Three quick crime fiction reviews
From Booklist Magazine:
The voice that emerges from Josef’s diary is one of a man struggling with the enduring issue that surfaces and resurfaces throughout espionage fiction, from Graham Greene to John LeCarre and Alan Furst: loyalty to country versus loyalty to the individual.
The setting is pre-World-War-Two Germany, in Hamm, to be specific, in the far north of the country. Josef Hoffmann has come there in order to do work on behalf of international Communism. But he becomes involved in the life of Walter, the young son of the woman who runs his boarding house. Gradually he becomes like a substitute father to the boy.
As Josef’s emotional commitment to Walter grows, his commitment to “the cause” recedes. Eventually he must make a crucial decision.
What could be better than espionage with a beating heart at its center? I loved this book and would definitely read another by this author, David Downing.
Dan Fesperman was foreign correspondent for the Baltimore Sun before turning novelist. Having enjoyed The Small Boat of Great Sorrows -such an evocative title – and The Warlord’s Son, I have long wanted to get back to this writer. In the main, Safe Houses did not disappoint. It was, however, in my estimation, too long and filled with such a large number of characters that I had trouble keeping track of them all. On the plus side, Helen Abell, the aptly named protagonist, is someone you want to root for. Her resourcefulness is deeply impressive; at the same time, she’s all too human, and vulnerable along with it.
Safe Houses opens in Berlin in the late 1970s. Additionally, the action takes place in Paris and on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. (That last is a place we know fairly well, so that was kind of a bonus for this reader.) This is one of the hallmarks of espionage literature; there’s a great deal of restless movement from place to place. In this particular instance, Helen is trying to elude capture by a very sinister foe. The situation is full of irony; they both work for the same service.
The level of suspense would have been higher had the action been less attenuated. Still, on balance, I enjoyed Safe Houses and hope to read more books by Dan Fesperman.
It’s mid-Victorian England, and there’s a madcap race on to catch a killer – to stop a dangerous conspiracy among people who believe that Darwin’s theories are nothing less than heretical. Meanwhile, a true life policeman – Charles Field – features in this fictional tale, while the fictional Field gets conflated with yet another policeman: Inspector Bucket, who issued forth from the fertile imagination of no less an author than Charles Dickens:
“That’s enough out of you, Brass Buttons, this man here is Detective Field!” Kilvert grew indignant. “Mr. Charles Dickens called him Bucket!”
“Shut up, Kilvert!” said Field. “Inspector Bucket of the Detective!”
“Kilvert, you ass,” said Field, “just get me out of this!”
As the inspector was released, there was renewed scrutiny from the crowd. It was clear that many of them had heard of Dickens’ fictional detective. For a person who did not in fact exist, Mr. Bucket was quite the celebrity, and so was his model.
I haven’t had this much just plain reading fun in a long time. This novel is a treasure!
‘They began their lives in deficit.’ – The Five, by Hallie Rubenhold
I’ve learned to stop describing this book as being about the five women murdered by Jack the Ripper. As soon as people hear those last three words they recoil in horror. But wait –
The Five is subtitled, The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper. The book is about the lives of those five individuals up until the time of their respective demises in 1888. What it is most definitely not about is Jack the Ripper.
From the Amazon page:
Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden, and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers.
They were orphaned while still underage. They got caught in destructive marriages or relationships. They had a child, or children, whom they worked to support and protect. They often stayed in rooming houses that were at best insalubrious, sharing rooms, and even beds, with strangers. As many as 48.9 percent of English women of the ‘lower classes’ could not read or write.
This book contains many passages that are well nigh brutal in their depiction of what living in poverty did to these women. Even so, moments of great poignancy occur. In this one, Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols, the Ripper’s first “canonical” victim, is identified by her estranged husband William, in the presence of Inspector Abberline. William and Polly were both entitled to their recriminations; yet they never stopped caring about each other:
Abberline noticed that the color had drained from Nichols’ face. He was noticeably shaken by the sight and then broke down.
“I forgive you as you are.” He addressed Polly as if she were merely sleeping and the brutish cuts on her body had not ended her life. “I forgive you on account of what you have been to me.”
