What Kirkus didn't tell you: Three more new crime novels you can read this summer

Kirkus Reviews recently published a list of twenty crime novels due for publication this summer and recommended for your consideration. It's not a bad list, but here are three novels that it missed:

1) Paradime, by Alan Glynn (Picador U.S. August/Faber U.K. May) Reviewers have invoked James Ellroy and John le Carré when discussing Alan Glynn, and if I squint and hold my head at the right angle, I can see resemblances. But Glynn's new novel is a lot more like David Mamet's 1997 movie The Spanish Prisoner than it is like anything by Ellroy and or le Carré. The novel's fever-dream narration is intoxicating, its first section in particular a kind of contemporary nightmare picaresque. (A worker for a private military contractor in Afghanistan witnesses a shocking incident, comes back to New York City, discovers that the incident won't leave him alone, and finds aspects of the result a strangely attractive escape — addictive, even.)

The novel shares some themes with Glynn's previous books, The Dark Fields (also published as Limitless), Winterland, Bloodland, and Graveland: alienation, paranoia, helplessness in the face of corporate and government power, and the uncertainty of boundaries between the two. But the action centers more on the protagonist than it does in the earlier novels, with distant but distinct echoes of mid-twentieth-century American noir. The book also seems carefully constructed, full of epiphanies that shed shocking new light on earlier scenes. And that may be one more mark of its kinship with The Spanish Prisoner.

2) One or the Other, by John McFetridge (ECW Press, August). I know of no crime writer who writes about suburbs and people who live there with the respect that McFetridge does, even though his books are set mostly in cities: Toronto and, in his three most recent novels, Montreal. But I also know of no crime writer who writes more vividly about cities, and who integrates character, crime, and history as seamlessly as McFetridge.

McFetridge's empathy with his protagonist, a young police constable named Eddie Dougherty, may remind readers of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels, but McBain never had anything like McFetridge's eye for the way big events and individual lives intersect, the lives always more important than the events. McFetridge's Dougherty books, of which One or the Other is the third, following Black Rock and A Little More Free, don't try to transcend any genre, but I can easily imagine that they would appeal to readers who love to empathize with characters and wonder about everyday lives lived in tumultuous times, whether or not the stories involve crime.

3) A Quiet Place, by Seicho Matsumoto (Bitter Lemon Press, August U.S./June UK) Too many invocations of one crime writer to describe another are silly, but Matsumoto really is reminiscent of Georges Simenon. This is true especially in his portrayals of dogged, unexceptional characters, bewildered, sometimes to the point of pathos, as they navigate the consequences of crimes they understand only dimly.

Matsumoto died in 1992, and little of his large output has been translated into English, so any new publication is welcome. A Quiet Place is a noirish tale full of sparing but sharp observations and pointed critiques of postwar Japanese society. The novel is reminiscent in that respect of Matsumoto's Points and Lines, which I named one of my favorite international crime novels in the first Detectives Beyond Borders post back in 2006.  The novel's close examination of a setting observed by the protagonist as he travels through it may remind readers of Akira Kurosawa's classic crime movie Stray Dog or of work by the contemporary Japanese crime writers Keigo Higashino and Fuminori Nakamura.

© Peter Rozovsky 2016

A Quiet Place: More Matsumoto to be released in English this summer

Too many invocations of one crime writer to describe another are silly, but Seicho Matsumoto really is reminiscent of Georges Simenon. This is true especially in his portrayals of dogged, unexceptional characters, bewildered, sometimes to the point of pathos, as they navigate the consequences of crimes they understand only dimly.

Matsumoto died in 1992, and little of his large output has been translated into English, so any new publication is welcome. A Quiet Place, out this summer from Bitter Lemon Press, is a noirish tale full of sparing but sharp observations and pointed critiques of postwar Japanese society.

The novel is reminiscent in that respect of Matsumoto's Points and Lines, which I named as one of my favorite international crime novels in the first Detectives Beyond Borders post back in 2006.

© Peter Rozovsky 2016

Killer in the Rain, or What's your favorite crime art?

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, "Shirai Gonpachi," from
The Sixty-Nine Stations of the Kisokaido Road,
1852, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Today's offering comes from the printmaker Kuniyoshi's series depicting the post stations, or rest stops, on the inland Kisokaido road between Edo (Tokyo) and Kyoto.

