and now, the '50s, part two ... The Gravediggers' Bread, by Frédéric Dard

9781782272014
Pushkin Vertigo, 2018
originally published as Le pain des fossoyeurs, 1956
translated by Melanie Florence
148 pp

paperback

"You cannot change someone else's destiny. Each of us bears our own skin and thoughts along the furrows of Fate."

When the mail arrives and I open an envelope to find a Pushkin Vertigo book inside of it, it's happy dance time at my house.   The Gravediggers' Bread did not disappoint; au contraire,  it a dark, well-plotted noir novel that,  as with the best of the best noir novels, has a psychological focus that is the true attraction.  Combined with other elements such as setting, pacing, and some unexpected plot twists, the result is a claustrophobic, bleak, dark, and highly atmospheric story that turns out be a complete surprise, even though I was absolutely positive I knew where it would be heading.  These days, in my case, that's rare.

Returning to France after two years in Casablanca working with "a scoundrel" in a job that didn't quite pan out, narrator Blaise Delange is now looking for work.  Out of money after failing to find a different job in Morocco, Delange makes a call to his friend in Paris  to let him know he didn't get the latest job to which he'd applied.  According to Delange, it's the same old story -- he's "always last in the queue when they're giving things out."   On his way out of the post office phone booth,  he steps on a small wallet, in which he finds eight thousand francs and an ID card belonging to a Germaine Castain who turns out to be the beautiful woman with the "too large eyes" who had  occupied the booth just before Blaise had stepped in.  Seriously in need of cash, he finds himself doing a strange thing: he decides to return the money to its owner.  He doesn't even understand why he should do this; he hasn't "always been very honest" in his life," and he hasn't been kept awake by scruples, but he finds himself on the way to Rue Haute where Germaine lives with her much older husband, the undertaker Achille.  Before handing over the wallet though, he removes a small photo of another man, obviously not Achille, which was a good thing, since Achille grabbed the wallet from her almost right away.  Dodging Achille's questions about where he'd found it, and not mentioning the photo he'd found brings gratitude from Germaine; from Achille he gets a job offer.  As he becomes more of an asset to Achille every day, putting him in direct contact with the two every day, he begins to realize that

"This strange couple concealed a mystery, and I was eager to find it out."

The greatest mystery, according to Blaise, is why Germaine stays with her husband.  As Delange learns more about the strange relationship between Achille and Germaine,  he finds himself drawn deeper into their lives to the point where he is unable to make himself leave because of Germaine, but at some point he realizes that something has to give in this bizarre triangle, of which one side is, as he puts it,  "de trop."  

It is to Dard's great credit that in such a short amount of space he has produced a novel of such depth, a story that focuses a great deal on fate and destiny, explored through the dark mind of one man.  His work here reminds me so much of that of Simenon, especially in how the reader eventually comes to realize that the ever-shrinking corner that Blaise has worked himself into is largely of his own making -- that he was trapped before he was even aware of his situation.  I can't say how this is so without giving things away, but the combination of the stuffy, claustrophobic provincial town in which the events of this  novel occur,  the intense psychological depth afforded to Dard's characters, and the initial slow pace of this story that eventually gathers speed throwing in a number of twists along the way all make The Gravediggers' Bread an unforgettable story that I can certainly recommend to noir enthusiasts.

*The Widow Lerouge, by Émile Gaboriau

9781515097372

CreateSpace, 2015

originally published in serial form, 1863, Le Pays

originally published in novel form, 1866 as L'Affaire Lerouge

(no translator given here)

290 pp

paperback

"...let it be a lesson for the remainder of your life... remember it is useless to try and hide the truth; it always comes to light!" 

                                                                           

This book is yet another entry in this year's reading project involving the history of crime/mystery fiction. I had thought I'd be somewhere in the 1880s by now (since this year was my reading was supposed to have taken me through to 1914) but it seems that the 1860s were a banner decade for mystery and crime writing so I'll be hovering here for a while yet. 

just a tiny bit of history before we get to the mystery:

French crime writer Émile Gaboriau should be much more well known, more widely read in the realm of crime fiction than he actually is by modern crime readers, since he was a prolific author of twelve books and a volume of short stories.    According to Professor Stephen Knight in his Towards Sherlock Holmes: A Thematic History of Crime Fiction in the 19th Century World, Gaboriau also gave readers "the first major police detective in crime fiction."  He goes on to quote Yves Oliver-Martin from his work Histoire du roman populaire en France de 1840 à 1980), who said that Gaboriau's Dectective Lecoq was, in fact,  "the prototype" (56).  While Lecoq makes only a brief, introductory appearance here in L'Affaire Lerouge, he will become involved in four more cases, and even the great Arthur Conan Doyle would bandy his name about in A Study in Scarlet, where he is referred to by Sherlock Holmes as a "miserable bungler."  While Holmes may not have thought much of Lecoq, his creator revealed that Gaboriau's "neat dovetailing of his plot" attracted him to the author, while Daniel Stashower (Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle)  notes various similarities between Holmes and Lecoq (80).   And really, it  takes no time at all once inside of The Widow Lerouge to discover Gaboriau's influence on Conan Doyle's great detective. 

frontispiece from Mémoires de Vidocq

Since coincidences abound in The Widow Lerouge, it seems appropriate here to throw in an interesting real-life coincidence before moving on to the book itself.  Going back for a moment to an earlier post, it seems that in 1862, while Paul Féval was putting together his Jean Diable,  he had taken on Gaboriau as his secretary.  Molly Carr in her book In Search of Dr. Watson notes that while Gaboriau's M. Lecoq was based on the very real Eugene François Vidocq, "a man who began as a thief and then became a high-ranking police official in Paris," a certain "villainous" Lecoq showed up as a character in  Féval's first novel of his seven-book Habits Noirs (Blackcoats) series.  Her idea is that Gaboriau may have 

"quietly appropriated the name for himself, giving it to an upholder of the law rather than to someone who was not." 

 Whether or not that's how things went down, it's still an interesting factoid.

... et maintenant, 

Original title page of L'Affaire Lerouge, from The First One Hundred Years of  Detective Fiction, 1841-1941 

As noted above, L'Affair Lerouge began as a serialization or feuilleton, in Le Pays in 1863.  (For more info on the history of the feuilleton, click here.)  It was published in novel form in 1866 by E. Dentu, and since then it has been translated into a number of languages.  The story begins when, on Shrove Tuesday, March, 1862, "five women belonging to the village of La Jonchere" turn up at the Bougival police station to report that no one had seen their neighbor, the Widow Lerouge,  for two days.  Evidently this "sudden disappearance" was not only out of the ordinary, but it was alarming, since the women were concerned that some sort of crime may have occurred.  Crime is a rarity in Bougival, but the gendarmes went to check it out along with the commissaire. They find the door to the widow's home locked and while waiting for the locksmith to get it open, a young boy hands them the key which he'd found in a ditch.  When they walk in they discover that the place is a mess with furniture that had been "knocked about," and various trunks and drawers had been forced open.  As they go deeper into the house, they discover not only that there's even more of a mess, but that the missing Widow Lerouge is dead, with her face buried in the ashes of the fireplace. Witnesses and neighbors are questioned to discover exactly who this woman was during her lifetime, and then the investigating magistrate, M. Daburon, appears on the scene, along with the chief of detective police Gevrol and his "subordinate," Lecoq. He was

"an old offender, reconciled to the law. A smart fellow in his profession, crafty as a fox, and jealous of his chief, whose abilities he held in light estimation."

