Winter Preview 2014-2015: Part Four

I don't know why I'm so fascinated with the 1930s and 40s, but I am, and I grateful that so many writers and publishers feed my fascination. This winter looks like it'll be no exception.

No sooner do I say it's the 30s and 40s that I like than I'm writing about a book set in 1923. Well, Emerson said that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, so there. Frances Brody's A Woman Unknown (Minotaur, February 10) caught my eye because of one very particular element of the plot.

This fourth title in Brody's Kate Shackleton PI series features a married woman named Deirdre who becomes a co-respondent-for-hire. This is a part of a lot of books and movies of that era, my favorite being the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers romp The Gay Divorcée, in which Ginger's character, Mimi, wants a divorce, but has no grounds. Mimi's Aunt Hortense asks her forgetful lawyer, Egbert, played by the great character actor Edward Everett Horton, to hire a man to go to a seaside hotel, head for Mimi's room, and be "caught" there by private detectives, so that Mimi's husband will divorce her for adultery. Horton's character hires the flamboyant Rodolfo Tonetti to be Mimi's putative lover, but he forgets to arrange for the private detectives. Astaire's character, Guy, is a friend of Egbert's and when he shows up at the hotel, a farce ensues––with dancing, of course. (Geez, now I really want to see that movie again . . . .)

Nobody needs these professional co-respondents anymore, of course, and even though that's a good thing, it's a loss to books and movies. So I'm pleased to see Brody resurrect it. In this case,

Deirdre shows up at her latest assignment, which is to hit the sheets with a banker to provide divorce grounds for his wife. Things don't quite turn out as planned when, instead of the supposed adulterers being found in bed looking lively, the husband is dead. PI Kate Shackleton was already on the job for Deirdre's husband, tracking her to see just what it was she was doing while he was at work (!), so this development means that Kate now has two related cases going.

Query: In 1923, would it have been grounds for divorce if your spouse is acting as a hired co-respondent pretending to commit adultery? Maybe Brody will answer that pressing question,

Alright, enough of this frivolity. It's time for World War II.

Some people say geography is destiny, and it's hard to argue with that when we look at countries situated between Russia and Germany. In Sofi Oksanen's When the Doves Disappeared(translated from the Finnish by Lola Rogers; Knopf, February 10), the unlucky country at issue is Estonia.

During World War II, the Baltic countries were overrun by the Nazis. Then the tide turned, and it was the Soviets who flooded in and stayed for decades. What do people do to survive in times like that? The Dutch Resistance Museum in Amsterdam has a fascinating exhibit that follows three possible paths; laying low, collaboration and resistance. What happens to those paths when your countrymen have to deal with not only Nazi occupation, but then the Soviets?

In Oksanen's book, in 1941 two Red Army soldiers, Roland and his cousin Edgar, desert. Roland is a resistance fighter, but Edgar is a man with no such principles. When the Nazis take over, Edgar leaves his wife, Juudit, and is suddenly a fervent supporter. Fast forward to 1963, and the ever-flexible Edgar is a faithful functionary in the Soviet government. His Nazi past is a threat to him, of course, and there are some people in his past, especially Roland and Juudit, who epitomize that threat.

Ever since the French went crazy for the absolutely dreadful The Truth About the Harry Québert Affair, I've been dubious about their literary judgment, but I can't resist when Le Monde says this about When the Doves Disappeared: "An explosive text with a dark heart. . . . At once a historical novel, a crime story, a psychological novel, a romance, a war novel, When the Doves Disappeared plays with blurring boundaries."

In real-life 1941, a young idealistic Berlin detective named Georg Heuser helped crack the case of the notorious S-Bahn serial killer. Twenty years later, Heuser was on trial for his life. Though David Thomas's Ostland (Quercus, January 6) is classified as fiction, it is firmly based on fact. Heuser was talent spotted by the Gestapo and sent off to Minsk, one of the capitals of Nazi Germany's eastern killing fields.