It took Williams some time to compose himself. The coffin lid was moved back into place, and Abberline showed the grieving husband back across the yard and into the station.
Some of the environments in which both men and women had to live and work were truly terrible. They displayed the results of unrestrained and unregulated industrialization at its worst. Here, Rubenhold quotes a description of a “deadened, scorched landscape” that prevailed in the West Midlands in the mid-nineteenth century:
“On every side, and as far as the eye could see into the heavy distance, tall chimneys, crowding on each other, and presenting that endless repetition of the same dull, ugly form, which is the horror of oppressive dreams, poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the light, and made foul the melancholy air.”
(This, from Charles Dickens, who knew a thing or two about such conditions.) Catherine ‘Kate’ Eddoes was sent to live (with an aunt and uncle) and work in this place, sometimes referred to as the Black Country.
Hallie Rubenhold has done prodigious research and produced a fascinating recreation of a particular time and place. But most of all, The Five is a searing indictment of the conditions and expectations foisted upon the poor women of the nineteenth century. From the summing up at the book’s conclusion:
The cards were stacked against Polly, Annie, Elisabeth, Kate, and Mary Jane from birth. They began their lives in deficit. Not only were most of them born into working-class families; they were also born female. Before they had even spoken their first words or taken their first steps, they were regarded as less important than their brothers and more of a burden on the world than their wealthier female counterparts.
One gets the feeling that this book, meticulously sourced and beautifully written, was in fact written in a mood of barely suppressed rage. The concluded chapter is called “Just Prostitutes;” and in it, the dam of the author’s anger is well and truly breached. She gives vent freely, as in these words:
A woman’s entire function was to support men, and if the roles of their male family members were to support the roles and needs of men wealthier than them, then the women at the bottom were driven like piles deeper and harder into the ground in order to bear the weight of everyone else’s demands. A woman’s role was to produce children and to raise them, but because rudimentary contraception and published information about birth control was made virtually unavailable to the poor, they…had no real means of managing the size of their families or preventing an inevitable backslide into financial hardship. The inability to break this cycle–to better their own prospects and those of their children–would have been soul crushing, but borne with resignation.
In the course of this book, the reader is made to witness the terrible struggle on the part of each of these women as they attempt to withstand the conditions foisted upon them, as they endure repeated pregnancies and try to care for sick and dying children, only to fall victim, finally, to the savage ministrations of Jack the Ripper.
One of Hallie Rubenhold’s chief goals in writing The Five is to put to rest the assumption that these women were prostitutes. Selling themselves was a desperate act when no other way of getting money was available to them. Only the last, Mary-Jane Kelly, resorted to it with any kind of frequency. The others, including Mary-Jane herself, engaged in any number of other kinds of back breaking labor – anything to put food on the table without resorting to the ultimate debasement. To write off each of these women as “just prostitutes” is a calumny which this author seeks to redress and prove to be untrue. She has succeeded, all the while telling a riveting and ultimately heartbreaking story.
Hallie Rubenhold
I’ve written about Ngaio Marsh before. It’s my pleasure to be writing about her again.
A week ago last Tuesday, on an exceptionally lovely day, we Suspects gathered on Hilda’s screened porch to discuss Overture to Death by Ngaio Marsh.
This was Mike’s selection, and she did an excellent job presenting background for the life of Dame Ngaio. (“My Damery,” she called it; it was bestowed in honor of her work in theater in her native New Zealand.)
Overture To Death is a classic English village mystery. In some ways it’s amazing to think how insular such places still were on the eve of the Second World War. Not that you would know from this narrative that catastrophe was looming so nearly. On the contrary: in Pen Cuckoo, plans are afoot for an amateur play production. Theatrics and all the concomitant confusion dominate everyone’s thoughts. A suitable play must be selected and cast, purely by the locals, of course. Competition is fierce; comments are snide.
