PETRONA

Best American Mystery Stories 2010, ed. Lee Child

Best American Mystery Stories 2010

Edited by Lee Child,  Atlantic Books

The fourteenth of these annual collections of short stories first published in the previous calendar year arrived courtesy of the publisher, Corvus (Atlantic). Although I am not usually a consumer of the short-story format, I had just read a novel that upset me so much that I needed an antidote before embarking on another one, so a few short stories seemed to be just the ticket.

Each year, Otto Penzler reads all the submitted entries (more than 1,000 for this collection) – the rules are explained in his series forward. He makes a shortlist of 50 and a guest editor (this year  the ubiquitous Lee Child) makes the final choice of 20. I had read four of the authors in the 2010 book before:  Dennis Lehane, Jay Brandon, Kurt Vonnegut and Philip Margolin. All provide well-observed, twisty tales that I enjoyed reading. Margolin’s, in particular, manages to be both funny and sharp. Of the authors new to me, I liked the entries by Doug Allyn and Phylis Cohen – but there are plenty of others to attract your interest, ranging across place and time.

I am never sure how to review a short story because even a sentence can give away too much of the plot for a short-form piece. However, real-estate brokers, barmen, female vice cops, jewellery thieves and lawyers in the wild west all feature in a well-put-together set of stories. 

At the end of the book there is a brief biography of each author, together with  a short paragraph about how he or she came to write the story in the collection. I’m not sure for how long many of these will stick in my memory, but dipping in and out of this book was a pleasant experience, and on occasion a haunting one.

 

Book Review: The Screaming of the Innocent by Unity Dow

The Screaming of the Innocent

Unity Dow

Spinfex, 2002

This novel is one of the saddest books I have ever read. It’s a superbly told story of village life in Botswana. The first chilling chapters are from the point of view of Mr Disanka, a successful businessman at the village level. He has a wife and several children to whom he is outwardly devoted (so much so in the case of his youngest child that she’s obese from all the sweets, ice-cream and other “treats” she demands and receives), he has a mistress who has all the same things as his wife but not quite as good, and he has various liaisons. None of this is sufficient to satisfy a very dark desire, however. He plans how to achieve his malign goal with two other local “dignitaries”.

After this mesmerising, and menacing, start to the novel, the reader is plunged into life in this country of ignorance, poverty, superstition and extreme sexism. Attitudes to women and to the poor are deeply ingrained and maintained by long traditions, supported by those themselves who suffer.  The police, as well as other low-level “government officials” in their cosy jobs for life, keep everything under control and make sure any benefits are kept among themselves. The country is going through a period of positive change, typified by occasional poor children being able to attend school, and the odd inside toilet (greeted with derision for, from their perspective, very practical reasons by most of the villagers).

Five years after the start of the novel, a young woman called Amantle Bokaa takes up an internship at a remote health centre.  As she begins her duties assigned to her by the lazy, unpleasant nurses who run the centre, we read of her life-story. She’s the seventh child of a typical poor peasant family, the first sibling to be able to go to school, and wants to be a doctor. She’s a determined, brave woman who uncomplainingly accepts the menial jobs meted out to her by the nurses despite the fact she’d clearly be better both with the patients and in diagnosing their illnesses. One of her tasks is to clear out a storeroom, and there she discovers a box inscribed with the name “Neo Kakang”, containing some bloody clothes. Amantle remembers that this is the name of a girl who went missing, presumed killed by an animal or drowned, five years previously.

The rest of the novel describes what Amantle does about her discovery, involving a lawyer friend whom she’s met previously when unfairly accused of inciting a student riot. In the process, the reader learns many details of the entrenched culture of poverty and repression; and the lazy, smug attitudes of the (mainly male) people who have been lucky enough to be assigned government jobs. These details are seamlessly woven into the narrative, and add a tremendous power and authenticity to the novel.  One of the many aspects that I loved was the positive portrayal of young, professional women (and the occasional young man) who, helped by education,  are rising above the history and traditions of their tribal, superstition-ridden  society to strike out for independence and freedom of choice. The story is, however, unbearably tragic– the last chapter (which explains the title) is so terribly, pathetically upsetting that I could hardly bear to read it.

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The author, Unity Dow,  has been a prominent human rights activist and is Botswana’s first female high-court judge. This novel is a must-read, if you can bear it. It is an admirable book, and provides a searing perspective and portrait of life in a region whose impact and depth could never be matched by authors from elsewhere who try to reflect similar realities from the outside.

I purchased my copy of this novel, which is published by an admirable, small, independent Australian press, Spinifex.

