#18 Jan Costin Wagner / The Winter of the Lions

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Jan Costin Wagner, The Winter of the Lions, translated from German by Anthea Bell (London: Harvill Secker, 2011 [2009]). The third novel in the beguiling Kimmo Joentaa series. 4 stars

 Opening sentence:  Kimmo Joentaa had been planning to spend the last hours of Christmas Eve on his own, but it didn’t turn out like that.

I was given a copy of The Winter of the Lions by my lovely brother for Christmas (following a sisterly nudge in the right direction) and it proved to be the perfect festive read, as the novel’s action begins on 24th December and ends on New Year’s Eve. The evocative cover, with its snowy Finnish birches, also made the novel an attractive winter gift.

Regular readers to this blog will know that I’m a firm fan of of the Kimmo Joentaa series, which, intriguingly, is set in Finland but is authored by a German whose wife is Finnish. The novels are suffused with nordic melancholia, and are in large measure a study of grief, as the first novel, Ice Moon, opens with the death of Detective Joentaa’s young wife. Thus, while each book contains a discrete police investigation, collectively they trace the arc of Joentaa’s grief and the slow process by which he comes to terms with his loss. The Winter of the Lions, set around three years later, sees him embarking on a fragile and rather unconventional new relationship with a women he meets through his duties as a policeman.

One of the big strengths of the series is its focus on the characters within the police team, in a way that’s reminiscent of Scandinavian writers such as Sjowall & Wahloo and Mankell. Joentaa isn’t the only team member with problems, and there are some very human depictions of individuals trying to juggle the demands of their professional lives with the stresses and strains of life beyond the office. In this novel, however, the team also has to deal with the collective trauma of one of their own being murdered. Forensic pathologist Patrik Laukkanen is found dead on a snowy cross-country ski trail in the forest, the victim of a frenzied knife attack. Soon afterwards, another man is found stabbed, and when the link between the two victims is established it proves to be a strange one: both were guests on the popular Hamalainen talk show. As the front cover tantalisingly points out, ‘careless talk costs lives’…

As in previous Joentaa novels, sections of the narrative are written from the murderer’s point of view, and we gradually build up a picture of their character and the circumstances that have led them to commit their crimes. The murderer in The Winter of the Lions is portrayed with sensitivity and a degree of sympathy, although the consequences of his/her crimes for the families of the victims are also carefully spelled out. Here, again, trauma and grief are key themes, and as in Ice Moon, there are some intriguing similarities between the murderer and the investigator whose job it is to track him/her down.

I enjoyed The Winter of the Lions almost as much as the previous two Joentaa novels (although I missed the presence of Ketola, Joentaa’s former boss), and will certainly be back for more. At the end of this third book, I realise that the value of the series lies less for me in the plot or investigative process and more in the novels’ use of the crime genre to explore human reactions to death, trauma and loss. Melancholy and beguiling, these novels are a wintry treat of the highest order.

For other Mrs P. posts on the Joentaa series see Ice Moon and Silence.

The first few chapters are available via the Random House website.

Incidentally, Silence was made into a German film in 2010 (entitled Das letzte Schweigen [the final silence]. You can see the trailer here, which looks great and makes wonderful use of the Finnish *summer* landscape (for a change). It’s in German, but don’t let that put you off!

Mrs Peabody awards The Winter of the Lions a snow and vodka fuelled 4 stars.

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In Praise of Columbo

Posted on by Kat Hall
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In a mad moment before Christmas, I bought a boxset of the entire 10 series of Columbo (including the original TV pilots), and have had a lovely time since then reliving the days of my youth, when this programme was a staple of our family’s TV viewing.

In total, Columbo was on screen for an amazing 35 years between 1968 and 2003, and has held up remarkably well given its age – a tribute to the brilliance of the show’s two big concepts (the character of Columbo and the ‘inverted mystery’ formula), and its high production values.

Just one more thing...

