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.
Thursday, 23 November 2017
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.
Wednesday, 21 June 2017
Mark Billingham - "Rush of Blood"
"Domestic Noir" is a term which gets thrown around a bit recently in discussions of crime fiction. Essentially, the style involves taking a crime but showing the way that it breaks open the quiet domestic facades that the characters have erected. In some ways, of course, this is not a new technique - Sherlock Holmes occasionally unearthed society scandals in his pursuits of criminals, and any number of the "Golden Age" novels of Agatha Christie and her contemporaries feature marital infidelity, mental illness, sexual peccadilloes and other subplots as well as Poirot or Marple's triumphant unmasking of the killer.
For my part, one key antecedent of the style is JB Priestley's unnerving play An Inspector Calls. Here, the highly respectable facade of a wealthy family is systematically destroyed by Inspector Goole (retitled as the more anodyne "Poole" in one filmed version of the play) and his investigation of a woman driven to suicide. Priestley's play, which is compulsory viewing by anyone interested in the creation of dramatic tension, ends on an ambiguous note, which is not something the modern purveyors of the style tend to adopt.
Mark Billingham, on the other hand, is an unusual name to associate with the "Domestic Noir" style. Or, perhaps, with crime fiction at all.
Billingham was originally - and still is, occasionally - a stand-up comic of some repute. He first crossed my radar, however, as the hilariously inept soldier Gary opposite Tony Robinson's venal Sheriff of Nottingham in the BBC's Maid Marian and her Merry Men, one of those wonderful programs made for a young audience and featuring plenty of slapstick and stupidity but also replete with puns and political references to keep adults entertained. Billingham's writing career can be said to have begun with a co-writing credit in the episode Tunnel Vision with parodies of everything from "Sonic the Hedgehog" to fantasy roleplaying games and the then-proposed Channel Tunnel involved.
Subsequently, Billingham has become well-regarded for his series featuring DI Tom Thorne. Thorne began as something of a John Rebus clone, only minus the worst of his Scottish inspiration's complex personal life, but has developed very much into his own character. A hallmark of Billingham's Thorne series has been the incredibly twisted setups - copycat serial killers, apparent resurrections and the deliberate causing of locked-in syndrome are all par for the course. While there is humour to be found in Thorne's world, it is truly pitch-black, even more so than many of the Scandinavian stars.
Not wanting to confine his attentions to one character, Billingham has also written a small number of standalone novels in which Thorne plays a very limited role (a voice on the end of a phone call, or a peripheral detective at a crime scene, for example). 2012's Rush of Blood is one of these novels.
The novel opens in a slightly non-linear fashion, and deals with the preparations for a dinner party hosted by Angie and Barry, a married couple living south of London. The guests are two other couples - Sue and Ed and the unmarried Dave and Marina. The six met, it emerges through flashbacks, on holiday in Florida where they all happened to stay at the same resort for a week of sun and relaxation.
Something else happened during their stay as well - the mysterious disappearance of the young daughter of one of the other guests, an American. This event has unsettled each of the British characters in its own way, and unsurprisingly proves to be a central topic of discussion at the dinner party.
As time goes on - and the other couples take their turns at hosting their own dinner parties - the case is investigated by the police in Florida, as well as their counterparts in London when details need to be confirmed. Someone, somewhere is hiding something. The reader is privy to that fact quite early in the piece, courtesy of some very effective scenes told in first-person by the killer (this is, everyone agrees, the sort of disappearance without a happy ending) and a clever technique of providing overviews of conversations without going into detail about who is saying what - or when exactly anything was said.
Being the domestic noir that it is, each character has their own dirty secrets, and these are slowly hinted at throughout the narrative. Depending on the nature of the secrets, their revelation causes further layers of mistrust among the group.
The action really begins to snowball, though, when another child is kidnapped. Even the "killer"'s sections become more tense at this point, and it becomes clear to the group around the dining tables that the stakes are higher than they realised.
In concept, therefore, Rush of Blood has a lot going for it, and not just that domestic noir is very "of the moment".
It doesn't entirely work, though. The final few twists revealing the identity of the killer seem just too contrived to make sense. It's not quite a case of the least- (or even the most-) obvious character turning out to be the killer, but the reader's reaction is more likely to be either "So what?" or "That doesn't make sense" than the hoped-for "Wow!" when the final pieces of the plot are finally fitted together.
Additionally, there are some bizarre loose ends which remain completely unresolved. Dave and Marina, in particular, are characters who deserve a lot more "air time" as the conclusion draws near, and some very important questions about their motivations are left unanswered. It's an easy thing to miss in the intensity that this style of writing requires, but in the hands of Billingham it really ought to have been handled better.
Perhaps most problematically for a novel in this style, though, the characters aren't properly delineated enough to become "real". Barry at one point remarks that he's actually younger than Ed, despite the latter's fast friendship with the very much younger Dave, but for much of the plot the two older men could be practically interchangeable. The same goes for their wives, to be honest. While the police aren't customarily as well-rounded in this style as they might be in others, the two police characters here (one American, one British) are positively two-dimensional, which is a real shame when Billingham has previously created wonderful characters throughout Thorne's station.
The other concern with this novel is that it genuinely doesn't feel like Billingham's writing. His earlier standalone work In the Dark preserves much of his borderline-sadistic plotting and pitch-black humour, but neither of these are really in evidence here.
The plotting has already been touched on, but the humour in Rush of Blood consists more of people making attempts at witty repartee around the dinner table. Full marks, I suppose, for capturing people attempting to be funnier than they are, but there's none of Billingham's customary crackle of dialogue.
To be honest, if it weren't for the fact that my copy identifies the author in large font on the cover, I'd almost wonder if this were either Billingham trying to write like someone else, or someone else attempting to mimic Billingham. Either way, it's a poor mismatch between author and style - and considering the popularity of domestic noir on both page and screen (one thinks here of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train as but two recent examples in both locations), one which may wind up dating poorly as well.
All in all, I'll stick to the Thorne series. 1 star.
For my part, one key antecedent of the style is JB Priestley's unnerving play An Inspector Calls. Here, the highly respectable facade of a wealthy family is systematically destroyed by Inspector Goole (retitled as the more anodyne "Poole" in one filmed version of the play) and his investigation of a woman driven to suicide. Priestley's play, which is compulsory viewing by anyone interested in the creation of dramatic tension, ends on an ambiguous note, which is not something the modern purveyors of the style tend to adopt.
Mark Billingham, on the other hand, is an unusual name to associate with the "Domestic Noir" style. Or, perhaps, with crime fiction at all.
Billingham was originally - and still is, occasionally - a stand-up comic of some repute. He first crossed my radar, however, as the hilariously inept soldier Gary opposite Tony Robinson's venal Sheriff of Nottingham in the BBC's Maid Marian and her Merry Men, one of those wonderful programs made for a young audience and featuring plenty of slapstick and stupidity but also replete with puns and political references to keep adults entertained. Billingham's writing career can be said to have begun with a co-writing credit in the episode Tunnel Vision with parodies of everything from "Sonic the Hedgehog" to fantasy roleplaying games and the then-proposed Channel Tunnel involved.
Subsequently, Billingham has become well-regarded for his series featuring DI Tom Thorne. Thorne began as something of a John Rebus clone, only minus the worst of his Scottish inspiration's complex personal life, but has developed very much into his own character. A hallmark of Billingham's Thorne series has been the incredibly twisted setups - copycat serial killers, apparent resurrections and the deliberate causing of locked-in syndrome are all par for the course. While there is humour to be found in Thorne's world, it is truly pitch-black, even more so than many of the Scandinavian stars.
Not wanting to confine his attentions to one character, Billingham has also written a small number of standalone novels in which Thorne plays a very limited role (a voice on the end of a phone call, or a peripheral detective at a crime scene, for example). 2012's Rush of Blood is one of these novels.
The novel opens in a slightly non-linear fashion, and deals with the preparations for a dinner party hosted by Angie and Barry, a married couple living south of London. The guests are two other couples - Sue and Ed and the unmarried Dave and Marina. The six met, it emerges through flashbacks, on holiday in Florida where they all happened to stay at the same resort for a week of sun and relaxation.
Something else happened during their stay as well - the mysterious disappearance of the young daughter of one of the other guests, an American. This event has unsettled each of the British characters in its own way, and unsurprisingly proves to be a central topic of discussion at the dinner party.
As time goes on - and the other couples take their turns at hosting their own dinner parties - the case is investigated by the police in Florida, as well as their counterparts in London when details need to be confirmed. Someone, somewhere is hiding something. The reader is privy to that fact quite early in the piece, courtesy of some very effective scenes told in first-person by the killer (this is, everyone agrees, the sort of disappearance without a happy ending) and a clever technique of providing overviews of conversations without going into detail about who is saying what - or when exactly anything was said.
Being the domestic noir that it is, each character has their own dirty secrets, and these are slowly hinted at throughout the narrative. Depending on the nature of the secrets, their revelation causes further layers of mistrust among the group.
The action really begins to snowball, though, when another child is kidnapped. Even the "killer"'s sections become more tense at this point, and it becomes clear to the group around the dining tables that the stakes are higher than they realised.
In concept, therefore, Rush of Blood has a lot going for it, and not just that domestic noir is very "of the moment".
It doesn't entirely work, though. The final few twists revealing the identity of the killer seem just too contrived to make sense. It's not quite a case of the least- (or even the most-) obvious character turning out to be the killer, but the reader's reaction is more likely to be either "So what?" or "That doesn't make sense" than the hoped-for "Wow!" when the final pieces of the plot are finally fitted together.
