Mystery novels
are not my default fiction genre for reading myself to sleep at night, but they
do show up on my end tables occasionally. Last week three were my soporifics. That probably doesn’t sound flattering to the books, but they
didn’t last a week precisely because all proved to be good reads.
** **
Runaway by Peter May (2015)
Runaway is billed as mystery fiction, and it
is, but it stretches the definition beyond the usual limits. Veteran Scottish crime
fiction author and screenwriter Peter May tells a tale of youthful adventure
and late-life remorse – and, of course, murder.
There are no private investigators and no police, except as people to be
avoided.
The novel
alternates between 1965 and 2015. In 1965 the central character Jack MacKay, upon
his expulsion from high school, convinces four of his friends to leave notes
for their parents and run off with him from Glasgow to London in a van in order
to become a successful band in London – something the author tried himself as a
teenager. Along the way, Maurie, one of the runaway friends, insists on picking
up his cousin Rachel in Leeds to rescue her from an abusive relationship.
Despite one disaster after another, the six make it to London where they fall
in with a trendy psychologist who dabbles in LSD, celebrities, and attractive
young men. Heartbreak and murder ensue. Three of the original runaways including
Jack return to Glasgow feeling beaten and disillusioned.
50 years later,
the prime suspect in the 1965 slaying is himself murdered. Maurie, who is
terminally ill and barely ambulatory, learns of this and urges a second runaway,
this time from offspring and grandchildren. Once again he means to travel from
Glasgow to London where two of the original six had stayed behind in ‘65. Jack
and Dave need little persuasion. Jack maneuvers his grandson into driving them
in a trip that is scarcely less eventful than the first one. There is much
unfinished business in London after all these years. The two murders – one a
half-century old and one new – are only a part of it, and mostly for Maurie.
For the others it’s largely a poignant tale of paths not taken and of choices
that still exist.
This finely
written novel is not the usual mystery fare, and it likely speaks the most to
those old enough to contemplate the consequences of those untaken paths.
** **
The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler (1949)
After Peter May,
it was time for a well-seasoned classic, and it’s hard to get more classic than
Raymond Chandler. Philip Marlowe is a century too late to be the prototype pulp
detective, but he nonetheless is the archetype; he is everything we still
imagine a private detective to be. For those who know the character only from
the movies, the portrayal most like the Marlowe of the books is that of Dick
Powell in Murder, My Sweet (1944). In
purely cinematic terms, I like Humphrey Bogart’s Marlowe in The Big Sleep better, but Powell’s is
closer to the flavor of the literary character: a world-weary cynical
wisecracker who doesn’t take life very seriously, yet chooses to finish the
jobs he takes even when it would be far wiser and safer not to. My pick was The Little Sister, which I hadn’t
previously read.
The Little Sister is the fifth of the seven Marlowe
novels and the last from the decade in which the character is most at home. By
1949 several of Chandler’s novels and short stories had been adapted to the
screen and he had written a few screenplays of his own including The Blue Dahlia and Double Indemnity. Chandler had had a mouthful of Hollywood and he
didn’t much like the taste. (See Writers
in Hollywood, an article he wrote for The Atlantic in 1945 in which he explains why; multiply all his $
figures by about 20 to adjust for inflation.) He brings his insider knowledge
and perspective to this novel, which features second tier actors, producers,
and agents along with the criminals, lowlifes, and drug dealers interacting
with them. The novel is worth the price just for the glimpse of 1940s Los
Angeles.
The action
begins when the interestingly named Orfamay Quest, an apparently uptight and
naïve young woman from Manhattan Kansas, walks into Marlowe’s office and asks
him to find her brother Orrin, who is missing. She doesn’t want to involve the
police in case he has fallen in with a bad crowd and the police might cause him
trouble. Orfamay is not quite what she seems to be, however, even though "nobody
ever looked less like Lady Macbeth." Orrin and Orfamay, it soon turns out,
are half-siblings of B-actress Mavis Weld who has a real chance of becoming an
A-actress. Mavis is also the girlfriend of a semi-retired gangster named
Steelgrave on whom the cops would love to pin something. Several seemingly
unconnected threads involving photos, blackmail, greed, an old unsolved murder,
drugs, film studio politics, and scorned affections intertwine. Bodies pile up
from ice picks and bullets. Even more than usual, Marlowe is loose with the law,
thereby annoying the police who are alternately sadistic and kind – frequently
in the same encounter.
