Detectives Beyond Borders is the luck of the Irish

Want to win an award (says John Connolly)? Then talk terrorism with me. Before this evening's 69th Annual Edgar Awards Dinner, I grilled Connolly about Gerry Adams' arrest. I had Northern Ireland in mind; Connolly talked a bit about the IRA (and its offshoots) in Ireland south of the border and north.

An hour and a half later, Connolly was called to the podium to accept the Edgar for best short story. (Read a complete list of the winners.)

My fellow diners included Bill Alder, up for an Edgar for his book Maigret, Simenon and France: Social Dimensions of the Novels and Stories. I learned as much from him about Simenon's early career as I did from Connolly about the afterlife of the Troubles in the Irish Republic, and that's not even counting some juicy tidbits about World War II and France.  This most stimulating of Edgar dinners may keep me posting for weeks.

Oh, and the food was good, too. Thanks, MWA.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014 

Giorgio Scerbanenco, dark maestro of Italian noir

I can't quite figure out whom Giorgio Scerbanenco reminds me of most. He can be as dark as Leonardo Sciascia, as deadpan realistic as Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, as probing in his observation of people as Simenon, as humane as Camilleri, as noir as Manchette, as hope-against-hopeful as David Goodis, but with a dark, dark humor all his own.

In short, the first-ever English translation of his 1966 novel A Private Venus (Venere Privata) has to be the year's biggest event yet for readers of translated crime fiction, and I hope its status as a new book in English makes it eligible for the big crime-fiction awards in the U.S. and U.K. next year.

Here's a passage that sums up the novel's intriguing mix of involvement, alienation, social observation and wry, dark self-awareness:

"Everything was going wrong, the only thing that worked was the air conditioning in those two rooms in the Hotel Cavour, cool without being damp and without smelling odd; everything was going badly wrong in a way that the confident, efficient Milanese who passed, sweating, along the Via Fatebenefratelli or through the Piazza Cavour couldn't begin to imagine, even though they read stories like this every day in the Corriere. For them, these stories belonged to a fourth dimension, devised by an Einstein of crime, who was even more incomprehensible than the Einstein of physics. What was real was going to the tobacconist to buy filter cigarettes, so that they didn't feel so bad about smoking ... "

***

Not much is available about Scerbanenco in English.  This edition of A Private Venus, from Hersilia Press, includes a short autobiography called "I, Vladimir Scerbanenko." This outline of Italian crime fiction includes a few remarks. If you read Italian, Wikipedia offers a detailed summary of the novel. The Italian Mysteries Website offers a brief discussion of Duca and the Milan Murders, a 1970 translation of Traditori di tutti, second of Scerbanenco's four novels about the defrocked Milan physician Duca Lamberti. (A Private Venus is the first.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Weather or not in crime stories

Valerio Varesi doesn't know enough to come in out of the fictional rain, and the opening pages of his novel River of Shadows are none the worse for it.

Those pages, in which a drenching rainstorm weighs heavily on the thoughts of a group of boatmen, are a good answer to anyone who insists a crime story should not begin with weather. Use weather to create suspense, let drumming rain or the wind-blown clatter of signs in a deserted square work their way under the characters' skins — or the reader's — and you'll pull the reader right in. Simenon did it in The Yellow Dog, and Varesi does it here.


(Photo by your humble blogkeeper)

(Varesi's The Dark Valley has been shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association International Dagger for translated crime fiction. The short list was announced at Crimefest 2012. Here are the shortlists for the six awards announced at Crimefest.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Andrea Camilleri, heart and sole

Andrea Camilleri and his Inspector Salvo Montalbano have come to feel like old friends whom I am always happy to see and to report on to our mutual acquaintances.

In The Potter's Field, thirteenth novel in the series, Salvo goes to bed with Ingrid.  Out of bed, his choice of reading matter, always a delight to Camilleri's readers, is a special treat this time. (OK, I'll give it away: Salvo, whose reading in previous novels has included Georges Simenon and Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, this time chooses a novel by Andrea Camilleri.) 

