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.

Under the Midnight Sun, by Keigo Higashino

 9781250105790
Minotaur Books
originally published as 白夜行, Byakuyakō, 1998
560 pp

arc, my thanks to the publisher!

Under the Midnight Sun hasn't even been officially released yet (that's tomorrow, actually),  but it seems to be taking the crime-reading world by storm. A brief perusal of the usual places shows that readers are all over it, with reviews on a 5-star scale coming in just about at the 4.5 level.  I have a feeling it's going to be selling like hotcakes.

If there's anyone out there who doesn't know Keigo Higashino, he's the author of the popular Detective Galileo series that so far has three entries:  The Devotion of Suspect X, Salvation of a Saint, and A Midsummer's Equation.  (I've read and enjoyed the first two, and surprise of all surprises, my husband actually liked the first two books as well. I say surprise because we don't usually agree on crime novels.)  He's also the author of another series of nine novels featuring Tokyo detective Kyochiro Kaga, of which only Malice has been translated, and three standalones: Naoko, Under the Midnight Sun and coming soon, The Name of the Game is Kidnapping.  He's obviously a man devoted to his craft, and has been a finalist for two different crime-writing awards here in the US.  

Under the Midnight Sun I'd label as "epic psychological crime drama", since it takes us through nearly two decades of time before we're through here.  It begins in 1973 with the murder of a pawnbroker by the name of Yosuke Kirihara, who was found dead in an abandoned building, leaving behind a wife and young son Ryo.  Osaka detective Sasagaki is on the case and as he's beginning to get somewhere with the investigation, there are two more deaths: first, that of a wholesaler named Terasaki who is connected somehow to  Kirihara's death or at least knows something more than he's saying,  and second, somewhat later, the suicide of a woman whom the detective has been considering as his prime suspect in Kirihara's murder. She also leaves behind a child, Yukiho, who is later adopted by a relative.  Sasagaki fails to make any traction on the pawnbroker murder, a fact which, as we later discover,  has haunted him over the years.  However, after these three deaths, we say goodbye to our erstwhile detective for about nineteen years as the author moves the story forward around the lives of  Ryo and Yukiho. 

I think that's about all I'm going to give away as far as plot, because a)  a story that unfolds over nearly twenty years really can't be summarized very neatly, b) it's much more character driven rather than plot driven, and c) there are a number of twists and turns as the years roll by before our detective makes his way back into the picture.  And while a lot of nefarious things happen throughout this story that left twists in my gut, the main emphasis turns out not to be the actual 1973 case itself, but rather on the two kids left behind, with betrayal and obsession as two main themes that run throughout the book.  

The deaths at the beginning pave the way for what follows, and most of what happens over the next two decades is enough to keep anyone reading.  The situation is never pretty and there's no happy happy anywhere in this book, but that's all in keeping with the author's psychological focus here. Along that particular trajectory, the author is quite successful as he reveals the very warped and darker side of human nature.  At the same time, my personal preference is for more streamlined crime fiction, and this book piles subplot upon subplot upon subplot, goes into a lot more dialogue than I felt was necessary, and while I get where the author's going with all of this characterwise, in my opinion, it could have been a much tighter and stronger story had a lot been left out. One more thing: whoever wrote the back cover blurb (it's probably on the dustjacket of the finished copy) really does readers a major disservice by referring to the "obsessed detective" since really, he's there at the beginning and doesn't actually reappear for the next nineteen years. If he's that obsessed, he should have been worth at least a mention here and there but basically he's forgotten until close to the ending.  Still, the strength of this novel is much more in its psychological underpinnings, and that's actually done quite well.

Okay. October's over so it's back to the business of crime: The White Devil, by Dominic Stansberry

9780996765916
Molotov Editions, 2016
250 pp

paperback, courtesy of the author - thanks!

"There is no such thing as a secret life."

