Crime Fiction from Nicola Griffith, June's Nebula Grand Master

 Nicola Griffith at center, with her award.

The Nebula Award is for science fiction, not mystery -- but author Nicola Griffith has been able to excel in both genres, so it's a thrill to see her named Grand Master by the sci-fi world this summer. Her acceptance speech is well worth reading, as she talks about "world building" ... something that's also common to crime fiction and historical fiction, not just speculative or sci fi work.

Summer's a great season for discovering a new author and barreling through a series. Thanks to Picador, Griffith's three crime novels featuring Aug Torvingen are newly released in softcover in the US: THE BLUE PLACE (which I just devoured), STAY, and ALWAYS. Check out a long description of Aud (Norwegian born, American by choice, a former police detective now taking specialized private work. In THE BLUE PLACE she agrees to track down a case of art fraud, murder, and a red herring of drugs connected to a Mexican cartel. Why? 

"It's the adrenaline," Aud admits to her new and very close friend Julia. "When everything slows down and my muscles are hot and strong and the blood beats in my veins like champagne I feel this vast delight. Everything is beautiful and precious, and so clear. Light gets this bluish tinge and I feel like a hummingbird among elephants, untouchable."

But that elation and "untouchable" sensation can lead her astray, and does, with nearly unbearable costs. Maybe you'll connect to that part of Aud. Or maybe to the gorgeous descriptive passages of her adopted home area, Atlanta, Georgia, or the home she revisits as a safety location during the crime hunt, Norway, with its mystical winters, stunning landscape, and pervasive legends.

My dad used to say, "Do as I say, not as I do." Let me pass that along to you also: Take Griffith's Aud Torvingen crime novels slowly and luxuriously. Don't devour ... instead, savor. That's what summer was made for.

And here's a postscript from Griffith, to remind you that you may not have heard of her books (especially if you're not reading sci-fi), but you've heard of the authors who praise this sleuthing series: Dennis Lehane, Val McDermid, Dorothy Allison, Lee Child, Manda Scott, Francis Spufford, Laurie King, Ivy Pochoda, Robert Crais, Elizabeth Hand, James Sallis and more.

 

Nordic Noir in 13th Harry Hole Crime Novel from Jo Nesbø, KILLING MOON

 [Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Nesbø never releases the heartstrings through an otherwise classic dark police procedural.”

 

Harry Hole, depressed Norwegian detective, has fled to California as the 13th book in this “Nordic noir” detective series opens. It takes one to know one, they say, and an aging actress and gambling addict named Lucille, hanging out in the bar with him, nails Harry as running as running away from something—his wife? No, she’s dead. “Ah. You’re running from grief,” Lucille readily assesses.

 

For Harry, that could be both the sum and his ending, since he’s ready to give up on everything. But (with plenty of Leonard Cohen lyrics along the way) it turns out that seeing Lucille assaulted because of her gambling debts wakes up the protective side of this aging police detective. And that, in turn, readies him to accept a return to Norway to solve a crime, provided he can get a big enough fee to pay off Lucille’s life.

 

It's a poignant and emotional way to pull Harry Hole back into action, and Nesbø never releases the heartstrings through an otherwise classic dark police procedural. DNA analysis, cocaine trafficking, violent crime—it all piles up across nearly 500 pages of detection. Alternating points of view bring in forensic sleuth Alexandra Sturdza, as well as a highly unpleasant set of manipulative criminals. Sturdza, despite her first gray hairs, is glad to recall once being told “her body was a cross between a tiger and a Lamborghini” and her wry comments and quirky expertise add fun to the narrative.

 

As detective novels go, this one is on the edge of being a thriller, since there’s a “ticking clock” for Harry Hole to discover and arrest a serial killer. Technically, he’s only got to prove his client didn’t do the crime, in order to have the needed funds wired to his bar buddy Lucille’s account and get her released. But of course, proving innocence is much more direct if someone else is clearly guilty. Because he’s on a short time leash, Hole takes bigger risks and cuts more legal corners than might be wise. It makes sense, in the context, and it ramps up the suspense.

 

Fans of the series will find this sleuth’s grief and loss powerful, and will appreciate how life forces Harry back into the work he does so well. Newcomers to Nesbø’s well-established investigations won’t struggle for context, though; Harry Hole’s sense of blame for his wife’s death and his overwhelming need to accept responsibility for another life are quickly established and push the plot.