Additionally, there are some bizarre loose ends which remain completely unresolved. Dave and Marina, in particular, are characters who deserve a lot more "air time" as the conclusion draws near, and some very important questions about their motivations are left unanswered. It's an easy thing to miss in the intensity that this style of writing requires, but in the hands of Billingham it really ought to have been handled better.
Perhaps most problematically for a novel in this style, though, the characters aren't properly delineated enough to become "real". Barry at one point remarks that he's actually younger than Ed, despite the latter's fast friendship with the very much younger Dave, but for much of the plot the two older men could be practically interchangeable. The same goes for their wives, to be honest. While the police aren't customarily as well-rounded in this style as they might be in others, the two police characters here (one American, one British) are positively two-dimensional, which is a real shame when Billingham has previously created wonderful characters throughout Thorne's station.
The other concern with this novel is that it genuinely doesn't feel like Billingham's writing. His earlier standalone work In the Dark preserves much of his borderline-sadistic plotting and pitch-black humour, but neither of these are really in evidence here.
The plotting has already been touched on, but the humour in Rush of Blood consists more of people making attempts at witty repartee around the dinner table. Full marks, I suppose, for capturing people attempting to be funnier than they are, but there's none of Billingham's customary crackle of dialogue.
To be honest, if it weren't for the fact that my copy identifies the author in large font on the cover, I'd almost wonder if this were either Billingham trying to write like someone else, or someone else attempting to mimic Billingham. Either way, it's a poor mismatch between author and style - and considering the popularity of domestic noir on both page and screen (one thinks here of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train as but two recent examples in both locations), one which may wind up dating poorly as well.
All in all, I'll stick to the Thorne series. 1 star.
Jo Nesbø - "The Leopard"
At the end of Harry Hole's previous case, The Snowman, the alcholic Norwegian detective had expressed a desire to disappear and never be found again. He could hardly be blamed for this, as the final stages of that investigation had seemingly cost him any hope of a return to his former relationship with his ex-partner Rakel and her son Oleg, as well as costing him his right middle finger in a particularly violent clash with a deranged serial killer. Hole, therefore, disappeared from view.
By the opening of Nesbø's eighth novel starring Hole, his disappearance has taken him as far as Hong Kong. Apparently, he would have wanted to go further still, but was removed from his flight for his drunken behaviour and has found a home - of sorts - in the rabbit-warren that is Chungking Mansions (referred to as "Chungking Mansion" here) amid the petty criminals and drug addicts in that infamous building.
Such is the rather bleak opening of the novel known in English as The Leopard (published in translation in 2011, published in the original Norwegian in 2009). The title is slightly less than impressive in translation, as it refers to a throwaway line from one character that the leopard is particularly well-suited to stalking its prey. The Norwegian original is titled Panserhjerte, which translates roughly as "Armoured Heart" and is a reference both to constrictive pericarditis (which plays a minor role in the plot) and Hole's gradual development of such a thing.
Hole is being sought - and eventually returned to Oslo - by the young policewoman Kaja Solness as it appears that another serial killer is on the loose in the Norwegian capital. Two young women have died by drowning in their own blood, and shortly after the narrative begins a third is murdered in what can only be described as an excessively violent manner. Despite Hole's reluctance, he is persuaded back to Norway with the news that his father is dying.
On arrival in Oslo, it also emerges that Hole has landed in the middle of a territorial dispute between the Crime Squad, his normal division, and Kripos, an elite team designed to solve more complex and serious cases. In traditional Hole fashion, he weighs into this dispute by beating up one of the Kripos top brass and creating his own small unit within Crime Squad to investigate the murders anyway.
As the body-count climbs, the investigation extends to enlisting the help of Katrine Bratt, Hole's partner from the Snowman investigation, who provides some welcome comic relief, as well as a brief trip to Rwanda and the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in search of an exotic torture device which appears to have been used. Cinematic though the African scenes are in The Leopard, Nesbø's facility in creating a convincing non-Norwegian setting is still slightly limited. His Africa is much more convincing than his Australia in an earlier Hole case (or even than the cutaway scenes in Australia here), but there's still an air of unreality about it - the proverbial brushstrokes are too broad and intense to hit the level of reality that his native Norway achieves here.
The plot - and particularly the killer's motive - is remarkably complex. Even though it becomes apparent early in the novel that what links the victims is a night at a remote mountain cabin, the exact details of why this would lead to brutal murders are obscure until very close to the end, and this tension is maintained at a very high level.
Nesbø is not above resorting to many of his favourite tricks, too. Supporting characters are introduced in deliberately ambiguous ways only to reveal their true purpose in the narrative much later, and there are a few instances where key information is (briefly) withheld from the reader in order to heighten the tension. While these tricks have been a hallmark of Nesbø's work from the outset, his skill in deploying them in both Snowman and Leopard is much closer to that of an experienced film director who knows that playing certain music can elicit particular reactions from the audience.
A word of warning about the plot, too. Where the killer in Snowman was almost entirely insane, the murderer here has a sense of almost icy rationality, as well as a strongly sadistic streak. The various acts of violence performed here - particularly as the novel reaches its climax - are most definitely not for the faint-hearted. It seems that Nesbø has even apologised for some of the more graphic moments, in fact, which may make some readers consider their choice.
