Above the Law

Usually, when I review a French book on this site, I spend my time moaning about how unfair it is that it has not been translated into English. But today, the situation is different. Yes, I am reviewing a book that was originally written in French, but it has been translated and published in English. This is thanks to the efforts of a new company called Le French Book. According to their website, Le French Book “brings France's best crime fiction, thrillers, novels, short stories, and non-fiction to new readers across the English-speaking world. If we love it, we’ll translate it.”

So far, three mysteries have been translated and published, and hopefully more are on their way. One of these is a book by Fréderique Molay entitled The Seventh Woman. I wouldn’t exactly call it a mystery, though—this is far more of a thriller, and that feeling was only amplified by the main character’s name: Nico Sirsky. Maybe it’s a sign of my maturity (or rather lack thereof) but I kept envisioning Steven Seagal, who played a character named Nico Toscani in Above the Law. (For the record, I don’t particularly like Seagal, but as his movies go Above the Law is better than most of the others.)

Set Sail for Murder

I was asked to review Marsali Taylor’s Death on a Longship all the way back in August, but I still had a summer job and school was around the corner, not to mention I had other review requests to get out of the way. So I had to decline an opportunity to be part of a book tour, although our good friend the Puzzle Doctor participated. The review was extremely positive, and so it made me eager to get around to reading this book. Unfortunately, with midterms, work, and unexpected stuff happening left and right, it took me well over three weeks to read this book. However, I’m glad to report that I easily kept track of everything. I never felt lost and when I picked up the book to read some more, I never felt like I had to refresh my memory on what I had read before. Marsali Taylor has written a very pleasant read.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. The whole story revolves around Cass Lynch, a native of the Shetland Isles who returns to her homeland as part of a film crew, proudly skippering the replica Viking longship Stormfugl. This is being used for Ted Tarrant’s latest film, starring his beloved wife Favelle. They are Hollywood’s Golden Couple—Ted directs, Favelle stars, and come Oscar season they sweep all the awards out from under Steven Spielberg’s nose. (Seriously, how else do you explain his being snubbed as Best Director for Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Munich? For that matter, how did Martin Scorsese not win for Goodfellas?)

Death to the Vampire!

Just last week, fellow blogger TomCat took a look at Mike Resnick’s Stalking the Dragon, a parody of hardboiled detective stories with a simple premise at heart: the story, while told in a hardboiled style, took place in a parallel universe with goblins, leprechauns, dragons, and the like walking down the same streets as the private eye, John Justice Mallory. And I instantly resolved to read one of these books in the near future (especially seeing what time of year this is). Well, that day is today, and the book in question is Resnick’s Stalking the Vampire.

It’s Halloween, and detective John Justice Mallory notices that his partner, Winifred Carruthers, seems unusually pale. That’s when he notices the bite-marks on her neck, and he quickly deduces that they were inflicted by her nephew Rupert, who has come over for a visit to his aunt. Well, it’s true: on the boat over to New York, Rupert was bitten by a vampire named Aristotle Draconis, and now Mallory has to figure out how to protect Winifred from her nephew. But then Rupert disappears, and is later found murdered outside Winifred’s apartment. Is Draconis responsible? And if not him, who?

I remember...

Donald E. Westlake’s Memory was published posthumously by Hard Case Crime. It was written by the author way back in his early days of writing, but it was never published. I first heard of this book when reading an article on Donald E. Westlake by Lawrence Block, collected in Mystery & Suspense Writers, Volume 2. Block described the novel and praised it in glowing terms. According to the article, 30 years later, Westlake decided not to publish the novel because he considered it too much a creature of its time.

I’m a big Donald E. Westlake fan, though admittedly I’m a newcomer. And Memory is a challenge to describe. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever reviewed for this blog. It isn’t a mystery in any proper sense of the word, and yet… Okay, here’s the plot: Paul Cole, an actor, is assaulted by the husband of his current lover, and he lands in the hospital. But on waking up, he finds that his memory is bad—it is like a sieve, full of holes and gaps that he simply cannot fill. Memories are constantly draining from his head, though he remembers who he is, how to dance, and (presumably) how to tie his shoes. I know what you’re thinking: this sounds a lot like Memento! But it isn’t anything like the brilliant Christopher Nolan movie – which I highly recommend. Memory is very much a creature of its own…

The Return of Mike Hammer

By Gad, sir, you are a character.

- Casper Gutman, The Maltese Falcon

Regular readers of my blog know that when I read I, The Jury, the first Mike Hammer novel, my reaction was very negative. Well, that’s the nice way of putting it: truth be told, I was positively disgusted by the “hero” and the graphic violence. In fact, I chose it as one of my worst reading moments of 2011. But like him or not, Mike Hammer’s influence on the genre cannot be denied.

Indeed, the best defenses I’ve read of the character come from Max Allan Collins. In the collection Books to Die For, Collins wrote about Spillane’s I, The Jury. He drew some surprisingly astute comparisons between the book and an Agatha Christie plot – although no mention was made of the major plotholes, which were pointed out by Bill Pronzini in Gun in Cheek. But once again, I found myself impressed with Collins’ defense of the series, though it didn’t make me like Mike Hammer any more. Last week, when I reviewed Collins’ novel True Detective, I was honoured when Collins himself visit the blog and left a comment, where he asked me not to give up on Mike Hammer.

Grand Finale

The last time we checked in at Nero Wolfe’s brownstone in The Second Confession, the great man was directly confronted by Arnold Zeck, a criminal mastermind who is something like the Professor Moriarty to his Sherlock Holmes. Luckily for Wolfe, soon afterwards, an event occurred that placed Zeck squarely on Wolfe’s side. But Zeck has gone too far this time.