In Lt. Columbo of the LAPD, writers Richard Levenson and William Link created a unique police detective, who was wonderfully realised by Falk. Seemingly bumbling, incompetent and dishevelled (looking like ‘an unmade bed’ in his crumpled mac), his razor-sharp intellect was always fatally underestimated by the murderer, who believed that he or she had committed the perfect crime. Interestingly, and in contrast to investigators in other American police procedurals such as Starsky and Hutch or Cagney and Lacey, Columbo is shown operating largely on his own – we never see a police-partner, Columbo’s superiors, or any action at the police precinct. He’s actually a very clever fusion of policeman (title and frequently flashed badge), private eye (his appearance and constant snooping),  and ‘Golden Age’ detective (his unerring ability to solve the murder, typically committed in the L.A. equivalent of an English country house).  

This wonderful character was then combined with the innovative ‘inverted mystery’ formula to produce a highly addictive show. Each episode opened with a 10 to 15 minute section showing an individual carrying out a murder, thereby inverting the usual ‘who-dunnit’ formula and making the viewer an eye-witness to the detail of the crime. The focus of the rest of the episode was on how Columbo solved the murder and furnished proof of the culprit’s guilt, so that justice could be served. Dogged and persistent, Columbo would seize on any ‘loose ends’ in the case (e.g. why was the victim’s car radio tuned to a classical station when he was a country music fan?) and return again and again to probe the suspect’s story until the truth was finally revealed.

As Andrew Donkin notes in the sleeve notes for my Playback/Universal Columbo boxset, ‘this structure made the show particularly hard to write for, as the ending had to justify the time invested by the audience who already knew the answer [of the murderer’s identity]’  (p.2). A particular challenge was keeping the episodes fresh: while there’s a great deal of pleasure to be derived from the repetitive structure of the show, and the reassuring certainty that Columbo will always nail the criminal, there’s also a risk that the audience will get bored. This was countered in a number of ways: episodes that played with the formula and audiences expectations (such as ‘Double Shock’, which featured twins as suspects); a steady stream of top writing and directing talent, included Steven Bochco and Steven Spielberg (the latter was responsible for the first ever episode, ‘Murder by the Book’, in which a crime writer bumps off his writing partner), and, of course, the numerous, fabulous guest stars who appeared throughout the many years of the show.

The guest stars are a particular pleasure to watch now. Given that Columbo was essentially a two-hander between Peter Falk and the murderer, who was carted off to prison at the end of each episode, there was ample opportunity for often incredibly famous actors to shine in the latter role. Drawn to the show by its quality, the chance to play a gloriously villainous character, and to hog the limelight before Columbo’s entrance, they included (in no particular order):

* Ray Milland * Johnny Cash * Leonard Nimoy * Martin Landau * Vincent Price * Martin Sheen * Ida Lupino * Donald Pleasance * Robert Culp * Dick van Dyke * Patrick MacGoohan * Robert Vaughn * Janet Leigh * William Shatner * Faye Dunaway * Rue McClanahan * Blythe Danner * John Cassavetes * Valerie Harper * Ricardo Montalban *

Peter Falk with guest star William Shatner (aka Captain Kirk)

The other aspect of the show I sneakingly enjoy is its class dynamic: the murderers are typically ultra-affluent, well-educated, oh-so-arrogant types, who are brought low by a scruffy police detective from a humble background. This is not to say that Columbo delivers a detailed social critique of American society (the visually stunning upper-class settings are homage to Agatha Christie as much as anything else), but there’s a sustained contrast between the intelligence, abilities and moral goodness of the hard-working ordinary man and the greed, decadance and arrogance of the super-rich (apologies to any wealthy, morally-upright philanthropists who may be reading!). Notably, it’s the villain’s snobby assumption that Columbo could not possibly pose a threat to them that proves to be their undoing. Columbo frequently makes the point that he’s accumulated skills and experience from the hard graft of hundreds of investigations, whereas the murderer has only ever carried out one crime. They really don’t stand a chance.  

