Two Mysteries

I've been reading a lot of reviews of Scandinavian mysteries lately so when AndiF lent me a sack full of "BritLit" for the summer I was pleased to find a Scandinavian mystery inside. Missing, by Karin Alvtegen (translated from Swedish by Anna Paterson), was published in 2000 and won Scandinavia's best crime novel of the year. It was nominated for an Edger here in the US this year.

I read it almost straight through without stopping. The protagonist is Sybilla who we meet in the restaurant of an upscale Stockholm hotel where she is apparently trying to pick up a single male diner at the table next to hers. Is she a prostitute? Is she a con artist? No, she is homeless, and trying to have someone pay for a nice hotel room for her where she can take a bath before she returns to her life on the streets? Fortunately the gentleman pays for her room. Unfortunately he is found murdered the next morning and she was the last person seen with him. So her previously anonymous life on the streets is disrupted by her "wanted" status.

I won't give away the ending, but Sybilla is an interesting character that you don't often see in novels. She comes from a wealthy family in which she never felt accepted. Although she has chosen to live a life on the streets rather than live with her family in reality her choice to disappear and become invisible to the Swedish social welfare system means that she has no choice except to live on the street because to do otherwise requires a govt. ID number by which she can be traced.

The mystery portion of the novel is good although I thought the ending was a little forced. But I recommend it. I can't decide if it is better summer reading or winter reading (Sweden always seems like a winterish place to me).

Also in the sack of books was another mystery, Burial of Ghosts by Ann Cleeves. Like Sybilla, the protagonist of this story, Lizzie Bartholomew, is also something of a lost woman, starting out life as an abandoned baby who is placed with English social services. Now an adult social worker, she is drifting after some kind of traumatic incident that has forced her to leave her job. In Morocco she has a one night fling with a married man that ends up having unexpected repercussions.

This book kept my attention but I didn't like Cleeves' style that much. Where Alvteger's story telling was pinpoint sharp and tightly focused, Cleeves' story is all over the place as Lizzie tells (parts) of her story to other people and to herself and as she experiences nightmarish flashbacks that eventually give us the whole story of the traumatic incident she lived through. I can't say that I anticipated the ending completely but it wasn't wholly unexpected.

If I could only read one of these books, I'd enthusiastically recommend Missing but I'd skip Burial of Ghosts.

This and That: Dance, Mystery Novels, Blog Comments and Movie Architecture

Some stuff:

Dancer/Choreographer Merce Cunningham has announced that his company will be disbanded after his death because "he thinks his dances have a better chance of surviving over the long haul if his associates concentrate on making them available to other companies instead of keeping his own troupe going."  Terry Teachout writes in the WSJ that this is the most "significant dance-related piece of news to come along in years."

Ian Rankin retired his famous detective John Rebus but he's not retired from writing.  His new detective is Malcom Fox and Rankin auctioned the opening pages of the first Malcom Fox manuscript for charity.  The novel is set for release in September.

I decided to put Sarah Waters' new novel, The Little Stranger, in my pile of vacation reading.  A few weeks ago Waters wrote a column in  The Guardian in which she discussed the relationship of this novel to Josephine Tey's mystery novel, The Franchise Affair.  I read all of Tey's novels years ago and I'm thinking of digging out The Franchise Affair and re-reading it.  But I can't decide whether to read it before or after The Little Stranger.

I got a chuckle out of  post by Scott McLemee at ArtsJournal in which he clarifies that he doesn't think the problem with online communication is too many people thinking they are important or thinking they are part of the conversation.  No, the "issue is people acting like assholes."   Yeah, I think that pretty much sums it up.  I'm pleased that my commenters have (so far) been the exact opposite. :)

Finally, Architect's Journal recently selected the top ten star wars buildings.   What do you think?  I've always wanted to visit the Cloud City, I would have ranked it higher.

This & That

Some stuff:

Sarah Waters.  The Guardian had an interesting interview with novelist Sarah Waters this week.

In the past, the literary grandes dames of the 20th century were larger-than-life figures as complex as Radclyffe Hall and Djuna Barnes or as frankly posh and exotic as Daphne du Maurier. Waters, who has the potential, and perhaps the appetite, to achieve a du Maurier audience, is not like that. She is at pains to stress her ordinariness. "I think I'm an unhysterical person," she says. "I do see myself as normal." Everything about her situation here advertises normality. "But," she goes on, "I think that what's behind normality is very interesting."

