Crime Fiction – Page 179

Crime Fiction Alphabet: C is for The Complaints

Published on October 20, 2009 by Margaret4 Comments

This week the Crime Fiction Alphabet is featuring the letter C, which for me is Ian Rankin’s latest book The Complaints. The ‘Complaints’ are the cops who investigate other cops.

Set in Edinburgh in February 2009, Inspector Malcolm Fox works in the the PSU or Professional Standards Unit, part of the Complaints and Conducts office. The PSU is sometimes called ‘the Dark Side’,

They sniffed out racism and corruption. They looked at bungs received and blind eyes turned. They were quiet and serious and determined and had as much power as they need in order to do the job. (page 4) …

A lot of cops asked the Complaints the same question: how can you do it? How can you spit on your own kind? These were the officers you’d worked with, or might work with in the future. These were, it was often said, ‘the good guys’. But that was the problem right there – what did it mean to be good? Fox had puzzled over that one himself, staring into the mirror behind the bar as he nursed another soft drink. (page 5)

And there in those two quotes is the nub of this book. Who is the good guy? As Fox, yet another divorced cop with a drink problem, his father in a care home and his sister, Jude, in an abusive relationship, is drawn into an increasingly complex and puzzling investigation he has to work out just who the bad guys are. He is asked to investigate DS Jamie Breck, a likeable young cop who is allegedly involved in a paedophile site run by an Aussie cop in Melbourne. Then Jude’s partner, Vince is murdered and Breck is the investigating officer. As Fox gets to know him it become increasingly difficult for him to know just who he can trust.

As I read on I grew to really like Fox. He is a good guy, he plays by the rules and looks after his family. He’s bit of a philosopher, an outsider mistrusted and hated by other cops.Then he finds he has to defend his reputation when he himself is accused of a misdemeanor and comes under suspicion and surveillance. It’s about morality and vice. It’s up-to-date and I was absolutely engrossed in this book from the beginning to the end; one of the best books I’ve read this year. I hope Ian Rankin will write at least one more book featuring Malcolm Fox – and Jamie Breck.

Agatha Christie Reading Challenge Update

Published on October 17, 2009 by Margaret3 Comments

I’ve been taking part in Kerrie’s Agatha Christie Reading Challenge. I’m not reading her books in the order she wrote them, but as I find copies. Sometimes I join a challenge and then lose interest, but I’m really enjoying this one – it’s pure pleasure.

These are the books I’ve read and reviewed to date:

Crooked House (1949)
By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968)
The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (1962)
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
Dead Man’s Folly (1956)
The Body in the Library (1942)
Peril at End House (1932)
The Thirteen Problems (1933) Short Stories
The Hound of Death (1933) Short Stories
Elephants Can Remember (1972)

The following are Agatha Christie books that I own and will be reading next – not necessarily in this order:

The Pale Horse
Murder on the Orient Express
A Murder is Announced
Death on the Nile
They Do It with Mirrors
The Moving Finger
A Pocket Full of Rye

I’ll be looking out for more books to read once I’ve finished these.

Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear

Published on October 17, 2009 by Margaret1 Comment

I’ve already posted my letter B in Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet series, but here is a late entry for the letter A.

Among the Mad is by Jacqueline Winspear. It is the sixth in the Maisie Dobbs Mystery series. It begins on Christmas Eve in 1931 in London where Maisie notices a man sitting on the pavement. About to give him some change she becomes aware of a strange sensation of impending danger, somehow she knew that the man was about to take his life and before she can reach him there is an explosion. This is the start of a series of terrifying events threatening the safety of not only Maisie but also thousands of innocent people.

Although the Great War had ended more than thirteen years years ago it still haunts Maisie and her assistant Billy Beale and this suicide brings all its horrors back to them. This is a dark novel as Maisie is drawn into the investigation by Scotland Yard to discover the identity of the man who is threatening to kill thousands of people unless his demands are met. It highlights the desperate conditions of the war veterans suffering still from shell-shock, unable to work and receiving no pensions. As first dogs and birds and finally a Government junior minister are found dead from some unknown chemical substance the search becomes increasingly more sinister as the mind of the madman is revealed.

