Anne Holt, or which crime writers should be in politics?

Anne Holt (Photo for Detectives 
Beyond Borders by Peter Rozovsky)

Kati Hiekkapelto said during a panel on Morality, Society And Justice In Crime Fiction at Crimefest 2016 in Bristol last week that laws were made for middle-class white people. Anne Holt disagreed, invoking the Ten Commandments in citing laws as setting standards toward which humans can aspire.

Anyone with a cursory knowledge of the two authors' résumés might expect as much: Hiekkapelto is an activist for immigrants' and refugees' rights when she's not writing her Anna Fekete crime novels, and Holt's CV includes a stint as Norway's minister of justice. It would be easy to tag Hiekkapelto as the rebel and Holt as the representative of the establishment, especially by the constricted standards of what passes for political discourse in the United States.

One could almost think that Fear Not, whose plot turns in part on an asylum seeker's death, is a Hiekkapelto novel. But it's not; Holt wrote it. Elsewhere during Crimefest, Holt said she bristled at descriptions of her as leftist. Instead, she said, her political passion is human rights.  That tells me that she's no doctrinaire politician, and Wikipedia describes her party, Norway's Labour Party, as social-democratic.

Wouldn't it be cool if Holt were American? She could run for office as a Democrat, and Republicans would find it difficult to attack a candidate who cited the Ten Commandments among the touchstones of her conception of the law.  Even a Republican Senate might be unable to stonewall her nomination forever. And wouldn't it be nice to have a crime writer in the cabinet or the White House?

I wrote after last month's Edgar Awards that Walter Mosley and Sara Paretsky might make a good president-vice president ticket. Anne Holt, provided she could get the citizenship thing straightened out, could be attorney general. What crime writers would you like to see as presidents, prime ministers, or heads of government departments? Call it the Shadow cabinet.

© Peter Rozovsky 2016

Paul Hardisty, plus the covers of Crimefest

Paul Hardisty at Crimefest
2015, photo by your
humble blogkeeper

Paul Hardisty's books include The Economics of Groundwater Remediation and Protection, Environmental and Economic Sustainability (Environmental and Ecological Risk Assessment), e-Study Guide for Environmental and Economic Sustainability, and The Abrupt Physics of Dying.

 I don't know about the first three, but ...Abrupt Physics..., Hardisty's first novel, reminds me a bit of Patricia Highsmith's The Tremor of Forgery or Pater Rabe's The Box.  The book is that good at evoking the sense of being lost in a hot country one is alternately sure one knows well, and despairs of ever knowing.  A bit of Graham Greene in there, too?

The land is Yemen, the protagonist an engineer in country to check water quality for an oil company, and you know what happens next: restive tribesmen, a violent and oppressive central government,  a venal corporation,  a military veteran questioning his own past, a— but I don't want to make the book sound more melodramatic than it is, because Hardisty portrays the milieu (its rugged topography and, in judicious glimpses, its history) so well. Now, let's see how he handles the book's recently introduced potential romantic interest.

*

Clash of titles.

I met Hardisty at the recent Crimefest 2015 in Bristol, as I did the authors of the books pictured at left.

Another novel I bought at Crimefest, by another author I had not previously known, is The Human Flies, by Hans Olav Lahlum. Since Lahlum sets the book in Oslo, I feel an urge to call it East Side of Norway Story. I don't know why.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015 

Crime writers and reviewers, as they looked at Crimefest 2015

Martin Edwards

Kati Hiekkapelto

Ali Karim

Jake Kerridge

Anthony Quinn

Gunnar Staalesen

Steve Cavanagh

Ruth Dudley Edwards

Hans Olav Lahlum

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

Crimefest and tonic

I can't quite remember the sequence of events, and I'm not sure I have all the names straight, but suffice it to say that the first day of Crimefest Bristol has restored my faith in the rationality of the human species. And that's pretty good for a crime convention's first day.

Kati Hiekkapelto, Ragnar Jonasson 

at Friday's debut authors panel.

More to follow after the pitifully meager amount of sleep that remains to me before tomorrow's panels.

Among the day's discoveries--possibly foremost among them--is that 160 ml. of tonic mixed with the gin is the perfect amount for an exquisite Hendrick's and tonic, a conclusion verified repeatedly beyond all possibility of statistical error.

Ali Karim

I have enjoyed being carried along in Ali Karim's wake, and have also had the pleasure of meeting Craig Sisterson in person, years after serving as a judge for him in New Zealand's Ngaio Marsh crime fiction awards.

I also met up with Western Australia's Alan Carter, and thanks to David Whish-Wilson for letting me know about him. Alan: I missed your panel this morning, but I bought Getting Warmer. Stop me if you see me, and I'll ask you to sign it.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015