Category: Krimi

Ross Macdonald, The Underground Man (1973).

Good Reads meta-data is 288 pages rated 3.94 by 2419.

Genre: krimi.

Verdict: The Best. 

Tagline: It’s hot!

Lew Archer’s humane instincts put him in the middle of a martial dispute when feeding pigeons, while waiting for a bus, he shares his peanuts with a small boy. Soon he is in the crossfire between a loutish father and a battered mother as they quarrel over the boy. Knowing he should walk away, Archer does not.  

Ever the loner himself, Archer wants to help this broken family and so the inner knight errand mounts his faithful dusty blue Ford sedan and sets forth.  Once in, it’s all in for Archer. As he goes to and fro, asking questions against the background of a raging wildfire like a conquering army pounding and destroying all in its path slowly approaching the city. 

While the prose is spare the metaphors are rich (albeit sometimes too rich and forced) as Archer moves through the body politic of SoCal – noir in the sunshine, indeed.  Once broken, families repeat that break through the generations it seems.  The title should be ‘Men’ not ‘Man.’  Much of the action stems from fragile masculine egos.  

The people he questions seldom want to talk about the most important things. The façade of normality is just that, a screen. 

***

I sometimes think Macdonald is THE krimi writer. One critic said he wrote the same story twenty-five times in varying ways. Each time with more depth, insight, or empathy.  It was story about a broken family.  

K. A. Bedford, Black Light (2015).

Good Reads meta-data is 328 pages, rated 3.22 by 45 litizens. 

Genre: Thriller: Species: Paranormal.  

DNA:  Black Swan. 

Verdict: A change of pace. 

Tagline:  Elves and demons rove Western Australia!  ‘Get your amulets right here! Three potions for the price of two!’  

A few years after The Great War, a widowed English novelist moves as far away as possible from bad memories to Western Australia, hours south of Perth.  She lives alone, hires servants, writes novels, wears old clothes (at times those of her dead husband), has plenty of money, never attends church, drives cars, does not coif her hair, is reclusive, each and all of these facts shocks the locals. They, however, are divided among themselves over which of her unnatural behaviours is the worst. So far she hasn’t started smoking or playing loud music, but can it be long before she starts this devil worship?  So they may well ask. The vicar reviles her wanton ways! He is small-minded hypocrite.  A touch of realism there.  

(A similar reaction to women of that time on the other side of the world is On the Rocks, discussed elsewhere on this blog.)

Then, unbidden, a favourite aunt from Old Blighty makes the two-week odyssey by air (circa 1926) to warn Novelist of impending doom!  Doom?  Doom.  However, once arrived, Aunt is so exhausted from the sojourn, confused by her fatigue, ill from motion sickness, disoriented in the unfamiliar surroundings that she cannot quite say what impelled (or paid for) her impromptu trek, apart from some strange dreams involving Novelist. These dreams, as she recounts them, are very detailed and accurate about places and objects auntie has never seen.  We have entered Spooktown in the Twilight Zone.     

Side Bar: spiritualism reached a high in the years after World War I.  The wholesale slaughter of a masculine generation gave impetus to efforts to penetrate the beyond.  While many charlatans and crooks took advantage of that demand, there were also well-meaning people who explored the occult.  One of them is Novelist’s neighbour, who spends most of spare time, when not reading up on magic, building a time machine with correspondence from H. G. Wells. Get the idea?

The plot pot thickens when she receives first a menacing letter, then a threatening one, and finally a blackmail demand.  Since she has only been there a few months, none this makes sense…in this world.

Daunted, she nonetheless fights back with scant assistance and resources, not including the local plod whose only apparent interest is football.  Another touch of realism that. Being other worldly the story does not stick to Ronald Knox’s decalogue for krimis. Ergo, in the last 50+ pages all kinds of new information and characters enter.  It’s just not natural!  

***

A change of pace from my usual reading.  It is well written and thoroughly contextualised with differentiated characters. The detail is rich but not suffocating.  It ends on an open door that suggests a follow-up novel.  

Murder Most Royal (2020) by S. J. Bennett

Good Reads meta-data is 336 pages, rated 3.88 by 6784 litizens.

