Review of Peter May's Entry Island

Entry Island by Peter May

As I watch the intrepid athletes compete in the Sochi Olympics, I know that some would give anything for a "do over." It is a fantastic concept, but it is one that is only acceptable in children's games––and then only when played among forgiving friends. Real life is not forgiving. On the other hand, in fiction the rules can be bent and sometimes downright broken! Peter May teases us with this notion in his latest book Entry Island (Quercus, 2013).

"There has been a murder on the Magdalen Islands, out in the Gulf of St. Lawrence," are the first words that Sime Mackenzie hears after another tortuous night of twisting-and-turning insomnia. He is to be part of the investigation team sent from the Montreal police. This was the first murder in these islands since living memory. It took place on l'Île d'Entrée, better known to its inhabitants as Entry Island.

The Madelinots are French-speaking for the most part, but on Entry Island they speak only English. This explained Sime's inclusion on the team, because he was equally at home with French or English. Entry Island is about 900 miles from Montreal, although it is still part of the province of Québec. The police team must make the final leg of the trip by boat.

The victim, James Cowell, was a native of the Islands (called the Magdalens by the French speakers and the Madeleines by the English speakers) and a wealthy businessman who, among other things, ran half the lobster boats in the Madeleines. His wife Kirsty claimed there was an intruder in a mask who attacked her and, when Cowell came to help her, he was stabbed several times.  Most of the team thinks this will be an open-and-shut case, but Sime is unsure because, for one thing, Kirsty looks very familiar to him and she does look as if she has been beaten up.

Sime (pronounced Sheem) is not at the top of his game, because his personal problems are overwhelming him in his sleepless state, and when he does sleep, he is disturbed by vivid recollections of stories read to him by his grandmother, triggered by meeting Kirsty. His grandmother read these stories from an old family journal written by a Simon Mackenzie, written in the mid-1800s when the lands in the Outer Hebrides were being cleared of the starving, poverty-stricken Scottish sharecroppers by the English lords so they could raise sheep. What was it about this remote location that was triggering these memories of the Highland clearances?

There wasn't much on Entry Island except a dwindling population of about one hundred people, a few stores, a church, a school and a post office. So when Kirsty claims she has not left the island for 10 years, and says she never wants to leave, no one believes her. And since the area is so hard to get to, the police doubt the talk about an intruder.  The spotlight is focused solely on Kirsty, particularly when there is another disappearance and possible death of another of the island's inhabitants.

Remnants of a hurricane are barreling down on the islands, and the weather becomes a character in itself as it wreaks havoc, with mighty and furious winds and burning, spitting rain. Entry Island is temporarily cut off from the world as it hunkers down in the storm. I myself felt cold, damp and miserable as I was caught up in the descriptions of the tempest.

Peter May has written several very successful series. His first featured Li Yan, a detective in the Beijing police who has partnered with an American pathologist, Margaret Campbell, to solve some very unusual cases. Then May moved onto France, where Enzo Macleod, a Scottish biologist, took on several amazing cold cases. My favorite series has been the Lewis trilogy, in which Fin Macleod, a Detective Inspector in Edinburgh, returns to his birthplace on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.

Entry Island is somewhat of a departure for Peter May, because the murder mystery takes a back seat to the history of the settlement of some of the Madeleine Islands. There is a focus on the very bad old days of the times between the forced dispersal of the Scots to the New World and the difficulties the immigrants faced when their welcome was not to be counted on. The story moves on at a slow pace, as Sime has repeated flashbacks to the days of his ancestors. I believe May's descriptions of the injustices and the inhumanity of the past kept my blood on the boil. It was due to the same Scot in me that makes me shiver when I hear the bagpipes.

Despite an exotic location and the distinctive individuals involved in the crime, the motives for murder are not that unusual. Sime Mackenzie faces a conflict between his professional duty and his personal desires and he is led down a path he could never have foreseen. If you enjoy your crime novels with connections to another time this book would be a great addition to a TBR pile.