PD James and Elizabeth George.  At the beginning of May, Rohan Maitzen wrote a blog post that I intended to point to earlier about James and George called Who Cares who Killed ... Whoever it Was?  I had read George's last novel a few months ago but I just finished James' last novel The Private Patient recently.  I found a lot to think about in her post.

Often in my course on mystery and detective fiction we talk about the limits working in this genre sets on certain literary elements, chief among them characterization. A mystery novelist can not afford to mine the depths of her characters as long as they are suspects in the case. This technical limitation is most apparent in writers of 'puzzle mysteries,' such as Agatha Christie, but even with writers who develop their people quite fully, as James and George do, an element of opacity is required, not just about their actions, but about their feelings and values, else we will know too quickly "whodunnit." (There are exceptions, of course, as when some of the novel is openly from the point of view of the criminal, though often then we have inside knowledge without knowing the character's outward identity.) The same limits do not, however, apply to the detectives--which is one reason, as historians and critics of the genre have pointed out, for the appeal of the mystery series. Across a series of novels, we can come to know the detectives very well, and a developmental arc much longer than that of any single case emerges. Though the case provides the occasion, after a while the real interest lies with the detective.

I think that's true.  At this point I only read George to find out the next chapter in the saga of Lynley and also Barbara Havers.  The mystery is really irrelevant to me.   I read James because I like the way she writes and less to find out what happens to Dalgleish but that's only because I long ago learned that James will not reveal all about Dalgleish.   And this is why I continued reading Janet Evanavich all last summer even as I grew to almost dislike her formulaic writing.  I wanted to find out if Stephanie and Joe would get together - finally and completely.  When I figured out that Evanovich had no intention of doing anything but tease us with that relationship to sell books, I lost interest and I've never read her last novel.

Speaking of mystery detectives ...

My Summer Book Wish List.  Lindsey Davies has a new volume out in her Marcus Didius Falco series - volume #19.   It's called Alexandria and, yes, the mystery will be irrelevant.  I want to find out what's going on with Marcus, Helen and the kids.   Iain Pears, has a new novel out:  Stone's Fall.  Reviews say it's more like Dream of Scipio than An Instance of the Fingerpost, which sounds encouraging.   Dream is one of my favorite novels.  (And the fact he lists Robertson Davies' The Deptford Trilogy as one of his three favorite books pleases me very much.)  A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book won't be released in the United States until October.  Will I be able to wait?  Or will I need to get it from a commonwealth country (hello Canada!) before then?  Or maybe someone who is traveling to Europe will pick it up for me in an airport bookstore ...

Finally ... a feel good story:

This & That: Music, Travel, Books, etc.

Some stuff:

• A local artist is putting the words of Meriwether Lewis to music. Words like: "heartily tired of the national hug".
• My friends Meg and Adam have finished the South American half of their year traveling around the world. Starting in Peru, they moved on to Bolivia, Argentina and Chile before spending a final three weeks in Columbia. I admit I was nervous about them being in Columbia but they say it was beautiful and the people were lovely. After a brief stop back in the States they have moved on to spend a month in New Zealand where they are traveling around by spaceship. Then they head to Asia. Jealous? Me? What makes you think that?
• I've made it to the last of Laura Lippman's Tess Monaghan mysteries. I'm really impressed how she doesn't repeat herself with plots (although shooting people at the end of the novel is starting to get predictable). I finished The Last Place which involved a serial killer (and had references back to the very first book too). It was really creepy and I found I couldn't read it late at night. In By A Spider's Thread she took the action out of town again (southern Indiana no less - I'd like Andi's opinion on if she got it right). But she avoided the problems I had with her when she sent Tess to Texas by creating a network of female investigators that Tess could call on for the out of town work. That worked really well (in fact I'll probably write more about that at some point.) As I read this series I did regularly wonder if she was purposely trying not to cover Baltimore ground that David Simon covers, but then came No Good Deeds. It had a different twist though - it ended up being a meditation on the power that the federal government has to make the life of an average citizen miserable if it so chooses. I just picked up Another Thing to Fall from the library and when I finish that, I'm finished. Sigh.
• I had jury duty today and I brought Anna Karenina with me to read. I assumed I'd be there two days (that's what usually happens) and I'd have a lot of downtime (that also usually happens). But I only had to serve one day and most of it was spent in an actual courtroom going through voir dire. They didn't pick me (no surprise there) but I also didn't get much reading time in. I only have about 200 more pages to go - I just need some uninterrupted time when I'm not too tired. I thought for sure that jury duty would provide that. Wrong. But I did my civic duty.

