Conan Doyle for the Defense by Margalit Fox

Rating: 4 Stars

 In ‘Conan Doyle for the Defense’, Margalit Fox examines one of the most infamous trials of the Victorian Age in a style that combines the best elements of fiction and nonfiction writing.

A wealthy elderly lady is found bludgeoned to death in her home in Glasgow in 1908. The Glasgow police glom on to a suspect despite a staggering lack of evidence connecting him to the crime. What then follows is a miscarriage of justice that sets a textbook example of how not to try a case.

Fox deftly captures the zeitgeist of a historic era at the junction of raging social forces. A nation that unapologetically established an empire is paranoid about all the foreigners encroaching on its own turf. Oscar Slater, a man of German-Jewish origins, is framed for the murder of Mrs. Marion Gilchrist by the Glasgow P.D. The incompetence and/or corruption of the police force meet their match with prosecutorial and judicial misconduct. The end result is that Slater served nineteen years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

The case captured headlines at its time. Despite the prevailing mood of xenophobia, there were many who were sufficiently troubled by the weak case against Slater, and the biased trial that he was subjected to, that there was a persistent effort to see justice done. The attempts to exonerate Slater began to gather steam when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle joins the fight. Conan Doyle – writer, physician, rationalist, veteran, sleuth, gentleman, and a knight of the old order…

At The New York Times where she is a senior writer, Margalit Fox is a member of the obituary news department. I do appreciate stylish send-offs. ‘Conan Doyle for the Defense’ is a study of flawed police procedure and a failed justice system; but it is also a glowing tribute to the literary mastermind who was Holmes and Watson in one.

Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions by Mario Giordano

[Trans. by John Brownjohn]

Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

Auntie Poldi is newly transplanted to Sicily from her native Munich. Despondent from the recent death of her husband and several financial setbacks, Poldi has decided to drink herself to death. And she has chosen Sicily as the perfect backdrop for her demise. The mystery begins when her young handyman is found with his face nearly blown apart by an old mafia-style weapon. The only problem is that there aren’t any Mafiosi in Giordano’s modern Sicily. But even if there were, Poldi is not the kind of woman to back down from them.

Auntie Poldi is an unconventional detective by any consideration. A grieving widow with a lust for life and a weakness for handsome policemen, she lurches around Sicily in a regularly inebriated condition. Still, she always has enough clarity to ask the right questions; and the chutzpah to bother the wrong kind of people with her relentless demands for answers. Grief and depression always loom in the background of her mind. Nevertheless, Poldi has a vitality that has her greeting life with her usual, “Namaste!”

Perhaps like me, you too have bought into the clichés about Italy and the Italian people – their joie de vivre, love of famila, love of food, their dramatic flair,  and, the ardor of their romantic affairs. Well, make no mistake about it; this book continues to perpetuate all those stereotypes. Reading this novel has left me craving marzipan, and Sicilian style almond-milk.

Poldi is assisted in her investigations by her quartet of helpful in-laws; and her sounding board is her nephew who is wrestling with himself to conjure up a literary masterpiece that seems a strange hybrid of ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ and ‘Odyssey’. This nephew also does double-duty as the first-person narrator of this novel – an unwieldy and needless technical device. The climax is unabashedly deus ex machina. But these minor flaws aside, the book is an undemanding charmer; its most winsome attribute being its eccentric, loveable heroine. Namaste, Poldi!

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

Stars: 3 & ½

2013 Booker Prize

Eleanor Catton’s ‘The Luminaries’ is a multi-faceted dazzler – historical fiction; mystery; whimsical romance; and with a touch of the paranormal thrown in for some extra effect. Yet this olio somehow works without any clumsiness.

The story is set in 19^th. century New Zealand. Walter Moody, newly arrived from England, comes to the west coast town of Hokitika with an intention to try his luck in its goldfields. But his entrance coincides with recent events that have upturned the little town: Emery Staines, Hokitika’s wealthiest man, is missing and presumed dead; Anna Wetherell, a favorite town prostitute; appears to have made an unsuccessful attempt to take her own life; Crosbie Wells, a local hermit, has died under mysterious circumstances; and, Alistair Lauderback, an ambitious politician, is being blackmailed. What this quartet has in common is their mutual acquaintance with the sinister Francis Carver, and his accomplice, the equally devious Lydia Greenway.

Twelve concerned citizens of Hokitika share the information they possess with Moody; determined to find justice for the victims and absolve themselves of any role they might have unwittingly played in the tragic events.

While Ms. Catton employs a slightly modified (thank God!) version of the Victorian style of expression, the most striking aspect of this novel is in its elaborate organization of character and apportioning of timeline according to astrological principles. If you have ever dabbled in the zodiac, this book will probably offer you an extra element of enjoyment. If that’s really not your thing, the character chart may seem superfluous and the titles won’t make much sense. But the book still will; so don’t worry about it.

The bare skeleton of the plot is simple enough. The intricacy lies in how deftly the actions and their consequences are interlaced. The author retains her audience’s interests by switching between past and present; revealing only tantalizing glimpses of the plot at a time; and from multiple perspectives to boot. At 800 plus pages, this is the longest book to have ever won a Booker prize. And yet despite its voluminous might, any reader who expects events to be neatly resolved and the tale to come to a tidy finish will be disappointed. Yes, justice (both the poetic and legal kind) is served, but much is left to our inference. The answers are there; but you should have been paying attention. Or just read it all over again. Go ahead, I dare you.

Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith

Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

Martin Cruz Smith’s ‘Gorky Park’ was a best-seller when it was first published in 1981, and had critics hailing the writer as America’s answer to John LeCarré. While the author may not have intended the book as a historical mystery, thirty years since its publication and after the dissolution of the former U.S.S.R., it can perhaps be qualified as such today.

Arkady Renko, Senior Homicide Investigator of the Soviet militia is assigned to solve the mystery of three frozen bodies found in Gorky Park. Renko, suspecting the involvement of the KGB and its sinister agent, Major Pribluda, is unenthusiastic about a case that seems certain to be headed to a dead end. Despite his reluctance, he’s drawn further into the murders that have seemingly inexplicable international connections, and increasingly point to corruption and treachery at the highest levels.

Though the latter half of the book seems to drag on for far longer than necessary, Smith does successfully engross the reader's attention for the most part. There may be suggestions of homicidal maniacs on the loose, but in the end, the motives are coldly practical, and the plot’s sense of urgency intensifies till it reaches its crescendo. Apparently, MCS engaged in seven years of research to complete this novel, and very often his style is dazzling, so subtly does his Soviet Union get under our skin.

The author’s Russia pre-dated Gorbachev’s perestroika, and highlights the slippery terrain Renko has to navigate. Smith’s portrayals irked the U.S.S.R enough to list him as a ‘dangerous agent provocateur’. There are disturbing vignettes of people being tortured for trivialities, efficiency-stifling bureaucracy, and women practicing clandestine birth-control and serial abortions in a nation where government fiats demand patriotic procreation. Renko, like so many of his fellow countrymen can neither criticize nor condone the misgoverning of his country.

One appeal of this book is the character of the chain-smoking Arkady Renko withering in a loveless marriage that’s grown on him like yet another bad habit, and helplessly attracted to a woman who might very well be the end of him. He’s seen enough of violence and brutality without letting it contaminate his own character; and though he’s prudent enough to be a card-carrying party member, he has too much integrity to ingratiate himself to further his career.

The government’s anti-capitalist propaganda is in sharp contrast to the rampant black-marketing and the hungry consumerism of the population. In contrast to Arkady, his best friend, Misha, is venal, yet likable. He doesn’t hesitate to play the system and keep his own life as comfortably afloat as he can - a state of affairs where some are definitely more equal than others.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Rating: 4 Stars

It had me at the first page, and kept me hooked till the last. So many ‘suspense’ novels telegraph their grand climax well before the reader is half-way through that, we nearly forget the enjoyable sensation of being kept on tenterhooks. It’s nice to get an occasional reminder once in a while.

Nick Dunne, on the day of his fifth anniversary returns home to find his wife, Amy, missing. He calls in the police, and the search begins in the small town of Carthage, Missouri. The evidence points all too damningly to the usual suspect in such cases. While there may be more than one side to any story, Nick’s perspective on his tottery marriage and his spouse does not win him much sympathy. The scariest place to be is inside someone’s head, and Flynn leads us into the darkest nooks and crannies of her protagonists’. The distinction between being a self-absorbed jerk and a narcissistic psychopath may be merely a difference of degrees.

Predictably the hunt for Amy soon turns into the usual media circus; with ratings-hungry talk-show hosts quivering with self-righteous outrage, slick attorneys, and casual acquaintances avid for their fifteen minutes in the spotlight.

Gone Girl scores an enviable double whammy. It’s a thriller that beckons with a promise of sexy, wicked fun, and before we know it, has us by the throat with its ferocious intelligence and startlingly acute insight.

There are some questionable angles, but it’s easy to overlook those when the author has gratified in so many other respects. One of the charms of this book is the way it slyly upends clichés – the lawyer who is the go-to guy for uxoricide suspects is apparently happily married; romance’s cherished ideal of a knight in shining armor is not every girl’s idea of the perfect man; incorrigible love-birds are annoying to the rest of us, as Nick nastily remarks on his grieving in-laws "cherishing each other" every chance they get. And while hope may be ‘the thing with feathers’, love can and does sport scales, fangs, and claws.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

Published in 1938, ‘Rebecca’ has been hailed as a classic work of suspense. It also seemed like the longest book I’ve read in a while. I’ll get to that later.

The book’s un-named narrator falls hopelessly in love with recent widower Maxim de Winter when they meet in Monte Carlo. She accepts his proposal and moves to Manderley, de Winter’s ancestral manor. The very young and painfully diffident bride soon becomes obsessed with her predecessor – Rebecca, who may be gone, but is certainly not forgotten. She compares herself with the earlier Mrs. de Winter, and finds herself falling short every time. Her predicament is exacerbated by her increasingly remote husband, and the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, whose tangible antipathy threatens to shatter her fragile sense of self-esteem.

The book’s greatest triumph is that it’s most vibrant, dynamic character is the one whom we never see except through the words of others, and the narrator’s tortured imagination. In the fine web that the author weaves, the reader too becomes entangled by the lure of a woman so ravishingly beautiful, accomplished, and mysterious that mere mortals can but quake at her memory. Rebecca not only haunts the Manderley she conceived; her presence imbues the skein of the narrative.

As is usual in the English Manor Mystery genre, there is a brooding atmosphere that gets denser as the story progresses. The tone is set by the eerie beginning, evoking a house whose beauty is offset by a pervading sense of menace.

As for the novel seeming one of the longest that I’ve read – the fault may at least partially be my own. I approached it with every good intention, but just found myself unable to lose myself in it. Perhaps it’s because I saw the movie before I read the book [Hint: the book is better], and therefore I couldn’t enjoy the element of surprise, so crucial to any work of suspense. That wasn’t the only reason however; while the Lilith-Eve angle has a certain literary appeal, the book’s one-dimensional characterization has rendered an archetype into a stereotype. That aside, quite simply - glaciers move faster than the pace of this story.

At the risk of offending its many fans, this is one book that didn’t quite live up to its reputation.

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Rating: 4 Stars

Wilkie Collins is considered by many to be the first author of detective fiction. Trained in the law, the sleuthing techniques used in his work paved the way for Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Collins’s 1859 novel, ‘The Woman in White’ is written in the epistolary style reflecting multiple viewpoints, with some portions seeming like outright witness statements.

Walter Hartright, a young art teacher is employed at Limmeridge House by Mr. Fairlie to restore his art-work and to teach his niece Laura Fairlie, and her half-sister Marian Halcombe. In no time at all, Walter falls in love with Laura, but takes the honorable recourse of removing his impecunious self from the scene, so that she may marry her titled fiancé. Alas, much tragedy lies in wait for Laura, a young woman exasperatingly incapable of taking any decisions on her own behalf. She leaves that to the intrepid Marian.