Ostland gives us a police-procedural view of the S-Bahn murders case, and then switches to Minsk, where the perverted Nazi morality holds sway. David Thomas shows us the path that Heuser takes and how, in 1959, a prosecution team chasing war criminals brings him to judgment.

Published to rave reviews in the UK, this promises to be a painful book to read, but an important one.

The bloodlands between Germany and Russia, and the past catching up are also themes in Nele Neuhaus's The Ice Queen (translated from the German by Steven T. Murray; Minotaur, January 13). In the third book in their series, Detectives Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver Bodenstein are assigned to find out who killed 92-year-old Jossi Goldberg, found shot to death at home near Frankfurt. Wait a minute, though. According to the autopsy, this supposed Jewish Holocaust survivor has an inexpertly-removed blood-group tattoo from his underarm; the kind that SS members had. What does that mean?

And what is the meaning of the five-digit number written in blood at the crime scene? When two similar murders occur, Kirchhoff and Bodenstein find a link: all of the victims are associated with the rich and powerful philanthropist Baroness Vera von Kaltensee––who does all she can to hobble the investigation.

Publishers Weekly says: "Readers need to pay close attention to this solidly plotted and densely populated drama full of red herrings, lest they miss key clues." It's a deal!

Greece was another country victimized by the Nazis in World War II. After the war's end, a civil war raged, resulting in a right-wing takeover. In 1948, CBS reporter George Polk (the namesake of the prestigious Polk Award for journalism) went to Greece to investigate a story about the embezzlement of US aid money by forces within the Greek government. Polk's body was found floating in the azure sea around Thessaloniki. A Greek journalist, Manolis Gris, was convicted of his murder, but he later claimed his confession was a result of torture.

In another fact-based novel, Sophia Nikolaidou's The Scapegoat (translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich; Melville House, February 3) revisits the mystery of Polk's death. The framing device for the historical mystery is the story of a contemporary high school student, Minas Georgiou, who tells his teacher he doesn't plan to go on to university. His teacher challenges him to investigate the Polk murder. Minas has connections to the case, because his grandmother had a love affair with the lawyer who represented Gris and helped him with the painful decision to make a plea bargain that gave him a life term instead of a death sentence.

Minas interviews many people connected with the Polk case, from retired police officers to family members of Gris and his lawyer, and more. Minas sees parallels between the corruption and hypocrisy in play in 1948 and the conditions of today's financial meltdown in Greece.

Two nonfiction books round up my list of history-related books I'm most looking forward to.

Pamela Katz's The Partnership: Brecht, Weill, Three Women, and Germany on the Brink (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, January 6) is about, well, isn't it obvious from the subtitle? In decadent Weimar-era Berlin, volatile composer Kurt Weill and playwright Berthold Brecht teamed up to produce the boundary-pushing and celebrated Threepenny Opera and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Threepenny Opera gave us the perennial favorite "Mack the Knife," and made Lotte Lenya a star.

Weill, the self-disciplined half of the Brecht/Weill partnership, fell in love with Lenya and, naturally, married her. Brecht liked to spread himself around a bit (well, a lot) more, though. He had a wife, but that wasn't enough. He also carried on love affairs with actress Helen Weigel and writer Elisabeth Hauptmann, who were also artistic collaborators with the Brecht/Weill partnership.

Katz illuminates the volatile relationships among these five during the daring days of sexual license in Weimar Berlin, and when the outraged Nazis cracked down. Germany on the edge has always fascinated me, and this book about artists who were in the thick of it is one I'm impatient to get to.

Striking a more rah-rah note is Molly Guptill Manning's When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, December 2). Still, it tells a story that I've never heard before and that seems well worth reading.

The sheer logistical challenge of supplying a vast force of US fighters to go to war overseas is almost too much for the mind to take in. But among the necessities of uniforms, arms, equipment and food, books were also considered vital. Underneath their daunting uniforms and helmets, these warriors were young men, barely a breath away from being boys. Away from home for the first time, thrown in with others from all over the country and sent to fight far from home in strange new worlds, they needed something to help ground them, remind them of home and what they were fighting for. Books were thought to be one answer to that morale issue.

