Youth is served, but will it pick up the check?
I've twice cited bits of rueful wisdom from Jo Nesbø's novels. In Nemesis, Harry Hole asks his cab driver friend Øystein if he might want to return to his old career:Øystein shook off internal laughter as he ran the tip of his tongue along the paper. "Annual salary of a million and a quiet office – of course, I could do with that, but I've missed the boat, Harry. The time for rock 'n' roll guys like me in IT is over."Two passages in The Redeemer have Hole musing on the passage of time, invoking the ephemeral excitement of punk music and the fading appeal of a classic rock and roll album.
Perhaps because Nesbø and I are about the same age, I find these passages attractive. They're welcome respite from corporate- and media-driven youth and technology worship. Hole is reflective, I think, without descending into maudlin, hard-bitten cliché.
Such maturity is evident as well in The Snowman, fifth of the Hole novels to be translated into English. This time Harry recalls a television producer who wants him as an expert spokesman on an interview show:
She had been good-looking in a boring, young way, had talked in a boring, young way and had eyed Harry hungrily ...One might object that Nesbø shows rather than tells; what exactly is "a boring, young way"? But the passage is about Harry, not about the young woman, and it says much about how he sees the world.
Now it's your turn. Tell me how you think youth is overrated. What are your favorite examples of maturity, introspection and self-knowledge in crime fiction?
© Peter Rozovsky 2010
Labels: Jo Nesbø, Nordic crime, Nordic crime fiction, Norway, Norway crime fiction, Scandinavia, Scandinavian crime fiction, The Snowman
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 11:59 PM
52 Comments:
I'll start the ball rolling by saying that Margery Allingham's Albert Campion got much better with age. He was a fop in the early books, but not so much so in the later ones.
I may have heard that before. What sorts of things did he do or say in later books that he would not have done earlier?
I'm not an expert on Campion. But I seem to recall that what really happened was WWII. So the lighter, foolish style no longer seemed appropriate and Allingham grew him up fast. He's always supposed to be smarter than he appears, but I think in the later ones you have more of his inner mind.
I wonder how fans of the older books reacted to the newer ones. I like the suggestion that the war compelled Allingham to bring a more psychological focus to her writing.
I don't know, but I don't have the impression she sank in popularity any.
That sort of thing -- a shift in focus and its effect or lack thereof on her popularity -- is fascinating. I should check my sources on English crime fiction here and here.
Colin Dexter's early Morse probably offends some feminists because of his occasionally self-centered involvements with women; later, though, those rough edges are worn off, and Morse becomes more sensitive (with women). Unfortunately, in another aspect of Morse's personality (character), his over-indulgence seems unchecked by experience, maturity, and warnings; thus, Morse meets his inevitable demise because of his unmitigated intemperance. Perhaps he would have been better off to mitigate the latter (drinking) and not mitigate the former (relationships).
Not many authors will have a protagonist of long standing meet a demise of any kind. It's easier to kill off a character with alcohol than with insensitivity, I suppose.
Apparently (I say that because I've not read enough of the books) Lucas Davenport in Sandford's "Prey" books has become less of a rake than he was in his early manifestations.
Hmm, a decline in rakishness seems to be a common theme. I wonder how old Sanford was as he wrote the books.
Unfortunately, this conversation could produce some major spoilers. I'm thinking of the last Charlie Resnick book by John Harvey, Cold in Hand. The entire series is a character development and the last case really puts the icing on it. But I can't describe that without giving away the story. I can certainly recommend the series!
Great to see another Nesbo book is out!
Pat, to the extent that my comments about Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse series either explicitly or implicitly contained a "spoiler," I would note that almost everyone who has followed the Morse novels knows that the final installment is "final" in more than a few ways; and--here is my confession--because of what I know to be at the heart of the final novel, I have refused to read it (even though I have read and savored all of the other books in the series), which I suppose means that I am in denial about the "final spoiler."
My “favorite examples of maturity, introspection and self-knowledge in crime fiction?” Gosh, where to start. As I’ve aged I can’t say I’ve become more mature but I definitely have become more introspective and self-aware. Particularly as over the last year-and-a-half I have come to be more aware of my own mortality. Time to get some self-knowledge! So I guess I kind of gravitate to crime fiction where these elements figure in the narrative. And I admit to a soft spot for protagonists, like Salvo Montalbano and John Rebus, who are about my own age in the most recent ones I’ve read. Salvo’s musings on aging are always tinged with humor and acceptance while Rebus is (to the point I’ve read; don’t know what he will be like at retirement) vaguely discontent and looks back on his past and the mistakes he’s made with regret and even anger. I tend to put these 2 positions down, at least in part, to the ages of their creators. Camilleri at 80+ reminds me of my soon-to-be-81-yrs-old father (and BTW bears a striking resemblance to Camilleri) who is also more hopeful and accepting of the future. Pop used to be quite the “angry young man.” Rankin (like Nesbø) is “only” 50 and still railing at both the present and the future.