DNA: Brit; Species: Royalty.  

Verdict: One liked it. 

Tagline:  Look what Santa Claus brought.

Members of the British royal family travel to Sandringham House on the Norfolk Coast for Christmas, where they have been many times before.  The peace and quiet they seek is unsettled by a macabre discovery on the beach, teenage drug dealing, a hit and run accident or was it, and a death in odd circumstances.  Sandringham sounds worse than Newtown on Saturday night.

While plod takes these events one at a time, with years of experience at the jigsaw puzzle of humanity, Her Majesty sees a whole, and sends forth her paladin, one time artillery officer Rozie to connect the dots.  

Bennett makes the members of the royal family human, and in the main likeable. Similarly the local residents are several and varied. Nor are the police reduced to cardboard. 

Still I niggle, Her Majesty seems to be in a hurry and has three direct confrontations that cut against her softy-softly approach. The sulky teenager who appears early on then disappears, and likewise the drug haul that misled the police also goes poof!  There is also a reference to Greenland that had me consulting Google Earth to see if it made sense. Barely. Contrived.

Finally, I found it hard to keep the characters straight. Those with titles have three names: their aristocratic one, a birth name, and a nickname.  It was like reading a Russian novel with patronymics, eponymics, retronymics, and nymics.  

For pedants only: Sandringham House is the personal and private property of Elizabeth Mountbatten née Windsor. It was purchased by her father and willed to her.  Wikipedia says it has, get this, between 100 and 200 rooms! ‘Between.’  That made me wonder about all the staff. The maids, janitors, tradesmen to keep the place running.  Then there are the grounds of the estate, which are extensive.  Who pays them?  

Third in the sequence and one hopes for a fourth in due course. 

Murder Most Royal (2020) by S. J. Bennett

Good Reads meta-data is 336 pages, rated 3.88 by 6784 litizens.

DNA: Brit; Species: Royalty.  

Verdict: One liked it. 

Tagline:  Look what Santa Claus brought.

Members of the British royal family travel to Sandringham House on the Norfolk Coast for Christmas, where they have been many times before.  The peace and quiet they seek is unsettled by a macabre discovery on the beach, teenage drug dealing, a hit and run accident or was it, and a death in odd circumstances.  Sandringham sounds worse than Newtown on Saturday night.

While plod takes these events one at a time, with years of experience at the jigsaw puzzle of humanity, Her Majesty sees a whole, and sends forth her paladin, one time artillery officer Rozie to connect the dots.  

Bennett makes the members of the royal family human, and in the main likeable. Similarly the local residents are several and varied. Nor are the police reduced to cardboard. 

Still I niggle, Her Majesty seems to be in a hurry and has three direct confrontations that cut against her softy-softly approach. The sulky teenager who appears early on then disappears, and likewise the drug haul that misled the police also goes poof!  There is also a reference to Greenland that had me consulting Google Earth to see if it made sense. Barely. Contrived.

Finally, I found it hard to keep the characters straight. Those with titles have three names: their aristocratic one, a birth name, and a nickname.  It was like reading a Russian novel with patronymics, eponyms, retronymics, and nymbics.  

For pedants only: Sandringham House is the personal and private property of Elizabeth Mountbatten née Windsor. It was purchased by her father and willed to her.  Wikipedia says it has, get this, between 100 and 200 rooms! ‘Between.’  That made me wonder about all the staff. The maids, janitors, tradesmen to keep the place running.  Then there are the grounds of the estate, which are extensive.  Who pays them?  

Third in the sequence and one hopes for a fourth in due course. 

Timothy Hallinan, A Nail Through the Heart (2007)

Good Reads meta-data is 336 pages, rated 3.88 by 1,842 litizens.

Genre: krimi.

DNA: Thai.

Verdict: tour de force debut!

Tagline: Bangkok’s mean streets.

He has lived there long enough to speak Thaiglish and, more importantly, to learn the Bangkok glide and now aspires to sweat less.  Yes he is a European ex-pat living cheap in Thailand, writing travel guides for the, ahem, adventurous rough travellers.  He is tough and cynical, he thinks. Then he meets several people who give him masterclasses in being tough and cynical.  