 

At the core of Killing Moon is the painful reawakening of attachment in Harry’s life, through reconnecting with an old flame and her child. It’s a terrific contrast to the self-centered menace of criminals, and lets Nesbø dip into more classic tunes, beyond Leonard Cohen. The most satisfying lullaby Harry can offer to a child turns out to be “a low, slow chanting in a rough voice that now and then hit the notes of an old blues song about the perils of cocaine.” Truth seems to be the best currency with this child. For Harry, that in itself offers more risk and pain.

 

At the same time, it provides another hostage to keep Harry Hole investigating, as a new kidnapper invites Harry to check out the night’s moon: “You can see the eclipse is under way. When the moon is completely covered,” the villain offers, he’s going to slit the throat of someone Harry loves.

 

Running away from grief? Rephrase that: Once again, Harry Hole is running for the sake of love.

 

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Haunting Norwegian Historical Fiction, EYES OF THE RIGEL by Roy Jacobsen

It's sometimes said that the great literature offers two great themes: "A stranger comes to town" and "Someone leaves on a journey." In EYES OF THE RIGEL, Roy Jacobsen weaves together both of these, as new mother Ingrid Barrøy calmly announces she is leaving her island for a while—with her mysterious and calm dark-eyed baby.

It's soon clear that Ingrid is seeking the father of her child. How this little one came to arrive at the end of the long war, how much love is involved, and why her father's gone are mysteries from almost everyone. Perhaps Ingrid herself isn't sure how this journey has come to be. But she is determined to make it, without questioning whether she can complete it and find Alexander. 

Yet, aside from rowing away from the island and landing on Norway's mainland, she has little idea of where to go. That is, she doesn't actually know where to look for Alexander. So her initial impetus is seeking signs of his passing. For this, nearly speechless, she holds up the child, Kaja, whose dark gaze is unmistakably his. Others meeting the baby's gaze seem compelled to point to the faint trail ahead.

From this book of slow and evocative revelation, here are some key moments:

[p. 90] They made some food and ate it to the sound of snoring from the next room, in what Ingrid considered would have been an oppressive atmosphere, had they not had Kaja, who was sitting on the table between them and laughing at their playful fingers, she was so serenely marble-white and oblivious to both war and peace that Ingrid was able to reassure herself—once again—that the journey had not only been undertaken because of Kaja, it couldn't even have happened without her, without a child to lug around, this most divine of all burdens.

[p. 106] "You're walking along a road of bad consciences, my dear."

"Hva?" Ingrid said.

Hübner answered—as far as she could make out—that the Occupation of Norway had been of a special kind, in many places it had been more like co-operation, it had tainted people, now they were washing away the stains, the country is cleaning its hands. Yes, even many of those who did do something of value know that they could have done more, and they would prefer not to be reminded of it.

[p. 110] Ingrid ... realized she would have to resign herself to not understanding what she was doing, and not let it worry here, as if it were possible to think in a way which was unthinkable. Or stop feeling what she felt. What are you doing to me, little one, she thought, and pressed Kaja to her body.

The translation by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw evokes the languages of Scandinavia, but also of isolation and desperation. EYES OF THE RIGEL—the eyes are those of the child, and the Rigel was a ship that Alexander served on—offers the most elusive of mysteries, with delicate clues to their solution, and a finale as wide open as the ocean itself. Readers of mysteries by James Benn, Charles Todd, and Fuminori Nakamura may find much to enchant them in this slowly compelling adventure.

This is the third of a series that Biblioasis brought to America in translation; the previous volumes were The Unseen and White Shadow. When you order Jacobsen's work from a local bookstore, as them to check the Consortium list in the US, or the University of Toronto Press in Canada.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Kjell Ola Dahl's Norwegian "Gunnarstranda" Police Mysteries Continue

[Originally published in the New York Review of Books]

It’s twenty-four degrees below zero in Oslo, Norway, as police detective Lena Stigersand watches a corpse being pulled from the harbor, in contrast to the Christmas decorations around the market area. A crane hauls the body from the water: “The dead man rose higher and rotated in the air. The lapels of his jacket hung like heavy pennants. Water dripped and immediately froze into icicles on this clothes. … The water on the dead man’s face froze to ice as they watched.”

Lena’s quickly aware that this is a suspicious death, with the body identified right away but the clothing and alcohol-free stomach contents denying the proposal that it could be a suicide. Yet who would want to kill Sveinung Adeler, a relatively minor political aide?

