Category: Krimi

The Saturday Morning Murder (1988) by Batya Gur

Good Reads meta-data is 304 pages, rated 3.68 by 811 litizens.

Genre: Krimi.

DNA: Israeli.

Verdict: heavy duty procedural.

Tagline: slow and unsure wins the race.

When the Psychoanalytic Institute in Jerusalem is opened early Saturday morning one of its most illustrious members is found dead. It is a job for Michael Ohayon, chief inspector, who is always exhausted and frequently distracted but seems to have a bottomless budget.  

The first question is practical, how was the misdeed done?  It sorta looked like suicide but the absence of the gun blunted enthusiasm for that conclusion (though we know that is not always decisive, see The Silence of the Rain discussed elsewhere on the blog).  Then the next question is why.  What was the motive?  Was the perpetrator someone off the street or a member of the Institute. The security of the building is proof against an intruder, so then an insider, or – just to complicate things – an outsider with access to an insider, must be a murderer!

On it goes with a cast of blue herrings: a soldier, a confused patient, a jealous rival, an inept analyst, an Arab gardener, and more in a rich cast. In the end, well, read the book.  

It has much back-and-forth in Jerusalem at all hours, which I found more interesting than the de rigueur backstory of Ohayon.  The trope is a variant of the locked room murder. In this case the locked Institute.  It is also a variant of the isolated locale, since the Institute is staffed and frequented by very few. Then there are the stock uncooperative witnesses whose next scheduled meeting is far more important than apprehending a murderer in their ranks.  

There are some loose ends to this casual reader: the lecture notes seemed to have been stolen twice.  I never did find out what was in the lecture manuscript that was so important.  Though the solider was treated carefully, not so the far more formidable judge.  

In short, it has the usual ingredients of a police procedural and they were well handled, so that I kept reading.  I will likely try another in this long running series.  This one, by the way was the first. 

I Hate Hockey (2011) J’häis le hockey by François Barcelo

Good Reads meta-data is 112 pages, rated 3.20 by 60 litizens.  

Genre: krimi.

DNA: Québec.

Verdict: This is an adult?  

Tagline: Take a deep breath; slow down.

How can any Canadien hate hockey?  Least of all a Québécois?  In the Eastern Townships there is only one sport – Le hockey!  And it is not a sport but a way of life!  Or so everyone feels, except our Hero.  He blames hockey for ending his marriage, because his wife was a fanatic for the game, and he could never quite manifest sufficient interest in it to satisfy her. He blames hockey for the estrangement of his teenage son, who is embarrassed by a father who doesn’t skate. He blames hockey for losing his sales job because he could not talk the sport with customers.  In short, he couldn’t keep his stick on the ice.  Worse, he doesn’t want to do so!  

Yet, by dint of a cosmic misalignment, he is suborned into acting, emphasis on ‘acting,’ as coach for his son’s hockey team in one match, because the league rules requires adult supervision and no one else is available.  This is one fish out of water, or on ice, or something. 

The players are so good they don’t need a coach except for compliance. However he discovers that the real coach died, unexpectedly. That is, he was murdered. Specifically, beaten to death by one or more hockey sticks! Tabernac! 

It is told in a frenetic style of the early Woody Allen, which was at first entertaining, bemusing, then exhausting, soon annoying, and finally irritating.  Hero jumps from one ill-founded conclusion to another with Olympic speed absent Olympic grace.  

A 100 breathless page monologue with Romeo and Juliet ending that bears no relation to previous pages. The end.

The Silence of the Rain (1996) O silèncio da chuva by Luis Alfredo Garcia-Roza

Good Reads meta-data is 256 pages, rated 3.68 by 913 litizens.  

Genre: krimi.

DNA: Brazil.

Verdict: It is not about Espinosa.  

Tagline: Variation on the locked room.

The introverted Inspector Espinosa inspects after a victim is found shot to death in locked car parked in a large, downtown garage.  Is it robbery gone wrong, or something else staged to look like that?  With patience, persistence, resilience, and the other virtues of literary detectives Espinosa traipses back and forth through Rio de Janeiro to find out, often taking the subway or a bus since parking, even for a marked police car, is nigh impossible.  

