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Book Review: FOREIGN BODIES (2018) edited by Martin Edwards

3/28/2018

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Two years in the making, the international crime short story collection Foreign Bodies from British Library Crime Classics (U.K) and Poisoned Pen Press (U.S.) answers an intriguing question: what do Golden Age mystery tales from other countries look like? Many of us are familiar with contemporary cultural crime stories, whether they are brooding Scandinavian thrillers or French urban police procedurals or gritty espionage accounts with spies trotting the globe. I, for one, was particularly interested to explore examples of mystery stories from the first half of the 20th century by non-British, non-American authors.

It turns out, as curator and editor Martin Edwards notes in his informative introduction, that those familiar Golden Age mystery stories from England had a far-flung effect on writers around the world. And this influence is helpful—there is no denying the appeal of an impossible crime or locked room story—but it is also potentially limiting, because it suggests that authors with access to unique settings sometimes ignore them to instead meet and copy the expectations of the genre.

Full credit should be given to Edwards, who worked with translators and publishers such as Josh Pachter and John Pugmire to locate and select these stories and present them to English language readers, some translated especially for this anthology. There are fifteen stories in all, with the most successful for me being the ones that incorporate observations and themes from the author’s home country and cultural philosophy.

Take the collection’s first and oldest entry, “The Swedish Match” (1884), a slyly sardonic story by Anton Chekhov. The plotline is comfortably familiar, with the irritable examining magistrate Tchubikov and his hypothesizing assistant Dyukovsky looking into the disappearance of a retired guardsman. There is a mystery, an investigation, multiple exchanges between two detectives who have differing perspectives (one is old, cantankerous, and prone to surface generalities; the other is young, nimble, and inclined to wild surmises), and finally a resolution. But the comic characterization, the ironic solution, and the very human view of these ordinary people bumbling about and making mistakes is in perfect harmony with Chekhov’s more celebrated playwriting and the worldview he fosters. The story also feels ahead of its time, as it both celebrates and punctures the traditional mystery tropes which, at the turn of the century, were still being shaped and solidified.

In contrast, consider the later story “The Venom of the Tarantula,” written by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay and set in his native Nepal. The plot: a hedonistic old man under medical surveillance manages to regularly smuggle spider venom into his room to use as a dangerous narcotic. Assistant Ajit describes this mystery to his friend, the brilliant detective Byomkesh Bakshi, hoping that the puzzle will take Bakshi’s mind off of a consuming forgery case. Despite the exotic contraband at its center, “Venom” feels the most English of all the collected stories, which is beat-for-beat a detective story in the tradition of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes adventures. (The solution also recalls one of G.K. Chesterton’s most famous Father Brown tales.) If setting and Indian ensemble were replaced with Anglo-Saxon counterparts, the tone and characterization would lose nothing in translation because there is nothing unique to lose.

Personally, the best examples of genre fiction being enhanced by the social and geographical perspectives of their authors are found in the two stories from Japan. Martin Edwards introduces Koga Saburo’s atmospheric and entertaining tale “The Spider” (1930) as “a pleasing fusion of elements from macabre fiction and the classic detective puzzle.” Death occurs in an odd, silo-shaped laboratory where Professor Tsujikawa houses hundreds of specimens of exotic arachnids, some of them very lethal. The murder method—which isn’t a spider bite, enjoyably—is memorable and connects (for me) with the Japanese virtues of order and balance, especially when the murderer’s motive is revenge or righting a perceived wrong. The first-person narrative from a Poe-esque observer of the horrors adds a layer of personal-yet-objective reporting to an otherwise Gothic story.

Arguably the most successful tale in the collection is provided by Keikichi Osaka. “The Cold Night’s Clearing” (1936) is a haunting piece where we discover the circumstances that turned a secluded, snow-surrounded home into the scene of a violent murder-kidnapping. The author creates a foreboding sense of tragedy, and a senseless act of murder starts to reveal a logic that is both rooted in the Japanese notion of honor and a sadly inevitable cause-and-effect fatalism for the people involved. Tone, action, and setting all synthesize to deliver an intelligently mournful work of short fiction that transcends any potential genre limitations.

Inevitably, a few of the stories here fall short in premise or execution. “Murder à la Carte” by Jean-Toussaint Samat finds a narrator musing (vaguely) on lethal combinations of non-poisonous foods, although such murderous menus would be more likely to deliver indigestion instead of death, and “The Lipstick and the Teacup” by Dutch writer Havank turns on a clue so simplistic that it could have been rejected by boy detective Encyclopedia Brown.

