Category Archives: Russia

Louise Erdrich’s The Round House (USA), James Wolff’s The Man in the Corduroy Suit (UK/Russia), and Becky Chambers’ A Closed and Common Orbit (USA/Space)

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Hello, everyone! It’s been a while hasn’t it? I hope you’re all as well as can be and embarking on some quality autumn reading.

Here’s a small selection of the crime that’s grabbed me lately. All three novels are loosely part of larger series, but can be read as standalones. All draw on the crime genre in intriguing ways.

Louise Erdrich, The Round House, Corsair 2013 [2012], USA

First line: Small trees had attacked my parents’ house at the foundation.

How have I managed to miss Louise Erdrich on my literary travels? She’s such a prolific and acclaimed author, and her writing is so very good. I’ve caught up with two of her novels thus far — The Round House (2012) and The Sentence (2021). The Night Watchman (2020), which won a Pulitzer, is next on my list.

Erdrich is viewed as a ‘literary’ author rather than crime writer, but her novels often explore the impact of individual and institutional crimes. The Round House, in particular, is a stunning dissection of a crime and its spiralling consequences. Our narrator, Joe Coutts, reflects on the traumatic summer of 1988, when his mother Geraldine was raped and fell into a deep depression that threatened to destroy her.

The Coutts live on an Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota, and Joe’s father Bazil, a tribal judge, initially seeks justice for his wife via legal means. However, it’s unclear exactly where the crime against Geraldine took place — on land that’s under federal government or reservation jurisdiction? — and this slows the investigation. Frustrated, 13-year-old Joe and his friends start looking for clues, which in turn fuels a desire for revenge. The questions of what kind of justice should prevail and at what cost are thus central. So too are past and present crimes committed by the state against the Ojibwe, and especially Ojibwe women. It’s an intricate, expertly told tale, and there’s a warmth and complexity to the main characters that’s hugely compelling.

The Round House is part of Erdrich’s ‘justice trilogy’ (all three works can be read as standalones, but intersect thematically). The others are The Plague of Doves and LaRose, now also on my list.

If you’d like to learn more about this superb author, who continues to draw extensively on her Native American heritage, head over to this article on Britiannia.com.

James Wolff, The Man in the Corduroy Suit, Bitter Lemon Press 2023, UK

First line: Confidential. We are writing to inform you that a 64-year-old woman named Willa KARLSSON was admitted to University College Hospital last night in an unconscious state.

One of the heirs to the late, great espionage writer John le Carré is James Wolff, who like the latter once worked for the British government in a rather opaque capacity.

Along with Mick Herron of ‘Slow Horses’ fame, Wolff shares le Carré’s deep interest in the individuals who work for the intelligence services. Some are brilliant but flawed, some are social misfits looking for a home, some are pen-pushers in search of glory, and some are collateral damage, sacrificed to strategic aims or power plays. What Herron and Wolff both excel at is capturing the Catch-22 absurdities of service life, depicting surreal, blackly comical scenarios that are more The Office than James Bond. At the same time, they raise some really serious questions about the purpose of the intelligence services and what they do — their novels are a long way from being mere comic romps.

The maverick hero of The Man in the Corduroy Suit is (wait for it) corduroy-suit-wearing Leonard Flood, a relatively junior intelligence officer who is tasked by the shadowy ‘Gatekeeping’ section to investigate the possible Russian poisoning of British agent Willa Karlsson. We follow Flood as he burrows expertly into Willa’s life and work, to the point where, like many of le Carré’s protagonists, he has big moral and ethical decisions to make.

This is the third espionage novel in the excellent ‘Discipline Files’ trilogy. I read them completely out of order, but you may wish to start with the first, Beside the Syrian Sea.

Becky Chambers, A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers 2), Hodderscape 2016, USA / Space

First Line: Mimetic AI housing is banned in all GC territories, outposts, facilities and vessels.