We know something he doesn’t from the get-go and that deepens the mystery for readers because….  

No honour among thieves but there were so many thieves I got lost. I never did fathom the original act, the widow, her would-be paramour, or the motivation of the villain, but it was a good trip all the same.  

There is a strong sense of place with the tropical flora, coastal weather, enervating humidity, salvation air conditioning, criss-crossing Rio de Janeiro by night because it is too hot to do much in daylight.  

It is not every detective who obsessively reads Charles Dickens in down time or keeps cautioning himself not to jump to conclusions.  Though I thought he was let down sometimes by non-sequiturs in the translation, and a confusion among the characters.  

Ricardo motivations? Unknown to me. Aurelio motivations? Unknown to me.

I have read 3 or 4 of this series which run to either 8 or 11 depending on which opinionator on Good Reads is cited. The author is a professor of philosophy at Rio University.  Perhaps that explains why the detective is called eSpinoza. 

A Season for the Dead (2004) by David Hewson 

Good Reads meta-data is 496 pages, rated 3.60 by 2569 litizens.

Genre: Krimi; Species: Thriller; Sub-species: Oh hum.

DNA: Italy.

Verdict: Dan Brown wanna be.

Tagline: My disbelief remained undisturbed.  

It starts in the Vatican Library, a place I would like to see, where a woman, having gained the necessary permissions, is consulting…a cookbook.  It went down hill from there.

Titillation without substance follows for hundreds of pages.  All the women are mysteriously beautiful.  The men are handsome and, well, manly. The sex is plentiful.  The stereotypes are working overtime.  All the many murders are elaborately gruel, gruesome, and detailed.  A more descriptive title would have been A Season at the Abattoir.  

Leaden prose, place name dropping but no ambience. All the ingredients for well received book on Good Reads: Vacuous and trite. (My, I am feeling grumpy today.)  Instead of plot or character we have an enveloping conspiracy of the unnamed and unseen others.  

First in a series for those strong of stomach and weak of mind. 

***

Written in that fractured thriller style back-and-forth between characters and settings that leaves me cold. 

I chose it for opening scene in Vatican Library, but it is just a site for some gaudy, gruesome, and cheap thrills.  Might as well have been an abattoir.   I tried to read it years ago and stopped, trying again to get my money’s worth out of it, a duty not a pleasure, interest, or diversion 

Pel and the Precious Parcel (1997) by Juliet Hebden

Good Reads meta-data is 176 pages, rated 3.33 by 3 litizens. 

Genre: krimi.

DNA: France; Species: Burgundy.

Verdict: Hooray for Pel.

Tagline:  He’s back!  

The irascible Inspector Pel who never has a good word to say about or to anyone is on the job, and, as usual, he won’t let go.  Sergeant Misset is a lazy incompetent; the weather is damnable and damned; and the witnesses are witless, but Pel keeps on keeping on.  

When a group of armed men in hooded black clothing rob the cargo hold of a plane on the airport apron, they take only one package.  Which package is that? Why, the one containing perfume samples!  Perfume! 

As he reached for his 30th Gauloise of the day, Pel could hardly believe his ears.  The plot thickens when a technician finds that the listed weight for the parcel on the cargo manifest far exceeded anything such a volume of perfume could weigh.  What was in the parcel?

Those in the perfumery and the family that owns this private business are clueless, so they say.  But Pel knows a lie when he hears one and presses on, because someone knows something, and he will ferret it out with his usual distempered determination taken out on those around him, that is, all save Madame Pel in whose presence he goes all docile and devoted.  Had he a tail then it would wag in her presence.

In several of Pel’s cases there is a long echo of the Debacle and the Occupation, as there is here in a minor key.

***

This is number 20 in the series, the third by Juliet who took to the typewriter when the founder Mark hung up his keyboard.  There is only one Pel no matter the name on the cover.  

