add that to the way in which the attention to realism seems to flatten out the arc of the narrative structure, which would normally serve to add shape to the otherwise random events of everyday life, what I end up with is something that feels closer to fact than to fiction.

At least it would be if it wasn't for one thing and that is the rather wry sense of humour that permeates the writing and even makes its way through the translation. And it is this feeling that neither Martin Beck or the writers are taking themselves too seriously which eventually won me over to the book and which will take me back to the other novels. That and the fact that as someone who is particularly involved in the study of narrative organisation I am very interested to see how the writers manage to make good their claim that the series is one complete narrative, presumably with a narrative arc of its own, distinct and separate from those of the individual stories. That is an extremely difficult thing to bring off, for technical reasons I won't go into here. If they manage it I shall be very impressed indeed.

As a footnote, when I was in Blackwell's last weekend, I noted a relatively recent book about Scandinavian Crime Fiction, called simply, Scandinavian Crime Fiction, it is by Paula Arvas and Andrew and looked very interesting indeed. Perhaps at some point in the future I shall have to treat myself to a copy.

The Whisperer ~ Donato Carrisi

Has anyone else read this? Because, if so, I would very much like a second opinion. I was asked to read it by a librarian friend who knows that I enjoy crime fiction. She herself was in two minds about it, and I think I can see why, but as I say, I would like to hear what others think.

The Whisperer is a first novel by an Italian writer, Donato Carrisi. Carrisi has written in the past for the cinema and you can certainly see a cinematic imagination at work in this book.

Basically, without giving too much away, the story centres around, Mila, a police woman who specialises in the rescue of abducted children. She is called in to help a dedicated and already established team following the disappearance of five young girls between the ages of eight and thirteen. A possible burial site has been identified and sure enough as the police begin to dig they also find remains. However, they are not the remains of complete corpses. All they find is a series of left arms. And they don't find five, they find six. Somewhere another girl has been abducted, but her disappearance has not been reported. Furthermore, forensic examination of the arms leads the team to believe that while the other five children are dead, the sixth may well be being kept alive. The race is on to identify that final child and to find her while there is still a chance of saving her life.

For a first novel there are many things about this book that mark Carrisi out as a writer to watch. The plotting is tight and the twists come at just the right moments and certainly surprise. But, while they are not signalled, they are still believable. This man knows a lot about human nature. Furthermore, the psychology on which the basic premise is founded is sound and this isn't surprising given that the author has a degree in law and has specialised in criminology and behavioural science. I don't want to talk about the direction his thinking actually takes because it would given too much away, but well known cases are quoted and unlikely as the underlying hypothesis might seem, when you start to think about it I'm afraid any disquiet as to its accuracy gives way to disquiet at the thought that there are humans out there who can behave like this.

I also thought that he managed his characters very well. I had clear pictures in my mind of each of them and of their relationships with each other. My only possible uncertainty was to do with the Police Chief, Roche. Accepting that he would have got as far as he has in the service asked me to be more cynical about the relationship between police and politics than I like to be. But then, I have to remember that this is Italy. It is a different system from the one I'm used to and therein lies the rub.

Because I do have some disquiet about this book and the further I read the more I began to wonder if it isn't down to the way in which it has been translated. To begin with, the actual lexical translation itself seems to me to be very uneven. One of the problems with English becoming such a universal language is that there are many different versions of English. We're probably all aware of the difference between British English and American English. Who was it said that we were two nations divided by a single language? There is the same degree of difference between other varieties as well and I think part of the problem here is that the translator hasn't decided which variety he is going to opt for. So, I will happily be reading along in British English only to suddenly come across a phrase that I have only ever heard from some of my Irish colleagues. All well and good if the character is Irish, but he isn't, he's Italian.

Or is he, because some of the names seem to have been 'translated' into English as well. Am I really supposed to think that there was a small Italian boy in a Catholic orphanage called Billy Moore? I don't think so, somehow.

But then, am I actually suppose to think that the book is set in Italy? I can't remember any direct references that would place the action that precisely. Is the translator going for a kind of universality, a one size fits all that would let any reader place the events in their own country? If so, it isn't going to work because there are aspects of the way in which the crime is solved that won't translate that neatly. And elements in the aftermath that not even I am cynical enough to think that the police would get away with in the UK.

I know I am always very wary of translations, so perhaps I am being unfair but the feeling I come away with from this book is that here is a writer of considerable potential who needs to have serious discussions with his publishers about the way any future books are prepared for the overseas market. I don't think this version does Carrisi justice. As it stands I found the story he had to tell really gripping. Next time it would be good if the narrative through which it found voice was gripping as well.

