Midsummer. Sweden. A small group of friends are celebrating the longer days - and the long-awaited arrival of warmer weather - dressed in historical costumes when they're shot by an unknown marksman. If this atmospheric beginning doesn't immediately make the reader think they're in southern Scania and about to follow Kurt Wallander and the rest of the Ystad police, I don't know what will.
One Step Behind (Swedish: Steget efter) is Henning Mankell's seventh Kurt Wallander novel, making its appearance in Sweden in 1997 and its translated appearance in 2002. As with many of Wallander's earlier cases, the age of the novel is immediately apparent to the reader in 2017/2018 - younger characters can't be automatically assumed to have mobile phones, for example, and the circulation of a suspect's photo outside of Sweden takes some time to achieve. Mankell's muted social commentary - the sort of thing which would become a hallmark of Scandi-crime in the post-Stieg-Larsson era - makes its appearance as well, with several characters bemoaning the move towards a more "modern" and "lawless" Sweden as they gradually uncover the crimes here.
Unlike most of Wallander's earlier cases, One Step Behind begins in a rather oblique manner. The murders referred to above are described (tensely, and from the perspective of the killer) in the prologue, but the first Wallander and his colleagues hear about them is the belief of the mother of one of the girls in the group that her daughter hasn't gone on the trip around Europe her postcards seem to indicate that she's taken. Looking again at the age of the novel, it's rather touching to see Wallander asking relatives of the youths involved for handwriting samples (from letters) and musing on how easy it would be to forge the writing of the people in question.
Things become more interesting, though, when Wallander's colleague Svedberg misses work for a few days in a row. Acting on a hunch, Wallander calls on Svedberg's address, only to find a brutal murder scene. The death of one of their own sparks the Ystad force in a way that the missing teenagers hasn't, particularly as they are forced to confront the fact that they really didn't know Svedberg very well at all, making the investigation exceptionally challenging.
In the first of several twists, Svedberg appears to have had almost no private life, even according to his two living relatives (one of whom has made a minor appearance in an earlier case). And yet, as this puzzle begins to unravel, Wallander is met by another puzzle, that Svedberg had seemingly been connected to the disappearance of the teenagers in some way or another, and seems to have been conducting his own investigation during his annual holidays.
Wallander and his colleagues - particularly the increasingly-well-written Ann-Britt Höglund - are faced with a truly baffling mystery involving a telescope, a mysterious woman, the bonds between the teenagers and a killer who can somehow manage to stay ahead of them.
In contrast to Wallander's earlier cases, Mankell has genuinely crafted a remarkable set of puzzles for his characters (and readers) to solve. Wallander is reminded of his former mentor Rydberg's dictum of removing the "extraneous layers", but even the brief vignettes from the perspective of the killer don't give the reader much of a chance to remove those layers.
From a crime-writing perspective, this is a huge leap from the earlier "straight thriller" plots (such as The Man Who Smiled, which is more an exercise in watching Wallander assemble evidence against someone the reader already assumes is the villain, while this character tries to destabilise the case, or Sidetracked with its frequent killer's-eye-view passages). We aren't exactly in the realm of the classic whodunit with its myriad clues and red herrings and the detective summoning all the suspects for a comfortable chat, but there is patently more detective work required to discover the ins and outs of this mystery than earlier ones.
That said, Mankell drops the ball in two important ways here. The first may simply be a product of its time - Svedberg's status as a "confirmed bachelor" leads many characters to assume he was gay, and this subplot seems to bring out the worst in many of the supporting characters (not Wallander and Höglund, admittedly). It's entirely possible, as mentioned, that Sweden in the late 1990s may simply have been less tolerant than it famously is now, and that judging One Step Behind by contemporary standards on this issue may be as pointless as expecting the characters here to communicate by email and smartphone rather than letter and fax.
The second concern, though, is more serious. Mankell gives us a genuinely cold-blooded killer here, but one who appears to have performed certain actions purely to advance the plot, which is most unfortunate. One Step Behind features a brief epilogue where Wallander goes over his interrogation of the killer and asks many of the questions the reader will doubtless have about motive (some of the killer's-eye-view sections imply a very long-game kind of a plan - with a "schedule" of kills, and a reason for one of the more impressive set-pieces). The response, apparently, was that there was "no reason" for these.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with a fictional killer performing bizarre actions to make a case more complicated, of course. One of the most famous lines in the cult comedy Clue is Tim Curry's explanation of why one of the victims was found in the bathroom - "Don't you see? To create confusion!" That said, when most of the killer's rationale is "I don't know", it's hard not to feel that the author created a set of puzzles without putting a motive behind them.
A lot of ink has been spilled, and bytes filled, about this sort of thing, and I don't intend to add much more to the debate, but it genuinely does seem a bit of a letdown when someone who is being set up to be one of the more memorable serial killers in recent literature really doesn't have a motive. Even the seemingly-motiveless killings in Larsson's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo can at least be put down to "men who hate women", while the vague attempts at a motive here are more than a bit facile.
4 stars. Leaving aside the rather weak ending, this is a truly gripping read.
Friday, 5 January 2018
Tuesday, 19 December 2017
Arnaldur Indriðason - "Outrage"
Since I wrote my last review of his work, the Icelandic crime novelist Arnaldur Indriðason has achieved a slightly unusual milestone, courtesy of the politics of his homeland. The new Icelandic Prime Minister is one Katrín Jakobsdóttir, who holds an MA degree in the work of the novelist, which may well make Arnaldur the first crime novelist to have been studied academically by a senior politician anywhere in the world.
All of this is a side-note to 2012's Outrage (originally published in 2008 as Myrká), of course, which is itself a somewhat peculiar novel even by Arnaldur's customarily austere standards.
The action begins with a rather enigmatic prologue, in which a man prepares himself for a night on the town. It's clear that the unnamed man is up to something sinister, and by the time he's found himself talking to a young (unnamed) woman, we begin to realise that his aim is the use of a date-rape drug of some description.
But all is not as it might seem, though. As the dead body is found, it emerges that it's the man who has been killed, with no sign of any woman nearby - only a woman's shawl, with a strange smell which Detective Elínborg recognises as tandoori spices. Moreover, we learn rapidly that the man's bloodstream is full of rohypnol, all of which points to something much more complex than first thought.
