Point Zero, by Seichō Matsumoto

 

9781913394936

Europa Editions, 2024

originally published as Zero no shoten, 1959

translated by Louise Heal Kawai

279 pp 

paperback

 I needed a short novel for late-night reading while family was here last week and Tokyo Express (apa Points and Lines) called out to me from my shelf, after which I found myself wanting to read more of Matsumoto's work.  I chose this one,  Point Zero, which, like Tokyo Express, is set against the backdrop of  postwar Japanese society.  I found myself unwilling to put it down at any time once I'd started reading, and I liked it so much that I took out my copy of the author's A Quiet Place (also from Europa) which I'm ready to start later this evening.  About Point Zero, it's best to say as little as possible so as not to give away too much, so my post will be a bit vague.  Personally, I think the back-cover blurb is too spoiler-ish but feel free to disagree. 

 Although Teiko Itane had received marriage proposals in the past, she'd turned them all down.  Her situation changes when she receives a proposal from a certain Kenichi Uhara via a matchmaker.  Uhara is the manager of the Hokuriku branch of a major advertising firm, spending twenty days a month at the office in Kanazawa City and ten days in Tokyo.  That arrangement is of particular concern to Teiko's mother, but it seems that the company has been trying to get him to move to Tokyo for a while and he's finally agreed, using the opportunity to finally get married as well.  Even though they hadn't spent any time alone together, Teiko decides to accept the proposal, and also believes that whatever life he'd had in the past should stay in the past.  This decision will come back to bite her later, but for the moment, aside from some sort of  unspoken "complexity" within Kenichi that she senses, the few early days of the marriage that they share aren't so bad for either of them.  She's made friends with Kenichi's brother's family (who live in the Aoyama neighborhood of Tokyo) and after the honeymoon, the plan is for Kenichi to make his final trip to Kanazawa to hand over the job to his successor, a certain Yoshio Honda, who will be accompanying him on the train journey.   As she watches the train pull out of the station, she has no clue that this will be "the last time Teiko ever saw her husband." 

The first hint that something is wrong comes when Kenichi sends a postcard saying that he'll be home on the twelfth and fails to show up.  After a few phone calls, Teiko learns that nobody in the company knows where he is; on the third day the section chief of Kenichi's company advises her that someone will be going to investigate his disappearance in Kanazawa.  He also asks if she would be willing to accompany that person.  Kenichi's brother Sotaro can't get away at that time, so she heads to Ueno station where she learns that Honda has already been in touch with police and is taking Kenichi's disappearance very seriously.  Once she arrives in Kanazawa, she learns a bit more about Kenichi's movements the day before he was to take the train home to Tokyo, the results taking both Honda and herself by surprise. But this information is just the opening salvo of many more surprises to come, including a series of unexpected deaths and a ruthless killer who is determined not to be caught.  The question that drives Teiko here is just how these deaths are connected. She also realizes that "Her husband had a secret. What was it?"   Beginning her quest with only two photos of two different houses that might possibly be some sort of clue,  finding the answers becomes for Teiko nearly a full-time occupation.  She also doesn't realize that she is up against a very powerful and determined opponent, someone who will do anything to prevent the past from catching up to the present, no matter the cost. 

 

1971 edition (in which the cover is much more relevant and given the story, downright creepy)  from Amazon

Aside from the twists and turns that this story takes, I was struck while reading Point Zero by two things.  The first is the sense of place that Matsumoto layers into this novel, whether it is in describing  various views captured within the neighborhoods of Tokyo or (and most especially), his incorporation  of the natural world away from the city.   The second is that the most forceful characters throughout the novel are women.  Anyone who goes into this novel with preconceived notions of docile Japanese women taking a back seat to the men in their orbits may be surprised at the strength the author affords to many of the females here.  While there are more than a few I could talk about, it starts with Teiko, who is strong, highly independent and more than determined to get to the root of Kenichi's disappearance.  She has no trouble trying to dig out information from people ranging from top company executives to the police to denizens of the neighborhoods her investigation takes her, and obviously she will not be satisfied until she knows everything there is to know, even if she has to rethink things now and again.  