Such series were a favorite of Japanese printmakers, depicting natural sights and vignettes of human activity. This example incorporates an earlier favorite Japanese genre, the actor print (yakusha-e or, if you prefer, 役者絵). An excerpt from Sarah E. Thompson's description of the scene in her book about the series will explain why it belongs here:

"In both real life and drama, Gonpachi's criminal career began in his home province of Tottori, where he killed a man named Honjo Sukedayu ... This print shows the moment just after the killing, when Gonpachi emerges from Honjo's house into the rain. An umbrella and a rain clog (with a cover to keep the foot dry) can be seen on the ground beside him; the umbrella and swords also appear in the series title border [upper right]."

That could be a scene from a crime novel. What is your favorite art (painting, print, drawing, or sculpture) that hits you like  crime fiction does? Links to visual examples welcome. Here's one from yesterday's Detectives Beyond Borders post.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Yams! Yams! Yams!

Or, to state the case more fully:

"Rubbing his sleepy eyes, he looked a second time, and with a sharp gasp he realized what they were. Yams! Yams! Yams!"

The passage is from Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's story "Yam Gruel," which has nothing to do with crime, but how could I resist a line like "Yams! Yams! Yams!"?

Akutagawa (1892-1927) did write stories with elements of crime to them, notably the two on which Akira Kurosawa based his celebrated movie Rashomon. And "Kesa and Morito," based, like a number of Akutagawa's stories, on old Japanese tales, may remind crime fans of Double Indemnity.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Shane MacGowan meets Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

One of the bounciest, most cheerful songs I've heard recently also makes the Detectives Beyond Borders list of great noir and crime songs (click the link, then scroll down for some good reading and listening.)

The song is "Rain Street," from the Pogues' 1990 album Hell's Ditch, and it includes lines such as:

"Down the alley the ice wagon flew
Picked up a stiff that was turning blue
The local kids were sniffin' glue
Not much else for a kid to do
Down rain street."

Lyrically, the song is a bit like Lou Reed and, in its stream of images, something like Bob Dylan's long, near-surrealistic songs from the mid-1960s. But Shane MacGowan had a livelier sense of fun than both those guys, and the Pogues were better and tighter musically, so the song is just plain fun to listen to even if you ignore the words.

But those words ... they're a little like David Goodis or maybe, I don't know, Nelson Algren. Click on the song's title above to hear Shane and the boys perform it.

***

Rashomon is one of the greatest and most celebrated of all movies, and probably the best-known Japanese movie in the Western world. (How many movies have lent their titles to a psychological effect?)

But thirty-six years before Akira Kurosawa's film, "Rashomon" was a story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, one of two by the author that formed the basis of the movie. (The story "Rashomon" is the source of the ramshackle gate and the unforgettable rain in the movie; the "Rashomon effect" is depicted in a story called "In a Grove.")

Late on a rainless night in a deserted office is no time or place to start a consideration of twentieth-century Japanese literature, so I'll begin and end by saying that "In a Grove" is one of the wittiest and most carefully and deliberately constructed stories this writer has had the pleasure to read. As of now, I am, albeit tentatively, a Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and you should be, too. Read him to have your eyes opened to new, little-explored possibilities for crime stories.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Into the '50s, with a stop in Japan first

I finished Keigo Higashino's The Devotion of Suspect X last night, and I'm impressed by how Higashino built his story. The book offers not just rationality against emotion, but, among the characters governed by their rationality, mathematics against physics. The head investigator has not just a subordinate with whom he forms an amusing team, but a friend and semi-amateur sleuth who is the real force behind the investigation. All this forms a nice background for a tale of seething emotions and their consequences.

The clues all make sense at the end, and Higashino does a nice job planting details that let me flatter myself when I spotted their significance many pages later.

***

Speaking of emotions, they're spilling out all over the pages of my other recent reading, and not just of one book, either. I've stocked up on American paperback originals from the 1950s, as reissued by Wonder eBooks and Prologue Books, and all I can say is that all that liquor characters drank in the 1920s and '30s and '40s finally started to hit in the 1950s. If the '20s, '30s and '40s were the boozy party of American crime writing, the '50s were the morning after, with the hangover, the empty pockets, the strange bed, the gutter, the torn clothes, and the utter lack of prospects -- not that some American crime writing of the time wasn't pretty funny. Here are a few bits from some of the books I've been browsing trying to decide what to read next:

"She had been somewhere with someone, but she couldn’t quite remember the place or the person. As a matter of fact she had a feeling that she had been a number of places with a number of persons, but she couldn’t quite remember that for certain either."