When a journalist steps into Lena’s life, seducing her with both hot sex and hints about the dead man’s significance, things look promising: She’s feeling great about herself and she has more to add at the department meetings. Her colleague, Detective Gunnarstranda, is working on another death that looks at first like suicide, where a homeless woman’s run over by a train after leaping in front of it. When the two deaths, and then a third, show signs of being linked, the detectives must negotiate the perils of governmental interference, including a member of Parliament whose staff bites with powerful teeth.

Lena’s path is the more compelling in THE ICE SWIMMER, as she’s handling (badly) a medical diagnosis that puts her way off balance in a very recognizable way, so her errors of judgment in the investigation make perfect sense. Meanwhile, Gunnarstranda’s pursuit of the criminal behind the deaths is suspenseful and dangerous:

Gunnarstranda got up. The shadow slipped through. Gunnarstranda went after it, through the door opening. … He was standing on the edge of a sheer drop. A square hole in the floor.

He gasped as his hands groped for something to hold on to. They found nothing, but he regained his balance.

A vibration made him step back two paces without his knowing why. A crash made him start. A concrete block had landed where he had just been standing. It smashed into pieces and sprayed his face with bits of cement and gravel.

… At that moment he received a violent push and fell. He broke his fall with his hands and grazed both palms. Someone jumped over him and ran down the stairs.

Regular readers of Nordic noir may recognize Gunnarstranda as one of the two noted detectives in Kjell Ola Dahl’s Faithless, and this is the sequel, second in Dahl’s popular “Oslo Detectives” series, finally being translated and brought across the Atlantic. The translator, Don Bartlett, also works with material by Jo Nesbø and Gunnar Staalesen (the Varg Veum crime novels), and provides a smooth text that’s only slightly “foreign” in feel (more a question of the “music” of the phrasing; nothing awkward). Inspector Frank Frølich is absent from this second title in the series, except for a short visit that Gunnarstranda makes to tap his expertise. Hard to say what will follow, but it would be great if these all returned in book three in a year or so.

Although the crimes and their locations are dark, Dahl’s detectives arrive with force of character and are willing to share a bit of wisdom with each other. That’s lucky for Lena in this case, because a police detective going to bed with a journalist hints at disaster to follow, and she’s far from immune.

Well written, quickly paced, Dahl’s series fits the traditional police detective model (think Michael Connelly, and Karen Slaughter), including the hint of despair that a high-alcohol profession brings along. Good reading, and all the plot threads fit together by the end, although there’s a rather odd postscript chapter to pick up the last bit. But perhaps it’s also to lay the start for the book that comes next.

From Orenda Books, which continues to bring solid translations across the Atlantic. 

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.  

Brief Mention: Nordic Noir from Kjell Ola Dahl, FAITHLESS

The Oslo, Norway, sleuthing mysteries by Kjell Ola Dahl are well known in Scandinavia -- there are 11 so far -- but had to wait for translation, and for Orenda Books to start bringing them across the Atlantic. FAITHLESS arrived in the U.S. in September, and provides a rewarding new direction in dark Scandinavian mysteries: a police procedural with depth of character and a wickedly dry sense of humor.

Inspector Frank Frølich, attending an engagement party for an old friend, discovers the new fiancée is a woman Frank had just arrested, then released, under a Norwegian legal function that allows someone to pay a fine for possession of illicit drugs at a personal use level. But that complication, which after all can be managed within careful polite manners, pales beside the next twist: the women, Veronika, soon becomes a murder victim. Is it a result of the arrest or the party or something else entirely?

Frølich's own past turns out to have some of the clues, a decidedly uncomfortable situation for the Oslo detective and his partner, Inspector Gunnarstranda. But the twists of plot get even more intense when their fellow detective Lena manipulates one of their colleagues, as well as stepping over the line toward baiting a dangerous criminal.

