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Astonishing Strides

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Food Vendor at a Bangkok Night Market

It is strange to be suddenly confronted by truth in places that one had not thought to look for it. Such was the case this evening when I encountered it in a little-known mystery novel set in Bangkok. The Sonchai Jitgpleecheep novels of John Burdett have been a recent preoccupation of mine during this hot and seemingly endless summer in Southern California. Then, like a Buddhist burst of contemplation, there it was a fifth of the way through Bangkok Asset, the sixth novel in the series:

Man has made astonishing strides recently in all things inessential. The price we’ve paid is enormous. Stuck with an infantile description of reality that cannot come to terms with death or even lesser challenges, the eternal infant must torture himself for lifetime after lifetime, probably without end.

This is what happens when one is a serious bookworm. The truth is out there, even in seemingly unusual places, like genre series novels.

Sometime this month, I’m going to tackle the Collected Stories of William Faulkner. For some reason, I’ve always liked to read Faulkner during the hottest month of the year. I might suddenly find some pearl of wisdom that stands out, or I might not. On the other hand, I might read some arrant piece of trash an find myself at the edge of a cliff that stretches to the horizon.

Romans Durs

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Author Georges Simenon (1903-1989)

He wrote hundreds of novels during the fifty years while he was active. There were 75 novels featuring Inspector Jules Maigret of the Paris Police Judiciaire, plus 28 short stories. According to Wikipedia, he also wrote some 117 romans durs, literally “hard novels,” usually grittier than his Maigret works.

I have just finished reading Le destin des Malou (The Fate of the Malous, 1948) about the young heir of a bankrupt developer who must make his way in the world after realizing that most of his family are completely unsympathetic. In the end, his hero Alain reminds me of Honoré de Balzac’s Eugène de Rastignac from Père Goriot as he resolves to conquer Paris as he stands on the heights of Père Lachaise cemetery overlooking the city. It is nothing short of a masterpiece.

I’ve read approximately half of Simenon’s work—at least half of what he published in his own name. I couldn’t find a bibliography of what he published under various pseudonyms. Although much of his work could be classified as genre fiction, I am beginning to think that perhaps, in our time, the best fiction falls into that category.

In a letter to the author, André Gide compared his roman dur La veuve Couderc (Ticket of Leave, 1942) to The Stranger by Albert Camus, “In my opinion, your book goes much further, and without seeming to—which is the height of Art.” Maybe that’s why Simenon is sadly underrated as an author of mysteries and police procedurals. I like that expression “goes much further, and without seeming to.”

That’s why I am now considering Georges Simenon the equal of other great 20th Century authors. I love reading his works, sometimes even multiple times. I’ve been reading his work for half a century now, and I am deeply grateful that he was so prolific.

Icelandic Mystery

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The Town of Akranes, Setting for Eva Björg Ægisdottir’s Novels

It’s difficult to think of Iceland as a “scene of the crime” involving murder. The entire nation has a population under 400,000, with approximately half living in or near the capital of Reykjavík. Yet I know of three mystery authors who write about more Icelandic murders than could have occurred within the last half century..

The writers, in the order that I discovered them, are:

  • Arnaldur Indriðason
  • Yrsa Siguðardottir (who also writes children’s books)
  • Eva Björg Ægisdottir

All three are excellent writers. Below are my favorites among their works:

  • Hypothermia and Reykjavík Nights by Arnaldur Indriðason
  • Ashes to Dust and My Soul to Take by Yrsa Siguðardottir
  • Girls Who Lie and Night Shadows by Eva Björg Ægisdottir

These are just some of my favorites, but I haven’t read a single stinker by any of these authors.

Travis McGee and Others

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Mystery Writer John D. MacDonald (1916-1986)

When the dog days of summer roll around, I like to look for a good mystery novel, especially if the scene of action is in a steamy place like Florida. Ever since I discovered that I could “check out” up to ten books from the L.A. public library to read on my Amazon Kindle, I have been looking for John D. MacDonald titles. In the last few weeks, I have picked out four titles. To date, I have read eleven of his books.

In many ways, MacDonald reminds me of Georges Simenon, another of my favorites. On one hand, Simenon wrote some 75 novels featuring Inspector Jules Maigret, and hundreds of other of what he calls his romans durs, or “hard” novels. You guessed it: The latter group tend to be much more hard-bitten than the Maigret titles.

In the same way, MacDonald has his score of Travis McGee novels set in Florida and featuring the very sympathetic captain of the Busted Flush, the yacht on board of which he lives. Like Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, he is a knightly presence in the Southern California darkness. MacDonald’s non-Travis-McGee titles also tend to be a bit tougher sledding, with his detective’s humane presence absent.

I am just now starting to read some of MacDonald’s other fiction, such as Border Town Girl.

The Poet of Apprehension

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The Young Patricia Highsmith

She was a gorgeous Texan from Fort Worth who just happened to be perhaps the best woman mystery novelist of all time. Graham Greene called her “The Poet of Apprehension.” Her novels and stories were unusually dark, beginning with her first novel, Strangers on a Train (1950), which was turned into a film by Alfred Hitchcock. Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was depressed and preferred relationships with women. Eventually, the depression dragged her down and destroyed her good looks.