Danger hems in the sisters from all sides, and the key to the mystery lies with an eerie young woman whom Walter had met by chance. Damsels in distress; a noble-minded hero guided by the highest principles; unscrupulous villains; and, a plot with many twists and turns - the book is a true Victorian pot-boiler.

It is not free of the maudlin sentimentality that hounds even the best works of this period, and at times betrays an overwrought imagination that could have been dispensed with. But to the question does it work – the answer is yes. Collins keeps the threads of the narrative firmly in his possession, and the work has a contemporary charm in its sudden quirks of humor, and astute characterization, except in the case of Laura Fairlie who is presumably the Victorian ideal of a delicate-minded lady. It has the watermark of the successful mystery – it keeps you engrossed till the last page.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

‘Sakhi’ Book Club September 2011 Pick

“It was so difficult to do that the idea had fascinated me…I wrote the book after a tremendous amount of planning, and I was pleased with what I had made of it.”- Agatha Christie on ‘And Then There Were None’

Christie had reason to be gratified with how the book had turned out. First published in 1939 with a much more offensive title, of all the Queen of Mystery’s novels, this was her most popular work, with a hundred million sales. Original in concept, it is also considered among her best.

Ten people of varying backgrounds, most of whom have never met each other, are invited by a mysterious host to Soldier Island. Once there, they realize that they are at the mercy of a malevolent mastermind who knows all too much about them. For unsuspecting as they are, they are far from innocent. Each one has a skeleton rattling in their closet; and their unknown host seems privy to their guiltiest secrets. Very soon, people start to die, in grotesque accordance with a misanthropic and un-childlike rhyme. Who is going to be the last one left standing? Who could have done it?

Christie does not deceive with cheap tricks; she does leave her trail of clues, and all the evidence points to one suspect. Personally, for me, this was less of a whodunit, and more of a how-was-it-done, and that gets harder to configure as the bodies start piling up. Whether the plot stands up to the plausibility test is debatable, but the author astutely anticipates her critics' objections, and deftly parries most queries in the book's epilogue. The long and short of it is, Christie manages to pull off a superb trompe l'oeil on her readers.

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

[Translated from the Turkish by Erdag M. Goknar]

Orhan Pamuk was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006

“…Let it not be forgotten that in the Glorious Koran, ‘creator’ is one of the attributes of Allah. It is Allah who is creative… who brings that which is not into existence, who gives life to the lifeless. No one ought to compete with him. The greatest of sins is committed by painters who presume to do what He does, who claim to be as creative as He…”

This statement is the essential conflict of ‘My Name is Red’, Orhan Pamuk’s intricate tale of Art and murder in 16^th century Turkey under Ottoman rule. It’s a world where artistry is circumscribed by religious ideology, and where mad old painters aspire to blindness as the ultimate mark of Allah’s favor.

The world of these painters, or more correctly, miniaturists, is the centerpiece of the novel. They are anguished souls unable to unleash their true artistry, shackled to the traditions of the ‘old masters’, and forbidden to innovate. This last condition is proving especially cumbersome because the Ottoman Empire has become increasingly susceptible to the influence of European art with its dazzling use of perspective and seductive portraiture. But in the eyes of the imams, that way lies heresy and perdition. The painters are torn between artistic envy and their religious convictions.

Then a miniaturist, working on a book specially commissioned by the Sultan, is murdered. There are any number of suspects - from his rival-colleagues to the followers of a fundamentalist cleric. Summoned to solve the mystery is Black, an erstwhile artist and clerk. Black accepts, in order to ingratiate himself with the father of his beloved, Shekure. Black is a fool for love, but Shekure is a single mother living at the mercy of a patriarchal society. She has no intention of yoking her family’s fortunes to Black without carefully hedging her bets.

The book is gratifying, both as historical fiction as well as an intelligently crafted mystery. It proceeds at a leisurely stroll, and with the frequent scenic detours down the by lanes of Ottoman art, history, culture and philosophy, it is often an aesthetic delight, with many passages of surpassing beauty. The plot has mystery’s requisite tension, and the conclusion is satisfactory, if not highly suspenseful.

Where it falters is in setting and characterization. I would have expected more color and richer detail in descriptions of sixteenth century Istanbul, one of the most storied cities in the world. More disappointing is the characterization. It has the same flaws that may be leveled at miniature painting – lack of depth and perspective. The story is told through multiple viewpoints, but the characters frequently contradict themselves and indulge in so much double speak, that we have no idea who they are, or what they believe. They remain mostly a strange, amorphous bunch. The prevailing mood of characterization is an unabashed homoeroticism. Not a single youth escapes having an adoring adjective – ‘pretty’, ‘lovely’, ‘beautiful’- affixed to his person. The problem with a literary world where every male is assumed to be just a little bit gay is that it is at best a lop-sided, and at worst a falsified view of human nature. Literature becomes less Art and more artifice.

Turkey has long been at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and its struggle with cultural identity is evident in the novel. That is to say, Pamuk portrays it but seems unable to reconcile the differences. What the book offers is an exclusively Islamic worldview that fails to reaffirm the import of one of its most inspiring lines:

“Nothing is pure…To God belongs the East and the West. May he protect us from the will of the pure and the unadulterated.”

Faithful Place by Tana French

Rating: 3 Stars

“The rules in my road went like this: no matter how skint you are, if you go to the pub then you stand your round; if your mate gets into a fight, you stick around to drag him off as soon as you see blood, so no one loses face; you leave the heroin to them down in the flats; even if you’re an anarchist punk rocker this month, you go to Mass on Sunday; and no matter what, you never, ever squeal on anyone.”

Faithful Place or, simply, The Place, as it is often called is more than a presence in French’s gripping novel. It is a character in its own right, with a rough, heavy menace that you watch out of the corner of your eye, and never turn your back on. Detective Francis (Frank) Mackey of Dublin’s Undercover Squad left Faithful Place at the age of nineteen, and in the past twenty-two years has tried to put as much distance from it as possible. The Place won’t stand for that kind of faithless behavior, not while it can still grab him by the throat and drag him back into its ugly heart.

Mackey has not only tried to leave the Place behind, he has virtually cut off all contact with his sprawling, unpredictable tough-love family. That is until he gets a call from his sister, Jackie, informing him of a recently unearthed suitcase, belonging to Rosie Daly – Frank’s ex-girlfriend, his first love, who pretty much broke his heart. Mackey, now a divorced father, with a nine-year old daughter whom he fiercely protects, and an ex-wife for whom he still carries a flame, is reluctantly drawn back to the maelstrom of the Place, only to be inevitably caught in its undertow.

French is a compelling writer with a snazzy style that immediately snags our attention, and Frank Mackey is a not unattractive version of the macho, hard-boiled cop. The story propels itself on its own momentum, till the point it doesn’t. Somewhere around the middle of the book, Frank’s swaggering charm wears thin, the sparkle in the language fizzles out, the suspense has made its exit, and the plot limps towards an uninspired finish. The reader is at least of the same mind as Mackey about his home – not a nice Place to visit, and a good one to leave behind.

The Hangman's Daughter by Oliver Potzsch

[Translated from the German by Lee Chadeayne]

Rating: 3 Stars 

In ‘The Hangman’s Daughter’, Oliver Potzsch has come up with an intriguing new hero, Jakob Kuisl, the torturer and executioner of Schongau in 17^th. Century Bavaria. This is a well-researched and entertaining blend of history and mystery, layered with details that bring a convincing verisimilitude to the story. 

The delicate-minded reader should beware. Potzsch is unsparing in relating the specifics of the executioner’s trade. The first chapter in particular is electrifying. However, the violence is not gratuitous; it is an essential element of this book. We are talking about the bad old days when the city executioners were encouraged to be as inventive as possible when it came to the matter of extracting confessions. Once the accused had broken down and confessed under torture, then even more ingenious methods were concocted for their death – beheading, drowning, hanging, being broken on the wheel. The whole town would turn up to witness the execution. It was like the county fair – the event of the season that nobody wanted to miss.