I think the bleakest bit of self-knowledge I’ve read recently was that of Frederick Troy in John Lawton’s “A Little White Death.” At the end of the novel, Troy (in his late 40s) realizes that “He had lived so long without—without wife, without family, without feeling—without the value scheme, the moral scheme that life builds on reciprocal emotion. These were things he did not know and did not wish to know and would never know.”
I’ll balance that nihilist view with an observation made by Philip Marlowe, via the aging, dying, Raymond Chandler in “Playback”: “Damn it,” I said, “when I was young you could undress a girl slowly. Nowadays she’s in the bed while you’re struggling with your collar button.”
Pat, John Harvey could figure in another occasional topic of discussion: music in crime fiction. For now, I can say that you've provided a good tease.
Nesbø's publication history is more tangled than that of most translated crime fiction. Not only has the series been translated out of original publication order, but the order of release of English-language publication is different in the U.S. from Canada and the U.K. Here's the list with original Norwegian publication year on the left and what is probably British on the right. But The Devil's Star is just now being released in hardcover in the U.S. What's the order of availability in Australia?
1997 – Flaggermusmannen; English translation: The Bat Man
1998 – Kakerlakkene; English translation: The Cockroaches
2000 – Rødstrupe; English translation by Don Bartlett: The Redbreast (2006)
2002 – Sorgenfri; English translation by Don Bartlett: Nemesis (2008)
2003 – Marekors; English translation by Don Bartlett: The Devil's Star (2005)
2005 – Frelseren; English translation by Don Bartlett: The Redeemer (2009)
2007 – Snømannen; English translation: The Snowman (2010)
2009 – Panserhjerte'; English translation: The Leopard
Elisabeth, Camilleri is the undisputed king in this area, especially interesting for precisely the reason you cite: He's in his eighties writing about a protagonist moving into his fifties. No one can accuse him of using his protagonist to vent his own middle-age self-pity. Speaking of resemblance, a recent picture in my newspaper of Shane Victorino, the centerfielder for the Phillies, looks a bit like Luca Zingaretti as Montalbano.
The ending of A Little White Death is not quite despair, but more like bitter resignation, if such a thing exists. Is Marlowe's remark one of resignation, or of joyous acceptance?.
R.T., Morse's destiny was rather celebrated because it was a rare one for a series crime-fiction character. Not many fictional detectives are brought to account before their maker the way he was.
Peter, I do think Troy’s self-assessment is rather more than “bitter resignation,” considering how much he wanted these things earlier in his life (as voiced in “Old Flames”). If he is resigned, and says he doesn't want these things anyway, it’s because he realizes he hasn’t long to live.
Marlowe is wistfully exasperated. It’s more of a “ou sont les neiges d’antan” lament. He’s not going to let the opportunity to bed the luscious Miss Vermilyea pass him by but he is wondering whatever happened to the delightful preludes of moonlight and romance before hopping into the sack. A couple of Chandler’s letters reveal that he clearly enjoyed foreplay.
Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen and Macdonald’s Lew Archer also offer some of the more interesting takes on introspection and self-knowledge I’ve read recently. Whenever Zen is on the brink of wallowing in self-pity, Dibdin brings him back from the edge and places him in an amusing or snap-out-of-it plot twist. Lew Archer, now in his early 40s in “The Zebra-striped Hearse,” is particularly “mature” in his self-observations. From the first page this maturity is clear: “She had the kind of style that didn’t go on with her make-up, and she was about my age. As a man gets older, if knows what is good for him, the women he likes are getting older, too. The trouble is that most of them are married.” This novel has a lovely thread of melancholic self-perception running through it. Archer, too, wonders "où sont les neiges d'antan?"
Speaking of "Luca Zingaretti as Montalbano"… Zingaretti looks a bit more more like the "real" Salvo in his new film, “Il figlio più piccolo (The Youngest Son)”. Check out that bushy moustache!
Trailer at:
http://www.mymovies.it/film/2010/ilfigliopiupiccolo/
I just don't want to accept that Troy was on the way out, I guess, even though I think we agree he'd be an odd presence amid Johnny Rotten and Margaret Thatcher. He might have fun with the era between the Profumo Affair and "Anarchy in the UK," though.