The political gibes, as barbed as ever, are delivered with greater concision even as they ripen into a kind of weariness at the state of the world, though the gibes are as funny as always.  Camilleri has deepened and mellowed his protagonist's view.

In previous books, this has taken the form of increasing tenderness in Salvo's regard for his distant lover, Livia. Here, he feels the pain of a friend's betrayal more sharply than a younger Salvo would have, and his kinship with his fellow creatures even turns him briefly off seafood after he admires the fish at an aquarium in Genoa. (Can I have veal milanese? he asks a waiter. "Sure," the waiter replies,  "if you go to Milan." Salvo settles for an excellent plate of fried sole.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

What does literary "influence" mean?

Larry McMurtry's introduction to the NYRB edition of Georges Simenon's Monsieur Monde Vanishes is all about the urge to disappear and start a new life, but it does not mention the Flitcraft parable from The Maltese Falcon.

The omission is odd because McMurtry does cite other literary parallels. I don't necessarily suggest that Hammett influenced Simenon, but I'd be curious about McMurtry's reason for the omission. (The Maltese Falcon predates Simenon's novel by sixteen years, in case you're wondering.)

***

The estimable Brian Lindenmuth said of Wallace Stroby's novel Cold Shot to the Heart: "Imagine a Parker novel if Parker was a woman," and I won my copy in a contest on the Violent World of Parker Web site. Indeed, Stroby inscribed the book: "To Peter, who really knows his Richard Stark [the pen name under which Donald Westlake wrote the Parker novels]."

The novel opens mid-heist, as do the middle-period Parker novels, and some of its middle chapters open in mid-action ("When ...), like the early Parkers.  Thing is, the book doesn't feel much like a Parker.

Its heister-on-the-run plot feels more like a tale of doomed lovers on the run (though protagonist Chrissa's lover is in prison, she doesn't mean to leave him there), and the story tugs at the heartstrings in ways Stark never did.  And it is to Stroby's considerable credit that the two biggest heartstring-tuggers work nicely as plot elements, one of them especially so. The book may yank at your heart, but it won't insult your mind.

Stroby has undoubtedly read his Richard Stark, but his novel, for all its surface similarities, feels very different from Stark's books. And that leads to today's question: What do you mean when you say, "Author or Book A influenced Author or Book B"? In what ways does one author or book influence another?

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

A long day and a short post from NoirCon 2008

Day Three had an early beginning and a late end at NoirCon 2008. What I don't get to now, I'll discuss tomorrow night.

The convention's one session that dealt explicitly and exclusively with international fiction unexpectedly had little to do with the usual subjects at Detectives Beyond Borders. The session was Saturday afternoon's tribute to Georges Simenon, with William Boyle and Scott Phillips.

Each expressed a preference for Simenon's romans durs, his hard, tough, psychological novels, over his books and stories about Inspector Maigret, and both offered sound, noir-based reasons for doing so. The romans durs put their protagonists in tight, tough, bad situations that get tighter, tougher and worse, sometimes, even often, when no crime is committed. Phillips' and Boyle's preferences made sense; the convention is called NoirCon, after all, and not CrimeCon.

This puts a positive spin on an artistic decision that some critics have regarded as a grubby bid for respectability on Simenon's part. Clive James, for example, wrote that "the Maigret novels acquired such prestige that Simenon’s action novels without Maigret in them started counting as proper novels, the absence of the star turn being thought of as a sign of artistic purity."

Noir, then, does not necessarily imply crime.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Conventional odds and ends

I'm just back from the first evening of my first crime-fiction convention, NoirCon 2008 in Philadelphia. Though the event is devoted principally to American crime, the opening sessions contained a touch or two of special international interest, starting, of course with the name: noir, a French word adopted for an American sub-genre of crime fiction and film.