The author Becky Chambers is another recent discovery, and quite frankly she’s a marvel. Both of her parents worked in the field of space science, and this has clearly shaped her own writing imagination…

Chambers’ ‘Wayfarers’ series, which won a prestigious Hugo Award in 2019, has been variously described as space opera, solar punk and hope punk, and explores the future of humanity via the stories of individuals and small groups living on space ships or space stations, or in GC (Galactic Commons) colonies.

While not crime fiction as such, questions of crime, justice and closure dominate A Closed and Common Orbit. The novel tells the story of AI Lovelace — recently decanted from a space ship into an illegal body following an emergency — and her engineer friend Pepper, whose own extraordinary tale of youthful survival unfolds in the course of the narrative. Those tracking current AI debates may be interested in the more hopeful possibilities the novel depicts of future human-AI interactions, as well as cross-species communications and tolerance (there are fabulous depictions of alien civilisations and cultures throughout).

A Closed and Common Orbit is the ‘standalone sequel’ to The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. While the latter isn’t crime, it’s a great introduction to Chamber’s character-rich work. Like all of the novels discussed in this post, it has a big heart and plenty of humanity, which is certainly something we need right now.

Let me know in the comments what you’ve been enjoying too!

‘I insist it’s Moscow Rules’: John le Carré’s Karla Trilogy and Sarah Armstrong’s The Wolves of Leninsky Prospekt

Posted on by Kat Hall
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My reading has veered off in a curious direction in the last couple of weeks. First, I found myself revisiting two novels in John le Carré’s Karla Trilogy – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s People – then reading Sarah Armstrong’s thought-provoking The Wolves of Leninsky Prospekt, and then watching the 2011 film adaptation of Tinker Tailor. I suspect the Alec Guinness TV series will be next.

All, of course, are set during the 1970s at the height of the Cold War.

Le Carré’s novels detail the epic battle between master spy George Smiley and KGB supremo ‘Karla’ for the soul of the British Secret Intelligence Service.

Tinker Tailor draws heavily on the jaw-dropping 1960s revelations that high-ranking British MI6 officers such as Kim Philby had for decades operated as Russian double agents. Pretty much all Smiley knows at the beginning of the novel is that there’s a mole at the top of ‘the Circus’, and his against-the-odds quest to unearth the spy remains a brilliant and exhilarating tale. I love the original cover with its creepy Russian dolls, which perfectly captures the novel’s mesmerising ‘stories within stories within stories’ structure.

Sarah Armstrong’s new novel The Wolves of Leninsky Prospekt (Sandstone Press) is a highly original Cold War thriller. Set in Soviet Russia in the mid-1970s, it traces the tensions and dangers of the period through the eyes of frustrated diplomatic wife Martha. She’s forged a marriage of convenience with childhood friend Kit: he needs to cover up the fact that he’s gay, and she needs an escape from her oppressive family and a dull English life. We follow Martha into the topsy-turvy world of Moscow, where she tries to make sense of the city and its inhabitants, and of a fraught political environment in which anyone can turn out to be a spy – sometimes even without knowing it themselves.

I loved this novel’s sense of place and the way it captures the Kafkaesque absurdities of Soviet life at the time (maps with areas left blank; demolished churches that are instantly ‘forgotten’ by Russian citizens). It also very deftly shows, like le Carré’s novels, that the lines between ‘them’ and ‘us’ are often very blurred.

So why this odd Russian turn? As with so many things these days, I’m going to have to blame Brexit, our very own murky, messy, political stew. There are still a number of unanswered questions about Russian interference in the 2016 EU Referendum, which I’m sure will one day make it to the big screen. And just as le Carré’s forty-year-old novels take on a new resonance in these turbulent political times, so they also provide some solace – particularly in their depiction of Smiley’s dogged pursuit of the truth, and his grit and determination when the chips are down.

