British Murder Mystery, Traditional Yet Chilling, from Elly Griffiths, SMOKE AND MIRRORS

It's not easy for American readers to keep up with the top-notch British crime fiction, when the American authors are the ones getting the big full-page ads and the point-of-purchase bookshop displays. Thanks to a partnership between UK publisher Quercus and pub giant Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), though, two strong series from Elly Griffiths are now available here. And her newest title, SMOKE AND MIRRORS, arrives in the costume of a traditional British murder mystery, with perservering CID officers and a snow-covered seaside resort town.

But with deft story twists and an appeal to the dark side of classic fairy tales, Griffiths quickly takes her detectives and the pantomime cast for "Alladin" in 1951 Brighton into terrain that's deceptive, wicked, and downright eerie. All of which could be expected if you're already reading this "Magic Men Mystery" series featuring professional magician and brilliant illusionist Max Mephisto.

Max has a deep connection with Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens, who is leading the search for a pair of vanished children: A decade earlier a British defense effort against Hitler's forces involved Max and Edgar and a handful of others -- the so-called Magic Men, established by the military -- in a secret operation to confuse any invasion of England's coast by faking the presence of strong defenses there. The trust forged in the operation allows Max to work sometimes with Edgar, a big plus for the CID because Max grasps how the illusion of a successful crime can be built. And busted.

As the investigators begin to realize that the criminal they're pursuing and the children missing are somehow connected with a staging of a twisted sort of "Hansel and Gretel" by a group of children, Sergeant Emma Holmes begins to step out of her chilly, self-protective role in the local force, following her hunch to talk with a teacher who'd encouraged the children's drama efforts, especially by young Annie, already writing scripts:

Miss Young did not protest that Annie preferred sciences. Instead, to Emma's surprise, she drew out a folder from a pile on her desk.

'She wrote plays and stories too. I was just looking at these before you came. Morbid really. But reading them brought Annie back for a moment.'

Emma looked a the first sheet of lined paper. ... The writing was perfect primary-school script: 'The Wicked Stepdaughter.'

Emma started reading: 'It's the stepmother who's meant to be wicked but mine's just stupid, a fool who doesn't know what's coming to her. No, I'm the wicked one.'

Is Annie, one of the missing children, actually manipulating her own disappearance? If not, has she somehow threatened an adult who is punishing her and the community? And what does all this have to do with another child's stage-related death from before both world wars, in 1912?

It takes a lot of courage by several people, some in the police force, some performers, some children, to resolve the case of the missing children. And there are more at risk.

Griffiths ties together the damages of wartime Britain, the failings of damaged minds, and the dangers of being an astute child, into a wintry and fast-moving novel of intrigue and suspense. Max Mephisto's sleight of hand and mind will tilt Edgar's insight ... but most important will be the way the investigators follow up even the smallest detail, as the snow buries clues and pushes the pace in Brighton and on Max's stage.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS is one of the best new crime novels for this autumn. No need to read The Zig Zag Girl (its predecessor) before this one, but you may want to get both at once, for a highly satisfying read.

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

Swedish Crime Fiction from Carl-Johan Vallgren, THE BOY IN THE SHADOWS

A few months ago, the University of Minnesota Press completed its publication of all three books in Norwegian author Vidal Sunstøl's "Minnesota Trilogy" of Norway/Minnesota crime fiction, richly underlaid with mysticism and the deep ringing notes of an author who writes far more deeply than "genre" fiction labels suggest. I treasured all three -- but as a Vermont resident, it was the second title, Only the Dead, that shook me and lingers in my mind as if I'd experienced it.

Now another link to the American Midwest rises with the newly published American version of Carl-Johan Vallgren's THE BOY IN THE SHADOWS: Brought across the Atlantic by Quercus (owned by Hodder and Stoughton), the novel was translated from Swedish by Madison, Wisconsin, resident Rachel Willson-Broyles, who took advantage of the Midwest's historic connection with the Scandinavians to become an expert in bringing one language into taut, exhilarating coupling with another. Every page of THE BOY IN THE SHADOWS feels like it's written in a native American language (with a touch of British), allowing Vallgren's disturbing currents of menace and despair to flow freely. The book is Vallgren's crime fiction debut, although he has a long track record in other Swedish fiction and is an award-winning and much-heralded author (and musician) in his native land.