Chandler always
writes very well and he often is funny even as he conveys the mood he wants: “I
smelled Los Angeles before I got to it. It smelled old and stale like a living
room that had been closed too long.” Or, “Down at the drugstore lunch counter I
had time to inhale two cups of coffee and a melted cheese sandwich with two
slivers of ersatz bacon in it, like dead fish in the silt at the bottom of a
drained pool.” Yum. The Little Sister
is another solid entry in the Chandler bibliography. Definitely recommended.
** **
The State Counsellor by Boris Akunin (2000 – trans. 2008)
Anyone who is a
fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes but hasn’t read Boris Akunin
needs to start right now. Holmes’ contemporary Erast Fandorin first appeared in
print as a 20-year-old neophyte detective in The Winter Queen, a tale set in 1876. The State Counsellor, the sixth Fandorin mystery begins in 1891.
General Krapov
is secretly traveling by train from St. Petersburg to a post in Siberia, where
he being sidelined for a while due to bad publicity from an incident with a
female prisoner. Fandorin is responsible for Krapov’s safety during the
stopover in Moscow, though the responsibility doesn’t come with adequate
authority. Neither the police nor the security service are specifically under
his direction and the two agencies are virtually at war with each other. Someone
impersonating Fandorin boards the train before it reaches Moscow, assassinates
Krapov, and escapes. Fandorin is arrested for this but is quickly released
thanks to the witnesses on the train. But who leaked the information about the “secret”
trip and to what killer or killers?
The reader
learns the answer to the second part of that question right away. In fact, the
book alternates between the perspective of Fandorin, and that of Green, the
leader of the revolutionary Combat Group. We learn of the pogrom that turned
him into what he is. The Combat Group throws bombs at the elites, robs banks,
and commits political murders to further its purposes. We see things from the
points of view of the nobility, the underclass, those in between, and the
insurrectionists. Meanwhile there are personal intrigues, double agents,
professional infighting, and femmes fatales. Fandorin’s job is to solve a
crime, but the crime can’t be separated from the social context. Knowing what we
know about Russia’s fateful upcoming 20th century adds a deep portent
to all the goings-on.
Andrew
Bromfield’s translation is clear and readable. That’s all one really can ask.
If you’re
already an Akunin fan, this will keep you one. If you aren’t one yet, pick up The Winter Queen. You’re likely then to
seek out The State Counsellor.
** **
Trailer for Murder, My Sweet (1944). Except, strangely, for the title (changed
from Farewell, My Lovely), this is
the truest to the spirit of a Chandler novel of any film adaptation to date.
I've got Little Sister here and been meaning to read it. Generally I like mystery or crime novels. I'd not heard of The Winter Queen, but I'd probably enjoy it too. They all sounded like good reads.
ReplyDeleteThey are all enjoyable. I always feel I'm cheating when reading a book in translation though. You never know if you're missing something stylistically. Sometimes it's the best one can do. The only language I can read other than English (though I'm very rusty) is Latin, and the ancient Romans weren't big on detective stories. Lindsey Davis writes some very fun detective fiction set in first century Rome, however. If you haven't given her a try but think you might, start with "The Silver Pigs."
DeleteI love reading those noire novels from Chandler and his contemporaries. The writing style is so crisp and engaging. I read "The Big Sleep" last year and since i had never seen the film, I was just blown away by it. A great read and much more disturbing than I anticipated.
ReplyDeleteAll eras produce copious trash in popular culture, of course, but the best of the noir era is very good indeed by any standard. I'm also a fan of Jim Thompson who had a solid handle on the details of lowlife by lowlifes. His books generally resist movie adaptation since so much of them occur in characters' minds, though "The Grifters" wasn't bad. There have been three attempts at adapting "The Killer inside Me" though, and none has done it justice.
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