*The quote in this post’s title comes from le Carré’s Smiley’s People. The term ‘Moscow Rules’ signals the need to take utmost care on an operation, and is also specific set of rules – e.g. carry intel in a camouflaged fashion (such as in a pack of cigarettes), so you can discard it easily if needed.

Mina’s The Long Drop (Scotland), Broadribb’s Deep Down Dead (UK/USA), le Carré’s The Pigeon Tunnel (UK/world)

Posted on by Kat Hall
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This ‘read exactly what you want to read’ thing is working out really well. Three crackers for you this week:

Denise Mina, The Long Drop (Harvill Secker, 2017)

First lines: He knows too much to be an honest man but says he wants to help. He says he can get the gun for them.

I’ve loved everything I’ve read by the supremely talented Scottish writer Denise Mina, and The Long Drop is no exception. Based on the true case of rapist and murderer Peter Manuel, it’s a highly original re-telling of the circumstances leading up to his trial and judicial reckoning, set in a grimy, rough 1950s Glasgow.

Often these kinds of literary/true crime hybrids will focus on ‘why and how’ a criminal came to carry out his or her crimes (see for example my recent review of Carrère’s The Adversary). Such approaches are often fascinating, but what makes The Long Drop stand out is the originality of its storytelling, which expertly weaves together two contrasting narrative strands. The first shows a long night of drinking by Manuel and businessman William Watt in various Glasgow bars and establishments. Watt is the husband, father and brother-in-law of three of Manuel’s murder victims, and meets Manuel in the hope of gaining a crucial piece of evidence. It’s a cat-and-mouse game with some genuine surprises, which also takes us on a tour of the ‘old’ Glasgow before the slum clearances and remaking of the city centre (you can trace their wanderings on the map on the inside cover). The second narrative strand explores Manuel’s trial and the public/media interest in the case. It’s equally fascinating, not least due to Manuel’s misguided decision to dispense with his legal representation and do the job himself.

I found the entire book unexpectedly gripping, and the quality of the writing and characterisation are sublime. Mina doesn’t shy away from describing Manuel’s horrific crimes, but her approach is never salacious, and she provides razor-sharp dissections of masculinity and class along the way. Highly recommended.

You can read an extract from the beginning of The Long Drop over at DeadGoodBooks.

Steph Broadribb, Deep Down Dead (Orenda Books, 2017)

First line: I open my eyes and the first things I see are the cuffs.

I’ve never been much good at dealing with Mild Peril. Even watching kids’ films like Finding Nemo, in which a small fish lurches from one mildly threatening situation to another, required the steadying hand of my small son. For that reason, I don’t tend to read thrillers packed with Major Peril. Every now and then, however, I’ll be tempted to throw caution to the wind, as was the case with Steph Broadribb’s Deep Down Dead. I’d heard Steph read an extract from the novel at Newcastle Noir, and liked the sound of her sassy heroine, Florida bounty hunter Lori Anderson, very much.

Deep Down Dead is a genuinely accomplished debut novel. Steph is a UK author, but convincingly pulls off a Stateside setting and dialogue, and famously shadowed a real bounty hunter as part of her research, in order to learn the trade first-hand. I love the character of Lori, a thirty-something single mother, whose need to pay off her nine-year-old daughter’s medical bills leads her to take the job of collecting a wanted man in West Virginia. Except the man turns out to be J.T., her old flame and mentor, and the lack of a babysitter means she has to take daughter Dakota along – into a less than child-friendly environment. Trouble quickly ensues. The dialogue is snappy, the action high-octane, and Lori’s dual identity as bounty hunter and parent makes her the ultimate multi-tasking mom – and a very likeable one at that. A wonderfully entertaining summer read.

John  le Carré’s The Pigeon Tunnel. Stories from my Life (Viking, 2016)

First line: There is scarcely a book of mine that didn’t have The Pigeon Tunnel at some time or another as its working title.

