Tag Archives: international crime drama

Disappearing into thin air: Sarah Ward’s The Vanishing Act (Wales) and Laura Lippman’s Lady in the Lake (USA)

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Sarah Ward, The Vanishing Act, Canelo Crime 2024

First line: Elsa drove her car down the rutted road, the suspension on her ancient Fiesta groaning as it was thrown from grassy mound to pothole.

Sarah Ward’s The Vanishing Act is part of the ‘Mallory Dawson’ series set in Wales, where I happen to live, and I’ve very much enjoyed seeing places I know and love depicted in her gripping mysteries — Eldey (Caldey) Island, St Davids with its stunning Gothic cathedral, and now the ancient Brechfa (Glyn Cothi) forest in Carmarthenshire.

Sarah has a real gift for creating compelling crime scenarios. In The Vanishing Act, young Elsa goes to do her weekly clean of a holiday cottage deep in the forest, only to find it empty. But the kettle is still boiling on the Aga, half-made sandwiches are lying on the kitchen countertop and a chair is overturned. The family renting the cottage clearly left in a hurry, but why? Elsa phones Mallory to seek advice, who in turn contacts DI Harri Evans. He remembers being called out to a disturbing, supposedly supernatural event at the cottage many years earlier. Could there be a link? Mallory is tasked with digging into past events, and when the disappearance turns into possible murder, she finds herself back on the police team as a civilian investigator.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Vanishing Act. I love the characterization of the down-to-earth Mallory, who is rethinking her life after leaving the police and a divorce, and whose investigative skills and courage are an asset to every case. There’s also something of a Scandi feel about the isolated forest setting and its other-worldly vibe — a place where it pays to be wary of the darkness lurking in its depths. A gripping, satisfying read.

Interested in Welsh crime? Then the article ‘Ten killer crime novels set in Wales’ is for you!

Laura Lippman, Lady in the Lake, Faber & Faber 2019

First lines: I saw you once. I saw you and you noticed me because you caught me looking at you, seeing you.

I stumbled across this trailer yesterday for the new TV crime drama Lady in the Lake, starring Nathalie Portman as Maddie Schwarz. It looks like it could be an amazing adaptation of Laura Lippman’s 2019 novel.

I read Lady in the Lake last year and enjoyed it on a number of levels. Set in 1960s Baltimore, it’s a crime novel exploring the disappearances of Tessie, a Jewish girl, and Cleo, a Black woman, but is also a story of female emancipation. 37-year-old Maddie Schwarz ditches her comfortable but dull existence as an affluent Jewish wife, convinced that there has to be more to life. Her chance involvement in the discovery of a body sets her on a path to becoming an investigative journalist in the male-dominated newsrooms of the city.

Drawing on real cases and figures, Lady in the Lake is also an exploration of the social fabric of the city — of class and gender and ethnic tensions — and sets itself apart by giving space to multiple voices within the community, not least Cleo herself. It’s what I would describe as an ambitious social crime novel that is maybe slightly too ambitious at times. Ideal, then, for a long-form, seven-part TV adaptation that will allow the material to breathe.

The first two episodes of Lady in the Lake air on 19 July on Apple TV. 

Mrs Peabody is away for the next month or so, but has packed a goodly assortment of crime, ranging from Rebecca F. Kuang’s Yellowface and Zadie Smith’s The Fraud to Janet Evanovich’s Seven Up (I’m a big Stephanie Plum fan). What’s on your summer bookshelf?

Berlinale 2015 showcases international crime dramas and thrillers from Germany, Israel, Denmark, Sweden and Italy

Posted on by Kat Hall
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The 2015 Berlinale – one of the world’s top international film festivals – closes today in Berlin. As ever, a host of wonderful films have been shown during the packed ten-day programme, with the Iranian film Taxi, directed by dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi, awarded the coveted Golden Bear.

While reading coverage of the festival, I was interested to see that some international TV dramas were premiered as part of the programme, and that a number of these had a pronounced crime/thriller/spying dimension. Alessandra Stanley’s excellent article in the New York Times provides a good overview, and also discusses how such series are beginning to be picked up in the States (and not always to be remade in English either), which is a very good sign.

Here are a few of the series in question:

Deutschland 83. There’s quite a lot of buzz about this spying drama in Germany and beyond, and it has now also been picked up by an American network (in the original German!). The central protagonist is East German border guard Martin Rauch, who is sent across the border as an undercover agent by the Stasi (the East German secret police); his task is to pose as an aid to a West German general working with NATO. Stanley describes the series as ‘an ingenious, counter-intuitive look at the Cold War’ and a recent Guardian article sees it as indicative of rising interest in the divided Germany of 1949 to 1990.

Deutschland 83

Shkufim (False Flag). According to Stanley, this Israeli political drama was inspired by the assassination of a Hamas leader in Dubai in 2010. That scenario has been reworked for the series, which shows five Israeli citizens waking up one day to find they are prime suspects in the kidnapping of a Iranian official in Moscow. The drama is produced by Tender Productions, which also has links with Homeland (which was itself based on the Israeli series Hatufim).

The five suspects in False Flag

Follow the Money is a Danish crime thriller series by DR Drama (the makers of The Killing and Borgen) due to air later this year. It focuses on corruption in big business, with a lovely twist: the business in question is a wind-power company called Energreen, with supposedly impeccable ecological and moral credentials. Insider dealings and dodgy deaths indicate that all is not as it should be.

Follow the Money. Photo credit Christian Geisnæs

1992 is an Italian drama that was picked up in Berlin by the UK, according to Stanley (though no specific channel is named). This time, the corruption of political life by big business is the focus: the drama explores the Italian bribery scandals of the 1990s, and the attempts of Milan magistrate Antonio Di Pietro to clean up politics through Operation Clean Hands (Mani Pulite).

Italian crime series 1992

Last but not least, Blå ögon (Blue Eyes) is a Swedish-German crime series that explores racism, discrimination and immigration issues. Stanley describes it as having an anti-racist message, but also wanting to ‘upend expectations’ by giving characters on all sides of the debate a voice. One of the murder victims is a female, right-wing politician, who is assassinated while out in public.

STV’s Blue Eyes

Stanley ends her piece by noting that none of these series feature the disappearance or death of a child, as seen in earlier crime series such as The Killing and Broadchurch. Or to put this another way: these dramas are moving from highly personal cases whose investigations focus on the family and small communities, to cases that address larger historical, political and social issues. Interesting times. As ever, I’m hoping that a good number will make it on to our UK and US screens.