I think it’s safe to assume that Norwegian author Gunnar Staalesen, author of The Writing On the Wall, has issues with evangelical Christians. Early in this book two characters, a cross-dressing judge who dies in bed with an underage prostitute, and a Bergen organized crime kingpin, are both identified as members of the “Christian People’s Party” (usually translated “The Christian Democratic Party”), the traditional party of conservative Christians in Norway. (Did you know that evangelical Christians control organized crime in Bergen? I didn’t either, but that’s the impression Staalesen leaves.)

I’ll have to admit he fooled me, though. With an opening like that, I took it for granted that the perpetrator of the murder at the center of this story, the death by asphyxiation of a teenaged girl, would be the evangelical crime boss. As it turned out he wasn’t guilty of that, though he was guilty of plenty of other things.

Staalesen’s hero, private detective Varg Veum (the last name’s pronounced VAY-oom), is apparently supposed to be a kind of Norwegian Philip Marlowe, tough and wry and world-weary. I didn’t get that at all, frankly, until a fight finally happened, and Veum turned out to be able to take care of himself, to my surprise. I’d imagined him kind of effete based on his earlier behavior, especially his interest in describing women’s clothing, and home furnishings, in loving detail.

But I may have missed some narrative hints that could be present in the original and lost in translation. The translation here is of that maddening variety that’s technically irreproachable, every phrase literally correct, but tone-deaf in terms of style and nuance, so that the characters speak as no English speaker ever would, mixing formal diction with British slang. All the characters talk the same way, and are equally unconvincing.

Hey, Norwegian publishers! Are you looking for an English translator? I can do better than this guy!

Anyway, it was all fairly unrewarding, especially for evangelical like me. I’m pretty sure Staalesen doesn’t want my business, and he won’t be getting any more of it.

Cautions for language and adult themes.

Dan was laughing. At least that chuckling murmur was near to a laugh. Yet there was no mirth in it. It had that touch of the maniacal in it which freezes the blood. Silent halted in the midst of his rush, with his hands poised for the next blow. His mouth fell agape with an odd expression of horror as Dan stared up at him. That hideous chuckling continued. The sound defied definition. And from the shadow in which Dan was crouched, his brown eyes blazed, changed, and filled with yellow fires.

If the passage above, taken from Max Brand’s novel The Untamed, seems a little turgid to you, I am in agreement. The book was free for Kindle, and I’d never read any Brand, so I thought I’d give him a try. I don’t think I’m going to be a fan. The prose is labored, and dialogue (though the slang is probably authentic, since the author actually worked as a cowboy for a while) clunks like a counterfeit double eagle.

And yet… considering how literary tastes change, I could see how this could have been an extremely popular book in its time. There’s a mythic quality to it, especially toward the climax, where the image of a mysterious rider in the dark, whistling a weird melody as he approaches with death in his hands, evokes a scene that could have inspired Sergio Leone. Continue reading The Untamed, by Max Brand →

I’ve always had a fondness for tales of early Hollywood. It was an amazing time and place in history, in a sense the culmination (as author Loren D. Estleman himself argues in this novel) of the American Wild West. There, in the dusty hills of sleepy Los Angeles, a dysfunctional aggregation of eastern Jewish businessmen, stage actors, vaudevillians, European artistes, and ordinary cowboys improvised like mad to create an art form that had never existed before, and so had no rules or traditions to which to appeal.

Loren D. Estleman is best known as a mystery novelist, but he also writes good westerns, and The Rocky Mountain Moving Picture Association contains elements of both genres. It’s a fun book, and I enjoyed it quite a lot.

Presented in the form of three long flashbacks, interspersed with vignettes describing the main character’s (and Hollywood’s) later history, TRMMPA tells the story of Dmitri Pulski, who when we meet him in 1913 is working for his father, an ice merchant with an operation in northern California. His father, who has received a huge order for ice from the titular Rocky Mountain Moving Picture Association, has grave doubts about the likely solvency of such an enterprise (“Moving pictures are a fad,” he explains, “but people will always need ice.”). So he sends Dmitri south, along with a Russian immigrant co-worker, in a Model T to investigate. Continue reading The Rocky Mountain Moving Picture Association, by Loren D. Estleman →