Domenic Stansberry, you are one clever man. The entire time I was reading this novel, I'm thinking that I'd read something along these lines before and was racking my brain trying to remember where.  Then when I got to the Author's Note at the back, I read this:

"...this novel borrows many elements from John Webster's older play (1612) of the same title..."

then Ah! The light bulb goes off over my head. It wasn't Webster, but Stendhal's Vittoria Accoramboni that I read, a bit different, but based on the same subject matter.  Now I need to look at the play, which was written by the author of Duchess of Malfi. There's nothing like a good Jacobean revenge story.

[One minor point and I'll be going on with this tale -- at Publishers Weekly, whoever reviewed this book  evidently didn't read it very carefully, calling the narrator "unnamed," when in fact she has a name which is mentioned more than a few times.   Hello. Wakey wakey.]

Relating her tale from a second-story flat off the Avenida in Rome, the narrator of this story takes us along with her on a tour of her life up to the present.  Vicky Wilson aka Vittoria, hailing from Texas, has married Frank Paris, a writer whose career has seen better days and whose uncle, Cardinal Whiting, is supporting him. Now in Rome, her brother Johnny introduces her to an Italian senator named Paolo Orsini, whose wife Isabella is a wealthy celebrity, adored by the paparazzi, the tabloids, and the people. It's an instant attraction, and after a few trysts between Vittoria and Orsini, Isabella, who has gone to New York for work, ends up dead. It obviously wasn't Paolo -- he had left New York prior to her death,  but later, after Vittoria's husband Frank meets an untimely end while out horseback riding, followed by the election of a new pope, the situation begins to take a major turn, leaving the fates of several people to spiral out of control as they find themselves stuck, as the author says at different points, "in a kind of limbo."

Aside from the links between corruption, money, power, the influence of the Catholic Church in more secular affairs, the political/legal system, and above all, the often-linked duo of murder and revenge,  what's really interesting here is that this story is told completely from Vicki/Vittoria's point of view, so when we look back at her past, which is very closely linked that of her brother's, things tend to get a bit hazy here and there. Aside from little bits and pieces of her past, we're never quite sure who we're dealing with here.  For example, in one hazy recollection during which she tells us that she'd been to a psychologist at school, she reveals that

"The shrink was concerned about certain blank spots, emptiness, memories I skittered around, dissociative tendencies typical of certain kinds of trauma," 

but aside from a few clues here and there, we don't necessarily have a complete picture of who this rather enigmatic woman really is.  There are a few times where we get the idea that she knows she could have done things differently (If I'd ... this, If I'd ... that), but didn't, because of "certain loyalties" she had. It's those "certain loyalties" that are at the heart of it all, and which drive our narrator,  but I'll leave exactly how for others to discover.   For  me, she is the real draw here, and I think the author does a really nice job detailing her inner turmoil throughout her entire ordeal, right up until the very last moment when she has to face a grave reality.

There's more of course -- the various sources of media -- bloggers, newspapers, and especially the tabloids whose lurid titles spark conspiracy theories -- which keep suspicion floating in the air and a desire for any sort of private life a joke; family ties also play a huge role here, and more.  It's a really good book, and beyond the story itself, I love Mr. Stansberry's  writing voice -- it's refreshingly subdued, never overplayed or overly dramatic but at the same time able to tell a very haunting story.  These days, that's difficult to do, so I don't mind saying that I'm highly impressed.

You can find more about this author (who is no stranger to the crime fiction game) here -- I have to say that I love when something different hits my mailbox and this book is definitely (and most gratefully)  not in the category of same old same old.  Human nature is so bizarre sometimes, and here, its dark side is writ very large.

another seriously good novel, this time from Russia: The Investigator, by Margarita Khemlin

9781784379650

Glagoslav Publications, 2015

originally published 2012

translated by Melanie Moore

336 pp

paperback

"Irredeemable guilt, you either forgive or forget without forgiveness. But living with it is impossible." 

This book is yet another example of why I'm a huge advocate for smaller presses, who tend to put out some of the best and sadly unknown work, making for some of the most intelligent writing and through them I've been introduced to authors whose writing I would read again and again.  Let's take this book, for example, The Investigator, by Margarita Khemlin.  I had never heard of either Khemlin or this particular title before Ksenia at Glagoslav got in touch (and I thank you very, very much for the books you sent) re Slavic books in translation.  I actually turned her down at first because of my majorly-sagging tbr shelves through November,  but she assured me that there are no time pressures so I agreed. Imagine my surprise when I looked at the back cover and discovered that it was shortlisted for the 2013 Russian Booker Prize.  I knew I had something special here and as it turns out, I was absolutely correct.  