"Girls today," he thought as a shapely wrist snaked out from under the sheets and yanked him into bed.
A good string of lines like Macdonald's is the best way to avoid accusations of self-pity.
I can't get used to Zingaretti with a moustache!
The last book ("The Lonely Silver Rain") Travis McGee appeared in had him pretty wistful. Most of his neighbors at Bahia Mar had moved on, and then a relative turned up.
The last scenes of "A Family Affair," the last Nero Wolfe book, made it pretty clear that the end was nigh (not for Wolfe and Archie, but for Stout).
Introspection and self-examination: I'd say my favorites at this are Guideo Brunetti, Donna Leon's Commissario and Erlander, Arnaldur Indridasson's.
Not that either of them were particularly rakish in their youth which we did not read about, but Brunetti is always thinking about society and his own role and what is his responsibility in a situation, and also he thinks about his family and his responsibilities here.
Erlander, whose family relationships had totally deteriorated, is reflecting on them and trying to fix up those with his grown children, while he's still figuring out a childhood trauma which still affects him, so that he can find peace with it and move on.
Are there are women characters for whom this applies? Police or private detectives?
Also, as an fyi as I don't know where else to put this, just read and enjoyed Kelli Stanley's "City of Dragons." Even though this is a blog about beyond U.S.-border detectives, this is still a recommendation about 1940s San Francisco and an eccentric, jaded but wise and courageous private eye--Miranda Corbie.
R.T., Colin Dexter is high on my ToBeRead shelf (which is sagging in the middle!) so I haven't read the last installment, either. But if you really enjoy a series it's all about the writing, not just the story line. Please don't deny yourself the pleasure of the journey just because you know the destination. Often, I find that I tend to forget the solution to the mystery after I've read a book that I really enjoyed. That's a plus, because it means I can re-read it sometime in the future and enjoy it all over again.
Applying this same principle, Peter, to the books by Jo Nesbo, once I got over the bit of confusion caused by reading them out of order, I soldiered on and wasn't let down. Fabulous writing and a great character, Harry Hole. These, too, will be books I'll enjoy re-reading. I read the series as they came out in Britain, starting with The Devil's Star followed by Redbreast (which was somewhat perplexing), then Nemesis and most recently Redeemer. I'm really looking forward to a translation of the first one, The Bat Man, which I understand takes place partially in Australia and is referred to in subsequent books.
Ah, yes, music in crime fiction - BIG topic! Goes with the introspection but does deserve a thread of its own if it doesn't already have an entire website. Must explore.
kathy d., in response to your question about female characters, my reading of Sue Grafton's series isn't up to date, but Kinsey has had a few brushes with relatives she didn't know she had and old flames she thought she had lost which have caused her to be rather introspective. She usually decides that what she is doing in the here and now is more important than what happened in the past, or she wants to put as much distance between herself and those forces (especially the relatives) as she can without always having a clear understanding of why she feels that way. It keeps her human and keeps us interested in her.
Linkmeister, I mentioned Andrea Camilleri above. Other than his Montalbano novels, none of the long series of which I've read most or all of the books shows much in the way of wistfulness. Bill James' Desmond Iles, for example, has a child, but this only serves in various ways to emphasize what a maniac he is. And Donald Westlake's Dortmunder books and the Parker novels he wrote as Richard Stark would occasionally show flashes of sympathy for people in economic hard times. That might count as a certain sympathy that accompanied age.
Your description makes me curious but apprehensive about that last Nero Wolfe book.
Are there are women characters for whom this applies? Police or private detectives?
Erlendur is one of those rare fictional detectives who is introspective and who has personal problems but still seems relatively well-adjusted, or at least reconciled to the fact that he's not especially well-adjusted. And that's a fine question about female characters. Female detectives I can think of off-hand who are divorced or raising families seem to do so without taking the problems quite as hard as their male counterparts do.
I saw "City of Dragons" on display at a store near me, and I hope to read it soon. It makes a change from Stanley's previous area, ancient Rome, and it ought to interest readers and fans who will attend Bouchercon 2010 in San Francisco.
Pat, Kinsey Milhone's brushes will old flames sound just like the sort of thing a male fictional detective would do, thought it sounds as if she does not brood quite as much.
With respect to differences between male and female crime protagonists, Christa Faust wrote something interesting recently -- and I hope I'm recalling the details correctly -- about obsession and revenge. Would a female character become obsessed with a man she is investigating in the manner of, say, Laura? If I think of it, I'll try to track the piece down. You might find a link to it on her blog, Deadlier Than the Male.
