2012's Beastly Things is Donna Leon's 21st outing of Commissario Guido Brunetti. Just like the wines Brunetti seems to spend a lot of each novel drinking, he really only gets better with age.
Beastly Things begins with Brunetti talking to forensic examiner Ettore Rizzardi about an unidentified man whose body was found floating in one of the canals. The man was dressed neatly, and had an unusual physical condition, both of which seem to be clues to his identity. Brunetti also can't shake the feeling that the man's face is familiar, but can't place where he's seen him before.
Before too long, Brunetti and his good friend Lorenzo Vianello are discovering that the man was a vet on the Venetian mainland and was connected to an abbatoir further inland. The revelations of what was really going on at the abbatoir form much of the plot of the novel.
So far, so deceptively simple. But of course, a Donna Leon novel isn't just about the plot. There's so much more going on. Here, for example, Brunetti's children have both started at university and are rapidly discovering that they want to be vegetarians, which plays into Brunetti's own discoveries about how cattle are killed for beef.
Much of the plot involves Brunetti shuttling back and forth from the mainland - almost too much, to be honest - and this gives Leon the chance to ruminate on the differences between the Venice the tourists know and love, and the somewhat seedier towns surrounding it.
Leon's customary humour about the quotidian frustrations of Italian life is also present in droves here.
Brunetti has a wonderfully entertaining discussion with Signorina Elettra about the futility of Vice-Questore Patta's son continuing to take (and fail) his exams to become an accountant. This leads into the typical reservations that Brunetti himself has about the potential influence his father-in-law could exert over his career, given that the man is of noble descent.
In another scene, Brunetti and Vianello muse about the legality and morality of using Signorina Elettra - and her friend at the telephone company - to obtain vast amounts of information about key suspects in the investigation. I've sometimes wondered if Elettra isn't close to being a deus ex machina for Leon to wallpaper over what should properly be weeks or months of painstaking leg-work, but the explanations all the characters give for her abilities and their willingness to use them are at least plausible. This time, the scene extends as far as Vianello trying not to tell the young police-boat captain Foa that having a girlfriend and a fiancee are not mutually-exclusive concepts.
The real standout here, though, is a sort of half-subplot dealing with Brunetti's wife trying to establish what to do about an academic appointment at the university. In typical fashion, Brunetti's advice is couched in terms of his reading of Marcus Aurelius and other classical authors, but the right solution is reached.
While this may seem like a relatively bland review for a novel, by this stage with Donna Leon it really is a case that the reader knows what they're getting. Sparkling dialogue with sharp observations of Italian - and specifically Venetian - society abounds, as does a plot which, while not desperately intricate, takes the reader sufficiently far into the dark underbelly of one of the world's top tourist attractions as to make the place seem just that little more interesting.
Four stars.
Thursday, 22 March 2018
Thursday, 15 March 2018
Casey Hill - "Taboo"
Hailing from Ireland, "Casey Hill" is another pseudonym for a husband and wife duo, this time Melissa and Kevin Hill. While Melissa Hill is a bestselling author in her own right, it seems that neither had written crime before 2011's Taboo.
On the face of it, Taboo has a lot going for it. It's set in Ireland, which is an area which contemporary crime fiction hasn't really travelled to on anything like the level it could do, it's a very of-the-moment Dublin in which the action takes place (property prices seem to be at just pre-GFC levels, people are constantly bemoaning gentrification), and the main character is Reilly Steel, a young female forensic scientist. The ingredients are there for a decent thriller.
We're introduced to the characters at a reasonable clip, too. Steel is an FBI forensic specialist who's been seconded to the Irish police (the "Guards", as the Irish term is translated to English by many characters) to help establish a modern forensic laboratory. She's Californian, young, blonde, and has an uncanny sense of smell and "instincts" that she deploys at a crime scene by doing what another character thinks is yoga. The other characters given decent air-time are detectives Delaney and Kennedy. Peculiarly, Delaney is often referred to in narration by his first name (Chris), while Kennedy isn't.
