Tag: Krimi

Goodreads meta-data is 256 pages, rated 3.71 by 276 litizens.  

Genre: krimi

Verdict: Fun but flabby

When CBS executives pressured Orson Welles to reduce the verisimilitude of the script for the Halloween broadcast in 1938, his standard defence was that no one would be stupid enough to think it real.  Ah, he should have paid more attention to P. T. Barnum.  There is always someone that stupid with many friends, just look at the White House today.

In 1938 Welles was an infant terrible of twenty-three years already with a string of theatrical triumphs behind him.  While he was a creative genius, as well he knew, he needed help and founded the Mercury Theatre with John Houseman to produce his genius.  Yes, that John Houseman.  

Welles never did one thing at a time; while he continued to stage dramas for the Mercury Theatre on Broadway, he also branched out with the Mercury Theatre of the Air, while simultaneously writing scripts for movies.  If he had fewer than three separate and independent projects to work on in a day, he became bored.  

Welles own career in radio started with that voice as the caped avenger in ‘The Shadow,’ who knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men, rivalling Santa Claus in contravening of the NSW Privacy Laws. To return to this yarn Welles is hatching a new project and he brings into the tent the writer of ‘The Shadow’ stories from earlier years, Walter Gibson, who is the narrator thereafter.  

Gibson is no ingénue but even he is swept up in the profligate and prodigious energy that Welles exudes, and — since all expenses are paid — he goes along for the ride.  He enters just as the Mercury Theatre of the Air is rehearsing for The War of the Worlds.  It is fascinating to read of the organised chaos that produced live-to-air radio in 1938.  While on air and in role before the microphone Welles scribbles new lines for the other players to whom he hands them.  

Genius he may be, but that most levelheaded of men, Houseman, knows Welles is riding for fall, and he tries to reign Welles in, again and again.  Ditto the CBS executive who delivers the budget, but who also wants to curb the enthusiasms of the Wunderkind least the corporate goodwill evaporate taking the money with it. Gibson observes all of this with wry detachment.  

The Welles that emerges in these pages conforms to the general impression.  Genius, yes, without a doubt, charming and charismatic to get his way.  But also he can be crude, rude, and arrogant by turns. And ever theatrical in appearance, tone, and movement. He could turn the taps on for love or hate with equal ease and switch between them in a breath, because he did not mean any of it.  Not so much that he was insincere, as like an Olympian god, he was indifferent to the matters of mere mortals.  (What a comeuppance then to spend all those later years pitching for Findus frozen peas and Paul Masson wine in television advertisements. These make painful viewing on You Tube. How low the Olympian fell before the long arc of justice.)  

Every time Houseman forced a compromise on him after much resistance and rancour, Welles would give in with lavish good grace, and promptly undermine the agreement. To give an example, if CBS insisted that no real names be used. He made up names that in the script did not look like real names but when said with certain inflections — which he coached the actors to do — sounded like real names of people or places.  When CBS said the script cannot have a simulated President Roosevelt speaking, after hours of angry resistance, Welles conceded by substituting a Secretary of the Interior.  He then cast as the Secretary an actor famous for his perfect impersonation of FDR.  And so on.  

So Houseman decided to teach Welles a lesson he would not forget – SPOILER ALERT — by framing him for murder!  As an accomplished producer Houseman knows everything about staging and with the help of a woman scorned he fakes a murder scene with Welles’s name written all over it – literally, for Welles to find a few hours before the ‘The War of the Worlds Broadcast.’  That’ll tame him was Houseman’s hope. A subdued Welles could then be guided to moderate the realism of the upcoming broadcast, thought Houseman.   

Yes the frame-up did stun Welles, but the show must go on and, if anything, the spectre of the murder fired him to make even greater effort in the broadcast. Houseman had underestimated his man.  