The novel is utterly twisty, full of betrayals and secrets which eventually are unraveled to take the reader to another time and place entirely.  All of the above makes for  a solid mystery at the core of this novel, and I seriously had trouble putting it down once I'd started.  I have a great love for Japanese crime authors who use their writing to explore human nature and troubled psyches, and  Point Zero certainly appeals on that level as well.  What elevates it beyond ordinary is Matsumoto's ability to set the crime not only within historical context but in a changing social context as well.  This one I can certainly and highly recommend, especially to readers of vintage Japanese crime fiction.  I loved it. 

from blu-ray.com

I also watched the film adaptation of this novel made in 1961.  There is also a 2009 version that I would love to see, but I have to wait for a long while for my DVD to arrive.    For now, luckily I subscribe to the Criterion Channel and there it was (the 1961 film) along with other Japanese noir movies.  The beginning happens very quickly  with fast scene changes and seems a bit clunky;  later these quick cuts will be a bit more fleshed out via flashback. It's only when Teiko arrives in Kanazawa that the movie gets a bit more back on track, but I was definitely thankful I'd read the novel ahead of seeing the film or quite frankly I would have been shaking my head at the start wondering what the heck is happening here.   The powers that be did make a number of changes to the original source material, but even with those it is still well worth watching.  

from Europa's World Noir series: Cemetery of Swallows, by Jean-Denis Bruet-Ferreol (aka Mallock)

9781609451868
Europa World Noir, 2014
originally published as Le cimetière des birondelles, 2012
translated by Steven Rendall
384 pp

paperback

Once in a while I pick up a crime novel that literally blows me away.  Cemetery of Swallows is one of them.  By the last few chapters I was literally talking to the main character  out loud saying "come on! I know you'll figure this out! I know there's got to be a logical explanation!"  I don't tend to get that excited in the normal course of crime reading, but this book put me through the wringer and kept me there up until the last minutes. 

Police superintendent Amédée Mallock is famous for his work on difficult cases.  He lives alone, and considers himself “the king of the homebodies” since having lost his wife and son some years ago. He has haunting and recurring dreams about his little boy, and never talks about him to anyone.  He's a great cop and he has a great team.  One of his team members is Julie, and a week before we first meet Mallock on a plane to the Dominican Republic, she tells him she must take a special leave because of her brother. Her distress is so obvious that Mallock has to ask her why. She relates a very unusual story to her boss that started a week earlier.  One morning, her brother Manuel  Gemoni was watching a video a friend gave him about cigars (which he's passionate about) and cigar making in the Dominican Republic, when he recognizes a face on the screen.  He doesn't know who it is exactly, but he knows he has to kill him.  Abandoning his wife and baby, he travels to the island nation, where he waits in a place he knows the guy will eventually show up. When the opportunity arises, Gemoni kills him in front of a number of witnesses and is himself wounded and then arrested. The only thing Julie really knows is that upon his arrest, her brother made a bizarre statement that no one understands:

"I killed him because he had killed me."

Since he is fond of Julie, and because of the family Manuel left behind, Mallock decides to get involved, and soon he is on a plane to the Dominican Republic to bring Gemoni home.  As things turn out, getting him back to France is the only easy part of this entire case.   To help him, Mallock and his very talented team will have to find out what actually happened and more importantly why Gemoni would kill someone he didn't even know. He faces not only prison time in France, but a return to the Dominican Republic for trial where it's highly unlikely he'll stay alive to even go to court.  They have to find something that will provide Gemoni with a reasonable defense.  But after hearing Manuel's side of things, they realize that they have only the slimmest of margins for success.

Cemetery of Swallows is centered almost completely on the main character. Without going into detail so as not to wreck things, Mallock finds himself on the horns of an unimaginable dilemma. At first, Mallock has no clue what to think about the wild but unflinching story Gemoni  tells from his hospital bed. He felt as if he'd been

"confronted by either a brilliant actor -- a possibility that could never be excluded -- or one of the annoying enigmas that life sought to put in his way.
     A third possibility: Manuel was simply crazy. Schizophrenia could explain the twofold feeling he had with regard to this crime. For a moment he began to hope that the psychiatrist would confirm the young man's insanity. Wasn’t that the best solution? They take him home and have him cared for. He’s put in a psychiatric hospital and the case is closed. Then he thought of Julie and was angry with himself."

 Mallock also knows that the third possibility is just not feasible:

     "Well then, since he cannot and must not be either mad or guilty, let’s go with the enigma, he said to himself."