Other reviews of this book are at: Shotsmag (Mary Andrea Clarke), Mixed Media, one of Michael Stanley's top 10 African crime novels (the Guardian), and  quotes at the publisher's website, 

From Griffith Review:

"The Screaming of the Innocent (2002), Dow's second novel, is based on a real case of a ritual killing of a child, a practice that has its roots in traditional initiation ceremonies. It is a compelling account not just of how a belief in the supernatural still exists in a society that has adopted many Western beliefs and practices, but also of how powerful figures in a small town – the village head, a school principal and a successful businessmen – can force their will on ordinary people and manipulate the local representatives of government. The novel vividly portrays multi-partner relationships, which have their roots in traditional attitudes to male-female relations and sexuality. The supernatural world again plays an ambiguous role, at worst allowing individuals to escape responsibility for their own actions. "Someone else is doing things to you," said Dow. "You might drink too much, have a car crash, and then blame witchcraft. This really becomes a problem when it's applied to AIDS." "

The best of times, the worst of times. Edition 17: Staying Alive by Peter Browne

Book Review: Hidden Depths by Ann Cleeves

Hidden Depths

Ann Cleeves

Pan, 2007

Hidden Depths is a classic crime-fiction story set in the small towns and villages of Northumberland (and, a bit, in the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne), north-east England.  Inspector Vera Stanhope and her team are called out when a young teenager, Luke Armstrong, is found dead in his bath by his mother, Julie. Julie at first assumes the boy, who had learning difficulties, had committed suicide, but Vera and team quickly establish that he had been murdered. Soon after, the body of another young person, this time a woman called Lily Marsh, is found on the beach, having died in a similar fashion to Luke. Again, Vera’s team investigates.

The former case, that of Luke, has proved hard to tackle for the police due to a dearth of suspects, though Vera quickly picks up on the fact that Luke’s best friend Tom had drowned some time ago, and that although the death was accidental, Luke tried to save Tom and has since blamed himself for his friend’s death. Tom comes from a family of criminals, so Vera visits his father in prison and uncovers a couple of clues, or rather hints.

The second case, that of Lily, presents a richer crew of suspects. Lily is discovered by four men who are celebrating the sixtieth birthday of one of them, unpleasant Peter Calvert, a botanist. Calvert, in common with Cleeves characters in other novels, is both an obsessive birdwatcher and a failed yet pompous academic. Although he is a university lecturer, he has not reached what he considers to be his full potential, and has to suffer the indignity of having research papers rejected from journals, and so on. His smug wife Felicity is much younger than him. She does not work outside the home, spending her time looking after the couple’s youngest child James, cooking and keeping the house and garden beautiful. She enjoys flirting with her husband’s birdwatching friends Gary, a sound technician, Sam, a librarian and writer, and Clive, a museum curator.

Vera and her team search for a link between the two cases. Soon they find that they have almost too many connections, as more characters turn up who have or could have intersected with both victims. The charm and heart of this novel is the personality of Vera. She’s much more central here than she was in Telling Tales, her previous outing, so we learn a bit more about her background and relationship with her father, as well as her investigative methods and attitudes, and her relationship with younger policeman Joe Ashworth. Vera is not the kind of detective, nor Cleeves the kind of author, who is big on procedure and documentation. Rather, Vera goes to see all the characters in turn, gradually digging under their defences and working out how their past or present secrets might be relevant. Whether or not this approach is a realistic depiction of police-work, the result is a compelling, sympathetic and insightful account of the quietly desperate lives led by some people, on the edge of mental illness in some cases, and how they struggle to keep going in a hostile or indifferent world. The character studies here are acute, and while there are so many clues and connections that the solution to the mysteries does have an element of “select any person out of the list of suspects” about it, the novel as a whole is readable, absorbing and enjoyable.

My copy of this book was a gift from the publisher.

There are three books in the Vera Stanhope series: The Crow Trap, Telling Tales and Hidden Depths (links go to my reviews). The next installment,  Silent Voices,  is out in the UK early next year. Vera will also be a TV character early next year (UK), in which Hidden Depths is currently planned to be the first episode even though it is the third in the book series.

Among her other books, Ann Cleeves is the author of a Shetland Quartet. My reviews of these novels can be read at Euro Crime.

Read other reviews of Hidden Depths at: Euro Crime (Sunnie Gill), Musings from a Muddy Island (Juliet Doyle), Spinetingler magazine (Martin Edwards) and DJ's Krimiblog (Dorte Jakobsen). 

Book Review: The Siege by Stephen White

The Siege

Stephen White

Signet, 2010 (first published 2009).