In two years, the nation's librarians mobilized to collect 6.6 million books for the armed forces in the Victory Book Drive. The success of this campaign led to the Army's decision to establish its own program, commissioning easy-to-carry paperback versions of books like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and The Great Gatsby.

Though little-known today, this campaign had links to so many landmarks in history and reading. Part of its impetus was our horror in the US at the Nazi book burnings. So many members of our armed forces became avid readers that they wrote to the authors of books they received, and flocked to take advantage of the GI Bill to attend college when the war ended. These pocket editions helped make mass market paperback popular for decades afterward.

Manning interviews several recipients of these wartime books, who tell what their reading meant to them. The book also lists all 1,200 books that were issued in these service editions.

Since When Books Went to War comes out next week, it's available in plenty of time to make a terrific Christmas present for the book lover in your life.

I hope you all had a warm and wonderful Thanksgiving. We awoke to a 10-inch blanket of snow. I'm not too thrilled this early arrival of snowblower season, but it sure is pretty out my window right now.

Review of Nele Neuhaus's Snow White Must Die

Following a search tangent is like cutting
off a head of the Lernaean Hydra. Many
more search possibilities pop up.

Snow White Must Die by Nele Neuhaus, trans. by Steven T. Murray

Please cut me some slack today, as I give in to searchtangentitis, in which a word or idea prompts me to follow research trails that become increasingly unrelated until the original reason for searching has been lost. Nele Neuhaus's Snow White Must Die is full of searchtangentitis triggers. Just to give you a flavor of one of the trails I followed, I researched the German fairy tale and the Brothers Grimm, of course, and from there I went to dwarfs and apple varieties, Tales of Monkey Island (Disney, who made a Snow White movie, bought LucasArts, maker of the game Monkey Island), Haiti (an island), Tonton Macoute (scary-as-hell Haitian paramilitary group), wonton soup, Great White sharks, and Henry VIII. You get the idea. Since this is Friday, and Read Me Deadly has an "all bets are off" policy on Fridays, I'll indulge my searchtangentitis by giving some starting points for research as I talk to you about Neuhaus's book.

Snow White Must Die's prologue is a dreamy, tender scene reminiscent of the fairy tale. In a hidden place, an unknown man visits a recumbent woman, whom he calls Snow White. He knows she's dead, and, judging from her stiff and leathery skin, she died years ago. (→ mummy, a list of mummy movies, Steve Martin as King Tut, Nele Neuhaus)

The scene shifts, and it's Thursday, November 6, 2008. Famous German actress Nadia von Bredow is picking up her childhood friend, Tobias Sartorius, outside the Rockenberg Correctional Facility. Now 30 years old, Tobias served a 10-year sentence for the 1997 murders of two teenage girls, Laura Wagner and Stefanie Schneeberger. Laura was his ex-girlfriend, and Stefanie was his current girlfriend when they were last seen, entering Tobias's house. Tobias claims that his memory about what happened that night is a "black hole," and the bodies were never found. He was convicted on eyewitness testimony, circumstantial evidence, and blood stains on his clothes, in his room, and in the trunk of his car. Other physical evidence was found hidden in his house, and the murder weapon was found hidden outside. (→ international homicide rate, black hole, forensic crime fiction, amnesia)

When Nadia drops off Tobias at his family home in the Taunus Mountains village of Altenhain, Tobias is shocked by what he finds. His father, Hartmut, is a wreck, and the farm is strewn with trash. Hartmut's once-thriving restaurant has closed. His parents have divorced, and his mother, Rita Cramer, lives in Bad Soden. Tobias, who had planned to stay a few days, decides to help his father by cleaning up the property. When Tobias discovers one of his father's friends has taken financial advantage of him, he vows to stay until he can figure out what happened 11 years ago. This will not be easy, because the villagers are furious that Tobias has dared to return. A campaign of harassment begins. (→ Taunus Mountains, The Wall Street Journal, musophobia, German politics)