What lies at the very heart of the story in The Investigator is something I never expected, remaining a mystery throughout the entire novel and I aim to keep it that way here, because any hint will wreck what lies beneath.   Set in the Ukrainian SSR in the 1950s, in the town of Chernigov, the story is narrated by police captain Mikhail (Misha) Ivanovich Tsupkoy, who was previously a military intelligence officer  until he was demobbed and became an police investigator.  The novel is, as he notes, his reminiscence of "a single incident from my long and extensive career," the death of one Lilia Vorobeichik in 1952.   A suspect in her murder comes to light very quickly, an actor named Roman Nikolayevich Moiseenko, who eventually confesses to the crime, and then saves himself a court trial by hanging himself in his cell.  Case closed? Well, we're only at page eight, so obviously not. As it happens, two events spark Mikhail to continue digging -- his best friend's suicide, and the interference of a certain neighbor of the dead woman who somehow manages to come up with the heretofore undiscovered murder weapon.  This woman, dressmaker Polina Lvovna (Laevskaya), turns out to be the proverbial thorn in Misha's side, sowing doubt on his integrity as an investigator to whoever might listen to her, which turns out to be troublesome for our investigator. Secrets acting as smokescreens abound in this book, making Misha's job all the more difficult as he tries to unravel them to get to truth. But as the reader moves closer and closer to the why of things, it seems that everyone involved here has something to hide and that they have their own reasons for holding their secrets and their stories close. 

Now, when a novel starts out with a murder, it's easy to understand why it might be labeled as crime fiction, but The Investigator turns out to move well beyond the standard crime tropes to become a serious piece of historical fiction taking the reader beyond the novel's present into its past and back again.   It can come across as murky or even a bit silly at times, as Tsupkoy travels hither and thither between Ukrainian towns interacting with a complex set of characters over and over again; however, among other things, what seems to come out of this (for me, anyway), is that the people who live here are very much connected to their past histories, to each other, and most especially to the very troubled history of this area, and that it is impossible to separate any one of these elements from the other.  I won't say why, but this point becomes very, very clear by the end of the book.  There is a LOT of ambiguity here to be examined, and the stories that are eventually revealed are beyond satisfying as far as my own interest as to what drives people to do the things they do.  I'll also say that there are some very big surprises to be had that I wasn't at all expecting.  Sorry to be so vague, but I don't want to give away a single thing. 

Looking at it solely from the perspective of a crime fiction reader, the story of the investigation itself  is a good one and as noted earlier, the surprising solution is kept at bay until close to the ending, as is the secret that underpins everything.   At the same time, also noted earlier, this book goes well beyond the realm of a simple crime novel, and becomes a lovely yet disturbing piece of historical writing done very, very well. If The Investigator is an example of what Glagoslav has to offer, they will be seeing their books talked about here a lot.  Highly, highly recommended for serious readers who are always looking for something new and different.  Frankly,  I've read some seriously excellent books this year, and this one just got added to that list.  

Thanks again, Ksenia. I loved it.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this book!!! His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae, by Graeme Macrae Burnet

9781910192146

Contraband, 2015

280 pp

paperback

There is no doubt that when I go back to look over what I've read this year (hence this reading journal),  this book will probably be at the top of my favorite books of all categories for 2016.   I loved this book. Hear me? I said LOVED. I don't often express my LOVE for a book in all caps, but this one just blew me away.  His Bloody Project was nominated for this year's Man Booker Prize, and made it through to the shortlist, so evidently the judges thought it was great too.  It was so good, in fact,  that although I'd decided to read the entire longlist this year, after finishing this one I knew I'd found my winner.  How the official  judging plays out may be a completely different story, but this would be my hands-down choice for sure, so no point in reading further down the list for me. 

