Fiction, Reviews

‘The Iron Chariot,’ by Stein Riverton

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The Iron Chariot

One-word review: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I hate to be one of those philistines who can’t appreciate the literature of a past age, but I have to say – the art of the crime novel has improved immensely since 1909, when The Iron Chariot was published.

Author Stein Riverton (real name Svein Elvetun) apparently gets credit for being the inventor of the Scandinavian crime genre. And The Iron Chariot is his classic work.

But even for a Norway booster like me, it’s a slog, my brothers. A genuine slog.

The story opens on a summer day at a resort on a Norwegian island. Some locals come running, announcing they’ve discovered a body. A few guests who’ve been lounging on the lawn run to look, among them the narrator (who is never named). A local gamekeeper has been clubbed to death.

Shortly a private detective is summoned from Kristiania (now Oslo). This detective sets about questioning a few people, relaxing in his room, and wandering the area, apparently without purpose. He carries on a series of languid conversations with the narrator. And about a hundred years later, he names the killer.

“Stein Riverton” is reported to have been a fan of Nobel Prize-winning author Knut Hamsun. This is not good news for the casual reader. The book is indeed Hamsun-esque, and that means slow progress and dense prose. I also didn’t like the detective, Asbjørn Krag, who is one of those inexorable, infallible thinking machines who infest so many early mystery stories.

Worst of all, I figured out the culprit’s identity very early on. After that, it was a matter of mumbling, “Get on with it! Get on with it!” for a hundred pages or more.

Valuable for its historical significance, The Iron Chariot is a yawner of a book. I recommend it only for devotees of old mysteries.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Faithless,’ by Kjell Ola Dahl

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Faithless

Oslo police detective Frank Frølich stops a woman leaving a business he’s surveilling in connection with a series of thefts. He searches her purse and finds drugs. That’s not a major crime in Oslo; she pays a fine and goes home.

The next night, Frank goes to an old friend’s engagement party. His friend introduces him to his fiancée – who turns out to be the very woman Frank arrested the night before.

Shortly thereafter, that same woman is found murdered, naked in a dumpster.

That’s how Faithless, by Kjell Ola Dahl, begins. It’s one of the “Oslo Detectives” series, which follows Frank and his older partner, Gunnarstranda (who doesn’t seem to have a first name, or at least I didn’t catch it).

The story was well told, and pretty suspenseful. The translation got clunky now and then, but I’ve become more tolerant of clunkiness since I started translating books myself.

Indeed, the story was so interesting that it wasn’t until the very end that I realized how grim and nihilistic the whole thing had been, right up to the climactic scene, which involves a hand to hand fight in a waste treatment plant. Well, what do I expect from Scandinavian Noir?

I was ready to buy another book in the series, but I accidentally bought a stand-alone by the same author. It appeared to be a thriller about drug dealers and junkies, and I quickly lost heart and just gave it up.

But Faithless is a well-done cop thriller, and I can’t disrespect it. Cautions for language, violence, sex… pretty much everything.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Freeze Frame,’ by Peter May

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Freeze Frame

This is the last book in the Enzo Mysteries series that is currently available for Kindle.

In Freeze Frame, police forensic expert Enzo Macleod, who lives and operates in France, takes up a cold case involving the murder of an English citizen shot to death 20 years earlier in his home on an island off the Brittany coast.

This book departs from the series’ usual protocols. Enzo is on his own this time, not surrounded by his supportive team of two daughters, their boyfriends, and his female assistant. And this story assumes the form of a classic, “cozy” puzzle mystery. The murder victim had asked, before he died, that his study be preserved exactly as he left it, until his son returned. His son, he said, would immediately understand certain clues he’d left. Unfortunately, the son died before ever seeing the murder scene. His (the son’s) widow has preserved the study untouched ever since. It’s Enzo’s challenge to decipher a puzzle involving secrets and private jokes shared by two men long dead.

I liked Enzo a little more in Freeze Frame than I did in the previous books. He actually exercises some sexual restraint this time out, and a personal challenge that confronts him finds him taking what I consider the right side on a controversial issue.

I’d read the next Enzo book if the Kindle version were available, but for now I’ll be patient. Recommended, with cautions for what you’d expect.

Authors

Jane Austen’s Enduring Popularity

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Has it been simply, unquantifiable choices that has kept Jane Austen’s works so well liked or could it be her word choices? The Upshot spells out some research into what types of words Austen used compared to many other authors in a two century span. (via Alan Cornett)

In other news, Jane Austen’s letter hilariously mocking a gothic novel will be auctioned for the first time at Sotheby’s tomorrow.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Blacklight Blue,’ by Peter May

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Blacklight Blue

I kind of cooled to Peter May’s Enzo Macleod mystery series after the last volume I reviewed. But I picked the thread up again with Blacklight Blue. I’m pleased to report that some of the quirks that annoyed me in previous books have been moderated, and I enjoyed the book well enough.

This time out, Enzo has just gotten a diagnosis of terminal cancer from a doctor, when (in short succession) one of his daughters is nearly killed by a bomb, his other daughter’s boyfriend’s business is burned down, and all his credit cards are stopped.