Under normal circumstances, this would be a case for Detective Erlendur, that gaunt, irascible character familiar from the rest of Arnaldur's novels. Strangely, Erlendur is completely absent from this novel, having travelled to the east of the country in an attempt to reconnect with his roots. The investigation, therefore, is conducted by Elínborg in the main, with Sigurður Óli providing some level of support.
The effect of this is somewhat bizarre to the reader, as Erlendur is as synonymous with Arnaldur's work as Wallander is for Henning Mankell or Hercule Poirot for Agatha Christie. While Mankell wrote a number of non-Wallander novels, and Christie had a small group of "starring detectives" (as well as trying her hand at a Poirot investigation in which Poirot himself stays at home), it is still a jarring realisation that Erlendur is absent and we're really getting the "B-Team" doing the investigation. Talented author though Arnaldur is, Elínborg and Sigurður Óli have never really been fleshed out as three-dimensional characters before, and remain similarly underdeveloped by the end of the this case. We know a bit more of Elínborg's private life, but I'm not convinced I really "know" the character the way I do Erlendur.
Arnaldur's novels almost always involve motives arising from the relatively distant past, and Outrage is no exception. Elínborg moves between the unnamed fishing village where the victim was born, the drug-dealers of Reykjavík and even the suburban town of Akranes in the quest to resolve this murder - and to try and clear up an unsolved disappearance from half a decade earlier.
The victim - Runólfur - gradually emerges as a thoroughly objectionable figure, and it is to Arnaldur's credit that he's able to change the focus of the novel from "justice for the victim" to "justice for other victims", as the logic of investigating Runólfur is all but openly questioned by a number of characters.
As in the best Scandi-Crime, Arnaldur holds up a mirror to his society and isn't at all concerned about showing things warts and all. Prescription drug abuse and a willingness to minimise the impact of sexual assault are both shown as "norms" in Iceland. So, too, is the clash between traditional society - such as Runólfur's mother, who is known in her village for never having been to Reykjavík - and the hyper-modernity of the capital.
On occasion, this leads to some genuinely amusing moments. Elínborg's interviews with an elderly woman who is terrified of electro-magnetic waves and who provides an important clue are sensitively-written but still very funny. The same, in fact, can be said for the way in which the woman's clue is revealed to actually be a clue.
That being said, some portions of the solution appear to have been phoned in, as the saying goes. The final use of the "tandoori shawl" clue feels a bit padded out, as well as being slightly too reliant on coincidence to be plausible. In Arnaldur's defence, though, it's possible to argue that the genuine lack of Indian cuisine in Iceland could produce a situation like the one Elínborg discovers.
In customary fashion, Arnaldur's conclusion leaves as many questions as it provides answers. Having read a number of this series, it's a technique which works very well, as the entire point is that "life goes on", rather than everything having been wrapped up neatly and "closure" provided to everyone involved. It may be slightly disconcerting to readers encountering the Reykjavík CID for the first time, though. These novels are an acquired taste.
Not exactly Arnaldur at the peak of his powers, but a good read nonetheless. I continue to live in hope that the earlier pair of Erlendur novels will see an English translation someday. 4 stars.
[NOTE: In accordance with Icelandic names, all Icelanders here are properly referred to by their first names only]
All of this is a side-note to 2012's Outrage (originally published in 2008 as Myrká), of course, which is itself a somewhat peculiar novel even by Arnaldur's customarily austere standards.
The action begins with a rather enigmatic prologue, in which a man prepares himself for a night on the town. It's clear that the unnamed man is up to something sinister, and by the time he's found himself talking to a young (unnamed) woman, we begin to realise that his aim is the use of a date-rape drug of some description.
But all is not as it might seem, though. As the dead body is found, it emerges that it's the man who has been killed, with no sign of any woman nearby - only a woman's shawl, with a strange smell which Detective Elínborg recognises as tandoori spices. Moreover, we learn rapidly that the man's bloodstream is full of rohypnol, all of which points to something much more complex than first thought.
Under normal circumstances, this would be a case for Detective Erlendur, that gaunt, irascible character familiar from the rest of Arnaldur's novels. Strangely, Erlendur is completely absent from this novel, having travelled to the east of the country in an attempt to reconnect with his roots. The investigation, therefore, is conducted by Elínborg in the main, with Sigurður Óli providing some level of support.
The effect of this is somewhat bizarre to the reader, as Erlendur is as synonymous with Arnaldur's work as Wallander is for Henning Mankell or Hercule Poirot for Agatha Christie. While Mankell wrote a number of non-Wallander novels, and Christie had a small group of "starring detectives" (as well as trying her hand at a Poirot investigation in which Poirot himself stays at home), it is still a jarring realisation that Erlendur is absent and we're really getting the "B-Team" doing the investigation. Talented author though Arnaldur is, Elínborg and Sigurður Óli have never really been fleshed out as three-dimensional characters before, and remain similarly underdeveloped by the end of the this case. We know a bit more of Elínborg's private life, but I'm not convinced I really "know" the character the way I do Erlendur.
Arnaldur's novels almost always involve motives arising from the relatively distant past, and Outrage is no exception. Elínborg moves between the unnamed fishing village where the victim was born, the drug-dealers of Reykjavík and even the suburban town of Akranes in the quest to resolve this murder - and to try and clear up an unsolved disappearance from half a decade earlier.
The victim - Runólfur - gradually emerges as a thoroughly objectionable figure, and it is to Arnaldur's credit that he's able to change the focus of the novel from "justice for the victim" to "justice for other victims", as the logic of investigating Runólfur is all but openly questioned by a number of characters.
As in the best Scandi-Crime, Arnaldur holds up a mirror to his society and isn't at all concerned about showing things warts and all. Prescription drug abuse and a willingness to minimise the impact of sexual assault are both shown as "norms" in Iceland. So, too, is the clash between traditional society - such as Runólfur's mother, who is known in her village for never having been to Reykjavík - and the hyper-modernity of the capital.
On occasion, this leads to some genuinely amusing moments. Elínborg's interviews with an elderly woman who is terrified of electro-magnetic waves and who provides an important clue are sensitively-written but still very funny. The same, in fact, can be said for the way in which the woman's clue is revealed to actually be a clue.
That being said, some portions of the solution appear to have been phoned in, as the saying goes. The final use of the "tandoori shawl" clue feels a bit padded out, as well as being slightly too reliant on coincidence to be plausible. In Arnaldur's defence, though, it's possible to argue that the genuine lack of Indian cuisine in Iceland could produce a situation like the one Elínborg discovers.
