Monthly Archives: June 2011

The Killing – BBC4 Series 2 Trailer

Posted on by Kat Hall
19

For some reason, I’m particularly missing the wondrousness that is The Killing at the moment.

BBC4 has thoughtfully supplied a glimpse of autumn’s Series 2 to allieviate my withdrawal symptoms. I never thought I’d be so happy to hear Danish! 

‘It’s good to see you again…’

Note: BBC4 rates the clip as suitable for 16+ only.

Pssst! No word from BBC4 as yet, but there was an article in The Guardian the other day (about jumpers!), which referenced Sarah Lund as a style icon and let slip a start date of mid-November for The Killing 2.

See http://www.guardian.co.uk/fashion/2011/oct/18/jumpers

 

Belfast, Bateman and Bora

Posted on by Kat Hall
10

I thoroughly enjoyed my recent visit to Belfast in Northern Ireland. Highlights included:

The Belfast ‘States of Crime’ Conference…

which was held 17-18 June and featured 60 academics from over 14 countries speaking on a wide range of international crime fiction. The focus of the conference was ‘the state’ and papers explored crime’s treatment of this topic from a number of angles, such as: state authority, state violence, the state and social exclusion, the criminal state, state memories and counter-memories, the welfare state, complicity with the state and resistance to the state. My paper was on the ‘The Nazi Detective and the State’, and examined the depiction of this controversial figure in three texts: Philip Kerr’s The Pale Criminal, Robert Harris’s Fatherland, and the German crime novel Wer übrig bleibt, hat recht by Richard Birkefeld and Göran Hachmeister [published the journal Comparative Literature Studies in 2013].

Other crime writers under discussion included Ian Rankin, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, James Ellroy, Ross MacDonald, Massimo Carlotto, David Peace, Dominique Manotti, Stieg Larsson, Chester Himes and Didier Daeninckx.

There’s a real buzz about crime fiction as an area of academic research at the moment. In the past there’s been some snobbery in academic circles about the value of studying popular culture, and many academics from previous generations felt they had to research crime fiction ‘on the side’ as a kind of guilty pleasure. There’s a significant shift now, with younger academics already writing doctorates on crime fiction rather than waiting until later when they’ve established an academic reputation. It’s a very welcome development, especially given that crime fiction is read by such huge audiences, and has an important cultural influence that merits analysis.

The Belfast Book Festival…

was running at the same time as the conference. Delegates and crime fans joined together for a roundtable with David Peace and Eoin McNamee on Friday evening. Both authors were very eloquent about their work and the kinds of problems raised when writing about real life crimes (the Yorkshire Ripper murders and the Patricia Curran murder respectively). Both also felt strongly that depicting the victims’ stories, so often overlooked in crime fiction, was of paramount importance to their own projects.

Each of the authors read from their works. Peace’s selection of GB84 was especially resonant given the the current economic climate.

The No Alibis Bookstore…

on Botanic Avenue, just around the corner from the university, is a treasure trove of crime fiction from all four corners of the world. But it also has a literary claim to fame, as it’s the same bookshop that’s featured in Belfast crime writer Colin Bateman’s Mystery Man: Murder, Mayhem and Damn Sexy Trousers. I had an illuminating discussion with the owner about what it was like to see your shop, and in large measure yourself, depicted in a work of fiction…

Aside from the fabulous selection of crime fiction, I’d recommend a visit for the following lovely touch: all customers are offered a cup of tea as they browse the bookshelves or read on the highly comfy sofas. What’s not to love?!

A greatly enlarged TBR pile for my own research project on Nazi-themed crime has resulted from those four days away. New reading includes: Dominique Manotti’s Affairs of State, Andreas Pittler’s Bronstein series (largely set in Austria before and during Nazi Occupation and featuring a Jewish policeman, but not yet translated, alas), Camilla Lackberg’s The Hidden Child, and Ben Pastor’s Lumen. The latter, which I’ve just started, is the first in the Martin Bora series, set in Nazi-occupied Cracow in 1939. It’ll be very interesting to compare it to other historical crime fiction set in the same period such as Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series.

A bit of a treat: Belfast ‘States of Crime’ conference

Posted on by Kat Hall
2

Tomorrow I’m heading off to Belfast for a few days, and will pop my head round the door of the ‘States of Crime’ conference being held at Queen’s on Friday and Saturday. As its title suggests, the conference will be looking at representations of the state in crime fiction, and how it is shown negotiating issues such as criminality, policing, justice and civil rights. 

I’ve had a peek at the programme, and it’s stuffed with talks on international crime (Italian, French, German, Austrian, Swiss, Russian, Finnish, Swedish, African, Spanish, British, Irish, American). Heaven! 

The icing on the cake is a round table with David Peace and Eoin McNamee. Peace is a bit of a literary god in my eyes: I think his Red Riding Quartet is one of the best things ever written – irrespective of genre – and I’m really looking forward to seeing him in discussion at the No Alibis Bookstore on Friday evening. 