As the novel begins, Steel's team is investigating the evidence from a drunken fight in Temple Bar, which allows for a quick overview of what sorts of evidence a good technician can get from something as innocent as a hamburger. Slightly an instance of "as you know, Bob", but as an establishing shot, I'll let our authorial duo get away with it. There's an unidentified body floating in the Liffey, too, before everyone is called to what looks like a murder-suicide in an upmarket area of the city.
The plot moves rapidly from this point, as the bodycount piles up, and usually in inventively gruesome ways. The theme of the killings is that the victims have somehow been forced to break social taboos before being killed, and this leads into some interesting discussions of Freudian psychology in between our regularly-scheduled murder scenes.
In typical thriller manner, chapters are short, and often end with dramatic cliffhangers - characters suddenly have a dramatic realisation before we jump-cut to someone else. The final revelation, when it comes, is suitably dramatic, and there's a fair bit of running around and racing against time to try and deal with an increasingly twisted murderer.
That said, for all its promise, Taboo never really moves beyond the generic. Opportunities to really make the most of the Irish setting aren't taken advantage of (apart from an incredible, and ham-fisted, set of coincidences in the final few chapters), and in fact the only way we really know we're in the Emerald Isle is that most of the male characters talk about drinking alcohol a lot.
The characters, too, are cliched. Steel is strikingly beautiful, whip-smart and has Poirot-esque instincts that keep allowing her to see the evidence her colleagues miss. Delaney is practically hypnotised by her brilliance, and Kennedy's scepticism seems sufficiently strong that it could only ever mask a grudging respect for Steel's unorthodox methods. Even the killer, when we eventually meet them, is a rather bland, two-dimensional serial killer from central casting. This isn't quite a killer with no motive, but the motives ascribed feel like an attempt by the authors to tie up some rather awkward loose ends with a semi-decent outcome, regardless that it sounds more artificial than it should. Everyone seems to have read too much Freud, if I'm honest.
The pacing of the plot, too, is faulty. While the set-pieces where Steel and her colleagues realise the identity of the killer are dramatic, the twist of this character's identity is telegraphed several chapters earlier, and with very minimal attempts to conceal the clues.
Perhaps the biggest criticism I have for Taboo, though, is the lack of real gore. If you're going to write a novel about a genuinely twisted serial killer, particularly one who forces victims to do unspeakable things, simply hinting primly at the unspeakable things really doesn't work.
One of the taboos "broken" by the killer is hinted at for three chapters before someone finally expressly states what the victim was made to do. Another victim may not even really have been "forced to break a taboo" (homosexuality in this case), as none of the characters seem to agree on the facts regarding his death, while a third victim is only semi-described before Steel is informed that she's urgently needed for the climax of the novel.
I'm not saying that every single victim needs to be described in loving detail. What I am saying, though, is that you can't write a novel about violent crime - particularly not one where the blurb indicates that you created a pseudonym "to delve into darker aspects of fiction" - and suddenly come over all prim and proper the moment there's any risk that you might have to actually, you know, write about violent crime.
As a crime-fiction fan, I've read and enjoyed everything from Agatha Christie's politely murdered victims through to the cinematic violence of Stieg Larsson and the twisted motives of Mark Billingham's characters. While I recognise that true-crime, particularly that of serial killers, isn't everyone's cup of tea, I'm happy to call myself a ripperologist into the bargain. Surely, by now, we can all be adult enough to pick up a book about a violent serial killer and expect to encounter the same without being disappointed.
It appears, particularly from the final scenes of this novel, that Reilly Steel is intended to be a series character. If so, she can solve future crimes without me.
1 star.
On the face of it, Taboo has a lot going for it. It's set in Ireland, which is an area which contemporary crime fiction hasn't really travelled to on anything like the level it could do, it's a very of-the-moment Dublin in which the action takes place (property prices seem to be at just pre-GFC levels, people are constantly bemoaning gentrification), and the main character is Reilly Steel, a young female forensic scientist. The ingredients are there for a decent thriller.
We're introduced to the characters at a reasonable clip, too. Steel is an FBI forensic specialist who's been seconded to the Irish police (the "Guards", as the Irish term is translated to English by many characters) to help establish a modern forensic laboratory. She's Californian, young, blonde, and has an uncanny sense of smell and "instincts" that she deploys at a crime scene by doing what another character thinks is yoga. The other characters given decent air-time are detectives Delaney and Kennedy. Peculiarly, Delaney is often referred to in narration by his first name (Chris), while Kennedy isn't.