There’s Jocelyn Jernigham, Lord of the Manor, which is also named Pen Cuckoo. Against his wishes, his son Henry is in love with Dinah Copeland, the rector’s daughter, and means to marry her. For her part, Dinah has acted professionally and takes it upon herself to help direct the thespian undertaking of the denizens of Pen Cuckoo. So: into the mix throw William Templett, the village doctor; Selia Ross, a comely, scheming widow; Miss Eleanor Prentice, a nosy busybody who also happens to be cousin to Jocelyn Jerningham; Miss Idris Campanula – a couple of invidious spinsters both in hot pursuit of the widoewed rector – and several others, and we’re off and running!
Overture To Death, then, is a story of loving, loathing, resentment, and all manner of other emotions let loose in a dangerous way. It’s s roiling brew, and of course, it all culminates in murder. And what a murder! You’ll probably agree that it’s one of the more ingenious methods of causing death that you’ve encountered in crime fiction. This book cover hints at what’s involved: 
. Believe me, it’s much more subtle – fiendish, even – than it appears to be here.
Somehow, in the course of our discussion, the subject of red sacristy lamps in churches came up. This was something of which – unsurprisingly – I’d never heard. Frank introduced us to the storytelling term “lampshading.” (Truth to tell, I don’t quite understand this.) All in all, this was a discussion in which the digressions were as much fun as the main topic!
Mike reminded us that in creating the character of Detective Roderick Alleyn, Marsh became a pioneer in the field of police procedurals. (Someone pointed out that Poirot had been a policeman in his native Belgium. While this is in fact part of his back story, he was never technically a member of the force in Britain. He acted solely in a private capacity, always ready to assist Inspector Japp by using the prodigious power of his “leetle gray cells.”)
The reader will no doubt delight in the finely wrought prose passages that distinguish the work of Dame Ngaio.
Henry uttered an impatient noise and moved away from the fireplace. He joined his father in the window and he too looked down into the darkling vale of Pen Cuckoo. He saw an austere landscape, adamant beneath drifts of winter mist. The naked trees slept soundly, the fields were dumb with cold; the few stone cottages, with their comfortable signals of blue smoke, were the only waking things in all the valley.
**************The hall rang with Miss Campanula’s conversation. She was a large arrogant spinster with a firm bust, a high-coloured complexion, coarse grey hair, and enormous bony hands. Her clothes were hideous but expensive, for Miss Campanula was extremely wealthy. She was supposed to be Eleanor Prentice’s great friend. Their alliance was based on mutual antipathies and interests. Each adored scandal and each cloaked her passion in a mantle of conscious rectitude. Neither trusted the other an inch, but there was no doubt that they enjoyed each other’s company.
**********It did not matter to them that they were unable to speak to each other, for their thoughts went forward to the morning, and their hearts trembled with happiness. They were isolated by their youth, two scathless figures. It would have seemed impossible to them that their love for each other could hold any reflection, however faint, of the emotions that drew Dr. Templett to Selia Ross, or those two ageing women to the rector. They would not have believed that there was a reverse side to love, or that the twin-opposites of love lay dormant in their own hearts. Nor were they to guess that never again, as long as they lived, would they know the rapturous expectancy that now pressed them.
I’ve read several Roderick Alleyn novels and led discussions of two: Death in a White Tie and The Nursing Home Murder. My favorite of all of them is Death in a White Tie, for two reasons. First of all, that book depicts the London “season” in all its vivid glory – the endless round of parties and the blatant husband hunting carried on by the young debs and their mothers; it is as much a novel of manners as a murder mystery. Secondly, the murder victim is someone who moves in those circles and is known and liked by Rory (Roderick), Troy, and numerous others. The grief at his untimely passing is thus genuine and heartfelt. 
I don’t understand why more crime fiction authors don’t create a known and sympathetic victim. To my mind, it causes the reader to be more emotionally invested in the story. That’s certainly what happened to me as I was reading Death in a White Tie.
A word about the BBC series filmed in 1993 and 1994. The BBC changed the order of the episodes – in some cases altering the content of certain episodes – so as to to create a story arc that would smoothly accommodate the love story of Roderick Alleyn and Agatha Troy. Not to worry: it works beautifully. The mysteries are entirely engrossing. Having them undergirded by the somewhat tumultuous relationship between ‘Rory’ and ‘Troy’ adds to the drama without overwhelming it.
