Not all of Guido Brunetti's cases involve actively investigating crimes. 2013's The Golden Egg is one of the better examples where a "mystery" certainly exists, but the nature of any crime committed remains murky.
Donna Leon begins her 22nd trip into Brunetti's world in typical fashion. Vice-Questore Patta summons Brunetti to see if he can make discreet enquiries about a mask shop in one of the campi of the city. It seems that the proprietor of the shop has taken to displaying their wares on tables in the campo itself, despite not having the licence to do so. In what should surely qualify as an "only-in-Venice" moment (but is probably the kind of thing which happens elsewhere as well), there are implications for the son of the Mayor of the city, depending on the outcome of Brunetti's queries.
While Brunetti begins this line of investigation, his wife tells him that a deaf-mute man who had worked at their local dry-cleaner has died. Paola is concerned about what could have caused this death, and Brunetti is only too happy to make his own private enquiries about what seems to be a rather bland death by misadventure.
This is until the man - Davide Cavanella - turns out to have had no official existence. In Italy, as in much of the rest of Europe, national ID cards are issed to everyone, and Cavanella didn't have one of these. Neither did he leave any other trace going through life, even a school record at the one school in Venice designed to teach sign language, or a disability pension. Pathologist Ettore Rizzardi points out that without anything like this, an identification will need to be made by a relative, and Cavanella's mother is reluctant to be drawn on any of the particulars of her son's death, or his life.
By this point, of course, Brunetti's curiosity has got the better of him, and a careful private investigation ensues. As is relatively common in Leon's novels, the story of Cavanella's life is unearthed gradually, and involves numerous blind alleys and plenty of drinks in Venetian bars before the full sordid back-story is revealed.
The Golden Egg also represents a return to prominence of Brunetti's Sicilian colleague Griffoni, who had been sidelined in several recent investigations. Despite her lack of a Venetian background, her understanding of what Brunetti refers to as "a certain type of woman" proves pivotal in obtaining key pieces of information.
While there are fewer domestic scenes in The Golden Egg than are perhaps par for the course, the opening exchanges around the dining table are vintage Leon. Brunetti's family have devised a strange game where they tell a story from the end to the beginning, deliberately setting each other up with increasingly outlandish premises. Coming from a family with a strong line in word-play myself, this felt particularly authentic.
As ever with Donna Leon, if you know what you're getting yourself into, this is a terrific read. Brunetti never breaks a sweat, and neither will the plot have that result on the reader. In some ways, staging a novel like this in contemporary Venice comes closer than might sound possible to Miss Marple's St Mary Mead, in that Venice is a small town where most people know most people and just about everyone has secrets. Not quite the "rural cosy" that Agatha Christie pioneered, perhaps, but an "Adriatic cosy" is the next best thing.
Four stars.
Sunday, 22 April 2018
Tuesday, 10 April 2018
Henning Mankell - "Firewall"
With 2002's Firewall (originally published in Swedish in 1998 as Brandvägg), Henning Mankell's brooding Kurt Wallander is really given the chance to reflect on his career.
Indeed, we first meet Wallander in this instalment as he attends the funeral of one of the characters from Sidetracked and ruminates on the legacy of the sadistic killer in that case. He also reminisces about his self-imposed exile at the start of The Man Who Smiled and the discoveries he makes about a former colleague in One Step Behind. For a character who personifies the "noir" side of "Scandinavian Noir", this is almost too gloomy as an opening.
Thankfully for the reader, events occur quickly to shake Wallander out of his typical reverie. Two young girls have been arrested for a violent and seemingly-random attack on a taxi driver, and Wallander has been given the job of trying to establish a motive. One of them manages to escape police custody, while Wallander's actions in relation to the other result in an internal police investigation being opened - yet another cloud over the head of this gifted but idiosyncratic policeman.
Shortly after this event, a power outage in southern Sweden is found to have a particularly gruesome cause, eventually leading Wallander and his team to suspect a link with a man who seems to have had a heart attack after making an ATM withdrawal. This web seems to extend to a mysterious man with a fraudulent Hong Kong-issued American Express card, which sets up a particularly Byzantine investigation, much of which is conducted in that quaint version of cyberspace which existed barely two decades ago, before the internet became what it is today. There is also a brief detour to Mankell's beloved Africa, this time Angola.
