Oh, To Be Young Again

It's always fun to pull out those old photo albums and take a squinty-eyed gander at your younger self––un-Photoshopped, of course. It is easy to see, by comparing photos taken over the years, how you got from there to here.

Now we have the opportunity to watch some interpretations of how some of our iconic fictional sleuths got the face they earned. Several months ago I tuned into a new series on PBS about the early life and times of Endeavour Morse. This is a prequel to the long-running Inspector Morse program, which was derived from the Morse novels authored by Colin Dexter. In the series, Shaun Evans portrays young Morse as he begins his career as a Detective Constable with the Oxford City Police CID.

Morse, blessed with the unusual Quaker name of Endeavour, spent some time at Oxford University and some time in the army, where he worked with ciphers before joining the police. Young Morse is at first disillusioned by detective work, but he is quite the natural and seems bound to be a success, although he has quite a time satisfying his superiors. This form of constant disapproval I call the "McCloud Syndrome," because it always reminds me of the TV series McCloud, in which Dennis Weaver plays a marshal out of Taos, New Mexico, who could never please his boss. No matter how many cases he solved with wonderful deductive reasoning, his Chief always treated him as a bumbler.

The episodes I've seen so far do an intriguing job of fleshing out young Morse's character, giving the audience some hints about his background and family life. There is also a vintage red Jaguar in this new show. But it does not belong to Morse––not yet anyway. The series continues in 2014 and I look forward to it. My vote in this case is for the young Morse. He was much more likeable than old Morse, in my view.

A relatively new book series by James Henry introduced me to the younger Jack Frost, another well-known detective, both in the print series written by R. D. Wingfield, and its adaptation for television.

In the third book of Henry's Jack Frost prequel series, Morning Frost, Frost is a Detective Sergeant who has just struggled through one of the low points of his life. It is October of 1982, and Jack had just buried his wife Mary, who had suffered from cancer. There had been a point before her diagnosis when Jack had been planning to ask for a divorce because he had become attached to a female DC who worked out of his precinct. But despite Jack and Mary's many differences, he stayed with her to her death, ended all hope for personal happiness with the DC and sank himself into his work.

Several cases are dumped on Frost at once; very reminiscent of the way R. D. Wingfield treated Frost. There are body parts, female hit men, stolen artwork and the murder of a policeman, and Frost manages to shamble on his way through this to collect all the threads and knot them together. Superintendent Mullet of the Denton police has his usual mixed feelings about Jack. It has been made clear to him that Frost has been tapped for promotion to Detective Inspector for some time, and Mullet would do anything that would quash any recognition of Jack Frost.

Frost appears to be in his late thirties in the James Henry series and not that much older than that in the first of the Wingfield series books, Frost at Christmas. In the original stories, Frost is portrayed as a loveable rogue who is exceedingly sloppy and inefficient in his work habits, and with a personality that is at times sarcastic, insolent and conniving––which doesn’t affect the squad he works with, since they are incredibly loyal to him. This is not a total surprise, because readers tend to like Frost more than they expect to.

In the TV series, Touch of Frost, Frost is portrayed by David Jason, who appears a decade or two older than the fictional Frost, aging naturally over the course of a total of 15 years of the series. On TV, Superintendent Mullet is seen in a kinder, gentler light and Frost himself has more respect for women. The female characters in the books usually have little to recommend them. My vote in this case is ambiguous. I think both the printed series are excellent, but as a character I like the old Frost better. That may be because James Henry gets more into the personality of the man than Wingfield did. Ignorance is bliss.

Now on to the interesting battle of the Montalbanos. Salvo Montabano is the protagonist of the popular Andrea Camilleri novels based in the fictional town, Vigàta in Sicily. He is a Commissario in the police force, a rank comparable to a superintendent of a regional force. Montalbano has his own way of doing things, as he has to navigate without compromising himself through the murky politics of life in Italy, where the crime bosses sometimes have more power than the politicians, let alone the police. He has those rare characteristics of honesty, decency and loyalty.

Luca Zingaretti

These stories have depth because Camilleri makes it a point to "smuggle into a detective novel a critical commentary of my times." There has been a television show based on Camilleri's books for about 15 years. Acting the part of Montalbano is Luca Zingaretti, whose image is synonymous with Montalbano.

In 2012, Italian television aired a spin-off featuring a young Montalbano, who was to have somewhat of a Che Guevara appeal. Michele Riondino was cast in the role, and young Montalbano has all the fine characteristics that make the mature Montalbano the person that he is. He has an energy, mixed with his style and appeal, that is eminently watchable.

Michele Riondino

Before I can vote on which of these characters I prefer, I am going to have to bone up on my Italian because these shows are only available with English subtitles. In this case, at least the older and the younger Montalbano face off weekly in Italy so there is an abundance of opportunities to compare the different stages of Montalbano's life.

Review of Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbano’s First Case

Montalbano's First Case by Andrea Camilleri

Salvo Montalbano and the sea go together like spaghetti and squid ink. It may not work as a combination here, but in Sicily it is a match made in heaven. But Montalbano began his career as a policeman in Mascalippa, an area of meadows carpeted with grass, polka-dotted with livestock, mountains in the distance but not a breath of salty air and it was killing him. He thought it was akin to being in jail.

When he heard a rumor that he was to get his promotion to Chief Inspector, he was not sure whether that was good news or bad news. Fortunately for him, his boss had been able to read his hangdog expressions over the past years and had recommended that he get his promotion, but in a different location: Vigàta, on the coast.