Perhaps the biggest challenge that The Leopard faces is that it's the followup to The Snowman. While Nesbø had been a successful novelist in Scandinavia before that novel was translated, he was by this time very much "The next Stieg Larsson", according to much of the popular press. Just like the director trying to follow an Oscar-winning film, Leopard was always going to be judged in the light of its incredible predecessor.
By and large, it works. Hole is clearly carrying the scars of his previous case, and acquires more over the course of this one (both physical and mental) and his resignation from the police force at the end of the investigation is more than likely a small mercy. That said, he had resigned at the end of the previous case, too, so the question must be asked of what horrors he might encounter next. The long-running Rakel subplot is still present here, even if Rakel herself is not, and it's clear that her influence is felt in many aspects of Hole's life. The obligatory "damsel in distress" Hole finds himself entangled with is also presented sensibly and with clear motives for her actions.
That said, there are some negatives. As well as the earlier points regarding the African detour, there's a very long period during which an alibi isn't properly tested. Perhaps this might be the "seasoned crime-fiction reader" in me talking, but the "shock" that certain characters have on finding that a particular cast-iron alibi is nothing of the sort seemed artificial to me, especially as it had been all-but-explained some 100 pages earlier.
Additionally, the almost-byzantine complexity of the killer's plot feels like an exercise in what are often termed "plot tokens" (the almost-irrelevant things which allow the plot of a story to proceed) being collected. All is made clear at the end - unusually, through the simple method of the killer outlining what happened - but there were a number of steps the plot took which really seem irrelevant.
Lastly, The Leopard features the trick used in The Snowman of having multiple "semi-endings" where it genuinely appears that the solution has been reached (apart from the fact that the reader is left holding 200-odd pages of unread novel, sort of thing). Where the earlier novel deployed these with devastating effect, this one seemed content to let things calmly fizzle out, which rather spoils the emotional effect of realising that the unspeakably evil killer who's been arrested is actually not quite that.
Nonetheless, this is another highly-recommended instalment in Harry Hole's career. Even if lightning hasn't completely struck twice, it comes very close to having done so.
4.5 stars.
By the opening of Nesbø's eighth novel starring Hole, his disappearance has taken him as far as Hong Kong. Apparently, he would have wanted to go further still, but was removed from his flight for his drunken behaviour and has found a home - of sorts - in the rabbit-warren that is Chungking Mansions (referred to as "Chungking Mansion" here) amid the petty criminals and drug addicts in that infamous building.
Such is the rather bleak opening of the novel known in English as The Leopard (published in translation in 2011, published in the original Norwegian in 2009). The title is slightly less than impressive in translation, as it refers to a throwaway line from one character that the leopard is particularly well-suited to stalking its prey. The Norwegian original is titled Panserhjerte, which translates roughly as "Armoured Heart" and is a reference both to constrictive pericarditis (which plays a minor role in the plot) and Hole's gradual development of such a thing.
Hole is being sought - and eventually returned to Oslo - by the young policewoman Kaja Solness as it appears that another serial killer is on the loose in the Norwegian capital. Two young women have died by drowning in their own blood, and shortly after the narrative begins a third is murdered in what can only be described as an excessively violent manner. Despite Hole's reluctance, he is persuaded back to Norway with the news that his father is dying.
On arrival in Oslo, it also emerges that Hole has landed in the middle of a territorial dispute between the Crime Squad, his normal division, and Kripos, an elite team designed to solve more complex and serious cases. In traditional Hole fashion, he weighs into this dispute by beating up one of the Kripos top brass and creating his own small unit within Crime Squad to investigate the murders anyway.
As the body-count climbs, the investigation extends to enlisting the help of Katrine Bratt, Hole's partner from the Snowman investigation, who provides some welcome comic relief, as well as a brief trip to Rwanda and the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in search of an exotic torture device which appears to have been used. Cinematic though the African scenes are in The Leopard, Nesbø's facility in creating a convincing non-Norwegian setting is still slightly limited. His Africa is much more convincing than his Australia in an earlier Hole case (or even than the cutaway scenes in Australia here), but there's still an air of unreality about it - the proverbial brushstrokes are too broad and intense to hit the level of reality that his native Norway achieves here.
The plot - and particularly the killer's motive - is remarkably complex. Even though it becomes apparent early in the novel that what links the victims is a night at a remote mountain cabin, the exact details of why this would lead to brutal murders are obscure until very close to the end, and this tension is maintained at a very high level.
Nesbø is not above resorting to many of his favourite tricks, too. Supporting characters are introduced in deliberately ambiguous ways only to reveal their true purpose in the narrative much later, and there are a few instances where key information is (briefly) withheld from the reader in order to heighten the tension. While these tricks have been a hallmark of Nesbø's work from the outset, his skill in deploying them in both Snowman and Leopard is much closer to that of an experienced film director who knows that playing certain music can elicit particular reactions from the audience.