Park Avenue Tramp, Fletcher Flora

"(I)t it was a small, sad, lovely face of fine structure in which sadness and loveliness would survive as a shadow of themselves after the erosions of gin and promiscuous love and nervous breakdowns."

ibid.

"She was tall, blackhaired, with creamy skin and what I thought of simply as `Mexican' eyes. Dark eyes, soft, big, shadowed eyes with both the question and the answer in them."

The Sleeper Caper, Richard S. Prather

Before you sneer at "Mexican eyes," think about the words that went before: "what I thought of simply as." Sure, Prather has his protagonist, Shell Scott, engage in what some might call ethnic stereotyping and objectification of women today, but by God, he's redeemed by his awareness of what he's doing and by Scott's enjoyment of this Elena's beauty. And who could resist the melodramatic appeal of a pair of eyes that contain not just answers but also questions? Damned efficient, I'd say.

"You never can tell what a big, tough Polish boy will do when he finds a nude blonde in his bathroom."

To Kiss, Or Kill, Day Keene

Goodnight!

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

The Coffee Ceremony

No one is going to read The Devotion of Suspect X for laughs, but bits have made me smile. My favorite is probably this scene of a physicist welcoming a visit from his police investigator friend:

“Yukawa walked over to a nearby sink, filled a kettle with water, and set it on a gas burner—the start of his usual instant coffee ritual.”

Nothing will convince me that Higashino is not poking a bit of irreverent fun at the Japanese tea ceremony.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

東野 圭吾's tribute to 江戸川 乱歩 and 松本 清張

It may be coincidence, but a district and a park on the first page of Keigo Higashino's The Devotion of Suspect X bear the names of two pioneering Japanese crime writers.

The page takes a character on a walk to Seicho Garden Park that passes a road leading to Edogawa. Edogawa is one of Tokyo's twenty-three special wards. More to the point, Seicho Matsumoto (1909-1992) and Edogawa Rampo (1894-1965) were two of the most popular and influential crime writers in twentieth-century Japan. Edogawa Rampo (it's a pen name, and yes, it really is a Japanese rendering of Edgar Allan Poe) promoted Japanese crime fiction tirelessly and founded the group that later became Mystery Writers of Japan.  He admired Arthur Conan Doyle in addition to Poe, and his fiction, criticism, and organizing "played a major role in the development of Japanese mystery fiction," according to Wikipedia.

Seicho Matsumoto was a kind of Jean-Patrick Manchette, a writer of spare, bleak, socially acute narratives credited with breaking new ground in narrative technique:

"Dispensing with formulaic plot devices such as puzzles," Wikipedia says, "Seichō incorporated elements of human psychology and ordinary life. In particular, his works often reflect a wider social context and postwar nihilism that expanded the scope and further darkened the atmosphere of the genre. His exposé of corruption among police officials as well as criminals was a new addition to the field."

Seichō Matsumoto memorial museum,
Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan

The solitary walker of Higashino's opening chapter is a mathematics teacher who engages in amateur sleuthing that will remind readers of Edogawa Rampo's man Sherlock Holmes. And his profession just might mark another point of affinity with Matsumoto, who wrote a novel called in English Points and Lines. (How much more mathematical can one get?) Higashino's emphasis on geography may also bring Matsumoto to mind.

If all this is mere coincidence, the coincidence is suggestive. Let's assume it's deliberate and once again ask this diverting question: How have crime writers paid tribute in their stories to predecessors and colleagues?

***

The Devotion of Suspect X was shortlisted for best novel at this week's Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America, one of four books by a non-American author on the five-book shortlist and one of two translated novels. The winner was Gone by Mo Hayder.

(Here's an old post about Seicho Matsumoto, my reading of whom predates this blog. Rereading the post reminds me of what a bracing writer Matsumoto was.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

History and mystery: Three authors of historical crime fiction on what they do and why they do it

When talk turned to anachronism a few months back here at Detectives Beyond Borders, several authors of historical mysteries weighed in both privately and in the public discussion. I have always been in awe of the task that writers of such fiction set for themselves. In addition to writing a satisfying and entertaining crime story, they must serve the muses of history and of accuracy. They can't screw up details, and they must convey the flavor a bygone period while holding contemporary readers' attention.

As a good historian would, I went to the source and asked three authors of historical crime fiction to talk about what they do and how they do it. Let's meet our three guests and get to the questions.