I count myself as one of John le Carré’s biggest fans (see my appreciation here), so reading his memoir The Pigeon Tunnel was a treat of the highest order. The author has a reputation for being a brilliant raconteur, and the reading the book’s 38 chapters felt a bit like being at a dinner where the great man is holding court.

There are fascinating takes on key moments of Cold War history (West German Chancellor Adenauer’s failure to remove former high-ranking Nazis from post-war political structures; Russia before and after the collapse of Communism), wonderful anecdotes about actors and directors (Alec Guinness, Richard Burton, Sydney Pollack, Stanley Kubrick), stories about the people who inspired his characters (such as Yvette Pierpaoli, who became Tess in The Constant Gardener), and the extensive research trips for novels such as The Little Drummer Girl (resulting in a dance with Yasser Arafat). And of course, there are insights into the complex, murky world of spying, and in particular the Kim Philby case – the British intelligence officer who was unmasked as a Russian spy in 1963. The stories are by turns illuminating, moving and hilarious – I found myself laughing out loud a great deal, which wasn’t something I’d expected at all. If you’re a fan of le Carré, the memoirs really are a must-read.

I’m now keen to re-read some of le Carré’s novels, and to tuck into Adam Sisman’s biography of the author, which is waiting patiently for me on a shelf.

You can read an extract from The Pigeon Tunnel here, involving Alec Guinness, former Chief of the Secret Service Maurice Oldfield, and some authorial guilt. Other extracts are available from The Guardian here, both from The Pigeon Tunnel and the author’s novels (beautifully read by a cast of famous actors).

Extensive re-run of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Foreign Bodies’ crime fiction series on now!

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Thanks to Andy Lawrence for spotting that BBC Radio 4 is re-running episodes from Mark Lawson’s excellent ‘Foreign Bodies’ crime fiction series on BBC Radio Four extra and BBC iPlayer Radio. Most episodes will be available online for a month following broadcast, and offer 15-minute opportunities to delve into the work of key crime writers and traditions from around the world.

foreign-bodies

The ‘Foreign Bodies’ series are close to my heart for their celebration of international crime fiction, their focus on some of our most interesting detective figures, and their analysis of how crime fiction is used to explore important political and social issues. I was also lucky enough to contribute to two episodes in Series 1 – on the works of Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Jakob Arjouni respectively.

Here’s a list of the ‘Foreign Bodies’ programmes you can listen to via BBC Radio iPlayer, either now or in the coming days. If you’re looking for some gems to add to your reading list, then these programmes are definitely for you.

Series 1, Episode 1  Belgium: Hercule Poirot and Jules Maigret (Agatha Christie and Georges Simenon)

Series 1, Episode 2  Switzerland/Germany: Inspector Bärlach (Friedrich Dürrenmatt… with a contribution from Mrs Peabody)

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Series 1, Episode 3  Czechoslovakia: Lieutenant Boruvka (Josef Skvorecky)

Series 1, Episode 4  The Netherlands: Commissaris Van Der Valk (Nicolas Freeling)

Series 1, Episode 5  Sweden: Inspector Martin Beck (Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö)

Series 1, Episode 6  UK: Commander Dalgliesh/Chief Inspector Wexford (P.D. James and Ruth Rendell)

Series 1, Episode 7  Sicily: Inspector Rogas (Leonardo Sciascia)

Series 1, Episode 8  Spain: PI Pepe Carvalho (Manuel Vázquez Montalbán)

Series 1, Episode 9  UK: DCI Jane Tennison (Linda La Plante)

Episodes 10 to 15 are not yet listed as available, but they may well be soon – I’ll update if so (these include Montalbano/Italy, Kayankaya/Germany, Rebus/Scotland, Wallander and Salander/Sweden, Harry Hole/Norway and Fandorin/Russia).

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Series 3, Episode 1  Cuba: an exploration of fictional investigations of Cuba after the Castro revolution with Leonardo Padura, author of The Havana Quartet, and Caroline Garcia-Aquilera, a Cuban-American writing from exile in Miami.