A word of warning about the plot, too. Where the killer in Snowman was almost entirely insane, the murderer here has a sense of almost icy rationality, as well as a strongly sadistic streak. The various acts of violence performed here - particularly as the novel reaches its climax - are most definitely not for the faint-hearted. It seems that Nesbø has even apologised for some of the more graphic moments, in fact, which may make some readers consider their choice.
Perhaps the biggest challenge that The Leopard faces is that it's the followup to The Snowman. While Nesbø had been a successful novelist in Scandinavia before that novel was translated, he was by this time very much "The next Stieg Larsson", according to much of the popular press. Just like the director trying to follow an Oscar-winning film, Leopard was always going to be judged in the light of its incredible predecessor.
By and large, it works. Hole is clearly carrying the scars of his previous case, and acquires more over the course of this one (both physical and mental) and his resignation from the police force at the end of the investigation is more than likely a small mercy. That said, he had resigned at the end of the previous case, too, so the question must be asked of what horrors he might encounter next. The long-running Rakel subplot is still present here, even if Rakel herself is not, and it's clear that her influence is felt in many aspects of Hole's life. The obligatory "damsel in distress" Hole finds himself entangled with is also presented sensibly and with clear motives for her actions.
That said, there are some negatives. As well as the earlier points regarding the African detour, there's a very long period during which an alibi isn't properly tested. Perhaps this might be the "seasoned crime-fiction reader" in me talking, but the "shock" that certain characters have on finding that a particular cast-iron alibi is nothing of the sort seemed artificial to me, especially as it had been all-but-explained some 100 pages earlier.
Additionally, the almost-byzantine complexity of the killer's plot feels like an exercise in what are often termed "plot tokens" (the almost-irrelevant things which allow the plot of a story to proceed) being collected. All is made clear at the end - unusually, through the simple method of the killer outlining what happened - but there were a number of steps the plot took which really seem irrelevant.
Lastly, The Leopard features the trick used in The Snowman of having multiple "semi-endings" where it genuinely appears that the solution has been reached (apart from the fact that the reader is left holding 200-odd pages of unread novel, sort of thing). Where the earlier novel deployed these with devastating effect, this one seemed content to let things calmly fizzle out, which rather spoils the emotional effect of realising that the unspeakably evil killer who's been arrested is actually not quite that.
Nonetheless, this is another highly-recommended instalment in Harry Hole's career. Even if lightning hasn't completely struck twice, it comes very close to having done so.
4.5 stars.
Saturday, 17 June 2017
Henning Mankell - "The Fifth Woman"
After another draining investigation, Kurt Wallander begins his sixth case on holiday with his elderly father in Rome. This had been planned towards the end of Sidetracked, as the two men finally began to find common ground - sadly in the face of the senior Wallander's diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. Returning from the Italian capital, Wallander almost has a new lease on life, but we all know it can't last.
Henning Mankell's The Fifth Woman (originally published in Swedish as Den femte kvinnan in 1996, translated to English in 2000) is the result of this knowledge that we as the readers have. Indeed, even before the dishevelled Wallander makes an appearance in the novel, we've been treated to an enigmatic preface dealing with a woman being killed in a remote region of North Africa and the vague sense that something less than positive is about to happen.
For Wallander, the investigation begins with a puzzling case. He and Ann-Britt Höglund are called to a florist where a break-in has occurred, but nothing was taken. Tempting as it is to write this off as a prank, both Wallander and Höglund have their doubts when they see a small pool of blood on the floor of the shop.
Wallander's curiosity is also piqued when a heating-oil deliveryman reports the disappearance of Holger Eriksson, one of his clients. The reader is already aware that something has happened to Eriksson, and it is perhaps unsurprising that this disappearance quickly escalates into a murder investigation. The body-count, also surprising nobody, climbs from there.
The legacy of the previous case seems to haunt Wallander throughout this novel. As the violence behind Eriksson's murder becomes more apparent, the locals around Ystad organise themselves into self-defence militias in response to the seeming inability of the local police to handle yet another violent killer in their midst.
In some ways, the Sweden of The Fifith Woman is a Sweden developing into the society familiar to readers of more contemporary crime fiction. Wallander at one point muses that the difference is that Swedes no longer darn their socks, and are willing to throw things away when they're no longer useful. If this can apply to socks or other consumer items, he wonders, perhaps it can also apply to human life. The short step towards Stieg Larsson's Stockholm is very apparent, particularly as we learn that the victims of the killer here can also be described as "Men who hate women".
While The Fifth Woman contains an intriguing puzzle around the killer's identity, it feels as though Mankell may have simply tried too hard here. The "Chinese box" (Wallander's words) surrounding the solution is too intricate to be opened through dogged detective work alone, and the key breakthrough is a very unconvincing series of coincidences roughly two-thirds of the way through the novel. From this point, to give Mankell his due, the plot rights itself and races towards a more convincing conclusion, but the narrative disjunct is still jarring.