At the same time Among the Mad gives agonising details of the medical treatment given to woman suffering from melancholia in the mental hospitals of the time when Billy’s wife, Doreen is admitted to Wychett Hill, or as Billy describes it “the bleedin’ nuthouse”. Doreen undergoes some kind of insulin therapy, and both Maisie and Billy are horrified to find her

lying on a cast-iron bed, her eyes wide open, her face contorted as she jerked her head back and forth on the pillow. Her wrists were secured to the bed on either side of her body, and her feet had been strapped to the bottom of the bed. Her slender wrists reminded Maisie of a sparrow’s tiny bones, set against the dark leather biting into her skin. Doreen had lost so much weight it seemed as if the sheet and blanket were flush across the bed, with slight protrusions to indicate the position of her feet, knees and hips. (pages 117-8)

I enjoy the Maisie Dobbs books; Maisie is meticulous, with great attention to detail, reflective and caring. There is so much social history which fascinated me, making me want to know more about the 1930s. There is also an interesting glimpse of Oswald Mosley:

He’s been hobnobbing with the likes of the Italian, Mussolini, and there’s talk that he’s thinking of setting up a Fascist Party here. There’s a recipe for terror, if ever I came across it. (page 103)

Murder Being Once Done by Ruth Rendell

Published on October 15, 2009 by Margaret3 Comments

Murder Being Once Done was first published in 1972. Inspector Wexford is convalescing, staying with his nephew, Howard, in London. He is bored, fussed over by his wife Dora, on a strict diet, denied the food he loves, absolutely ordered off alcohol and police work by his doctor, so all he can do to pass his time is to take walks and talk with his nephew about More’s Utopia which he has borrowed from the library. What makes it all most frustrating is that his nephew is a Dectective Superintendent and he is investigating the death of Loveday Morgan, aged about 20, found in a vault in a London cemetery.

Wexford just cannot resist going to the scene of the crime – Kenbourne Vale Cemetery, a huge and bizarre place, which Wexford finds profoundly sinister and awe-inspiring:

Never before, not in any mortuary or house of murder, had Wexford so tellingly felt the oppressive chill of death. The winged victory held back her plunging horses against a sky that was almost black, and under the arches of the colonnades lay wells of gloom. He felt that not for anything would he have walked between those arches and the pillars that fronted them to read the bronze plaques on their damp yellow walls. Not for renewed health and youth would he have spent a night in that place. (page 17)

From then on he defies his doctor’s orders and helps Howard with his investigations. He has to go carefully though, feeling rather lost away from the familiar ground of Kingsmarkham, his “essential Wexfordness” deserting him for a while, and aware of the attitude of the townsman towards his country cousin. Wexford gets more involved and is convinced he’s found the murderer only to discover that he’s made a mistake. Then he realises how

deeply his illness had demoralized him. Fear of getting tired, fear of getting wet, fear of being hurt – all these fears had contributed to his failure. (page 138)

He’s about to give up, feeling old and useless. Then, when he is presented with a vital clue he gets back his yearning for the truth, excitement sets the adrenlin surging through his blood and shivers traveling up his spine as he sees his quarry in his sight.

Although this is quite a short book it’s densely packed, not only with details of the crime, but touching on such issues as single mothers, poverty, ignorance and religious intolerance. It’s strong on sense of place, and although there are a few passages painting a picture of life in the 1970s it has a timeless quality about it, with enough twists and turns for me to be unsure of the outcome.

I liked the chapter heading quotations from Sir Thomas More’s Utopia – the title comes from one of these:

The murder being once done, he is in less fear and more hope that the deed shall not be betrayed or known, seeing the party is now dead and rid out of the way, which only might have uttered or disclosed it.

Crime Fiction Alphabet: B is for The Brethren

Published on October 13, 2009 by Margaret2 Comments

Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise is running a weekly meme: The Alphabet in Crime Fiction. Each week you have to write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week.

Kerrie explains that your post MUST be related to either the first letter of a book’s title, the first letter of an author’s first name, or the first letter of the author’s surname.

So you see you have lots of choice. You could write a review, or a bio of an author, so long as it fits the rules somehow.

This week’s letter is B and the book I’ve chosen to write about is The Brethren by John Grisham. I first read this several years ago when I was having a Grisham binge, reading every book by him that I could find. I read them so quickly and then promptly forgot about them.

