Category: Krimi

Black River (2022) by Nilanjana Roy

Good Reads meta-data is 368 pages, rated 4.09 by 503 litizens.  

Genre: krimi.

DNA: India.

Verdict: G^{4 (=} gritty, gruesome, garish, gory).

Tagline: TMI is not enough.

It opens with the murder of woman and then a child. It gets worse after that.  Dirty doings in Delhi ensue.  It follows as the night the day the obvious perpetrator did it, and 360 pages later we get to him.  Those 360 pages pile on detail after detail of the injustice and oppression and squalor of Indian life for many people, especially for women, so who else could be the villain but a rich oppressor.  

A police officer is introduced earlier in the proceedings but I lost track of him in all the G⁴ tsunami that followed.  The policing does reappear about 150 pages later, and I liked the portrayal of both the investigator from Delhi and the local as they assess the situation.  But in the end that did not seem integral to the story or the plot or much as the sermon on the evils of the society. 

Edmund Crispin, Holy Disorders (1945).

Good Reads meta-data is 272 pages, rate 3.64 by 1640 litizens.  

Genre: krimi.

DNA: Brit.

Verdict: Once is enough. More than. 

Tagline:  Yes, there is more, and more, and more. 

An egotistical Oxford don spouts literary quotations alternating with Dad jokes as a complex, convoluted, and confused plot slowly unfolds, very slowly, consisting of fantastic twists and unbelievable turns.  I could not decide whether to call it tedious, trying, or tiresome.  Maybe the whole trifecta!

It strives to be humorous but stops short at annoying.  The first chapter which I read on a Kindle sample was amusing and so I took the bait, but the air went out immediately after that. It is the second in a sequence of ten or so but this one is enough for me.  More than….

Harlem Shuffle (2021) by Colson Whitehead.

Good Reads meta-data is 318 pages, 3.73 rated by 8591 litizens.

Genre: krimi.

DNA: Harlem 1960s.

Verdict: Harlem Cycle rechauffée.

Tagline: Welcome to Harlem.

Harlem 1960 is a world of its own, and this account is richly textured and detailed with blood and gore for those that like that on the page.  Stability in this world is achieved by blind eyes and payoffs.

Navigating these shoals, riptides, cross currents, and squalls both white and black is Furniture Merchant who would like to be honest, but, well, temptations and pressures are many in the levels of this world.  By day he sells recliners, sofas, wingback chairs, and by night he fences stolen goods, arranges robberies…but only because, he tells himself repeatedly, to help out his troublesome and always in trouble Cousin.  

Furniture Man is an honest crook in a warped environment where the racism is palpable.  Take a wrong turn and walk into another neighbourhood and the cops pounce on a black face on the wrong side of an invisible line.  It pays to know the rules, and the most important ones are unwritten and almost never said.  

***

The detail is so rich, the dialogue is so dense with the street idioms of the time and place, the racism so omnipresent that I drowned in the text, and flicked pages to stay afloat.  Not only does every character have a backstory, though admittedly many recur, so do most objects.  

There is as much violence, gratuitous as well as purposeful, in the book to remind me of Chester Hines’s Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones books of the Harlem Cycle set in the same milieu.  

Pel and The Death of a Detective (2000) by Juliet Hebden 

Good Reads meta-data is 224 pages, rated by 4.33 by 3 litizens.

Genre: krimi.

DNA: France: Burgundy: Gauloise.

Verdict: Is this the end of Pel?

Tagline: Incroyable!  Pel stopped smoking…for hours on end. 

Everiste Clovis Désiré Pel, Commissionare, Police Judiciare, Dijon is nearing the end.  The moody, irascible, sharp-tongued, hypochondriac considers giving up the struggle, the struggle against the judiciary, the struggle against the rules and regulations, the struggle against the well armed villains, the struggle with the hapless civilians who see nothing, hear nothing, and know nothing when questioned by police officers. (And perhaps also the struggle against we readers who want more and more of Pel and we want it now!)

All these frustrations came to a head for Pel when one of his detectives is killed in action because, he thinks, of misinformation supplied by a rule bound bureaucrat who is more interested in photo ops than crime fighting. No, not the egregious Misset, the bad penny who always lands on his feet somehow, but his number one, Daniel of the movie star good looks, which proved no protection against bullets. 

Pel has earned a rest after 25 books and two generations of writers chronicling his trials.  Here near the end the thin veil is dropped and Dijon is named as the locale.

Much as I enjoy the hunchbacked, balding, diminutive chimney that is Pel, I found this title to be overdone.  There are so many back and side stories at the start I needed GPS to navigate. However, it is also true to say that (nearly) all these threads are drawn together at the end, but even so it was hard going wielding a mental machete to get to the end. 

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.