I have just finished reading her novel The Cry of the Owl (1962), one of her darkest novels. Robert, her hero, is a strange kind of asexual Peeping Tom who falls for a young woman by watching her prepare salads and entertain her boyfriend Greg. Things begin to develop dangerously when Jenny, the young woman, ends her relationship with Greg and begins to fall for Robert. There follow two murders, several attempted murders, a suicide, some incredibly sloppy police work, and encounters with the neighbors from hell.

When Greg teams up with Robert’s ex-wife Nickie, they both decide to make life difficult for Robert in every way possible, up to beating him up, wounding him, or killing him.

By the time I finished reading the novel about an hour ago, I began to understand that relationships can go bad at warp speed.

In addition to The Cry of the Owl, I have read the following Highsmith novels and collections, each of which I loved:

  • The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)
  • A Game for the Living (1958)
  • A Suspension of Mercy (1965) – Released in the U.S. as The Story Teller
  • A Dog’s Ransom (1972)
  • Little Tales of Misogyny (1975)
  • The Black House (1981)

Fortunately, Highsmith was a fairly prolific writer, and I have only just begun to scratch the surface of her work.

Cozy Mysteries?

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On my occasional visits to the few bookstores that remain, I have become conscious that some dealers have split mysteries into two categories:

  • The traditional hard police procedurals and noir works
  • “Cozy mysteries”

What? If they find a cadaver in a “cozy mystery,” does it not smell? Does it look nice rather than ghastly? One thing for sure, it tends to be either British or it imitates British mysteries. I am not implying that all British mysteries are “cozy,” because they aren’t. Take the works of Ian Rankin and P. D. James—which are anything but “cozy.”

I suspect that the sub-genre is meant to appeal mostly to women readers who like tales emphasizing ratiocination (as Poe called it) rather than being exposed to any form of unpleasantness. (Curiously, Dorothy Sayers’s excellent The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club verges on “cozy” at times.)

Unpleasantness doesn’t bother me. I just finished reading Charles Willeford’s The Way We Die Now with its bloody murder of two Floridian backwoods baddies, and I found it rather soothing in a strange way.

Avoiding all unpleasantness, however, would bother me. I have always felt that whatever we most studiously avoid winds up biting us in the ass.

Thou Foster-Child of Silence and Slow Time

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Irish Writer J. Sheridan LeFanu (1814-1873)

He is probably most famous for his ghost stories. His Carmilla (1872) was a Lesbian vampire tale that inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula and was turned into a Roger Vadim film called Blood and Roses (1960). His stories were an unusual mixture of horror, mystery, and historical fiction. After putting it off for decades, I am finally reading his Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram-Haugh (1864) and am enjoying immensely.

The title of this post comes from John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn”:

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
       Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
       A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
       Of deities or mortals, or of both,
               In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
       What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
               What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

There is something eminently satisfying about reading a long nineteenth century novel. It calls for reserves of patience, but rewards with insights similar to those of the Grecian urn about which Keats writes. That is particularly true of novels from the British Isles, where the prose at times approaches the realm of poetry:

See how a sleepy child will put off the inevitable departure for bed. The little creature’s eyes blink and stare, and it needs constant jogging to prevent his nodding off into the slumber which nature craves. His waking is a pain; he is quite worn out, and peevish, and stupid, and yet he implores a respite, and deprecates repose, and vows he is not sleepy, even to the moment when his mother takes him in her arms, and carries him, in a sweet slumber, to the nursery. So it is with us old children of earth and the great sleep of death, and nature our kind mother. Just so reluctantly we part with consciousness, the picture is, even to the last, so interesting; the bird in the hand, though sick and moulting, so inestimably better than all the brilliant tenants of the bush. We sit up, yawning, and blinking, and stupid, the whole scene swimming before us, and the stories and music humming off into the sound of distant winds and waters. It is not time yet; we are not fatigued; we are good for another hour still, and so protesting against bed, we falter and drop into the dreamless sleep which nature assigns to fatigue and satiety.

I am presently 70% of the way through Uncle Silas and look forward to finishing the book tomorrow, come hell or high water. If you are interested in exploring LeFanu’s work, the following editions were issued by Dover Publications and may still be found from used book dealers (I recommend http://www.abebooks.com):

  • Best Ghost Stories of J. S. LeFanu
  • Green Tea and Other Ghost Stories
  • Ghost Stories and Mysteries
  • Wylder’s Hand
  • Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram-Haugh
  • The Wyvern Mystery

It is my opinion that LeFanu is a sadly neglected writer who, over time, will come into his own.

The Swamp of Evil

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Swamps in Our Culture Are Places of Evil

One of the grisliest places I ever visited was the Mexican State of Tabasco, where storms upriver caused floods in Villahermosa. From the banks of the Grijalva, my brother and I saw the carcasses of cows and other livestock come floating past in the fast-flowing muddy waters. The humidity easily stood at 100%, if not more.

