John Connolly, Scandinavian crime fiction, and me
John Connolly cited James Lee Burke during his Bouchercon 2010 discussion with Declan Hughes of "Ten Crime Novels You Must Read Before You Die."Among other things, he said there are "two landscapes in crime fiction. One is psychological." In Burke's evocation of landscape, Connolly said, "We have kind of an association with Scandinavian crime fiction."
I was thrilled to hear that because I'd written about landscape in my Following the Detectives essay on Arnaldur Indriðason. Here's some of it:
"People disappear in Arnaldur Indriðason's Iceland, but the soil has a way of yielding them up again. An earthquake cracks the land, drains a lake, and uncovers a body; a victim turns up on a construction-site excavation; in spring, corpses come to light in a lake, where winter ice had concealed all signs of their disappearance. ... `The setting is a character' is a commonplace in modern discussion of crime fiction; in Arnaldur, the setting is a narrative agent as well. The landscape swallows up victims, whether of murder, accident or natural disaster; geological disruption lays them bare again."What other authors give landscape a similarly important role?
© Peter Rozovsky 2010
Labels: Arnaldur Indriðason, Bouchercon 2010, conventions, Following the Detectives, John Connolly, landscape
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 12:01 PM
81 Comments:
Peter, I don't know how much James Lee Burke you've read but after I read A Morning For Flamingos I went out and bought another dozen of his books. Very few crime writers have had that effect on me.
Great characters and kickass dialogue, attached to serviceable plots which move at just the right pace. Later episodes in the Robicheaux series got a bit flabby, a bit formulaic and even introduced a supernatural element which had me running for the hills. Perhaps, the books are a little violent for the testosterone-challenged out there but still, one of the greats, in my book.
His description of landscapes are a trifle overripe for my tastes but he's one of the few writers I know who can write purple passages without making me see red.
The New Iberia he describes is so much a world of its own, so unlike the rest of America, that you might even consider it a suitable candidate for DBB.
The only problem I have wtih James Lee Burke is a non-landscape one, but I thought I'd mention it anyway: I've read several of his books but stopped after awhile because I just couldn't believe that one person could have so many relatives/friends with so many secrets ready to be murderously revealed in every book.
As for landscape: I nominate Steve Hamilton in his splendid Alex McKnight series set in Norhtern Michigan near the Canadian border. THE book to read: BLOOD IS THE SKY.
Nobody writes better about the winter landscape.
Ross Macdonald in his novels "The Underground Man" and "Sleeping Beauty." Chandler in his short story "Red Wind."
Solo, I have not read James Lee Burke, though I have a copy of The Tin-Roof Blowdown lying around.
Violence was fine with me, and I can even handle the supernatural, if it’s handled as naturalistically as Stuart Neville does it in The Ghosts of Belfast.
Sounds as if the landscape may be a bit of a supernatural presence in Burke’s books.
Yvette, maybe people in the South have sprawling families that interesect in mysterious ways.
Steve Hamilton -- he was at Bouchercon. James Lee Burke did not attend, but his daughter did.
“Red Wind,” the famous opening of which I cited most recently here, along with another crime writer’s tribute to it.
I can't bring specific examples to mind but two authors whose work I find oozing settings as character are Deon Meyer's books in South Africa and Adrian Hyland's marvellous books depicting the Australian outback.
Bernadette, as soon as I saw your name, I had a feeling Adrian Hyland was going to come up. He's a good choice. As always, his name puts me in mind of one of Arthur W. Upfield's books, I think The Sands of Windee, that includes a terrifying brushfire scene.
I would bring in Eliot Pattison here, for his description of the Tibetan landscape is superb. The mountainous terrain with its numerous small and isolated valleys and the dry cold plains certainly play a significant part in all of the stories.
Nobody does a ferocious mountain wind like Eliot Pattison. Makes me shiver and makes my ears pound just to think of it.
Peter,
For some reason, I find Pattison's Tibetan mysteries especially alluring during Tucson's summers.
Ye gods, Tucson must have some bad summers. Pattison's wind-buffeted Tibetan landscapes are alluring, but in a way that makes me glad to be reading about them rather than shivering through them. But he does give voice to those winds.
Peter
OT in terms of crime fiction but I still get shivers of anxiety when I remember Thomas Hardy's 9 page description of Egdon Heath in The Retun of the Native. The heath in winter, the heath in summer, the heath with the grass cut, the heath with sheep on it, the heath when there are no sheep, etc. etc.