Rebecca Cantrell writes the Hannah Vogel mystery series set in 1930s Berlin, including A Trace of Smoke, A Night of Long Knives, and A Game of Lies. Her short stories are included in the First Thrills anthology. She also writes the YA iMonsters series, including iDrakula, as Bekka Black. She lives in Hawaii with her husband, her son, and too many geckoes to count. She is online at www.rebeccacantrell.com and www.bekkablack.com.

***

Gary Corby has been fascinated by ancient history since he was a teenager.  "What happened for real, thousands of years ago, was as exciting and even more bizarre than any modern thriller," he writes. " I also love the puzzles of murder mysteries.  So I combined the two to create an historical mystery series set in classical Greece.  The Pericles Commission was released last year,  The Ionia Sanction is out in November. I live in Sydney, Australia, with one wife, two daughters, and four guinea pigs.  My daughters tell me I must now include the two budgies we've adopted.  You can catch me on my blog at GaryCorby.com." 

***

I. J. Parker was born in Munich, Germany, and attended German and American universities.  Her Akitada mystery series, set in eleventh-century Japan, was partially the outcome of research into Asian literature.  She writes both novels and short stories, the latter published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.  In 2001, "Akitada's First Case" won the Shamus award.  Her books have been translated into ten foreign languages. She is also a contributor to the recent Shaken: Stories for Japan. 

===========================

How important is period detail to a successful historical mystery?

Rebecca Cantrell: "Crucial. The reason I read historical mysteries is to time travel within the pages of a book. If the detail isn't there, or if it's incorrect, the time machine breaks, and I'm thrown out of the story into my own time. This makes me a cranky reader. So, as a writer, I take great pains to make sure that everything is as accurate as I can make it so that the readers stay safely inside the time capsule. If I must deviate from history for plot reasons, I am always careful to note that in the Author's Notes at the end of the book. That said, don't read those notes before you read the novel, as they sometimes contain spoilers. If you do, don't say you weren't warned." 

Gary Corby: "Period detail is essential. Some people read historical mysteries because they like mysteries, and the exotic background is a bonus. There are others who read because they want to be immersed in a different time and place; those people don't really care `who done it.'  For them, the puzzle aspect of the story is merely a device to keep the plot moving so they can explore more of the world. I've been surprised and gratified by the number of people who've told me they enjoyed reading my book, and then add that they picked up more ancient Greek history from reading a light whodunit than they ever learned at school."

I.J. Parker: "Very important, provided it doesn’t interfere with the story.  The setting in a historical novel takes in much more than the background. It also involves customs and mindset of the time (and place). The author must guess at just how much and what detail the reader needs without knowing his education or experience. Putting in too much will ruin the book." 

What kinds of anachronisms can kill a historical mystery?

RC: "Modern attitudes and language." 

GC: "There's the classic wristwatch-on-the-chariot-driver type of error. Those are relatively easy to catch. There are anachronistic phrases, and they can be deadly. My characters in 460 BC should not be quoting either Shakespeare or the Bible. You would not believe how many stock modern phrases come from Shakespeare and the Bible. On the plus side, it stops me from using clichés. Finally, there are the more subtle historical errors which only an expert is likely to catch. To prevent those you have to become a pseudo-expert yourself."

IJP: "Factual ones.  Here again, the problem of the unknown reader.  How much does the reader know?  Best not to take any chances and do the research. Historical novel web sites are full of readers mocking authors for making silly mistakes (like having thirteenth century Venetian cooks prepare potato dishes)." 

How do you juggle the tasks of portraying a historical period faithfully and making a story inviting and accessible to contemporary readers?

RC: "I research and research until I know the era fairly well and have far more details in my head than I could cram into a novel. Once I know enough to do so, I put myself in Hannah's shoes and see only what she sees and know only what she knows. This means that I cannot have her make comments about events that haven't happened, guess about future events without evidence, or go into long soliloquies about how the Olympic Stadium was constructed (even if the details of the construction are fascinating to me personally)." 

GC: "Any detail you mention has to be directly to do with the problems your characters face in the story. Never explain anything, unless it genuinely needs to be explained to a character. Any dialogue that begins, `As you know...' is a red alert.

