Category Archives: By country

Jakob Arjouni event / A trip to Swansea Library / Maigret

Posted on by Kat Hall
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News of an event tomorrow night that will be of particular interest to those in London:

No Exit Press, together with Pancreatic Cancer UK, is hosting an event at Daunts Books (112-114 Holland Park Avenue, London, W11 4UA) on Tuesday 26th November, 18:30-21:00, to celebrate the life of German author Jakob Arjouni (1964-2013) and to raise funds for research into pancreatic cancer (http://www.pancreaticcancer.org.uk/). Barry Forshaw will be hosting and there’ll be German food and drink available. Entry is free.

The event will also launch Arjouni’s fifth and final Kayankaya novel, Brother Kemal. Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m particularly fond of the first in the series, Happy Birthday Turk!, which was an absolutely ground-breaking German crime novel back in the 1980s – see my earlier post here. I can also thoroughly recommend Brother Kemal, which provides a wonderful conclusion to the Kayankaya series.

In other news, I’ve been down to my local library to stock up on some crime fiction! I’m particularly blessed that Swansea Central Library is on my doorstep, which has an impressive range of crime fiction, including lashings of international crime. I came away with a satisfying selection including the first Arabic detective novel in English translation (Abdelilah Hamdouchi’s The Final Bet), some Spanish crime (Eugenio Fuentes’ At Close Quarters) and M.J.McGrath’s second Arctic novel, The Boy in the Snow. I’ve now read the first two, which were both excellent in their own ways, and am looking forward to meeting Edie Kiglatuk again soon.

Aside from the quality of these novels, it’s been a relief to read some crime that doesn’t open with the gruesome murder of a young woman. All too many of the novels sent to me by publishers begin with blurbs such as the following: ‘the body of a young woman is found carved up and buried in a forest glade’ / ‘a young woman is discovered in her apartment bound and gagged, the victim of an extraordinarily brutal attack’ / ‘a young woman has been brutally killed, her body abandoned in a car boot as a warning to others’ / ‘a young girl has been brutally murdered, her body arranged in bed with her hands over her eyes’. And so on… There does seem to be a depressing pattern here of an opening set piece featuring a young, sadistically brutalised female, and I’m getting pretty fed up with the gratuitousness of it all. I think a few more trips to the library are in order soon.

And finally… I’ve set up a new Maigret tab on the main menu of the site, where I’ll post mini-reviews of Simenon’s 75 Maigret novels as they are reissued by Penguin once a month. The idea is to build up a nice record / resource over time, and to track interesting developments in the series. It’s a (very) long-term reading challenge, which you are most welcome to join – either for the whole or for part of the way.

Arnaldur Indriðason’s Strange Shores / Iceland Noir

Posted on by Kat Hall
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So I’ve finally read Arnaldur Indriðason’s Strange Shores (Harvill Secker), possibly the last novel in the Inspector Erlendur series, in which our favourite Icelandic detective heads back to his abandoned childhood home to face the trauma that has shaped his life – the disappearance of his little brother Bergur in a snowstorm when he was eight years old. While there, Erlendur also starts to dig into another unresolved story: that of Matthildur, a young wife who set off across the frozen fjords one day in 1942 and was never heard of again. The two cases are entwined throughout this absorbing narrative, and cuminate in a powerful and and thoroughly moving ending.

What a fine series this is: while consistently delivering satisfying police procedurals, Indriðason has provided his readers with wonderfully realised investigative figures, and with an insightful portrait of a rapidly changing Iceland (and all the good and bad such transformation entails). He also very effectively explores profound themes such as grief and loss. On re-reading my earlier review of The Draining Lake I found I had written that Indriðason’s sensitive treatment of ‘the missing’ – and of the impact of losing someone without knowing their final fate – lifted the novel above many others in the genre. The same remains true of Strange Shores.

If you’d like to know more about the novel, I recommend heading over to Raven Crime Reads, where you’ll find an excellent review. But if you’ve not yet read all the others in the series, it might be best to do so first…

Those with Erlendur withdrawal symptoms will be glad to know that Indriðason has written a prequel set in 1974 entitled Reykjavikurnaetur (Reykjavik Nights), which was published in Iceland last year. Hopefully it will be translated into English soon. Indriðason’s latest novel is called Skuggasund (Shadow Channel), and won this year’s Spanish RBA crime fiction prize. Many thanks to Quentin Bates, author of the marvellous Gunna crime series, for passing on this cheering information.