If it had been a movie it would have been filmed by Andrei Tarkovsky
Peter, you are probably right about Southern families. But I'm a disbelieving Yankee.
Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon books consciously use landscape, set as they are in National Parks. Her descriptions of Isle Royale in Lake Superior are so vivid you feel cold.
Adrian, I deliberately did not specify crime writers in my question. Any writer strongly associated with a particular patch of country, as Hardy is, probably belongs on this post. And there was the murder in Tess of the d'Urbervilles, so he's an honorary crime writer.
Linkmeister, Giles Blunt has also set down a nice landscape passage or two. Nevada Barr's Isle Royale sounds a bit like Eliot Pattison's Tibet.
My questions here always elicit good suggestions for further reading. The nominations are especially attractive this time. I wonder if any of the suggested authors makes the landscape a narrative agent the way Arnaldur does.
That could be an especially Icelandic thing. Arnaldur's fellow Icelander, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir. writes occasionally about geology on the Murder is Everywhere blog, and I don't think she does so just because she's a civil engineer who helps build geothermal power plants. She noted during our Bouchercon panel that Iceland is very young geologically. That youth apparently makes it geologically unruly, as the world was reminded earlier this year.
Yvette, I'm pretty hard-headed, rational and ruthless, too, as we Yankees are. But I'll keep Connolly's and your comments in mind as I read Burke. Your comments probably won't come to the fore until I've read a few books, though.
If "Any writer strongly associated with a particular patch of country, as Hardy is, probably belongs on this post" is true, then one can't leave out Faulkner and Mississippi. Even if one can't abide his books ("As I Lay Dying" was required reading my junior year in high school, and I wasn't attuned to allegory. The chapter which reads, in toto, "My mother is a fish" turned me off to Faulkner forever).
In jr high I read Anne Rice books voraciously - Gens de Couleur and The Witching Hour series were my favorites. Her description of New Orleans (especially the past, with a dash of Haiti thrown it) was so haunting and enchanting that I visited New Orleans after high school. NOLA (as locals call it) definitely has the best food in the US. I also can't wait to visit Montale's Marseilles.
Peter, don't get me wrong. James Lee Burke is an excellent writer. It's just that after awhile there was a kind of 'sameness' to the stories that began to bother me. I know I'm in the minority.
Meant to mention Julia Spencer Fleming's use of landscape in her great series set in a fictional town in gloomy upstate New York.
First book: IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER, just about says it all. Fabulous series- I love it. But it's one of those that MUST be read in order.
And another author that suddenly came to mind:
Robert Crais's use and understanding of L.A.
" ... one can't leave out Faulkner and Mississippi."
Linkmeiser:
And Faulkner worked on the screenplay of The Big Sleep, so he's an honorary crime writer, too.
Some people just don't like fish, I guess.
Solea, the human and cultural landscapes are at least as much a part of Montale's and Izzo's Marseilles as the physical landscape. But where does one stop and next begin?
Hmm, am I turning into the Fernand Braudel of crime fiction?
Yvette, I think I got you right. Keeping a series fresh is a frequent topic of discussion among crime-fiction readers. And, while I've heard and read lavish praise of James Lee Burke, I've never heard any discussions of his work as a whole. You may not be the only reader who detects that sameness.
That's an interesting challenge, that the series must be read in order. I once made the bold declaration that if a series must be read in order, the writer is falling short. What I meant is that the writing has to be good enough to make up for whatever a reader misses by reading out of order.
I live on an island! Of course I like fish!
Hmmph!
OK, you like fish, but not as part of your immediate family.
Oh. Well, yes. With that qualifier, I don't like fish.
You'll enjoy it broiled, with a squirt of lemon, but you won't let your daughter marry one.
Well, the 'must be read in order' challenge is not really a challenge. Just a 'caution'. Proceed at your own risk. In some series, there are developing relationships which, read out of order, might not MEAN as much to the reader. (If this is not important to you, then the problem is moot.)My feeling is that an author of a series should AVOID re-hashing every nuance of a relationship over and over again and can do so by having his series develop from book to book - almost like a serial. Each book pushing the characters forward a bit. I don't see anything wrong with this. As readers, we know what a series means: continuing characters or setting or both. If you don't like this sort of thing, then don't bother with a series. Although to my mind, you'd be missing out on a helluva lot of great writing.
But yes, you're right Peter, in thinking that each book must stand on its own. To me, that's a given. But with a series I look for the added plus of a link from book to book.