Oh là là! Un thriller français roman

Syndrome E by Franck Thilliez,
translated by Mark Polizzotti

Quick. I say, "French," you say. . . . If the words "thriller" or "noir" don't readily come to mind, you've been sadly deprived. Let me tell you about a best-selling French thriller recently released in the United States by Viking, Syndrome E, by Franck Thilliez.

A supervisor once described 37-year-old Lucie Henebelle, a CID lieutenant in Lille, Belgium, as possessed––a good psychologist in the field, but sometimes out of control. And that's how her mother would describe her now. Lucie is supposed to be on vacation; however, one of her 8-year-old twin daughters is in the hospital, recovering from an illness. Instead of hanging around the sickroom, Lucie is investigating something frightening and bizarre: when her former lover, Ludovic Sénéchal, viewed a 1950s-era film purchased at an estate sale, he spontaneously became blind.

Now, we all know, no matter what the film's rating, this sort of thing doesn't happen with a Netflix rental. How could this occur? When Lucie watches Ludovic's mysterious 16 mm film, she's unsettled not only by its violent scenes, but its pleasant ones, too. Why would watching a little girl stroking a kitten disturb her? What's with the white circle in the frame's upper right-hand corner, the fog, and the large dark, flat areas on the sides and in the sky?

There are two ways to see a film: through its plot and screenplay or through the medium itself. The eyes only supply the image to the brain; it's the brain that actually "sees" the film. It's possible for an image to be flashed by so quickly that the eyes don't have time to notice it, even though the brain has "seen" it. In the 1950s, knowledge of the brain and the impact of images on the mind was fairly primitive, but there was tremendous interest in this research. An American publicist––wouldn't you just know it––was the first to officially use a subliminal image in 1957. (Since then, there have been many reports of subliminal messages conveyed through mainstream media images, from advertising to political campaigning to attempts by the police to communicate with a criminal. Use of subliminal images is even the subject of a Columbo plot on TV in 1973.)

While Lucie's attention is focused on analyzing the film and tracing its history, Chief Inspector Franck Sharko (or "Shark") has been pulled out of his vacation to a crime scene outside of Rouen. Shark is a behavioral analyst in the Bureau of Violent Crimes in Nanterre, France. Theoretically, his job involves investigating unsolved violent crimes without leaving his desk. He cross-references information and establishes a psychological profile, using the computer and other informational tools to determine a killer's motives. The Rouen crime scene is a construction site, where five men have been unearthed. Their bodies are missing their teeth, hands, eyes, and the tops of their heads. Their brains have been removed. These are interesting corpses for behavioral analysis, but Shark is miserable. It's hot and muddy, and he hates mosquitos. Despite recent transcranial magnetic stimulation for treatment of his schizophrenia, he's still troubled by hallucinations of Eugenie, a girl who taunts him about the deaths of his wife and daughter five years ago. Shark placates her with gifts of candied chestnuts and cocktail sauce and soothes himself with cold baths and the noise of a running model train engine.

Lucie's digging on behalf of her friend becomes a case for the police when Claude Poignet, the expert Lucie asked to "autopsy" the film, is found hanging by the neck; the noose is an old western film, Good Day for a Hanging. (I'll spare you the murderers' other creative uses of film at the scene.) As the Lille investigation proceeds, and more people are murdered, evidence links the film to the five men buried near Rouen. The Paris CID, the Lille team, and the Rouen cops combine their investigations. Lucie, whose loneliness hasn't been cured by her internet dating, is immediately attracted to Chief Inspector Sharko's competence. In one of the book's many references to film, she finds Shark shares the sadness of Léon, the contract killer in Luc Besson's The Professional, but also the same "incomprehensible sympathy that made you want to get to know him." Shark recognizes Lucie as driven as he is, and he warns her that "a cop's eyes should never shine, and hers gleamed way too much when she talked about her case." Such professional dedication takes a high personal toll.