Much of the early sections of the novel are taken up with Mankell's other pet interest - Africa. Outside of his successful novel-writing career, he was the founder of a theatre in Mozambique and a strong advocate for that continent. As well as the mysterious death at the outset of this novel, there's a long digression dealing with Swedish mercenaries in the Katanga conflict in the then-Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in the 1950s and 1960s. While this is interesting, the angle ultimately remains completely unresolved and feels more like Mankell demonstrating the breadth of his interests rather than writing a novel. My edition clocks in at just under 600 pages, for example, and could have lost a good 100 of them without losing any of the drama had this exposition been trimmed.
That said, Mankell makes up for his heavy-handed display of his research with some surprisingly touching scenes dealing with Wallander's family. His relationship with his father seems to have finally stabilised, only to be cut cruelly short during this investigation (this isn't a spoiler), and his daughter Linda seems able to interact with him as an adult - rather than as the sort of overgrown child Wallander seems to have in his mind. In fact, it is in this novel that Linda first confesses her interest in a police career of her own.
Wallander's difficult relationship with Baiba Liepa in Riga is seemingly no closer to a resolution, either. During quieter moments in this case, he wonders if perhaps retirement from the police is the solution, in order to give the two of them a private life outside of Ystad. Somehow, this seems an unlikely outcome, particularly given Wallander's previous flirtation with retirement in The Man Who Smiled.
The Fifth Woman is far from a bad novel. Mankell is still more heavy-handed with his plotting than one would normally expect by a veteran of six novels, but the novel works substantially more often than not, and is definitely a rewarding read. One is left - once again - wishing that Kurt Wallander would have things go his own way.
3.5 stars.
Henning Mankell's The Fifth Woman (originally published in Swedish as Den femte kvinnan in 1996, translated to English in 2000) is the result of this knowledge that we as the readers have. Indeed, even before the dishevelled Wallander makes an appearance in the novel, we've been treated to an enigmatic preface dealing with a woman being killed in a remote region of North Africa and the vague sense that something less than positive is about to happen.
For Wallander, the investigation begins with a puzzling case. He and Ann-Britt Höglund are called to a florist where a break-in has occurred, but nothing was taken. Tempting as it is to write this off as a prank, both Wallander and Höglund have their doubts when they see a small pool of blood on the floor of the shop.
Wallander's curiosity is also piqued when a heating-oil deliveryman reports the disappearance of Holger Eriksson, one of his clients. The reader is already aware that something has happened to Eriksson, and it is perhaps unsurprising that this disappearance quickly escalates into a murder investigation. The body-count, also surprising nobody, climbs from there.
The legacy of the previous case seems to haunt Wallander throughout this novel. As the violence behind Eriksson's murder becomes more apparent, the locals around Ystad organise themselves into self-defence militias in response to the seeming inability of the local police to handle yet another violent killer in their midst.
In some ways, the Sweden of The Fifith Woman is a Sweden developing into the society familiar to readers of more contemporary crime fiction. Wallander at one point muses that the difference is that Swedes no longer darn their socks, and are willing to throw things away when they're no longer useful. If this can apply to socks or other consumer items, he wonders, perhaps it can also apply to human life. The short step towards Stieg Larsson's Stockholm is very apparent, particularly as we learn that the victims of the killer here can also be described as "Men who hate women".
While The Fifth Woman contains an intriguing puzzle around the killer's identity, it feels as though Mankell may have simply tried too hard here. The "Chinese box" (Wallander's words) surrounding the solution is too intricate to be opened through dogged detective work alone, and the key breakthrough is a very unconvincing series of coincidences roughly two-thirds of the way through the novel. From this point, to give Mankell his due, the plot rights itself and races towards a more convincing conclusion, but the narrative disjunct is still jarring.
Much of the early sections of the novel are taken up with Mankell's other pet interest - Africa. Outside of his successful novel-writing career, he was the founder of a theatre in Mozambique and a strong advocate for that continent. As well as the mysterious death at the outset of this novel, there's a long digression dealing with Swedish mercenaries in the Katanga conflict in the then-Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in the 1950s and 1960s. While this is interesting, the angle ultimately remains completely unresolved and feels more like Mankell demonstrating the breadth of his interests rather than writing a novel. My edition clocks in at just under 600 pages, for example, and could have lost a good 100 of them without losing any of the drama had this exposition been trimmed.
That said, Mankell makes up for his heavy-handed display of his research with some surprisingly touching scenes dealing with Wallander's family. His relationship with his father seems to have finally stabilised, only to be cut cruelly short during this investigation (this isn't a spoiler), and his daughter Linda seems able to interact with him as an adult - rather than as the sort of overgrown child Wallander seems to have in his mind. In fact, it is in this novel that Linda first confesses her interest in a police career of her own.