It is Lecoq who asks for a certain M. Tabaret (nicknamed Tirauclair), who had discovered the truth in an earlier  case for a which an innocent man was found guilty and nearly guillotined.  Tabaret is an amateur sleuth, who "goes for playing the detective by way of amusement."  He is, however, widely respected by Lecoq, and so he joins the investigation. As it turns out, his involvement is a good thing, since Gevrol decides to follow one slim lead, leaving Tabaret to continue his "researches" outside of Gevrol's. As he says, "I am, I search, and I find," and it isn't very long until we get a taste of Tabaret's capabilities as an armchair sort of detective. I swear, it's like reading the part of a Holmes story where he dazzles everyone with his observations.   The case will continue until the culprit is discovered, although things change quickly throughout the story, meaning once you think you know the "who," don't be surprised that as circumstances change so will your guess.

I will say that while The Widow Lerouge is a solid mystery story, it's a bit frustrating because there are a number of coincidences that turn things on their heads and that have a bearing on the later parts of the tale. Normally I want to scream when a writer does this, but actually, to my surprise, once I got past my own prejudices on that issue, I realized that it sort of worked here. And  then, there's the ending, which I won't divulge, but suffice it to say that I don't think it was thought out very well at all. I can't say why without spoiling the story, but the "who" started to  become very obvious and I have to find fault with the author for his methodology here. Hopefully he improves in the later books, but in this one, well, it's amateur.    Still, as in most books like this one, for me it's all about the journey, and that was truly great fun.  There's a good story underlying it all, making this book well worth reading.  Perhaps it's time to give those domestic noir novels that are hot right now in the crime world a rest and give something classic a chance instead.

***

ps/find a better version than this one -- I was appalled a) that there was no translator given and b) that there weren't even page numbers!

*the first modern detective novel? John Devil, by Paul Féval

1932983155

Black Coat Press, 2004
translated by Brian Stableford

originally serialized 1862

originally published in 1863 as Jean Diable

645 pp

paperback

Just recently I finished Charles Warren Adams'  The Notting-Hill Mystery which a number of very smart people have claimed as the first detective novel.   However, there's another contender, and that's this book, Jean Diable, translated into English as John Devil.  If you read this interview with Professor Paul Collins at NPR, he states very clearly that The Notting-Hill Mystery was first published in book form in 1865 (although serialized from 1862-1863),  and yet, Jean Diable came into book form in 1863 after being serialized in 1862.  So technically, if one counts the serialization, it could be a toss up between the two of these books as to which one actually wins the title.  However, I think that looking at it from translator Brian Stableford's point of view (with which I happen to agree), he says that

"most remarkable thing about Jean Diable is that, although it includes and makes much of the character of the detective, it is not a 'detective story' at all, in the sense to which we have become accustomed." (7)

He's absolutely right here -- in this book, the focus is much more on the criminal genius who is John Devil rather than on the detective who spends his career trying to bring him to justice.  Truth be told, it doesn't really matter to me in the long run whether or not this might be the first detective novel,  but I couldn't pass up this book as part of this year's ongoing look at the history of crime fiction/mystery.

Anyone wanting to know more about Paul Féval will find bio and other information here, in an article by Robin Walz in Journal of The Western Society for French History.  Something important to consider is that  Féval's  Habits Noirs (Black Coats) series, as Walz notes,

"had a profound influence upon the subsequent development of the French roman policier"; 

and Féval also made a huge impression on Emile Gaboriau, whose L'Affaire Lerouge would be published in 1866.  Look for that book to make its way onto these pages here very shortly.  Stableford has also included quite a lengthy section about the author, as well as comments about some of his other books, which thankfully are coming back into print thanks to Mr. Stableford and Black Coat Press.

Okay, so now to the book, about which I'm not going to say much, because a) reading it is an experience in itself and b) it's so convoluted at times with backstories, deceptions, a villainous plot bordering on "techno-thriller" and most definitely conspiracy fiction, and a rather huge cast of characters that I couldn't really explain it anyway.  Basically, it's like this:  John Devil is truly one of the most evil crime geniuses ever to grace the pages of fiction, and no matter what he does or what he's responsible for throughout this story, he remains virtually untouchable.  He is the nemesis of Chief Superintendent of Scotland Yard Gregory Temple, who has spent his entire career trying to bring him down  to absolutely no avail, and whose single-minded quest pushes him past the brink of madness.

This isn't a casual mystery/crime novel in any sense of the word -- it can become so  complicated in fact, that by the end of the novel I was beyond grateful to Stableford for the afterword that not only explains things, but puts it all in perspective as well.  However, once I got a feel for how this book works, I had to finish it come hell or high water, and at times I didn't know whether to loathe this master of crime or to cheer him on for being so deliciously diabolic.  In the end though, I felt so badly for Temple that I ended up siding with him against his monstrous foe.  It's such a gripping story that it will lock onto your brain not too far in, and you'll be amazed at just how much capacity one man can have for sheer evil and even more, how he manages to draw others into a web of complicity.

Again, this is probably a niche read that will appeal mainly to old-pulp fiction readers, as well as those who may be interested in the history of crime fiction or in French crime fiction of yesteryear.  For me, it's a win, although I will say it took me a while to feel completely immersed in the story. Once I was there, though, there was no getting out until it was all over and I could stop holding my breath.

I loved this book, and more of Féval's work is on its way to my house where it will be given a place of honor on my home library shelves.

dark, darker, moving into the territory of bleak: The Executioner Weeps, by Frédéric Dard

9781782272564
Pushkin Vertigo, 2017
originally published as Le Borreau pleure, 1956
translated by David Coward
157 pp

paperback

"There's nothing more terrifying for a painter than a blank white canvas. It's like a window that opens onto infinite possibilities. A window from which the most disturbing metamorphoses may emerge." -- 42

I started this book very late last night and actually tried to fight sleep to finish it, but alas, it was not to be and  I had to wait until today to finish it.  It's probably a good thing, since there is a sort of nightmarish aspect to the story as it comes down to the end.  Frédéric Dard has to be one of the darkest writers whose work graces the pages of these reprints by Pushkin Vertigo, putting his novels squarely in my wheelhouse.  I defy anyone who reads this book to not feel the slightest bit of adrenaline pumping through his or her veins while doing so -- by the end my guts were twisted in knots.  Far from being any kind of whodunit, it falls more into the psychological zone; I've seen it described as a thriller, but I'm not sure that fits either.  It's one of those novels where you just have a feeling in your bones that something terrible is coming down the pike so you brace yourself for it, but in my case, I don't think I prepared myself enough.  Holy crap -- this is a good one!