In customary fashion, Arnaldur's conclusion leaves as many questions as it provides answers. Having read a number of this series, it's a technique which works very well, as the entire point is that "life goes on", rather than everything having been wrapped up neatly and "closure" provided to everyone involved. It may be slightly disconcerting to readers encountering the Reykjavík CID for the first time, though. These novels are an acquired taste.
Not exactly Arnaldur at the peak of his powers, but a good read nonetheless. I continue to live in hope that the earlier pair of Erlendur novels will see an English translation someday. 4 stars.
[NOTE: In accordance with Icelandic names, all Icelanders here are properly referred to by their first names only]
Tuesday, 12 December 2017
"The Snowman" film review
While this is a blog of book reviews, I feel that it is important to devote some attention to the recent film adaptation of Jo Nesbø's The Snowman. In my review of the novel, I indicated that the promise of the cast of the film was very high. Sadly, however, those expectations don't appear to have been borne out.
The Snowman is, to be entirely honest, a deeply frustrating film. There is no reason why - given the material, the actors and the director - it shouldn't have been one of the best films of the year, and yet it routinely drops the ball when it has the opportunity to do something genuinely spectacular.
My first problem with the film is that it falls into the common trap of letting all the actors use their natural accents, rather than getting them all to sound Norwegian. I suppose in some regard this is because much of the filmgoing public doesn't necessarily know what Norwegian accents sound like, but it actively destroys the realism of the plot. As a result, Michael Fassbender plays Hole with his Irish accent with overtones of something generically Scandinavian (I have a great deal of respect for Fassbender as an actor, and it is gratifying to see that he's at least made an effort here). Charlotte Gainsbourg plays Rakel with a French accent, which is bizarre, and Val Kilmer's Gert Rafto has an American accent, which is a complete waste of time. In Kilmer's defence, Rafto is from Bergen which has a very distinctive accent for most Norwegians, but I doubt that Kilmer's American tones are what they would have expected either.
Secondly, the film dispenses with a number of the subplots in the original novel. The complex motivations of Katrine Bratt, for example, remain almost entirely unexplained and her ultimate fate is radically different to that in the novel - so much so that I'm not sure how the mooted sequel (which I honestly doubt will be made now) would have worked.
Yes, there are certain aspects of Snowman's plot which require the written word, rather than the camera shot, to maintain their tension, but excising nearly 75% of a character (JK Simmons' Arve Støp moves from a key figure to a peripheral distraction) in the name of the visual makes no sense at all.
Thirdly, and most damningly, the film really doesn't know what genre it wants to be in. The novel is a thriller, and a very tense one at that. The marketing for the film presents it as something closer to an urban horror film with a slasher-esque villain. Just as so many Hollywood comedies overplay their hands by having the funniest bits in the trailer, the same is true with this film's jump-scares, for the simple reason that there actually aren't a great many in the original plot (one or two are invented for the screen, but that's another story).
Having eviscerated Nesbø's plot and made a mockery of the setting - much of the film was actually filmed on location, which further makes the accents bizarre - it emerges that Thomas Alfredson really didn't know what to do with what was left as a director.
Alfredson has previously directed the recent version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and can clearly handle complex plots, so the fact that he clearly phoned this one in is baffling. He's on record as complaining about a lack of time to prepare overall, as well as to do all the shooting he wanted to in Norway. While both of these may well be valid points, the fact that he's come out and said as much sounds remarkably unprofessional. A good director should be able to overcome such difficulties, rather than use them as excuses.
Again, the bones (or most of them) of Nesbø's original plot are there, and there's some particularly good acting in parts. Sadly, this doesn't add up to a particularly faithful re-creation of an absolute classic of recent crime fiction. I'm tempted to say that it works on some level, but while I'm glad I saw it, it really doesn't work at all.
The Snowman is, to be entirely honest, a deeply frustrating film. There is no reason why - given the material, the actors and the director - it shouldn't have been one of the best films of the year, and yet it routinely drops the ball when it has the opportunity to do something genuinely spectacular.
My first problem with the film is that it falls into the common trap of letting all the actors use their natural accents, rather than getting them all to sound Norwegian. I suppose in some regard this is because much of the filmgoing public doesn't necessarily know what Norwegian accents sound like, but it actively destroys the realism of the plot. As a result, Michael Fassbender plays Hole with his Irish accent with overtones of something generically Scandinavian (I have a great deal of respect for Fassbender as an actor, and it is gratifying to see that he's at least made an effort here). Charlotte Gainsbourg plays Rakel with a French accent, which is bizarre, and Val Kilmer's Gert Rafto has an American accent, which is a complete waste of time. In Kilmer's defence, Rafto is from Bergen which has a very distinctive accent for most Norwegians, but I doubt that Kilmer's American tones are what they would have expected either.
Secondly, the film dispenses with a number of the subplots in the original novel. The complex motivations of Katrine Bratt, for example, remain almost entirely unexplained and her ultimate fate is radically different to that in the novel - so much so that I'm not sure how the mooted sequel (which I honestly doubt will be made now) would have worked.
Yes, there are certain aspects of Snowman's plot which require the written word, rather than the camera shot, to maintain their tension, but excising nearly 75% of a character (JK Simmons' Arve Støp moves from a key figure to a peripheral distraction) in the name of the visual makes no sense at all.
Thirdly, and most damningly, the film really doesn't know what genre it wants to be in. The novel is a thriller, and a very tense one at that. The marketing for the film presents it as something closer to an urban horror film with a slasher-esque villain. Just as so many Hollywood comedies overplay their hands by having the funniest bits in the trailer, the same is true with this film's jump-scares, for the simple reason that there actually aren't a great many in the original plot (one or two are invented for the screen, but that's another story).
Having eviscerated Nesbø's plot and made a mockery of the setting - much of the film was actually filmed on location, which further makes the accents bizarre - it emerges that Thomas Alfredson really didn't know what to do with what was left as a director.
Alfredson has previously directed the recent version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and can clearly handle complex plots, so the fact that he clearly phoned this one in is baffling. He's on record as complaining about a lack of time to prepare overall, as well as to do all the shooting he wanted to in Norway. While both of these may well be valid points, the fact that he's come out and said as much sounds remarkably unprofessional. A good director should be able to overcome such difficulties, rather than use them as excuses.