Wallander's difficult relationship with Baiba Liepa in Riga is seemingly no closer to a resolution, either. During quieter moments in this case, he wonders if perhaps retirement from the police is the solution, in order to give the two of them a private life outside of Ystad. Somehow, this seems an unlikely outcome, particularly given Wallander's previous flirtation with retirement in The Man Who Smiled.
The Fifth Woman is far from a bad novel. Mankell is still more heavy-handed with his plotting than one would normally expect by a veteran of six novels, but the novel works substantially more often than not, and is definitely a rewarding read. One is left - once again - wishing that Kurt Wallander would have things go his own way.
3.5 stars.
Monday, 5 June 2017
Jo Nesbø - "The Snowman"
While Jo Nesbø had carved out a successful career in his native Norway, it was 2007's The Snowman (Norwegian: Snømannen) which, when translated in 2010, really propelled him into the big time where Scandi-Crime is concerned. As often happens in these matters, such propulsion had very little to do with Nesbø himself. In this case, it had more to do with the popularity of Sweden's Stieg Larsson and the Millennium series, the third volume of which had been published in English at about the same time. Suddenly, Scandinavia was the place in which to set crime fiction, and with Larsson no longer alive to contribute further adventures of Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist (the more recent continuation of that series notwithstanding), someone else had to fill the gap.
For that reason, at the very least, it makes sense that my edition of The Snowman has a cover blurb identifying Nesbø as "The next Stieg Larsson", even though fans of the Swede may not necessarily find themselves in familiar hands when discovering Harry Hole.
The Snowman is, in many ways, the novel Nesbø had been threatening to write throughout the first few of Hole's cases. Picking up almost where The Redeemer left off, we are rapidly plunged into Nesbø's trademark pitch-black incarnation of Norwegian society and Oslo in particular.
Hole is attempting to deal with the death of his former investigative partner Jack Halvorsen and the disappearance of his former superior Bjarne Møller. Outside of work, his ex-partner Rakel seems to be even closer to her new love interest Mathias than before, and this presents its own set of challenges both for Hole and Rakel's son Oleg who has taken a shine to the unconventional policeman. So far, so much as expected.
Hole and his new colleague Magnus Skarre are sent to investigate a missing person report. Birte Becker, the attractive young wife of physics professor Filip Becker, has disappeared in the middle of the night with the only clue being her scarf left on a strangely menacing snowman in the front yard of the Becker house. While both detectives begin this investigation as they would any other disappearance, Hole's new colleague Katrine Bratt unearths some unfortunate similarities between Becker's disappearance and those of other young mothers around Oslo and further afield. Hole - who seems to spend much of his time practicing "speed-cuffing" chair legs in his office - becomes increasingly convinced that Oslo has a serial killer on its hands.
In what can only be described as Nesbø's customary manner, this isn't just any serial killer. The body count climbs rapidly and is heading towards double digits before 200 pages of the novel have elapsed. Squeamish readers should also take note that "The Snowman", as the killer is soon nicknamed, takes particular delight in torture and sadism, and the fates of many victims are described in a higher level of detail than is typical even in today's blood-soaked crime fiction.
The investigation, too, covers a lot of ground. Themes such as hereditary illness and madness are to the fore, along with fidelity and the somewhat laissez-faire approach that Scandinavian society takes to it. These are new themes in Nesbø's work, but he also backs them up with some typically sharp jabs at the culture of celebrity in Norway (and around the world), with Hole attempting to interview a suspect live on television at one point, with decidedly mixed results.
Where The Redeemer was possibly a little loose in its presentation of all the important clues, The Snowman is pointedly fair. Every single clue which is relevant in the identification of the killer - and even the killer's motive - is presented in clear view throughout. The fact that the reader will almost certainly miss these no matter how obvious they are is hardly Nesbø's fault, and in fact deserves praise for the utterly crackling plot built around them. There are, in fact, several red herrings which darken the plot further and provide some opportunities for highly memorable set pieces. Again, these are images which may not fade in the short term if you're not into this sort of thing.
Above all, this is an exercise in sheer narrative tension. The earlier Hole novels flirted with different ways of building tension - The Redeemer, notably, is essentially an extended chase scene - but with Snowman, Nesbø's got it down to an art form. Hole's constant unease that the killer knows exactly what his next move will be, coupled with the unpredictability of the killings themselves, makes this an utterly compulsive read.
Nesbø even plays bait-and-switch with the readers. Cut-away scenes to different characters frequently lead in specific directions...apart from when they don't. Characters who seem "invincible" by right are shown to be anything but.
The experience is exhausting by the end of the novel. There's the customary sense of "oh" when a novel ends, but in this case it's tinged with relief that no more of this madness can occur to anyone. One can sympathise with Hole when he announces at the end of the case that he intends to disappear and not be found.
While Snowman continues on from the events of Redeemer, there's no particular need to have read the previous novel to understand this one. The plot arc which has been building silently is recapped at the right moment for maximum impact, and the recurring characters are given enough introduction for the casual reader to understand who they are. There is, however, one important revelation from - of all places - the first Hole novel contained in the plot here, so my customary advice of "start from the first in the series" still stands.
