No procrastination, this time

It's been over 40 years since I read any Dostoyevsky, but I had flashbacks last night while reading Karin Fossum's Bad Intentions. Someone at NPR said a Fossum mystery is "equal parts whodunit, heart-thumper and creep show." Fossum says they are “small, quiet stories.”

Well, Bad Intentions may be small (just over 200 pages) but it's not quiet. It is creepy. It's really not a mystery, and her main detective, Inspector Sejer, plays a very minor role in the plot. But it was, for me, a "heart-thumper." Two of the main characters were guilt-ridden, Dostoyevsky-like characters. A third was a Dostoyevsky-like manipulator, who evaded his own guilty feelings by attributing them to "lesser men."

The story revolves around the death of a man after a drinking party. Three friends who were involved in hiding the body, if not directly in the man's death, try to find ways of living with their memories. One of them ends up in a mental hospital, another in a quest to stay as high as possible for as along as possible. The third friend tries to find ways to get his buddies to carry his guilt as well as their own. Two of the friends are obviously in danger and my fear for them kept me reading as much as Fossum's skill in telling the story and probing the minds of the three main characters.

I was struck by Barry Forshaw's comment in his review of Bad Intentions in The Independent (UK). He described a mystery writer's conference where everyone was having a good time with "shop talk." Then Karin Fossum spoke: "Fossum... was having none of the brandy-induced good humour that had preceded her, and her truly terrifying description of a real-life child murder was delivered point blank to a suddenly sober audience. People shifted uneasily in their seats, but it was a salutary reminder that crime – however pleasurable on the page – has grim consequences in the non-literary world." It's a connection that even the graphic visuals of television's medical examiners don't often make for viewers.

If you're looking for a short narrative story about human frailty, this might be a book to go to. If you need your stereotypes of Norway adjusted, this might be a place to begin. If you want a deep exploration of guilt, go to Dostoyevsky. Just remember that Dostoyevsky's books are really long.

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• Barry Forshaw's review in The Independent.
• Laura Wilson's review in The Guardian.
• Lesley McDowell's review in The Herald (Edinburgh).

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Miracle superhero

The stories in some books pour off the pages like slick water. Other stories come out of books like cold, thick molasses, and then only with a lot of work. Jo Nesbø's Police is one of the latter.

I think those molasses-like stories are often more interesting to read. Not necessarily better, but more interesting.

Police is intense and interesting. Often too intense for me. I skimmed through several sections looking for semi-climaxes.

Nesbø spins a good yarn and writes suspenseful action scenes. Many of the scenes are theatrical. Several times in the book he dangles red herrings as he narrates some action, only to sweep them away and reveal deception at the end. It's neatly done, but it's also a somewhat nasty trick to play on readers.
I could never be sure I understood what had happened until I read the post-action description that Nesbø has to include or no one would blame you for thinking his hero is crazy to talk about a surprise present as he walks into a room where he knows a psychopath has a gun aimed the hero's son and fiancé.

Oh, and remember the special awards I give out to stories that needed superheros and unbelievable good fortune to work? Well, Police earns both the Green Lantern superhero and the Heart of Gold improbability awards.

The Heart of Gold

Green Lantern

If you're not willing to tolerate an unbelievable superhero and enough improbability to send the Heart of Gold across the universe a couple times, stay away from this book. Otherwise, enjoy it like a good Batman story.

Have you read Police? What did you think of it? Write and tell this little bit of the universe.

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• The author's web site
• Marilyn Stasio's review in The New York Times
• Daneet Steffens' review in The Boston Globe
• Q&A with Jo Nesbø in the Chicago Tribune

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Short and sort of non-fiction

While at the Northfield Library, I picked up another book by Karin Fossum. This one is The Water's Edge. The primary characters are, once again, Inspector Konrad Sejer and his partner, Jacob Skarre. They're smart and careful cops.

 Christian Skolmen as Jacob Skarre
and Bjørn Sundquist as Konrad Sejer on Norwegian TV

 

I've thought that a couple of Fossum's books were very good and a couple others weren't. This one borders on good from the not so good side. Luckily, it's short -- about half the size of most of the mystery novels I read.

Also, I want partial credit for reading non-fiction (see previous entry). The primary crime in this story involves paedophilia. I'm glad the crime is neither graphically described nor discussed at length. However, Fossum obviously did a lot of research on paedophilia in order to write the book and she passes on what she learned through the voice of Jacob Skarre. Skarre "does" his research in the course of investigating this case, and he passes on what he learns about profiling paedophiles, about paedophilia in the USA, and about the liklihood of serial killings. All that telling does offer some education to Inspector Sejer and the reader, but it's not fiction. Nor does it move the story along.

