Ahistorical fiction?

A Quiet Flame, Book 5 in Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy, has Bernie Gunther sailing to Argentina with two very high-ranking Nazis after World War II.

"Don't mind me," Gunther says. "I'm not quite as rabid as our friend here wearing the bow tie and glasses, that's all. He's still in denial."

I have read that the concept of denial originated with Freud and that 12-step programs started in 1939. The term also may have gained popular currency in Germany before it did elsewhere.

Still, were ordinary people, non-psychiatrists, really saying "in denial" as early as 1950?

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

The Buenos Aires Quintet

There's more going on in The Buenos Aires Quintet than in most crime novels, so it's no surprise that author Manuel Vázquez Montalbán was not just a crime novelist. He was also a "journalist ... poet, essayist, anthologue, prologist, humourist, critic, as well as a gastronome and a FC Barcelona supporter."

In fact, the Colegio de Periodistas de Cataluña awards two prizes named for Vázquez Montalbán, one in sports journalism, the other in cultural or political journalism. There's a bit o'boxing in this novel, and politics and culture? You name it, and it's here, from tango, meditations on Jorge Luis Borges and Catalan food to pointed jokes about Carlos Menem, Argentina's president when Vázquez Montalbán wrote the book.

Mostly, the book is a moving psychological travelogue through Buenos Aires in the years after Argentina's military dictatorship, an "almost unreal" city, perhaps fitting for a novel in which the shade of Jorge Luis Borges figures prominently.

Though Vázquez Montalbán plucks his nihilistic gourmand of a detective, Pepe Carvalho, from Barcelona for this novel (he's looking for his uncle's missing son), fans need not worry. Carvalho still manages to eat well, staying in frequent touch by phone with his chef/assistant, Biscuter, back home for culinary advice.

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Here's a retrospective and a pair of reviews from the Barcelona Review on the occasion of Vázquez Montalbán's death in 2003. The article contains spoilers, but you won't lose much if you know something about The Buenos Aires Quintet's plot beforehand. The book is too rich a trip for that.

And I have just found a link to the abstract for a thesis by one Anna Maria Valsecchi from the Università degli Studi di Bergamo titled in English translation When the Mediterranean hosts a detective story: Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Andrea Camilleri, Jean-Claude Izzo. That's one thesis that I bet was fun to write.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Non-traditional book distribution and other non-fictional news

Via Crime Scraps comes the news that a truckload of the Spanish edition of Jo Nesbø's The Redbreast was hijacked in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Here on the North American landmass, Sandra Ruttan was happy to report receiving author's copies of her novel What Burns Within even though the box containing them had been ripped open and one of the books "liberated along the way."

Here's hoping that the hijackers and liberators enjoy their books and that the authors get the royalties they deserve.

Back in South America, Brazil's government wants to fine all foreigners who visit the Amazon wilderness without government permission. Under a bill the government plans to send to the country's Congress, those caught in the Amazon without a permit from military and justice authorities could be fined $60,000, according to the Associated Press.

"We want the world to visit the region. But we want them to tell us when they’re coming and what they’re going to do,” said National Justice Secretary Romeu Tuma Jr., who added that the government was looking at Brazilian organizations in the Amazon for possible illegal activities.

According to the AP, "The bill reflects suspicions among conservative politicians and the military that foreign nongovernmental organizations working to help Indians and save the rain forest are actually attempting to wrest the Amazon and its riches away from Brazil."

“We have information that some international groups disguised as NGOs have come to carry out bioprospecting and have entered public and indigenous lands to try and influence their cultures,” Tuma is quoted as having said. “There is piracy and the theft of (traditional) knowledge in the region.”

Sounds to me like a story idea for Leighton Gage.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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A big con from Argentina

What's the greatest movie ever made about con artists? The Sting? I don't know; I've never seen it. But Nine Queens probably stacks up well, and I'm guessing it stands out in ways a big-star, big-budget movie never could.

For one thing, this Argentine production,written and directed by Fabián Bielinsky and released in 2000, is a quiet movie, literally and figuratively. It has no background music that I can recall, no thudding, fast-paced soundtrack to hammer home the message that something exciting is happening. It's a sweet-natured buddy movie, in part, a tale of one con man teaching a younger colleague the tricks of the trade.

It's also a deadpan comedy of two men trying to make a living in a hard world. "Those are thieves," the older scamster, Marcos, tells his protégé, Juan, pointing out the pickpockets and snatch-and-grab thieves in a sequence whose rapid cutting among shifty characters at work is a sly satire of action movies.

"I'm not a crook!" is a catch line throughout the movie, and it works because it's always delivered straight and always accepted at face value. It even works when Juan's jailed father confides to his son during a prison visit that "This place is full of crooks."

The Nine Queens of the title are a sheet of rare stamps from the Weimar Republic, a counterfeit copy of which Marcos and Juan try to sell to a millionaire about to be deported. The customer's haste means he lacks time to verify the stamps' authenticity with chemical tests, and therein lie Marcos and Juan's hopes for success.

Complications naturally ensue, one provided by the snatch-and-grab thieves mentioned above, and Juan and Marcos end up scrounging for money to finance their scheme. That's when the fun really starts and, even when tension is highest, the mood remains quiet. Its mood is perhaps best encapsulated in this droll exchange, Marcos' proposal of a business partnership after he rescues Juan from a botched convenience-store con:

"I'm Marcos, and you are?"

"Juan."

"Juan. But you've always wanted to be called – "

"Sebastin."

"Guys called Juan always want another name. Let's do business, Sebastin."

"Juan."

"Juan."

And now, readers, here's your assignment: Rent and watch Nine Queens. Then tell me how far in advance you figured out what was going to happen.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

A signpost to some Argentine and Argentine American mysteries

Bill Crider posted a comment about The Lady from Buenos Aires by John Lantigua. That got me thinking how little crime fiction I'd found from Argentina, which led me to this article by G.J. Demko on crime fiction from Argentina.

In The Lady From Buenos Aires, P.I. Willie Cuesta

"gets involved with the Argentine community in Miami. He's hired to find the daughter of a woman who was 'disappeared' twenty years ago in Argentina's 'dirty war.' In the course of his search, he runs into a diplomat, a realtor who isn't what he seems, a former CIA agent, a nightclub owner, a suspicious husband, and any number of ladies from Buenos Aires. It seems that nearly all of them have pasts they'd rather not have revealed. Murders ensue. Willie has a couple of very close calls himself."

I would be especially interested to see how well Lantigua can bring that grim period of Argentina's history to life, and also to see how he handles the challenge of making those events reverberate in an Argentine expatriate community.

The Demko article ought to interest readers of international crime fiction right from its opening sentences: "Argentine writers were among the earliest adopters and adapters of the crime fiction genre. The authors, many of whom were, and are, members of the mainstream literati, created a popular, respected, and uniquely Argentine form of mystery."

© Peter Rozovsky 2007