The time is 1869, and a young (17) Roddy Macrae of the small remote village of Culduie, Scotland has just killed three members of one family.   His family and the other villagers are crofters, ekeing out a harsh, miserable existence, and are always at the mercy of their benefactor "the factor," and his representative in the village, the Constable. Roddy confesses right away, and there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that he is guilty.  But the major question in this novel is "why?" and the story surrounding the murders  is revealed slowly via different sources in this book: Roddy's memoir, written "at the behest of  [his] advocate," witness statements, police statements, psychological assessments, and other voices that join in to tell the story.  However, there's a big catch: from page one on, it becomes very clear that truth and perception are in the eyes of the beholders, and that both may just be slippery and elusive.  

I'm really not going to say more than that little bit about the plot, because really, it's a book that should absolutely be experienced on one's own.  It's a stunningly superb novel, and aside from offering readers the challenge of  trying to piece together what may have actually happened and why,   the author has done an excellent job here in bringing us into life  in the small, rather claustrophic village of Culduie, mid 19-th century.   I'll just note that aside from the mystery of the why, the social, political, religious and class explorations in this novel elevate it to something well beyond anything else I've read this year.  

Reading this novel at a slower pace pays dividends, and it is definitely a book to be savored.  I cannot recommend it highly enough, and I will say that anyone thinking about it would be wise to avoid any reviews or reader posts that give away much more than what's on the back-cover blurb or what I've said here.   I'll also say that it is a story that demands active reader participation --  it's a thinking person's novel that really demands close attention, but also one that highly satisfies in the end.  Sheesh! It seriously just does not get better than this!!!!

  

Off to Italy this time with The Disappearance of Signora Giulia, by Piero Chiara

9781782271048
Pushkin Vertigo, 2015
originally published as I giovedi della signora giulia, 1970
translated by Jill Foulston
122 pp

paperback

Set in 1955, The Disappearance of Signora Giulia is one of the most truly baffling mysteries I've read in quite some time.  By the time I finished this book, I was totally perplexed.  And trust me -- after having read thousands of mystery novels in my time,  "baffling" is not a term I throw about willy nilly, but I'm certainly not going to spill my guts as to why I found it so.  

 Commissario Corrado Sciancalepre returns from a conference with the Chief Constable in the "small town of M_____" in Northern Lombardy and gets a big surprise.  Waiting in his office is Esengrini, the area's "most agile and authoritative criminal lawyer" who is there with an "incredibly serious matter," which, as he puts it, will likely turn his entire life "upside down."  It seems that his wife, the titular "Signora Giulia," has left home, and Esengrini needs Sciancalepre's help in trying to find her.  La Signora was supposed to have caught a train that day for Milan, which she does every Thursday, to see their daughter Emilia at her boarding school, to make the rounds of various places in the city, and to do things for her friends while she's there, catching the two p.m. train and coming home by 7:30 in the evening.  On this particular Thursday though,  it seems that Signora Giulia never caught the train.  When Sciancalepre returns with Esengrini to his home, he discovers that perhaps she'd been planning to stay longer than her usual few hours this time -- her bedroom is "a complete mess," a lot of clothing has gone with her and so has her jewelry.  Her husband had also heard her "moving around continually, opening drawers, shifting chairs" the night before, and according to him, she was "agitated."  But wait. It's here that the first of a number of secrets pervading this novel comes tumbling out, as Esengrini confesses to the Commissario that he'd known for some time she'd been seeing other men on those Thursdays, using the visits to her daughter as a cover.  He'd even had her followed four months earlier because Giulia, 38, had started turning cold toward her 60 year-old spouse in the last year, and Esengrini had wanted to know why.  Sciancalepre offers to try to find her, but this is 1955, and he needs Esengrini to bring a charge against her so he can do so.  Esengrini decides it's going to be a case of "abandoning the marital home," which is enough for our Commissario to begin his search.  But this is definitely NOT going to be an easy or simple case of finding a runaway wife, and Sciancalepre doesn't realize at the time that this case is will be years in the solving, and even then ....