As the novel begins, Steel's team is investigating the evidence from a drunken fight in Temple Bar, which allows for a quick overview of what sorts of evidence a good technician can get from something as innocent as a hamburger. Slightly an instance of "as you know, Bob", but as an establishing shot, I'll let our authorial duo get away with it. There's an unidentified body floating in the Liffey, too, before everyone is called to what looks like a murder-suicide in an upmarket area of the city.
The plot moves rapidly from this point, as the bodycount piles up, and usually in inventively gruesome ways. The theme of the killings is that the victims have somehow been forced to break social taboos before being killed, and this leads into some interesting discussions of Freudian psychology in between our regularly-scheduled murder scenes.
In typical thriller manner, chapters are short, and often end with dramatic cliffhangers - characters suddenly have a dramatic realisation before we jump-cut to someone else. The final revelation, when it comes, is suitably dramatic, and there's a fair bit of running around and racing against time to try and deal with an increasingly twisted murderer.
That said, for all its promise, Taboo never really moves beyond the generic. Opportunities to really make the most of the Irish setting aren't taken advantage of (apart from an incredible, and ham-fisted, set of coincidences in the final few chapters), and in fact the only way we really know we're in the Emerald Isle is that most of the male characters talk about drinking alcohol a lot.
The characters, too, are cliched. Steel is strikingly beautiful, whip-smart and has Poirot-esque instincts that keep allowing her to see the evidence her colleagues miss. Delaney is practically hypnotised by her brilliance, and Kennedy's scepticism seems sufficiently strong that it could only ever mask a grudging respect for Steel's unorthodox methods. Even the killer, when we eventually meet them, is a rather bland, two-dimensional serial killer from central casting. This isn't quite a killer with no motive, but the motives ascribed feel like an attempt by the authors to tie up some rather awkward loose ends with a semi-decent outcome, regardless that it sounds more artificial than it should. Everyone seems to have read too much Freud, if I'm honest.
The pacing of the plot, too, is faulty. While the set-pieces where Steel and her colleagues realise the identity of the killer are dramatic, the twist of this character's identity is telegraphed several chapters earlier, and with very minimal attempts to conceal the clues.
Perhaps the biggest criticism I have for Taboo, though, is the lack of real gore. If you're going to write a novel about a genuinely twisted serial killer, particularly one who forces victims to do unspeakable things, simply hinting primly at the unspeakable things really doesn't work.
One of the taboos "broken" by the killer is hinted at for three chapters before someone finally expressly states what the victim was made to do. Another victim may not even really have been "forced to break a taboo" (homosexuality in this case), as none of the characters seem to agree on the facts regarding his death, while a third victim is only semi-described before Steel is informed that she's urgently needed for the climax of the novel.
I'm not saying that every single victim needs to be described in loving detail. What I am saying, though, is that you can't write a novel about violent crime - particularly not one where the blurb indicates that you created a pseudonym "to delve into darker aspects of fiction" - and suddenly come over all prim and proper the moment there's any risk that you might have to actually, you know, write about violent crime.
As a crime-fiction fan, I've read and enjoyed everything from Agatha Christie's politely murdered victims through to the cinematic violence of Stieg Larsson and the twisted motives of Mark Billingham's characters. While I recognise that true-crime, particularly that of serial killers, isn't everyone's cup of tea, I'm happy to call myself a ripperologist into the bargain. Surely, by now, we can all be adult enough to pick up a book about a violent serial killer and expect to encounter the same without being disappointed.
It appears, particularly from the final scenes of this novel, that Reilly Steel is intended to be a series character. If so, she can solve future crimes without me.
1 star.
Monday, 12 March 2018
Colin and Damon Wilson - "Serial Killers"
Serial Killers is one of those books you sometimes see on the bargain table at a bookshop and wonder if it's of much interest. Despite a lurid-looking image of Richard "Night Stalker" Ramirez on the cover and a table of contents covering all the obvious names (Jack the Ripper, Ramirez, Bundy, Dahmer, Chikatilo, Holmes, Gacy, Brady and Hindley, Zodiac, BTK) and a few less obvious ones, this really is a "quickie book", with minimal research, no analysis and only marginal editing.