 How does one write an original thriller in the crowded niche of books about terrorists/hostages? If the author had not been Stephen White, I would not have picked up this book on the grounds that such plots are usually 100 per cent predictable, with the only variations being location, cause of terrorism, etc.  Nevertheless, Stephen White is a reliable author, and after completing The Siege I think it fair to say that if you like his Alan Gregory novels, you’ll probably like this one, which although it features series regular Sam Purdy, a Boulder cop currently under suspension, can be read without any reference to the rest of the author’s output.

The Siege does not start promisingly, with a confusing opening chapter that plunges us into the main action,  told from the point of view of New Haven cop Sergeant Christine Carmody as she is dealing with an act of violence against a hostage being held in a ‘tomb’ at Yale University.  After this horrible yet confusingly described event, the author steps back to relate the story of the previous few days that led up to the crisis. Some of this build-up concerns the aforementioned Sam, who is attending an upmarket engagement party in Florida. He has been invited because his soon-to-be stepdaughter is marrying the son of the squillionaire Ronaldo Calderon and his geophysicist wife Ann. Knowing Sam is in law enforcement, Ann reveals to him that her daughter Jane, a student at Yale, has suddenly stopped communicating with her, and that she’s very worried as the two are usually in constant contact. She asks him for discreet help. Rapidly, Sam surmises that the reason for Jane’s silence is a dreadful one.

Chapters switch between Sam’s quest to find out more about what has happened to Jane, and Christine’s cop duties in New Haven. Luckily, Christine has a boss who is not very bright, so between explanations to him and Sam (who soon arrives at the location) scouting around, the reader is given a quick tutorial on Yale tombs (actually large, stone buildings), secret student societies (reminiscent of Donna Tartt’s novel A Secret History), “tapping” and so on, as well as a useful street map, so one can become geographically orientated about the act(s) of terrorism and other dramatic events in the immediate area.

A third story is being told in parallel – that of an odd couple of investigators, a female CIA agent called Dee, and her occasional male lover, FBI counter-intelligence specialist Poe. Poe is a victim of the Oklahoma bomb atrocity and has never really recovered. He and Dee between them are interested in “evolved terrorism” – where terrorism might go if it stopped being the provenance of fanatics and began to be financed by high-tech big business. They, too, home in on New Haven as soon as they hear news of the hostage crisis.

The Siege is very involving and exciting during the chapters about Sam, Christine, Dee and Poe, as they try to fulfil their various missions with honour and courage, as well as racing against time to second-guess (and hence try to foil) the terrorists. Where the novel falls down is in exactly in the usual failing of  “terrorist-hostage” novels:  that is, the terrorists are far too all-seeing, all-powerful, able to anticipate any move by the authorities and technologically beyond mere sophistication. Their motivation, when finally revealed, is logical but not that credible, and for me does not fully hang together with their actions towards their student hostages. So, I score the novel 10 out of 10 for the "good guy" characters and the exciting, tense events as told from their perspectives as they converge on New Haven– I particularly liked the geophysical subplot – but far less than that for the routine terrorists and the action-packed (equally routine) outcome and aftermath.

I purchased my copy of this novel. Thanks to Kathy for reminding me the other day in a comment that this book was on my "to be purchased" list.

The Siege at the author's website.

Read other, very positive, reviews of The Siege at: Mysterious Reviews;  The Novel Bookworm; and Seeing the World Through Books. (This last review, by Mary Whipple, is excellent both as a review and as a very informative piece about the setting of the novel.)

Book Review: The Burning by Jane Casey

The Burning

Jane Casey

Ebury, November 2010 (paperback).

Part police-procedural and part psychological suspense, The Burning is a very good crime novel. From the cover words, one would think that this book is about a serial killer who is attacking young women walking home late at night in south London, and burning them. Although this plot description would usually put me off reading a book, my experience of the author’s previous (debut) novel, The Missing, encouraged me to buy The Burning, and I’m glad I did as the serial killer element is very much a side-issue.

DC Maeve Kerrigan is part of the team working on the case of the murdered women. She’s called out at 3 a.m. one day when it is thought that the killer has been caught in the act. Simultaneously with the discovery that this is not true, the body of a young woman is found – presumed the fifth victim. Maeve and the head of the task force, DI Godley, have their doubts based on some differences in the fifth case from the previous four, so Maeve finds herself assigned to a 'sideline' investigation into the fifth murder. Godley wants to keep the possibility that there may be two killers within his squad and away from the media until he is sure one way or the other.

Maeve is a competent detective plagued by petty sexism and racism (she’s Irish) that never reaches the level of justifiying a complaint, but which is corrosive and unsettling for her. At the same time, she’s impulsively moved in two months earlier with Ian, a banker, and their relationship is not working out, to put it mildly.