He took a trip to visit his home-to-be and, just as he got out of the car, he was assailed by an exquisite perfume, a mixture of stagnant seawater, rotten seaweed, decaying fish, ancient ropes and sardines. He knew he could be happy here.

The first thing he did was to find a trattoria on the main drag where, after he had eaten enough for four or five people, he still felt light as a feather. Salvo felt absolutely certain that the move to Vigàta was preordained. The only fly in the ointment was in the guise of an almost insignificant traffic accident that occurred right in front of Montalbano, who had yet to identify himself to anyone in the town as a policeman, much less their new chief Inspector.

As Montalbano was waiting outside the restaurant, a sports car came speeding out of nowhere. It swerved slightly and sideswiped a slower car. The driver of this slower car was an elderly gentleman wearing glasses. The elderly man stopped his vehicle and got out to inspect it. The speeder in the roadster got out of his car and approached the old man and smashed him in the face before the speeder was forced back into his own car by a passenger and then tore off.

Montalbano took charge, but there was a traffic cop there as well, and it would be some time before Montalbano settled into his job in Vigàta. By the time he did, this little case began to develop twists and turns, with strings pulling at Salvo this way and that. He actually began to feel that thin, invisible wires were moving him forward like a puppet.

Who wrote that? "Ah, Pirandello," thought Montalbano, but this thought segued into the plot of the Argentine author Borges, who narrated the plot of a mystery in which everything could be traced back to the random encounter between two chess players on a train who had never met before. The two players planned a murder, executed it and managed to avoid raising any suspicion. This first case is like many of Montalbano's cases. He has to be more wily than the crooks and the mafia, and slyer than the politicians, if he wants to keep landing on his feet. Particularly if he wants to do it with his honor and integrity intact.

Carmine Fazio, who becomes Montalbano's deputy, wants to understand what kind of boss he is going to be working under. Salvo explains. His philosophy is comparable to homemade sweaters made of wool.

But that's a pattern I can't divulge without giving away too much. This ebook novella is a prequel that is as enjoyable as the entire Camilleri series.

Note: Montalbano's First Case was translated from the Italian by Gianluca Rizzo and Dominic Siracusa and published by Mondadori/Open Road Integrated Media in October 2013. I received a free e-galley from NetGalley for purposes of review.

A Stranger and a Thief

This has been a peaceful day. Or maybe a better way of putting it is to say that I have made peace with what I haven't done and still have time to do before Christmas. Somehow time slips away, especially if I'm trotting the globe in my reading.

Based on its themes, Andrea Camilleri's The Potter's Field is a better book for reading at Easter than at Christmas but that's not to say I'd suggest putting it off until then. The Bible's New Testament states that temple elders used the 30 pieces of silver given them by Judas, after he betrayed Christ, to purchase the potter's field for a burial spot for strangers. In this thirteenth Inspector Salvo Montalbano book, a garbage bag containing the dismembered body of an unknown man is found at the place called 'u critaru (Sicilian for the clay field). The plot also employs biblical themes of betrayal, prophetic dreams, feuds, rains that mimic the Great Flood and sins of lust and murder.

There is often friction between Montalbano and his men of the Vigàta police precinct, but for the past few months Inspector Mimì Arguello has been unusually short-tempered and Fazio and Catarella are barely coping with him. Montalbano hasn't noticed. He's been too busy feeling his age, ignoring telephone calls, feuding with the press, walking on the beach and ensuring his appetite is satisfied. Now he has no choice but to pay attention to the murder investigation and unhappiness of those around him.

The Potter's Field was translated from the Italian by Stephen Sartarelli and published by Penguin Books in 2011. As usual with this series, the Sicilian food is mouth watering, Montalbano's "bullshitter extraordinaire" moments are entertaining, the characters are colorful and the plotting is good. It was awarded the 2012 International Dagger Award.

Camilleri's Sicily is a feast for the senses. The Tokyo of Fuminori Nakamura's The Thief isn't the city of jostling crowds and neon lights. It's the anonymity and gloom of subway stations and dark alleys. The narrator is a pickpocket (his name, Nishimura, is mentioned once) who has been stealing since he was very young. He is an expert at assessing wealth by apparel. Nishimura dresses to blend in with the crowd. He is never more alive than when he gets close to his mark and uses two fingers to lift a wallet. Then a quiver goes up his arm and the tension in his body leaks into the air. Sometimes Nishimura finds wallets he has no memory of taking in the inner pockets of his suit and he sees towers where there aren't any. (When he was young, there was always a tower in the distance.)

At one time Nishimura worked with a partner, but now he and Ishiwaka are just friends. He has begun a friendship with a nameless prostitute, whom he spots shoplifting in a store, and her nameless young son, who is beginning to steal, when Ishiwaka recruits him for a home robbery planned by a criminal called Kizaki. This is a bad mistake and Nishimura will need all the skills he can muster.

This isn't typical noir. It's not easy to convey its strangeness. It's as if it's narrated by an emotionally claustrophobic being. At the same time it's compulsive reading. Nishimura's voice is spare and cryptic, the pace is fast and unusual details are the usual. When Nishimura buys cigarettes and coffee at a convenience store, "the clerk bellowed, 'Thank you very much!' like he was insane." I enjoyed this story of an alienated thief whose main connectedness with other people is the moment at which he's lifting their wallets from their pockets. What does this say about the society in which Nishamura lives? The Thief was translated from the Japanese by Satoko Izumo and Stephen Coates and published in 2012 by Soho Crime. It won Japan's 2009 Oe Prize.  I will look forward to more from this young writer.

I'll tell you about James Church's A Drop of Chinese Blood next time. Have a very Merry Christmas.