"For example, I know in classical Athens sewerage pooled in gutters running down the middle of the street. I could write a couple of pages on the drainage system of Athens in 460 BC, but somehow I have a feeling you're not going to read it. Instead, when my hero Nicolaos is dragged off down the street by a couple of thugs, something squishy that doesn't bear thinking about gets caught between his sandal and his foot, and he has to hop on the other foot while shaking the first to get it clear. A whole day's research on drainage has devolved into two lines of book text about a messy foot. That's good, because a foot with poo on it is story and character, a treatise on drainage is not."

IJP: "There’s the trick.  The story becomes accessible through the characters, not the other way around.  Make your characters fully developed human beings that readers can relate to, and the rest follows.  However, modern readers do not relate well to certain historical customs. Those must be handled carefully." 

Which authors of historical mysteries do you admire? Why?

RC: "I love Kelli Stanley's Miranda Corbie series. (A City of Dragons is the first; start there.) She has a wonderful voice and a strong sense of the place and time. I also think Laurie King, Anne Perry, and Charles Todd write evocatively of the era between the wars. For a lighter touch, I like Rhys Bowen's Royal Spyness books." 

GC: "I'm going to cheat by starting with three historical authors who did not write mysteries: The Flashman stories of George MacDonald Fraser. Fraser is the gold standard for accuracy in historical novels. Also, his Flashman is hilarious. The Greek novels of Mary Renault, because they're the best novels of ancient Greece ever written. Patrick O'Brian wrote the best sea adventure stories ever, set during the Napoleonic Wars. They're generally known as the Aubrey-Maturin novels, after the two heroes.

"There are so many excellent historical mysteries these days, it's hard to know who to include without doing injustice to many others. Ruth Downie writes a series set in Roman Britain, starring a doctor named Ruso. The books are very funny, Ruso is a wonderful character, plus we get to see a Roman doctor at work. Rebecca Cantrell's mysteries are set in Germany at the height of the Nazi party, starring a reporter named Hannah Vogel. A tough subject, and she carries it off brilliantly. The mysteries of John Maddox Roberts, Steven Saylor, and Lindsey Davis were the first to be set in the ancient world. C.J. Sansom's Matthew Shardlake is an investigator in the time of Henry VIII, working for a chap named Cromwell. Very high-quality writing."

IJP: "Robert Van Gulik, of course.  To a lesser degree, Lindsey Davis.  Both have the trick of drawing the reader into the book.  Van Gulik relies more on the exotic setting.  Davis portrays her protagonist much like the modern hard-boiled detective."

Why did you choose to write about the period you did? If you were to write historical fiction about a period other than the one you do, which period would you choose? Why?

RC: "I've been toying with the idea of writing something set in Berlin during the Cold War, maybe even the 1980s. I lived there then, so I could remember details about popular songs and political events. But the thought of writing about an era of my own life as historical document makes me feel so old that it gives me pause."

GC: "Nicolaos begins his adventures in 460 BC, right at the start of the Golden Age of Athens. Democracy was invented about five days before his first murder investigation begins! It was a period packed with tales of adventure, war, conspiracy, lust, love, corruption, power politics, assassination. . . . you name it, and it happened, all at one of the most critical periods in human history. If he can survive his highly hazardous missions, Nico will live to see the founding of western civilization.

"I can tell you three I definitely would not write: ancient Rome (and Roman Britain), mediaeval England, and Victorian London. All three have been done extensively by many fine writers, and fun as they are, there's no need for me to add to the existing corpus. There are so many fascinating periods. I might be tempted to go further back in history, for example, to somewhere like Mesopotamia. Renaissance Italy would be fun too."

IJP: "I loved Van Gulik’s books and the literature of eleventh-century Japan.  As for other periods, I have written a book set in eighteenth-century Bavaria.  I like the eighteenth century and will probably do more of this." 

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Shaken: Stories for Japan available now!

Timothy Hallinan, the Japan America Society of Southern California, and twenty talented authors have teamed up to produce Shaken: Stories for Japan,  available now for just $3.99. One hundred percent of the proceeds of this e-book will benefit the society's 2011 Japan Relief Fund.

Contributors include Hallinan, Adrian McKinty,  I.J. Parker, Brett Battles, Cara Black, Vicki Doudera, Dianne Emley, Dale Furutani, Stefan Hammond, Rosemary Harris, Naomi Hirahara, Wendy Hornsby, Ken Kuhlken, Debbi Mack, Gary Phillips, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Jeffrey Siger, Kelli Stanley, C.J. West, and Jeri Westerson.