I said ‘flabby’ above because I found the pages padded with endless and pointless descriptions of clothes, decor, food, and the appearance of players who walk across the page. Buried in this verbiage is short story that is a corker, notwithstanding the fact there is almost no investigation, no psychological depth, just an elaborate prank within an even more elaborate prank. But the evocation of radio drama was fascinating and I intend to listen to a few from Audible, starting with ‘The Shadow!’  On a similar note I read years ago, and have dredged up the reference thanks to the app Book Collector, John Dunning, Two O’Clock Eastern Wartime (2001).  It too evokes the magic of radio in 1942.  

A number of other items related to Welles’s ‘The War of the Worlds’ broadcast have been discussed on the blog, including Ed Murrow’s documentary on it and Hadley Cantril’s study The Invasion from Mars (1940). Seek and ye may find.     

It turns out there were plenty of people dumb enough to believe that invasion story, despite the station breaks, the newspaper advertisements, the fabricated place names, the incorrect terminology, the elapsed time, and any number of radio-addicted children who recognised the voices of the actors. These people vote, drive cars, and have opinions. Think of that.  Look around, they are your neighbours today.  

Collins is a writing industry from his Iowa home with a number of series.  This one is in a set of so-called Disaster novels, that centre on a real, or in this case imagined, disaster, e.g., the Hindenburg crash, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the London Blitz, or the assassination of Huey Long. In them he mixes real people of the time and place with some fictional ones to stir the pot.  He does a great deal of research for the context, but anachronisms still appear, as he admitted in the afterword to this novel.  These always jar.  

Goodreads meta-data is 336 pages, rated 3.78 by 2817 litizens.  

Genre: krimi

Verdict: meticiulous  

Inspector Irene Huss is on the job after a nurse is murdered in a private hospital.  This is the second instalment in the series following ‘Detective Inspector’ Huss (2004).  As the police go to work the staff of the hospital, its owners, the medical consultants, patients and their visitors are questioned, and the interstices of the nineteenth century building are examined.  Tursten knows this world well from her earlier career as a nurse.  

What follow is a police procedural rich in the locale both the city of Göteborg and of the hospital. Its principal owner is the surgeon in chief, who has a trophy wife and the debts to prove it.  It is February and the freezing rain becomes a pivotal character in the plot.  When the temperature rises to freezing, it is cause for smiles, but when it rains and then freezes again, there are no more smiles but plenty of black ice.    

There is a split among the nurses, some have been working at this hospital since it was owned by the surgeon’s father, and others are twenty year old contractors who come and go.  The old guard nurses are loyal to the past, including its ghost, and the contractors just want to get paid. Ghosts or not, there are some haunted characters in this hospital of Otranto.  

Even as Huss and the team investigate more murderers occur that may be related or may not.  Along the way we see street people who have long since become non-persons to the social services, some faked qualifications that no one has the time or interest to check, and Huss herself is so preoccupied with things at home (two teenage children, a dog, and a husband in that order of priority) that she makes mistakes.  

While her immediate superior tries hard, his roots are in the old school when women made the coffee and they show through, but Huss grits her teeth and bears it.  Both that such sexism is present and that Huss ignores it, riles some GoodReads reviewers who qualify for the Snow Flake Award.  Curiously one such writer condemns the books as easily forgotten and then dwells on this sexism in detail.  It seems the writer both forgot the book and remembered it. Take that Aristotle, a thing can be itself and not at the same time. So much for the law of the excluded middle. 

I have also read ‘Fire Dance’ (2014) and liked it.

Goodreads meta-data is 321 pages, rated 4.16 by 167 litizens.

Genre: Krimi

Verdict: Masterful, again.

In the thirteenth instalment of this series David Brock has gone into an uneasy retirement, and his protégé Kathy Kolla has been promoted to Detective Chief Inspector. When Hampstead Heath becomes a killing field for the screenwriter’s old crutch, the serial killer, Kolla mobilises and strikes, arresting the unlikely but clearly implicated small-time publisher John Pettigrew who lives nearby. Forensic evidence points to him, as do witness statements.