Annie

In the Bleak Midwinter ~ Julia Spencer-Fleming

I have never quite been able to decide whether the way in which one is constantly being introduced to new writers is one of the blessings of belonging to the blogging world, or one of its major curses. Practically every day, it seems, I go hurrying over to the library site to see if I can locate either a specific book or anything by a previously unknown author that I would never have thought about requesting had it not been for something one of you had recommended. (As you can see, I'm putting the blame fairly and squarely where it really lies.) Ultimately, this way lies madness. I walked out of the library this morning struggling under the weight of no fewer than seven volumes. It's a mile and a half walk home!

Nevertheless, sometimes there is no doubt that such recommendations are a blessing. So whoever it was pointed me in the direction of Julia Spencer-Fleming, thank you. You always know you are onto a good thing when you reach the end of a book and automatically look for the next in the series because you don't want to leave the main characters behind. This was definitely the case with In the Bleak Midwinter, the first of Spencer-Fleming's novels about Clare Fergusson, the newly ordained Episcopalian priest of a small upstate NewYork community and Russ Van Alystyne, the local chief of Police.

Being the first woman priest in this small town is going to be difficult enough for Clare, especially as it is clear that she is as different as can be from her predecessor; she doesn't need anything that is going to make life even more complicated than it already is. Cue disaster in the shape of a newborn baby abandoned on the steps of the church and the discovery, hard on the heels of this event, of the body of a young woman. These two incidents bring Clare and Russ into close contact and they find it easy to collaborate having both come from military backgrounds which have shaped their minds to work in pretty much the same sort of organised way.

Who is the baby? Who is the girl? Is she the baby's mother and if so who might want her dead? Why was whoever left the child on the church steps so insistent that he be adopted by a particular family from the congregation? Spencer-Fleming develops a convincing plot line that kept me guessing almost to the end.

 However, good though her plotting is, I think her really strong points are her ability to create realistic settings and to draw extremely believable characters.  Clare has come from much warmer climes and the New England winter is a real shock. It was to me as well. I really felt the cold and most particularly the difficultly of day to day life in a countryside that is almost impossible to penetrate once the snow comes down. I thought we'd had a difficult winter this year, but it was as nothing to what the people of Millers Kill have to face. If we have another bad spell next winter remind me not to complain before I've re-read this, will you.

Clare herself I found really attractive. As someone who was brought up in the Church, but no longer belongs, she struck me as the sort of priest the ministry could do with encouraging. She leads her congregation in the ways she feels are moral without actually judging them. When I am screaming at a character, "And you call yourself a Christian?" Clare is trying to find a way of helping that person see for themselves that what they are proposing is not acceptable. The best thing I can say about Clare is that I would like her for a very good friend.

Something that I will be interested to see is how Spencer-Fleming develops the community in which her novels are set. I'm seeing her here in relation to Louise Penny, who has created in Three Pines a group of individuals every bit as important and as central to her work as Inspector Gamache and his police team. So far I haven't felt that there is anyone among the inhabitants of Millers Kill who is going to become a recurring and important character but that may change further into the series.

All in all then, this is a mark in favour of being introduced to new writers and a book worth adding to the pile as I struggle home from the library.  Thank you.

Annie

Lasting Damage ~ Sophie Hannah

I have been a fan of Sophie Hannah ever since I picked up her first crime novel, Little Face, and made the acquaintance of Sergeant Charlie Zailer and DC Simon Waterhouse. As I suspect is true for many crime addicts, I am intrigued and gripped as much by the developing story within the police team as I am by the individual cases that are the subject of each of the books and I am definitely gripped by the cases. Sophie Hannah certainly knows how to write a thriller that keeps the reader on tenterhooks to the very last page. Lasting Damage is no exception.

Connie Bowskill is worried and, as we very soon discover, she's been worried for sometime. That worry forces her out of bed in the early hours of the morning to surf the net for details of a house she's seen that is up for sale. Bringing up the estate agent's website she finds that there is a virtual tour available and so she clicks on the button in the hope that she will find evidence that will settle those worries one way or another. Well, she finds evidence all right, but it isn't what she was expecting, because what she sees is a woman lying face down in a pool of blood. However, when she brings her husband downstairs and gets him to search the site, the woman has gone. What is more there is no sign of the blood either. The carpet is perfectly clean, the room perfectly normal.

And so the process of investigation begins and as usual it isn't until the very last pages of the novel that it becomes clear which of the many twists and turns in the plot will finally reveal the truth. Inevitably, it will take a mind that can see past the obvious and join dots that are so far apart as almost to belong to different puzzles to solve the mystery. Which is another way of saying that it will take Simon Waterhouse. And this is a problem because as the story begins he and Charlie are hundreds of miles away on their honeymoon. But then you surely didn't ever expect that to be the proverbial bed of roses, did you?