Peter Falk died last year at the age of 83. I will always be deeply, DEEPLY envious of Mr. Peabody, who as a young man on his first trip to America in the 1980s, encountered Falk in the elevator of a hotel in Florida where Columbo was being filmed. Seeing that he’d been recognised, the great actor leaned over, shook hands with the star-stuck teenager, and breathed the immortal line….. ‘How ya doin’, kid?’. 

Just how good is that?!

If you’re a fan of Columbo you might be interested in The Ultimate Columbo website – a treasure trove of information about the programme, its actors and individual episodes.

*****

Thanks to Norman, who has just made me aware of a fascinating intertextual link, namely that the figure of Columbo was partially based on the character of Porfiry Petrovich from Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Judith Gunn, in her post on the author, examines the the similarities between the two (and the narrative frameworks of both texts), which are striking and persuasive.

SoundCloud link to the music from Forbrydelsen / The Killing

Posted on by Kat Hall

For the many of us who have wondered where to find the wonderfully atmospheric music from the Danish crime drama Forbrydelsen / The Killing, information is finally at hand – thanks to blog readers Viv and Andrew.

From Viv I’ve learned that the soundtrack is by the Danish film composer Franz Bak. In addition to Forbrydelsen I, he’s also scored the music for Forbrydelsen II, an episode of Branagh’s Wallander series (‘The Fifth Woman’), and the American version of The Killing.

A large number of his tracks are available on the Franz Bak website (see right-hand column) and on SoundCloud (Playlist 3). If you’re in search of that haunting title music, it’s the Forbrydelsen Montage…

It doesn’t look like tracks can be downloaded or purchased (if you know otherwise please let us know), but at least they can now be enjoyed in one place via computer. Andrew adds that lots of Franz Bak’s music is also available on Spotify.

Thanks again to Viv and Andrew for passing this information on – it’s eased the pain of returning to work tomorrow considerably!

Have yourself a merry little Christmas…

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Mrs. P. hopes you have a very lovely Christmas and that Santa brings you all the crime novels your heart desires.

Have you been good?! I’m sure you have.

In that case, here’s a sublime version of ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’, complete with Hammond organ, from She and Him. Enjoy.

#17 Sam Hawken / The Dead Women of Juárez

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Sam Hawken, The Dead Women of Juárez (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2011). An outstanding crime novel set in the corrupt Mexican border city of Juárez, infamous for its high rate of ‘feminicidios’ (female homicides)  5 stars

 Opening sentence:  Roger Kahn wrote, ‘Boxing is smoky halls and kidneys battered until they bleed,” but in Mexico everything bled in the ring.

The Dead Women of Juárez is one of those crime novels that transcends genre and can be thought of, quite simply, as an excellent piece of writing. Set in the Mexican border city of Juárez, just across from El Paso, Texas, it draws on the legacy of American writers such as Hemingway to explore in succinct, precise, but highly evocative language the brutalising nature of life in Juárez, and the violence and corruption that pervade its politics and policing.

Ciudad Juárez is arguably the perfect place to set a crime novel, given its dubious real-life distinction of being the murder capital of the world. But Hawken chooses to focus on one specific group of the city’s murder victims, namely the 400 women killed there since 1993, and the estimated 3000 (that’s three thousand) women who have simply disappeared and are presumed dead – the victims of sexual attacks and ‘femicide’.

The novel explores the abject failure of the authorities to deal with the feminicidios, and the toll that the murders take on the women’s families, from the perspective of two highly damaged individuals: Kelly Courter, a washed-up American boxer reduced to the role of punchbag for talented younger fighters in the ring, and Raphael Sevilla, a narcotics investigator jaded from his many years on the police-force, who is hiding a serious drink problem. The link between the two is Paloma Esteban, Courter’s on-off girlfriend, the sister of a local drug dealer Sevilla is trying to nail, and a campaigner for the group Mujeres Sin Voces (Mothers without Voices), which seeks justicia (justice) for Juárez’s victims of femicide. When yet another woman goes missing, Courter and Sevilla find themselves drawn into an investigation that will radically change both of their lives.