Pettigrew’s brief entices Brock into acting as a private inquiry agent to see what can be seen. While Brock is reluctant, he finds Pettigrew convincing and he is bored in retirement so he begins to turn over stones before he realised Kolla was the officer in charge, leading him into conflict with her.

There are more twists and turns and after another murder forensic evidence and witness statements in this case now implicate Brock, who finds himself on remand. At first he treats confinement as a joke, then a mistake, then a respite, then he registers that it is not going to end. Angry as she is at Brock for sticking his nose in, Kolla is dead certain he is innocent and whips herself and her team into a frenzy to put it altogether piece by piece. Kolla seems to have outgrown her constant hormone attacks of earlier novels in the series. In these pages she concentrates on the job, not on feeling sorry for herself.

While the summary above may be conventional, the execution is so deft, so focussed, so speedy that the reader will not find it stale or clichéd. One of the nicest aspects of these books is the author does not find it necessary to create false tensions, e.g., by having an interfering and incompetent superior. Kolla’s boss wants results and works hard at making sure that happens. There are no stupid cops forgetting to lock doors, or smoking round the back while evidence disappears. If anything, these police are almost too good to be true, even the one who was ready to believe anything to get a result concludes it cannot be that easy.

          Barry Maitland

The tension is in the master narrative and not distracting sidelines. And like the first entry in this stable, ‘The Marx Sisters’ (1994), discussed on an entry on my unlearned blog, at the heart of the mystery is a book, and what a book it is.

Good Reads meta-data is 223 pages, rated 3.91 by a scant 46 litizens

Genre: krimi, pastiche

Verdict: clever and refreshing, but with a sour aftertaste.

In the world of Victorian England in the year 1886 all is not right with the world. Across the green land the (lecherous) rector, the (plagiarist) novelist, and the (cheating) speculator have one thing in common: they were murdered! There is only man for this job: Sholto Lestrade, Inspector, Scotland Yard. Maybe so but while he gets on with it and another five seemingly respectable Victorians are murdered and each, it turns out, was a despicable villain beneath the veneer of respectablility. With each of the eight victims is an inscrutable symbol [see front cover below].

As Lestade goes hither and thither, arriving always too late to stop the next murder, he keeps running across an annoying prat accompanied by a bumbling doctor, Holmes and Watson they are by name. Lestrade has neither the time nor the patience to sort these two out, but why are they always underfoot. Indeed, who are they?

The book opens with workmen excavating a foundation where they find a limbless body in between discussing Georg Hegel’s influence on Karl Marx’s philosophy of history in a cockney accent so thick it took this reader sometime to realise what they were talking about, but when dawned the realisation there followed the guffaws. So unexpected! So well done! That alone was worth the price of admission.

Lestrade manages to avoid the tide of history, but has to deal with two, one after another in quick succession, Home Secretaries who want a immediate resolution without any fuss, no expenditure, and no inquiry into respectable gentlemen, as well as machine guns, while dreading his inadvertent agreement to appear in the Police Annual Review for Charity to imitate Sarah Bernhardt.

That would seem to be more than enough, Yet there is also larded through it some racism, homophobia, and sexism. While these attitudes reflect the Victorian times, they do not advance the plot, limn any character development, or enrich the context. What they do is distract and irritate the contemporary reader. They are, in short, gratuitous. Strangely in this day when virtue display is so routine few reviewers on either GoodReads or Amazon refer to this business. I would have thought it offered a perfect chance to strut one’s virtue.

This title is number 12 in the Sholto Lestrade Mysteries from the industrious Trow who also has two other series since he cannot keep his hands off the keyboard.

I’d be willing to try another Lestrade in the hope that the racism, sexism, homophobia was not ingrained in the writing. But only one, least the Victorian setting licenses the author’s prejudices.