Fall Preview 2014: Part Three

Most of the time, I like to read about all kinds of excitement that takes place far away from my back yard. This fall, my reading wish list will take me across the pond to some foreign locations I would like to visit someday in person.

It’s always nice to see a few new books coming out from both Francophiles written in English and works written in French and translated. My list has one of each of these.

I first encountered the charismatic Antoine Verlaque in M. L. Longworth's Death at the Chateau Bremont, the first in a series set in Provence. He is the Chief Investigating Magistrate of Aix, and he and an old friend of his, law professor Marine Bonnet, teamed up to solve the murder of two brothers. I'm looking forward to the fourth mystery in the series, Murder on the Île Sordou (Penguin, September 30). Verlaque and Bonnet are taking a vacation on a small island off the coast of Marseilles, where they are staying at a 1960s retro hotel. This turns out to be no vacation from crime, though. The hotel is filled with interesting company, including poets, actors, some Americans and the inevitable rude person. I'll let you guess who the murder victim is.

Just like the surroundings, the answer to the puzzles lie in the past. This should be a nice way to spend a fall weekend.

While you are in France, you might as well take a short jaunt over to Paris, because this next author writes novels with an authentic feel of Paris; its streets, its neighborhoods, and the way its police work, as well as the life on the streets.

Frédérique Molay's first book, The 7^th Woman, took France by storm in 2006 and it was finally translated into English by Anne Trager in 2012. Next in the series is Crossing the Line (translated from the French by Anne Trager; Le French Book, September 23).

The Molay books feature super cop Chief of Police Nico Sirsky, who heads the top criminal investigation division in Paris, "La Crim." Sirsky is just returning to work after recovering from a gunshot wound. It is Christmas now in Paris, and Sirsky has romance on his mind. But his first day back at work sets him on the trail of a jewel thief, as well as dealing with a very peculiar disturbing message in a severed head. As in any busy metropolitan police station, the crimes begin to pile up and the crack homicide detectives have their work cut out for them as they work to distinguish the naughty from the nice.

If you have a craving for a bit of la dolce vita, including skiing, as well as après ski with wine, pasta and skullduggery, take a look at David P. Wagner's Death in the Dolomites (Poisoned Pen Press, September 8), which is also on the fall menu.

This is the second in a series featuring Rick Montoya, who is a 30-something American with a mother from Rome and an American father, from New Mexico. Rick has chosen to live in Rome and makes his living as a translator. But in this story, he is taking a break from his translating business to meet Flavio, a friend from his University of New Mexico days, for a skiing vacation.

It doesn't matter exactly what time of year it is in the Dolomites, which are in the southern alpine area, because it snows early and often. Many of the villages in these parts have prospered in the postwar days from flatlanders of many sorts, mostly skiers and hikers. Now, heavy snows have brought Rick and Flavio, but also criminals, who have found that deep crevasses are ideal for hiding bodies.

When an important banker goes missing, Rick's uncle, who is a policeman in Rome, asks him to aid the local police. A body found on the slopes happens to be an American. Rick is in the perfect spot to exercise his amateur sleuthing abilities. There are beautiful women, hair-raising escapades and more to entertain Rick before his adventure is over.

There are plenty of reasons to visit Denmark via crime books, and Jussi Adler-Olsen's Department Q books are among the best. These mysteries feature Chief Detective Carl Mørck, who used to be one of Copenhagen's best homicide detectives. After he was almost killed in an incident in which two of his colleagues were killed, he lost heart because he blamed himself.

When he returned to work, he was given a new assignment to investigate cold cases. He understood just how important his new job was when he was allotted a broom closet in the basement for his new office. After he finally finagled a computer and an assistant, he settled back to put his feet up and snooze his life away. Somehow it doesn't work out that way.

Mørck's assistant, Assad, is a wannabe Sherlock Holmes and Department Q, as it is termed, becomes successful. Eventually, Department Q gets another assistant, Rose, and a new boss.

Jussi Adler-Olsen's fifth Department Q novel is The Marco Effect (Dutton, September 9). The Marco of the title is Marco Jameson, a 15-year-old gypsy boy who has been forced to beg and steal from his infancy by his evil uncle Zola. But Marco has dreams of leaving this dreadful life. His uncle has plans to cripple him to keep him under his thumb, but Marco flees.

When Marco sees a poster of a missing man, he realizes that he has seen him before and he may have information that would be helpful to the police––and may save his own life. Department Q and Marco together make a case that leads from Denmark to Africa, from low to high, and who knows to what ends. This is powerful stuff. More than enough to get Mørck juiced up.

Since I am always looking for more exotic locations as backdrops to murder, I am looking forward to Deon Meyer's new book, Cobra (Atlantic Monthly Press, October 7). Meyer's books are not for the faint of heart. They take place in South Africa––post-apartheid, but not post- cruelty, murder, fear and desperation. Into this mix comes Benny Greissel, who has hit bottom and bounced a few times, a police detective in a force that is undermanned and undertrained, while at the same time at odds with private security agencies with their own agendas and a citizenry that is as lawless as the Wild West.

