Category: Krimi

Sins for Father Knox (1973) by Josef Škvorecký

Good Reads meta-data is 272 pages rated 3.56 by 124 litizens. 

Genre: Krimi.

DNA: Czech (via exile in Canada)

Verdict: A puzzler, indeed.  

Tagline line:  Who dunnit? How d’ya know? 

Accomplished Czech crime writer Škvorecký offers ten short mystery stories after a foreword about Ronald Knox’s decalogue.  In anticipation of this volume, there is an earlier post setting forth Knox’s ten commandments. That is the homework.

Each of these stories illustrates the contravention of one of these ten commandments.  That is, each story shows the importance of each commandment by its absence, so that when it is violated the story is less than satisfactory.

About 80% through each story there is a pause to allow the reader to infer who did it and how and ponder on which commandment has been compromised. 

The stories are amusing, though contrived for didactic purposes, and, sorry to say, they become repetitive because the recurrent character is described every time in some detail: her alluring scent, her plunging décolletage, her blonde hair, her hourglass figure, her shapely legs revealed by a maximum mini skirt, and so on, again and again.  Likewise, her repeated and successful efforts at repelling boarders from the barflies that are drawn to her as per the previous description.  

Some readers may be interested to know that one story offers a mathematical proof to identify the murderer. Sort of.   

The sequence is not in numerical order of the decalogue, nor otherwise ordered by difficulty, or length. This reader discerned no order at all.  

Only one of the stories is set in Czechoslovakia as it was then.  Some are in Sweden and most in the USA as our heroine is a traveling artiste singing in nightclubs. Škvorecký’s Lieutenant Boruvka does make an appearance in the last story along with the songbird whose feminine attributes are once again detailed.  

Frontera Dreams (1990) by Paco Ignacio Taibo II.

Good Reads meta-data is 120 pages, rated 3.65 b 274 litizens. 

Genre: krimi.

DNA: Mexico.

Verdict:  Self-indulgent. 

Tagline:  World Weary. 

Along its 3000 kilometres that frontier of dreams between the United States and Mexico is a land of magic realism where strange things may happen then as now.  Tec is retained to find a Mexican soap opera actress, his high school squeeze, who has gone missing. Last seen in Baja (California).  So Tec takes to the road to track her down and find why she ran away.  The trail takes him back and forth across northern most Mexico in the hazy twilight of dreams. 

Did I mention it? No? The detective is named Shayne like that wisecracking Irishman.  Too exhausted by life, he does not crack wise.  Along the border legends still live of Pancho Villa, the times of Juarez, Zapata, and the lost Mexican lands to the north. There is also the cruel reality of the narcotraficantes, then as now meeting American demand.

Did she flee from an ardent suitor?  Was Harvey Weinstein involved?  Or is it all a plot device to allow the author to pontificate on the state and fate of his country in that Northern shadow?  You be the judge!  

***

Known by his initials as PIT, there are ten novels in this Shayne sequence.  Over the years I have read some others: An Easy Thing, Return to the Same City, and Shadow of a Shadow. Not sure if I have read all these titles, though they are in my data base, since I do not find them congenial in the elliptical style that seems lazy to me, the absence of a plot, and transparent characterisations.  In fact, I am not sure I have read them since I have notes only for one.  Strange.

The Day of the Owl (1961) by Leonardo Sciascia

Good Reads meta-data is 136 pages, rated 3.73 by 15,672 litizens.  

DNA: Italy; Species: Sicily.

Genre: Krimi; Species: Mafia.

Verdict: Lean and mean. 

Tagline: It starts with a bang. Well, two bangs.  

A man in a business suit waiting to board a bus in a village outside Palermo is shot dead.  The bus load of witnesses disappear even as he fell to the ground.  When the carabinieri arrive no one saw anything, indeed, there is no one there to see or be seen. Captain Bellodi investigates out of curiosity, not because he thinks he will accomplish anything. As he does, others observe and comment.  

The result is a travelogue of 1950’s Sicily, its dialect which sometimes mystifies Bellodi (from Parma), its poverty makes cigarette smuggling attractive, its distance from Rome measured in lightyears, its many divisions between christians, socialists, communists, villages, clans, and most of all, outsiders, its mafia or is that just a figment of overwrought journalism.  All done in a spare prose.  

In due course, despite the evidence, Bellodi is transferred and the case closed when an innocent man is framed for the deed in order to forestall investigation of this thing called the Mafia.   

All in all, it is a confirmation of the North/South divide that is still noteworthy in Italy.  

***

The best of his oeuvre, they say. Sciascia (1921-1989) was a man for many seasons: a novelist, essayist, playwright, and member of the chamber of deputies, and the European parliament as a communist.  Only a few of his many titles have been translated into English.  

On the Rocks (2013) by Sue Hallgarth

Good Reads meta-data is 255 pages, rated 3.06 by 70 litizens. 

DNA: O’ Canada. 