Among the few people who are friendly are Claudius Terlinden, the most powerful man in the village, and the father of Tobias's former best friend, Lars; Terlinden's autistic son, Thies; and a 17-year-old newcomer named Amelie Fröhlich, who works at the Black Horse. Amelie is friendly with Thies, and lives with her father and stepmother in the Schneebergers' old house. Everyone notices that Amelie has an "almost spooky" resemblance to the murdered Stefanie Schneeberger, who was nicknamed Snow White. Amelie has the "same finely etched and alabaster-pale facial features, the voluptuous mouth, the dark, knowing eyes." Until Tobias's arrival, Amelie found the villagers as interesting "as a sack of rice in China." Now she's obsessed with finding out about the old murders. (→ Altenhain, autism, graffitti art, snowflakes)

While Tobias deals with village hostility and a budding romance with Nadia, two significant events happen outside of Altenhain: a backhoe operator at a long-closed airfield in Eschborn discovers human bones and a skull in an empty underground jet fuel tank, and Tobias's mother is hospitalized in a coma after she's shoved off a Bad Soden pedestrian overpass and lands on a car passing below. Investigating these two crimes are Detective Inspector Pia Kirchhoff and her superior, Detective Superintendent Oliver von Bodenstein, who soon follow the evidence to Altenhain. There, they receive little cooperation. Pia notes discrepancies in the evidence that sent Tobias to prison, but what is she to think about Tobias's guilt when Amelie disappears? Man, there is no shortage of secrets in Altenhain. (→ prehistoric brain surgery, Freud on guilt, Patricia Highsmith, "guilt"-tagged movies, BMW cars)

Snow White Must Die is a beautifully atmospheric German thriller about a search for justice, involving themes of guilt and redemption, outsiders vs. insiders, and loyalty and betrayal. The village's cultural mores are fascinating, as are the topical issues in mental health and crime. It's the fourth book in the Bodenstein-Kirchhoff series, although so far it's the only one translated into English. Translator Steven T. Murray has done an excellent job. After the flow of Scandinavian crime fiction, perhaps we'll finally see more mysteries from Germany trickling in. (→ thriller genre, atmospheric optics, outsider art)

German cops, like cops everywhere, juggle personal loyalty to each other with loyalty to the force, and demands of work and family. I liked Neuhaus's cops. Bodenstein is the son of a countess (when he is wounded, Pia laughs to see his blood is red, rather than blue) and father of three children. Pia says he's Cary Grant handsome and charming. (Does Bodenstein remind you at all of Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey or Elizabeth George's Thomas Lynley?) Bodenstein would be happier if Cosima, his movie-producer wife, stuck to Kinder, Küche, Kirche. Their relationship has been strained since their Mallorca vacation was interrupted by Bodenstein's job. Bodenstein is now miserable because he suspects that Cosima is having an affair. Pia also has distractions: Bodenstein isn't his usual self, her ex-husband is in a messy spot, and her farm remodeling plans were denied a permit. Despite these issues, the 41-year-old Pia is happy. Her lover, Christoph Sander, is a zoo director whose smile "always triggered in Pia the almost irrepressible desire to throw herself into his arms." (→ Cary Grant movies, German beer, Life of Pi)

I also enjoyed a peek at Germany's law enforcement and legal systems. A couple of things struck me: for murder, there's no statute of limitations in the US, but there's a 30-year statute of limitations in Germany. When those human bones are discovered in the old airfield fuel tank, careful forensic analysis to determine how long it's been since death is crucial. And, I was surprised that Tobias could study to become a locksmith while in prison; would that be allowed here? (→ statute of limitations, the Wright brothers, explore human anatomy, list of films featuring extraterrestrials)

Finally, Neuhaus repeatedly uses the Snow White colors⎯"white as snow, red as blood, black as ebony"⎯to gorgeous effect in descriptions of the winter settings, names (e.g. the Ebony Club, Schnee[snow]berger), and characters' appearances, emotions (e.g., black despair, white rage, red embarrassment), and relationships. Scenes alternate between the villagers in Altenhain and the investigating cops, but there's no trouble following the action. The plot is timely and twists smartly. Although the final quarter could have been trimmed, the suspense is well handled, with skillful misdirection and foreshadowing. Nele Neuhaus's Snow White Must Die was already an international best-seller when it was published by Minotaur Books in 2012. It's no wonder. I enjoyed it, and I'm hoping for more.