Series 3, Episode 2  USA: Laura Lippman and Walter Mosley, the creators of private eyes Tess Monaghan and Easy Rawlins, discuss how they introduced the experience of women and black Americans into crime fiction dominated by men and a McCarthyite fear of outsiders.

Series 3, Episode 3  Poland: Zygmunt Miloszewski and Joanna Jodelka reflect on how Polish crime fiction depicts the country’s occupation by Nazis and Communists, the transition to democracy through the Solidarity movement and lingering accusations of racism and anti-Semitism.

Series 3 Episode 4  Australia: Australia’s leading crime novelist, South African-born Peter Temple, discusses depicting a society shaped by both British colonialism and American power, and why Australian crime fiction should contain as few words as possible.

Series 3 Episode 5  Nigeria: Writers Helon Habila and C.M. Okonkwo discuss how a flourishing new tradition of Nigerian crime fiction explores British legacy, tribal tradition and the new “corporate colonialism” as global companies exploit the country’s mineral reserves.

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Mark Lawson’s article on the first ‘Foreign Bodies’ series is also available via The Guardian: ‘Crime’s Grand Tour: European Detective Fiction’.

TV crime drama (Deep Water & McMafia) and John le Carré’s The Pigeon Tunnel

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Two TV crime dramas in the pipeline have recently caught my eye.

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Noah Taylor in Deep Water (photo Sean O’Reilly/SBS)

Deep Water (BBC Four)

From the BBC press release: ‘A gripping four-part crime drama set in contemporary Australia, the series is inspired by the unsolved gay-hate crime epidemic that swept through Sydney in the 80s and 90s, known as the Bondi Beach Murders.

The drama unfolds after detectives Tori Lustigman and Nick Manning are assigned a brutal murder case. They uncover evidence that suggests the killing is connected to a spate of unexplained deaths, ‘suicides’ and disappearances throughout the 80s and 90s. Is this the result of shoddy police work, indifference, or something far more sinister?’

The series stars Noah Taylor as detective Nick Manning; Yael Stone as detective Tori Lustigman; William McInnes as Inspector Peel; Daniel Spielman as Rhys; and Danielle Cormack as Brenda. It’s a Blackfella Films production for SBS Broadcasting Australia, Screen Australia & Screen New South Wales. Transmission date to be confirmed, but probably in the autumn.

There’s a bit more info in this Guardian article by Steph Harmon.

mcmafia

McMafia (BBC One)

From the BBC press release: ‘Inspired by Misha Glenny’s bestselling book McMafia – a hard-hitting look at global crime – Hossein Amini and James Watkins have created a thrilling international crime drama that centres on one family in London.

James Norton (War & Peace, Happy Valley) will play the lead, Alex Godman, the English-raised son of Russian exiles with a mafia past. 

McMafia charts Alex’s journey through a terrifying labyrinth of international criminals, money launderers, corrupt politicians and ruthless intelligence agencies. He finds himself embroiled in an underworld that stretches from London to Moscow, Dubai to Mumbai, Africa to the Americas; a battleground where Mexican cocaine cartels compete with Pakistani drug lords, Balkan smugglers and the Russian Mafia itself. What starts out as a story of survival and revenge becomes an epic tale of a man’s struggle against the lures of corruption in the modern world and in himself.

This fast-paced thriller is epic and intimate, glamorous and gritty, global in scale and forensic in detail. It delves into how, with the rise of globalization, the corporate has become criminal and the criminal corporate and how, driven by the global demand for cheap products, everyone is complicit in some way.

The writing team includes David Farr (The Night Manager, Spooks, Troy – Fall Of A City), Peter Harness (Doctor Who, Wallander, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell) and Laurence Coriat (Wonderland, Me Without You).’ Cuba Pictures. Transmission date tbc.