And speaking of Arnaldur and Quentin… This week sees a very special event taking place in Reykjavik for the first time – the crime convention ICELAND NOIR – which both writers will be attending, as well as a host of other Icelandic, Scandi and British authors. It looks like it’s going to be an absolutely fantastic few days, and I am deeply, deeply jealous of all who will be there. Please tweet and blog LOTS so we can take part vicariously.

Iceland Noir Poster

The very first Inspector Maigret novel: Pietr the Latvian

Posted on by Kat Hall
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A little while ago, I reported that Penguin were publishing all 75 of Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret novels – in their original order and with new translations – at the rate of one a month, starting in November with Pietr the Latvian. Their press release states that this is ‘part of Penguin Classics long-term project to bring Simenon’s writing to a British audience’ – a laudable aim given his output of over 400 novels and short stories, and his status as a literary giant in Europe.

Penguin kindly sent me a copy of Pietr the Latvian, beautifully translated by David Bellos, which I very much enjoyed reading over a rainy weekend. Originally published in 1930, the novel felt a little old-fashioned in some respects, but remarkably modern in another:

  • There were moments when I had to take a deep breath due to the novel’s negative depiction of Jewish characters and its essentialist approach to issues such as race. Anti-Semitism and biological determinism were common in the 1930s, and might not have stood out for readers of the time, but of course they do now. And the fact that the book was published in the same decade that National Socialism took hold in Germany is a sobering one. I did find that there was somewhat more nuance towards the end of the novel, so I’ll be interested to see how these elements are handled later in the series…
  • But one very pleasant surprise was the highly European feel of the novel. Right at the beginning, Pietr the Latvian is identified as a major criminal being tracked by the ICPC or International Criminal Police Commission, based in Vienna, which ‘oversees the struggle against organised crime in Europe, with a particular responsibility for liaison between the various national police forces on the Continent’ (p.1). Sounds a lot like more modern organisations such as Interpol or Europol, doesn’t it? And in the course of the first four pages, Maigret is shown reading telegrams from Krakow, Bremen, the Netherlands, Brussels and Copenhagen, moving effortlessly between languages as he checks the progress of Pietr across Europe to his own juristiction of Paris.

Up until now, I’ve associated this kind of ‘Eurocrime’ feel with novels written after the collapse of communism in 1989, such as Henning Mankell’s The Dogs of Riga and Arne Dahl’s more recent Opcop/Europol series, which thematise the rise of organised crime across European borders, and the need for coordinated pan-European policing. But now I can see that these constitute just one phase of the ‘European crime novel’, and a late-ish one at that. Simenon’s Maigret debut was already on the case in 1930, and that means others from that time and beyond are likely to address similar themes. I’m already looking forward to finding them for the Euro strand of my research: as always, suggestions gratefully received!

The second Maigret novel, The Late Monsieur Gallet, will be out in December. I can already feel a little prickle of addiction, which is no doubt exactly what the good people at Penguin intend… The book covers, by the way, are by Harry Gruyeart, a Magnum photographer. This is undoubtedly going to be a gorgeous-looking series.

WELSH crime drama Y Gwyll / Hinterland

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Hinterland will be shown again on BBC4 from Monday 28 April 2014. See below for information about the series and a spoiler-free review of Episode 1.

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There’s been lots of buzz recently about the new Welsh crime drama Y Gwyll / Hinterland, which debuts at 9.30pm, next Tuesday, 29th October on S4C Digital. (In case you’re wondering, S4C stands for Sianel Pedwar Cymru or ‘Channel Four Wales’, and is also available beyond Wales via satellite, cable, and online).

My ears pricked up when I heard about this Fiction Factory/S4C/BBC production, partly because I have the good fortune to live in Wales, and partly because of its strong Scandinavian connections. Pre-broadcast coverage has repeatedly emphasised the influence of crime dramas such as The Killing and Wallander on Y Gwyll, both in terms of its tone – think Scandi melancholy and bleakly beautiful landscapes – and in terms of the decision to film it in Welsh with English subtitles. It’s a gentle reminder that languages other than English are spoken in the UK, and provides a wonderful showcase for Welsh language and Welsh culture, especially that of west Wales, which has a high proportion of Welsh-speakers.