Again, the bones (or most of them) of Nesbø's original plot are there, and there's some particularly good acting in parts. Sadly, this doesn't add up to a particularly faithful re-creation of an absolute classic of recent crime fiction. I'm tempted to say that it works on some level, but while I'm glad I saw it, it really doesn't work at all.
Jo Nesbø - "Phantom"
Hary Hole again intends to disappear at the end of The Leopard, but the Norwegian capital clearly has a hold over Jo Nesbø's famously dark detective, as 2012's Phantom (Norwegian: Gjenferd, originally published 2011) opens with the scarred and newly-metallic-fingered Hole returning to Oslo. Hole has changed, though, as he is now definitely no longer a Norwegian policeman, and has in fact been working in what might be termed "debt collection", or perhaps "standover tactics" in Hong Kong, a development hinted at towards the end of the earlier novel.
Oslo, too, has changed. The police no longer turn a blind eye to drug dealing in certain parts of the city, and in asides we learn that the more "traditional" drug of heroin has been replaced by something known as "violin". Hole's adversaries from The Leopard - Mikael Bellman and his loyal underling Truls Berntsen - remain in their police careers, with Bellman re-assigned to head the division focusing on organised crime, which appears to focus on a criminal known only as "the man from Dubai".
So what's brought Hole back from the Orient this time? He initially requests permission from his former boss to investigate the murder of a young junkie, Gusto Hanssen. This is an unusual request, since the case appears to be straightforward, and a suspect has already been arrested. There is, of course, more to it than that - Oleg, the son of Hole's former girlfriend Rakel - is the arrested suspect. While mother and son had left Norway after the events of The Snowman, it emerges that they have returned, and that Oleg has gone off the rails, falling in with drugs and petty crime. Hole, perhaps unsurprisingly, blames himself and simply can't believe that the boy he knew a few short years before could have killed someone else.
On meeting Oleg - in a particularly touching series of scenes - it is revealed that the young man blames Hole for his troubles as well, and much of the early plot of the novel is played against the need for the father-son relationship (such as it was) to be restored.
Hole's investigations into the murder take him further into the new underworld in Oslo, uncovering a complex web of political and personal corruption uniting crime, the police and the government, and where it is never entirely clear who is using whom. In many ways, this investigation owes a lot to the classic noir fiction from the USA more than half a century ago. I honestly wouldn't be surprised to have seen Sam Spade or any of the other key figures of that style of fiction conducting inquiries.
The weakness of the novel, to be honest, is the sheer complexity of this corruption. Nesbø relies quite heavily on a "narrative" from the deceased Gusto Hanssen to explain some of the more abstruse points, as it gradually emerges that this may not have been a "regular" murder of a junkie or drug dealer. Unfortunately, Hanssen's exposition of the plot doesn't always keep pace with Hole's investigation, and the former detective is left more than once chasing up a red herring which the reader already knows the resolution to.
This isn't always a problem, due again to that self-same complexity. There were just as many points where I was grateful that Hanssen would explain something Hole's narrative had hinted at - or vice versa. All of this probably militates against the novel being good "beach reading", a comment I find slightly ironic as I in fact did read this during a holiday at the beach.
Perhaps more than many of the Hole novels, Phantom requires an awareness of the past incidents in Hole's chequered career. His delicate relationship with Rakel plays a considerable role in the plot development here, as do the favours he had earned during The Redeemer. Moreover, the experience of reading the earlier instalments will demonstrate whether Hole really is the detective the reader wants to follow. Nesbø again pulls very few punches, and has no qualms about putting his man into some very tough situations, both physically and ethically.
4 stars overall, for a very complex plot which somehow holds together.
Oslo, too, has changed. The police no longer turn a blind eye to drug dealing in certain parts of the city, and in asides we learn that the more "traditional" drug of heroin has been replaced by something known as "violin". Hole's adversaries from The Leopard - Mikael Bellman and his loyal underling Truls Berntsen - remain in their police careers, with Bellman re-assigned to head the division focusing on organised crime, which appears to focus on a criminal known only as "the man from Dubai".
So what's brought Hole back from the Orient this time? He initially requests permission from his former boss to investigate the murder of a young junkie, Gusto Hanssen. This is an unusual request, since the case appears to be straightforward, and a suspect has already been arrested. There is, of course, more to it than that - Oleg, the son of Hole's former girlfriend Rakel - is the arrested suspect. While mother and son had left Norway after the events of The Snowman, it emerges that they have returned, and that Oleg has gone off the rails, falling in with drugs and petty crime. Hole, perhaps unsurprisingly, blames himself and simply can't believe that the boy he knew a few short years before could have killed someone else.
On meeting Oleg - in a particularly touching series of scenes - it is revealed that the young man blames Hole for his troubles as well, and much of the early plot of the novel is played against the need for the father-son relationship (such as it was) to be restored.
Hole's investigations into the murder take him further into the new underworld in Oslo, uncovering a complex web of political and personal corruption uniting crime, the police and the government, and where it is never entirely clear who is using whom. In many ways, this investigation owes a lot to the classic noir fiction from the USA more than half a century ago. I honestly wouldn't be surprised to have seen Sam Spade or any of the other key figures of that style of fiction conducting inquiries.
The weakness of the novel, to be honest, is the sheer complexity of this corruption. Nesbø relies quite heavily on a "narrative" from the deceased Gusto Hanssen to explain some of the more abstruse points, as it gradually emerges that this may not have been a "regular" murder of a junkie or drug dealer. Unfortunately, Hanssen's exposition of the plot doesn't always keep pace with Hole's investigation, and the former detective is left more than once chasing up a red herring which the reader already knows the resolution to.
This isn't always a problem, due again to that self-same complexity. There were just as many points where I was grateful that Hanssen would explain something Hole's narrative had hinted at - or vice versa. All of this probably militates against the novel being good "beach reading", a comment I find slightly ironic as I in fact did read this during a holiday at the beach.
Perhaps more than many of the Hole novels, Phantom requires an awareness of the past incidents in Hole's chequered career. His delicate relationship with Rakel plays a considerable role in the plot development here, as do the favours he had earned during The Redeemer. Moreover, the experience of reading the earlier instalments will demonstrate whether Hole really is the detective the reader wants to follow. Nesbø again pulls very few punches, and has no qualms about putting his man into some very tough situations, both physically and ethically.
