I feel compelled to comment on Clive James' article in an issue of The New Yorker from last April ("Blood on the Borders," April 9, 2007 - obviously, I'm behind on my reading...), about international crime novels.
Mysteries and police procedurals, especially those that take place in foreign lands, have recently become my favorite genre fiction, so I was excited to find James' article. I've read at least the first book in most of the series that he discusses, and I agree with him that one of best aspects of these entertaining but, for the most part, less-than-challenging novels is the atmosphere that the authors are skilled at creating. The mysteries themselves rarely if ever excite me. Great characterization drives my favorites. What's disappointing about James' article is that the author ignored, missed, forgot about or for some other reason excluded from his discussion some of the best writers and characters in the genre, while heaping too much praise on some that don't really deserve it.
I'll start with Ian Rankin. James likes Rankin's very hard-drinking ("Rebus...looks and sounds like a man who has slept under a horse...") and "maverick" Edinburgh cop John Rebus and the dark, creepy squalor of the city that he works in. I read the first Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses, and then quit the series in frustration. In this first book (it has been a very long while since I read it), Rankin establishes Rebus as a less-then-well-adjusted former member of the British Special Forces (or similar military unit) and current police detective in the early stages of alcoholism. On at least once occasion, Rebus shop-lifts his breakfast buns from the neighborhood grocer. And if I remember correctly, the wife he still loves is divorcing him. These aspects of the character were all well and good. What I found intolerable was Rebus' penchant for, of all things, reading the Bible. No. I like my anti-heroes rather more hard-boiled, full of faults and regrets and maybe just enough self-awareness (and a desire to be happier) to make them willing to seek out the advice of a good therapist, at least until they realize that it was a stupid idea, but not searching for redemption for their "sins," or even comfort from a "higher power." Yuck.
I love Scotland, and because I'm intrigued by the dark and sleazy nooks and crannies of Edinburgh that Rankin writes about, I want to return to this series. I hope to find that the author realized the dopiness of having his troubled hero seek solace in religion, and that Rebus has given up the Bible while continuing to hit the bottle.
James gives only a very brief mention of Martin Beck, the Swedish Police Inspector created in the 1960s by Maj Sjowall and her husband, Per Wahloo. I've read Roseanna (translated from the Swedish by Lois Roth), the first in the series, and more than the atmosphere of Stockholm and its gray and white environs in winter, it's definitely the characterization that makes it a fine book. Beck himself is a brilliant, dogged investigator on the job, and a frustrated, unhappy man at home, married to a woman who bores him nearly to death. He probably lives too much in his own head. And there's Kollberg, Beck's police underling, friend and polar opposite in personality - "fat...and jovial and non-chalant." Kollberg's also very witty, the speaker of the quote in the title to this posting (he tells Beck that thinking too much is a waste of time). The mystery involves the murder of a sexually active young American woman traveling through Scandinavia alone. The police interviewers have to ask their suspects candid questions about the sexual activities they engaged in with the victim, and frankly, the dialogue from 1965 is so dated that it's humorous. But this flaw doesn't detract from the book's quality. I look forward to the rest of the series.
James' high praise for Andrea Camilleri and his Commissario Salvo Montalbano ("A typical Montalbano novel, and one that I recommend heartily...is the impeccably grimy The Shape of Water.") in Vigata, Sicily, is well placed (The Shape of Water and The Terra-Cotta Dog, both translated by Stephen Sartarelli, are the first two books in the series). Montalbano is one of my crime-fiction favorites, and I'm lucky to have a non-PBS-connected public television station in my area that imports great mystery series from around the world, including Montalbano from Italy. Vigata itself is fictional but the series is filmed in Sicily and the place is almost indescribably beautiful - washed by the sun and sea air, with old, high-ceilinged palazzos and bright gardens. Italian actor Luca Zingaretti plays the Commissario to perfection. He exudes the self-confidence of Camilleri's character, is honest, smart, funny, emotional and sexy. Sadly, the series is not available on dvd, at least not in Region I. Maybe when all the novels have finally been translated into English, the series will come to us on dvd as well.
James also gives very high praise to Donna Leon ("Hers is an unusually potent cocktail of atmosphere and event."), whose second Commissario Brunetti book, Death in a Strange Country, I found most disappointing. The setting is Venice, the city of my dreams. And yet, in this second book at least, Leon doesn't so much describe the city as list its neighborhoods and landmarks. Brunetti has a fondness for walking to clear his head, and I could follow him on a map, but this really isn't atmosphere. Interesting historical details do crop up periodically, like the fact that the words "Non Nobis" or "Not for us," are inscribed on the entrance to the city's casino. They date from the days of the Republic and are meant to admonish Venetians to stay away from the temptations of the casino, that only "foreigners were to be fleeced. Venetians were to invest their money wisely and not squander it on dice and gaming."