Pat, the publication in English of Redbreast and Nemesis after The Devil's Star will provide a brief shock to readers who read them in order of English publication. But they will get over it, as I did.
The Snowman has referred to that earlier case in Australia.
I've devoted a number of posts and threads to crime songs. Click here to find them.
I'm going to a meeting of Sisters in Crime tonight. I'll put this question to the 'sisters' and see what other examples we can come up with.
My regards to the Sisters. Let me know how the discussion goes.
I haven't seen "Prime Suspect," but Jane Tennison is often cited as a female fictional detective who drinks too much, a trait associated strongly with male protagonists in crime fiction.
Can't wait to see what Pat says.
Jane Tennison had problems and did mull over and ruminate a bit and drank too much. Yes, she was flawed.
The Miranda Corbie sleuth in "City of Dragons," has a lot of problems--i.e., bourbon and blue gin, and quite a past. She is flawed, eccentric, jaded but courageous and very smart. She isn't just like V.I. Warshawski, who is smart, courageous, and has problems, too, but has deeper issues and problems to think about, like losing a lover in the Spanish Civil War, the Rape of Nanking, her own awful childhood, etc. It makes the book compelling.
I love to read a book I can't put down, have to loan to friends and can't stop talking about...I guess we all do. And from which I learn.
Will attempt Stanley's earlier book. Am usually averse to historical novels, but am trying to change and broaden horizons.
Fiction is a great way to learn.
I discussed the book with Kelli Stanley at last year's Bouchercon after a panel about crime fiction set during wartime. "City of Dragons," not yet released then, naturally came up.
I asked the question of my ‘comrades’ at Sisters in Crime tonight which led to a lively discussion. There have been a number of Australian crime authors who have female detectives. Many of these characters have to balance difficult home lives on top of stressful jobs or deal with discrimination in their work; have complicated love lives, or not; cope with dysfunctional relatives or colleagues, care for aged parents or fractured self-images. Our discussion drew up this brief sampler:
Tara Moss http://www.taramoss.com.au/home.php
Makedde Vanderwall, former model and forensic psychologist has emigrated to Sydney from Vancouver. She struggles to fit in to her new home and adjust to her change in job, leaving behind a troubled past that included the death of her mother.
Books: Fetish (1999), Split (2002), Covet (2004), Hit (2006), Siren (2009)
P.D. Martin http://www.pdmartin.com.au/
Sophie Anderson is an Australian working as an FBI profiler, based in Quantico, Virginia.
Books: Body Count (2005), The Murderers’ Club (2006), Fan Mail (2008), The Killing Hands (2009), Kiss of Death (2009)
Kathryn Fox http://www.kathrynfox.com/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx
Dr. Anya Crichton, a forensic pathologist in Sydney.
Books: Malicious Intent (2004), Without Consent (2006), Skin and Bone (2009), Blood Born (2009)
Cathy Cole http://www.catherinecole.com.au/
“Nicola Sharpe, a twenty-nine-year-old private investigator. She's lived in Balmain, Sydney all her life and is worried about what's happening in her suburb.”
Books: Dry Dock (1999), Skin Deep (2002), The Grave at Thu Le (2005); also Private Dicks and Feisty Chicks: an interrogation of crime fiction
Other characters that came up in the discussion which may be more widely familiar to DBB readers: DS Barbara Havers (Elizabeth George), Sharon McCone (Marcia Muller), Prof. Kate Fansler (Amanda Cross).
At this point the topic of the evening started and we heard Felicity Young http://www.felicityyoung.com/ and Helene Young http://www.heleneyoung.com/ talk in great detail about how they developed the characters of their female protagonists, DSS Stevie Hooper and Captain Morgan Pentland respectively.
I hope this information will be a useful starting point for some readers.
[Some dates are Australian release dates. Details and links available at:
http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/index.html
and author websites. ]
Thanks for what looks like a good starting point, and thanks to the rest of the group. I've read a bit of Amanda Cross, and I've never thought of Kate Fansler as having trouble adjusting to anything.
I haven't read Amanda Cross, but the person who mentioned her thought that she was very introspective.
That person may have read more of Amanda Cross than I have and more recently as well. I remember her attitude and Fansler's as witheringly scornful of pretention, especially in academia. One story has three working women take fearful vengeance on a professor who teaches feminism but treats secretaries and cleaning ladies like crap. Another has Fansler remark of, I think, her husband that he teaches Shakespeare -- not that anyone teaches Shakespeare anymore in the days of open admissions. She is not afraid to offend anyone, in other words.