The beginning of the novel finds our narrator, French painter Daniel Mermet, at the Casa Patricio, a "very modest inn" not too far from Barcelona and located directly on the beach.  It was, as he says, "The ideal place for a holiday." But then, driving along the road one night, a woman carrying a violin case "deliberately" throws herself at his car, and he hits her. He puts her in his car and returns to the inn, where a doctor is called; luckily, she wasn't injured too seriously. She didn't come out unscathed, though -- she cannot remember a thing about herself, especially what might have caused her to bolt out in front of his car, much less as to why she's in Spain.   Mermet realizes that she speaks French, but the only clue to her identity is a handkerchief with the letter M on it and the labels in her clothes.  The M, after some time, leads her to think her name is Marianne, and Daniel tries to get help for her, by going to the French consulate but they don't seem too interested in her plight. One doctor he takes her to tells him that the bump on her head probably didn't cause her amnesia, but rather that she was either "already suffering from nervous problems," or "it was the shock of the accident" that may have triggered it.

As the two spend more time together, they grow close and fall in love.  She is something new for Daniel -- a woman completely without a past, which makes the love he feels for her even more special than it may have been in a "normal" situation.  He is happy, she is happy, and he envisions a future with this woman, unable to picture himself without her. She can't envision herself without him now either, and extracts from him a certain promise (which I won't go into here but keep it in mind when you get to it) that lets him know how she feels.  He's so into her that he doesn't really care if he ever finds out about her past -- at least that's what he says.

But there's a problem.  Finding out who she really is becomes paramount when Daniel is invited to go to America to exhibit his work, since he doesn't want to go without her; without any form of ID papers, it's impossible for her to go with him.  As he notes,

"...I'm going to discover your identity because that is what we have to do"

because "officially", she must "become someone."  But first he has to return to France.

That is about all I'll say about this book, except for the fact that it's at this juncture where my pages started getting flipped with a vengeance, and where my house could have burned down while I was sitting on my sofa and I wouldn't have noticed. I'll also say that when Daniel tells us on page 100 that "Even Zola never dreamt up a story more sordid than this," he wasn't joking.

from de Dard et D'Autres

  It's interesting that Dard makes Daniel a painter, and that at the beginning just after he'd brought Marianne back to the Casa Patricio he spends a bit of time talking about the "canvas rectangle" where he rules "like an absolute master."  A bit later he talks about the canvas as a "window from which the most disturbing metamorphoses may emerge," and given what happens in this story,  it's a great metaphor that works nicely throughout the novel.

The Executioner Weeps can be read as a nerve-wracking tale of one man's journey into deepening despair and desperation, and you are there in Daniel's head as things become dark,darker, and move on into the territory of bleak before all is said and done -- making it my kind of read.  Don't blow it off because it was written in the 1950s -- as tragic and dark as it is, this is a great story. 

A Climate of Fear, by Fred Vargas

9780143109457
Penguin, 2017
originally published as Temps glaciaires, 2015
translated by Sian Reynolds
410 pp

paperback

I'm actually in between crime reads at the moment, having finished two Victorian crime novels (posts coming shortly), one of which has a prequel that was written five years later.   Waiting for said prequel to arrive in the mail, I rummaged through my shelves for a light, modern read and stopped at this book by Fred Vargas, which is the ninth book to feature Commissaire Adamsberg and his motley crew of colleagues. While I've sort of lost my zeal for keeping up with crime/mystery series novels, there are still a few authors whose work I can't not read, and Vargas is one of those.  I haven't missed a single one of these books; while sometimes I was less than enchanted (to put it mildly) with the turn toward the supernatural in some of her novels,  I can't help myself -- it's the ensemble cast that is the real draw for me in these novels.

It is the investigation of a suicide that starts this ball rolling; oddly enough, it doesn't take place in Adamsberg's patch, but rather that of Commissaire Bourlin in the 15th arrondissement.  The police are ready to close the case, but Bourlin is still concerned about the dead woman's last message, a strange sign drawn by the side of  Alice Gauthier's bathtub.  He knows just the person to call to help him on the matter, Commandant Adrien Danglard of the Serious Crime Squad in the 13th arrondissement. Danglard is one of those people whose knowledge is astounding, so his choice isn't a bad one. Yet, as one of his colleagues reminds him, behind Danglard is Commisssaire Adamsberg, and sure enough it isn't too long before Adamsberg's curiosity gets the better of him.  What starts out as a potential suicide explodes into a full-blown murder investigation when other bodies are discovered along with the same cryptic sign at the crime scene.  And when a witness steps forward to reveal that she had posted a letter that had fallen out of the handbag of the now-dead Alice Gauthier, things take a strange turn, taking Adamsberg and his crew back in time to an ill-begotten and deadly expedition to a small island off the Icelandic coast.

At the risk of sounding like a late-night tv infomercial,

but wait -- there's more.

Maximilien Robespierre, from Guided History, Boston University

Hoping for some clue as to how the now three dead people may be connected, their photos are sent out to the world via social media and the press along with with a plea for information. While still following the Iceland lead, Adamsberg and his colleagues receive a letter from a certain François Chateau, who informs them that he recognizes all three as being members of an association of which he is president.  While one of Adamsberg's men calls it "a tank full of nutty fans of Robespierre and the French Revolution," the organization is actually called The Association for the Study of the Writings of Maximilien Robespierre. Chateau is concerned that a murderer may be "at large" in his association, and as much as possible, wants to help in any way he can.  As the squad becomes more involved in this new development, Adamsberg develops a certain "itch," which leads to all kinds of complications involving his colleagues.

Yes, there is a certain bit o' the supernatural vibe in this book, but luckily it's kept to a minimum here.   While the investigation comes to a standstill, Adamsberg is facing a trial of his own as his colleagues start to become fed up with his sort of out-there methods. He's a man very much living in his head in this novel, and in order to satisfy his nagging "itch," he makes a decision that will set part of his own squad against him. In this sense, and in terms of where Adamsberg is led as he desperately tries to untangle all of the knots in the case to ease his own mind, the original French title is much more on the money.  I won't divulge anything, but the reasons why this is so become evident as the novel comes to a close.