I’m sure the enormous success of the ‘subtitled homicide genre’ in the popular BBC4 Saturday crime slot played a sizable role in convincing telly execs that this fairly costly venture (£4.2 million) would prove worthwhile. The series has also been filmed in English, and will air on BBC Wales and BBC4 next year, but I’ll definitely be watching the Welsh version first, and am hugely looking forward to some quality Cymru Crime.

In a lovely twist, the series has already been sold to the Danish channel DR, which means that we’re exporting some Scandi-style subtitled drama back to Denmark. Expect to see lots of Danish tourists flocking to the seaside town of Aberystwyth soon.

Here’s a bit more about Y Gwyll from the Fiction Factory website:

> From the windswept sand dunes of the coastline to the badlands of the hinterland, Aberystwyth is the perfect setting for this brand new drama series. A place that lives by its own rules: a natural crucible of colliding worlds where history and myth meet the modern and contemporary. Into this world steps DCI TOM MATHIAS (Richard Harrington), a brilliant but troubled man. Having abandoned his life in London, he isolates himself on the outskirts of Aber – a town filled with secrets as dark and destructive as his own.

MATHIAS is partnered with DI MARED RHYS (Mali Harris). Intelligent and complex, she is a mother wiser than her 33 years suggest. Together, enigmatic outsider Mathias and hometown girl Mared form an engaging relationship.

MATHIAS is at the heart of every story. He is a man we instinctively trust, a man who knows that the key to solving the ultimate crime of murder lies not in where you look for truth, but how you look. From the windswept sand dunes of the coastline to the badlands of the hinterland, this is a detective drama with pace, poetry and scale. A series of four two-hour films with stories that are original and local, yet timeless and universal <.

You’ll also find a superbly atmospheric trailer on YouTube) to give you a flavour of what’s to come (in Welsh with English subtitles). The Guardian TV Guide reckons that ‘fans of washed-out noir slaughter are going to love Y Gwyll for its slow, confident pacing, attention to detail, and Harrington’s engrossing performance.’  Mwynhewch! Enjoy!

Further reading:

Stephen Moss at The Guardian about the making of the series and its Scandi influences: ‘Hinterland – the TV noir so good they made it twice’.

Sioned Morgan, Wales Online: ‘S4C’s early-awaited Y Gwyll/Hinterland is a dark drama with a sense of place’.

UPDATE 29 OCTOBER: Review of Y Gwyll Episode 1 (spoiler free). 

Well, I really, really enjoyed this first episode of Y Gwyll: congratulations to S4C and its partners on a great start.

They’ve succeeded in creating a high-quality crime drama that draws on the best of brooding Scandi crime, but which also retains a distinctively Welsh feel. While there are definitely echoes of Wallander (the figure of DCI Mathias and the windswept landscapes) and The Killing (Mathias does lots of Lund-like gazing and thinking), we also have the twinkly lights of the Aber seafront, a caravan overlooking the spectacular Welsh coast, and of course, the Welsh language itself. The acting is great, the dialogue sparky, the cinematography stylish – and there are some heart-stoppingly creepy moments added in as well.

As with all subtitled crime drama, the ultimate test of quality is whether the subtitles get in the way, and they definitely didn’t for me (although their thoroughness in recording every sound effect provided some added entertainment – e.g. ‘rustling’, ‘door creaking’, ‘deep breathing’).

I’m already looking forward to episode 2 on Thursday for the resolution to the Jenkins case, and perhaps also the chance to find out more about Mathias’ own ‘hinterland’. He’s a bit of an enigmatic figure at the moment, a Welshman who is something of an outsider to the close-knit Aber community after time away. It’ll be good to see how his working relationship with DI Mared Rhys develops too…

‘Another wild night in Aber?’… Yes, please! 

CRIME NOVEL wins Man Booker Prize!