Moondogs (2011) by Alexander Yates

Good Reads meta-data is 339 pages, rated 3.68 by 424 litizens.

Genre: krimi; Species: Magic unrealism.  

DNA: Filipino.  

Verdict: I warmed to it, slowly.  

Tagline:  Can’t tell the players without a scorecard! 

Estranged son flies to Manila at the invitation of his father, who is absent when he arrives.  He falls in with some of his father’s drinking buddies. That is one thread.

We already know that father has been kidnapped by a pair of incompetent and spontaneous lowlifes with the aim of selling him to some mad and bad Muslims who specialise in decapitations.  Meanwhile, father is locked in a room. The Imam they approach tries to stop their crazy plot and reports them to the police. That is thread two.

Thread three is a Philippine Army solider with uncanny, preternatural marksmanship who is recruited by the Dirtiest Harry of them all for a special police coven consisting of bruhos, that is, witches, of which this soldier is one whether he knows it or not; hence his ability.  This is the magic part of the realism. 

Thread four is Monique at the American embassy who deals with Americans who get into trouble in the Philippines, and there are a lot of them:  drunks, pederasts, and kidnapees.  Her ‘trailing spouse’ (official Foreign Service terminology) hates Manila.  Her adopted children are rebellious.  She has somehow started an affair with Dirtiest Harry. To say the least, they are a mismatched couple even when they couple.  

It adds up to a lot characters to keep straight without a scorecard.

Cockfights, earth tremors, terrorist explosions, gold lined hotels with golden toilets, all add to the local colour. The combination of opulence and corruption would make The Felon in Chief feel right at home. 

All these threads, and perhaps some I have forgotten or missed among all the superfluous detail, come together with a boom and a high body count.  It did so with very little investment from me. 

Set out in that chopped up, asynchronous, billiard ball style favoured by thriller writers who prefer to leave connecting the plot dots to readers. With all the cutting back and forth through time and space, I lost track of, and for a time interest in, the characters who tumble out of the pages.  I stuck with it because of the exotic locale – The Philippines. It is richly textured of that place, sometimes too much for my taste, e.g., the details of slaughtering a pig…in a hotel room!    

Pedants note: On the front cover the title has a hyphen as ‘Moon-Dogs,’ while on the spine (and in the text) it is ‘Moondogs.’  

Moondogs are those brights spots around the moon or a blurred halo behind it, also called paraselenae for those who must know and are too lazy to consult Wikipedia. The term is used only once in the book, that I noticed, and then is in no way significant.

The Informers (2004) by Juan Gabriel Vásquez

Good Reads meta-data is 333 pages, rated 3/39 by 246 litizens.

DNA: Colombia.

Genre: Novel.

Verdict: Meh.

Tagline: Everyone did it.  

In 1990 Gabriel remembers with a lifelong family friend, Sara, a Jewish refugee, the death of his father Gabriel Senior  In flashbacks we learn something of her flight from Germany in 1935 as a tweenager, and then Gabriel Senior’s troubled life during La Violencia of the 1950s in which 180,000 died when zealots on both sides thought murdering children was the best longterm strategy to defeat their opponents.  

In the late 1930s there were resident Germans in Colombia, among them many enthusiastic Nazis, then came a small influx of refugees, mostly German Jews, and after the war a few more Germans, including fervent Nazis.  During World War II many of the Germans, both residents and recent immigrants, were sequestered together – Jews, Nazis, and neither, usually in hotels or resorts and they lost many of their assets. Colombia had been quicker than many Latin American countries to join the Allies.  (Some of the resident Germans ran or flew in local airlines and were perceived to be a threat to shipping in the Caribbean Sea and the Panama Canal, either a directly or as a source of intelligence, though that is not mentioned in this novel.)  Colombia was also quick to join the United Nations in the Korean War.  