Last but not least, there's a film version of this novel scheduled for an October 2017 release. Tomas Alfredson (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) is directing, and Hole will be played by Michael Fassbender. JK Simmons, Val Kilmer, Chloe Sevigny and Charlotte Gainsbourg are also in the cast. This could well be one to watch out for, as the Hole novels are cinematic in ways the Millennium series weren't on the printed page.
A must-read. Five stars and the strongest possible recommendation.
[Update: I've now reviewed the film version]
For that reason, at the very least, it makes sense that my edition of The Snowman has a cover blurb identifying Nesbø as "The next Stieg Larsson", even though fans of the Swede may not necessarily find themselves in familiar hands when discovering Harry Hole.
The Snowman is, in many ways, the novel Nesbø had been threatening to write throughout the first few of Hole's cases. Picking up almost where The Redeemer left off, we are rapidly plunged into Nesbø's trademark pitch-black incarnation of Norwegian society and Oslo in particular.
Hole is attempting to deal with the death of his former investigative partner Jack Halvorsen and the disappearance of his former superior Bjarne Møller. Outside of work, his ex-partner Rakel seems to be even closer to her new love interest Mathias than before, and this presents its own set of challenges both for Hole and Rakel's son Oleg who has taken a shine to the unconventional policeman. So far, so much as expected.
Hole and his new colleague Magnus Skarre are sent to investigate a missing person report. Birte Becker, the attractive young wife of physics professor Filip Becker, has disappeared in the middle of the night with the only clue being her scarf left on a strangely menacing snowman in the front yard of the Becker house. While both detectives begin this investigation as they would any other disappearance, Hole's new colleague Katrine Bratt unearths some unfortunate similarities between Becker's disappearance and those of other young mothers around Oslo and further afield. Hole - who seems to spend much of his time practicing "speed-cuffing" chair legs in his office - becomes increasingly convinced that Oslo has a serial killer on its hands.
In what can only be described as Nesbø's customary manner, this isn't just any serial killer. The body count climbs rapidly and is heading towards double digits before 200 pages of the novel have elapsed. Squeamish readers should also take note that "The Snowman", as the killer is soon nicknamed, takes particular delight in torture and sadism, and the fates of many victims are described in a higher level of detail than is typical even in today's blood-soaked crime fiction.
The investigation, too, covers a lot of ground. Themes such as hereditary illness and madness are to the fore, along with fidelity and the somewhat laissez-faire approach that Scandinavian society takes to it. These are new themes in Nesbø's work, but he also backs them up with some typically sharp jabs at the culture of celebrity in Norway (and around the world), with Hole attempting to interview a suspect live on television at one point, with decidedly mixed results.
Where The Redeemer was possibly a little loose in its presentation of all the important clues, The Snowman is pointedly fair. Every single clue which is relevant in the identification of the killer - and even the killer's motive - is presented in clear view throughout. The fact that the reader will almost certainly miss these no matter how obvious they are is hardly Nesbø's fault, and in fact deserves praise for the utterly crackling plot built around them. There are, in fact, several red herrings which darken the plot further and provide some opportunities for highly memorable set pieces. Again, these are images which may not fade in the short term if you're not into this sort of thing.
Above all, this is an exercise in sheer narrative tension. The earlier Hole novels flirted with different ways of building tension - The Redeemer, notably, is essentially an extended chase scene - but with Snowman, Nesbø's got it down to an art form. Hole's constant unease that the killer knows exactly what his next move will be, coupled with the unpredictability of the killings themselves, makes this an utterly compulsive read.
Nesbø even plays bait-and-switch with the readers. Cut-away scenes to different characters frequently lead in specific directions...apart from when they don't. Characters who seem "invincible" by right are shown to be anything but.
The experience is exhausting by the end of the novel. There's the customary sense of "oh" when a novel ends, but in this case it's tinged with relief that no more of this madness can occur to anyone. One can sympathise with Hole when he announces at the end of the case that he intends to disappear and not be found.
While Snowman continues on from the events of Redeemer, there's no particular need to have read the previous novel to understand this one. The plot arc which has been building silently is recapped at the right moment for maximum impact, and the recurring characters are given enough introduction for the casual reader to understand who they are. There is, however, one important revelation from - of all places - the first Hole novel contained in the plot here, so my customary advice of "start from the first in the series" still stands.
Last but not least, there's a film version of this novel scheduled for an October 2017 release. Tomas Alfredson (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) is directing, and Hole will be played by Michael Fassbender. JK Simmons, Val Kilmer, Chloe Sevigny and Charlotte Gainsbourg are also in the cast. This could well be one to watch out for, as the Hole novels are cinematic in ways the Millennium series weren't on the printed page.
A must-read. Five stars and the strongest possible recommendation.
[Update: I've now reviewed the film version]
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