The phenomenon of the serial killer is fascinating - just look at the crime-fiction and true-crime shelves in your local bookshop and there will be endless variations on the theme in both fictional and non-fictional form. A proper discussion of what makes a serial killer makes great reading, too, particularly when enlivened with examples of the more infamous names and what made them tick. The process of catching a killer, particularly some of the more devious ones, makes great reading, as does the "one that got away" genre, of which Ripperology is but one example.
What we have here, though, is a series of relatively short potted biographies of the various killers, generally with a focus on sex and sexuality, and no real attempts to tease out themes and concepts across more than a century of criminality. Many of the biographies go out of their way to claim lurid sexual motives for the killer in question, including an insistence that Jack the Ripper had this motivation, which is still very much a live debate. Where there's even a hint of homosexuality, that angle is also played up mercilessly, and the reader could be excused for thinking that some 90% of serial killers are same-sex attracted, which is not exactly the case.
Criminologists are cited at times, but usually only by their surnames and in passing. Given that the book has no bibliography, it's impossible to chase up some of the more spectacular assertions ascribed to these experts, most of whom are usually referred to merely as "experts" or "criminologists".
To cap the poor-quality nature of this book, the editing is sloppy and non-existent in places. Dates are often transposed, names (including that of one of the killers!) are misspelled, placenames are rendered in a variety of ways on the same page, one foreign jurist has his name conflated with his title. One of my favourite moments, though, features a misspelling of "murderers" as "murdered", which completely alters the meaning of a passage.
The more infamous figures - particularly those I've named earlier - all have several book-length treatments written by more respectable authors and, particularly in the more recent instances, many of the police investigating the crimes themselves. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend any of these over this sensationalist nonsense.
Zero stars.
The phenomenon of the serial killer is fascinating - just look at the crime-fiction and true-crime shelves in your local bookshop and there will be endless variations on the theme in both fictional and non-fictional form. A proper discussion of what makes a serial killer makes great reading, too, particularly when enlivened with examples of the more infamous names and what made them tick. The process of catching a killer, particularly some of the more devious ones, makes great reading, as does the "one that got away" genre, of which Ripperology is but one example.
What we have here, though, is a series of relatively short potted biographies of the various killers, generally with a focus on sex and sexuality, and no real attempts to tease out themes and concepts across more than a century of criminality. Many of the biographies go out of their way to claim lurid sexual motives for the killer in question, including an insistence that Jack the Ripper had this motivation, which is still very much a live debate. Where there's even a hint of homosexuality, that angle is also played up mercilessly, and the reader could be excused for thinking that some 90% of serial killers are same-sex attracted, which is not exactly the case.
Criminologists are cited at times, but usually only by their surnames and in passing. Given that the book has no bibliography, it's impossible to chase up some of the more spectacular assertions ascribed to these experts, most of whom are usually referred to merely as "experts" or "criminologists".
To cap the poor-quality nature of this book, the editing is sloppy and non-existent in places. Dates are often transposed, names (including that of one of the killers!) are misspelled, placenames are rendered in a variety of ways on the same page, one foreign jurist has his name conflated with his title. One of my favourite moments, though, features a misspelling of "murderers" as "murdered", which completely alters the meaning of a passage.
The more infamous figures - particularly those I've named earlier - all have several book-length treatments written by more respectable authors and, particularly in the more recent instances, many of the police investigating the crimes themselves. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend any of these over this sensationalist nonsense.
Zero stars.
Tuesday, 6 March 2018
Lars Kepler - "The Nightmare"
Exploding onto the Scandi-Crime scene in 2009 with Hypnotisören (The Hypnotist in English translation), Lars Kepler became something of a publishing phenomenon in what was even by then a near-saturated market. Unlike other novelists in the same field, "Kepler" wrote under a pseudonym, which resulted in an early debate over "his" identity. One strong candidate, apparently, was none other than Henning Mankell. In late 2009, "Kepler's" identity was revealed as the married couple Alexander and Alexandra Ahndoril.