4 stars overall, for a very complex plot which somehow holds together.
Thursday, 23 November 2017
Ian Rankin - "Beggars Banquet"
Published in 2002, Beggars Banquet (the punctuation is inspired by the Rolling Stones album) contains a range of Ian Rankin's short stories written between 1991 and 2000. In contrast to Rankin's earlier short-story collection - A Good Hanging from 1992 - not all of these are Rebus stories, in fact, the good DI Rebus only appears 7 times across the 21 stories on offer here.
Short stories in crime fiction are always a risky proposition in my view. The best of them manage to showcase the creative side of the authors in a very condensed fashion - Agatha Christie, for example, was as much in control of her art in shorter form as she was at novel length. At their worst, the short story amounts to permission for the author to do away with the subtleties of plot and rely on coincidence and rather flimsy clues to present a solution which usually wouldn't stack up in the longer form.
Rankin's short stories here, at least those which deal with detection and the solving of crimes (read: Rebus stories), tend to be better than those worst examples, but not quite at the heights that his best novels can reach. The entertaining "Face the Music", for example, features Rebus at his maverick best dealing with a daylight robbery from an audio-visual shop, and the plot could easily have been spun out into at least part of a novel without much effort. "Trip Trap", on the other hand, sees Rebus jump to a conclusion - admittedly a rather obvious one - based on tissue-thin evidence, and the resolution of "Castle Dangerous" relies far too much on coincidence to be plausible.
Among the non-Rebus stories, there are similar tallies of hits and misses. "Principles of Accounts" is a genuinely tense game of cat-and-mouse with a truly surprising twist at the end, while "The Wider Scheme" falls flat with a twist which is telegraphed far too early in the piece.
There are some more "experimental" pieces, too. "Natural Selection" is a well-written (if overlong) dialogue among a group of small-time gangsters in a pub, "The Serpent's Back" takes place in the Edinburgh of the 1700s, and "The Confession" is based around precisely that, becoming quite claustrophobic as it unwinds. "The Hanged Man" even sees Rankin look at what might be termed supernatural themes, albeit rather cursorily, in combination with his customary "Tartan Noir" realism.
For Rankin aficionados, perhaps the most important entry in this collection is the novella "Death is Not The End".
Parts of this were recycled as a subplot in the 1999 novel Dead Souls, and it was an unusual experience reading the novella as the recycling was done almost bodily into the novel. That being said, the two plots of the novella frankly felt undercooked, with the ending of one of them being only marginally more inspired than "...and then I woke up". I'll stick with the more well-rounded treatment in Dead Souls.
The real question, though, with any collection of short stories, is whether or not it's actually something fans of the novelist need in their lives.
Obviously the trite answer is "yes". As the copyright details make clear, all of these stories were published in limited runs and "various authors" compilations. Assembling them all without this handy volume would be a considerable ask.
In saying that, the fan may also be well-advised to look for 2014's The Beat Goes On, which collects all of the Rebus short stories, and therefore covers all of A Good Hanging, the seven Rebus entries here and others. Of course, if one or more of the non-Rebus stories here pique the interest, looking for this volume may be advised.
All told, a combination of hits and misses, and one which has been superseded in many ways. 3.5 stars.
Short stories in crime fiction are always a risky proposition in my view. The best of them manage to showcase the creative side of the authors in a very condensed fashion - Agatha Christie, for example, was as much in control of her art in shorter form as she was at novel length. At their worst, the short story amounts to permission for the author to do away with the subtleties of plot and rely on coincidence and rather flimsy clues to present a solution which usually wouldn't stack up in the longer form.
Rankin's short stories here, at least those which deal with detection and the solving of crimes (read: Rebus stories), tend to be better than those worst examples, but not quite at the heights that his best novels can reach. The entertaining "Face the Music", for example, features Rebus at his maverick best dealing with a daylight robbery from an audio-visual shop, and the plot could easily have been spun out into at least part of a novel without much effort. "Trip Trap", on the other hand, sees Rebus jump to a conclusion - admittedly a rather obvious one - based on tissue-thin evidence, and the resolution of "Castle Dangerous" relies far too much on coincidence to be plausible.
Among the non-Rebus stories, there are similar tallies of hits and misses. "Principles of Accounts" is a genuinely tense game of cat-and-mouse with a truly surprising twist at the end, while "The Wider Scheme" falls flat with a twist which is telegraphed far too early in the piece.
There are some more "experimental" pieces, too. "Natural Selection" is a well-written (if overlong) dialogue among a group of small-time gangsters in a pub, "The Serpent's Back" takes place in the Edinburgh of the 1700s, and "The Confession" is based around precisely that, becoming quite claustrophobic as it unwinds. "The Hanged Man" even sees Rankin look at what might be termed supernatural themes, albeit rather cursorily, in combination with his customary "Tartan Noir" realism.
For Rankin aficionados, perhaps the most important entry in this collection is the novella "Death is Not The End".
Parts of this were recycled as a subplot in the 1999 novel Dead Souls, and it was an unusual experience reading the novella as the recycling was done almost bodily into the novel. That being said, the two plots of the novella frankly felt undercooked, with the ending of one of them being only marginally more inspired than "...and then I woke up". I'll stick with the more well-rounded treatment in Dead Souls.
The real question, though, with any collection of short stories, is whether or not it's actually something fans of the novelist need in their lives.
Obviously the trite answer is "yes". As the copyright details make clear, all of these stories were published in limited runs and "various authors" compilations. Assembling them all without this handy volume would be a considerable ask.
In saying that, the fan may also be well-advised to look for 2014's The Beat Goes On, which collects all of the Rebus short stories, and therefore covers all of A Good Hanging, the seven Rebus entries here and others. Of course, if one or more of the non-Rebus stories here pique the interest, looking for this volume may be advised.
All told, a combination of hits and misses, and one which has been superseded in many ways. 3.5 stars.
Tuesday, 21 November 2017
Mark Billingham - "Lazy Bones"
How do you investigate a murder when the victim is someone the world seems better off without?
This is a question that almost every fictional detective - or at least their creator - has had to grapple with since crime fiction moved from the genteel drawing rooms of Agatha Christie's novels and into the gritty realism readers seem to expect these days. Of course, at least one of Christie's most famous novels sees Hercule Poirot investigating the murder of a character who doesn't seem particularly pleasant, and who turns out to have been much less than that (Murder on the Orient Express), and many of her other victims at least had one or two associates who were pleased to see their demise.