1) David Schmid, a professor at the University of Buffalo and the kind of professor whose classes you would have wanted to take, opened proceedings with a talk about the wide use to which the term noir has been put. Schmid was educated in England and, from his accent, grew up there, too. Why does this matter? Because it's just one more piece of evidence of the international appeal that noir, like its fellow American art form, jazz, has enjoyed.

2) Scott Phillips, present for a screening of the superb movie based on his novel The Ice Harvest, said he had read about 150 of Georges Simenon's books and planned to be part of a Simenon panel later in the convention. He said he started reading Simenon as a way to keep up his skills in French when he was living in France.

He's not the only author for whom Simenon opened (or widened) a path into French. Janwillem van de Wetering, Dutch author of the Amsterdam Cops novels, has said in interviews that he started reading Simenon for a similar reason: to sharpen his French skills for business purposes. This, if I recall correctly, inspired him to start writing crime fiction.

3) One of the convention's two guests of honor was not on the first evening's program but put in a brief appearance nonetheless. I am happy to report that, based on a brief meeting, Ken Bruen seems to be a warm and personable a fellow as his reputation would suggest.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

A critical question for readers

A week and a half ago, I quoted Joe Gores' praise of Michael Gilbert's dapper but deadly fictional spies, Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens. Gores' thumbs-up appears in a useful collection called 100 Great Detectives, edited by Maxim Jakubowski and winner of an Anthony Award for best critical work in 1992.

Another entry in the book, Peter Robinson's, shines an illuminating light on Georges Simenon's Maigret, demonstrating in the process that criticism need not be diffuse, obscurantist, frivolous or incomprehensible. Robinson writes:

"H.R.F. Keating has noted that the Maigret stories represent the first examples of the detective as writer. Part of this clearly stems from Maigret's desire to understand human motivation and his need to soak up the atmosphere of a place and immerse himself in a complex mesh of relationships until the solution to the crime becomes clear. Simenon's plots are often flimsy or far-fetched, and Maigret's actual detective work can be minimal at times. What makes the books so absorbing is his empathy with the characters he encounters ... " (Highlighting is mine.)

What can I say except that the man is right and that his comments say much about why we read crime fiction.

As it happens, crime-fiction reviewers come in for some criticism on Crime Scraps this week, where a comment laments the shakiness of the Telegraph's recent list of 50 crime writers to read before you die. The commenter complains that:

"With the odd exception — Marcel Berlins, e.g. — reviewers are stringers or staff with a passing interest and without knowledge either wide or deep of the genre, nor of what, in literary terms, constitutes fine writing. And they [don't] particularly care — after all, it's just crime fiction. Today we have no Julian Symons, no Harry Keating, no Jacques Barzun, and that is a very unhappy thing."

That's another bouquet for H.R.F. Keating. Now, how about you, readers? Who's your favorite crime-fiction critic? What remarks about crime fiction have made you stroke your chin thoughtfully and muse, "Hmm, that's right."?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Simenon and other sympathetic subjects

In Reference to Murder is almost as prolific as Georges Simenon. Thus, it was fitting that blog keeper B.V. Lawson mark the 105th birthday of Inspector Maigret's creator last week with a roundup of information including links to lists, to one of the great crime-fiction Web sites, to serious discussions, and to information about how to buy a Simenon T-shirt. I'd like to weigh in with comments about Maigret as a sympathetic investigator.

Simenon attracted the attention of fellow crime novelists at least as early as the 1930s, when Friedrich Glauser observed in The Chinaman that "detective novels seemed popular in Pfründisberg," novels by Edgar Wallace, Agatha Christie, and, yes, Simenon.

One critic wrote that "Glauser has Simenon’s ability to turn a stereotype into a person, and the moral complexity to appeal to justice over the head of police procedure." That moral complexity manifests itself in a deep sympathy for downtrodden characters. Simenon shows a similar sympathy, or at least Maigret does. (See this review for a possible explantion of Simenon's sympathy.)