Laura Lippman's Tess Monaghan

I haven't posted much lately about books I've been reading. But that's not because I'm not reading. On the contrary, I'm flying through books.

At the suggestion of andif, I've been reading Laura Lippman's series of mystery novels that feature Baltimore private investigator Tess Monaghan. I love a good mystery series and this, so far, has been a really good series. I've read Baltimore Blues, Charm City, Butcher's Hill, In Big Trouble, The Sugar House and In a Strange City. I'm working on The Last Place right now.

Like I said, I love mystery novels. But I don't usually talk about them. Sometimes one of my reading groups picks one to read and there really isn't a whole lot to say after everyone decides whether or not the ending was surprising. A series is another matter because then there is often (but not always) an underlying story that builds the characters and can be a topic for discussion. But most reading groups don't commit to a whole series.

I thought I'd take a break from reading and talk a bit about why I'm enjoying this series. First, she hasn't annoyed me with erroneous lawyer detail. Yes, there is the obligatory lawyer, but he has only a small part in the series. He is important to Tess because he is a rowing coach as much as for his legal connections. Lippman spends very little time ever talking about him practicing law - which is a good thing. That means I'm not distracted by erroneous or unlikely lawyer details, as I often am in these types of series. And what she does talk about she either gets right or it's close enough to right that it isn't a distraction for me. For instance, one of the clever things about this series, is the reason there is an obligatory lawyer in the first place: to give Tess a confidential relationship with her clients. That's a really good reason and it's believable. Lippman doesn't quite get it right (or, she got it right once but then stopped getting it right), but that doesn't really matter because she has the overall idea right.

The other thing she's done right is give really good descriptions of Baltimore that paint a picture but don't go into so much detail that it is distracting. I like a mystery series that makes me feel part of a city: the London of Lord Peter Wimsey; the Rome of Marcus Didius Falco; the Edinburgh of John Rebus. Often when an author sets a story in a "second" city there is either too much description or too little. If there isn't enough description there is no sense of place. But too much detailed description (and this is usually the case) makes the reader feel like a visitor instead of a resident.

So far in my reading only one book was set outside the Baltimore area: In Big Trouble. So far, it has been my least favorite of the series, but not because of the descriptions of San Antonio. She does a good job with those. No, the problem for me was that Tess ended up solving the mystery in Texas the same way she would have done it in Baltimore, which was completely unrealistic. Lippman has done a great job of giving Tess a network in Baltimore with lots of contacts that can help her solve cases: newspaper contacts from her previous job, legal contracts, contacts within the police force and especially family and friend contacts that are very believable. Tess comes from a low profile politically connected family in Baltimore; not the glamorous political connections but the working class, bureaucracy connections (I'm waiting to see if she ever uses her mother's connections at the NSA). She also has a good friend that comes from money and that provides her with entry into circles that would otherwise be closed to her.

But in Texas she has no real contacts and yet... everyone opens up to her. I found it especially unbelievable that a homicide detective would sit there and share speculation about the case with a total stranger who has just found the dead body. This is one of my pet peeves about many mysteries I read. The detective just has to show up and everyone opens up. I was glad when Lippman moved Tess back to Baltimore.

I particularly liked Butcher's Hill, which had a couple of really good plot twists that were unexpected but not so much of a stretch that I found them unbelievable. And I liked In a Strange City which had a wealth of interesting tidbits about Baltimorean Edger Allen Poe. So far, the plots aren't formulaic and Tess grows and learns as the series goes along. In the current book I'm reading, The Last Place, she has been forced to go to anger management classes and it will be interesting to see how she comes out of those. (This one also involves a serial killer and is giving me the creeps.)

I'll be sorry when I get to the end of this series.