"In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt" *

Michael Walters takes us to Mongolia for an opposing view to that put forth by the pro-spring lobby.

* — Margaret Atwood

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Dewy-eyed Mongolians

Michael Walters explores the soft heart of Mongolia in another post about odd happenings in the world's nineteenth-largest nation. Actually, his comment concerns Mongolians who leave home, specifically for the Czech Republic, which they apparently have done in numbers large enough to make them that country's second-largest Asian community after Vietnamese, according to an article in the Prague Daily Monitor.

In a story sadly frequent throughout the world, it transpires that many of these Mongolians are left in the lurch by fradulent promises of work papers and residency documents. Mongolians are relatively easy to cheat "because many of them are dewy-eyed," the article says, quoting the Czech paper Právo.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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Mining for crime fiction in Mongolia

I don't normally read interviews with general secretaries of people's revolutionary parties, but Michael Walters links to one such interview, from the Moscow News, with Yondon Otgonbayar of Mongolia, that might be of interest to crime-fiction readers of an international bent.

Potential crime and crime-thriller stories fairly jump out: about resentment over incursion of foreign investment combined with eagerness for such investment; about natural resources, and not just of a mineral kind; and all with the looking presence of Mongolia's huge neighbors, China and Russia. There is an unexpected bit of wry humor, too, when the secretary remarks apropos of another of Mongolia's trading partners that Ulan Bator is probably the only capital city in the world with more Korean than Chinese restaurants.

Economic upheaval is in full force in many places, and that's always good for crime fiction, if sometimes uncomfortable and worse for those who live through it. Read the interview and spot the potential Mongolian crime stories in it. While you're at it, what other crime fiction trends or stories may have been sparked, a la Ireland, by money and economic success? What countries and regions are fertile ground for such stories in the future?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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Judging a cover by its book

Michael Walters’ blog links to this fascinating analysis of book-jacket design, in this case for the U.S. edition of Walters’ own novel The Shadow Walker. The designer/illustrator/blogger in question, Richard Tuschman, walks the reader through jacket design in a way I suspect you will find most enlightening. Needless to say, his blog looks good, too.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Mongolia is coming to America

Michael Walters reports on his blog that his novel The Shadow Walker is to be published in the United States by Berkley Books in 2008.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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More Mongolia and one more question for readers

I've finished Michael Walters' The Shadow Walker and, as in last week's comment, I'll say a word or two about settings.

My earlier comment discussed Clive James' occasionally simplistic view of crime novels set in far-flung climes, expressed in a New Yorker article in May called "Blood on the Borders." His thesis is that since crime novels have nothing new to say, their authors instead offer colorful views of their homelands. ("In most of the crime novels coming out now, it’s a matter not of what happens but of where. Essentially, they are guidebooks.”)

I'll save the question of whether crime novels are outmoded for later. The other half of James' assertion is easier to deal with. His guidebooks comparison conjures up visions of picturesque settings, when, in fact, setting can be more sophisticated than that. Sure, Walters' novel offers an occasional marvel at Mongolia's splendid isolation, including this, about a tourist camp in the Gobi:

There are also occasional observations about older residents in traditional robes mingling with younger people in western dress and, as I mentioned last week, of traditional Mongolian tents called gers incongruously co-existing with modern apartment blocks. I liked the observations, but I'll give Clive James the benefit of the doubt; they have a whiff of the guidebook about them.

"Holiday camps?" Drew said. "In the desert?"

"Well, you could perhaps think of it as a large beach," Nergui smiled. "Though I admit it's a long walk to the sea."

Not so for the novel's musing on the effects of capitalism on the environment and economy of the once-communist Mongolia. Nor is it the case for the unusual position in which the chief investigator, Nergui, finds himself, as a mix of police officer, diplomat and commercial and industrial relations specialist. Mongolia's rapidly modernizing economy is responsible for this mix of roles, and Walters make it a plot element.

Wearing his police hat, Nergui is resigned to the occasional blundering and ethical lapses of his colleagues, and this, too, is no mere narrative guidebook description. Rather, Walters presents it as the inevitable result of a sudden necessity for a professional police force, unnecessary when the army exercised police functions. The main plot, too, is tied closely to current conditions in Mongolia, involving as it does international struggles over rights to the country's extensive mineral wealth.

Yes, these are all aspects of setting, but they're hardly guidebook stuff. They're part of why I'd recommend The Shadow Walker as a story of, and not just a guidebook to, Mongolia.

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The question: Clive James called current crime novels "essentially ... guidebooks." What crime stories have you read where setting overwhelmed plot, where the story was lost amid the colorful sights?

© Peter Rozovsky 2007
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A mystery from Mongolia and a question for readers

Clive James told the world five months ago that crime fiction had run its course. “(T)here are only so many storylines and patterns of conflict,” he wrote in the New Yorker. “The only workable solution has been to shift the reader’s involvement from the center to the periphery: to the location. In most of the crime novels coming out now, it’s a matter not of what happens but of where. Essentially, they are guidebooks.”

Among the valid rejoinders is “So what?” A story can do worse than introduce a reader to an unfamiliar location. An author can do worse than explore a strange, new land and let the reader experience vicariously the strange newness. Once upon a time, that was one of the things stories were supposed to do.

I suspect that for most readers, setting will not come much stranger or newer than Michael Walters' Mongolia. In The Shadow Walker, a visiting investigator glimpses traditional nomadic camps as his plane descends over Ulan Bataar's airport. Minutes later, he is jarred by the contrast with the customs formalities and baggage carousels in the terminal.

Later, two Mongolian detectives meet in one of Ulan Bataar's new American-style coffee houses, and:

Sure, the opening chapters may contain more exposition than some crime novels, but why not? Walters is exploring interesting territory, so I don't mind that he stops now and then to tell me about it. Besides, he breaks the telling into small, unobtrusive chunks.

The killings have just begun, and the major complications have not yet started. So far, though, I like what Walters is showing me.
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I said that Mongolia would likely be a new and strange setting for most crime-fiction readers. What new, unexpected, surprising or exotic crime-fiction settings have caught your attention? And why?

© Peter Rozovsky 2007
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Nergui looked with some displeasure at the large foaming cup that Doripalam placed in front of him. “This isn't coffee,” he said. “It's a nursery drink.”

Doripalam shrugged. “It's what the Americans drink. Apparently.”

“So we must get used to it.” Nergui took a mouthful and grimaced. “Though that may take some time, I think. But thank you anyway."

A land of mystery

From the redoubtable Euro Crime comes this note about The Shadow Walker by Michael Walters. Why do I mention this? Because the novel (along with the same author's The Adversary) has an unusual setting: Mongolia.