And that leads to today's question: Who else falls into that tradition? Which crime-fiction authors have the deepest sympathy for their most wretched characters? Which fictional investigators?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Technorati tags:
Georges Simenon
Inspector Maigret
Friedrich Glauser
Belgian crime fiction

Keep it simple, except in Italian

The Rap Sheet posts a series of retrospectives on The New Black Mask. The posts are full of good reading, as, indeed, the publication seems to have been. Some comments from Inspector Maigret's creator are of special interest.

Georges Simenon told New Black Mask that he used “a minimum of adjectives and adverbs, a minimum of abstract words which have a different resonance for each reader.” He asked as well that his translators “safeguard his simplicity,” but he admitted the task could be difficult, “as for instance in Italian.”

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

Maigret and the Wonderful Meals

Years before Andrea Camilleri's Salvo Montalbano or Jean-Claude Izzo's Fabio Montale ate their first fictional meals, there was Inspector Jules Maigret. Georges Simenon's creation is, of course, right up there with Sherlock Holmes among the world's most popular fictional detectives. If benefit of the doubt goes to the detective who eats best, though, Maigret leaves the competition trailing in a cloud of kitchen aromas and pipe smoke.

Thirty-two years ago, in fact, a noted French food writer and a prestigious publisher got together to produce Madame Maigret's Recipes, a collection of instructions for the most enticing dishes from the seventy-five Maigret novels and twenty-eight short stories.

Robert J. Courtine, author of books on French cooking and of a food column for the French newspaper Le Monde, translated into recipes the dishes that Maigret enjoys so much at neighborhood bistrots, on his investigations all over France and, most memorably, in his own kitchen, as prepared by Mme. Maigret. The dishes are classified by type, and each is preceded by an excerpt or excerpts from Maigret stories in which the dish is mentioned.

These brief selections convey the flavor of Maigret's wanderings throughout France and of his leisurely love of a good meal. The juxtaposition of food talk with the sometimes grim titles of the stories from which it taken is also good for a smile, as in this introduction to Courtine's recipes for filets de harangs, or fileted herring:

"Bring us a carafe of Beaujolais right away. What's on the menu?"

"Andouilettes. Just came in from Auvergne this morning."

"Maigret decided to start with filets de harangs."

— Maigret and the Madwoman

Each recipe comes with Courtine's comments ("You can shell the mussels completely — they'll be easier to eat, but it won't look so amusing."), including suggestions for possible substitutions. The American edition, at least, includes a useful glossary of French wines along with suggested American substitutions. The publisher, by the way, is the Helen and Kurt Wolff imprint of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

The book is out of print, unless I am mistaken, but you may be able to find a copy in a secondhand bookshop, as I did. The entertaining, zestful writing may turn you into a fan of Maigret, of French cooking, or of both, even if you know nothing about either when you pick the book up.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

Technorati tags:
Georges Simenon
Maigret
French crime fiction
Belgian crime fiction

A gold mine of international crime fiction on TV and DVD

I’ve written here and there about international detective stories televised by MHz Networks in the Washington, D.C., area. It turns out that the network shows more than the Andrea Camilleri and Harri Nykänen series I mentioned in those posts. It screens entire series of detective shows from abroad under the general title International Mystery and plans to issue several on DVD, which I think is big, exciting news.

Here’s a note from Mike Jeck, MHz’s programming manager for films:

International Mystery has been screening since early 2000 on MHz Networks [an independent, noncommercial television broadcaster delivering international programming to the Washington, D.C., area, and now, selected affiliates and other outlets around the country].

Currently we are showing TV movies adapted from:
— Georges Simenon’s works about Maigret [the French series starring Bruno Cremer]
— Andrea Camilleri’s works about Montalbano
— The originally scripted German series Tatort [Scene of the Crime], focusing on the Cologne team of Ballauf and Schenk
— The unique, award-winning Finnish miniseries Raid [inspired by the novels, so far untranslated, by Harri Nykänen].