Examples: I picked up VOODOO RIVER by Robert Crais a few years ago - a book which fits in about halfway through his Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, L.A. detective thriller series and stands quite nicely on its own. Read it, loved it and immediately turned to the first book in the series and from then on read them in order. And boy am I glad I did. It's the only way, in my view, to appreciate what these books are really about, which is: the deep friendship between Elvis and Joe. This friendship is the core of these stories and if you read them in order, you 'get' what RC is doing in a much more fluid way. You see the scope of it more clearly.
Same thing in the Julia Spencer Fleming books I mentioned. At their heart is the budding relationship between two major characters. You can read the books out of of order, but will the relationship affect you and mean as much to you? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not.
As for the writing being 'good enough'. Oh yeah, the writing is quite good enough - at least in the series I've been fortunate enough to read.
Of course, there are series that break the rules. Example: Lee Child's Jack Reacher books in which the only familiar character from book to book is Jack Reacher himself. Each book is, basically, a stand-alone. I read these too.
I've mentioned Jo Nesbo's novels before. I started reading them in the order in which they were first translated into English, which meant The Devil's Star first. I then read The Redbreast and was jolted by the return of a character who had died in a spectacular scene in The Devil's Star. The Redbreast, you see, is the third book in the series and The Devil's Star the first. It was a a pretty sharp jolt but I got over it went on to enjoy the book.
(The books were released much later in the U.S. than in the U.K., but in the order of original publication. The U.K. translation order has been fifth, third, fourth, sixth and seventh in the series.)
Perhaps I pay less attention than some to series order because I first read my favorite series, Bill James' Harpur & Iles, in Book 10, then read the books in scattershot order as I could get them until IO caught up with series order around Book 18.
You see how badly this mixes me up? The Redbreast is the third in the series and the Devil's Star the fifth, not the first.
I've arrived a bit late to this post, (Bernadette beat me to the punch with her contribution of Adrian Hyland) but I must say, first off, that my copy of Following the Detectives arrived last week in record time. Lovely production, fascinating content. I'm looking forward to spending a lot of time with it.
I'd like to add Barry Maitland to the list. His Brock and Kolla series is set in the UK, and as Maitland is an architect by profession, his settings are always very evocative locations - from historic back streets in the City of London (The Marx Sisters) to a claustrophobic mega-mall (Silvermeadow), a leafy Square in artistic Chelsea (No Trace) or the ethnic vitality of Brick Lane (Babel). His one non-series thriller (Bright Air) is set in the ocean between Australia and New Zealand on a windswept spike of rock off Lord Howe Island. That makes for a very thrilling character!
Thanks for the comment, and I hope you enjoy the book. I should check to see if I have any Barry Maitland lying around.
Now, a test: How do his settings (or those of any author who comes to mind) contribute to the story beyond creating a mood?
I'd concur on Adrian Hyland's sense of place. His books have sent me to Google to find out much more about the geography and Indigenous peoples who inhabit Australia.
Malla Nunn conveyed the landscape in her second book set in South Africa.
Then there are Gianrico Carofiglio, who conveys well a sense of Bari, Italy. Donna Leon also does well with Venice (and occasionally other areas of Italy), though often the landscape is the city, its historical landmarks and cafes.
In the U.S., Nevada Barr has always described the location well for each of her books set in a different national park and U.S. region. This is one of the reasons she is popular--whether it's in rural Texas, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Anasazi ruins, the coast of the Southeast, and more, her descriptions are excellent.
Indridason and Siggurdadottir are good at describing Iceland's geography.
And Johan Theorin, although his writing isn't my favorite, does well in describing his locations, giving a very good sense of place.
And, although I try to read books in the order in which a series is written, it doesn't always work out, in terms of what's available at the library and when.
Barry Maitland's locations are always central to the plots which is why they seem to be characters in their own right. The mega-mall, Silvermeadow, for instance, is not only the location of the action, but as a commercial concern, it is totally tied into the mystery that is the story.
Wilkie Collins, notably in "The Moonstone". I will never forget the descriptions of quicksand.
Also, when he describes roads, he seems to compel you to walk along them with the characters.
A very visual writer.
Pat, coincidentally, I am reading NO TRACE by Barry Maitland right now and liking it very much so far. Picked it up at the library a couple of weeks ago after I read on one of the blogs about how good Maitland was. I'd never heard of him previously. I'm glad I paid attention. Oh, and I'm reading it out of order.;)
Thanks, Kathy. A couple of those are on my list.
