Review of The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre (2017, Old Street Publishing)

Patience Portefeux works as an underpaid, off-the-books French-Arabic translator for the police and courts, specialising in phone taps. She grew up in a criminal enterprise, living a low-life in France but experiencing luxury on holidays. When she got married her father decided she didn’t need to inherit and now she’s a widow she’s struggling to cover the nursing home fees for her mother, provide for her daughters, and plan a nest egg for her own future given a lack of employer pension. Then an opportunity presents itself through her work – a huge shipment of drugs disappears en route from Morocco to France and Patience knows roughly where it is hidden. So starts her second life as The Godmother. It’s fairly difficult to find a fresh take in the crime genre, but Cayre has managed to produce a novel, dark, engaging and humorous tale hooked around a colourful lead character and her situation. The plot unfolds at a nice pace, with a good balance between backstory, character development, social observation, and the main plot thread. Beyond Patience, the story is populated with other quirky characters and the spins out along an interesting trajectory. It ended a bit too quickly, with a thin wrap-up, but I still thought it was a wonderful noirish read that I rattled through.

Review of Birth Marks by Sarah Dunant (1991, Penguin)

Hannah Wolfe is a private investigator struggling to get by in London. Falling back on her old boss she picks up a missing persons case. Carolyn Hamilton was a promising ballet dancer who has disappeared. Her childhood teacher is sufficiently concerned to hire Hannah to track her down. However, not long after she starts her hunt, Carolyn’s body is found in the Thames, heavily pregnant. The police think it is suicide, but Hannah is not convinced. She suspects foul-play and continues to try and uncover the previous nine months. Her digging leads to employment agency, then onto Paris and a family who do not want to provide straight answers.

Birth Marks was the first in a set of three featuring London PI Hannah Wolfe. Hannah sees herself as a Philip Marlowe kind of character; a hardboiled, wise-cracking PI that eventually solves the case. In reality she’s a little more frail, not so smart, and reliant on others, though she’s persistent and resilient. Her task is to find a missing ballet dancer who then turns up dead. She uncovers clues by means fair and foul and makes faltering headway in a case the police have ruled suicide. The plot is fairly linear and despite a bit of a twist towards the end it’s pretty predictable; there is really only one suspect once they’ve come into view. A quite pedestrian but enjoyable enough PI tale.

Review of A Treachery of Spies by Manda Scott (2018, Corgi)

Present day and an elderly woman is found shot dead in a car park. To Capitaine Inés Picaut it appears to be a professional hit. The only clue is a business card sown into the lining of the victim’s coat. Picaut and her team discover that the victim's name appears to be Sophie Destivelle and a local film company was making a documentary about her involvement with SOE, a British-American Jedburgh team and the French Marquis in the Jura Mountains in the days leading up the D-Day landings and liberation. Other members of that group’s war-time leaders are present in Orleans, as is a special conference attended by high ranking American intelligence officers. When a second killing takes place of the son of one of the Marquis members, Picaut realises she has two mysteries to solve: who is killing Marquis members and their descendants and what happened during the war to prompt the murders so many years later. The remaining Marquis are not talking, determined to complete unfinished business and discover the identity of the suspected spy within their close knit resistance group. What started in the early 1940s is seemingly about to come to a bloody end.

A Treachery of Spies is the second book in the Capitaine Inés Picaut series, but can be read as a standalone. Manda Scott expertly weaves together two inter-related plots that are separated by seventy years. The first concerns a battle of wits between a master Gestapo agent who cleverly turns resistance members and a group of SOE agents and French Marquis that last much of the war. The resistance cell never quite gets the upper hand, even in victory, and the tight core of leaders are unsure if and who might be a spy. The second charts the present day investigation by Picaut into the assassination of one of SOE agents, Sophie Destivelle, herself turned and turned back again and also an assassin of traitors and collaborators during and after the war. Both threads make for compelling stories in and of themselves, with nicely crafted and well told plots, but when twisted together the result is a page-turning thriller. The characterisation is very nicely done, there’s good historical contextualisation, and the underlying premise in terms of the post-war era is interesting. Scott peppers the plot with twists and turns, and keeps the reader guessing as to the identity of the Marquis traitor and why the killing has resumed. An excellent read to finish up 2019.

Review of The Abrupt Physics of Dying by Paul Hardisty (2015, Orenda)

Since his time in the South African army Claymore Straker has been drifting, trying to forget his actions in skirmishes with communists in Angola. Years later he’s working as an environmental and social agent for an oil company in Yemen, testing for pollution and liaising with locals. Petro-Tex is run by a Russian brother and sister who specialise in extracting oil in unstable regions. And Yemen is teetering on the edge of civil war between North and South, with Al Qaeda in the mix. Straker and his driver are captured by the latter. Their leader orders Straker to find out what is killing the children of Al Urush, near to Petro-Tex’s facility, or his driver will be killed. He agrees to do some testing in the area. What he finds is a landscape transformed, with the water drying up, and very sick children. His bosses at Petro-Tex order him to forget the driver and resume his normal work doing minimal testing and bribing local chiefs. Straker is determined to save his friend and also discover what is going on, even if that means getting embroiled in a complex mess of disaster capitalism and the ruthless games different factions will play to realise their ambition. He’s aided by a troubled French journalist, