Category: Krimi

Recommended with qualifications as below.
It has an exotic setting, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. The Canadian Prairies in January and February no less. Dry frozen.

The protagonist is a part-lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan who seems to find plenty of trouble and whose work at the University does not seem to figure largely in her day. Might be the University of Sydney that. She is a widow with two adolescent children. But we do not get bogged down in domesticity.
The good: the provincial art world is a good context, there is none of the padded descriptions I find in many alleged krimies, the characters are differentiated though not always credible (like Nina the villain). For the most part the weather is presented realistically. Sally, the artist, is well drawn, way too smart and a very charming and talented user, but first last and always a user of other people. She reminded of some people I have known.
At one point a character says: ‘In art men look for statements and women look for relations.’ Nice.
The bad: it takes 60 pages of background to get going and the reader has no clue about why to read this and what to take from it. Yes some relevant things from this opening stretch are there at the end but not 60 pages worth. While the weather is there, it does not stop people from hanging clothes on the line and our protagonist gets by for a month without a car which is impossible in such a city because there is no public transport to speak of and few taxis. I also found the dirty secret not to be so dirty though perhaps in Saskatchewan it would be hard to live down. Stuart is also less than believable and after centring on him he then disappears toward the end. A blue herring. The fresco of penises was adolescent.

Recommended for Krimieologists (readers of crime novels). Set in the Soviet Union of 1936.
A lot of period details are easily integrated into the plot. Though it reads like ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four.’ I don’t know whether that is because ‘Nineteen Eight-Four’ was very accurate to the Soviet Union or because the author has been influenced by it and so ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ has shaped the telling, or is it that I am superimposing ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ onto it?

Korolov, the protagonist, is a loyal Soviet citizen yet he remains a believer (religious in secret) so there is a gap in his commitment to communism. 1936 is a tough year. Food is scarce, the rhetoric of paranoia is high, the winter is biting in Moscow, the zealots are zealous, and most people are struggling to survive while mouthing the requIred slogans. Only the great helmsman is above suspicion. For everyone else the goal posts constantly change and the marbles underfoot are ever-present. Not for everyone but for those in the police, the army, the party, the government, the collectives, there is a premium on denouncing someone, quotas for subversives to be jailed, disappearances, changes of portraits on the wall signal another wave of purges. But wait, there is more.
The person who is the least suspicious is suspect because a spy would not seem suspicious goes the prevailing logic. That and large measures of guilt by association, objective guilt, nets nearly everyone. No one is safe in this world.
No doubt there are parallels with North Korea today, yet I also thought there are also parallels with the green dream of telling everyone else what to do, when to do it, and how to do it on the grounds of the peril at the gate. Priests do like preaching even to a captive audience. The permanent crisis and the unscrupulousness of many supposed enemies of the Soviet Union requires endless vigilance. What reminded me most of green dreaming was the constant emphasis on the right nomenclature, and the least slip of the tongue, like gasping out ‘oh my God’ in surprise, is evidence of religious backsliding.
Now to the cavils, I thought Korolov got two tickets to the big game but he took four people in all without any trouble. Plus at a time of famine there were meat pies aplenty for sale at the game. Though Jack looked askance at the meat pie we never find out why. For a guy who is hard up Korolov takes a readily available taxi from the game. And he also has money for bribes, for smokes, and for meat pies for four.
This novel compares favorably to Sam Eastland, ‘The Eye of the Red Tsar’ which is set in 1924 in the Soviet Union. For this reader ‘The Holy Thief’ was better. This novel has less clutter, more insights into events, and complexity without confusion. Much less of an overblown backstory for our protagonist to interfere with the momentum. We learn about Korolov through his acts, words, and thoughts, and not by the exposition of a punctuated recitation of a contrived backstory in a curriculum vitae to make him sympathetic.

Another Eleanor Jones krimie set in 1923 Melbourne during a police strike: Carolyn Morwood, Cyanide and Poppies (2012).

Eleanor is now a reviewer for ‘The Argus.’ Nicholas is still there; his wife is not. Andrew has returned from, of all places, Dimboola, but is as fragile as cracked crystal and less stable.
Slow and thoughtful. Eleanor is introspective but it never feels like superfluous padding as it so often does in many of the Chick-Krimies that I sample and reject. Morwood brings Melbourne of the age alive with gravity in contrast, say to Miss Fisher with her bold and brassy and superficial appurtenances like cars, clothes, etc. If Miss Fisher, god love her, is nearly a cartoon, Eleanor is nearly a tragic heroine the 19th Century. They are both treasures.
Eleanor is a very serious person who served as a nurse during World War I in Palestine and France. She has seen much death and more suffering and been unable to do anything much about either. Her fiancée and her older brother were both killed in France, and the younger brother Andrew, who also served in France, returned psyched out. Not much fun there.
Her childhood sweetheart Nicholas is married but his wife seems to be permanently away, perhaps never to return. No one knows, perhaps not even Nicholas. He helped Eleanor get the job at the newspapers and they spend time together wondering no doubt how what might have been or what might be….
Meanwhile the hoons feel licensed by absence of police, most of whom are on strike. Vigilantes organise in turn. Libertarian hoon versus self-righteous thug is the result.
Within this context it is an engrossing study of relationships distorted by the gravity of a murder. The victim is a nosy, unpleasant journalist, who was perhaps given to blackmail. Andrew’s girlfriend, not quite girlfriend but might be, is the suspect. It is Sister Jones to the rescue.
There is much about Eleanor managing Andrew, trying to do it without his awareness. Their rapprochement and cooperation is well done. Inspector Pearce is well meaning and competent but under much pressure because of the Police Strike. The tension between Eleanor and Nicholas Bird is unrelenting. His daughter Kate is instrumental in the denouement, at first reluctantly but then willingly. ‘Reluctantly’ because Kate sees Eleanor as a threat to her absent mother or Kate’s own monopoly of Nicholas. But Kate, too, wants to help the innocent Nadine, Andrew’s deuce girlfriend, so she joins the plot.
There is to’ing and fro’ing in Melbourne and out, namely a train ride to and from Dimboola.
Nice touches, how the same facts can be construed in different ways. I also liked the ambiguity of Nadine’s (the maybe girlfriend) claim to be a medium, though it was dropped completely after being such a big part of the buildup. Some kind of recognition, if not resolution, is needed on that, not just omission. Likewise the unresolved tension with the maid is magnified, and then not mentioned again.
Rachel, Nicholas’s absent wife, writes to ask for a divorce! I foresee much consternation ahead. Divorce might ruin him socially in Melbourne. Kate would react how? Would he then be free for Eleanor or would he be too injured and want to avoid contaminating her?
It was not hard to figure out the villain before Eleanor. The most sanctimonious ones are always at it in krimies, as often in life.