Despite some minor lulls here and there in the telling, The Disappearance of Signora Giulia is beyond compelling and it's certainly one of the most unconventional crime stories I've ever read. It is a true whodunit in every sense of the term, with a big, no make that huge,  twist I never saw coming.  When I finished it, the first words coming out of my mouth were "that's just brilliant," and if anyone reading this post decides to read it, you'll see why.  I pondered over that ending for some time and when a book makes me do that, well, I call it a good one.

Very much recommended, especially for readers of older crime novels, for readers of international crime, and for readers of crime fiction who enjoy something completely different.

another winner from Pushkin Vertigo: I Was Jack Mortimer, by Alexander Lernet-Holenia

9781782271154
Pushkin Vertigo, 2015
originally published as Ich war Jack Mortimer, 1933
translated by Ignat Avsey
186 pp

paperback

"This man had messed up everything with his death." 

Ferdinand Sponer is a taxi driver in Vienna, "about thirty," whose only mistake was to pick up the wrong passenger.  Waiting in the taxi rank at the Westbahnhof, his turn comes up, and his passenger directs him to the Hotel Bristol.  After some time, he realizes that there are two Hotel Bristols, so he opens up the partition between front and back seat, and asks his passenger which one.  Receiving no answer, he asks again, and is met only with silence.  Sponer turns on the light inside the cab, looks at the man in the back seat, and realizes that "the man was dead." To his further surprise, since he hadn't heard anything at all, he discovers that the guy had been shot right there in his seat.  Sponer tries to tell the police, but panics -- after reporting a fake accident and unable to think straight,  he goes through what I can only describe as a serious lack of judgment, and then makes a fateful decision that will make his life a living hell over the course of the next couple of days.  Believing that if his passenger fails to show up at the hotel that the game would be up and he would be blamed, he decides Jack Mortimer will keep his reservation at the Hotel Bristol, just for one night.  Afterwards, Sponer figures, he can get on with his old life without anyone ever finding out what had happened. But, as we all know, the best laid plans and all that ...

I've seen this labeled as a thriller, and I suppose there are a number of thriller-type elements, but I got more of a noir sort of flavor from it -- the hapless Joe who's in the wrong place at the wrong time, looking for a way out of his predicament only to discover that he just may be trapped by his own choices.  The suspense picks up once Sponer decides that he will become Jack Mortimer, and as we discover exactly who Jack Mortimer actually was,  all manner of things happen that send Ferdinand's life spiraling out of control.  But, as we're told,

"One doesn't step into anyone's life, not even a dead man's, without having to live it to the end,"

and with our poor taxi driver, that just might be the case as he finds himself smack in the middle of a collision course between the past and the present.

from Quixotando

I watched the film (1935, German with English subtitles) this morning, and while not as suspenseful as the book, the movie itself is pretty good.  It starts pretty slowly, introducing the main players, and instead of letting the tension build in discovering the past history of Jack Mortimer we get that whole shebang near the beginning. It takes the actual discovery of the dead man in the back seat of the taxi to get things rolling, but from then on, it's one of those movies where you don't want to miss a second.  A few noticeably surreal scenes at times make it stand out, as does the main character spiraling into panic mode when he realizes that absolutely no one is going to believe that he has nothing to do with his passenger's death.

Both book and movie are definite yesses.  Alongside the main story in the novel, by virtue of Sponer's job as taxi driver, we are privy to the sights, sounds and smells of interwar Vienna as he travels through the city; class distinctions are also nicely detailed here.  As a character study, it also works quite nicely -- again, my focus in reading is on people, looking for what drives them to do what they do, and I was not at all disappointed.  Evidently, though, my high opinion of this novel isn't shared by a lot of readers, who in general give it an average overall rating mainly because of the plot.  Well, this book is a prime example of what you miss when plot and "story arc" are the only things you care about.  Trust me, there's nothing average about this book at all -- it's another fine example of an old book that has been largely forgotten, and thanks to Pushkin Vertigo, it's now widely available.  Once again I'll say that I do understand that crime from 1930s may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I seem to be encountering a lot of these old novels that are really, really good and which definitely ought to be part of every serious crime fiction reader's repertoire.

Recommended to all crime readers, but most especially to readers who love these old books as much as I do.