Pat, I like a megamall as a location, particularly one with such a creepy name. One of my favorite crime-fiction scenes is set in a shopping-center parking garage.
Tales, that's an enticing description of Wilkie Collins' roads. I could plausibly squeeze him into this blog's subject matter. Thanks.
Congratulations for defying series order, Yvette. I may make a short post about one of the advantages of reading out of order.
Collins is worth revisiting as he wrote in a state of heightened consciousness.
This is a helpful guide:
"http://www.wilkie-collins.info/wilkie_collins_opium.htm"
That's a straightforward but eye-catching title, "Wilkie Collins and laudanum." Thanks. The nineteenth century was a high point in patent medicine. I'm on my way to a drugstore now, I can assure you I'll find nothing with opium and alcohol in it.
Yvette, I'm glad you've discovered one of my favorite authors. There is an interesting back story through the series, but I do think each book is complete in itself.
For me, the benefit of reading books out of sequence is that they can be enjoyed from a fresh perspective on a second reading. I'm doing that now with Kate Atkinson's delightful Jackson Brodie series. I plan to reread Jo Nesbo's books that way, too, someday. I'm just waiting for the 1st Harry Hole book to be published in translation. Later books in the series keep referring to it. Tantalizing!
Pat, I may have to make that joys-of-reading-out-of-order post sooner rather than later, if the topic is hot. The only clue I'll offer is that the idea came to me from a book I'm reading now.
Ooooo! Parking garages have to be the creepiest places on Earth! Film and television have certainly used them to good effect, but I can't recall visceral uses of them in any books I have read. Which book were you referring to? Might make excellent Halloween reading!
Pat, Jo Nesbø talks a bit about order of translation of his books in this interview I did with him earlier this year.
Pat, I think of those wonderfully creepy stalking and shoot-out scenes in parking garages every time I'm in such a garage. The only thing I don't like about such scenes is the sound of echoing footsteps. That particular device has been overdone.
The scene I had in mind is in the opening chapter of Ruth Rendell's novel The Veiled One. It's impressive less for its creepiness than for Rendell's bold decision to cut away from the discovery of a body to a long description of the garage and its surroundings.
Yes, that post was the one that gave me hope that I would get to read those early novels. I've seen The Leopard listed for publication but I'm still looking out for The Batman. I was intrigued that he began his series with his Norwegian character placed in another country. Reading how Harry Hole develops as a character in such a 'foreign' place as Australia will be fascinating.
Thanks for that. Ruth Rendell's description sounds like it would be very 'forensic'. I'll have a look.
The Batman gets Harry to Sydney and The Cockroaches takes him to Thailand. I look forward to seeing him at work in both places.
It may be forsensic, but as I recall, Rendell's minute detail, working from the garage's interior outward to the surrounding shopping center, lends the description a kind of lyricism. And, again trusting my recollection, the exterior will later figure in the mystery.
Laura Lippman's "What the Dead Know," has a critical scene at a shopping mall, which is pivotal to the solution of the crime.
A mall and its stores are critical to "What was Lost," by British author Catherine O'Flynn.
Ha! I wonder if shopping-mall stories constitute a distinct microgenre of crime fiction.
It would be no surprise to see the motif crop up from time to time. Malls are a distinguishing feature of the postwar landscape in America and, though I think to a lesser extent, in Western Europe as well.
I'm surprised that we haven't seen a series featuring a mall cop as the "detective.'
vw: bless
Tucson Summers: 6 months of highs around 100 and lows around 80.
Fred, we are twice blessed. I had "bless" as a v-word a few weeks ago.
I know of no books about a mall detective, just a movie comedy or two. Perhaps some book has featured or will feature a rebllious or wronged former police officer reduced to being a mall cop
Fred, I had a colleague from Tucson. She had blond hair and fair skin. I bet dermatologists do land-office business in Tucson.
Peter, can I just second Linkmeister's comments about Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Unlike Linkmeister who seems to have been subjected to it at a tender age I only read it a few years ago. I found the whole thing pretty awful but only when I came to the 'chapter' which contained nothing other than the line, My mother is a fish, did my disgust crystallise into contempt.
Faulkner deserved the literature prize in the same way Kissenger deserved the peace prize.
Incidentally, from what I have read Faulkner spent all of his time in Hollywood dead drunk. As an acknowledged 'serious' writer his name was put on screen credits as a kind of window dressing, merely to give movies class by association. But his contributions to those movies seems to have been zero.
