Insightful Books Reviews
Our reviews section examines the latest mystery offerings, covering books, anthologies, audio books, and videos.
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BLACK SKIES
By Arnaldur Indridason
Translated by Victoria Cribb
London: Harvill Secker, 2012. $15.99
The greatest writer today of international police procedurals is without a
doubt Arnaldur Indridason. The Icelandic author recently reached film audiences
in Europe and America with his screenplay (co-written with Óskar Jónasson) for
Reykjavík-Rotterdam, the biggest budget film to come out of Iceland. The film
was remade for US audiences as Contraband featuring Mark Wahlberg. But
Indridason is at his core the literary crime novelist who hauntingly chronicles
the adventures of his Reykjavík Detectives as they explore human nature at its
basest and most disturbing. The latest novel, Black Skies, is no exception with
its timely plot and taut narrative.
Ever since the conclusion of Arctic Chill, Detective Inspector Erlendur
Sveinsson has been absent, on “walkabout,” contemplating the gruesome discovery
of what really happened to his younger brother when they were children. This has
brought the series to an interesting fork in the road. In the previous novel,
Outrage (2011), the story was told through the eyes of Detective Elinborg, while
Black Skies is told through the eyes of her colleague, the surly US-educated
Detective Sigurdur Oli. One contrast is that Elinborg is the more sympathetic of
the two. Sigurdur Oli is disdainful of Icelandic policing, has less patience and
finesse than Elinborg, and is often prepared to “bend the rules” when squeezed
for a result. Interestingly, it is these precise faults that make Oli perfect
for Black Skies’s plot, which involves corrupt bankers and hidden motives in
pre-recession 2005. The title itself is a metaphor for the coming financial
crisis that would engulf Iceland and ripple throughout the world.
The novel begins with the serial-killer motif, introducing a drifter named
Anders who is crafting a horrific killing device. Sexual perversity is once
again the order of the day (as in the preceding novel Outrage, where Elinborg
investigated a series of date rapes), but this time Sigurdur Oli is faced with a
case of “wife swapping” that leads to the extortion of a banker, a relative of
one of Oli’s former schoolmates. Battling his own marital problems, Oli soon
sees beyond the wife swapping and extortion to something far more ominous. He
sees the dangers of wealth—a carousel spinning faster and faster so that with
each turn the riders are less able to stop.
Evident in all Indridason’s work, and especially in Black Skies, is the
author’s brutal economy of words. Yet there is room enough for hypnotic imagery.
And this novel, a contemplative read on the whole, leaves us inadvertently
comparing our own lives to those of the protagonists whose misfortunes we
digest. The tragedy of Anders made this reviewer’s eyes moisten, as did the
tragedies of the bankers caught up in the machinations of greed. There is no
finer writer currently working the literary police procedural than Arnaldur
Indridason, and the melancholia that is Black Skies is evidence of that
statement. –Ali Karim
THE CUTTING SEASON
By Attica Locke
New York: Harper, 2012. $25.99
The Cutting Season is Attica Locke’s much-anticipated second novel. Her
first, Black Water Rising, was one of the most acclaimed debuts of 2009 and
received nominations for several awards, including the Orange Prize for Fiction,
the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award, and the Strand Magazine Critics
Award. While the scope of Black Water Rising was wider than that of many
mainstream crime novels, The Cutting Season—set in Louisiana on an old sugar
plantation—runs more along the lines of traditional crime fiction.
Belle Vie has been in the hands of the same family since shortly after the
Civil War. Funded by the heritage industry, the house, plantation, and slave
huts have been preserved and restored to provide an elegant surrounding for
weddings, conferences, and educational visits. In addition to the amenities,
visitors are offered a regularly performed play, The Olden Days of Belle Vie,
about a plantation where family and slaves work together in peaceful harmony
before the upheaval of war. Against this backdrop of warped antebellum
nostalgia, the sugar cane is now cut by a new workforce consisting of poor
Mexican immigrants—slaves in all but name.
The irony of Belle Vie is not lost on property manager Caren Gray, a
descendant of the very slaves who worked the plantation before the war. Her
ancestors cut cane in the fields and her great, great grandfather stayed on as a
freed slave after the war, working the land until he disappeared in a mystery
that has remained unsolved to the present day. But Caren does not have time to
dwell on the past—she has a living to earn, an often-uncooperative staff to
manage, the homeowners to appease, and her daughter Morgan to raise. Besides,
the old slave cabins give her an uneasy feeling she would prefer to ignore.
The book opens with a cottonmouth snake falling from a tree into the lap of
the bride’s mother during a wedding, a fitting parallel to the juxtaposition of
revisionism and slavery in modern day Belle Vie. On the heels of this bad omen,
the body of a female migrant worker is found in a shallow grave along the fence
between the plantation and the cane fields. The police investigation into the
killing quickly follows the simplest route, pinning the crime on Donovan Isaacs,
a young actor who works at the plantation and has spoken out against the
revisionist play. As Caren is gradually drawn in, she discovers blood on her
daughter’s clothes and realizes Morgan is lying to her about certain events on
the night of the murder. Tension escalates when a red pickup truck starts
following Caren, the police grow hostile and suspicious, and the Belle Vie staff
begins excluding her and keeping secrets that may or may not be connected to the
case.