I didn't notice introspection in Amanda Cross' character, however, the real person behind Amanda Cross, Carolyn Heilbruner, committed suicide a few years back, at 77, so she had been depressed. Maybe some of it came out in her writings.
Pat--your list is fantastic. Will write all of these authors down, and see what the library here has. If not available, will check the local indy crime bookstore and then amazon.com or other bookstores.
I trust that this post will be available for awhile, as my printer is broken so I'll re-look this up soon.
Did your group discuss Kelli Stanley's book, "City of Dragons," which is unique with a capital "U," especially for a woman writer with a woman character.
I'd always thought of academic mysteries as more a British than an American thing and a bit old-fashioned, but Cross/Heilbruner gave hers real topical bite. I wonder if she and Ruth Dudley Edwards, who also delights in poking rude fun at pompous institutions, ever met.
Well, Carolyn Heilbrun was a great favorite of mine. I don't think her suicide was due to depression, though--maybe an excess of rationality. She believed that after I think seventy, people had the right to choose to die, and she actually delayed it a bit. I think her children knew of her philosophic stance for a long time beforehand.
Personally, I found it disappointing, though not particularly sad. I like the people I admire to stick around for as long as possible. I would have liked to have her write further about old age--I'm sure she would have had much that was interesting to say on many things. But perhaps that is selfish.
I would not call Kate Fansler introspective so much as reflective...
Did she write anything besides the Kate Fansler stories and academic work?
Yes, under her own name, Heilbrun wrote quite a bit of non-academic nonfiction. Probably bad form to use our competitor's web page, but oh, well.
I read Hamlet's Mother and Other Women in the not so distant past, and got a lot out of it. I'm personally curious to read one I hadn't heard of before, When Men Were the Only Models We Had: My Teachers Fadiman, Barzun, Trilling. I knew that that Trilling was a big figure in her life, but I hadn't known about Barzun. Interesting... hlow
Carolyn Heilbrun wrote 14 non-fiction books, in addition to her series as Amanda Cross.
I can't speculate about why she ended her life. She left a message saying that her journey had ended.
Maybe it was depression, maybe not, but she could have continued to write and explained the aging process, as someone above pointed out.
It's too bad she didn't figure out how to keep on going. I don't think we ever really know the deep, internal reasons.
Anyway, this is far too philosophical.
I hope that in my own to-be-read list, that I read more of her Kate Fansler mysteries.
I have a question: how far back does this blog go and if one wanted to look up reviews or discussions or book recommendations, how would one do that?
Thanks. Some of these discussions are so interesting.
Seana, that list answers my question of why you especially wished she had lived to write more about old age.
Heilbrun seems to have been an admirable woman in many respects. She was a pioneer at her university, I think the first woman to win tenure in Columbia's English department, yet she obviously took her wisdom where she could find it. Do you know the story I referred to above (the title slips my mind) about the women who take revenge on the professor?
Here's a Heilbrun bibliography you could have used with fewer qualms.
Kathy, thanks for the kind words. The blog goes back to September 2006, and you can look up previous discussions in two ways that I can think of. The upper left of the page, in the tan bar along the top, should display a box with a little picture of a magnifying glass. Type in what you want to look for, click the magnifying glass, and the computer will search the blog for your search term.
You can also click any of the terms you'll find next to the word "Labels" at the bottom of each blog post. Clicking on a term will call up all the posts that I have labelled with that term.
I read all of them up through An Imperfect Spy, but it's been awhile. I'd guess it might be Death in a Tenured Position, but I'm not really sure and it's probably just as well if we leave that vague.
I was pretty sure I knew where I'd shelved that book of Amanda Cross stories, but I was wrong. I'll look again tomorrow. I remember that another of the stories concerned a precocious girl who wanted to hire Kate Fansler. One is not supposed to like precocious chilren in books, but this one was serious and intelligent.
We're probably not thinking of the same thing then, because I've only read the novels, not the stories.
I'd guess it might be Death in a Tenured Position, but I'm not really sure and it's probably just as well if we leave that vague.
I'm assuming you are straining to avoid spoilers. Thanks!
kathy d., I'm glad you found the list useful and hope book distributors will be working hard to get copies up to you.
Kelli Stanley's book hasn't been released here in Australia yet but I've asked my library to order in a copy.
Sisters in Crime mainly discusses Australian female crime writers of both fiction and true crime. We do have special overseas guests from time to time and are currently delighted that Val McDermid has accepted our invitation to preside over our annual Davitt awards ceremony next August. Next year marks the 20th anniversary of the Australian branch of Sisters in Crime and there are plans to celebrate that with a conference. Details TBA.
Looks like a big year for Val McDermid.
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