#9 Jan Costin Wagner / Silence

Posted on by Kat Hall
13

Jan Costin Wagner, Silence, translated from the German by Anthea Bell (London: Vintage 2011 [2007]). The second novel in the Kimmo Joentaa series. An absorbing police procedural and a sensitive portrayal of grief  5 stars

 

Opening sentence: The time came when they got into the little red car and drove away.

I wrote a short but enthusiastic post on Jan Costin Wagner’s Ice Moon back in March. While German by nationality (and writing in German), Costin Wagner is an honorary Finn by marriage, and appears to have acquired the stylistic DNA of nordic crime in the process. His police detective Kimmo Joentaa convincingly goes about his business in and around the Finnish city of Turku, and little within the narrative hints at the fact that its author was actually born and brought up in Frankfurt, nearly 1500 kilometers to the south-west.

Silence is the second in the Kimmo Joentaa series. The first, Ice Moon, depicted the harrowing weeks following the death of Kimmo’s young wife Sanna, and his desperate attempts to manage his grief by throwing himself into police-work. Silence is set a year or so later, and continues the sensitive exploration of Kimmo’s grief, as well as other kinds of grief felt by those around him, such as the parents of those who have disappeared or been murdered, or the former work colleague trying to communicate with his gravely troubled child.

When I’ve read an outstanding first novel, I’m often a bit wary of reading the second in the series, in case it doesn’t live up to the high standards of its predecessor. But Silence does a fantastic job of picking up the threads of Ice Moon, while developing the characterisation of the investigative team and providing the reader with an aborbing new crime narrative. In particular, the developing relationship between Joentaa and his recently retired and rather curmudgeonly boss, Ketola, is very nicely handled.

The novel’s investigation centres on the sudden disappearance of a teenager on her way to volleyball practice. The girl’s bicycle is found in exactly the same spot where another girl was attacked and murdered thirty-three years earlier, raising the possibility of a belated copy-cat killing. The cold case, in particular, has haunted Ketola, who was involved in the original investigation at the beginning of his career, and who now employs some rather unorthodox methods in his attempts to uncover the truth. In common with Ice Moon, the narrative also shows events from the perspective of the perpetrator, allowing readers to gain insights into the circumstances of the crime that are denied even Joentaa and Ketola. By employing this dual narrative structure, the novel succeeds in both satisfying the reader and in providing a thoughtful, nuanced, and rather disturbing conclusion to the case.

The third novel in the series, The Winter of the Lions, has just been published in translation by Vintage.

Mrs. Peabody awards Silence a classy 5 stars.

#8 Karin Alvtegen / Shadow

Posted on by Kat Hall
7

Karin Alvtegen, Shadow, translated from the Swedish by McKinley Burnett (London: Canongate 2009 [2007]). A gripping psychological thriller, but one which tips over into melodrama at times  4 stars

Opening sentence: The key to the flat had arrived in a padded envelope from the police.

Karin Alvtegen’s Shadow immediately caught my eye with its rather intriguing opening. When 92-year-old Gerda Persson dies alone, estate administrator Marianne Folkesson visits her flat to glean the details of her life, and finds the freezer packed with signed copies of books by prize-winning author Axel Ragnerfeld. What on earth could have led Gerda to put them there? And what connection might they have to a young boy who was abandoned in an amusement park back in 1975?

So far so good: a literary puzzle that leads the reader into the dark heart of a family’s story – as well as that of a traumatised Holocaust survivor – and expertly keeps us wanting to know more. Well-written and gripping, and with a multi-layered, uncompromising ending, Shadow is in many respects a highly enjoyable read. In particular, I found many of the novel’s characters sensitively drawn, and their relationships described with a keen eye for psychological detail. Alvtegen is particularly good at exploring human weaknesses, and the kind of personal prisons individuals create for themselves without even realising what they are doing. Tracing the consequences of these weaknesses, and of the criminal decisions or actions they generate, are the novel’s great strength.

However … there was one element of Alvtegen’s story-telling that grated, namely a tendency to melodrama in the final third of the novel. There came a point where so many dramatic events were piled on top of one another that the narrative threatened to tip over into ridiculousness, and to undo the finely observed psychological detail of the rest of the novel.  This tendency also weakened the depiction of a couple of characters, whose actions at certain moments just didn’t ring true.

In spite of these reservations, I did enjoy the novel, and found that the questions it raised about life choices, trauma and morality lingered on. In particular, the ‘one last question’ on the final page of the book stayed with me for a number of days after closing its covers.

Mrs. Peabody awards Shadow a thoughtful 4 stars.

Trivia special, courtesy of @Petrona: Karin Alvtegen is the great-niece of Pippi Long-stocking author Astrid Lindgren. Petrona’s own excellent review of Shadow can be read on the Euro Crime blog (and contains a more detailed description of some elements of the plot).

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