Nonetheless, particularly as the police procedural has become a popular vehicle of storytelling, victims are increasingly likely to have been "shady" at best, and downright repugnant at worst. Most novelists seem to get around this by giving their characters a slightly over-developed sense of justice, or by taking the more "hardboiled" route by creating some kind of an "honour among thieves".
Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne is faced with this dilemma in Lazy Bones, the third instalment (2003) in that series after the twisted plots of Sleepyhead and Scaredy Cat. In this instace, the dilemma is caused by the fact that the first victim is a recently-released sex offender, a man who many on the case seem rather pleased "got what was coming to him".
Thorne reluctantly takes on the case and leads a team which appears to be going through the motions rather than full of any real hope of catching the killer, despite the violent brutality of the killing itself. We're thus treated to more of the private lives of the central characters in Billingham's series - Phil Hendricks, the gay gothic pathologist, Dave Holland whose girlfriend is weeks away from giving birth, and Thorne himself with his father in the early stages of dementia. While it's comparatively easy to have the obligatory "pathologist" and "detective partner" characters reduced to two-dimensional ciphers (something which even Ian Rankin can be accused of at times), it's clear that Billingham actually cares enough about his supporting cast to give them lives outside of their work. Hendricks and Thorne have a wonderfully easy friendship characterised by wisecracks and football-related banter, and I really can't think of another example of this being done this well in contemporary crime fiction.
Thorne, for his part, is even given a romantic interest, which gives rise to even more banter among his colleagues.
Billingham, as I've indicated elsewhere, is a comedian and actor who turned his hand to fiction. This isn't to say that the Thorne series is "written for laughs" or even that it plays the comic card to the exclusion of the plot. What it means here is that, in contrast to other authors who have amusing scenes in their novels, Billingham genuinely understands the dark humour inherent in what he's writing.
Thorne, for example, begins the novel in a "Restorative Justice Conference", where a young hoodlum is being made to apologise to the elderly couple he broke into the house of. Where a John Rebus, to take a classic example, would find this a waste of time, Thorne is brilliantly cinematic in his reactions both during and after the event. The later inversion of this scene, where Thorne is able to deliver something of his own "restorative justice" to another young ratbag, is all the more amusing for it.
But it's not all careful parody of corporate doublespeak (although the reactions by most of the police to the edicts of the top brass are clearly written by someone who's had to sit through one too many "strategy" meetings). Thorne's house is robbed at one point, and his colleagues at another station are only able to find the thief because he hasn't been able to sell Thorne's extensive collection of country music CDs, which is the cue for a riff on the musical tastes of several characters.
Importantly, though, Billingham is able to dial back on the comedy when needed as well. Thorne's relationship with his father is a difficult one, and it's clearly complicated by the latter's dementia. There are some brilliantly-drawn scenes involving the two men as the younger comes to terms with the "new reality" of his father's decline.
Of course, the murder of the sex offender isn't the only one in this case, and more victims pile up quite effectively - with a few brief scenes from the perspective of one of them being most effective. Again, these are not men that people tend to feel remorse over the deaths of, and this continues to challenge some of the investigators - as do the all-too-frequent dead ends in the investigation.
It's here where Billingham - who, we must remember, was writing only his third novel at the time - has a little difficulty keeping all the balls in the air at once. We've been treated to little vignettes of a nameless couple coming to terms with a seemingly violent rape, as well as the scenes showing the victims-to-be, as mentioned earlier, but we're suddenly introduced to a middle-aged former policewoman being recruited into a "cold case" review team and following up leads on a seemingly-unrelated matter.
Eventually, all of these threads converge, and Thorne is given a new reason to investigate what has now become a serial killer case. There's slightly too high a level of coincidence in all of this for mine, although Billingham does a respectable job of explaining how it all works out the way it needs to.
The final revelations, while genuinely impressive, were ones I'd been suspecting for roughly the last 100 pages, due (of all things) to another vignette which Billingham inserted to dramatise the appearance of one of the victims. That said, this is the only instance in the Thorne series I'm aware of in which victory is snatched so dramatically from the jaws of defeat, even though there's still a reasonable level of coincidence involved and (in retrospect) some rather heavy-handed foreshadowing.
This isn't exactly "light reading", as sexual violence is never far from the surface of the plot. The plot, too, doesn't always move at the cracking pace that Billingham has made his stock-in-trade over his career, but again this is a third novel and may well demonstrate a writer still feeling his way forward a bit. The trademark Billingham humour and twisted mind, though, are both very readily apparent.
A worthy entry in the Thorne series. 4 stars.
This is a question that almost every fictional detective - or at least their creator - has had to grapple with since crime fiction moved from the genteel drawing rooms of Agatha Christie's novels and into the gritty realism readers seem to expect these days. Of course, at least one of Christie's most famous novels sees Hercule Poirot investigating the murder of a character who doesn't seem particularly pleasant, and who turns out to have been much less than that (Murder on the Orient Express), and many of her other victims at least had one or two associates who were pleased to see their demise.
Nonetheless, particularly as the police procedural has become a popular vehicle of storytelling, victims are increasingly likely to have been "shady" at best, and downright repugnant at worst. Most novelists seem to get around this by giving their characters a slightly over-developed sense of justice, or by taking the more "hardboiled" route by creating some kind of an "honour among thieves".
Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne is faced with this dilemma in Lazy Bones, the third instalment (2003) in that series after the twisted plots of Sleepyhead and Scaredy Cat. In this instace, the dilemma is caused by the fact that the first victim is a recently-released sex offender, a man who many on the case seem rather pleased "got what was coming to him".
Thorne reluctantly takes on the case and leads a team which appears to be going through the motions rather than full of any real hope of catching the killer, despite the violent brutality of the killing itself. We're thus treated to more of the private lives of the central characters in Billingham's series - Phil Hendricks, the gay gothic pathologist, Dave Holland whose girlfriend is weeks away from giving birth, and Thorne himself with his father in the early stages of dementia. While it's comparatively easy to have the obligatory "pathologist" and "detective partner" characters reduced to two-dimensional ciphers (something which even Ian Rankin can be accused of at times), it's clear that Billingham actually cares enough about his supporting cast to give them lives outside of their work. Hendricks and Thorne have a wonderfully easy friendship characterised by wisecracks and football-related banter, and I really can't think of another example of this being done this well in contemporary crime fiction.