Originally published in 2010 under the enigmatic title Paganinikontraktet, the second Kepler effort saw English release in 2012 as The Nightmare. The original Swedish title ("The Paganini Contract") does eventually make sense towards the end of the novel, but I suspect the change was designed to grab the Anglophone reader's attention, as well as to relate slightly better to the bulk of the plot.
And what a plot it is! In stark contrast to Mankell - who would have seriously gone out on a limb were he the author of these novels - The Nightmare is a full-tilt, pedal-to-the-metal thriller, much as The Hypnotist was earlier. While this is the second appearance of Kepler's series character, the Finland-born Swedish policeman Joona Linna, there's very little in the way of character development in this novel, and I doubt that a reader who hasn't already met Linna in his earlier case would be disadvantaged by jumping in at this point.
The Nightmare begins with the discovery of a woman's body on a deserted boat in the Stockholm Archipelago. She's been drowned, but her clothes are completely dry. Almost simultaneously, a routine police check uncovers the body of a man hanging from a noose attached to his ceiling...with seemingly no way for him to have got up to the noose in the first place.
Linna begins to suspect something when the woman is identified as the sister of a prominent Swedish peace activist, particularly as the hanged man was the head of the committee charged with approving arms exports from Sweden. And so begins what can only be described as a high-concept cinematic plot involving chases over several islands of the Archipelago, hitmen, explosions, some alarmingly graphic torture scenes and one remarkable set-piece in the German embassy in Stockholm.
As mentioned earlier, we don't really learn an awful lot about Linna over the course of the novel. He is Finnish, at least to the extent that he reverts to his native language under pressure, suffers occasionally from migraines and has what can only be described as a hesitant relationship with a woman called Disa. If there are more clues to his physical appearance, I can safely say that I didn't pick them up as there was more action going on.
The same can be said for the other characters here, which is the weakness of Kepler's writing style. While we want to know what's going to happen next (the very short chapters frequently end with people bursting into rooms, seeing pursuers closing in on them or generally being left in a tense situation), the lack of characterisation reduces practically everyone to the level of a cypher.
Linna's somewhat reluctant Säpo opposite number, Saga Bauer, is briefly described as being quite beautiful, but even her physical appearance seems to be a means to an end as it allows people to underestimate her strength, speed and analytical skills. Meanwhile, characters with almost no long-term relevance to the plot are unexpectedly given back-stories. Sometimes, this has the effect of creating some level of empathy for the character, but the level of detail is uneven. There are also quite possibly too many characters who have a strong affinity for classical music.
In the hands of a master storyteller like a Mankell, these inconsistencies would be ironed out, and it's not as if the Ahndorils had never written a word before teaming up to be Kepler (although it appears that they had been perhaps more "consciously literary" before being inspired by Stieg Larsson's Millennium series to try crime fiction). It does make the impact of the novel slightly less than it could have been, but in fairness this is a novel all about the action rather than the characters.
One other quirk of The Nightmare is its unusual use of tense. Most of the novel is written in present tense, with unannounced flashbacks arriving in past tense. This can be slightly disconcerting for the reader initially.
There is also an unusual reliance on what I can only term the "jump-cut". As in most thrillers, plenty of the action takes place simultaneously, and the secret of the craft lies in keeping all the threads of the story moving rapidly. It's not surprising to see one chapter from one character's perspective and then the next to be events at the same time from someone else's view. Occasionally, though, events turn out to have been in a different order - a phone call proving that one character is still alive, for example, is "received" in one scene some 25 pages before the scene in which it's "made", which is peculiar. Again, a slightly more deft hand in the writing process - or the editing process - would probably have tightened this up.
Also, a quick word on the translation. This generally keeps the plot moving without seemingly inserting extraneous details. I do have to take issue with the consistent rendering of Stockholm street names as "Sveavägen Boulevard", though, which just doesn't make sense.
While I've been critical of this novel, it's simply because I hold Scandi-Crime to a very high standard. The Nightmare doesn't quite hit those marks, but is still streets ahead of the average Anglo-American "airport thriller".
3 stars.