Syndrome E is a suspenseful tale about heartbreaking inhumanity and early neuroresearch. It is a feast about and for our brains, featuring memorable settings (in France, Belgium, Egypt, and Canada) and the characters Lucie and Shark. It isn't a creepfest, in which terrible things happen simply to shock, but a worthwhile albeit upsetting look at a dark history involving governments, intelligence and military agencies, religious institutions, and scientific research. People should know about this history and understand its ramifications. In a few years, machines might allow the visualization of dreams. Scanners might project a defendant's memories in the courtroom. Where will neuroresearch go next? Thilliez's tale sent me on a binge of research, and his story's ending makes me wish for an English translation of the sequel, Gataca.

Note: There are disturbing images, particularly in the short Chapter 25. I don't often advocate skipping parts of a book, but for people who find cruelty to animals or children unbearable, really, it could be skimmed or skipped completely.

April Is the Cruelest Month

Today is a good time to think about the meaning of human frailty, death, and redemption, whether one celebrates Easter as the resurrection of Jesus Christ or the glorious rebirth of the earth.

Below are some books of crime fiction set during Lent or the Holy Week culminating in Easter:

Ayacucho means "place of the dead." It is the capital city of Huamanga Province in Peru and is famous for its 33 churches and the large religious celebrations during Holy Week.

It is also the birthplace of Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar. Chacaltana's March 8, 2000 report about a dead man opens Santiago Roncagliolo's literary thriller, Red April. The corpse, burnt to a crisp and missing an arm, has been discovered in an Ayacucho hayloft on Ash Wednesday. The body isn't recognizable, and possible witnesses were too inebriated from days of celebrating to notice anything.

Chalcaltana is a man who only recently returned to Ayacucho after spending most of his life in Lima. He's incapable of lying and consumed with duty to his profession and the memory of his mamacita. He's in charge of the investigation because the police don't want to touch it. They fear the press will get wind of it and scare away tourists, or the government in Lima will hear of it and scuttle their promotions. The local military man in the Ministry of Justice, Commander Carrión, wants Chalcaltana's reports personally. He brushes off Chalcaltana's questions about whether this death could mean a return of 1980s terrorist violence by Sendero Luminoso, the Shining Path. "Get one thing into your head: in this country there is no terrorism, by orders from the top," Carrión says. Then he sends Chalcaltana on a hellish trip to observe elections in Yawarmayo.

Ayacucho, Peru

Chalcaltan's series of ludicrous investigative reports, written as ordered by Carrión to reflect the official line, are studded throughout Roncagliolo's tale rich in Peruvian history, symbolism, and folklore. They are accompanied by another type of report in small letters and full of misspellings, which appear to be written by a killer. The Ash Wednesday corpse is just the beginning of a religious season of murders and more; Chalcaltan and his colleagues are "fighting against ghosts, against the dead, against the spirit of the Andes." In Red April, translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman and winner of the 2006 Alfaguara Prize, it's difficult to tell the difference between the terrorists and the counterrorists. There are plenty of murders and disappearances to go around for everyone.

Army helicopter pilot is an unusual occupation for a woman who becomes an Episcopalian priest, but Rev. Clare Ferguson is an unusual woman. She's relieved when money is located to repair the roof of St. Alban's, although she's concerned because it will affect funding for the town's free health clinic. The clinic was founded by the widow of Jonathon Ketchem, who disappeared during Prohibition. When the clinic's director, Dr. Allan Rouse, disappears, some suspect a disgruntled young woman, but Clare and Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne disagree.

Out of the Deep I Cry is the third book in Julia Spencer-Fleming's traditional series set in Millers Kill, New York. The story is told with flashbacks to earlier decades, all against the backcloth of the present Lenten season at St. Alban's. When Clare and the married Chief Van Alstyne are stuck in the freezing church basement, their closeness is more than an opportunity to keep warm. The mystery is not the main reason to read this book; rather, it is the chance to spend time during the spring with Spencer-Fleming's vivid characters in this small town in the Adirondacks.

On a dark night early in the Easter Week of the Greek Orthodox Church, part of the body of the larger Eastern Orthodox Church, a saintly monk is cruelly murdered on the winding streets of Patmos, an island in Greece.