As well as being a hard-hitting crime novel, and a scathing critique of power, corruption and misogyny, The Dead Women of Juárez offers readers an eye-opening depiction of contemporary Mexican society, whose impoverished majority endure punishing and poorly-paid working conditions in the maquiladoras – factories that turn out consumer goods for American companies. While only a stone’s throw away from America, the workers of Juárez may as well inhabit a different planet, given the disjunction between their lives and those of more affluent U.S. citizens living a few miles away. On another level, the novel also functions as a study of failed masculinity, through the symbolic figure of the boxer who undergoes a series of highly bruising rounds with life. The characterisation of Courter is superb, as is that of Sevilla, and the novel is worth reading for these two nuanced and very human portraits alone.

I especially like the way this book openly identifies itself as a campaigning crime novel (one of its key sources is Teresa Rodriguez’s journalistic study The Daughters of Juarez). In his afterword, Hawken states that his aim was to ‘shine a light on these femicides’ and the state’s failure to respond adequately to the epidemic of violence against women. Only a handful of cases have ever reached court, which is extraordinary given the scale of the murders and disappearances. (Imagine for a second how we would feel if the same were happening in the British city of Birmingham, which like Juárez has a population of around one million people…). An additional problem is that the murders have been overshadowed by the drug wars in the area, in spite of the work carried out by Amnesty International  and women’s groups such as Voces sin Echo (Voices without an Echo) and Las Mujeres de Negro (Women in Black). Hawken emphasises the importances of securing justice for the women before the law (providing an interesting contrast to the way that justice is depicted in the narrative), and his novel is a great example of how the crime genre can be harnessed to raise awareness of real crimes and miscarriages of justice.

The Dead Women of Juárez was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger 2011, which means that this highly accomplished piece of work is – remarkably – Sam Hawken’s debut novel. Beautifully written and with a tremendous sense of place, it stands head and shoulders above many others in its field. Along with Ernesto Mallo’s Needle in a Haystack and Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Mercy, it is one of my stand-out crime novels of the year.

Mrs Peabody awards The Dead Women of Juárez a superlative 5 stars.

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Forbrydelsen / The Killing Series 2 Finale

Posted on by Kat Hall
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First of all, I just have to say: I KNEW IT!!!

I got the murderer dramatically wrong at the end of Forbrydelsen I, so a brief moment of smugness at correctly identifying the perp is permitted!

Some general musings at the end of this excellent second series:                        (no spoilers in line with Mrs. P. policy)

  1. A few people had warned me that the second series wasn’t as good as the first, but I found it immensely enjoyable. The 10-episode format over five weeks inevitably made for a more intense viewing experience, but one that worked extremely well for me. Not least, it was easier to keep the whole of the plot in your head for the duration, and I felt that there were fewer loose ends than in series 1. 
  2. To put this another way, series 2 was a very different entity to the first series, whose 20 episodes explored one central murder and its wider effects at a much slower pace. But Forbrydelsen II worked well on its own more succinct terms.
  3. There were also plenty of similarities between the two series, not least that both featured a strong political storyline and focused on the twin themes of power and corruption. (If there’s a criticism to be made of series 2, it would be of this political strand – for reasons that I can’t go into without revealing major bits of plot…).   
  4. Both series have a pleasing circular narrative (they end where they began in a number of fascinating ways).
  5. Lund rocks! I loved the continuing exploration of her character and the tensions between her duties as a policewoman and her personal life (taken in a slightly different and exceedingly interesting direction this time round).

Roll on Series 3!

Forbrydelsen II's investigative team: Brix, Lund and Strange

If you wish to leave a comment, please don’t give away any details of the plot, to protect those viewers who have yet to see the series.