I've realized too that Brunetti himself is rather dull. He has no eccentricities to speak of. I think Leon means him to be witty, but he isn't, certainly not when compared to the likes Kollberg and Montalbano. The book's secondary characters are not very interesting either. His aristocratic wife Paola, though she teaches English literature at the local university, always appears as nothing more than his caretaker and companion. Brunetti's police colleagues are little more than two-dimensional. His boss, Patta, some sort of supervisor (Vice-Questore) in the department who's risen to his own level of incompetence and cares way too much about impressing the members of Venetian elite, is no match for Brunetti and is obviously very insecure about it. The battle of wills between the two is no fun because Brunetti is so much smarter than the other man.
Leon's writing leaves something to be desired as well. She has a habit of making choppy transitions with detailed descriptions of the inconsequential actions of her characters as they happen:
"He opened the magazine and began to read."
"The American crossed his feet at the ankles and pulled a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He held the pack towards the Italians, but both shook their heads. He lit a cigarette with a lighter, careful to cup it between both hands from the nonexistent breeze, then slipped both packet and lighter back into his pocket."
And I almost threw the book at the wall when I read this:
"He lifted his foot and prodded at the can with his foot."
James claims that the fourth book in the series, Acqua Alta, is a favorite among fans. I hope I have something to look forward to.
As for what James failed to mention, I can't understand how he could talk about international crime fiction and not talk about Paco Ignacio Taibo, II and his private dick in Mexico City, Hector Belascoran Shayne. It's been way too long since I read the first novel in the series, An Easy Thing (translated from the Spanish by William I. Neuman), but I remember Hector fondly as an honest, frustrated idealist, much younger in years than his advanced cynicism would let on. He's also a chain smoker who guzzles soda pop, a reader of literature and a profane smart ass with an advanced degree in engineering from an American university who gave up a cushy job and the bourgeois lifestyle that went with it. Now he prowls the streets of his beloved, exasperating Mexico City on investigations or just because he's awake.
In this first book, he agrees to investigate three mysteries, including the "real" whereabouts of revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata, all at once. He realizes what a mistake he's made as he has less and less time to engage in the necessary activities of life, like sleeping and eating. He gets shot in the leg and the head, but instead of dying, ends up losing a eye. In a subsequent book, he does die, only to have Taibo enigmatically bring him back to life in the next book. Taibo is an unabashed leftist and probably the best writer that I've discussed in this post.
And now, for my sentimental favorite, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, creation of prolific but under-appreciated American writer Stuart Kaminsky, a police inspector and latent dissident in Soviet Moscow. Kaminsky must have based his character to some degree on Vassily Alekseyev, the great Soviet weight lifter who wiped out the competition in the 1972 and 1976 Summer Olympics. Back then, Alekseyev was less than tall, had lots of bushy black hair, mutton-chop whiskers and what looked like a huge beer gut, but no one came close to beating him for the Gold Medal in the heavy-weight division. Rostnikov is so odd looking that people call him "the Washtub," a nickname that would not have been inappropriate for the Alekseyev of the 1970s. He's also permanently disabled by the bullet wound to his left leg that he sustained while making a hero of himself near Rostov during World War II. Like Alekseyev, he loves to lift weights, and has won his division in the city's amateur competition for men over fifty. Despite his disability and looks, he's completely at ease with himself and confident in his intelligence and abilities as a police detective.
Kaminsky captures beautifully the locale of Moscow and the Russian personality. In the beginning of the fourth book in the series, A Fine Red Rain, a crowd gathers while Rostnikov tries to talk a drunk down from atop the twenty-foot statue of Nikolai Gogol in Arbat Square. True to their Russian-ness, the on-lookers begin to discuss, and argue about, Russian literature as they watch the drunk teetering on Gogol's shoulders.
Kaminsky's secondary characters are intriguing as well, especially Emil Karpo, one of Rostnikov's investigators, a very tall, pale, ascetic known as "the Vampire," a true-believer in the Soviet State and Communist vision for perfecting humankind. He's younger than Rostnikov but almost as talented at his job as his boss, and in his free time, ploddingly investigates every unsolved homicide that's ever occurred in Moscow, determined to solve them all before he dies. Needless to say, he has no family and lives alone. He insists to himself and to all who know him that he has no sense of humor and never succumbs to emotional weakness. Rostnikov tells him he could make a living as a comic.
Like Leon's Brunetti, Rostnikov does not get along with most of his supervisors. They are all apparatchiks in the corrupt municipal system and will ignore a murder when expedient, especially if the KGB shows interest. But they're not nearly as stupid as Leon's Patta, and they have real power to hurt Rostnikov when he gets out of line, which he does. He has a Jewish wife, and tries to bribe one of his bosses by threatening to reveal to the Western press the assissination of a dissident if he and his family are not allowed to emigrate. He gets a demotion instead of travel papers.
It's a real shame that James chose not to include Taibo and Kaminsky in his commentary while giving so much praise and exposure (in The New Yorker, no less) to the inferior Leon. It would be an even greater shame if he, obviously an intelligent fan of international crime fiction, has failed to discover them.