Luckily, there are short, caustic entries to reward the omnivorous reader: Maurice Level's 1920 conte cruel “The Kennel” finds hounds baying outside while a cuckolded husband decides what to do with his wife's lover, whom he discovers in their bedroom. Flemish author John Flanders contributes “Kippers”, a story with a Roald Dahl-type sting where a sudden shipwreck turns the tables on a bullying member of a crew. Also highly enjoyable are Pierre Véry's “The Mystery of the Green Room”, which pays clever homage to Gaston Leroux's landmark novel The Mystery of the Yellow Room, and Maurice LeBlanc's 1923 story “Footprints in the Snow”, a colorful detective tale featuring an apparent murder occurring around a deep well.

Martin Edwards and his partners in international crime are to be commended for gathering and sharing these intriguing, relatively unknown stories from around the world. Even while a few authors lean a bit too heavily on the familiar British mystery fiction that clearly inspired them and mute the originality of their own settings and cultures, there is much here to enjoy, explore, and celebrate. An eBook reading edition of Foreign Bodies was provided by Poisoned Pen Press through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Book Review: PIERRE ET JEAN (1888) by Guy de Maupassant

8/19/2017

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I have long been a fan of works of the French naturalists and impressionists of the later 19th century. My reading of these authors and this literature, while occasionally scattershot, has almost always been rewarding and intriguing. Flaubert, Zola, Balzac, Stendhal, and now – surprisingly, for the first time – Guy de Maupassant, whose slender novel Pierre et Jean incorporates his naturalist objective on every page. The author takes his brief but powerful story about two brothers who learn, through an outside inheritance, a perception-shifting secret and synchronizes it with the weather, mood, and metaphor of the port town Le Havre; by doing so, he is able to able to externalize the inner conflict of its key characters.

Older brother Pierre Roland, a newly minted doctor who is poised to take his first steps at establishing a practice, receives most of the novel's focus, and it is through Pierre that the reader most clearly tracks the changing emotions of the family. Maréchal, an old acquaintance, dies and leaves a legacy to the Rolands, which seems like a blessing for the economically confined family. But the money is left only to Pierre's younger brother Jean, who providentially wants to use the windfall to set up his law office. Although Roland père seems to have no curiosity over the inheritance, the gesture creates a chain of doubts in Pierre: Why has his brother benefited but not him? Why do he and Jean bear little physical resemblance? Just what was Maréchal's relationship to the family?

Maupassant gives each moment, linked to a fleeting but powerfully present emotion, a chance for exploration as Pierre modulates from suspicion to denial to jealousy to anger to self-pity. This is very much a novel of psychology, and even though the characters operate from a social and moral perspective that's more than a century old (and a culture removed from this American), every beat seems relatable and right. The weather and setting mirror Pierre's emotions in a way that is both poetic and real, where a clear day of sailing gives way to cold, enveloping fog, much as his private doubts begin to seep in and affect a sunnier outlook:

As he neared the harbor he heard out to sea a mournful, sinister plaint, like the bellowing of a bull, but longer drawn out and more powerful. It was the wail of a siren, the wail of ships lost in a fog… Pierre walked faster and reached the jetty, thinking of nothing now, content to enter this lugubrious, moaning darkness.   (trans. Leonard Tancock)
And in Maupassant's own words:
"En approchant du port il entendit vers la pleine mer une plainte lamentable et sinistre, pareille au meuglement d'un taureau, mais plus longue et plus puissante. C'était le cri d'une sirène, le cri des navires perdus dans la brume… Pierre gagna la jetée a grands pas, ne pensant plus a rien, satisfait d'entrer dans ces ténèbres lugubres et mugissantes."
As a study of human vulnerability, Pierre et Jean is a lovely small-scale work. True pathos is generated through Maupassant's craft and creation of his characters, even as they react in a way that can be considered self-serving or melodramatic. They may be overreacting to a situation that is not life-alteringly tragic when viewed objectively, but the genuineness of their feelings is never in doubt. The story ends on a note that is perfectly bittersweet, with each of the principal characters pursuing a mutual dénouement that seems right in theory but, as the author nimbly crafts the moment, may hardly be the proper solution for anyone. It's a fitting conclusion to a very perceptive – and deceptively simple – book, a tale where naturalism and literate poetry share the page.
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Book Review: THE MAD AND THE BAD (1972) by Jean-Patrick Manchette

7/24/2017

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The French people have a saying that seems appropriate here: à chacun son goût, meaning roughly "each to his own taste." Over at his great film and crime fiction site Noirish, John Grant spoke highly of a neo-noir pioneer that I had not heard of, Paris-based screenwriter, novelist, and genre critic Jean-Patrick Manchette. Always on the lookout for new discoveries, I decided to try Manchette's 1972 story of damaged killers and quarry, The Mad and the Bad. The author completed ten novels that mix violence, nihilism, and social commentary before his death in 1995; four are currently available in English translation. 