It happens when Sarah Rackham asks for Wolfe’s help. She is a wealthy woman, and has been happily married to Barry Rackham for four years. In that time, Barry has regularly asked for money, but lately his demands increased so dramatically that Sarah finally refused to give him anything one time. After that, Barry no longer asked her for money, and yet his extravagant spending habits are unchanged. Where is all this money coming from?

The Art of Pretentiousness

Every once in a while, a book comes along and changes everything. A book that forces you to look at the world in a new way and to question everything you felt you knew. It’s a book that can define a generation, and change the course of history. Paul Auster’s City of Glass is such a book. It dares you to ask “Who am I?” and “What the hell am I doing reading this?” Truly, this book represents the very epitome of Literary Art. No other book has affected me as much as City of Glass this year. This masterpiece, this tour de force par excellence, has forced me to look over my previous blog posts and wonder what I was thinking. The word “pretentious” does not mean what I thought it meant. And so I would like to begin by apologising to Raymond Chandler for using the adjective to describe his work.

Paul Auster’s City of Glass is Book 1 of “The New York Trilogy”, and it was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. I’m glad to see that the Edgar committee has some sense. Finally, R E A L   L i t e r a t u r e  is nominated in the category. And believe you me, literature can’t get more real than this. See, the entire story revolves around Daniel Quinn, a fellow who – get this –  writes detective stories! Jolly good jumping jelly beans, what a delightful reference to the genre! Anyhow, one night, he gets a telephone call, asking not for Daniel Quinn but for… wait for it… Paul Auster! Say what? Yes, indeed, the author himself is asked for at the telephone. Or is he? For Auster appears as a character as well as being credited as the author, but it is Quinn who is the protagonist, and yet a third person altogether who writes the whole thing!!! Isn’t this whole thing delightful? So very metaphysical, in an almost Miltonian sense, though it never quite approaches the fluid poetry of Keats.

Gangsters and Gunsels and Gals (Oh My!)

When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

—Maxwell Scott, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

Max Allan Collins is something of a recurring figure on this blog. I’ve quoted an interesting article he wrote on “The Hard-Boiled Detective” in Encyclopedia Mysteriosa. I’ve read two of his Batman short stories. But I hadn’t yet read any of his novels. I finally took the first step in that direction a while ago, where ten of Collins’ Nate Heller books formed the Kindle Daily Deal – each priced at $1.99. I bought all ten of them. But then I figured to myself, why start in the middle of a series I know nothing about? Why not start where the series started? And so I bought True Detective, the first novel in the Nate Heller series.

The Kindle edition begins with a terrific introduction from the author. He talks about how he came up with the concept for this series and how this book came to be. He tells readers how he named his son, how his literary idol Mickey Spillane complimented him on this book, and how (due to its length and content) it was a challenging book to sell. He also expresses a genuine hope that readers will enjoy the book. I know for a fact that there’s at least one insane reader in Canada who loved every page of it.

Nothing is Impossible

Last year, I reviewed The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino. A translation that was published in 2011, it was the first “new” novel that I had read for the blog and when I found out that a second novel was about to be translated, Salvation for a Saint, I perked up and kept track of the publication date. On the day of this novel’s release I purchased an audiobook. I loved The Devotion of Suspect X, and was hoping to once again get a clever story with good characterization.

Well, Keigo Higashino has done it again. This is an improvement over The Devotion of Suspect X. Once more, it’s an inverted mystery, and once more you know who the killer is. But the author turns it into an impossible crime novel, and manages to pull off a daring piece of sleight-of-hand! The plot is a simple enough one: a wife, Ayane Mashiba, decides to poison her husband Yoshitaka, a man so selfish that he was going to divorce his wife because she hadn’t given birth to a child. But, trickster that he is, Keigo Higashino forgets to tell you just how she murders Yoshitaka, who meets his Maker thanks to poison in his coffee.

What a Trick!: The Tricksters Return

Back in April, I reviewed the entire first season of the Japanese TV show Trick. I found it a delightful series. Although the plots often came with more holes than Swiss cheese, the comedy was fairly decent and the chemistry between the two leads was absolutely terrific. And so it was just a matter of time before I got around to season two.

Overall, I thought season two was a major improvement over the first season. There are still plot holes, but these aren’t quite as jarring as those from the first season—and to be honest, it forms part of the series’ charm. The subtitles also markedly improved, and so I got to appreciate a lot more of the jokes. The production design also improved—season one at times looked like a low-budget 70s TV show. Season two now feels like an okay-budgeted 80s TV show. (Okay, pardon the bad joke.) Finally, the stories in season two have got even more intriguing premises than those of season one, and in general, the plots are a lot more satisfying. Plot-wise, season one only had a few minor successes. Season two, on the other hand, is mainly composed of successes.

Some things have changed in season two. Professor Ueda is now well-known, with a successful TV show and a bestselling book called “Come Over, Spiritual Phenomena”. Naoko Yamada, meanwhile, is still at the same apartment with the same landlord, and she still performs magic tricks. Only now, she resents how the Professor keeps taking credit for the cases she helps to solve. The two police officers, Yabe Kenzo and his assistant Tatsuya Ishihara, play bigger roles than they did in the first season, and continue to admire Professor Ueda while showing nothing but disdain for Naoko.

Keep in mind that my plot summaries will try to avoid spoilers, and so I won’t describe many of the scams that are exposed on the side. The episodes really like that kind of thing, where a psychic or medium or whatnot will try to prove their authenticity with a bold trick. Describing them all would be a major chore, however, and would probably make this review far too long. So, without further ado, here are my thoughts on season two of Trick.