Most, but not all, of the pieces are crime fiction. McKinty's is a touching account of Matsushima Bay before the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, for example. The book's distribution through Amazon promises prompt release of proceeds, Hallinan says, so buy now. The cause is good, the gratification instant.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

The Summer of the Ubume, or crime writing and ghosts

This novel crosses two borders for me, one to Japan, the other to horror.

The publisher, Vertical, calls Natsuhiko Kyogoku's The Summer of the Ubume, mystery/horror. The author loves Japanese folklore, Vertical says, especially that of the paranormal and preturnatural, with special interest in the supernatural entities called yokai . This book, Kyogoku's 1994 debut, "gives birth to a new form of Japanese fiction," according to the publisher. Vertical also calls Kyogoku "the Neil Gaiman of Japanese mystery fiction."

Now, horror is not generally my cup of reading tea, but I do like the wry humor and sense of dislocation in The Summer of the Ubume's opening chapter. The opening perches on the verge of excess without going over:

"At the very top of the hill, where the lackadaisical, interminable slope petered out at last, sat my destination: Kyogokudo."

Want to know what Kyogokudo is? You'll have to wait til the bottom of the page. I've met no yokai yet, as far as I know, but Kyogoku knows how to build suspense from the beginning.

This will be a rare excursion in the world of ghosts for me. How about you? What are your thoughts on ghosts, spirits, and other other-worldly matteres in crime witing?

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Meshack Masondo

Let's stay in South Africa awhile longer, this time with Meshack Masondo's "The Love of Money" from the Bad Company anthology of short South African crime fiction.

The author says in an introduction to the story that "While based to an extent on the English model, the Zulu detective novel adds its own themes ー related to social problems caused by the meeting of modern life and Zulu traditional customs ー to the `classic recipe.'"

In time-honored manner, the detective protagonist of "The Love of Money" relates his solution to the crime. But his account has an edge that must make South African readers smile ruefully: "So many security firms springing up all over the place, you'd think there was room for all of them with this crime wave, but no. Your husband needed money."

Masondo writes for the most part in Zulu; I'm not sure if he wrote "The Love of Money" in that language or in English, but, like Roger Smith's Wake Up Dead, the story manages the difficult task of conveying in one language the cadences of another:

"Magwegwe replied feebly, `Nobody was injured, my wife. It is just that... "

"Popi persisted: `What is wrong, love?'"

Omitting a contraction goes a long way. South Africa is a country of many languages. Perhaps hearing this Babel of tongues makes authors sensitive to the rhythms of languages other than their own.

Masondo's Detective Themba Zondo is capable of delicious deadpan, and there's the hint of amusing interplay between him and his sidekick, Sgt. Thulani Zungu. Masondo's 1987 novel The Hunter and the Snakes features the two and is to appear soon in English translation, according to the introduction in Bad Company. I'll look forward to it.

(Click here for discussion of another short story from a non-traditional crime-fiction country that adopts a traditional crime-fiction form.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Take a trip to Heian Japan and win a book ... and we have a winner!

I.J. Parker sets her series about the official-cum-investigator Sugawara Akitada in eleventh-century Japan, part of that country's Heian period. That long, peaceful era is known among other things for its exquisite, refined courtly literature.

Perhaps that's why Parker opens The Convict's Sword, sixth book in the series, with a squalid encounter, a shabby quarter and a brutal killing – a nice counterpoint to the expectations that her readers may have of the period.

Any author of historical mysteries must balance the history and the mystery, to entertain while remaining reasonably faithful to the historical period, to portray the period without writing a travel brochure or a textbook. Near the novel's beginning, Parker nicely integrates the sword maker, a staple figure in Japanese art, into the story and rather gracefully suggests the respect with which he regards his craft:

"Akitada received the sword and turned to Sukenari. `Please forgive my friend. He's very enthusiastic and forgets his manners when his heart is moved.'

"`I understand. Mine is moved in the same way. The gods dwell in that blade.'"

=================

The Heian period is unusual in at least one respect: Its best-known authors are women. I'll send a copy of The Convict's Sword to the first person who tells me the name of either one of the Heian's two best-known writers and the work for which she is known today.

=================

We have a winner! A reader from British Columbia knew that one of the titles was that beguiling book of aesthetic contemplation, refined complaining and palace gossip, The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon. The other is The Tale of Genji of Lady Murasaki Shikibu. Your prize will be on its way soon. Enjoy it, and thanks to all who entered.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Japanese “New Traditionalism,” plus the traditional question for readers

I’ve just read another intriguing story in the Passport to Crime collection, assembled by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine from the magazine’s feature of the same name. The story, “An Urban Legend Puzzle” by Norizuki Rintaro, much-honored in Japan, is billed as an homage to Ellery Queen and an example of a “New Traditionalist” movement in Japanese crime writing “in which puzzle construction is key.”