It all seems to relate to the latest in his cold case investigations. A former forensic scientist, Enzo has made it his crusade, based on a bet, to clear up a number of unsolved French murders (though Scottish-Italian, Enzo lives in Paris). His investigation of the murder of a “rent boy” takes him (along with his usual entourage – his daughters, their boyfriends, and his female assistant) to the Auvergne region of France, where he faces a relentless enemy and a deadly confrontation on a mountainside.

I was pleased that the earlier, half-comic theme of Enzo’s devastating attractiveness to every women he meets has been downplayed. This time out he limits himself to a sympathetic female ski instructor who provides his party with a convenient hideout.

My enjoyment of these books is reduced by the fact that I don’t actually find Enzo a very appealing character. Yet I keep reading the books, so it can’t be that bad. Peter May is a good writer.

Recommended. Cautions for the usual stuff.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Since We Fell,’ by Dennis Lehane

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Since We Fell

“Who was your father?” She turned her chair toward him. “Your real father.”

“Jamie Alden,” he said brightly. “People called him Lefty.”

“Because he was left-handed?”

He shook his head. “Because he never met a place or a person he wouldn’t leave….”

This one, it seems to me, is a bit of a departure for Dennis Lehane. Not in the sense of being less dark than his other work, but Since We Fell has the form of something like a light romance/caper novel. Except in a very minor key. Because this is Lehane, after all.

Rachel Childs got off to an insecure start in life. Her single mother, briefly famous as a pop psychologist, controlled her daughter through manipulation. One of her chief manipulations was her refusal to tell Rachel who her real father was. After her mother’s death, Rachel tried to solve that mystery (there is, I think some existentialist subtext here), with disappointing results.

Her promising career as a television journalist crashes and burns one day when, while reporting on a disaster in Haiti, she has a full-blown psychological meltdown on camera. After that she sinks into agoraphobia and sees no hope for the future.

And then Brian Delacroix, a past acquaintance, re-enters her life. He is charming and cheerful, infinitely patient with her, and genuinely devoted. With his help, she begins to find the courage to face the world.

And that’s when everything starts going south in serious ways.

I won’t tell you more about the plot, because I don’t want to spoil the fun. Since We Fell is a weirdly compelling novel which mixes romance with stark realism, and offers some major surprises (a few of them fairly improbable). I thought it was a great read, but also thought it morally questionable.

Cautions for adult situations, violence, cynicism, and language.

Fiction

John Grisham’s Novels in Film

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The last adaptation we saw of a John Grisham thriller in theaters was Runaway Jury in 2003. A TV version of The Firm aired on NBC in 2012 for one season. Clearly adaptations, even of successful novels, take a lot of skill from a lot of people to work on screen.

Now, The Rainmaker is being considered for a TV series, but Grisham doesn’t have any news on when filming will begin, if ever. He says it’s hard to make a good movie any more.  Good adult dramas are hard to find, he says. If it doesn’t have a costumed character in it, the story won’t find much support in present-day Hollywood. (via Prufrock News)

Authors, Bookselling, Creative Writing, Publishing, Writing

Book pitch: ‘Writing Speculative Fiction: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, Teacher’s Ed.’ by Lelia Rose Foreman

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Writing Speculative Fiction

My friend Lelia Rose Foreman has written a text book, Writing Speculative Fiction: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, Teacher’s Ed. It is aimed especially at home schoolers teaching high schoolers. An excerpt from my novel Death’s Doors is incorporated, with my permission.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dragon Tears,’ by Dean Koontz

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Dragon Tears

Another Dean Koontz book downloaded to my Kindle because it didn’t seem familiar. I had read it before, of course, but I’d forgotten so much that all the surprises were still surprising (one of the side benefits of growing old, I guess).

Dragon Tears is both terrifying and sweet. The protagonists, a small group of people led by a male-female police team (who fall in love as we watch), are menaced by a truly horrifying villain – a man of no maturity at all who has nevertheless developed god-like powers, powers that grow every day. His ultimate goal is to make all humanity his slaves (he will reduce their numbers for environmental purposes). But for today he’s selected a small group – a mother and son living in their car, a homeless alcoholic, and the aforementioned pair of cops. The villain confronts them by means of avatars constructed of animated soil, warning them that he will kill them all – horribly – by dawn the next day. The cops take the initiative in trying to find a way to stop this guy, and they find assistance where they never looked for it.

Scary, charming, and a lot of fun, Dragon Tears is excellent entertainment. Cautions for intense situations and some rough language.

Non-fiction

The International Support for American Independence

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“Americans today,” Ferreiro says, “celebrate the July Fourth holiday under somewhat false pretences.” Yes, the colonial-wide support of Boston in the wake of the Coercive Acts (1774) was a factor in pushing British Americans toward independence. So was the publication of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. So were the ideas of the founding fathers and the activism of ordinary colonists who destroyed the homes of tax collectors, tarred and feathered loyalists, and burned tea. Yet, as Ferreiro shows us, the men sitting at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia during the Second Continental Congress also realized that a declaration of independence was their only real chance of securing the foreign aid necessary to defeat the mighty British army and navy. As Virginian Richard Henry Lee put it in June 1776, “It’s not by choice then, but necessity that calls for independence, as the only means by which foreign alliance can be obtained.”

John Fea draws these ideas from Larrie D. Ferreiro’s Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It. He says French and Spanish diplomats wanted to push back Great Britain’s power (particularly the French after their defeat in the French and Indian War) and exploited ways to encourage our War for Independence. (via Prufrock News)