Posted on by Kat Hall
31

I was working late last night and found myself having a midnight snack in the company of The Guardian newspaper. In the course of browsing, I realised that I’d missed the announcement for the Man Booker Prize, and was interested to see the winner was The Luminaries (Granta) by Eleanor Catton, a New Zealander who is now the youngest winner in the prize’s history (just 28), with its longest ever book (a corking 832 pages).

My eye then fell upon this bit of text: ‘The Luminaries is, at the plot level, a page-turning, suspenseful story about a series of unsolved crimes, written in the manner of a Victorian sensation novel. In January 1866, in the New Zealand town of Hokitika, a Scot called Moody walks into a hotel smoking room to find twelve men ruminating on a series of mysterious events: the disappearance of a rich prospector, the death of a wealthy recluse, the beating to a pulp of a prostitute. All the men are connected to these events and bound to each other’.

On digging around a bit further I discovered the following little details:

  1. Moody has arrived on a ship captained by a suspected murderer.
  2. Moody has legal training: he agrees to listen to the mens’ stories and to become ‘the unraveler’ … or might we say investigator?
  3. The narrative features a tense courtroom drama.

My first thought was: this would be a great book to review on the crime blog. My second thought was: that means A CRIME NOVEL HAS WON THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE!

I then rushed over to the Man Booker Prize webpage, only to find near invisible acknowledgement of Catton’s engagement with crime. While there is passing mention of Wilkie Collins, of mystery and a lawsuit, the idea that the novel incorporates and plays with significant aspects of the crime genre has been written out. The word CRIME does not feature once. Might this be evidence of an in-built Man Booker ‘prestigious literary prize’ prejudice? Its slogan is ‘fiction at its finest’, and it looks suspiciously like they couldn’t bear to elevate crime into that elite category.

The author with slogan…

Contrast the refreshing take of blogger Danylmc over at The Dim-Post, who asserts:

‘The Luminaries is primarily a very entertaining crime novel … It’s written in the style of a Victorian novel, but I suspect that two of the biggest influences were the golden-age HBO shows Deadwood and The Wire. Deadwood because of the frontier goldrush town setting, and The Wire because Catton is interested in using crime stories to examine how the society she’s writing about really works in terms of power-relationships and influence’.

Hurray! That’s more like it!

I can’t help but think of Ian Rankin here, who for many years has bemoaned the sidelining of crime fiction when it comes to major literary prizes. Well Ian, I think we’re well over half way there now. While The Luminaries can be classified as a historical novel, a Victorian sensation novel, a literary novel, or even a postmodern novel, we can also definitely view it as a crime novel. So I’ll say it again: A CRIME NOVEL HAS WON THE MAN BOOKER, and that’s really something to be celebrated. Now all we have to do is persuade ‘literary’ prize-givers that ‘crime’ is the door to rich and wonderfully innovative narratives, rather than a dirty word to be avoided. We’ve known it all along, and after reading The Luminaries, they really should too.

Update: PM Newton has kindly drawn my attention to a 2010 article in The Guardian entitled ‘Could Miles Franklin turn the Booker Prize to Crime?‘. It appeared just after Peter Temple’s success in winning Australia’s top literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award, with his crime novel Truth. The article provides a nice overview of the crime fiction/literary prize debates, and is worth reading for John Sutherland’s ‘donkey-in-the-Grand-National’ comment alone.

New! Anglo-French drama The Tunnel / Penguin Classics Simenon series

Posted on by Kat Hall
26

Continuing with last week’s French theme, two bits of news about Anglo-French (or Belgian French-language) collaborations:

1. New crime drama The Tunnel, inspired by the Swedish-Danish Bron/Broen (The Bridge), premieres on Sky Atlantic tomorrow,  Wednesday 16th October, at 9pm.

The Tunnel images - Stephen Clemence

Introducing Elise and Karl…

Here’s the series blurb from the channel’s website:

>> The Tunnel is a gripping new thriller from the makers of Broadchurch, set against the backdrop of Europe in crisis.

When a prominent French politician is found dead at the mid point of the Channel Tunnel, on the border between the UK and France, detectives Karl Roebuck (Stephen Dillane) and Elise Wassermann (Clémence Poésy) are sent to investigate on behalf of their respective countries. The case takes a surreal turn when a shocking discovery is made at the crime scene, forcing the French and British police into an uneasy partnership.