It’s a beautifully paced story, the father-and-son, police inspector-and-mystery writer team playing off one another, their successive accounts and theories of a murder at a student party building toward the theory that proves correct. That's apparently the way it was done in the Ellery Queen stories, which I may just have to investigate now that I've read one of their descendants. More broadly, the crime tale whose action consists in characters telling a story goes back before Ellery Queen to Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin. This site proposes yet another plausible influence on “An Urban Legend Puzzle”: Seicho Matsumoto.

I found the blend of venerable technique and thoroughly modern characters (cell phones, drugs, stress) bracing, and if that’s what “New Traditionalism” means, I want to read more of it. And here’s your question, readers: What crime stories can you think of, thoroughly modern stories, not deliberate nostalgia pieces, that nonetheless hark back in some way to older crime fiction?
====================

Competition update: A reader from the Isle of Wight is the first winner of Jo Nesbø's The Redbreast. You can win a copy, too, simply by telling me which Norwegian politician's name became a synonym for traitor thanks to his collaboration in the Nazi occupation of Norway. Read more about The Redbreast — and find a clue to the competition question — here. (Geographical restrictions apply. Winners must have postal addresses in the UK, Europe, the Commonwealth or Canada.)

Send your answers to detectivesbeyondborders("@" symbol)earthlink.net.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Calling all sociologists …

… especially if your area is East Asian studies. After a long, drama-packed, psychologically compelling buildup, a murder has finally been committed in Akimitsu Takagi’s The Informer. The first named police officer on the scene is a chief detective, followed only afterward by the homicide inspector who takes charge of the investigation.

Here is where the sociology comes in. The motif of a superior officer given unexpected priority repeats a pattern I’ve noticed in my admittedly limited experience of Japanese crime stories. In Akira Kurosawa’s movie Stray Dog, the senior officer, played by Takashi Shimura, guides the junior, played by Toshiro Mifune, investigating with him, interrogating with him, and keeping him in line. If my memory serves me well, a senior officer also plays an especially prominent role in at least one of Seicho Matsumoto’s novels as well.

These instances all seemed a contrast to what I'm accustomed to, in which a police novel has one lead investigator. In the case of The Informer, the contrast with American and British police procedurals seemed especially marked. In murder mysteries from the U.K. or America, if any police are named as appearing on the scene before the lead homicide investigator, they are likelier to be of lower rank, a patrolman or a constable, rather than higher.

Your job, readers, is to help me figure out if this means anything and, if so, what? Does it reflect differences between Japanese and Western police procedures? Differences in the way Japanese storytellers think about authority? Is it even typical of Japanese stories at all, or is it just a quirk of the few that I know?

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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The business of crime and the crimes of business – Akimitsu Takagi’s The Informer

I’m just a few chapters into this 1965 mystery of murder and industrial espionage, but it took far less than that to see how skillfully Takagi humanizes what could easily be a remote subject. The protagonist, a disgraced former stockbroker named Shigeo Sagawa, has an endearing love for the market, so much so that a reader may almost feel sorry for him now that he can no longer trade shares.

His readiness to jump from self-pity to a willingness to betray friends, sometimes within the space of a single sentence, makes him a character of compellingly human weakness. No doubt this will tighten the emotional screws on the reader once the schemes into which Sagawa lets himself be manipulated slip beyond his control.

And here’s where you come in, readers. By coincidence, perhaps, the only other business-crime story that comes immediately to mind is also Japanese – Akira Kurosawa’s movie The Bad Sleep Well. Since I’m such a newcomer to the world of business as a setting for crime stories, I’ll ask you to help me out. What other crime novels, movies or stories have used the corporate world as a setting? What makes these stories work? And, if they are primarily crime stories rather than thrillers – and don’t ask me to define that term here – what makes them so?

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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What knowledge does a detective gain ...

... by solving a crime? If you answer that he or she learns who did it, odds are that the most recent crime fiction you've read was not by Janwillem van de Wetering, particularly not his 1985 collection Inspector Saito’s Small Satori.

