Crimefest: History, wisdom, and the reek of fermented shark

 

Because it's almost time for Crimefest 2015, and because history is what I read most when I'm not reading crime, I thought I'd bring back a post about history from Crimefest 2010.   

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Andrew Taylor made trenchant observations during Crimefest 2010's historical-fiction panel, just as he had at last year's Crimefest.

"The 1950s," he said, "are a fascinating time because, I think, it was the end of history for most of us, an eternal present." But, he said, "It became clear to me it was a completely alien time," a world that would have been recognizable to someone who had been around in the 1930s.

Edward Marston, the panel's moderator, spoke of his childhood during the Second World War: "I saw no one between the ages of 18 and 40 because they had all been conscripted. I didn't see my father until I was 6. ... My grandfather lived with us. He'd fought in the First World War," and, Marston said, those who remained at home heard much about how "His war was better than our war."

Marston also made a remark that ought to make all crime readers and authors reflect on the world in which fictional detectives live and work: "Your sleuth must have social mobility."

Ruth Dudley Edwards spiced up the sex, violence and bad language panel with the observation that her Baroness 'Jack' Troutbeck, while willing to avail herself of a carnal romp with whatever sex is available, "would be just as motivated, really, by a good dinner." (My question about sex as a motivating factor in crime fiction, as a means rather than an end, won me a book bag for the session's best question. I won another later the same day, and no one was around to take it away from me.)

Elsewhere, Michael Ridpath, an author new to me who sets his recent novels in Iceland, said that country's financial crisis had forced some rewriting. "I had to change `In Iceland everything is expensive' to `In Iceland, everything is cheap,'" he said. Asked at a different session what she thought of Ridpath's choice of settings, Iceland's own Yrsa Sigurðardóttir said: "That's great. That's just excellent."

Yrsa also brought hákarl, or highly pungent fermented shark, an Icelandic specialty she was eager to share with fellow attendees, along with bracing Icelandic schnapps to wash it down. I enjoyed watching the faces of everyone who tried hákarl. You'll enjoy doing so, too. Says Wikipedia: Hákarl "is an acquired taste and many Icelanders never eat it."

I suspect that after Crimefest 2010, some Canadians, Americans, Englishmen and South Africans may join them.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Just call me Daddy War Books

Readers responded in good number to Friday's post about wartime crime fiction. One suggested I post a list of the nominated books and authors, and here it is:

— Alan Furst
— John Lawton
— Andrew Taylor's Lydmouth series
— David Downing, Silesian Station and Zoo Station
— Jo Walton: Farthing, Ha'penny, and Half a Crown
— Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther novels
— Jacqueline Winspear
— Rebecca Pawel's Carlos Tejeda series (suggested by Rebecca Pool in response to a post about Rebecca Cantrell)
— City of Gold by Len Deighton
— Marshall Browne, The Eye of the Abyss and The Iron Heart
— Charles McCarry

Some readers noted that their suggestions would usually be considered espionage novels or thrillers, but they offered good arguments for including them on a crime reader's list. I made the post to increase my own TBR list and to give a shout-out to good books I might (might!) not get around to reading right away. You helped me do both. Thanks, gentle readers.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

CrimeFest, Day III, Part I: Interviews

Håkan Nesser, interviewed by Ann Cleeves, shed light on that recurrent question of Scandinavian gloom and Scandinavian authors. Scandinavians, he said, are dour; their authors are not: "I wanted [my protagonist] to be, at least to start with, depressed. ... Happy people don't need their humor."

Dour Swedes may be, Nesser said, but not cripplingly so: "We're not that depressed, but we don't talk a lot. That's good for a crime story. You keep things inside for thirty years," and then they just come out.

Ten of Nesser's twenty-two novels have featured Inspector Van Veeteren; four of these have been translated into English. The remaining six would likely change Nesser's image in the English-speaking world. The books translated thus far have featured villains with whom the reader may sympathize deeply. But that changed: "There are two really bad guys in numbers nine and ten." After the fifth in the series, Nesser said, Van Veeteren retires from the police and opens a bookstore instead.

Nesser also discussed his series about a character with the whimsical name of Gunnar Barbarotti, a series as yet untranslated into English, a series whose premise seems an odd mix of whimsy and Ingemar Bergman: "It's a thing between [Barbarotti] and God, and God has to prove he exists. ... If the prayer is fulfilled, God will get one point, or, in more important cases, one or two points."

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Two interviews with authors I have not yet read offered insights I found especially pleasing. Andrew Taylor told Peter Guttridge that he loved Jane Austen, and Simon Brett told Gyles Brandreth that Austen was the one person he'd like to meet in Heaven, Taylor also cited P.G. Wodehouse as an early love.

So I'll take a tentative stab at charting some tendencies of British crime writers: They love Austen, they love Wodehouse, and they have a decided position, yes or no, on whether their novels have fundamentally moral concerns. At least this was true of some writers here, and the penchant for Austen and Wodehouse is by no means restricted to writers of what Americans call cozies or to any other type of mystery. Not should it be. Austen and Wodehouse are towering giants, a Hammett and a Chandler of English writing.

One remark was sufficient to get me interested in reading Taylor, who is English and this year's recipient of the CWA Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement: "Until ... 1934, it would have been utterly possible for us to slip gradually into being a Fascist state."

Oh, and he offered a valuable tip for beginning crime writers: "With the first novel, I had a corpse, and I went on from there. Corpses are good."

Click here for the full CrimeFest schedule.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009