Forced together this mix of Germans was volatile, but the novel makes little use of that obvious fact.  But it does emphasise the mutual denunciations by informers.  Instead the villains are the blacklists that were used to identify enemy aliens.  The logic is convoluted to this reader 

Yet somehow Gabriel Senior survived La Violencia, though maimed, and rose to eminence as a jurist and spawned a son, Junior, though there was little affection between them.  The aforementioned Junior, a journalist, convinced Sara to allow him to write her biography.  When it was published it all but disappeared until Senior, that very distinguished jurist, published a poisonous review of it.  That made it an object of curiosity and sales increased.  That also meant they no longer spoke to each other.  

The puzzle for Junior is why his father, who only read classics from the Ancient World, bothered to weigh in on his little book. But that emerges with persistence and patience, not my best qualities.  There are occasional references to events in Colombia’s recent history that mean nothing to me, but would to a Colombian no doubt. 

The style is vague, elliptic, dense, and asynchronous. The author is unfamiliar with the concept of a topic sentence.  Paragraphs run on and on combining description, dialogue, several points of view, many subjects, and then end, and another starts. The sort of obscure prose that appeals to jaded literary awards panelists. I found it hard to follow and even harder to care about this array of narcissists.   

Tony Bellotto, ed., Rio Noir (2016).

Good Reads meta-data is 245 pages, rated 3.56 by 75 litizens.  

Genre: krimi.

DNA: Brazil.

Verdict: dégustation. 

Tagline: Varied in 14 stories, some 3 pages, others 30.    

An ageing beauty convinces a gigolo to murder her husband.  He does, turns out the victim is not her husband, but the man who tortured and killed her husband thirty years ago when the generals ruled.  Oops.  Now professional honour requires that the deceased’s body guards have to settle the score. 

By chance a small time business man takes shelter from the rain in the foyer of a dilapidated office building where he sees a notice for a tarot reader.  To pass the time during the storm he decides to do it.  He does…. and finds out more than he wanted to know, because the mystic is….  All very Twilight Zone.

Then there is a Hannibal Lector, a teenage drug lord in the City of God on the hillside, and more.  Some of the stories are distasteful to my taste but they live up to the cover blurb’s promise of the dark side of the white sands, Sugar Loaf, and beachside high rises.  In some stories there is much to’ing and fro’ing and there is a rudimentary map to indicate the geography of this sprawling metropolis wedged between mountains and the sea.

***

There is certainly irony, as indicated above, but I am not sure the word ‘noir’ applies to any of the stories.  Many end without a resolution, and none comply with the Knox Decalogue.  

Of the fifteen authors, two are women.  One of each gender are expatriates.  The majority are journalists associated with O Globo, the newspaper of record, it says of itself, in Rio de Janeiro. Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza is included and I have read with interest three of his Inspector Espinosa series. Despite the puff I have neither knowledge of or interest in the editor.  Aside: to my untrained eye the same translator for all the stories rendered them uniform: Word choice, idiom translations were the same for all the characters, it seemed. 

Part of a series that includes scores of such other titles as Haiti Noir, Hong Kong Noir.  Stories stand alone but can be used to identify authors to check out for more if so inclined. 

What Time the Sexton’s Spade doth Rust (2024) by Alan Bradley. 

Good Reads meta-data is 298 pages, rated 4.14 by 4,212 litizens. 

Genre: Krimi.

DNA: Little England. 

Verdict: Go girl!  

Tagline: She’s back!  

Tweenage Flavia de Luce is irrepressible and her even younger cousin Undine is worse in 1952.  When a longtime but secretive resident of the local village is found dead, it’s murder!  

It gets worse. The harmless part-time cook, Mrs Mullet, of Buckshaw, Flavia’s home, is blamed for the death!  The only question for plod is whether it was intentional or accidental.  Yes, mushrooms.

That double whammy propels Flavia on to Gladys, her bicycle, to put things to rights! Again. Good. Hooray! She is aided and abetted by the ever so correct butler cum handyman, Dogger, when he is not suffering a recurrent bout of survivor guilt because of his three years on the Burma railroad.  

This is number eleven in the series after a five year hiatus. Any reader is advised to read them in sequence. An unexpected and most welcome return.  But no, I cannot explain the title, and I wonder if the author can.