In these cruel times, the enigmatic and complex Jakob Kuisl, a man with a healer’s instincts, is instead forced to practice the trade that he was born into. The penalty for being a conscientious protestor would be banishment and possible penury, not a viable option for a family-man. His fellow townsmen, who don’t hesitate to approach him for medical assistance, otherwise shun him and his family, and treat them like virtual outcasts. 

His quandary in this book is that the bodies of brutally murdered orphans are turning up, and Martha Stechlin, the town midwife is being accused of witchcraft and murder. The villagers are in a mounting hysteria, and the town council wants a speedy investigation, confession, and execution, before the mob starts an uncontrollable witch-hunt. This would be a repeat of something that had happened fairly recently in Schongau’s history. Kuisl doesn’t for a moment believe that Martha is either a murderess or a witch, but unless he can find incontrovertible proof of her innocence, he is soon going to have to inflict a great amount of pain on a woman whom he likes and respects. Helping him in his mission are his daughter, Magadalena, and the town physician, Simon Fronweiser; that is, when they are not too distracted by each other.

Truth is stranger than fiction, and you don’t have to look much further than the author’s afterword for evidence of that. Oliver Potzsch is a descendant of the famous Kuisl dynasty of Bavaria, whose executioner’s sword was displayed in the Schongau museum till the 1970s, when it was stolen and never recovered. In writing this book, he was aided by the meticulous research and genealogical records of other family members who took pride and interest in their unusual background.

The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

[Translated from the Swedish by Alan Blair]

Rating: 3 Stars

‘The Laughing Policeman’ is considered a vintage crime classic. It was first published in Sweden in 1968 by the wife and husband team of Sjowall and Wahloo respectively, and is one of ten books featuring Detective Martin Beck of the Stockholm Homicide Squad.

The book is reflective of the events of the day. The reverberations of the Vietnam War are being felt as far away as Sweden, when the story opens. The police are preoccupied with anti-Vietnam demonstrators outside the U.S. embassy, and violence is escalating on both sides. Beck, who  is not among those trying to quell the demonstrators, is woken in the night with the news that a mass-murder has been committed on a commuter bus by an unknown gunman. He has a personal stake in this crime. One of the victims on the bus was a junior of his, and that makes Beck and his squad look at the case very closely.

The media, public, and politicians work themselves into a lather at this violent incident, and the police are demanded to throw themselves into action. What is unusual about this book is that the pace is measured. The reader may be in no less of a hurry than the jittery populace of Stockholm, but Beck and his team proceed methodically, investigating every possible angle, knocking on doors, laboriously compiling paperwork, and systematically eliminating suspects. These things do not happen overnight. Perhaps that’s why this book is considered a definitive example of the police procedural.

The unhappily married and lugubrious Beck grew on me, as did the rest of his colleagues, each one indelibly etched in the mind. One drawback to this book is the translation – I found it to be disjointed and quite jarring, till I could settle into the rhythm of the story. This is certainly a book that requires a longer attention span, but the plot pulls you in, and keeps you reading, till you reach the highly satisfying conclusion.

Blood from a Stone

Blood from a Stone by Donna Leon
(a Commissario Guido Brunnetti Mystery)

Rating: 2 Stars

I was looking forward to blissfully soaking myself in a good old-fashioned cloak and dagger novel, but initially found this one a little tepid. More used to the rat-a-tat pace of the American crime caper, or the sinister undercurrents of the English countryside, it took me a while to get used to the well-read, genial hero of this Venetian mystery.

Guido Brunnetti, devoted family man and lover of good food, is a far cry from the stereotypical hard-boiled, macho cop hero. The story is well written, with a thought-provoking plot that takes time to unravel.

My main quibble is that our hero is reduced to being a frustrated witness when the final pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Neither he, nor the reader, has the satisfaction of declaring whole-heartedly, “Case closed!” Still, I think the series holds promise. Next time, I might try one of the better-reviewed books of Ms. Leon’s like, “Doctored Evidence” or “Uniform Justice”. Until then, Ciao Guido!