Climate of Fear isn't the best book of the series but it does follow the others nicely, and as I said, it doesn't overdo what I call the "woo-woo" element which I didn't care for in some of  the previous Adamsberg novels.  There are plenty of red herrings, two bizarre plotlines, and of course, the characters in Adamsberg's ensemble (not to mention the woman with the pet boar named Marc), which when combined, make it another book that appeals to my need for offbeat and quirky tales. It's not great literature, nor is it likely to become a classic, but hey ... it IS summer and it's a good light read while trying to escape the sweltering summer heat.

Do not let A Climate of Fear be your introduction to this series of novels -- there are things here that will not be understood (and become the cause of reader complaints because some people did start with this book) unless you've started from the beginning with The Chalk Circle Man.  While I've given away tons of crime novels to make room for more, the Adamsberg series has stayed on the shelves.  Obviously, that says a lot --  there's a reason I keep reading them.

crime fiction from France

Black Water Lilies, by Michel Bussi

9780316504997
Hachette, 2017
originally published as Nymphéas Noirs, 2011
translated by Shaun Whiteside
419 pp

paperback

Midway through this book something came up in the reading that made me think about tossing it across the room, but then I decided to give it a chance because I was at the point of being heavily invested. Oh my gosh -- I'm so glad I did! It's  one of the most seriously twisty crime novels I've read in a very long time. Note I said "twisty" rather than "twisted" -- big difference.  Black Water Lilies is another one of those rare books where I was just plain speechless, overwhelmed, stunned, blown away and other words describing my complete surprise by the time I got to the end when I realized exactly what the author's done here.  And while I had some issues with the writing here, on the whole I say well done!!  People -- put this  book on your tbr pile right now.

It's a tough novel to summarize without giving anything away so I won't say too much more than what someone could find on the back cover blurb. The novel is set in the small village of Giverny, France, site of the home and gardens of artist Claude Monet, who had moved there in 1883.  There are three major players in this book -- an "octogenarian" widow through whom we get most of the story,  a beautiful young schoolteacher, and an eleven year-old girl,  Fanette, who is a gifted artist in her own right.

The story spans thirteen days, over which the secrets of this small village slowly come to light.  We don't wait long  at all until the body of opthamologist Jérôme Morval is discovered in a brook that meanders through Monet's gardens  -- he'd been stabbed, hit on the head with a rock and pushed into the water.  All the police have to go on is a postcard of Monet's painting Water Lilies on which was written "Eleven Years Old. Happy Birthday" with a strip of paper glued to the card saying "The Crime of Dreaming, I agree to its creation," which police later discover comes from Louis Aragon's Aurélien.  The police also discover that the married Morval was quite the ladies man, and begin to wonder if somehow his penchant for the ladies was cause enough to kill him.  Inspectors Laurenç Sérénac and Sylvio Bénavides also look into rumors that Monet may have secreted as-yet undiscovered paintings in his former home as a possible motive.  Speaking of Monet, read very carefully as you go through this novel  -- it's  not called Black Water Lilies for nothing.

There are parts of this book that tend to be boggy and I think a lot could have been left out to make it much tighter, but really, it's all about the ending.  When the reveal comes it comes in a big way, and I had to rethink every single thing I'd just read. My first thought was "holy crap -- that's genius!" and that's all I'm going to say about this book's plot. Any more would absolutely ruin things, and one of my online groups will be reading Black Water Lilies this month so I'm keeping shtum. Trust me, this is not your average police procedural, for which I am grateful.  It takes a strong writer to make this much of an impression, and I'm so damn picky about what I consider good crime reads, so that says a lot.

Would I recommend it? Hell yes!

a downright delicious double dose of Dard, from Pushkin Vertigo: Crush and Bird in a Cage

9781782271987
Pushkin Vertigo, 2016
originally published as Les scélérates, 1959
translated by Daniel Seton
156 pp

paperback

"I sincerely believe you have pulled off the perfect crime." --  Bird in a Cage  

The good people at Pushkin Vertigo tell me in a short section at the back of this novel that this book is one of Frédéric Dard's " 'novels of the night', -- a run of stand-alone, dark psychological thrillers written by Dard in his prime, and considered by many to be his best work."  It's good, all right, as is his Bird in a Cage, both of them read over the course of one night while I was once again wide awake.

 What I find interesting about both books is that somewhere toward the beginning of each, the main characters say or think little things that sort of grate on the mental ear, cluing me into the notion that there may just be something very off with these people who are telling us their stories. It's nothing big, there's really nothing anyone can put his or her finger on at the moment,  but that little mental niggle picked up on by my inner radar has come back to me in both books at some later point, leading to the "aha - I knew it!" moment in my head.

Let's start with Crush, which has a bizarre but good ending that in hindsight I should have seen but actually never saw coming.  The "I" here is 17 year-old Louise Lacroix, living at home in Léopoldville, in a neighborhood that's "all stunted little houses, lined up any old how on a plain surrounded by chimney stacks spewing out great clouds of smoke..."  She lives with mom and her "mum's man" Arthur (having never known her dad)  in a rented "ramshackle, barely furnished house" that hasn't seen repairs in years,  even though the "walls are crumbling like nobody's business." She's also always hated the town, because she saw it as "artificial and sad."   Louise has a job in a local factory, but we soon discover that she needs a change, starting with her route home from work each evening. 

Changing her way home takes her through the center of town, where "you can feel the money round there," where she discovered the home of the Roolands, a couple known locally as "the Yanks"  existing "on a sort of desert island all its own... where the natives seemed to live bloody well..."  Returning home late one evening, she gets into it with Arthur, and runs to the Roolands' where she offers her services as a maid. Eventually Jess and Thelma agree and Louise convinces them that it would be better if she lived in.  While Thelma drinks away her day while listening to music, Jess works at NATO, and soon enough Louise is happy in her new situation.  One incident drives her home, but the American couple provides enough financial incentive to Louise's mother to bring Louise back. It isn't long though until tragedy strikes, and suddenly we're left wondering exactly what the truth is behind the events that follow.  Dard does such a good job here that as I said, I should have seen what was coming and absolutely did not.  Once I'd finished, though, I was in awe of just how well the author had set things up, and I didn't mind at all that I'd been so cleverly manipulated. Au contraire - I actually appreciated it.

Moving onto the next book, Bird in a Cage, another of Dard's romans nuits, I was a bit worried at first that I was reading something along the lines of Cornell Woolrich's Phantom Lady, because in many ways Bird in a Cage begins with just that sort of feel.  As things turned out though, I was entirely wrong.  