In Jeffrey Siger's Prey On Patmos, the crime was heinous not only because of the nature of the victim, but because it happened during a holy time and in a holy place. Patmos is in the eastern Aegean and it is here, in a cave almost 2000 years ago, that Saint John wrote the apocalyptic Book of Revelation. It has a small police force of its own, but in an unusual case like this one, which many would like to attribute to muggers, Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis of the Special Crimes Division is called to take over the investigation.

Mount Athos

In the Greek Orthodox Church, Easter is the most important day of the year. Easter week is the week preceding Easter day. Tourists flock to places such as Patmos and Mount Athos, another religious site that contains 20 monasteries that have been there 15 centuries.

Mount Athos is a self-governing monastic state that is vaguely a parallel to Rome. The monasteries all have one representative to a central Holy Community. And the leader of this group is known as the Protos. Ultimately, the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church resides in Istanbul––once known as Constantinople––Turkey. At this time, the Turks have passed new laws whose final effect will be to push the central leader and his organization out of Turkey, from whence it will be moved to either Russia or Greece. Naturally, the Greeks prefer this latter scenario and the politics surrounding this move are at once complicated and devious.

Patmos

Solving this murder is going to be difficult because initial findings mean that Kaldis must be privy to the inside workings of the monasteries, and most abbots believe in keeping their own counsel. It is found that the dead monk had been investigating a complex power play within the Church. Andreas and his associate have an uphill battle, as they use every source in their power to find a killer hidden deep in monastic life, surrounded by many people who think he is just an ordinary––or maybe an extraordinary––monk.

Grace Brophy's novel The Last Enemy also takes place at this time of year, but in the location of beautiful Assisi in northern Italy. The evening of Good Friday is traditionally spent observing the procession of many local men and some women carrying a cross through the winding ancient streets of the city as they do penance to shorten their way to heaven after death and as a reminder of a momentous Friday 2000 ago.

1 Corinthians 15:26

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

While Count Casati and his family watch the procession in a piazza near their home, they wait for a traditional fish dinner and for a little beloved niece, Rita, who has been residing with them since she brought her mother's body to be buried in Assisi. They wait in vain, because Rita has met her death in the family mausoleum. She is found the following morning resting on a stone altar step and posed in a fashion that suggests she was raped.

Because of the prominence of the family involved, Commissario Alessandro Cenni, the head of the special task force that deals with terrorism and politically sensitive domestic crimes, is assigned to bring about a fast resolution to the case. While he finds that the local police and the powers that be want the blame to settle on either a foreigner or a vagrant, Alex is confident that the killer had to have known the victim well––and that puts the powerful Casati family in the spotlight. But this is Italy, where connections are more powerful than the facts. The story moves at a lively pace and ends with an Italian twist.

Brophy transports the reader to a lovely part of Italy that I hope to be able to see one day. Alex Cenni is an intriguing, complex character who is believable, likeable and a bit of a romantic. I am happy to report that there is more to this series, the latest of which is being released this year.

Louise Penny takes a lighter approach to the Easter holidays as The Cruelest Month begins with an Easter egg hunt, which is part of the Easter ritual practiced on this side of the Atlantic. This title also comes from a quotation by a favorite poet of mine, T. S. Eliot.

"April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire…"

Shakespeare also used the phrase, but when Penny uses it she refers to the fact that not all things come to life in the spring; some things die or are murdered. In this case, a psychic visiting the Canadian village of Three Pines is persuaded to lead a séance at the spooky old Hadley House and one of the townspeople in the circle appears to have died from fright. Holding a séance on Easter Sunday turned out not to be a good idea.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache returns to the lovely area to investigate the death. As in all his cases, he works with a delicate, intuitive touch. He is a bit hampered on this occasion, because there is a plot afloat within the police intended to discredit Gamache, in addition to which he has become aware that one of his team is a mole reporting on all his actions to someone in the Montreal police hierarchy. Nonetheless, this consummate professional resolves these situations before Easter week is out.

These mysteries take you from the very solemn to the fun in a way in a way that only a good book can do. You can appreciate and enjoy different forms of Easter celebrations––all without moving beyond your doorstep.