Special Delivery before Midnight, 12/31/2012

I feel like a woman about to give birth, and it's not a comfortable sensation. I finished The Child's Child by Barbara Vine (the pen name Ruth Rendell uses for dark and complex psychological suspense), but this tale about Grace Easton, who becomes pregnant by her brother Andrew's lover and discovers an unpublished manuscript from 1951 that mirrors this triangular situation, is too sad to review on the last day of the year. I haven't quite finished Karen Englemann's delectable The Stockholm Octavo, in which seer Sofia Sparrow reads the cards and promises young Office of Customs and Excise bureaucrat Emil Larsson a golden path to love and connection in 1791 Stockholm. Rather than prolong my labor in writing a review, let me share some books I plan to read soon.

Snow White Must Die by Nele Neuhaus, translated by Steven T. Murray (Macmillan, January 2013). I want to revisit the Grimm's fairy tale refrain "White as snow, red as blood, black as ebony." In this multifaceted German police procedural, Altenhain cops Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein investigate the death of a woman whose son, Tobias Sartorius, was convicted 10 years earlier of murdering two teenage girls. The bodies were never found. Tobias has recently been released and moved back home. After more disappearances, townspeople are ready to take the law into their own hands. This is the fourth in a six-book series, and the only one published in English so far. What I've read about this police duo and the twisting plot of betrayal and revenge promises a great read.

Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov (Melville International Crime, 2001). Okay, you tell me how I can read the first sentence of a Kirkus review ("A writer is sucked gently into the evil new Ukrainian economy as his penguin flatmate watches.") and not scramble to read this book. Viktor Alekseyevich's life, in the dumps since his girlfriend left him, appears to be looking up. He's taken over the care of Misha, a "quiet and thoughtful" penguin de-accessioned from the Kiev zoo, and he's been hired by Capital News to write "pre-need" obituaries for underworld luminaries. Then Viktor realizes he's handing death sentences to these luminaries.

The Woman Who Wouldn't Die by Colin Cotterill (Random House, February 2013). It is now 1978, and Dr. Siri Paiboun is retired from his job as national coroner of Laos; however, a judge has asked Siri to look into a case involving the minister of agriculture's wife, who has hired the supposed-to-be-dead Madame Keui to lay rest the ghost of the minister's brother. Siri, who has a healthy regard for the supernatural, is the perfect man for the job. This is the ninth book in Cotterill's witty Dr. Siri Paiboun series. (Read Della Streetwise's review of the first book, The Coroner's Lunch, here.)

Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster, February 2013). “There is very little peace for a man with a body buried in his backyard.” Thus begins Mason's debut about an ordinary man named Jason Getty, who kills and buries a man behind his house. That is enough to disconcert Jason right there, but things become even more complicated when police dig up two bodies, and neither is the one that Jason buried. The publisher says this book is for fans of offbeat, black thrillers and the Coen brothers' movies––in other words, for me, and you, too?

Perfect Hatred by Leighton Gage (Soho Crime, February 2013). For a police procedural that combines terrific characterization, action, setting, and social issues, Della Streetwise, Maltese Condor (see her review here), and I read Leighton Gage's Chief Inspector Mario Silva series, set in modern Brazil. In the sixth book, Silva's team investigates a suicide bombing, the assassination of a gubernatorial candidate, and the revenge plot of a newly released felon who hates Silva. It's not necessary to read Gage's books in order, but these characters grow over time, and you'll want to follow them. The first book is 2007's Blood of the Wicked, in which Bishop Dom Felipe is assassinated when he visits the agricultural town of Cascatas do Pontal.

What about you? What's on your schedule for early 2013?

I'll be back later this week to tell you about Vine's The Child's Child and Engelmann's The Stockholm Octavo. I hope your festivities tonight will deliver a wonderful 2013 for you.