Thorne, for his part, is even given a romantic interest, which gives rise to even more banter among his colleagues.
Billingham, as I've indicated elsewhere, is a comedian and actor who turned his hand to fiction. This isn't to say that the Thorne series is "written for laughs" or even that it plays the comic card to the exclusion of the plot. What it means here is that, in contrast to other authors who have amusing scenes in their novels, Billingham genuinely understands the dark humour inherent in what he's writing.
Thorne, for example, begins the novel in a "Restorative Justice Conference", where a young hoodlum is being made to apologise to the elderly couple he broke into the house of. Where a John Rebus, to take a classic example, would find this a waste of time, Thorne is brilliantly cinematic in his reactions both during and after the event. The later inversion of this scene, where Thorne is able to deliver something of his own "restorative justice" to another young ratbag, is all the more amusing for it.
But it's not all careful parody of corporate doublespeak (although the reactions by most of the police to the edicts of the top brass are clearly written by someone who's had to sit through one too many "strategy" meetings). Thorne's house is robbed at one point, and his colleagues at another station are only able to find the thief because he hasn't been able to sell Thorne's extensive collection of country music CDs, which is the cue for a riff on the musical tastes of several characters.
Importantly, though, Billingham is able to dial back on the comedy when needed as well. Thorne's relationship with his father is a difficult one, and it's clearly complicated by the latter's dementia. There are some brilliantly-drawn scenes involving the two men as the younger comes to terms with the "new reality" of his father's decline.
Of course, the murder of the sex offender isn't the only one in this case, and more victims pile up quite effectively - with a few brief scenes from the perspective of one of them being most effective. Again, these are not men that people tend to feel remorse over the deaths of, and this continues to challenge some of the investigators - as do the all-too-frequent dead ends in the investigation.
It's here where Billingham - who, we must remember, was writing only his third novel at the time - has a little difficulty keeping all the balls in the air at once. We've been treated to little vignettes of a nameless couple coming to terms with a seemingly violent rape, as well as the scenes showing the victims-to-be, as mentioned earlier, but we're suddenly introduced to a middle-aged former policewoman being recruited into a "cold case" review team and following up leads on a seemingly-unrelated matter.
Eventually, all of these threads converge, and Thorne is given a new reason to investigate what has now become a serial killer case. There's slightly too high a level of coincidence in all of this for mine, although Billingham does a respectable job of explaining how it all works out the way it needs to.
The final revelations, while genuinely impressive, were ones I'd been suspecting for roughly the last 100 pages, due (of all things) to another vignette which Billingham inserted to dramatise the appearance of one of the victims. That said, this is the only instance in the Thorne series I'm aware of in which victory is snatched so dramatically from the jaws of defeat, even though there's still a reasonable level of coincidence involved and (in retrospect) some rather heavy-handed foreshadowing.
This isn't exactly "light reading", as sexual violence is never far from the surface of the plot. The plot, too, doesn't always move at the cracking pace that Billingham has made his stock-in-trade over his career, but again this is a third novel and may well demonstrate a writer still feeling his way forward a bit. The trademark Billingham humour and twisted mind, though, are both very readily apparent.
A worthy entry in the Thorne series. 4 stars.
Wednesday, 5 July 2017
Mark Billingham - "From The Dead"
Mark Billingham's series character Tom Thorne is in many ways an atypical detective to have as the main focus for the sort of hard-bitten police procedural novels that the UK seems to specialise in producing.
On the surface, he's very easy to write off as a John Rebus clone. Sharp-tongued, fond of a drink and with a moderately complicated personal life, he does sound like Ian Rankin's iconic figure. And yet, Thorne is much less of a maverick. A good Thorne investigation - and 2010's From the Dead certainly has elements of precisely that - sees the central character work rather conspicuously with his colleagues, rather than going off on his own track. Additionally, Rebus' rampant alcoholism and soap opera of personal entanglements are replaced with Thorne's ability to stop drinking before he crosses any lines and seemingly-stable relationship with a colleague.
What really set Billingham's series apart from Rankin's or most others, to be honest, is the inventiveness of the scenarios he sets his readers up with. From the Dead begins with two unnamed criminals setting fire to a car with a man inside it, and a throwaway remark from one suggests that the other is faking his own death in the process.
Before this becomes slightly too Guy-Ritchie-esque for its own good, we jump ahead a decade and meet Anna Cunningham, who is busily seducing a man in a sushi restaurant for reasons which become abundantly - and amusingly - clear quite rapidly. Such is Billingham's ability to provide memorable scenes without any real warning.
As the plot begins, it appears that the burning of the car was indeed a death being faked. Alan Langford - a shady businessman - was meant to have been in the car and his widow Donna was found guilty of arranging the hit. She's been released from prison after a decade inside, but has been sent an anonymous letter with a photo showing a man who could only have been her supposedly-late husband looking anything but dead.
Donna enlists the services of a private detective, who in turn involves Thorne as he was the original investigating officer. Thorne is smarting from a more recent trial which appears to be going wrong, as well as dealing with some questions over his relationship, and is understandably reluctant to re-investigate what had apparently been a cut-and-dried case from a decade ago. Events, perhaps unsurprisingly, rapidly convince him that there is indeed something more sinister afoot and the pair pool their resources to rake over the details of events a decade earlier. The matter is complicated further by the disappearance of Donna's daughter, Ellie, whom she suspects Alan of having kidnapped in a final act of retaliation.
Billingham's customary sense of humour shines through at the most unexpected moments in this novel. Thorne conducts part of the investigation in Yorkshire and spends some time comparing the detectives he meets there with his own London-based colleagues and working out the personality types that every team contains, often with amusing results. The officiousness of various superiors is satirised, particularly with the creation of a series of silly policing acronyms, too.
Importantly, though, Billingham never has the humour feel forced. This clearly comes from his background as a comedian and scriptwriter, where the importance of the funny lines seeming natural is key. The dialogue in the investigative team meetings, for example, is entirely plausible, with one young detective's suggestion of "I've been wondering about tax evasion" (as a means of capturing Langford) being greeted with Thorne's immediate response of "I wouldn't try it. It's illegal", the kind of exchange familiar to anyone who's been in a meeting which perhaps took just a little bit too long.