 Yet, back in France,  as he and the team delve deeper into what Gemoni reveals and they come to the only "reasonable" but startling conclusion, Mallock finds himself

"experiencing, without being able to defend himself against it, a regular attack by the most militant irrationality. His world of deduction and synthesis could handle intuitions and even visions without too much difficulty, but no more."

The usual politics and power plays, along with leaks resulting in a veritable media frenzy don't help Mallock or his cause either, but he continues to fight on, literally up to the last moment, either ignoring or cleverly  surmounting the obstacles in his path.

While I feel badly that I can't really divulge any more of the book than I have, sometimes less is way more, especially here because there are so many things going on that depend on the element of surprise and for that matter, shock value. And surprised I definitely was, not just in terms of plot, but also by how deeply involved I became in finding out the truth of things. When, as I noted in my first paragraph, I am actually talking to the main character because I want him to find the logical explanation for everything, I'd say that I was beyond engaged. That kind of reading intensity just doesn't happen with every book I read, but in this case, it's obvious that the author had his story well thought out way ahead of time. He pretty much had to -- this storyline is so twisty (and twisted in parts) that every new revelation opened up yet another can of worms.  It's also obvious that he's given more than just a minimum amount of thought to his hero -- aside from the details about other cases that Mallock has solved, by the time I finished this book I felt like there was very little I did not know about him. Normally that never happens for me either.  Cemetery of Swallows is a novel I can wholeheartedly recommend for readers of translated crime fiction and for readers who want something very different in the genre.  It's one of those books where you literally have to wait until the very end -- only then does the light bulb go on and you get to the "aha" moment that for me is the payoff . This book is also genuinely innovative  in terms of crime fiction reading, and I had a great time with it. I'm also going to buy every book that this man writes as soon as they're published.

crime fiction from France

Total Chaos, by Jean-Claude Izzo

1933372044
Europa Editions, 2006
originally published as Total Khéops, 1995
translated by Howard Curtis
248 pp.



Note: Yes, I'm supposed to be reading Sweet Money by Ernesto Mallo, but I needed to make an initial entry for the Europa Challenge Blog before the month runs out.   On to the review of this book.

 ---

Marseilles isn't a city for tourists. There's nothing to see. Its beauty can't be photographed. It can only be shared.  It's a place where you have to take sides, be passionately for or against. Only then can you see what there is to see.  And you realize too late, that you're in the middle of a tragedy.  An ancient tragedy in which the hero is death. In Marseilles, even to lose you have to know how to fight.

First in a collective set of works known as The Marseilles Trilogy, Total Chaos falls into the neo-noir category, which is more modern and literary in character while sharing many of the same characteristics of classic noir.   There is nothing cutesy at all about this novel. It is a gritty, down and dirty kind of story that is set in a Marseilles of the 1990s.  It is also, like many other translated crime fiction novels, steeped in the politics, social issues and economic realities of the day.  While this can be off-putting for some readers, for me, it only enhances the setting and sense of place of these works, resulting in a much more believable and realistic end product.

The story is told through a mix of current action and through the main character, Detective Fabio Montale, who spends a great deal of  time reflecting on his past.  Two of his childhood friends, Manu and Ugo, have been murdered. In their youth, all three boys, from immigrant families, got caught up in the criminal life, but after a druggist was shot during a robbery,  Montale, who didn't have the stomach for this kind of life,  made a vow that if the druggist "pulled through", he'd become a priest; if not, he'd become a cop.  After leaving Marseilles for a stint in the Colonial Army, Montale returned to Marseilles, where he did become a cop; Manu and Ugo graduated to the full-time life of the criminal underworld.  But now, despite the past and the fact that he had virtually alienated himself from his two friends,   those old bonds lead Montale to step in to find out who killed Ugo, who had returned to avenge Manu's death and had then himself been killed. As he sets about investigating their deaths, he is stunned when the daughter of a friend is killed -- and discovers that there is a link between all of the crimes.  But this is not a police procedural novel -- it's noir, which often consists of action that is like watching two trains about to collide -- you know that it's going to be bad, but you just can't pull yourself away. And as Montale gets closer to the whys and the whos, he finds himself not only in danger, but in a downhill skid in both his personal and professional life.