The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life - John le Carré (CNW Group/Penguin Random House Canada Limited)

The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life – John le Carré (Penguin)

Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m a huge John le Carré fan (see my post ‘In praise of John le Carré‘), so I’m delighted that his autobiography The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from my Life is now out with Penguin. Stacks of fabulous content has been released to promote the book, including an extract, readings from le Carré’s works by actors such as Rachel Weisz, and fantastic TV interview snippets. My favourite insight from the author so far: conflict makes for a good story (thus ‘the cat sat on the mat’ is not a promising start, whereas ‘the cat sat on the dog’s mat’ is).

le Carré will be reading extracts from The Pigeon Tunnel on BBC Radio 4 from Monday 12 September in the ‘Book of the Week’ slot.

CrimeFest 2013 and the inaugural Petrona Award

Posted on by Kat Hall
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This time next week CrimeFest 2013 will be in full swing. There’s a mouth-watering programme with lots of international writers as well as British writers whose works are set on international shores.

They include: Quentin Bates (Iceland), Xavier-Marie Bonnot (France), Roberto Costantini (Italy), K.O. Dahl (Norway), Jeffrey Deaver (USA), Thomas Enger (Norway), Ragnar Jonasson (Iceland), Pierre Lemaître (France), Adrian Magson (UK/France), M J McGrath (UK/Arctic), Derek B. Miller (Norway), Barbara Nadel (UK/Turkey), William Ryan (UK/ Russia), Jeffrey Siger (US/ Greece), Yrsa Sigurðardóttir (Iceland), Dana Stabenow (USA/ Alaska), Valerio Varesi (Italy), Robert Wilson (Spain/Portugal/Africa), Anne Zouroudi (UK/Greece). A full list of writers with further details is available here.

The winner of the first Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year will also be announced at the CrimeFest Gala dinner on Saturday night. I have my posh frock at the ready and am looking forward to the occasion very much.

The award was set up in memory of Maxine Clarke, who blogged as Petrona and was an expert in Scandinavian crime fiction. The 2013 shortlist, compiled on the basis of Maxine’s reviews, is as follows:

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PIERCED by Thomas Enger, tr. Charlotte Barslund (Faber and Faber)

BLACK SKIES by Arnaldur Indridason, tr. Victoria Cribb (Harvill Secker)

LAST WILL by Liza Marklund, tr. Neil Smith (Corgi)

ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER LIFE by Leif GW Persson tr. Paul Norlen (Doubleday)

Synopses of the novels with extracts from Maxine’s reviews can be found at the wonderful ‘Petrona Remembered’ blog. Karen Meek has also set up two polls over at ‘Eurocrime’: ‘which novel do you want to win the Petrona Award 2013′ and ‘which novel do you think will win the Petrona Award 2013′. The polls are open until 29 May.

I’ll be tweeting from CrimeFest using the following hashtags: #CrimeFest and #CrimeFest2013. The only difficulty now is deciding which of the panels to attend – they all look so good…

In Cold Blood: CultureCritic Guest Guide to Wintry Crime Fiction

Posted on by Kat Hall
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The good people over at CultureCritic recently invited me to contribute a piece to their fabulous blog. The result is a guest guide to ‘wintry’ crime and the role of chilly settings in five of my favourite novels.

  • Jan Costin Wagner, The Winter of the Lions (German author; Finnish setting; 2011)
  • Leif G. W. Persson, Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End (Swedish author; Swedish setting; 2010)
  • A.D. Miller, Snowdrops (British author / Russian setting / 2011)
  • Julia Keller, A Killing in the Hills (US author / Appalachian mountain setting / 2012)
  • MJ McGrath, White Heat (UK author; Arctic Circle setting; 2011)

Many thanks to CultureCritic for the invitation; it was fun to do!

If you’re not yet familiar with the CultureCritic blog, do pop over: you’ll find all the latest on film, music, books, exhibitions, theatre, opera, dance and more…. It’s a regular smörgåsbord of cultural delights.