Genre: Krimi. 

Verdict: Willa can do it!  

Tagline: Button, button, who’s lost a button.

It is the summer of 1929 and Pulitzer winning novelist Willa Cather and her paramour Edith Lewis escape New York City’s heat and humidity by retreating to a cottage they have built over the years on Ile de Grand Manan of New Brunswick (which has the distinction these days of being the only Canadian province that is legally bilingual). Others also flee summer heat to areas and islands in the vicinity like Campobello. (If you know, you know.) 

While the resident islanders (numbering about 3,000 per Wikipedia today) don’t always like these outsiders, their money is good and they don’t stay long.  Ergo there are accommodations and supplies for them.  Since most, if not all, the outsiders are women, many islanders resent them even more for having money, wearing trousers, drinking alcohol, building their own cottages, driving cars, smoking cigarettes, and breathing.  Still a truce obtains most summers.

That truce is strained when an American stranger just off the ferry falls to his death and the Republican rumour mill runs over time blaming his demise on the coven of witches that are everywhere, among them Cather and Lewis. ‘They caused his death, and that is murder,’ is the text. Not that any of these rumour-millers knew or cared about the victim, but his demise offers an excuse to vent their pent-up animosity.

The local plod is on his own and though level-headed he cannot do everything at once: keep the peace, investigate the death, fend off bootleggers, interview twenty of more people who may have seen the victim on the day, go over the ferry records of passengers, and more.  Yes, in 1929 exporting forbidden alcohol to the United States is big Canadian business. Fortunately, unbidden, he gets some help from the energetic Lewis and the insightful Cather.  

While I found the start slow with its perseverating asides on literature, social mores, and history tedious, even though I found most of them sympathetic, they were not why I was there, yet I stuck with it and was glad I did.  It had some very nice touches.

 Warning SPOILERS ahead: the surrender of the torch was one, another were the many loose shirt buttons.  There were also some nice images as in overhearing ‘a silent conversation.’  It makes sense in context. 

I bought this book at the Willa Cather Museum in Red Cloud (NB) nearly ten years ago and finally got around to reading it.  There is another novel featuring this duo by Hallgarth.  

By the way, I am sorry to say that on Hallgarth’s website Cather’s Red Cloud home is said to be in MN (Minnesota), whereas in fact it is in NB (Nebraska).  (Yes, I know, there is a Red Cloud in Minnesota, but that is not where she lived.)  

Murder in the Museum (1980) by Jo Frisbie and Gunnar Horn

Good Reads meta-data is 177 pages, rated by 0  litizens!   

DNA: Aksarben.

Genre: Krimi.

Verdict: Slow and steady wins the race.  

Tagline:  Very slow.  

It was a strange museum display to begin with and it got stranger when a cadaver was slipped into it.  But if you can suspend that disbelief what follows is a small town (Red Cloud by another name) mystery.     

There is a lot of dithering, confusion, and some repetition but it is all credible, if annoying.  Life is like that. 

The county attorney and sheriff (both elected officials) combine and sometimes clash to sift the evidence as the plot is thickened with another corpse.  But I got confused because on page 95 some clues are spotted and bagged then twice later on pages 105 and 160 their existence is denied.  I must have missed something. Maybe I blinked. Ç’est la vie. 

The authors have combined on five other stories, one of which I read ages ago. They are hard to find so try Abe or Alibris. 

By the way, Murder in the Museum is a well used title.  I noticed at least a half-a-dozen other instances.  

The Day of the Jack Russell (2009) by Colin Bateman

Good Reads meta-data is 284 pages, rated 3.96 by 1272 litizens.

DNA: Ulster.

Verdict: More to come.

Tagline: [Woof!]

The man with no name is back, stumbling into the thick of it again.  Hiding from the world in his bookshop where customers seldom venture and those few that do are driven away by his indifference or the vitriol his mother, who often fronts the shop, saves for…, well, everyone, he is suborned by a wad of black cash that Inland Revenue will never know about, to track down two yobbos who defaced a billboard featuring the smiling visage of a Freddie Laker.  Much offended, this Freddie would like a stern word with them.  

Identifying and finding them proves to be easy, but, well, no sooner does he report them to Freddie than the yobbos are topped. Gulp!  Has he become an accessory before the gruesome facts?  Plod certainly thinks so.

Nameless has no choice but to clear himself by finding the culprit(s).  His pregnant on again off again girlfriend is recruited, his layabout sales assistant is conscripted, his poisonous mother gets in the way, and as they bounce around there is the dog.  Everyone and I mean everyone seems to be after that Jack Russell, known as Patch: the Northern Ireland Police Service, MI5 and 1/2, Freddie, rival drug dealers, an IRA remnant, and the taxidermist.  Yep, taxidermist.   

It is almost a mile a minute, apart from innumerable asides about Nameless’s health, his dislike of everyone else, his cantankerous mother, his long suffering girlfriend, and lectures on etymology.  While he can and will recite the definitions of ‘focus’ he cannot do it. 