As the serial killer uses ever more elaborate and ingenious methods to highlight the moral bankruptcy of modern society, Karl and Elise are drawn deeper into his increasingly personal agenda. <<

The 10-part series boasts an Anglo-French writing team, and is ‘the result of an entente cordiale with France’s CANAL+’. You can watch the first five minutes on the Sky Atlantic website here. Having had a peek, I think they’ve caught the tone of the original very well – gritty and atmospheric, but with a sharp sense of humour – and it looks like the dynamic between the Saga-like French cop and her rather more dour British counterpart is going to be good.

As I don’t happen to have access to the channel in question, I will be relying on UK viewers for some reviews…

2. Starting in November, Penguin Classics will be publishing all 75 of acclaimed Belgian writer Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret novels. They will appear in shiny new translations at the rate of one per month, with Pietr the Latvian first off the presses.

I’ve not read nearly enough Simenon, and have always felt a little guilty about this lack given the breadth of his work and its influence (his novels have been translated into over 50 languages and adapted into more than 90 films).

And how to resist writing like this (courtesy of a little booklet Penguin sent me)?

‘It was a ridiculous situation. The inspector knew there wasn’t one chance in ten that his surveillance would be of any use.

Yet he stuck it out – just because of a vague feeling that didn’t even deserve to be called an intuition. In fact it was a pet theory of his that he’d never worked out in full and remained vague in his mind… What he sought, what he waited and watched out for, was the crack in the wall. In other words, the instant when the human being comes out from behind the opponent.’

#43 / Pascal Garnier, Moon in a Dead Eye

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Pascal Garnier, Moon in a Dead Eye, translated from the French by Emily Boyce (London: Gallic Books, 2013 [2009])  4 stars

Love this design: a seriously stylish series.

Opening line: Martial compared the photo on the cover of the brochure with the view from the window.

Pascal Garnier, who died in 2010, was a prolific French author who worked in a number of genres, including crime. Gallic Books have thus far published four of his works in translation, with more due in 2014.

To date, I’ve sampled two of Garnier’s novels – or more accurately novellas of modest length – and have very much enjoyed the sharp observational powers deployed in each. Moon in a Dead Eye is set in a posh French retirement village: a gated community whose inhabitants are attracted by its 24/7 security and the promise that they will be protected from nasty ‘foreign’ elements. But perhaps Martial, Odette, Maxime, Marlene and Lea should be worrying less about the threat from without than the threat from within? To all those fantasising about a retirement in the South of France, I can only say: be careful what you wish for…

In common with Garnier’s earlier novel A26, which I would also highly recommend, Moon in a Dead Eye digs beneath the apparent respectability of provincial life to reveal the violence lurking beneath. This violence is often male, erupting from unexpected sources following a series of interlinked events. Although the stories they tell are undeniably bleak, both books are leavened with a biting satirical humour (reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith or the German author Ingrid Noll), and are beautifully and precisely written.

I’m looking forward to reading the other two (superbly titled) Garnier novels already available – The Panda Theory and How’s the Pain? Together with A26 and The Moon in a Dead Eye, they’ll make a stylishly grim quartet on my bookshelf.

Mrs. Peabody awards Moon in a Dead Eye a beautifully-observed and rather wicked 4 stars.

With thanks to Gallic Books for sending me an advance copy of this book.

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Crime Scene: European crime fiction guides

Posted on by Kat Hall
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I was having a stroll around the Crime Time website the other day, and ended up in an excellent section called Crime Scene, which profiles crime fiction on a country by country basis.

At the moment there are four Crime Scene guides – for France, Italy, The Netherlands and Switzerland (the latter includes info on Germany too) – and more will be added in future. They can be viewed online or downloaded as a PDF, and provide a really useful overview of the respective countries’ crime scenes.

Simone van der Vlugt is one of the writers featured in The Netherlands guide

Each is written by an expert on the crime of the country in question, but all look at similar areas, under the guidance of series editor Bob Cornwell:

– a history of the country’s crime fiction

– recent publishing trends

– notable writers (often by category, e.g. police procedural, historical crime fiction)

– major crime prizes

– key publishers

– key suppliers, festivals and websites

– key reference works

I’m extremely impressed with these guides, which pack a lot of information into a relatively small space. Produced in conjunction with the International Association of Crime Writers, they provide a great resource for beginners and more advanced crime readers alike, and I look forward to seeing more in due course.