Originally published in 2010 under the enigmatic title Paganinikontraktet, the second Kepler effort saw English release in 2012 as The Nightmare. The original Swedish title ("The Paganini Contract") does eventually make sense towards the end of the novel, but I suspect the change was designed to grab the Anglophone reader's attention, as well as to relate slightly better to the bulk of the plot.
And what a plot it is! In stark contrast to Mankell - who would have seriously gone out on a limb were he the author of these novels - The Nightmare is a full-tilt, pedal-to-the-metal thriller, much as The Hypnotist was earlier. While this is the second appearance of Kepler's series character, the Finland-born Swedish policeman Joona Linna, there's very little in the way of character development in this novel, and I doubt that a reader who hasn't already met Linna in his earlier case would be disadvantaged by jumping in at this point.
The Nightmare begins with the discovery of a woman's body on a deserted boat in the Stockholm Archipelago. She's been drowned, but her clothes are completely dry. Almost simultaneously, a routine police check uncovers the body of a man hanging from a noose attached to his ceiling...with seemingly no way for him to have got up to the noose in the first place.
Linna begins to suspect something when the woman is identified as the sister of a prominent Swedish peace activist, particularly as the hanged man was the head of the committee charged with approving arms exports from Sweden. And so begins what can only be described as a high-concept cinematic plot involving chases over several islands of the Archipelago, hitmen, explosions, some alarmingly graphic torture scenes and one remarkable set-piece in the German embassy in Stockholm.
As mentioned earlier, we don't really learn an awful lot about Linna over the course of the novel. He is Finnish, at least to the extent that he reverts to his native language under pressure, suffers occasionally from migraines and has what can only be described as a hesitant relationship with a woman called Disa. If there are more clues to his physical appearance, I can safely say that I didn't pick them up as there was more action going on.
The same can be said for the other characters here, which is the weakness of Kepler's writing style. While we want to know what's going to happen next (the very short chapters frequently end with people bursting into rooms, seeing pursuers closing in on them or generally being left in a tense situation), the lack of characterisation reduces practically everyone to the level of a cypher.
Linna's somewhat reluctant Säpo opposite number, Saga Bauer, is briefly described as being quite beautiful, but even her physical appearance seems to be a means to an end as it allows people to underestimate her strength, speed and analytical skills. Meanwhile, characters with almost no long-term relevance to the plot are unexpectedly given back-stories. Sometimes, this has the effect of creating some level of empathy for the character, but the level of detail is uneven. There are also quite possibly too many characters who have a strong affinity for classical music.
In the hands of a master storyteller like a Mankell, these inconsistencies would be ironed out, and it's not as if the Ahndorils had never written a word before teaming up to be Kepler (although it appears that they had been perhaps more "consciously literary" before being inspired by Stieg Larsson's Millennium series to try crime fiction). It does make the impact of the novel slightly less than it could have been, but in fairness this is a novel all about the action rather than the characters.
One other quirk of The Nightmare is its unusual use of tense. Most of the novel is written in present tense, with unannounced flashbacks arriving in past tense. This can be slightly disconcerting for the reader initially.
There is also an unusual reliance on what I can only term the "jump-cut". As in most thrillers, plenty of the action takes place simultaneously, and the secret of the craft lies in keeping all the threads of the story moving rapidly. It's not surprising to see one chapter from one character's perspective and then the next to be events at the same time from someone else's view. Occasionally, though, events turn out to have been in a different order - a phone call proving that one character is still alive, for example, is "received" in one scene some 25 pages before the scene in which it's "made", which is peculiar. Again, a slightly more deft hand in the writing process - or the editing process - would probably have tightened this up.
Also, a quick word on the translation. This generally keeps the plot moving without seemingly inserting extraneous details. I do have to take issue with the consistent rendering of Stockholm street names as "Sveavägen Boulevard", though, which just doesn't make sense.
While I've been critical of this novel, it's simply because I hold Scandi-Crime to a very high standard. The Nightmare doesn't quite hit those marks, but is still streets ahead of the average Anglo-American "airport thriller".
3 stars.
Friday, 5 January 2018
Henning Mankell - "One Step Behind"
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.
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)