We have our swampy regions in the States as well. Take Louisiana, for instance, where the Atchafalaya Basin could become the new course of the Mississippi, if it jumps the Army Corps of Engineers dams to the north.

James Lee Burke, Author of the David Robicheaux Novels

I have just finished reading James Lee Burke’s Sunset Limited, in which David Robicheaux of the New Iberia Police confronts evils that are scarcely to be imagined, let alone experienced.

Years ago, a labor leader named Frank Flynn was murdered by being crucified upside-down with a nail gun on the side of an old barn. His children Cisco and Megan are back in the Bayou Teche area, along with some of the nastiest contract killers ever portrayed in literature. But then, as Dave reminds us, “Evil doesn’t have a zip code.”

The gnarliest of them, one Harpo Scruggs, also has a wicked sense of humor:

“You got a lot of brass,” I said to him.

“Not really. Since I don’t think your bunch [the police] could drink piss out of a boot with the instructions printed on the heel,” [Harpo] replied. He unscrewed the cork in the mescal bottle with a squeak and tipped another shot into his glass.

One thing that characterizes a Dave Robicheaux novel is the tendency of its hero, along with his friend Clete Purcel, a former New Orleans police officer, to confront evil head on, with intensity and frequency.

To date, I have read over ten of Burke’s Robicheaux novels with their brooding atmosphere of Cajun eeriness—and I intend to keep going.

Blood on the Bayou

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Mystery Writer James Lee Burke

I have been reading occasional mystery novels by James Lee Burke over the years. Having just finished the first novel in the Dave Robicheaux series—Neon Rain (1987)—I now know why I like him so much.

Dave Robicheaux is the hero of most of Burke’s novels. After a traumatic stint in Vietnam, he joins the New Orleans Police Department. He has had a problem with alcoholism and a history with Twelve-Step programs, as well as a distrust of authority. At one point in Neon Rain, he says:

Like many others, I learned a great lesson in Vietnam: Never trust authority. But because I had come to feel that that authority should always be treated as suspect and self-serving.

His pictures of the Southern Louisiana landscape sometimes wax on the poetic:

Clouds of fog swirled off the bayou through the flooded woods as I banged over an old board road that had been cut through the swamp by an oil company. The dead cypresses were wet and black in the gray light, and green lichen grew where the waterline touched the swollen bases of the trunks. The fog was so thick and white in the trees that I could barely see thirty feet ahead of the car. A rotted plank snapped under my wheel and hanged off the oil pan. In the early morning stillness the sound made the herons and egrets rise in a sudden flapping of wings toward the pink light above the treetops. Then to one side of the road, in a scoured-out clearing in the trees, I saw a shack built of Montgomery Ward brick and clapboard, elevated from the muddy ground by cinder blocks and cypress stumps, with a Toyota jeep parked in front.

And:

Somewhere down inside him, he knew that his fear of death by water had always been a foolish one. Death was a rodent that ate its way inch by inch through your entrails, chewed at your liver and stomach, severed tendon from organ, until finally, when you were alone in the dark, it sat gorged and sleek next to your head, its eyes resting, its wet muzzle like a kiss, a promise whispered in the ear.

There is a great deal of violence in the plot as Robicheaux fights his police force and various Federal agencies at the same time as he tracks down a set of murderous thugs, one by one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Patience of Maigret

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Writer Georges Simenon (1903-1989)

Whenever I am looking for a great crime read, my first choice is usually the late Georges Simenon, the creator of Inspector (later Superintendent) Jules Maigret. Like the author, Maigret always had a pipe in his mouth. I cannot help but think that Simenon thought of himself as his hero, but whenever I visualize the French detective, I have a different image in my mind, that of the film comedian Jacques Tati (1907-1982), Simenon’s near contemporary. (See photo below.)

I have just finished reading The Patience of Maigret [La Patience de Maigret] (1965), the 92nd Maigret in a series extending to 103 titles. Although the ones he wrote in the 1930s were brilliant, there was no noticeable falling-off with the later novels.

Maigret is in many ways the anti-Sherlock-Holmes. His cases are not solved as much through ratiocination as by a fanatical thoroughgoing diligence and its hero’s trust in the picture of the crime that emerges as a result. Near the beginning, Simenon describes Maigret going through his paces: “And yet that was how the Superintendent had succeeded with most of his investigations: climbing stairs, sniffing in the corners, having a chat here and there, and asking apparently futile questions, often spending hours in rather shady bistros.”

Comic Jacques Tati in Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday—The Very Image of the Paris Detective

At another point, he writes: “People had a mania about asking him about his methods. Some of them even thought they could analyse them and he would look at them with bantering curiosity because they knew more about it than he, who usually improvised at the whim of his instinct.”

In The Patience of Maigret, everyone is stumped. In fact, the jewel crimes at the heart of them have been going on for over twenty years, but no one could figure out who was cutting the gemstones out of their settings in order to fence the loot. The answer comes at blinding speed in response to a comment made during a phone call to the former mayor of Douai. When that happens, Maigret corrals the guilty parties and ties everything together with giftwrap for the examining magistrates who will do the heavy lifting for the prosecution.