What malice, what evil, in someone's past erupts in violent murder? And are there currents that swirl definitively both forward and back in time from the ultimate evils? Danny Katz, a recovering heroin addict with a significant Jewish identity, is about to find out, when an old military friend's wife asks him for help finding her missing husband. Could Joel, the eventual heir to the Klingberg family wealth, have cracked under pressure of his own long-ago disaster? What are the powerful Swedish family's roots in both Scandinavia and the Caribbean?

Danny's past makes him an easy victim, and it's soon clear he's being set up in several ways. But he's determined to keep a commitment to locating Joel -- until the level of danger sweeps away almost all of what he values. The arrival of another individual determined to unravel the knot of the past, Eva Westin, provides a scrap of hope that Danny may elude the net cast for him. But what will he have to surrender in return?

Brace for a long series of unexpected but highly satisfying plot twists in this one -- if you are collecting Scandinavian crime fiction, it's a must for your shelf, but it will also intrigue those who appreciate what a shared military past can impose on a friendship ... as well as readers who appreciate how the power of the industrial and scientific complex can become a dark and terrifying force.

No website for the author at present, and the Wikipedia page is sadly lacking, but Quercus offers a bit on Vallgren here. Another translation from Vallgren, The Tunnel, is underway.

Bank Robbery, Scandinavian Style, in THE FATHER, Anton Svensson

John Dillinger, Jesse James, and Bonnie and Clyde may be America's most famous bank robbers -- but there was also Ma Barker, whose family formed the notorious Barker-Karpis gang, a ruthless group of three core members and some 20 others, and whose exploits spanned the Depression Era.

In Sweden, a string of bank robberies in the 1990s literally paralyzed commerce, as banks came to actually expect another violent attack from the team known as the Military Gang. Consider it Sweden's modern version of Ma Barker's gang. THE FATHER, the debut effort by "Anton Svensson," is the first of a two-book series that turns those robberies and the family behind them into compelling suspense fiction.

THE FATHER opens with an attack witness by sons Leo, Vincent, and Felix, as their brutal father returns after four years and batters their mother. For young Leo, struggling to both embrace his papa and stop papa's fists from pounding Mamma, the action is terrifying and confusing, and abruptly turned by his father into an object lesson in what it is to be a man.

Leo keeps hold of him, his arms around his father's waist, and leans into his body, as if he were still hugging him.

"It's your turn now, Leonard."

The smell of blood, spaghetti and meat sauce, and Mamma's blood. They look at each other.

"Do you understand? I won't be around any more, not here. You're responsible from now on."

And so this boy, oldest of the three but still heart-breakingly young, begins the confusing process of becoming a man as violent and powerful as his father. One who will, given the right plan and weapons, lead a set of crimes designed to make him rich and to terrorize Sweden.

THE FATHER is a powerful work of fiction, sweeping through years as Leo forges his team of brothers -- and one friend pulled into the group as well -- into an instrument able to commit the perfect robbery. By the time things go out of control, Leo is hooked on the addiction of increasingly violent and masterful crime, and can't seem to stop.

But the book's title beats the throb of drums under all of the action, because everything Leo puts together is a result of the "manning up" his father has taught him. And astute readers will see ahead into the catastrophes of his life far sooner than he can, as his father begins, after all this time, to seek a relationship with his son.

Although the book is the debut for "Anton Svensson," the author back-story is at least as complex as the novel itself: The pseudonym represents co-authors Stefan Thunberg and Anders Roslund. Thunberg is, in real life, the fourth brother of the actual notorious bank-robbing family, the brother who escaped the pattern and went to art school. Roslund's name should be familiar to readers of Scandinavian crime fiction, as he wrote for 14 years with Börge Hellström, creating the Roslund & Hellström author tag for award-winning Swedish crime fiction. When the Thunberg and Roslund met, they keyed into a new craft partnership -- writing a book that's neither "true crime" nor "crime fiction" but an entirely new hybrid. (The author website is layered and fascinating, by the way.)

THE FATHER is dark and often violent, but (thank goodness) stays out of the more perverse areas of crime fiction (not a sex crimes book, for example, and no gruesome games with corpses). I found it expertly paced, and the "dramatic" additions the authors made to shape the story are effective and memorable. The adept combination of narrative and inner revelation of how violence is forged in the soul is fascinating.

And for readers who become engaged with the fates of the dangerous men in THE FATHER -- a second book is on the way. The book's subtitle is MADE IN SWEDEN: PART I. It was released in Europe in August 2015, and released in the US this week; at a guess, the second volume may be a year or so away. Published by Quercus; pick up a copy of THE FATHER while the first US printings are still available.

IRÈNE, Pierre Lemaitre: Extraordinary French Crime Writing

[Note to readers of "traditional" or "amateur sleuth" or "cozy" mysteries: Stay with us this week. We have a lot to write about! But this one's probably not your cuppa tea.]

Consider yourself fortunate if you have NOT yet read Pierre Lemaitre's Alex, which is the second in the Vanderhoeven trilogy -- somehow the lines of translation from French to the English-reading market got royally twisted, and Alex, which is the second in this investigative threesome, came out earlier.

Today, however, is the release date for

--> IRÈNE -- the first in the series -- and if you like rich literary mystery writing, or dark European work, or are building a collection of French mysteries, this one is definitely for you.

Commandant Camille Vanderhoeven is a master interviewer of criminals and victims alike. It's a side effect of his artistic imagination and skills, handed down from his mother, a superb painter whose early death has left her studio silenced. As IRÈNE opens, Camille is making a deft sketch of the battered woman in his office who chooses not to reveal her batterer's whereabouts. Laying the lines onto the paper is background for his quick questions of the young woman -- and for his stagecraft, as he has already primed the interview with a planned interruption from a colleague, with a faked report that, in turn, will nudge the young woman into divulging the information that Camille needs.

This scene, in turn, is the author's sketch of the man whose shoes we inhabit for more than 400 pages, as Commandant Vanderhoeven heads up the search for a serial killer. The book's title is the name of Camille's pregnant wife -- the couple is happily expecting their first child. But Camille won't spend much time with his wife, as he chases the murderer across France and backtracks some earlier killings elsewhere. Soon two defining aspects of the series of killings emerge: (1) The murderer is replicating ghastly scenes from classic crime fiction (it takes a while for Camille to realize this and confirm it, but readers will notice the detail on the book cover), and (2) this serial killer is responding to Camille's connection to him, by getting personal. Way too personal.

I like this early description of the first crime scene the French Commandant confronts:

There is no strategy for dealing with atrocity. And yet this was why he was here, staring at the nameless horror.

Before it had clotted, someone had used the victims' blood to daub on the wall in huge letters: I AM BACK. ... Camille stepped over the mangled body of a woman and went to the wall. At the end of the sentence, a finger had been pressed against the wall with great care. Every ridge and whorl was distinct; it looked just like the old-style ID cards when a duty officer would press your finger against the yellowing cardboard, rolling it carefully from one side to the other.

Dark sprays of blood spattered the walls all the way to the ceiling.

It took several minutes for Camille to compose himself. It would be impossible for him to think rationally in this setting -- everything he could see defied reason.

The very slight stiltedness to the language here is maintained throughout the book, and I think it's partly a result of the literary style of translation (by Frank Wynne) and partly Lemaitre's voice -- he has already won both an International Dagger from the Crime Writers Association, and France's prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt. Thus, this one's not for impatient readers or those who like predictable pacing and plotting. 

But if you can make time to accept the author's pace, there's plenty of detail and tension to carry you along, and the blend of art and investigation is complex and memorable. When the book reaches its finale, keep in mind that there is a sequel to come -- I didn't know that when I first read this, and as a result I disliked the ending. But now that I know what's coming, I see the point of it, and the shape of the book makes sense (unlike the first crime scene!).

This is probably NOT going on holiday shopping lists. But if you have "time off" or a slowdown in December/January, it's a good one to put into your stack of to-be-read. Although the idea of crimes that copy books is not a new one, and although France is becoming a popular setting for translated crime fiction reaching the American market, Lemaitre's own blend of noir is haunting and memorable. Recommended, for sure. Keep an eye on future offerings from the publisher, Quercus, to track the rest of the series.

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