Eventually, the investigation leads Thorne to the south of Spain - the "Costa del Crime", as many of his colleagues term it. This, of course, gives rise to plenty of cultural-misunderstanding jokes (the deadpan riff from a Spanish policeman about the apparent health benefits of cosmetic surgery is vintage Billingham), but the humour never overstays its welcome or overshadows the investigation itself.
If there's a flaw in From the Dead, it would be the pacing of the plot. After the initial flurry of leads, things genuinely peter out until the final 60-80 pages in Spain. While this is more than likely the way an investigation like this would work in the real world, the entire point about crime fiction is that we don't get treated to every single painstaking exploration of a dead end - yes, realism is the key in this style of fiction, but it's realism to an end, rather than realism for realism's sake.
As a result of this, the final few twists in the plot feel more like the result of Billingham having painted himself into a corner rather than the "thrilling conclusion" such a novel really deserves. The blurb on the back of my copy makes a lot of "nothing and nobody are what they seem", which really isn't true. One of the "not what they seem" characters, frankly, had me scrambling back through the earlier chapters to remember just who they were meant to be, which isn't ideal in any regard. The deus ex machina style of ending really feels beneath a writer like Billingham, who seems to specialise in pulling the rug out from under the reader.
In fairness, there is a very sensitively-written coda to the novel in which some earlier loose ends are resolved in unexpected ways which redeems a lot of the issues with pacing. One wonders, in a sense, whether this was the novel Billingham had intended to write, only for From the Dead to appear instead.
This isn't Thorne's finest moment by any means, but it's a very strong read nonetheless. The beauty of the Thorne series is that one doesn't really have to have read the earlier instalments to pick up the next one, so this is not a bad place to start.
3.5 stars.
On the surface, he's very easy to write off as a John Rebus clone. Sharp-tongued, fond of a drink and with a moderately complicated personal life, he does sound like Ian Rankin's iconic figure. And yet, Thorne is much less of a maverick. A good Thorne investigation - and 2010's From the Dead certainly has elements of precisely that - sees the central character work rather conspicuously with his colleagues, rather than going off on his own track. Additionally, Rebus' rampant alcoholism and soap opera of personal entanglements are replaced with Thorne's ability to stop drinking before he crosses any lines and seemingly-stable relationship with a colleague.
What really set Billingham's series apart from Rankin's or most others, to be honest, is the inventiveness of the scenarios he sets his readers up with. From the Dead begins with two unnamed criminals setting fire to a car with a man inside it, and a throwaway remark from one suggests that the other is faking his own death in the process.
Before this becomes slightly too Guy-Ritchie-esque for its own good, we jump ahead a decade and meet Anna Cunningham, who is busily seducing a man in a sushi restaurant for reasons which become abundantly - and amusingly - clear quite rapidly. Such is Billingham's ability to provide memorable scenes without any real warning.
As the plot begins, it appears that the burning of the car was indeed a death being faked. Alan Langford - a shady businessman - was meant to have been in the car and his widow Donna was found guilty of arranging the hit. She's been released from prison after a decade inside, but has been sent an anonymous letter with a photo showing a man who could only have been her supposedly-late husband looking anything but dead.
Donna enlists the services of a private detective, who in turn involves Thorne as he was the original investigating officer. Thorne is smarting from a more recent trial which appears to be going wrong, as well as dealing with some questions over his relationship, and is understandably reluctant to re-investigate what had apparently been a cut-and-dried case from a decade ago. Events, perhaps unsurprisingly, rapidly convince him that there is indeed something more sinister afoot and the pair pool their resources to rake over the details of events a decade earlier. The matter is complicated further by the disappearance of Donna's daughter, Ellie, whom she suspects Alan of having kidnapped in a final act of retaliation.
Billingham's customary sense of humour shines through at the most unexpected moments in this novel. Thorne conducts part of the investigation in Yorkshire and spends some time comparing the detectives he meets there with his own London-based colleagues and working out the personality types that every team contains, often with amusing results. The officiousness of various superiors is satirised, particularly with the creation of a series of silly policing acronyms, too.
Importantly, though, Billingham never has the humour feel forced. This clearly comes from his background as a comedian and scriptwriter, where the importance of the funny lines seeming natural is key. The dialogue in the investigative team meetings, for example, is entirely plausible, with one young detective's suggestion of "I've been wondering about tax evasion" (as a means of capturing Langford) being greeted with Thorne's immediate response of "I wouldn't try it. It's illegal", the kind of exchange familiar to anyone who's been in a meeting which perhaps took just a little bit too long.
Eventually, the investigation leads Thorne to the south of Spain - the "Costa del Crime", as many of his colleagues term it. This, of course, gives rise to plenty of cultural-misunderstanding jokes (the deadpan riff from a Spanish policeman about the apparent health benefits of cosmetic surgery is vintage Billingham), but the humour never overstays its welcome or overshadows the investigation itself.
If there's a flaw in From the Dead, it would be the pacing of the plot. After the initial flurry of leads, things genuinely peter out until the final 60-80 pages in Spain. While this is more than likely the way an investigation like this would work in the real world, the entire point about crime fiction is that we don't get treated to every single painstaking exploration of a dead end - yes, realism is the key in this style of fiction, but it's realism to an end, rather than realism for realism's sake.
As a result of this, the final few twists in the plot feel more like the result of Billingham having painted himself into a corner rather than the "thrilling conclusion" such a novel really deserves. The blurb on the back of my copy makes a lot of "nothing and nobody are what they seem", which really isn't true. One of the "not what they seem" characters, frankly, had me scrambling back through the earlier chapters to remember just who they were meant to be, which isn't ideal in any regard. The deus ex machina style of ending really feels beneath a writer like Billingham, who seems to specialise in pulling the rug out from under the reader.
In fairness, there is a very sensitively-written coda to the novel in which some earlier loose ends are resolved in unexpected ways which redeems a lot of the issues with pacing. One wonders, in a sense, whether this was the novel Billingham had intended to write, only for From the Dead to appear instead.
This isn't Thorne's finest moment by any means, but it's a very strong read nonetheless. The beauty of the Thorne series is that one doesn't really have to have read the earlier instalments to pick up the next one, so this is not a bad place to start.
3.5 stars.
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