Patrick Malahide as Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn, backed up, as always, by Detective Inspector Fox, affectionately called ‘Brer Fox’, played by William Simons
Patrick Malahide with Belinda Lang as Agatha Troy
(Fun fact: Belinda Lang is married to Hugh Fraser, who plays Captain Arthur Hastings in the Poirot series starring David Suchet.)
It’s been noted that the character of Roderick Alleyn bears some similarities to that of Lord Peter Wimsey. Both are the younger sons of a titled aristocrats; both have carried out some secret intelligence missions in service to their country; both are in love with accomplished women that they desire to wed. For their part, both of these women – Agatha Troy and Harriet Vane, respectively – evince a marked reluctance to get married, a reluctance which is at length overcome, to the satisfaction of all, not least the reader.
The Inspector Alleyn books of Ngaio Marsh are among the most pleasurable relics of the Golden Age of British crime.
Barry Forshaw, in The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction
Ngaio Marsh in 1947
Loved it, as I figured I would: The Department of Sensitive Crimes, by Alexander McCall Smith
Scandi Blanc. Thus has Alexander McCall Smith named his new series. This is how he describes his latest undertaking in The Scotsman:
“I’ve started a new series set in Sweden. I call it ‘Scandi blanc’ as opposed to Scandi noir.
“My central character is a Swedish detective called Ulf Varg – Ulf means ‘wolf’ in Danish and Varg means ‘wolf’ in Swedish so he’s Wolf Wolf.
“He lives in Malmo and works in this department which deals with unusual crimes.
“He has a dog called Marten, and he’s hearing impaired. He’s the only dog in Sweden who can lip-read, but only in Swedish.
“He also has various sidekicks, but all his cases are really peculiar.
“The whole thing is just having great fun. My books never involve any serious crimes. Nobody is ever killed in any of my books, so there’s no murder there.
“There is a case of lycanthropy, though – somebody who is possibly a werewolf. It’s good Scandinavian stuff and I’ve had tremendous fun.
There is also a case of multiple missing persons. But is it actually a case if one of those reported missing never actually existed in the first place?
One of the reasons I love police procedurals is that you have a team of investigators. The individuals who make up that team are often very interesting in and of themselves. And there interactions can also be quite memorable.
From the jacket copy for The Department of Sensitive Crimes:
Ulf “the Wolf” Varg, the top dog, thoughtful and diligent; Anna Bengstdotter, who’s in love with Varg’s car (and possibly Varg too); Carl Holgersson, who likes nothing ,ore than filling out paperwork; and Erik Nykvist, who is deeply committed to fly fishing.
Throw in a local beat cop who is amiable but talks nonstop, and you have an entirely winning (if, at times, exasperating) ensemble.
Alexander McCall Smith is also great on the subject of dogs. Martin (variable spelling ‘Marten’) is an entirely lovable canine. Freddy de la Haye is my all time favorite fictional dog.
I admit I’ve been made slightly anxious by the appearance of this new series. I see there’s a new Precious Ramotswe novel in the offing, but what about the Isabel Dalhousie series? I love both and don’t want to see either of them supplanted. But McCall Smith is such a prolific writer – just have a look at his Wikipedia entry and you can see for yourself. I probably don’t need to worry.
I’m an Alexander McCall Smith junkie; I don’t deny it. I still have the fondest memory of his appearance at the library several years ago.
Long may he write!
Alexander McCall Smith
Rarely has the Australian outback been brought so vividly to life….The Lost Man, by Jane Harper
Jane Harper is a relatively new author; The Lost Man is her third book. She’s been getting consistently favorable reviews, which is why I decided to try this one.
The Bright brothers are cattle ranchers in Queensland, Australia. Their land is flat, vast, sun baked. There are three brothers: Nathan, Cameron, and Bub. The novel’s prologue reveals that a man has been found dead on a lonely stretch of land that’s well known for having a single gravestone on it.