If you’d like to find out the identity of the murderer or if you wish to comment in more detail on the specifics of the plot, you can do so at Vicky Frost’s excellent blog at The Guardian.

Vikas Swarup’s Six Suspects (India)

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Vikas Swarup, Six Suspects (London: Black Swan 2008). The crime novel as vehicle for a darkly humorous and highly critical portrait of modern India. 

 Opening sentence: Not all deaths are equal. There’s a caste system even in murder.

For the first time this blog travels to India, as part of a concerted effort to broaden its transnational criminal horizons.

Six Suspects is the second literary offering of Vikas Swarup, who hit the international jackpot when his highly-praised first novel, Q&A, was adapted for film as the phenomenally successful Slumdog Millionaire (eight Oscars and numerous other accolades). Not bad for a book that was written in a mere two months.

Six Suspects is a rather unusual crime novel. While drawing heavily on the conventions of classic detective fiction (there’s a murder, a drawing room of sorts, and the eponymous set of suspects), Swarup uses the genre primarily for satirical purposes, providing the reader with a darkly humorous and often scathing critique of modern India.

The suspects – a bureaucrat, a Bollywood actress, a thief, a politician, an American tourist and a tribesman from the Andaman Islands – are selected for the spectrum of perspectives they offer on contemporary Indian society, and allow Swarup to explore his key themes of political corruption, power and class in an uncompromising fashion (pretty daring given his day job as a member of the Indian civil service; currently Consul-General of India in Osaka-Kobe, Japan).

Much of the novel is taken up with tracing the life stories of the suspects and the motives that they might have had for killing Vivek ‘Vicky’ Rai, a disreputable thirty-two-year-old businessman and playboy, who also happens to be the son of the powerful Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh. In contrast, relatively little emphasis is placed upon the process of investigation: the role of detective is played in part by Arun Advani, a journalist renowned for exposing corruption and injustice, but he only features significantly at the beginning and the end of this chunky 557-page text.

I found Six Suspects very enjoyable in a number of respects. As someone who has visited India in the past, the novel’s evocative descriptions of the sights and sounds of everyday life, and the huge disjunction between rich and poor rang very true. The novel also travels widely around India, beginning and ending in Delhi, but taking in other locations such as Srinagar, Jaisalmer, Varanasi, Kolkata and the Andaman Islands on the way (the latter are a remote and very beautiful group of islands in the Bay of Bengal that ‘belong’ politically to India, and which are home to ethnic tribes such as the Onges and Jarawa). The novel thus takes readers on a wide-ranging geographical and cultural journey which will be highly rewarding for those with an interest in India.

Another hugely enjoyable aspect of the novel is its biting satirical humour, and its witty nod to Salman Rushdie and magical realism (I particularly liked the possession of a grumpy, philandering ex-politician by the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi).

On the minus side, I felt the novel was a bit overlong and that its depiction of some characters and incidents was too exaggerated to be effective in the larger context of Swarup’s satire. As a result, the narrative felt rather uneven at times, and while I remained admiring of the author’s ambitious use of the crime genre to create a satirical portrait of India, I wasn’t sure that he’d completely succeeded in his aim when I closed the book for the final time.

I discovered Six Suspects at our city library, which has a superlative collection of crime fiction. If you’d like to read an extract from the novel, you can do so here on the author’s website.

The Kindle and the criminally inclined

Posted on by Kat Hall
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I recently treated myself to a shiny new Kindle – half gleefully and half guiltily due to the size of the initial outlay (although with the added justification of helping to keep the beleagured British economy afloat). While not completely convinced of the merits of owning one, I felt it was the right time to give an e-reader a go, especially as previous generations of Kindle buyers have so considerately helped to iron out the early technological and design flaws. 