And if the crime story was the meat of the book, it would be good, but much like other books out there on the market or on library shelves. However,  Izzo draws the reader deeply into the neighborhoods of the city of Marseilles, from the cuttlefish pizza and the street music to the longstanding pressures and mistrust brought about by fears based on immigration.   He portrays Marseilles as a vibrant mix of cultures -- Italian, African, Middle Eastern, Vietnamese, Armenians and Portuguese to name a few.  Then, of course, there are the French.  But it's also be a place where racism and prejudice are sparked by  a "fear as old as the city," (lately augmented by the xenophobic National Front party), starting with a

downturn in the economy and the rise in unemployment.  The more unemployment there was, the more people became of the immigrants.  And the number of Arabs seemed to be increasing along with the unemployment! In the Sixties, the French had lived off the fat of the land. Now they had nothing, they wanted it for themselves! Nobody else was allowed to come and steal a crumb. And that's what the Arabs were doing, stealing our own poverty off our plates.

 Izzo notes that no one really believes this, but states that people of Marseilles found themselves in somewhat of a stranglehold based on these fears, not being able to "think straight," or see how to "reinvent themselves the way they'd always done."  And the police weren't helping ... while Montale believes in community policing, his boss makes it patently clear that the politically, there were "higher dividends" to be made by fanning the flames.  As he tells Montale, community policing, outreach and prevention were all "crap". Considering the corruption and racism that runs through Montale's department, this is no surprise.

But at the same time, the reality of life for the bulk of  immigrants like those from the Middle East was along these lines:

Fear of Arabs had made the people of Marseilles flee the downtown area to other neighborhoods away from the center where they felt safer....The Arabs had regrouped downtown. They'd taken over from the whites who'd fled, who'd washed their hands of Cours Belzance and Rue d'Aix, and all the narrow rundown streets between Belzunce and the Alles de Meilhan and the Saint-Charles railroad station. Streets full of hookers. Buildings unfit for human habitation, flea-ridden hotels. Successive waves of immigrants had passed through these streets, until redevelopment had pushed them out to the suburbs.  The latest redevelopment was happening now, and the suburbs had moved to the very edge of the city. Septiemes-les-Vallons, and out toward Les Pennes-Mirabeau. They were farther out all of the time, until they'd be out of Marseilles altogether.

But the kicker is that despite all of the ugliness,  Montale (and obviously Izzo as well) loves Marseilles, and believes that life is more than the hatred, racism and violence -- that it is a place where "people liked to live, to have a good time. That happiness was a new idea every day, even if the night ended with some strong-arm guy checking your identity."  And he is quick to note that the "immigrants" are more likely the sons or daughters of immigrants, native French citizens in their own right.  Izzo's beautifully captured the scene: the neighborhoods that stick together against outsiders, the fear-driven prejudice and above all,  the contradictions that exist in this society. Time and again he comes back to the point that in many cases, the practices established by  local  politics, police, business owners etc., are what continue to keep the immigrant population down at heel, both economically and socially, leading many to seek material gain (or simply make a living) through crime.  

As a novel, Total Chaos definitely has all of the classic traits of any noir story and they work.   Montale is surrounded by the beautiful buxom babes that provide him comfort and assistance. He has a fine affinity with the booze. He's had it as a cop and takes on avenging his dead friends and trying to be a friend to the down and out as a way of finding some meaning in his otherwise empty life, and meanwhile, finds peace in his boat in the sea.  As a character he becomes real through his love for the city and through his disgust at the system.  There's also the morally-bankrupt, Mafia-type gangsters who run not just the backstreets of the city, but have their claws into the more sophisticated joints as well.  The system, including the cops, is corrupt.  But what keeps it from becoming just another novel full of crime-ridden clichés is the city of Marseilles and the"total chaos"  of life there.  It's a good novel, although at times it is difficult to follow and relies on a couple of coincidences that as a rule, rankle me as a reader of crime fiction. The end comes quick and heavy, as if Izzo reminded himself that "oh yeah. I also have a crime I need to see through to the end." And I disliked a couple of Montale's female cohorts -- they didn't come across as very realistic people and they were annoying.   But despite those niggles, I enjoyed the book, not so much for the crime element, although  it serves my intermittent need for the guilty pleasure of edgy and gritty noir.  For me the illumination of  a small specific slice of life was an eye opener, a piece of France I'd never read about.  Total Chaos is not a novel for cozy readers, to be sure, but people who enjoy more hardboiled crime fiction, a cop with an existentialist crisis, and a sense of place that never stops might like this one.

crime fiction from France