As in other of Fossum's books, much of the investigation takes place off stage (off the page?). It reminds me of the handy partners that Detective Kate Beckett has on the TV series, Castle. Beckett says, "You guys and the uniforms go canvas the neighborhood and find out if anyone saw anything." And magically in the next scene, the partners show up with the results of the canvas. Well, Sejer and Skarre have a good crew at their police station who carry out much of the investigation off the page. That creates some complications for the main investigators in this story, but it does mean that little happens during the course of the story telling -- and that's been true in others of Fossum's books.

That inaction works pretty well because Fossum tells the main story and two or three side stories in first person narratives. She's done that in other books too. One of those side stories is intriguing -- especially at the end. Intriguing enough that I wish it had been more fully told.  

The Water's Edge was pretty good. Not great. Certainly not as good as Fossum's best (He Who Fears the Wolf or Black Seconds ).

Have you read The Water's Edge?  

Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it.

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• Maureen Corrigan's review in the Washington Post
• Glen Harper's review at International Noir Fiction
• Maxine Clarke's review at EuroCrime
• Peter's review at Nordic Bookblog

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Dale Stahl wrote

Since basketball season is done and the rush to Advanced Placement exams is just beginning, Dale had time to drop a note to this little bit of the world.

Jo Nesbø is really good. His main character is a Nowegian detective, flawed but liekable, Harry Hole, alcoholic and a guy you just like despite it. Series of books starting with The Bat, which I have never found, including The Redbreast and The Devil's Star and The Snowman. Loved those three and highly recommend them.

I like this guy (Hole) better than Mankel’s Wallander (at least the later versions; Mankel getting a bit pedantic in his old age!)

The latest book by Nesbø is The Headhunters. My wife is currently enjoying it and I am eager to grab it when she is done! Not Harry Hole but intriguing suspense.

Read a great book by Fred Vargas featuring Commisarie Adamsburg, French Detective. Liked him, liked his team, liked the story of a monstrous old superstitious belief fueling a modern killer, and am going to read some of the older books in this series. French cops, like in Louise Penny’s novels in Montreal area, are always eating and drinking something delectable; makes one want to sip a drink and have a snack while reading!

Finally, if no one has done this, I highly highly recommend reading all of Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammet’s works. The Thin Man, outstanding period piece. Great dialogue, great mystery great picture of America in 1932 or so. Chandler is the definitive hard boiled mystery writer. Philip Marlowe is my hero. I love every one of those books. The Long Goodbye, The High Window, The Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely. Dialogue amazing, stories intriguing, must reads for any mystery fan!

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Bird Loomis and I wrote about The Snowman and Jo Nesbø, and we both liked it. So did most critics.

Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau, aka Fred Vargas

 

I'll have to add Fred Vargas to my "to read" list. When I saw her photo, she wasn't the Fred I expected to see. She's also an archaeologist.

As for the classics, I remember well going back and reading The Thin Man books. I think it was in the days of actually-printed-on-paper-and-mailed newsletter, Reading. It was a treat as are the old movies. And the old movies of the Chandler books are also wonderful. I second the recommendations.

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Event telling (not story telling)

You've probably read that I like good story telling. I also like well-created characters. Karin Fossum has created and described some good characters, primarily her "hero," Norwegian police Inspector Konrad Sejer. She has also told some very good stories. I read the first one in 2006 and liked it. I've gone back and read several others. Some better and some not as good.

 In the best of her books, the story telling and the characterization are equally well done. She's written ten books featuring Inspector Sejer. The one I checked out from the Northfield Library was The Indian Bride, published in 2007. Strangely, there's not much there about Sejer, except for a routine interaction with his old, cancerous dog. And there's not much story either. And when I finished the book, I wasn't sure the story was over or the mystery resolved.

You don't have to accept my reaction. The Los Angeles Times gave it a LA Times Book Prize, so somebody thought it was better than I did. That's not unusual or unexpected.

 The Indian Bride's story centers on a Norwegian bachelor farm equipment salesman. At the age of 51, enchanted by a photograph in a book, he flies to India to find a bride. And he finds a bride. After a whilwind courtship, the happy couple is married. He returns to Norway. She settles things in Bombay and follows him. But, the groom's sister is in a car accident and he's attending her in the hospital when his wife arrives from India. The cab driver sent to meet her misses the incoming bride. The bride finds her way to the village of her future and then disappears.