#42 / Gillian Flynn, Dark Places

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Gillian Flynn, Dark Places (ebook; London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009) 4.5 stars

Opening line: I have a meanness in me, real as an organ.

I’m working my backwards through Gillian Flynn’s works after reading the incredible Gone Girl (see review here). Dark Places is the author’s second novel, and confirms my impression that she’s one of the most talented and original voices in crime today. Her novels are not necessarily perfect, but they’re extremely well written and have a narrative energy that makes them a red-hot reading experience. In the case of Dark Places, Flynn also takes on a very difficult subject and does so in a way that is both sensitive and groundbreaking. There is an authorial bravery at work here that I very much admire.

The principal narrator of Dark Places is thirty-one year old Libby Day, who in 1985, at the age of seven, survived a night-time massacre at the family farm that left her mother Patty and sisters Michelle and Debby dead. Her brother Ben, a teenager at the time, was convicted of the killings and sentenced to life imprisonment. Twenty-four years on, Libby is living alone, and has used up most of the $300,000 fund set up in her name after the murders. Petulant about the public’s dwindling interest in her, she resembles a former child film-star who can’t comprehend why the offers have dried up. So when she gets a call from a young man called Lyle, offering her money to appear as a ‘special guest’ at his none too subtly named ‘Kill Club’, she agrees to go. There she encounters a group of obsessives who have pored over every detail of the murders, and who are convinced that Ben is the victim of a miscarriage of justice. They offer her more money to talk to others close to the case – effectively positioning her as an investigator into her own family’s murders – and she accepts, partly for the cash and partly due to her own desire for closure. Her often darkly humorous account of events in the present is interspersed with sombre flashbacks to the day of the murders, narrated from the point of view of her mother Patty and brother Ben.

One of the key strengths of this novel for me was its characterisation. Libby, the sole survivor of the massacre, is clearly not depicted as a traditional tragic victim. She is spiky, surly, obsessed with money, and appears to have alienated everyone around her. But at the same time, hers is the voice that is the most moving in the novel, because through her, Flynn vividly realises the themes of grief, trauma and loss. Patty and Ben are also brilliantly portrayed: the thirty-two-year-old single mom trying to look after four children and keep the family farm going during a recession, and the troubled teenager struggling with the transition into manhood. All three characters give a sobering insight into the long-term effects of grinding poverty. Class is a big theme and is deftly handled.

There are some graphic descriptions of violence in the novel that readers may find upsetting. However, my own feeling is that Flynn uses these descriptions to convey the reality of the massacre as a violent and traumatic event, rather than with gratuitous intent. Crucially, we are told the physical details of what happened early in the novel, thus avoiding an excessive build up of readerly curiosity or their use as part of the narrative pay-off. There were perhaps just a few small details at the end of the novel that didn’t ring entirely true to me – a dash too much rural noir – but these don’t obscure the novel’s genuine strengths. Libby and Patty’s voices have stayed with me in particular.

In terms of larger literary influences, Dark Places surely reaches back to In Cold Blood, Truman Capote’s seminal 1966 account of the massacre of a farming family in Kansas (Libby tells us firmly that her farm is near Kansas City, Missouri rather than Kansas City, Kansas, which I read as a neat in-joke that both acknowledges Capote’s influence and asserts an authorial distance from him). I’m also reminded of Andrea Maria Schenkel’s novel The Murder Farm (see my review here), which is very different in style and length, but is another successful literary re-imagining of this kind of case.

By coincidence, an article by Sarah Weinman recently appeared in Book Beast entitled ‘The Original Gone Girls: Dorothy Salisbury Davis and Other Forgotten Pioneers of Crime Fiction’. It focuses on earlier contributions to the psychological thriller by women writers and is well worth checking out.

Mrs. Peabody awards Dark Places an accomplished and memorable 4.5 stars

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Indriđason’s The Draining Lake / Petrona Remembered

Posted on by Kat Hall
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This week’s post, on Icelandic author Arnaldur Indriđason’s The Draining Lake, can be found at the blog Petrona Remembered. It’s still one of my absolute favourites.

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