This one sticks in my mind a bit more than some of the others, mainly because of its title. There are two strands to the story. The first concerns the Brethren – three judges imprisoned in Trumble a minimum security federal prison. They meet every week in the law library with the prison’s approval to hear cases and settle disputes between the other prisoners, and also, but not with approval, they’re running a gay-extortion scheme raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars. The money is then smuggled out to their attorney and deposited in their secret offshore bank account.

Then there is Aaron Lake, a congressman talked into running for President by Teddy Maynard of the CIA. Lake is handsome, articulate and smart, with no bad habits, clean as a whistle with a pretty dull private life since he’d become a widower: a solid candidate, very electable. But then, of course the two plots link up.

I haven’t re-read the book, but my memory of it is, like all the other Grisham books that I’ve read, that it is fast-paced, packed with legal detail, complicated and for me at least totally absorbing. I may even read it again.

Sunday Salon

Published on October 11, 2009September 30, 2017 by Margaret10 Comments

Last Sunday I wrote that I was going to concentrate on reading just two books at a time concentrating on reading one non-fiction and one fiction. I sort of stuck to my plan and am still reading Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God. I finished Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear (more about that in a later post) and my plan after that was to go back to reading one of the books shown on the sidebar – Wolf Hall or The Children’s Book.

But it didn’t work out like that, because I went with D to a hospital appointment and needed a book to read whilst waiting. Both Wolf Hall and The Children’s Book are heavy hardbacks and wouldn’t fit in my handbag so instead I picked up one of my library books – Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell and started to read that. Reading in a hospital waiting room is an exercise in concentration. First off we had to use the hand spray to prevent catching, spreading the swine flu germs – how that works I don’t understand given that once you’re in you have to touch chairs, doors etc. Then we were told to sit on the green chairs whilst waiting to go to the next waiting area. The green chairs are next to the entrance doors that open automatically each time someone goes near, and it was a wet, windy day. One small boy was fascinated by the doors and kept walking in front of them saying “close” when they opened which meant that they stayed open. This went on for several minutes until his mother came and took him away. I read a few pages whilst being alternately amused and irritated and shivering.

We then were called to the next waiting area – no automatic doors, but a constant stream of doctors and nurses calling out names and ushering people through, people complaining about how long they’d had to wait, the phone ringing and people talking loudly. Still, it is a hospital, not a reading room, no matter how long you have to wait. But Faceless Killers is sufficiently engrossing so that I was hardly aware of what was going on around me.

I finshed it this morning and will now read either Wolf Hall or The Children’s Book. I started both of them a while back and only put them down because they’re so heavy it’s hard to read them in bed (where I like to do my reading). I’ll have to work on strengthening my hands and arms.

I hadn’t heard of Henning Mankell until the BBC broadcast the Wallender series last year with Kenneth Branagh playing Kurt Wallender. I’d been meaning to read one of the books since then. Branagh’s face was inevitably in my mind as I read Faceless Killers, but as it wasn’t one of the books filmed the rest was purely down to my imagination from reading the book. Wallender is yet another detective to join the ranks of Rebus in my mind. He is a senior police officer and, like Morse, listens to opera in his car and in his apartment. He is lonely, morose, overweight and drinks too much. His wife, Mona has left him, he’s estranged from his daughter, Linda and has problems with his father, an artist who has painted the same picture for years and is now senile.

I discovered on the Inspector Wallender website that Faceless Killers is the first in the Kurt Wallender series of books, so for once I’ve begun at the beginning of a series! (Although Wallender first appears in The Pyramid, a collection of short stories). It’s about the brutal murder of the Lovgrens, an old man and his wife in an isolated farmhouse in Skane, the southern most province in Sweden (there’s a helpful map in the book). The old lady’s last word is “foreign”. Does this mean the killers are foreigners? When this is leaked to the press the ugly issue of racial hatred is raised. Are the killers illegal immigrants from the refugee camps, or should the police be looking at the Lovgrens’ family? Why would anyone kill them in such a savage way – they weren’t rich and had no enemies?

This is not just a detective story, apart from racial discrimination and refugees, Wallender reflects on the problems of change in Swedish society, of aging, and of the uncertainty and fragility of life – the incantation he often reflects on is:

A time to live and a time to die.

I hope to find the next Wallender book to read soon: The Dogs of Riga.

Faceless Killers, like other Wallender books, has been adapted into a series on Swedish TV and an English version, again with Kenneth Branagh, is due to be broadcast next year.