Inspector Sejer is called in when a body is found just outside the village. As you might expect, the rest of the book is a combination of police investigation and Sejer's meditations about who, among the suspects, was most likely guilty.

The most interesting story is the trip to India by a small town Norwegian, but even that isn't well told. I think that if Fossum had found a middle aged, parochial Norwegian from a small town and taken him or her to Bombay and shared the physical and cultural shock, she'd have had a lot to tell. There's some mention of the discomfort of the heat, but that's about it. And what about the courtship? How does this large Nowegian man make enough conversation with the waitress at the tandoori restaurant to convince her to marry him? What is there about her and her life to make running off with the big guy attractive to a 30-something Indian woman? How do they communicate given his limited English and non-existent Hindi? Oh, there are stories to be told. But they're not in The Indian Bride.

And the police investigation takes place mostly "off-screen." Sejer ruminates about the various suspects. And about the time an arrest is made, a couple of the regulars at the village cafe speculate reasonably about the guilt of someone who hadn't been a suspect earlier. Was the case solved? Or will it come back to haunt Sejer in another book?

So this wasn't a Fossum book that was wonderful for me. It won't deter me from reading another if I see her name on the spine of a book on the library shelf, but it won't send me purposefully searching for another.

If I'd looked carefully at the ReadingBlog entries, I'd have seen that Dan Conrad wrote a couple years ago that he didn't like The Indian Bride.

Have you read The Indian Bride? What did you think of it? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

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• Fiona Walker's review at Mystery Ink
• Keishon's review at Yet Another Crime Fiction Blog
• Luan Gaines' review at curled up with a good book

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Fast books, slow books

Bird Loomis writes from a Democratic enclave (Lawrence) in a Republican utopia-to-be (Kansas). Luckily, the Kansans still allow the importation of books from the outside -- even those from outside the USA. And they allow e-mail out of Kansas as well. Thank you, Bird.

Over the past few months I’ve read five books by two authors, neither of whom I’d read before. Jo Nesbo is the better known, with his series of Norwegian novels (deftly translated) about detective Harry Hole. The other is Rebecca Pawel, a native New Yorker, who writes a fascinating series of mysteries about a Guardia lieutenant in Franco-era Spain of the 1940s.

I’ve come to enjoy both authors immensely, but my approach to the books has been quite different. Nesbo writes long, fast-paced, intricately plotted mysteries. I thought that I’d just about had it with alcoholic detectives, but Harry H. has won me over, in part because his drinking is not a constant, and it’s integral to his character and his up-and-down personal life. I haven’t read his work in any particular order, which is a little, but not too, problematic. I find that I read the long Nesbo books at a whirlwind pace. I start, and even if I’m not on vacation I find it hard to put the book down. (Not quite the 6-day Girl with the Dragon Tattoo marathon for all three books, but close.)

Pawel, on the other hand, is a “few pages a night before nodding off” kind of author for me. Like KC Constantine’s Western Pennsylvania novels about Rocksburg and its fictional police chief, Mario Balzic, Pawel’s books are less mysteries and more character studies. And what a set of characters – most notably Lieutenant Tejada, from an aristocratic, Fascist family, and his wife, who comes from a communist background and constantly makes life challenging for the family (as does Tejada). Still, they love each other and their son, and the series develops these relationships slowly and unpredictably. They genius of Pawel’s work is to make a sympathetic character (Tejada) out of someone whom most readers would ordinarily detest. But like Harry Hole, Wallander, John Rebus, and others, he is a good cop and, ultimately, a fair-minded individual.

I think I read the Pawel books slowly because I need time to keep following the various characters, placed back in history, but mostly because I want to ponder the relationships of Tejada with his wife, child, family, and social class. To be sure, there is a mystery to be solved, but the books’ resolutions are more about how personal ties evolve than the solving of a crime. In many ways, there is more to savor here than in the latest Connelly or Child or Nesbo.

In the end, I have no desire to read just “fast” books or only “slow” ones – but good ones. Nesbo hooked me almost immediately; Pawel took more time, but ultimately both made me go looking for more volumes, ever eager to read more.

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• Jo Nesbo's web site
• My thoughts about The Snowman
• Monica Hesse's profile of Jo Nesbo in the Washington Post
• Kjetil Stensvik Østil's interview with Jo Nesbo in The Browser

• Ilya Marritz' profile of Rebecca Pawel in The Sun (New York)
• Steven Torres' interview with Rebecca Pawel on the blog named after him

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