In the past, we have shown the Russian Sherlock Holmes adaptations, and almost all of the Mankell/Wallander movies and mini-series. We will soon resume showing all the Swedish adaptations/extensions from the novels about Martin Beck.

On a sister program we are showing the originally scripted Mafia series La Piovra [The Octopus], series 1 [there are 10.]

All of these are presented in the original language with English subtitles.

How to see us: For those in the Washington, D.C., area, click here. Nationally, click here.

DVD: We hold all US rights for the Montalbano, Octopus, and Martin Beck series; have wholesale/retail agreements re the Maigret and Raid series, and are in negotiations for several other series.

We expect to begin issuing Montalbano, Octopus and Raid DVD collections by at least early next year, with plenty of others to follow.

This is good stuff, readers.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

What ever happened to sports-related crime fiction?

Andrea Fannini's blog recently discussed an Italian crime novel set amid the Tour de France.

The review calls Giallo su Giallo, among other things, a diverting immersion in the cyclists' world and a gastronomic guide to France. When the killing starts, Inspector Magrite turns up to investigate. One assumes, with a surreal name like that, that author Gianni Mura has a sense of humor, too. (Would an inspector named Magrite puff on a Ceci n'est pas une pipe?)

Andrea posted his review nine days before the 2007 Tour began. That race, of course, turned into a doped-up scandal on wheels, which may have put the Italian reading public in a mood for cycling-related crime. Here in North America, though, crime readers and publishers have lost their appetite for sports. Horseracing tracks and boxing rings were once archetypal settings for crime fiction and movies. Then governments got in on the game with state lotteries and robbed gambling of much of its forbidden glamour. Outside of Dick Francis, Stephen Dobyns and Harlan Coben, I can think of no crime writers who still regularly use sports as a setting.

Why is this? Why have the Italian soccer bribery scandals, the proliferation of Olympic doping, the expenditures of billions on sports betting and television rights everywhere, the defections of Cuban baseball players, the shameful treatment of older retired football players and other such scandals not generated crime fiction? Or have I missed it?

So readers, what sports settings have generated crime stories — or should have?
==================================

N.B. Giallo su giallo means yellow on yellow. Crime stories are known in Italian as gialli, or "yellows," singular form giallo. Yellow is also the color of the leader's jersey in the Tour de France.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

Technorati tags:
Gianni Mura
Italian crime fiction

And one more thing ...

When I posted about tributes from one crime-fiction author to another, I forgot this example, from Colin Cotterill's The Coroner's Lunch, which I was reading at the time:

"During his stay in Paris decades before, he'd taken his delight in the weekly serializations of one Monsieur Sim in the l'Oeuvre newspaper ... Siri had been able to solve most of the mysteries long before the inspector had a handle on them."

And, recalls Cotterill's protagonist, the proud Siri Paiboun, he solved the crimes without the benefit of the inspector's pipe. Back in Laos, Siri is delighted to find that Monsieur Sim now writes under his full name of Georges Simenon and that his books have filtered from Vietnam into Laos.

Cotterill thus offers a more elaborate tribute than most, spinning it out into an anecdote and giving his readers not just the information that Siri (and, presumably, Cotterill, too) reads Simenon's Maigret stories, but the historical nugget that Simenon once wrote under the name of Sim, and a plausible example of his phenomenal worldwide popularity.

All this gives me the opportunity to ask you another question, dear readers. How do you feel about such references and tributes? Do they add to the story's interest? One the one hand, if you and I read detective stories, there is no reason why a fictional detective should not do the same thing. On the other, this can serve as a mischievous (or intrusive) reminder that when you read a story, you are not entering a real world, you are just reading a story.

OK, I'm done being ponderous. Now it's your turn. Do your favorite fictional detectives read detective stories? How do you feel about this?

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

Technorati tags:
Colin Cotterill
Asia crime fiction
Laos