In Cobra, Benny is part of a multiracial, multicultural, multilingual team called the Hawks. They are an elite team tracking a professional hit man who leaves a calling card at the site of each hit––a cartridge engraved with a spitting cobra. Benny and crew are not exactly sure who's against them; the top brass of the police themselves, Britain's MI6, or South Africa's own State Security Agency. Besides these, Benny has his own demons to battle. This story looks like a wild pulse-pumping ride that has heart attack written all over it.

One place that has always intrigued me, but I have never really wanted to visit there in any frigate except a book, is that lonely and seemingly desolate Himalayan country, Tibet. The novels that have been my main introduction to that remote place are those by Eliot Pattison, featuring ex-police Inspector Shan Tao Yun, who spent his early days in Tibet in a gulag aerie among imprisoned monks whom the Chinese were trying to reeducate––or else. Pattison's latest offering, like those before, is a mirror of the struggle of the indomitable Tibetans to retain their culture and autonomy.

In Soul of the Fire (Minotaur Books, November 25), Shan and his friend Lokesh, whom he met originally in prison, are grabbed by the Chinese authorities. Despite their fear that their subversive activities of aiding the Tibetans have been discovered, they keep their calm. Shan's fear turns to confusion when he finds that he has been put on a special international commission to investigate Tibetan suicides, then to dismay when he begins to discover that some of these suicides are indeed murders. Unfortunately, the imprisonment of Lokesh is being used as a pawn to deter Shan's investigations.

I expect that this latest novel, like all of Pattison's stories, will take you in its grip and stir you up. You might be reminded of what a varied and complicated world there is out there.

There are more upcoming books I want to tell you about, a good many of them from the British Isles. I'll fill you in soon about them.

Here's to You, Dad

A new tie. Hand-lettered cards. Blueberry pancakes served in bed. Yep, it's Father's Day today.

I make no accusations, but my daughter's flu is well timed. I'll take her place in the obligatory Father's Day golf game with her dad; Dear Hubby's tact will get a lot of exercise. After dinner, we'll grab bowls of popcorn and watch the 1944 movie Laura, in which a homicide detective falls for the woman whose murder he's investigating.

Throughout the day, my thoughts will drift to my own dad. We were close and shared a love of dogs, horses, wildlife, baseball, and reading. When I contemplate the books below, his voice is in my ears.

"Let's practice staying out of trouble." Compared to Adrian McKinty's Michael Forsythe, I need practice getting into trouble.

Adrian McKinty: Dead I Well May Be (2003). A vengeance-filled tale confided by Michael, a young thug who reluctantly flees the Troubles of Belfast in 1992 for New York City, where his fighting skills and cool head come in handy against Dominicans encroaching on the drug turf of Irish gangster Darkey White. All goes swimmingly until Michael can't stay away from Bridget, White's girl. White does something about this, forcing Michael to do something about that. This great series debut is darker and more violent than Dennis Lehane's Depression-era mobsters book, Live by Night (see here for review).

"She looks like she's been dragged through the hedge backwards." I'm sure Deon Meyer's Emma le Roux feels that way, too.

Deon Meyer: Blood Safari (2009). A tense standalone thriller, set primarily in South Africa's wildlife preserves, exploring that country's contemporary social issues and political history. Narrator Lemmer is a tough professional bodyguard who's never (1) lost a client, or (2) become personally involved with one. His record is challenged when he's hired by Emma, a Cape Town ad consultant recently targeted by violence, as she investigates the identity of a man wanted for the murder of four poachers. She thinks it could be her brother Jacobus, who disappeared from Kruger National Park 20 years ago. Writer Meyer's exotic landscape is populated by strong characters, vividly described.

"I'm not sleeping; I'm just resting my eyes." Take a gander at a Kafkaesque insomniac who has vanished from his Paris apartment.

Georges Perec: A Void (1994). You'll have to read it to believe it, but Frenchman Perec, a member of Oulipo, a group of mathematicians and writers who put constraints on their work to foster creativity, used no letter "e" in his 300-page book, and translator Gilbert Adair managed the same astonishing feat in English. This has amusing consequences, as the friends of missing Anton Vowl search for clues in his diary and notebooks, which contain e-less excerpts from Hamlet's soliloquies ("Living or not living: that is what I ask") and Poe ("Quoth that Black Bird, 'Not Again'"). Their investigations—interrupted by deaths—provide very satisfying entertainment for people who love words and highly original writing.

"You kids learn to get along." This was difficult for us war-mongering siblings; however, tattling or whining to Mom or Dad was discouraged by them and strictly taboo among us. If threatened by outside disaster, we sibs always closed ranks.