Moreover, there is little detecting, and just a string of lucky guesses.  Still I enjoyed the sarcasm with a dash of cynicism.

This is a volume in the Mystery Man series that included Dr Yes which I commented on sometime ago. Click on for enlightenment.  

The Tomb that Ruth Built (2014) by Troy Soos

Good Reads meta-data is 238 pages, rated 4.26 by 127 litizens. 

Genre: Fiction; Species; Krimi.

DNA: De Bronx.

Verdict: Safe!

Tagline: A drag bunt! 

A year that has lived in infamy: 1920, when the Boston Red Sox committed original sin, selling George Herman Ruth’s baseball contract to the New York Yankees. Ruth’s sportsmanship and showmanship gave the Yanks three years of untold prosperity.  Bankrolled by Ruth’s draw of fans to games and long desirous of their own turf the Yankees built Yankee Stadium in two years. (That is less time than it takes to get a pot hole filled in a local street in most places.)

At the dawn of 1923 the NYYs were bound for another pennant and now had THE stadium.  It was not a ‘field’ (Ebbets), ‘grounds’ (Polo), ‘park’ (Shibe), ‘bowl’ (Baker), no it was a ‘stadium’ of Roman grandeur.  (Though built to last its final at bat was in 2008.

Into this shiny new temple of baseball stepped a Yankee team based on THE BABE, who lives up to expectations on the field and down to them off the field.  Somewhere along the dugout bench is Utility infielder whose curiosity is surpassed only by his carnal love for baseball. Well, he probably sleeps with his bat and glove ready to get in at midnight.

The fun begins when workmen putting finishing touches on The House find a corpse stuck into the wall behind a concession stand on opening day.  Mum’s the word! With President Harding in the stands no one wants to spoil the party with this sordid detail, moreover, the owner does not want the brand new stadium cursed with this cadaver, so he asks/directs Utility Man (whose few baseball duties give him plenty of time off) to find out what happened on the QT. Why him? Because the victim was a onetime teammate on his journey through the majors. This is New York City 1923 and the police couldn’t care less if there is no cut for them.

What follows is a lot of baseball, though none of it bears on the krimi plot, and some digging by Utility Man to backtrack the victim. In addition to the baseball asides, there is a diversion into the film world of D. W. Griffith that tails away into nothing.  Likewise, the rookie Utility befriended in the early pages disappears.  Despite assurances that he would be rewarded for his efforts, there is no justice and after Utility Man figures it all out, he is cut to make way for a strapping rookie name of Gehrig. 

On the brighter side, the baseball is palpable, the characters are clearly distinguished, the human side of Circus Ruth is revealed, and the plot, albeit only a third of the book, makes sense. The mix and match of historical and fictional characters is seamless. It is the seventh in a series that has many more titles. I read one years ago set in Wrigleyville (figure it out or go home), and liked it.  Still earlier I started one set in Green Monster Nation (ditto) but failed at a flood of clichés in chapter two. Still two for three is some average!  

Ruth in the early stages of his celebrity is well done.  He is already being eaten by expectations both on and off the diamond. He knows it but is powerless to resist the siren call.  

The Hapsburg Falcon (2013) by J Trtek

Good Reads meta-data is 182 pages, rated 3.73 by 15 litizens.

Genre: Krimi; Species: Sherlock.

DNA: Brit.

Verdict: Elementary. 

Tagline: The stuff that nightmares are made of.

The Woman reappears, having twice outwitted the incomparable Sherlock Holmes, she turns to him for help in an hour of need: the one, the only Irene Adler.  

It seems an overweight, gregarious, duplicitous, and garrulous Man thinks she has what is his – dat boird – only she doesn’t.  It beggars belief but Irene is engaged to a young wastrel who schemed to get that bird, make a fortune, and whisk her away to parts known.  But both wastrel and bird have taken flight.  

Enter Holmes.  

There is a coda that traces the characters in this tale, including Sam Spade, to 1940. That alone is worth the price of admission.  

But it lacks that early line in The Maltese Falcon that said it all: ‘We didn’t believe you; we believed your $50.’

The Return of Moriarty (1974) by John Gardner 

Good Reads meta-data is 304 pages, rated 3.86 by 982 litizens.

Genre: Sherlock.

DNA: Victorian Britain.

Verdict: Tony needs counselling.  

Tagline: Period detail galore.

Tony Moriarty has come back from the dead, making a pact with Sherlock who looms on the horizon but never appears in these pages. Reclaiming the reins of his criminal organisation he dispenses justice, grants favours, invests in heists, and plans his own master stroke.  He is one hard working Don.  No wonder he needs counselling.   

***

The telling is replete with the slang of London lowlife of the time and place.  The text is accompanied by footnotes that relate incidents to the Holmes canon, which sometimes offer supplementary fictional text to enrich the soup. One in series starring the professor.