While I found both subject matters at issue repellant [guess], the reader’s nose is not rubbed into it, and I flipped some pages, but the ride is a mile-a-minute with some unusual (to this jaded hack) characters and unexpected twists and turns.  

Bangkok itself is the major character, its human tides and lulls, its uneasy relationship with the eponymous river, its scorching days and hotter nights, its sex tourists, its Buddhist rectitude and venal corruption, its crowded streets and desolate corners, the human flotsam and jetsam that have beached there ….from typhoons , revolutions, wars, tsunamis, crimes, and more. The spine and title page but not the front cover have the subtitle: A Novel of Bangkok. 

There are corrupt cops, another who quotes English philosophers, a reluctant and apologetic murderer, a murderous murderess war criminal, a sadist worse than the war criminal, a loving niece, two street kids, Go-Go dancer 47, a righteous seeker of vengeance, all in a rich mélange of characters. There are two plots that interweave but do not combine.  Deft.  There is no Great Attractor that brings everything together.  

The aside on the woeful influence of Nescafé appealed to me because I saw the same thing in Greece, where its convenience displaced some of the best coffee in the world with brown glug. 

It just about reads itself, and that is partly due to the very short chapters that speed along with energy on the page.

First in a series: Much as I liked this one I am not going to read another one soon.  The repellent subject matters leave a long and unpleasant aftertaste. I have had this one on my shelf for a decade or more, the pages have yellowed, before I got around to it.  When I got the first Kindle I switched to reading mainly on it, and only lately have gone back to my stash of paper books. 

The Bangkok glide is to walk slowly and barely lift your feet leaning a few degrees forward as you almost slide/glide forward: Energy conservation in the perishing climate.  Hero can work on that. As for sweating less, well maybe that is covered in the later volume of the series.  

The Man Who Died (2017) by Antti Tuomainen 

Good Reads meta-data is rated 3.82 by 4,917 litizens 

Genre:  krimi.

DNA: Finland

Verdict: TMI.

Tagline: DOA.

He went to the doctor with a headache and the doctor diagnosed something far worse. (See my review of the Brazilian short Instant Doctor elsewhere on the blog.)  Hero finds that he has been irreparably poisoned and there is so much internal organ damage he has but weeks, perhaps days, to live.  He sets out to find out who has killed him.  

He suspects his unfaithful wife or her toy boy and ….  Then his business rivals look like prospects.  A satisfying array of red herrings are tested before he gets to the least likely candidate.  Bingo!  

This is a trope used before. The most vivid example I can recall at the moment is the film Dead on Arrival (1949).

Tarquin Hall, The Case of the Elusive Bombay Duck (2025).

Good Reads meta-data is 244 pages rated 4.50 by 84 litizens.

Genre: krimi.

DNA: India.

Verdict: Amusing culture clash.  

Tagline: Pass the aloo, and hold the murderer.  

Vish Puri, the world’s greatest Indian detective returns to the field after a five-year sabbatical. But he is playing away without the aid of the Handbrake, Tubelight, Flush, Missy and the rest of his agency and on unfamiliar turf.  Although West Ham has a lot of India about it, and that comforts him.  

Why would Puri leave India and all its food behind?  He has been invited to London to receive an award and of course his wife and mother demand to go along.  Not ideal but he has no choice but to agree.  Then a representative of a Minister who could make his life miserable suborns him into an investigation while in London. Unofficial, hush-hush, secret.  As if. This fact he tries to keep from the distaff side but his mother, as always, see through him.  

While his original thought was to see sights and sites, with wife and mother along, he knows they will do the rounds of relatives distant, tenuous, and friends of friends and more with little chance to go to the British Museum, Big Ben, or the War Rooms that he wanted to see. 

The more Puri tries to trim his sails, the more deeply entangled he becomes.  As usual Mummy-ji sets off on her own mission, while assisting him, against his will.  A new ingredient is a London born and bred nephew who acts, unwillingly at first, as Puri’s guide and translator.  When he discover his fat, old uncle from Indian is on the trail of a major villain, he warms to the chase. Nicely done this clash of cultures and generations.Then there is the closing explanation of how Mummy-ji was able to get a passport and visa in record time.  Nice that, too.  