Despite her personal insecurities, Maeve pursues her investigation into the “fifth” case with professional vigour, which involves investigating friends, family and ex-colleagues of the dead woman.  Most of the book is told from her point of view, but the chapters in Maeve’s voice are interspersed with short entries by Louise, the dead girl’s best friend. By these means, we gradually build up a picture of the woman and her life, as Maeve closes in on what must have happened.

Matters come to a head one night when the police, including Maeve, take part in a large undercover operation. Maeve, with the help of her sympathetic colleague Rob and DI Godley, works out the truth by a combination of deductive reasoning and instinct – but of course, not before she herself is endangered.

This novel is both readable and impressive. Although its context is that of the search for the serial killer, the author is much more interested in the life of the fifth victim and how her death came about, so rather than dominating the novel with clichéd accounts of murders, the serial-killer case is tangential to the main event – constantly threatening and creating pressure on the police team, yet insubstantial rather than in the foreground.  In my opinion, this makes the novel both stronger and distinctive. Although the solution to the “fifth” mystery is not much of a surprise, it certainly has impact, due to the reader’s involvement in the characters, particularly Maeve –a  determined and attractive protagonist whom I hope to meet again one day.

I purchased this novel on impulse as a half-price offer.

There seem to be no independent reviews of the book yet in the media or on blogs, apart from this very brief one by Cath Staincliffe at Tangled Web. There are some customer reviews at the UK Amazon website.

My review of The Missing, Jane Casey's previous novel.

Jane Casey at AuthorsPlace.

Book Review: December Heat by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

December Heat

Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

Translator Benjamin Moser

First published in Portuguese 1998; first published in English 2005.

In the winter heat of Rio de Janeiro, a young homeless boy witnesses an insensible drunk being helped into a car outside a restaurant late at night. From his precious cardboard box, the boy watches as the man is wedged into his car by a woman and the restaurant’s doorman – tantalisingly, he sees a wallet sticking out of the drunk’s pocket. Unobserved in the chaos, he manages to snatch it. After the car drives off, he investigates his spoils but sees that the wallet contains a policeman’s ID. Terrified, the boy takes the cash and drops the wallet back in the gutter. He waits to see who will pick it up.

Later, retired cop Viera wakes up with a dreadful hangover and a severe memory lapse. Realizing his wallet has gone, he’s annoyed about the loss of his police ID card more than anything, as he’s been using it since he retired and can’t get another one.  He vaguely remembers that he went out the previous evening with his girlfriend Magali. He assumes that she has dropped him home and gone back to her own flat, so goes there to ask if she has his wallet. She is out, so he leaves his card. After returning to his apartment the phone rings. It is Inspector Espinosa, who has been called out to the scene of a murder – Magali’s. Espinosa’s only lead is Viera’s card.

The first half of this novel is a totally absorbing story of Espinosa’s teasing out of events before and after the crime. He soon discovers the existence of the homeless boy, and manages to make brief contact with him via a “street teacher” Clodorado. The boy is terrified though, as life on the streets is cheap and he has every reason to believe he is in danger.

As in the first novel in which he appears, Espinosa spends much  of this novel torn between two women, this time they are Flor, a prostitute who was Magali’s best friend and who takes up with Viera; and Kiki, a young artist who sells her paintings at a road junction and is a witness in the case. Espinosa’s musings over the two women are far less interesting than the case itself, which gradually unravels against a sympathetic and harrowing background of the many poor people struggling to survive in this huge city. About half way through the novel, Espinosa and Viera run out of leads, and for the rest of it, Espinosa is either searching for the same few people, or just missing them (this book was written at a time when communication was by answering machine not mobile phone), or pondering on the appeal of the two very different women characters. Perhaps I found this last aspect a little tiresome as Espinosa spent the previous novel, The Silence of the Rain, similarly torn between two women – neither of whom is mentioned here.

At the end, Espinosa does work out what is happening, but in a curiously detached way, separate from any organised investigation. There are various leads which are not followed up with any vigour, and the explanation, when it comes, is too full of supposition to be very satisfactory. Even so, the novel is an extremely atmospheric depiction of life in Rio de Janeiro which I very much enjoyed reading, despite its slight failings as a convincing crime novel. The perspective of the street people and of those struggling to escape the slums and shanty dwellings to make something of themselves are particularly moving. The translation seems sympathetic, but is in US, not English, English.

I purchased a second-hand copy of the Picador edition of this book.

Read my review of the first in the series, The Silence of the Rain.

Read other reviews of December Heat at: The Bookworm Wannabe (review in English of the original Portuguese version) and  January Magazine, 

The Silence of the Rain has also been reviewed at: Mysteries in Paradise and The View from the Blue House.

Southwesterly Wind, the third in the series, was recently reviewed at Reactions to Reading.