I’ve had the Kindle for a week now, and am gradually learning to appreciate its benefits. As a crime reader, I consume a huge amount of books, and one big plus is that the Kindle will help keep my bookshelves from collapsing in the too-near future. I’m also finding reading on it a pleasant and user-friendly experience (especially as one can customise the appearance of the type to suit one’s aging eyes). But best of all, I’ve been able to widen the scope of my reading through opportunistic scavenging for bargain crime. Gems have come my way through the Kindle Daily Deal, while others are simply waiting to be found in the course of browsing. There’s some very good stuff out there that costs very little, and because they’re so reasonably priced, I’m willing to take a flyer on novels I might not otherwise try – which is no doubt the idea. In any case, it’s having the effect of allowing me to broaden my horizons and to fill in the gaps for good authors I’ve missed to date. So far I’ve snapped up low cost (or even free) crime from the US, Norway, Iceland and the UK, and now have a nice range of different types of novels stored on the Kindle to suit different types of crime-reading mood.  

One of my bargains...

That’s not to say that I’ll ever give up the wondrous paper book. I’ll continue to buy crime in indie and charity bookshops, as I’ll always love the feel of a book in my hand, especially when having a nice hot bath at the end of a long working day. That’s one advantage the Kindle will never have – and that’s quite OK by me.

She’s Got the Look: BBC4’s Forbrydelsen / The Killing Series 2

Posted on by Kat Hall
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The first two episodes of Forbrydelsen / The Killing Series 2 have finally aired on BBC4. Anticipation had been building over the past week (Sarah Lund on the cover of The Radio Times!), and as I took up my position on the sofa at 8.58pm (complete with patterned Lund tribute jumper), I was practically beside myself with excitement.

Oh! What a wonderfully tense opening! Ah! The dulcet tones of that Neptun soundtrack! Ooh! It’s so good to see you, Sarah, and to hear your funky Danish again!

Series 2 opens a couple of years after the end of the traumatic Nanna Birk Larsen case. Lund has been demoted to an administrative job checking papers in the back of beyond -a mind-numbing exile that makes no use of her exceptional investigative skills. But following the bizarre murder of lawyer Anne Dragsholm, she is recalled to Copenhagen by former boss Lennart Brix, swaps her unflattering POLITI uniform for her traditional chunky-knit jumper, and resumes her rightful role as a police detective (‘this is what I do best’). 

In keeping with The Killing’s status as a police procedural, there’s a continued focus on Lund’s interaction (or non-interaction) with the rest of the investigative team. The wonderfully-monikered Ulrik Strange appears to be the new Meyer (I’m still devastated by the way that partnership turned out), and then there’s Lund’s granite-faced boss Brix, who played a rather ambiguous role in Series 1 (and who is one of the few characters apart from Sarah’s family returning for Series 2). We’re also re-entering the murky world of Danish politics. The (rather endearing) new Justice Minister Thomas Buch is in the midst of complex cross-party negotiations on the introduction of new anti-terrorism laws, and in another plot strand, we see Raben, a former soldier, hoping to be reunited with his wife and young son following his discharge from a psychiatric unit. The connections between the murder and the worlds of high politics and the military are soon, of course, to become the subject of Lund’s sustained investigative interest. 

Sarah Lund and Ulrik Strange (has anyone told him about Meyer?)

What I  particularly enjoyed in these opening episodes was seeing Lund back in her natural habitat – the crime scene. Initially unsure of herself and her abilities following her enforced absence, we see her gradually grow in confidence and take ownership of the investigation. And what’s striking throughout the two episodes is the repeated close-up shots of Lund simply looking, her gaze sweeping across a crime scene, suspect’s house or military office, and continually processing and storing information. As I noted in an earlier post, The Killing frequently references a trope associated with hard-boiled crime fiction – the ‘power of the investigative eye’. It’s all about ‘the look’: looking / seeing / thinking / making links and arriving at an understanding of the complex truth of the crime. Lund looks for and sees things in a way no one else does (be it a bit of cellophane, an ornament, items of furniture, a corpse or a photograph). I absolutely love this focus on the process of detection and on Lund’s intelligence. As ever, it’s a pleasure to see a supremely skilled policewoman on our screens.