9781782271994
Pushkin Vertigo, 2016
originally published as Le Monte-Charge, 1961
translated by David Bellos
123 pp
paperback

It's Christmas Eve, and Albert has come back home to Paris and to his mother's apartment after being away for six years. Mom has died, and he has returned to an empty, but still unchanged place.  After laying back in his old bed for a while, thinking he'd give anything to see his mom "just for a second, standing behind the door," and to hear her asking him if he was awake, his sorrow takes over and he needs to get out.  Off into the night, into his old quartier he wanders, after having stopped in a shop to buy a Christmas decoration, a "silver cardboard birdcage sprinkled with glitter dust" with a blue and yellow velvet bird inside on a perch. Next stop is Chiclet's, a "big restaurant" where as a child he'd stop and look through its windows "at the opulent part of humanity holding court inside."

 It's there that he runs into a woman who reminds him of a woman from his past named Anna, but this woman has a small child with her, and Albert suddenly feels the tragedy of the "shared loneliness" of the two.  After a short stint at a movie theater, Albert walks the woman (still nameless at this point) home; she invites him up for a drink and some impulse drives him to hang the birdcage on the woman's Christmas tree.  The little girl is put to bed, after which the woman reveals that she would really like to go out for a while, and they talk about her marriage which is extremely unhappy.  Returning her to her home, Albert realizes that they're not alone -- there's now a coat hanging on a hook that belongs to the woman's husband, who is lying on the sofa dead as a doornail. Albert quickly tries to remove traces of himself from the apartment, cleaning up fingerprints, etc., but when he goes to get the birdcage, he discovers that it is no longer hanging on the tree.  It's at this juncture where the story really takes off, as Albert is forced to make a confession to this woman, who promptly throws him out after telling him she'd get in touch with the police about her husband's death.   But he just can't leave, so he waits, hiding outside and watching as things get weirder and weirder before he steps in once more and gets the surprise of his life. 

When I finished this novel, to say I was blown away is to very much understate how I felt about it.  Frankly, I thought it was just genius. I think my insomnia may have been caused by a) first the tension that kept ratcheting up throughout the story and b) just laying there thinking about the book and  about just how cleverly Dard  put things together here. It's like I was expecting one thing and then out of nowhere, it became an entirely different ball game altogether, where everything changed completely.   

Passing on this book because it was written in 1961 would be a shame -- it's absolutely perfect for vintage crime readers, for readers who enjoy French crime, and for readers who are looking for something different in their crime fiction. My advice is to run, do not walk,  and pick up a copy ASAP. This one I just loved.  Absolutely.    

The Riddle of Monte Verita, by Jean-Paul Török

9781470086558
Locked Room International, 2012
originally published as L'Enigme du Monte Verita, 2007
translated by John Pugmire
193 pp

paperback

The Riddle of Monte Verita  is an obvious homage to the work of John Dickson Carr, who was a master of the craft of the locked-room mystery; it's also a product of the author's desire to

"write an impossible crime novel that obeys the rules of what is often called Golden Age fiction; to write it in a manner faithful to the French language usage of the time; and to end the story with the last sentence of La Chambre ardente, the French translation of Carr's The Burning Court..."

An admirable project, yes indeedy, but well, for reasons stated in the author's note section at the end of the book, things didn't come quite off as planned, but I admire the author's passion.  As it so happens, I'm a huge fan of locked-room mysteries; for me, first and foremost  it's all about the shock of the actual "impossible" crime that makes me wonder "how could that have possibly happened?," followed by scouring for real clues while trying to sort through the red herrings that find their way into the investigation. My experience has been that sometimes the solutions to these crimes have been pretty ingenious, while sometimes they're a bit on the silly side, which is a bit disappointing.  Here I enjoyed the central mystery;  there were enough red herrings to keep me highly satisfied, and enough places where I said to myself "this might be important" that I marked with page tabs. In the long run, though, while I enjoyed it for a while, I ended up feeling a bit let down. More on that soon.

Ascona, Switzerland, 1938.  Sorbonne professor Pierre Garnier has just arrived to attend a symposium on detective fiction that is being held at the Albergo Monte Verita. Accompanied by his wife Solange, he makes the acquaintance of another participant, Professor Lippi, on the way to the conference's inaugural cocktail hour.  Lippi gives him a rundown on the original "riddle" of Monte Verita, involving a turn-of-the-century colony of "gentle cranks" whose leader had "stuffed his head with esoteric theories" and went by the name of Rosenkreutz.  Not only did he call himself by that name, but insisted that he was the reincarnation of Christian Rosenkreutz, the imagined founder of the order of Rosicrucians.  It seems that the first Rosenkreutz is said to have entombed himself in a grotto, so his namesake at Monte Verita decided to seal himself in a "natural cave"-slash-grotto very close to the Albergo hotel to meditate and pray.   The legend is that his "flock" saw him go in, sealed him in with boulders, then stood guard for three days. On the fourth day, they opened the cave and their fearless leader had disappeared, never to be seen again.

Don't worry -- even though it sounds as if I'm leading you toward some sort of esoteric, Dan Brownish type novel -- the history of Monte Verita is definitely relevant to this tale.

Lippi's theory, as he presents in his symposium session, is that people who view the locked-room mystery as improbable are wrong, and that "it's not important that these kinds of situations cannot occur in real life." He is challenged by a certain Doctor Hoenig,  prompting remarks by Lippi that make the audience laugh and turn Hoenig purple with anger.  Then Lippi adds that no one would commit murder in real life in the manner of locked-room mysteries, since taking the time to set up such a crime is a "horribly complicated way to kill someone," drawing further ire from Hoenig who swears that he has evidence from "impossible crimes" he's investigated personally that he will present during his own lecture. But since Hoenig's "ingenuity of ... interpretation" won't enough to satisfy Lippi, he challenges Hoenig to "submit to a conclusive experiment" by shutting himself into the grotto and making himself disappear.  Well, these days the grotto is barred so no one can get in, but strange things begin happening that lead to murder and ultimately leave Garnier wondering just who he can trust.

Great premise, actually, and for a while there the story was on the plus side of atmospheric, pages were flipping at a fast rate, and my interest remained high for some time.  But what kind of soured me here was that when we get to the (for lack of a better word) alternative solutions, they've been done before, something I spotted well before the "spoiler" page where the author spells it all out.   It's one thing to write a book like this to pay tribute to an author, and indeed to an entire subset of mystery fiction, but to use scenarios that any major fan and serious reader of locked-room/impossible crime would recognize right away is not what I'd call original.   I won't discuss them here in case someone wants to read this book, but you've been warned.

I'd say don't shy away from it -- it was fun for a while -- but if you're looking for something new and original as far as a locked-room/impossible crime mystery story, well, this just might not be that book.

talk about dark! Whoa! Eyes Full of Empty, by Jérémie Guez

9781939419439
Unnamed Press, 2015
originally published as Du Vide Plein les Yeux, 2013
translated by Edward Gauvin
181 pp

paperback (read in March)

Ever on the lookout for new crime writers, somehow I found my way to Jérémie Guez.   Eyes Full of Empty is the third in his "Parisian Trilogy." I will skip my customary rant about translations not beginning with the first in series, but well, I'm still thinking it.  This novel is dark, and I do mean dark, sort of a noirish thriller that plays out in the streets of Paris.  Before anyone says  "I thought you don't do thrillers," let me say that there is a huge difference between the same old same old poorly-written action-packed crap and a novel like this one, which is intelligent,  well written and one that above all, made me wonder once again who the true criminals in any society actually are.  This is not also not the average crime novel set in Paris that celebrates the finer things about the City of Light -- most of the action in this book takes place in a Paris where much of life happens in darkness and shadow. 