The translation by Don Bartlett (British) is smooth and well carried out; the scenes are short and sharp; and although the crimes involved are dark ones, and the settings more than a little spooky ("atmospheric" is another descriptor), the characters carry a force of will that makes it a pleasure to follow their investigations. I'm glad Orenda's brought this award-winning Norwegian author to our attention; I'll be watching for more of Dahl's work.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Scandinavian Mystery, New from Vidar Sundstøl, THE DEVIL'S WEDDING RING

If you started your Scandinavian crime fiction with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander series, Vidar Sundstøl's mystery novels, deep and layered and rich with character, may provide a very different approach to Norway's singular history and culture. The latest from this award-winning author -- winner of the prestigious Riverton Prize for the Best Norwegian Crime Novel -- feels at first like a traditional "retired police officer" investigation. Max Fjellanger's odd compulsion to attend the funeral of fellow police officer he hasn't seen in more than 30 years, takes him to Eidsborg, a village noted for its impressive "stave church." And now it's also the source of an enduring disquiet that haunts Max and may have resulted in three untimely deaths. That is, in murder.

But can Max prove the interrelationship of the deaths, spread as they are by time, profession, gender? What ties them together has something to do with the church and a family of local sheriffs. And most of all with a haunting carved "saint" or possible ancient idol that sits in the church and has links to the village's ancient pre-Christian past.

The layering of such diverse forms of mystery -- those of vindictive or punitive death, possible suicide, cheating lovers, mystic beliefs, and family traditions of danger and threat -- is key to Sundstøl's writing. Fortunately for American readers, the University of Minnesota opted to publish over the past few years his Minnesota Trilogy: The Land of Dreams; Only the Dead; The Ravens. The dark human evil present in those volumes brings the same shudders as the classic story "The Most Dangerous Game" -- crossed with the suspense of Edgar Allen Poe. In fact, the middle volume Only the Dead may be the strongest and darkest full-length novel ever of hunting gone mad, and I plan to re-read all three books periodically, to recall how complex and probing a crime novel can become.

The press connection with the Sundstøl novels (with skilled translator Tiina Nunnally) is clear in the Minnesota Trilogy, which links crimes in that wild American landscape and its earliest inhabitants, with the lives of Norwegians who arrived as settlers, prepared to displace Native peoples by force as needed, forging their own connection with the Minnesota landscape.

It's less obvious how THE DEVIL'S WEDDING RING fits the press, except that clearly there is a heartfelt connection between Minnesota and Norway -- and Sundstøl sweeps sideways into that relationship through Max Fjellanger, whose confused defeat as a young law enforcement officer in Eidsborg led to his emigration from Scandinavia, to the United States. The bittersweet pain of a loving but childless marriage there and the death of his beloved wife carries Max into an impulsive trip to his "birth country" where the losses of his adult life began.

The book's title refers to a space in the wildest segment of the hillside adjoining Eidsborg's famous and ancient church, a space where it is claimed that "the devil" once dropped his wedding ring -- causing nothing to be able to grow again where the ring had landed.

In the community life as Max explores it, however, that location in the woods may have something to do with sustaining a dark and mystic practice that has more to do with primitive roots than with community as Max finds it today. University librarian Tirill Vesterli, eager to put her dream of becoming a detective in motion, soon links up with Max while supporting his research, with Max quickly realizing he has a valued new colleague in his risky investigation:

Possibly a little eccentric, but definitely compos mentis. And clearly sharp-witted.

"Do you have any idea what you might be getting involved in?" he asked.

She nodded eagerly.

"Then why are you doing this?"

"Because the truth is out there, even though we can't see it."

Max Fjellanger leaned back and took a sip of his white wine. That was the right answer. The truth had always been his lodestar -- the thought that it was out there somewhere, no matter how difficult it might be to see. Precisely as Tirill had just said.

Max hears the story of the devil's wedding ring from a local criminal named Tellev Sustuglu, who claims he heard the tale himself in prison -- a tale that emphasizes that the past is not necessarily dead, and neither are some of the dark personalities who have shaped the criminal events that once took place, even a generation earlier. Or more.

Sustuglu wraps up his tale by saying, "And they say a place like that still exists in the woods above the Homme farm. I've never seen it personally but ... So maybe you'll understand now why I won't say anything against [former sheriff[ Jørgen Homme in public, even though he's been dead for years. That man was from another world."

Max's confusion over this statement of "facts of the case" grows more intense -- as does the risk of his life, and Tirill Vesterli's.

Sundstøl spins a well-wrought, intelligent, and intense modern mystery with archaic roots, and much to offer about the roots of crime itself. THE DEVIL'S WEDDING RING gets a place on my "hold for reading again soon" shelf, with the books that enchant me because they also teach me about writing, about a really good story, and about how to comb out the complexities of the human spirit.

(And thank goodness for the University of Minnesota Press!)

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.