So that’s it – the sofa’s now booked every Saturday at 9.00 for the next few weeks (with apologies to the footballing fans in the family). Can’t wait to see more!

Further links

The first two episodes are available on BBC iPlayer for a limited time.

Vicky Frost’s excellent episode-by-episode blog of The Killing returns. Her posts discuss each installment in minute detail and so inevitably contain spoilers. You have been warned!

Guardian Q&A with Sophie Gråbøl.

A short Radio Times piece on translating and subtitling The Killing 2 – with a focus on the particular difficulties presented by expletives. I do hope they haven’t toned down the language too much, given the progamme’s gritty style.

Radio Times: knit your own Sarah Lund jumper.

Radio Times: TV’s top women cops

#15 Valerio Varesi / River of Shadows

Posted on by Kat Hall
24

Valerio Varesi, River of Shadows (Il fiume delle nebbie), translated from the Italian by Joseph Farrell (London: Maclehose Press 2011 [2003]). An atmospheric crime novel set against the backdrop of flooding in the Po Valley, and introducing Commissario Soneri  3.5 stars

 Opening sentence:  A steady downpour descended from the skies.

Given that Italy is currently in the headlines courtesy of Berlusconi’s imminent resignation, it seems fitting to review an Italian crime novel (I also happened upon an Inspector Zen novel in a charity shop today, so this week has become a bit of an Italian affair).

Valerio Varesi’s River of Shadows was shortlisted for the 2011 CWA International Dagger, and in most respects, is an enjoyable, quality read. The novel is set in the Po Valley of northern Italy, and offers a fascinating insight into the boatmen’s communities that work the Po river (if your knowledge of geography is as scanty as mine see here for further context; there’s also a helpful little map at the front of the book).

The novel has a tremendous sense of place, as its evocative cover suggests. The opening chapter describes the drama of the river’s rising floodwaters after four days of rain, and the strange disappearance of an experienced, but unpopular boatman named Anteo Tonna. When another man with the same surname falls from a window of the local hospital, Commissario Soneri is determined to establish a connection between the two, and the motivation for what he believes is a double murder. However, he soon comes up against the silence of the tightknit community of boatmen, led by the communist Barigazzi, who are unwilling to discuss their complex relationship with the missing man, one compromised by the murky politics of the fascist past.

I loved the atmospheric feel of this novel, the detail provided about life on the water, and the way the symbolism of the river was woven into the crime narrative (the rising floodwaters coincide with the violent deaths of the Tonnas, while the falling waters help to reveal the truth behind the case). Commissario Soneri is an astute and engaging investigative figure, and his interviews with various intriguing river dwellers, such as ‘Maria of the sands’, are nicely portrayed.

But there was one element of the novel I found highly irritating, namely the characterisation of Soneri’s girlfriend Angela, a one-dimensional, sex-mad fantasy figure who is averse to any kind of conventional commitment. Aside from being laughable, her presence undercuts the depiction of the otherwise professional Commissario. For example, I find it hard to believe that a policeman so committed to solving the case would consent to using a crime scene for an erotic rendevouz!

Readers of my previous posts will know that I’ve taken exception to the depiction of women in Italian crime fiction before (see my comments on Ingrid in Camilleri’s The Terracotta Dog). There does seem to be a pattern emerging, and I can’t help but wonder if these kinds of highly stereotyped representations of women are characteristic of Italian crime fiction in a way that they are not, say, for most Scandinavian crime novels. My impression is that male Italian crime writers tend to write for a male audience that expects its crime fiction to have an erotic dimension. However, in my view the latter doesn’t do the central crime narrative any favours (and I say this not out of primness, but because it’s so badly done!).

I will reserve judgement until I have read some further examples of Italian crime, and am actively on the lookout for a novel that proves my theory wrong. If anyone can point me in its direction I would be very grateful…

Mrs. Peabody awards River of Shadows an atmospheric 3.5 stars (one star deducted for its tedious representation of women).

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