This is a very good book. They are all very good books. However, I am beginning to have a 'but'. While each of Hannah's books works extremely well as a single novel they all follow exactly the same pattern, not only in respect of the way in which they are structured but also in terms of the type of crime and the nature of the victim. Now, I am a great believer in pattern. To quote Kenneth Pike, man is a pattern-making, pattern-seeking animal. But, having shown that we know how the pattern works the trick to keeping an audience's attention is to break it without having the structure fall down around our heads, especially when the chosen pattern is as obviously signalled to the reader as it is in these books. Hannah is a good enough writer to do that and I am beginning to wish that she would find a way of making her work fresh. For me, she is starting to sound the same note rather too often.


Annie

Horror on the Rue Morgue

Actually, the horror starts before we ever get to the Rue Morgue, because I have to admit that crime fiction addict that I am and despite working for decades in a University English Department, last night I read Poe's classic story for the first time.

Somehow, I have missed out on any in-depth study of the literature of the nineteenth century and consequently many texts that others take for granted I have only encountered if the whim has so taken me. My whim has never extended to Poe. I've read some of his poems and we used to use a short story, The Oval Portrait, as a means of introducing our first year undergrads to the novel thought that we might be interested in hearing their views about a text rather than simply having our own thoughts parroted back to us, but other than that my whim had never been wafted in Poe's direction. Thus, horror the first.

Horror the second comes with the murders themselves. You seriously don't want to be reading this book if you have any sort of squeamish stomach. Whatever anyone might say about the violence in present day crime fiction (and I was watching a seriously graphic televised version of one of Val McDermid's books the other evening that was enough to turn anyone's insides with the exception of the victim, whose insides were already thoroughly 'turned') it has nothing on what Poe describes here. You will have second and third thoughts about your safety, even behind locked doors, after you've shivered your way through this story, I can tell you.

But, horror the third comes when you find out whodunit. Don't worry, I'm not going to give the game away, but what a ..........! If you tried that in a modern novel you'd never get it past the publisher - at least I hope you wouldn't.

Having said that, in many ways this isn't typical of how crime fiction has developed over the intervening years. You can see how it leads to Sherlock Holmes, with the emphasis on close analysis of the detail of the crime and its surroundings and I suppose that does relate to some extent to those books that rely to a large extent on the use of the forensic sciences, but in truth this is a justification of a particular mode of thought, a specific cast of mind, that just happens to play itself out through the medium of a crime. Catching the perpetrator is secondary really.

Nevertheless, I'm glad I've read it and can now move on to other material from the period that is new to me. Next up is M E Brandon's Lady Audley's Secret, which is another book I should have read years ago. Fortunately a friend whose judgement I trust implicitly read this last year and loved it, so with luck I should fare better. No more horrors, I hope.

Annie

Anatomy of Murder

Before I could start on my revised list for January I had one of the far too many crime novels that I read over the holiday period to finish; this one for my Wednesday morning book group.

In fact, Imogen Robertson's Anatomy of Murder is a cut above a lot of the other books I read over the Christmas period. Set in 1781, it is her second novel and like the first, Instruments of Darkness, deals with the fortunes of Mrs Harriet Westerman and Mr Gabriel Crowther, a sort of CSI team of their day. These two characters were brought together by force of circumstances and the coincidence of their locale in the first book to solve the mystery of the Earl of Sussex and his missing heir after the discovery by Harriet of a dead man bearing the Sussex family coat of arms. The second in the series finds them in London where Harriet's Royal Navy husband is hospitalised having sustained a blow to the head while pursuing the King's enemies.

The thrust of the story is to do with the uncovering of a spy-ring set on revealing the secrets of the country's forces to any foreign government that is prepared to pay. In fact one of the things that makes much of the book ring true to modern ears is the accommodation that has to be reached with villains who are apprehended because of the service they have done the British Government in the past. In the course of discovery Robertson takes us into the world of Georgian opera and the public's love affair with the castrato voice as well as introducing us to some very likeable low-life Londoners who fortunately look set fair to reappear in future volumes.

There are several reasons why I'm actually very glad to have read this book. Firstly, I am always pleased when a good first novel is followed by an even better second. No one book wonder here then. Secondly, this is a period about which I know very little and when linked with my third reason that is important because the other feature that makes this a book worth reading is the quality of the research that has gone into it. The acknowledgements make it clear that Robertson has gone to considerable trouble to make sure that her facts are correct and the accuracy of what she has to say about the one area I do know something about, the theatre of the period, suggest that her other background reading has been put to similar good use.

There is a third book due out in April, Island of Bones, and although in general I want to read less crime fiction this year, that is one that will be on my library list as soon as it becomes available.


Annie