Van de Wetering, author of the Amsterdam Cops novels and stories, travels to Japan for these tales, and his protagonist, a brilliant young police inspector, is even more prone than are the three Amsterdam cops to amused – or bemused – contemplation of his own existence and the jobs he must carry out:

"He had, in a way, been promoted. He was still an ordinary inspector, of course, but he had been nudged up the ladder. And the door had his name on it – SAITO MASANOBU – in bright brown characters.

“He sat down and frowned. It would be nice if he had something to do.”

Saito is stationed in Kyoto, city of Zen Buddhist temples, at one of which Van de Wetering himself studied for two years. The Zen program apparently involves much meditation and, though Saito himself does not practice, he seems to have gained such insights as meditation might bring.

A monk in the collection’s title story, confronted with evidence that he has murdered a woman, says quietly that he wishes to kill himself out of shame. Saito replies just as quietly, in essence, what would that solve?

“`Yes,' Ohno said. `You were right, Inspector-san. It was silly of me to consider my shame and to respond to that shame. I am what I am and I will continue from the point where I find myself. … There will be good points later on, and they won’t matter so much either. Ha!'

“Saito grinned. The priest’s words had helped him to make the grin break through … And he realized that he didn’t care about his successful investigation … The priest’s shame was as much of an illusion as his own fame. He felt much relieved, lightheaded. The grin spread over his face. ‘Ha!’ The laugh was as carefree as Ohno’s laugh has been.”

The mystery, in the traditional mystery-story sense, is not the real mystery – and this in a story that meets all traditional mystery requirements.

And now, readers, your question: Van de Wetering’s stories offer an insight into an unfamiliar way of thinking, or at least into one man’s wrestling with such thinking. What crime fiction has given you similar insights?

(Photo of Ryoan-ji, the Temple of the Peaceful Dragon, © Copyright 2007 Roy Tennant, FreeLargePhotos.com).

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Happy birthday to this blog, plus a note on Tokyo Year Zero

Today is the first anniversary of the first Detectives Beyond Borders post, which I mention because I have read that few blogs last this long. Mine, I think, is beyond the teething stage by now and is even walking on its own. So, thanks to all of you who have read and commented over the past twelve months. Keep on doing it, and tell your friends, colleagues and loved ones to join you.

I begin the new blog year with another post about Tokyo Year Zero, this time about its technique. Author David Peace has interpolated memories, presumably the narrator's, and sound effects of the decaying and rebuilding Tokyo into the novel's text. The interpolations are set in italic type, which fairly screams Technique! The same is the case with the frequent repetition of sentences, sometimes with minor variants in word order.

But Peace has put the technique to exceedingly good use. The constant ton-ton-ton-ton of hammers and the repetition are highly effective ways of translating the noise, squalor and monotony of a war-ravaged city into terms a reader can understand and feel. The devices are far more effective than exclusively descriptive passages would be, though Peace offers plenty of those, too, and does it well. Peace makes the squalor a part of the very texture of the narrative. He does as good a job of describing war's effects on people's minds and daily lives as does Yasmina Khadra in Morituri.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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History, mystery, and crime in Japan

History and crime fiction have been topics of discussion here in recent days, and the trend continues thanks to an interview included with a review copy of Tokyo Year Zero.

Author David Peace talks about the novel and two further novels on which he is working, each of which was inspired by real crimes that happened during the American occupation of Japan after World War II. Peace says the second of those two books is based on the Shimoyama incident of 1949, in which the head of the Japanese National Railroad was found dead next to train tracks in Tokyo.

And that's where I felt I'd gained a bit of insight into modern Japanese history. Seicho Matsumoto, the celebrated Japanese crime novelist, wrote non-fiction works about the Shimoyama case, and his novels are marked by train trips and by bodies found under trains.

Peace also talks about the title Tokyo Year Zero and the dual sense it conveys of utter devastation but also of a new beginning. This and the criminal subject matter conjure inevitable memories of Akira Kurosawa's great crime movie Stray Dog.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Asia crime fiction
David Peace
Seicho Matsumoto
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A top-ten list of crime fiction from Asia

I meant to post this one a week ago. Catherine Sampson, who knows something about the subject, writes in the Guardian about her ten favorite crime novels set in Asia. Tops on her list: Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong. She also includes the worthy Inspector Imanishi Investigates by Seicho Matsumoto, whom I've mentioned several times here and whose novel Points and Lines I discussed, with Death of a Red Heroine, in the very first Detectives Beyond Borders post.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007