About all I'd known of Faulkner until this discussion is that he wrote long sentences. Now I also know he wrote short chapters about his family.
What other movies did he work on? And was Leigh Brackett the creative force behind The Big Sleep's screenplay?
Peter, Faulkner got partial screen credit for six movies. It wasn't by accident that five of them were directed by Howard Hawks. Hawks was considered something of a cold fish and it appears he had no real friendships but he and Faulkner seem to have hit it off, simply because they made good drinking buddies. Hawks ensured Faulkner got screen credit regardless of whether he deserved it or not.
Apart from The Big Sleep, their best known collaboration was the Hemingway story To Have And Have Not, another Bogie/Bacall vehicle. One subsequent Nobel prize winner adapting the work of another subsequent Nobel prize winner, not a combination Hollywood can boast very often.
I think you wrote about Leigh Brackett a while ago, so you probably know more about her contribution to The Big Sleep than I do. Apparently, Altman hired her for The Long Goodbye because she had worked on the earlier Chandler picture, an odd decision given that he seemed to think Chandler needed to be turned upside down to make him applicable to the 70s.
Both of those movies, though, seem to bear the stamp of the directors, rather than that of the screenwriter, for better in the case of The Big Sleep, for worse in the case of The Long Goodbye.
And Howard Hawks comes off best amid all those Nobel Prize winners, I'd say. Legend has it that Hawks took on "To Have and Have Not" to prove that he could make a good movie even out of what he told his friend Hemingway was a crappy story.
It would be hard to argue with Leigh Brackett if she thought Chandler's plotting needed some tightening up. John Connolly's recent remarks at Bouchercon are only the latest reminder that plotting was not Chandler's strong point.
This convinces me--I must read some books by Barry Maitland. Will find one at the library online right now.
Going back in the Gothic tradition, "Wuthering Heights" offers the most sustained fusion of psychological insight with the landscape, I think.
The landscape IS the story, to borrow from Cathy's words.
Even though I have not read "Wuthering Heights," I should have thought of it as a prototype of landscape-is-story stories. Thanks.
Peter,
About a decade or so ago, I think it was the Cancer Society that published a report that stated Tucson was second only to a city in Australia (name escapes me now) in the rate of skin cancers among its inhabitants.
Peter,
I've heard the same story about Hawks and Hemingway and _To Have and Have Not_, which was what Hawks considered to be Hemingway's worst story.
Peter,
That's what I was thinking of also--an ex-cop or one in disfavor with the powers-that-be.
Or, possibly a retired cop.
Some malls are almost small villages now.
Fred, Arizona is unafraid to pass bold laws. Why doesn't it just ban people with fair skin? I'd suggest that warning signs be posted on the city line that "Tucson may be hazardous to your health," but that would constitute undue government regulation.
Fred, in Diamond Solitaire by Peter Lovesey, the ex-cop protagonist, Peter Diamond, who had quit the cops in the previous novel, is working in security at Harrod's.
To Have and Have Not is a great movie.
Just saw it again a few months ago and loved it.
I have seen To Have and Have Not several times, though not in recent years. I associate it with crime fiction because of Bogart, Bacall, Howard Hawks and The Big Sleep. Hawks may well have been right that he could make a movie better than the story.
"To Have and Have Not" is a great movie. Though not a classic work of crime fiction, it does have some mysterious qualities to it. And, then there's the bit about the nasty Nazis and the French Resistance--and what Bogart's character will do, which way will he go.
I never considered it a classic mystery, but rather a WW II drama/thriller.
I suppose one could call it a drama/melodrama/thriller. This discussion is whetting my appetite to see the movie again.
chuckle...
Ban people with fair skin? Well, with the present law aimed at dark-skinned people, that would remove all humans from Arizona.
I suspect there are a few species around that wouldn't complain too loudly about that idea.
Peter,
I must admit that the Peter Lovesey series is one I haven't looked into yet. It's been on my list though.
You'd have animals on one side of the debate, oncologists on the other.
Fred, I've read three of the Peter Diamond novels and one each from two of Peter Lovesey's other series. The first Peter Diamond book and Bertie and the Seven Bodies, very different in tone, are especially impressive.
Peter,
Thanks for the recommendations. I'll add them to my search list.
vw--refulfug...hmmmm
Fred, here's one of several posts I put up about Bertie and the Seven Bodies.
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