Tanizaki Jun’ichirō: The Makioka Sisters (Japan, serially in the 1940s; the USA, 1957). Set against the backdrop of the Second Sino-Japanese War and pending World War II, this is the poignant tale of a wealthy Osaka family who tries to find an acceptable husband for the third sister, as Japan modernizes and their finances and social standing decline. According to custom, Yukiko Makioka, a shy and obedient woman now age 30, must wed before the much more westernized and rebellious fourth sister, Taeko, who already has a secret, unsuitable boyfriend. Both Yukiko and Taeko live with second sister Sachiko, a very caring woman, and her husband; the oldest sister, Tsuroko, refuses to acknowledge her family's deteriorating fortunes while she and her husband move to Tokyo. Watching these sisters maneuver through these perilously changing times makes unforgettable reading.

My dad had so many admonitions for me involving my mother, ranging from "Don't talk back to your mother" to "Ask your mother," I hardly know which to choose. I'll settle for one of my favs, "We won't worry your mother about this." She would think this book very strange.

Sergio De La Pava: A Naked Singularity (self-published, 2008; Univ. of Chicago, 2012). At the center of this nearly 700-page book of difficult-to-convey bizarreness is the son of Colombian immigrants, our narrator Casi, a perfectionistic and obsessional New York public defender, who has never lost in court. Then he does, and a lawyer colleague has an interesting proposition. In a way, this novel is a compelling––albeit satiric––legal thriller, as Casi grasps at justice for his beleaguered clients and works on behalf of a mentally handicapped man sitting on death row in Alabama; yet, as if our justice system doesn't contain enough room for all the absurdity and existential angst, there are many, many digressions into philosophy, television, boxing, and who knows what all. I'm still reading it, but I can tell you this: it's an entertaining book for those who enjoy unconventional writing and unique voices. For fans of David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon et al. If it takes a straightforward plot to please you, look elsewhere for fun.

"I'm not going to tell you again." But he did. Certain issues came up over and over. Man, considering our incorrigible natures, my patient, yet determined dad did wonders with his kids.

S. T. Haymon: Ritual Murder (1982). Haymon's writing is always clear and elegant; she liked to juxtapose an odd murder and an alien setting, such as a stately home, a cathedral, or a museum. In this second series book, Haymon creates copy-cat victims separated by centuries when the mutilated body of Anglebury choirboy Arthur Cossey is found in the excavated tomb of Little St. Ulf, a 12th-century victim of ritual murder. Appealing Det. Inspector Ben Jurnet, who's preparing to marry Miriam and despises the nickname "Valentino," and his Welsh sergeant begin with the question of child molestation before their suspenseful investigation moves to issues of anti-Semitism and drug trafficking. Fans of Ruth Rendell, P. D. James, Batya Gur, Deborah Crombie, or Caroline Graham should check out the Jurnet series, which begins with Death and the Pregnant Virgin.

"Good night, sleep tight./ Don’t let the bedbugs bite./ And if they do/ Then take your shoe/ And knock 'em 'til/ They’re black and blue!" Dad, I wish you could have met hit woman Clara Rinker.

John Sandford: Mortal Prey (2002). We follow two story lines in a furious game of cat-and-mouse between a smart and lucky lawman and an obsessed, cold-eyed killer, who've met and like each other. After nearly killing Minneapolis cop Lucas Davenport in 1999's Certain Prey, Clara ends up in Mexico. A botched attempt to kill her is fatal to her fiancé and unborn child. Assuming the triggerman was hired by four old employers, a seething Clara sets on a rampage through St. Louis, Missouri. The FBI drags Lucas away from his preparations for a new job, house construction, and wedding to aid their agents there. This is the 13th book in Sandford's Prey series, but there's not a speck of staleness to be found. Gotta love Lucas, a warm and generous hulk, who sold the role-playing game he developed, and now drives a Porsche and indulges his taste in clothes. I rooted for Lucas and Clara, as I did for both cat and mouse in Owen Laukkanen's 2012 debut, The Professionals (see review here), featuring young kidnappers also pursued by a likable Minneapolis detective and the FBI.

"Did I raise you in a barn?" After I pointed out that, yes, I mostly was raised in our barn, my dad switched to, "Were you raised by wolves?" Got me there, Dad.

Joe R. Lansdale: The Bottoms (2000). Narrator Harry Crane, now in his 80s and confined to a nursing-home bed, looks back at Depression-era East Texas when he was 13, and he and sister Tom (short for Thomasina) roamed the woods, scaring each other with stories about the Goat Man. One day they discover the disfigured body of a young black woman hanging by wire from a tree in the creek area called "the Bottoms." Their father, Jacob—town barber and constable—attempts an investigation that encounters extreme racism and provokes violence. As more corpses come to light, Jacob takes to drink. The combination of innocent children coming of age in the South, a crime involving race, and a parent who tries to do the right thing is reminiscent of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, but this beautifully written book, which won an Edgar and was nominated for numerous other crime-fiction awards, is much more unsettling and violent than Lee's novel or Lansdale's Hap Collins/Leonard Pine books.

I hope fathers are enjoying a wonderful Father's Day with their families. If you're remembering your father, as I am mine, I hope your memories warm you.