The main character is Idir, who had been sent to prison and who had served six months.  After he got out, some ten years before the present story begins, his father, a prominent physician,  had wanted him to come home and "rebuild" his life, but Idir realized he just couldn't do it.  Now he works as a sort of PI, where he often takes on some pretty shady jobs for the wealthy, allowing them to keep their own hands clean.   As the novel opens, he's with Oscar Crumley, the very person who'd put him in prison all those years ago after Idir was hired to cave his face in.  Idir needs the money ("It lets me pick up some produce and eat something besides Tuna Helper") although he really wants to destroy Crumley, "just for kicks, because I feel like it and still can." Crumley wants to hire him to find his missing brother, 22 year-old Thibault. But things are about to get strange. Idir's best friend Thomas is obsessed with the idea that his wife is cheating on him and Thomas' dad wants his very expensive stolen car recovered.  As Idir starts looking into all of these cases, he starts to get the feeling, and rightfully so as it turns out,  that something is just very, very wrong here. Ultimately, he will find himself in a position of having to balance loyalties while trying to get to the truth. 

Idir is an interesting  character. He's a different sort of self-styled investigator, one who comes from privilege, who went to the best schools, and yet he is someone who is also very much at home on the streets. He comes from a family of Algerian immigrants, with a grandmother who still bears Berber tattoos whose presence "protect her family from the evil eye and mourn her deceased husband" and a father who is a prominent physician.  Family gatherings are difficult for him -- he doesn't feel as though he fits in, since his presence seems to make everyone "uneasy."  Another thing about Idir is that he suffers from "mysterious crying jags," which can occur at any time, "disconnected from the reality of the moment."  He had, prior to prison, worked as a "basic fixer," mostly "doing people favors they were too embarrassed to handle."  Now he describes his work as following women "for jealous men," watching over kids for their parents, and sometimes threatening people if he has to.  He has friends everywhere in Paris, and has built a solid network of people he trusts and upon whom he relies when needed.  He is torn, "a depressive,"  world weary at his young age, looking for meaning in his life, and somehow hopes to find his own place in the universe. 

Eyes Full of Empty is not only dark, but rather bleak. Guez writes with a pessimism that is real; the novel is sharp and very powerful. It is in large part a social commentary on the "economic elite" - not so much in terms of money, but power.  It is also an atmospheric story that grabs hold from the first page and doesn't let go -- just my kind of book.  

I'm hoping the other two novels will be translated soon -- when they are, I'll have my finger on the buy button. 

*She Who Was No More, by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac

9781782270812
Pushkin Vertigo, 2015
originally published as Celle qui n'était plus, 1952
translated by Geoffrey Sainsbury
190 pp

paperback

At the end of the movie Diabolique (the movie based on this book from 1955), the credits are just about over and suddenly there's a message to the viewers.  In a nutshell, it asks anyone who's just seen the movie to keep quiet -- to not reveal to your friends what you've just watched. So I'll be doing the same here with the novel, for the most part.  Mum's the word.   Shhhhh!  I will say, though, that the book is NOT the film, so read the book first and then go watch the movie -- to do it in the reverse order won't be fair to the novel.

She Who Was No More is less of an action novel than the study of a man terrorized and tormented by guilt, and a large part of this book takes place inside the mind of the main character.  Fernand Ravinel is a traveling salesman whose job takes him away from home on a regular basis. He had taken a law degree, but sells sporting goods (loves making flies for fishing),  and in his mind shortly after the novel opens he's thinking about the little shop in Antibes he's going to have some day in the future. Ravinel is just an ordinary guy, living a pretty ordinary, mundane life, and he isn't in the best health. He is also "sick to death, sick of life, sick of everything," and "What's more, he always would be."

 He is married to Mireille whom he describes as a "nice little thing. Insignificant however," and  their mutual friend is Lucienne, a physician. Lucienne had lived with the couple for a brief while, and she also happens to be Ravinel's mistress.  Ravinel doesn't quite remember "Which of them had really chosen the other," but he does know that

"What had brought them together was not mutual attraction, but something residing in the deeper and darker recesses of the spirit." 

He also gets that she is attracted to power -- "she had to reign: it was an imperious necessity;" he is also, it seems, a bit afraid of her, or at least afraid not to do as she tells him so he has no problem going along with her murderous plan that she explains will benefit them both.  While they take precautions against getting caught, and while Lucienne is the main actor here, he still has a major role to play before all is said and done.  However, things go terribly wrong, and Fernand is in for what may be the biggest surprise of his life, which sends him down into a well of torment and spiraling down into more than a touch of madness.    This is pretty much what is written on the back cover blurb, so I'm not yet spoiling anything here, and certainly don't plan to do so.

Here the focus is on the characters; once the plan is set into motion, what comes next is mainly derived from Ravinel's tormented brain.   However, to me, the one to watch in this story is Lucienne, since  there are plenty of hints left by Boileau and Narcejac  that perhaps she just might not be all that she seems to be on the surface.   

And then there's the imagery, beginning right away with the fog.  As just one example, it turns out that as a child, Ravinel used to play this weird game where he'd make himself disappear into a dense fog, then consider himself doing an astral projection sort of thing where he'd make the crossing from the world of the living into the world of the dead.  But fog also can be a great metaphor implying not only ghosts and things that are obscured and distorted; here it also works as an awesome metaphor for ignorance.   Boileau and Narcejac, just as they did in their later Vertigo, end up not only foreshadowing what's coming but actually telegraphing future events, yet they manage to do it without falling into the trap of giving away too much.  It's very well done and the book takes you deep into some very disturbed minds down to the very last words in the book.

If you look at the Pushkin cover of this novel, there is a very small picture of a bathtub, which also features prominently in the film, but aside from tormented guilt and the action around the tub, the book and movie are incredibly different, although I'm not going to describe how in too much detail.  Let's just say that the film, like the book, is great and should definitely not be missed.  Both reflect a slowly-developing madness and paranoia among tortured and guilty souls; that's about the extent of what's common between both. However, the book stands on its own, and as in Vertigo, the reader really gets the idea of someone caught between two worlds, that of the dead and that of the living.  An excellent book; readers who enjoy more of an existentialist bent will find it delightfully dark, while readers looking for the film's action may be somewhat disappointed.