The Cutting Season explores the Old South through the context of new social
orders, pitting the pressure to rewrite or redress the past against corporate
greed and the need for identity. It is a compelling novel, slow-moving, and
beautifully written. It also contains all the elements of a traditional mystery:
murder, a growing list of suspects, and an investigation heading inexorably in
the wrong direction. If the denouement is less satisfactory than the novel on
the whole, this is probably because the author has great expectations of the
genre and asks it to carry more weight than most traditional genre writers ask
of their work.
Attica Locke’s Black Water Rising is a hard act to follow and The Cutting
Season does not disappoint.
—Danuta Reah
A DARK AND BROKEN HEART
By R.J. Ellory
London: Orion Publishing, 2012. $11.95
R.J. Ellory hit it big with his 2007 zeitgeist work, A Quiet Belief in
Angels, and successive works have further highlighted his skill as a literary
crime novelist. The author seems to prefer exploring theme, characterization,
and human fallibility rather than following the conventions of any genre. It is
therefore difficult to pigeonhole him. He has written police procedurals (Saints
of New York, 2010), prison melodramas (Candlemoth, 2003), conspiracy thrillers
(A Simple Act of Violence, 2008), and gonzo-southern gothic chase thrillers (Bad
Signs, 2011). Ellory’s versatility is evident again in his tenth novel, A Dark
and Broken Heart. This time, the focus is on how flawed characters gain
redemption for past transgressions.
Like most of Ellory’s work, A Dark and Broken Heart is peopled with
unlikeable characters, however the author makes sure they are well drawn and
multidimensional. This attention to detail is most evident in the main
character, Vincent Madigan, a cop with sociopathic tendencies who is in serious
debt to New York drug baron Sandia, a.k.a. “The Watermelon Man.” Vincent has one
chance to sort out his life by participating in a shakedown of a crew that has
stolen $400,000, but things go awry when he is forced to kill his colleagues,
and a young girl is shot accidentally in the gun battle. This might be termed
collateral damage by others, but not Vincent. He then discovers that the stolen
money is also tagged and therefore useless to him. This results in the rogue cop
going to ground, with cops and mob, led by Sandia, on the hunt for him.
The reader soon realizes that Vincent Madigan is now a full-blown
psychopath—a darkly charming liar, druggie, and user of people in the
Machiavellian mold—but with a contrasting streak of humanity. The conflicting
sides of human nature are areas that Ellory excels in revealing and here he
renders them with tremendous insight and compassion.
So, finally cornered, Vincent Madigan embarks on a curiously reckless and
risky journey to resolve his problems. This tale is a microcosmic examination of
his life—a search for context and an understanding of why he is the way he is.
This all sounds very worthy, but the beauty of the novel is that it can be read
as a page-turning thriller about a bad cop with a henhouse of chickens coming
home to roost, or as an existential meditation in the vein of a Jean-Patrick
Manchette story. A Dark and Broken Heart owes more to the French new-wave than
to its setting in the shadows of New York. In this disturbing thriller, Ellory
magnificently illustrates the most dangerous side of human nature. Highly
recommended!
—Ali Karim
DARK ROOM
By Steve Mosby
London: Orion Publishing, 2012. $22.99
British writer Steve Mosby often challenges our view of reality, and his
latest thriller, Dark Room, is no exception. Mosby’s work seems to explore the
nature of evil itself, so readers with a nervous disposition should be warned
that at times it can get ugly. Perhaps British readers are not averse to these
forays into the dark side, as Mosby was the 2012 recipient of the Crime Writers’
Association Dagger in the Library Award.
Opening along the well-worn path of a police procedural, the novel features
detectives Andy Hicks and Laura Fellowes investigating the murder of a woman who
seems to have been assaulted by her ex-husband. But when more bodies appear in
close succession, the detectives’ original theory of a domestic incident comes
into question. All the victims seem to be unrelated. And apart from brutal
beatings, no pattern emerges to give any indication of the killer’s modus
operandi—though talk of a serial killer is soon in the air. Even Hicks’ faith in
a logical solution for every problem is starting to shake.
Written with divergent plot strands that weave together toward an unexpected
climax, the book offers little that can be taken at face value, including Hicks’
own relationship with the killers. His already strained existence—investigating
the worst excesses of human nature while anticipating the birth of his first
child—is far from cliché. But it grows even more bizarre when he begins
receiving letters from the killers and begins contemplating secrets from his own
past.
