Who is your favorite trained, professional, but normal crime-fiction protagonist?

"I don't care for amateur sleuth stories, but characters such as this—a trained, yet normal person—are not common enough."

That's what author/reader/friend of Detectives Beyond Borders Dana King wrote in a reply to my comments about Owen Laukkanen's co-protagonists. I had written that

"Laukkanen offers as protagonists a married, male, mid-career state police officer and a beautiful, younger female FBI agent who wind up on the road a lot as the crimes cross state lines. Romantic tension? Sure, but no soap opera, no mid-life crisis, no over-the-top, should-I-or-shouldn't-I angst. Laukkanen's Officer/Agent Stevens is much closer to Brian McGilloway's Benedict Devlin than he is to the male crime protagonists who lie by your bed in messy, unhappy, poorly dressed, divorced, alcoholic heaps."

That's two authors whose main law enforcement characters are highly trained professionals, skilled at what they do and yet believable without going over the top into domestic bathos. Their domestic lives are more than window-dressing. They're heroes and believable characters at the same time.  Stuart M. Kaminsky's Abe Lieberman was like this. Helene Tursten tried for such a balance in the first of her novels about the Swedish police inspector Irene Huss to be translated into English and achieved it in the third, The Glass Devil.

What other crime-fiction characters achieve that delicate balance?

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Finn du siècle, or Owen Laukkanen's balancing act

Finno-Canadian, really, but who's counting?

I very briefly regretted reading The Professionals, Owen Laukkanen's first novel, only after I'd read (and thought highly of) his second, Criminal Enterprise. References in the second book rob the first of a bit of its suspense. But I quickly adjusted and concentrated on how Laukkanen built that character in a way that held my interest even though I knew more or less what would happen to him.

Built is an important word in this discussion because Laukkanen assembles his ingredients with the care of a skilled pastry chef, though the result is a pretty explosive pastry.

Here's what I mean: The kidnappers in The Professionals (like the bank robber in Criminal Enterprise) turn to crime because their college educations are useless in today's job market. Laukkanen gives us enough of that background to distinguish them from other fictional criminals, but not so much that he whacks us over the head with sociology.

On the right side of the law, Laukkanen offers as protagonists a married, male, mid-career state police officer and a beautiful, younger female FBI agent who wind up on the road a lot as the crimes cross state lines. Romantic tension? Sure, but no soap opera, no mid-life crisis, no over-the-top, should-I-or-shouldn't-I angst. Laukkanen's Officer/Agent Stevens is much closer to Brian McGilloway's Benedict Devlin than he is to the male crime protagonists who lie by your bed in messy, unhappy, poorly dressed, divorced, alcoholic heaps. Stevens is an ordinary guy occasionally called upon to do extraordinary things. And then are the two rich college girls who fall in with the gang and don't do quite what one might expect without, however, behaving exactly counter to type, either.

But really, the books are thrillers. Heists happen, cops investigate, and Laukkanen lets us know just enough about each to hold our interest until the two collide.

(Laukkanen's third novel, Kill Fee, is due for release in March.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Props for Laukkanen, plus an aside on Bouchercon book bags

I've finished my first piece of post-Bouchercon reading, and it was good.

Owen Laukkanen's second novel, Criminal Enterprise, has me wanting to read his first, The Professionals, and his third, due out next year. Criminal Enterprise does some familiar crime-fiction tricks well, and it rings refreshing changes on others. It manages the considerable feat of keeping all its subplots interesting, and its twists are surprising but plausible.

I had heard of Laukkanen, but it was Eric Beetner's Noir at the Bar-style open readings at Bouchercon that got me reading him, and he's my top discovery of Bouchercon 2103 so far.

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Don 't laugh, but the Bouchercon book bag, given to each attendee and containing programs, award ballots, and books, was pretty cool this year. After six years of attending conventions, I'll never need to buy a shopping, beach, or laundry bag again. But this year's model was shaped like a miniature duffel bag or an enlarged version of those old-time flight bags that airlines used to give passengers. It's perfect for carrying a computer, one's lunch, and a few books.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Owen Laukkanen and the Finno-Canadian crime fiction explosion: The first five pages

I've begun remedying an unfortunate dearth of Finno-Canadian crime writers in my reading background, and if Owen Laukkanen's second novel, Criminal Enterprise, is any guide, Finno-Canadian crime writing could be the next big thing.

I say that after having read just five pages, and even if the rest of the book falls short, that beginning proves conclusively that the man has chops.  The first chapter is a bank robbery carried out with crisp precision that ought to delight fans of Richard Stark's Parker novels, but its climax shows that Laukkanen can write fear. I don't mean cheap titillation, I mean the kind of fear that induces pity for the victim without the slightest hint of dirty voyeuristic titillation. Laukkanen is a little like Allan Guthrie that way.

Chapter Two begins with a brilliant, subtle bit of trickery on Laukkanen's part that plays on crime readers' genre expectations and will very likely resonate through the book. I can't reveal it here, so you'll have to read the book yourself. But do so soon. My patience won't last forever.

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Laukkanen is one of the writers I met at the just-concluded Bouchercon 2013. There's more to Bouchercon than gin. Meeting, discovering, and mingling with new writers is really what it's all about.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Bouchercon Day 3: McFetridge and Lansdale; Laukkanen, King, and Anonymous-9

After Bouchercon

From the perspective of 6:20 p.m., Saturday's 8 o'clock breakfast with the people who put together Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine seems a disorientingly distant memory, so it's time for a revitalizing nap before dinner. (This is Bouchercon; everybody takes naps at Bouchercon.)

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Ah, that's better.

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Saturday's panel on villains included this from Joe R. Lansdale:

"You're pulling something out of yourself. ... You're trying to bring humanity to the villain."

and

"You shouldn't try to write people as villains to begin with.  You should write stories that unfold in a certain way."

And this from DBB friend John McFetridge, who said his villains:

"See themselves as breaking laws, but they see the laws as kind of temporary."

North flank of Empire State Plaza, whose conference
center is the home of Bouchercon 2013.

That was more than just a laugh line. McFetridge told of seeing university buildings named for Canadian brewers who made their money shipping beer into the United States during Prohibition, even altering the shapes of the bottles to make smuggling easier. The drug smugglers in his books, he said, fully expect one day to see the BC Bud School of Finance.

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I bought novels by Owen Laukkanen and Anonymous-9 after hearing them read during Bouchercon's author's choice sessions, which concluded with Dana King's passionate and eloquent defense of Raymond Chandler's championing of conduct not merely heroic but honorable. King is a fine crime writer. He'd also make a good university lecturer, and I was proud to have had him as a member of my noir and hard-boiled panel earlier in the convention.

Ali Karim, Roger Ellory, and your humble blogkeeper.
(Photo by Ursula)

© Peter Rozovsky 2013