Wallander's personal life is its usual complicated self as well. With his relationship with Baiba Liepa clearly in past tense, he finally is persuaded to put a personal ad in the newspaper, which leads to an intriguing subplot of its own. Linda, Wallander's daughter, also makes a few small appearances, mainly in order to make her father worry about the secret she seems to be keeping from him.
Ultimately, Firewall falls victim to the same problem that rendered One Step Behind slightly less than successful. Mankell creates a genuinely intriguing web of conspiracies and shifting loyalties, but seems unable to "close the deal". The motives of certain characters remain unexplained beyond "being the bad guys", and it's left irritatingly ambiguous as to whether the links between certain events are real or merely coincidental. None of these criticisms get in the way of the plot, necessarily, but they do make the final revelations somewhat unsatisfying and point to an author still not entirely in control of his craft. Considering that this is Mankell's eighth excursion into Wallander's world in slightly over a decade, it's a bit of a worry that such "clunkiness" is still allowed to stand.
What makes Firewall work, though, are the well-written characters. Wallander remains objectionable, but much like his Scottish contemporary John Rebus, it's hard to stay mad at him. Linda is gradually becoming a useful calming influence on Wallander's excesses, and his colleague Ann-Britt Höglund is becoming a much better-developed character with each novel as well. Some more refinement of the plot - perhaps less ambition and globe-spanning conspiracies in favour of a simple well-rounded Swedish-based murder - would really move Mankell into the first rank of crime novelists with whom he is so often compared.
3.5 stars.
Indeed, we first meet Wallander in this instalment as he attends the funeral of one of the characters from Sidetracked and ruminates on the legacy of the sadistic killer in that case. He also reminisces about his self-imposed exile at the start of The Man Who Smiled and the discoveries he makes about a former colleague in One Step Behind. For a character who personifies the "noir" side of "Scandinavian Noir", this is almost too gloomy as an opening.
Thankfully for the reader, events occur quickly to shake Wallander out of his typical reverie. Two young girls have been arrested for a violent and seemingly-random attack on a taxi driver, and Wallander has been given the job of trying to establish a motive. One of them manages to escape police custody, while Wallander's actions in relation to the other result in an internal police investigation being opened - yet another cloud over the head of this gifted but idiosyncratic policeman.
Shortly after this event, a power outage in southern Sweden is found to have a particularly gruesome cause, eventually leading Wallander and his team to suspect a link with a man who seems to have had a heart attack after making an ATM withdrawal. This web seems to extend to a mysterious man with a fraudulent Hong Kong-issued American Express card, which sets up a particularly Byzantine investigation, much of which is conducted in that quaint version of cyberspace which existed barely two decades ago, before the internet became what it is today. There is also a brief detour to Mankell's beloved Africa, this time Angola.
Wallander's personal life is its usual complicated self as well. With his relationship with Baiba Liepa clearly in past tense, he finally is persuaded to put a personal ad in the newspaper, which leads to an intriguing subplot of its own. Linda, Wallander's daughter, also makes a few small appearances, mainly in order to make her father worry about the secret she seems to be keeping from him.
Ultimately, Firewall falls victim to the same problem that rendered One Step Behind slightly less than successful. Mankell creates a genuinely intriguing web of conspiracies and shifting loyalties, but seems unable to "close the deal". The motives of certain characters remain unexplained beyond "being the bad guys", and it's left irritatingly ambiguous as to whether the links between certain events are real or merely coincidental. None of these criticisms get in the way of the plot, necessarily, but they do make the final revelations somewhat unsatisfying and point to an author still not entirely in control of his craft. Considering that this is Mankell's eighth excursion into Wallander's world in slightly over a decade, it's a bit of a worry that such "clunkiness" is still allowed to stand.
What makes Firewall work, though, are the well-written characters. Wallander remains objectionable, but much like his Scottish contemporary John Rebus, it's hard to stay mad at him. Linda is gradually becoming a useful calming influence on Wallander's excesses, and his colleague Ann-Britt Höglund is becoming a much better-developed character with each novel as well. Some more refinement of the plot - perhaps less ambition and globe-spanning conspiracies in favour of a simple well-rounded Swedish-based murder - would really move Mankell into the first rank of crime novelists with whom he is so often compared.
3.5 stars.
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