The name of the man buried beneath had long since vanished, and the landmark was known to locals–all sixty-five of them, plus one hundred thousand head of cattle–simply as the stockman’s grave. That piece of land had never been a cemetery; the stockman had been put into the ground where he had died, and in more than a century, no one had joined him.
This is one of the most striking openings I’ve encountered in a novel in a long while. And the rest of the book more than lives up to the promise offered up in this prologue.
I was mesmerized by The Lost Man. I hated to finish it. The ending was just as dramatic as the beginning; I was held captive by every word in between, as well. Oh, for more reading experiences like this!
Highly recommended, obviously.
I plan to go back and read Jane Harper’s first Two novels, The Dry and Force of Nature.
Jane Harper
Two pleasing procedurals
Having fallen hopelessly behind in the reviewing process – and watching as titles pile up in my home office – I’ve decided to take a stab at remedying the situation.
So, to begin:
Both Jo Bannister and Peter Turnbull are, in my view at least, underappreciated writers, at least on this side side of the Atlantic. Both have a large and solid body of work, chiefly in the subgenre of the police procedural. Jo Bannister has authored several series; the one featuring Constable Hazel Best is her latest. Silent Footsteps is the most recent. It takes place, as do its predecessors, in the fictional region of Norbold.
Bannister has a wry sense of humor that often manifests itself in dialog. In this scene, Hazel is seconding Sergeant Murchison as he attempts to interview a possible witnesses to a crime. They belong to a gang called the Canal Crew. Murchison dives right in with a blunt opener:
“So what have you done with Trucker Watts?”
One of the hairy young men appeared to be senior to the other. ‘We ‘aven’t got ‘im. We never ‘ad ‘im. We ‘aven’t seen ‘im.”
There was something almost Shakespearean about it, Hazel thought. But Sergeant Murchison was harder to impress. ‘You saw him this morning, panhandling outside the off-license in Arkwright Street.’
Yes, they admitted, they had. They’d seen him off–or, to be more accurate, they’d seen him leave.They hadn’t seen him since.
‘Is that the truth?’
‘On my mother’s grave.’
Murchison frowned. ‘Your mother’s still alive, Billy Barnes.’
Yeah–but she’s already bought a plot down the Municipal. Cost her an arm and a leg, it did.’
Hazel has a close friendship with Gabriel Ash and talks to him frequently about the cases she’s working on. The two have a interesting back story. To be thoroughly filled in on that, it’s best to go back to the beginning and read Deadly Virtues. In fact, you could commit yourself to all six books in this series, read them in order, and be well served.
One of my favorite titles by Jo Bannister is a standalone called The Tinderbox.
***************
Cold Wrath is a different story. It’s the twenty-fifth entry in the series featuring Chief Inspector George Hennessey and Detective Sergeant Somerled (pronounced ‘Sorely’) Yellich. In each of these slender novels, Peter Turnbull presents the reader with an intriguing puzzle. A body is discovered in an odd place; sometimes it’s several bodies. Watching the action unfold as Hennessey, Yellich, and company pursue various leads is invariably a pleasurable experience – at least, it is for this devoted lover of police procedurals.
Part of the enjoyment of immersing oneself in these novels resides in the fact that they’re set in York, in the north of England. This is a magical city, steeped in history and crowned by the presence of York Minster, the largest Gothic cathedral in northern England.
Another thing that distinguishes these novels is the author’s use of somewhat antiquated diction. This is especially evident in the way he begins each new chapter. This, for example, appears above Chapter Three:
In which the reason why Miles Law delayed calling the police upon discovering the body of Anthony Garrett is revealed, and Reginald Webster and Carmen Pharoah and George Hennessey are severally at home to the urbane and always too forgiving reader.
There’s something oddly Victorian about it, n’est-ce pas? Reginald Webster and Carmen Pharoah, by the way, are additional members of Hennessey’s team of investigators. All of these characters have interesting back stories, which are reiterated anew in each book.
I’ve read something like seventeen novels in this series. I never tire of them, and always look forward to the next one.
Jo Bannister
Peter Turnbull
Books to the Ceiling 