Highly, highly recommended -- I seriously hope more of the work of Boileau and Nacerjac will be translated some day.

*an evil genius at work: Fantômas, by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain

1434450260
Wildside Press, 2009
originally published 1911
246 pp

hardcover

"Fantômas."

"What did you say?"

"I said: Fantômas."

"And what does that mean?"

"Nothing ...Everything!"

"But what is it?" 

"Nobody...And yet, yes, it is somebody!"

"And what does the somebody do?" 

"Spreads terror!" 

Fantômas is book two in this year's focus on crime fiction/mysteries that were made into movies.  Although I had planned on watching the movie today, I found enough time to take a look at it yesterday. To my surprise, the movie version isn't just one film but several serialized silents, so it didn't take as long as I thought it would since I only watched the film corresponding to this book. 

And oh, what a book it is!! Not only is it fun, but it ends in a complete cliffhanger so I had to buy book two,  The Exploits of Juve (Juve contre Fantômas), just to see what happens. I have this feeling that I'll end up with the entire set of  Fantômas novels if the ending of book one is any indicator.

The story begins in the Dordogne chateau of Beaulieu, the home of the Marquise de Langrune, at one of her regular Wednesday dinner parties.   Conversation comes around to the mysterious disappearance of Lord Beltham,  now being investigated by the celebrated  M. Juve of the Criminal Investigation Department. This conversation is our introduction to the mysterious Fantômas; it seems that the word is out that Juve believes this evil criminal is somehow responsible for Lord Beltham's disappearance and that Juve has "sworn that he will take him, and he is after him body and soul."   The very next day the body of the Marquise de Langrune is found in her room, her throat cut so deeply that it seemed almost as if "her head was severed from the trunk."  It seems that robbery was not the motive, and it also seems as though only someone in the house could have done this horrific deed.  Signs point to young Charles Rambert, a young man staying there as a guest (and who soon disappears)  but Juve, who is investigating, isn't quite sure.

The murder of the Marquise de Langrune is the first of a series of strange crimes and murders that take place at various locations;   Juve is convinced that they are all the work of a single person: Fantômas. Trying to catch him, though, is going to be tough. Some people even have doubts as to whether or not there is a Fantômas; one magistrate tells Juve that

"Fantômas is the too obvious subterfuge, the cheapest device for investing a case with mock honours. Between you and me, you know perfectly well that Fantômas is merely a legal fiction -- a lawyers' joke. Fantômas has no existence in fact!"

But Juve thinks he knows better -- he is obsessed with finding this elusive figure and has been after him for years.  The story begins to really heat up with the discovery of a body in a trunk at No. 147 rue Lévert, the rooms of a man named Gurn; even then, although Juve notes that "Everything points to Gurn," and while wondering if his imagination is getting the better of him, he can't help but think that

"about this murder, committed in the very middle of Paris, in a crowded house where yet nobody heard or suspected anything, there is an audacity, a certainty of impunity, an above all a multiplicity of precautions, that are typical of the Fantômas manner!"

As the crimes start to stack up, Juve employs all manner of disguises, subterfuge, and even applies the latest scientific methods of Bertillon  to try to rein in this mysterious evil genius.  Toward the end of the book it looks like things may just be going his way, but in this twisted tale, nothing is ever quite as it seems.

René Navarre as Fantômas

The movie version I watched is the old, silent version, starring Rene Navarre as Fantômas (1913).  It is a joy to watch, although since it's a part of a string of serials, it doesn't quite pick up a lot of what's in the book, nor does it really pick up the essence of this novel.  There are also some changes in character (I can't say who or I'd be giving one of the secrets of the novel away), and it starts with a crime that comes later in the novel, skipping the murder of the Marquise, for example. However, what it does reflect very, very well is Juve's obsession with trying to catch Fantômas.  Edmund Breon, who portrays the erstwhile Inspector, does such an excellent job in the role that it's not hard at all to see him not as the actor but as Juve himself.

Edmund Breon as Inspector Juve

The book was so much fun that I didn't even mind the cliffhanger ending, and now I'm caught up in Juve's ongoing quest to bring this mysterious evildoer to justice, so I know I'm  going to have many hours of entertainment ahead of me as I make my way through the books.  I'll most definitely recommend the book to people who are into classics, or into fun sort of pulpy mysteries or to those who want something very much off the beaten path.  This book (if you'll forgive the trite phrase) held me spellbound the entire time I was reading it -- and I can't think of a better recommendation for a couple of days' worth of sheer reading enjoyment.

*Vertigo, by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac -- a stunner.

97817822270805
Pushkin Vertigo, 2015
originally published as D'entre les morts, 1954
translated by Geoffrey Sainsbury
189 pp

paperback

I have this thing about reading books (or sometimes short stories) before I see the film adaptations; this year's main focus in my crime reading, in and around my normal bouncing from present to past, is reading books that eventually became movies -- my own sort of personal page-to-screen challenge.   Watching is one thing; capturing more of the nuances in a story than the screenwriter can convey in a movie is another. One of my favorite examples of this phenomenon is The Woman in Black, based on Susan Hill's most excellent novel.  If you watch the film, and that's your only guide to Hill's story, you miss the story of a man who is in profound grief and is trying to rationalize a personal trauma in the only way he can make sense of things.    None of that comes through in the movie -- in fact, the movie changes quite a bit from the original book so that when I got around to watching it, I kept hearing myself say "I don't remember that from the book" and "where did they come up with this" or other things along those lines until I had to go reread Hill's novel to satisfy my own curiosity. My point here is that my experience has been that there's generally something an author wants to convey that tends to not find its way into a film adaptation; there have also been times when I've wondered if the screenwriters have even read the book their movie is based on.

 With Vertigo, things are a bit different.  While there are a number of differences between the novel and the Hitchcock film we all know, most of the essential basics of the book are also there, although I did find the book to be much darker and much more inside of the main character's head.  The biggest  differences, aside from setting,  are that in the novel, the big reveal does not come until the very end, making the ending much more of a shocker (in my opinion)  than in Hitchcock's film; the other big difference is in what happens directly after the action in the bell tower -- in the film, Scottie unwittingly plays his role to perfection, while in the novel, the main character does not do what is expected.