Several minor characters striate the narrative of the book before becoming
integral at the close. The setting, a vague northern British city in the near
future, also seems minor at first. But perhaps the author is drawing a larger
parallel to the seeming randomness of life and death, and the idea that the
connection between the two is simply hidden from view. Dark Room is a superb
thriller for those who eat with their mouths closed and enjoy the existential
musings of people who operate on the edges of society.
—Ali Karim
DEATH IN A COLD CLIMATE:
A Guide to Scandinavian
Crime Fiction
By Barry Forshaw
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. $28.00
In Death in a Cold Climate, veteran British crime fiction critic Barry
Forshaw explores the fascinating “Nordic noir” phenomenon. This eruption of
Scandinavian crime novels, mostly police procedurals, began in 1965 with
Roseanna, the first of the Martin Beck series published by Swedes Maj Sjöwall
and Per Wahlöö. The genre gathered popular momentum in the late nineties with
Henning Mankell’s somber Kurt Wallander series and its English-language
television version starring Kenneth Branagh. Nordic noir exploded
internationally with Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series: The Girl With the Dragon
Tattoo (2008, US), The Girl Who Played with Fire (2009, US), and The Girl Who
Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (2010, US).
Forshaw wisely divided Death in a Cold Climate into chapters according to
nationality, since he believes the most effective authors from each of the
Scandinavian countries demonstrate the respective country’s idiosyncratic
approach to social and psychological problems in the crime novel context.
After a useful general introduction, “Crime and the Left,” Forshaw devotes
six chapters to Swedish crime fiction before, during, and after the work of
Sjöwall and Wahlöö, Mankell, and Larsson. His “Criminals and Criminologists”
section contains especially intriguing reflections on novels just now appearing
in English translation, such as Three Seconds (2011), a searing indictment of
government corruption by Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström.
Forshaw also highlights Norwegian author Jo Nesbø while discussing how Viking
legacy continues to impact Norway’s crime literature. He similarly deals with
authors—mostly translated, but some not yet available in English—of Danish,
Icelandic, and Finnish crime novels in their national, historical, and cultural
contexts. The closing chapter discusses film and television adaptations of crime
works from all five nations.
Besides Forshaw’s generally illuminating mini-critiques of translated novels
most likely to be found in US and UK bookstores, he directly quotes not only
Scandinavian authors but also their publishers and translators. The remarks from
the translators in particular are helpful in understanding the challenges of
making Nordic noir accessible to English-speaking audiences. Overall, Death in a
Cold Climate, with its comprehensive bibliography, respect for national literary
traditions, and level-headed evaluation of a complex and thought-provoking
literary phenomenon is a most worthwhile addition to any reader’s library.
—Mitzi M. Brunsdale
GONE GIRL
By Gillian Flynn
New York: Crown Publishing, 2012. $25.00
Gillian Flynn burst onto the literary scene in 2006 with Sharp Objects, a
disturbing novel that won two Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Awards, which
she followed up with Dark Places (2009). Her works feature unreliable narrators
as unsettling as any convention-weary reader could wish for. If Patricia
Highsmith were writing today, she would have fierce competition from fellow
American Flynn, as they share a common strand in their stories—understanding the
amorality that lies just a few millimetres beneath the veneer of humanity.
Gone Girl, Flynn’s third novel, is a very tough book to review because it
reads like a bad drug experience, or a lucid dream that one wakes from in sodden
sheets. Told from the viewpoints of Nick and Amy Dunne, the story follows a
marriage that is less One Day (2009) by David Nicholls and more Full Dark, No
Stars (2010) by Stephen King. It is in fact a dark romance about two lovers
undergoing change.
The backdrop is the economic crisis impinging upon an affluent and educated
couple. Forced to relocate from New York to Carthage, Missouri, they downsize to
look after Nick’s sick mother, and Nick uses up a slab of Amy’s inheritance to
set up a bar with his twin sister Margo (a.k.a. “Go”). There is subtle subtext
behind their move as the narrative makes mention of how tough the economy is for
people, including Amy’s parents, who once made a reasonable living from writing.
The narrative is difficult to detail, since it’s not the tale but rather the
storyteller that makes Gone Girl such a joyous discovery. The plot is simple
enough: following Amy’s disappearance on their fifth wedding anniversary, the
shadow of suspicion falls upon her husband Nick. And in small town America, this
proves troubling because there is no hard evidence, just whispering. Then the
small town whispers hit the press and the police begin to hound Nick, waiting
for the facade they believe he has built to crumble. Just when we seem to know
what has happened to Amy, we are confronted by diverging accounts—Nick’s
recollections of his relationship with Amy versus that of his wife’s diary. The
climax will make you go back to the start and question everything, even your own
reality.
In Flynn’s world, all reality is the artifice we build around ourselves; but
when one person’s artifice clashes with another’s, the ugly truth is revealed.
This is a thriller that will appeal to readers fascinated by the sinister side
of human relationships. If you are looking for the heir to Patricia Highsmith,
crack the spine of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. Such unsettling entertainment will
no doubt feature in all the awards for 2012.
—Ali Karim
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