‘Come to India and learn to speak proper English,’ Puri tells his street smart nephew. 

A lot of characters to keep track of and, of course, plenty of food for the big man.  I could not fathom why the hairy villain wazzed against the wall, and so drew attention to himself.

Note for the cognoscenti, ‘Bombay Duck’ is….  Look it up and be informed.  

6th in series I have read.

The Healer (2010) by Antti Tuomainen.

Good Reads meta-data is 224 pages rated 3.16 by 2073 litizens.

Genre: krimi.

DNA: Finland. Species: Helsinki.

Verdict: Unbalanced. 

Tagline: The worst has come.

There is a rich context of Helsinki, some of which resonates with memories of our visit there – the central station guarded by those giants, Stockman’s, the rock church, the bears at the door of museum with the 1919 broken glass in the door. 

The hero is sympathetic.  Moreover, the police are not cardboard fools. 

This world has a oneway descent into a state of nature. There is mercifully no preaching about this catastrophe; it just is. Instead we have a study of how different people react to that fact.  Some go into denial. Others welcome it, until it hurts them. A few find profit in it.  

Though the authority of the state has all but disappeared, the police are still rule-bound and paper money in euros retains value.  Further, for a penurious poet Hero seems to have a good supply of that paper money.  

Hamid appears, saves hero’s life, starts a backstory, and then disappears from the text. Poof! Uh?  Likewise, hard to fathom was the fact that poet seems to have known nothing about his wife or his two best friends.  Instead far too much leans on the plotter’s crutch: the all enveloping conspiracy.  

Had this been the first Antti Tuomainen book I read, I would not have read any more.  Very Nordic noir formulaic: the protagonist tortured by his backstory, gruesome violence, a bleak environment, insidious corruption by anyone with more than two euros to rub together, and a downbeat ending.  Same old, same old.

Beaver Theory (2022) by Antti Tuomainen

Good Reads meta-data is 269 pages rated 3.92 by 1015 litizens.

Genre: krimi. 

DNA: Finland. 

Verdict: Hoot and Holler three-peat.

Tagline:   The end. 

Actuary is happy, though he is wanted for murder, has been assaulted, is going broke, has been threatened with death, sees his park disintegrating, and faces a revolt from the park staff. A few troubles to be sure. However on the bright side, he now has a bended family which he brackets from these aforementioned purely professional concerns of staying out jail, staying alive, and staying in business. 

Who knew running an adventure park could be so…adventurous?  

Henri and his slide rule, will they prevail again, despite the odds, or because of them?  I read on to find out.  

This was the end of the trilogy.  Most of the loose ends were tied up but not all. The troublesome brother disappeared, and while I liked the shambling police officer, I wondered why he did not react to the dead and then alive brother.  Specifically, as to this title I missed an explanation of who funded the rival park, and what the black mail was about. Maybe that was just me.  

The Moose Paradox (2021) by Antti Tuomainen

Good Reads meta-data is 300 pages rated 3.76 by 1,916 litizens.  

DNA: Finland.

Verdict: A two-peat: Hoot and Holler!

Tagline: He’s back!  

Actuary’s brother is undead, and has learned nothing from the near death experience. Bad, very bad, for many reasons which Actuary enumerates…at length.  Brother is a one-man wrecking crew, filled with good intentions that generate catastrophes, which he duly blames on the nearest innocent bystander.  He would seem well qualified for senior management, and he is just that in his own freely given opinion.  

Actuary is also so in love, he cannot calculate the cost-benefits of anything, starting with being in love. He speaks without thinking!  He makes schoolboy blunders in arithmetic!  He takes the bus when he meant to go by train. He turns the wrong way when he exits the bus and gets lost. He is not himself.  But then who is he?  Indeed, where is he?  On the wrong bus.  

And, ‘What about the moose?’ A moose in need is a friend indeed. Right, Rocky!

***

Does not compute: the police show no interest in Brother’s return from the dead.  I also found Johanna’s capitulation to Brother did not jibe with her no nonsense persona from the Rabbit Factor.