 The first part of this story begins in Paris, 1940, with a meeting between a former police detective and now lawyer, Roger Flavières and an old acquaintance, Gévigne, now a shipbuilder married to Madeleine, the daughter of a "big industrialist."  Gevigne reveals to Flavières that his wife is acting strangely, having odd periods of withdrawal, but in trying to narrow down exactly why he's worried about her, Gévigne finally says that he knows it's "ridiculous," but that Madeleine is "someone else," and that "the woman living with me isn't Madeleine." Ruling out mental illness, he confides in Flavières about Madeleine's strange obsession with her great-grandmother, a woman named Pauline Lagerlac, who had met her own end by suicide.    After observing her from a distance at the theatre that same evening at the suggestion of Gévigne,  Flavières  is enchanted.  He lurks and follows while Madeleine does some pretty bizarre things, and then one particular incident pulls him out of the shadows and into Madeleine's life.    Their chats together lead Flavières to begin to wonder if she isn't indeed a reincarnated Pauline Lagerlac, putting the idea of reincarnation into his own mind.  As he begins to fall in love with and starts becoming truly obsessed by this woman, he realizes he's not really doing it for Gévigne at all,  but rather for himself because  "he wouldn't recover his peace of mind till he'd got to the bottom of the mystery." Little does he know that the "mystery" of Madeleine is just beginning; because of the disruption of the war and the Nazi occupation of France, it will be another several years before it is actually solved.

After a second read, one of the biggest things that struck me about this book is that throughout part one,  Boileau and Narcejac have planted several references here and there pointing to and distinctly foreshadowing not only what's going to happen (and if you've seen the movie you know what I mean here) but also supporting Flavières' ever-growing obsession with reincarnation and a return from the beyond that will be important throughout part two.   They incorporate quite a lot of imagery from the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice -- as just a few examples, his nickname for her is "little Eurydice,"  Flavières refers to Madeleine as a "woman who was not quite at home in the daylight," noting that he himself had "penetrated into the heart of the earth" as a child, "exploring the shadows, the country of phantoms, of the dead..."  He gives her a lighter on which is engraved "A Eurydice ressucitée."  There are also a number of references to caves that Flavières used to visit in his childhood, which later in the book set off the light bulb over my head as he reveals that he 

"came near to believing in the Christian God because of the promise of the resurrection...That body wrapped in a linen cloth, the great stone rolled to the door of the sepulchre, the soldiers watching ...And then, the third day...When I was a boy, how I used to ponder over that third day ... I went secretly up to an empty cave and shouted into it. The sound echoed under the ground, but no one rose from the dead...It was too early then...Now...now I believe my shout was answered."  (160)

Not only do these references (and others) provide a number of clues as to what's coming (and to Flavières' deterioriating state of mind), but they also reinforce my feeling that the French title for this novel,  D'entre les morts, is much more appropriate and more meaningful than simply "Vertigo."  In the movie, the title "Vertigo" makes a lot more sense, due not only to Scottie's condition but also because of all of the images Hitchcock uses to reveal a man spiraling into his own personal madness.  

There is much, much more that I would love to go into about this novel, but suffice it to say that Boileau and Narcejac have created something unique here.  It is an exquisite book, and that is a word I rarely use when describing books I read.  For anyone planning to read it, I would suggest putting the movie out of your head and focusing entirely and solely on the novel. It is delightfully dark and if modern crime writers wrote crime as intelligently as this writing duo has, I would never, ever find fault in their writing.  It is in a word, stunning. 

Just FYI: there is a brief section discussing Boileau and Nacerjac at the end of the book, and Pushkin-Vertigo has several more titles that they've already released and others that will be available throughout 2016, which, of course, I've already pre-ordered.  

Read this book!!!! 

Dirty War, by Dominique Sylvain -- a definite yes.

9780857052162

MacLehose Press, 2015

originally published as Guerre Sale, 2011

290 pp
translated by Nick Caistor

paperback

Well, this just royally sucks. Not this book, which is quite good,  but the fact that the next book isn't out in translation until October of next year, according to the publisher's website.  I'm the world's most impatient person when it comes to series books -- I read so few of them any more that when I find one I like, I want to read more as soon as possible. And this series I really do enjoy, so waiting is going to be a pain.

The first novel I read by Dominique Sylvain was her The Dark Angel, which I just LOVED. The characters are what made this book work well: the dynamic between retired Commissaire and the blonde American stripper (Lola and Ingrid, in that order) had me in stitches and in awe of just how refreshing these quirky characters are to read.  When I picked up this book, I assumed it was book number two in this series but it's not. According to a few places I looked at, Dirty War is actually book number five; it seems the intervening three series installments are as yet untranslated: La fille du Samouraï, (#2), Manta Corridor (#3) and L'absence de L'ogre (#4). As I've said many times, I really don't understand why we can't have books in translation in their publication order -- it would be nice not to have to backtrack each time, especially in a series that is based on characters like the ones in this series.  Like here, we have to kind of ignore that three books have fallen in a hole with all of the ongoing character development; even more maddening is the fact that in Dirty War, the two main characters are not at front and center of the story, although they're still just as odd and are still working around the police. 

This book is much, much more serious in tone than The Dark Angel. It takes on the form of a political thriller that focuses more on Sacha Duguin, the very gorgeous police inspector who is in charge of discovering who killed a young attorney named Florian Vidal.  The case draws Lola's attention when it turns out that the same method of murder was used five years earlier in the death of  Lola's former colleague, Toussaint Kidjo. Instinctively she knows that such a strange way of killing cannot be entirely random -- so along with Ingrid and a dog named Sigmund, Lola begins her own investigation. Without giving away anything important, it turns out that both murders have ties to Africa.  Vidal's death, however, also captures the attention of a "newly formed national intelligence agency" (according to the cover blurb), whose top guys are reluctant to share information with the Paris police department, resulting in a power struggle.    Sacha is appointed to solve the case, but what he uncovers leads to the titular and resulting "Dirty War" played out among the powers that be.  The stakes are high here for Sacha, in terms of his career, but they're even higher for the opposition trying to prevent the exposure of long-hidden secrets.   

Sylvain could go well beyond just crime fiction if she wanted to; her play on the old fable "Death in Samarkand" that appears both at the beginning and ending of this novel reveals just how very good of a writer she is.  She is also very, very good at constructing a story that turns out to be so meticulously plotted and so ingeniously twisted that it's nearly impossible to put the book aside.  With such an intense storyline, though, she sort of leaves Lola and Ingrid behind, which is so sad for me, but what few scenes they are in are just gold.  It's a shame really, but I see why they have to sort of stay more in the background than they did in the earlier novel.  

I normally am not a fan of thrillers, political or otherwise, but this one never gets down to that level of incredulity that so I see in so many of them; this one is rather intelligent and easy to follow without having to wade through a huge number of intersecting (and often ridiculous, in my opinion) plot lines. What I didn't care so much for was that at the end of this book, things got a bit rushed -- and a lot of the expository bits came out sounding like details of an author's outline.   Sadly, I can't provide an example since doing so, of course, would blow the show. However, I was beyond entertained here, in a great way, and I'm really looking forward to the next one, which seems to pick up where this one ends. I certainly hope so, because waiting 10 months to see where the cliffhanger ending goes is just going to be pure torture!  aarrrggghhh!!!!

Definitely recommended -- but do read The Dark Angel First.