My personal experience with The Mad and The Bad was a frustratingly mixed affair.
 

The plot is a simple yet colorful one, involving an unconventional nanny and a red-headed, borderline autistic boy who find themselves the targets of a ruthless assassin intent on kidnapping and killing them both. There are a couple cat-and-mouse shootout centerpieces, including one in a busy department store and another outside an eccentric architect's room furnished for a giant. The story's relentless pace stays constant for the book's brief length (less than 170 pages), and the central conflict is direct and uncluttered.
 
And here's where my goût comes in. For each intriguing choice or detail Manchette incorporates, I am left trying to connect it to a larger theme or grander design, but to no great success. Ultimately, many of these details feel like quirk rather than compelling symbolism, although I will freely admit that I am no expert on the French political obsessions that James Sallis, in his introduction to the paperback edition, argues drives Manchette's work. In several instances, the book feels as if it's not interested in higher ideas or deeper subtexts; it wants to deliver thrills and action and beguile the reader to keep turning pages. On this level, I think, it generally succeeds.
 
But what are we to make of Julie, newly released from a mental institution, who is plagued by manic-depressive moods and a dislike for humanity, her young charge included? Julie is described twice as looking mannish, like a "post-op transsexual." This is one of those intriguing details to which I allude above. It is clear that Manchette doesn't want her viewed as the traditional soft heroine in jeopardy. She is resourceful enough to keep ahead of her pursuers and to fight back when she is able, but she is hardly a sympathetic protagonist. When a male motorist picks her up while she is on the run, it is Julie who initiates the idea of a sexual encounter, only to bludgeon him to death as soon as he has stopped the car. This moment might be covered under the larger pessimism of neo-noir sociological theory -- everyone's a killer, and no one is innocent -- but it also serves to distance the characters from the reader without any greater understanding or catharsis taking place.
 
The other principal character who operates (in my opinion) on a level of faux-métaphore is the terminally ill -- or maybe just scabrously ulcerous -- hired killer, Thompson. As he pursues Julie and the boy Peter, an inner cancer is eating him up from the inside out (his chosen profession? his quest for money?). As he tries to aim his rifle, tears fill his eyes and bile and blood spray from his mouth. The concept isn't a bad one, but Manchette here has the disadvantage: the relentless crime-story character who needs to finish a job before he is eaten alive had been explored to much more satisfying effect years earlier by Friedrich Du
rrenmatt in The Judge and His Hangman (1950). Durrenmatt managed to combine metaphor and theme throughout his book in a way that never quite gels in The Mad and the Bad; at the end of Hangman, one knows exactly what all of the lies, deaths, and surreal images have amounted to. With Manchette, his prose reads like a screenplay, with action first and greater meaning to be extracted from the carnage a distant second in intention.
 
And that's okay; it's just not my particular cup of beef broth. There is one moment in The Mad and the Bad which proved a fascinating exercise in subjective perspective when writing prose. In a movie, one can generate suspense through parallel editing and storytelling: cut to Thompson in the car, looking up at the house. Then cut to the trapped Julie, noticing the car. Cut back to the killer, slipping on grass, bent over, trying to climb the hill with his weapon in hand, cursing as he falls. Cut again to Julie, frantically looking in the house for the boy. 
 
In a screenplay, there's no problem. But prose fiction needs a unifying point of view within a moment, even if the story is being related in third person. Manchette obeys this rule in nearly every one of his book's short chapters -- if it's a Julie scene, we don't switch setting and perspective to another character until the next scene begins. For the length of a few pages in The Mad and the Bad, however, the reader is asked to jump from one point of view to another, ping-ponging back and forth during the climactic confrontation. It feels jumbled and it doesn't work because we’re asked (all too briefly) to be inside the heads of both characters in quick succession. I'm grateful for this example because it helps to inform my own writing.
 
And that's perhaps the most sincere accolade I can give this book and its author: I'm grateful for experiencing a story that was fast-paced and focused, with unconventional characters. But I'm also frustrated that closer examination and further reflection doesn't reward those efforts, but only provides diminishing returns.
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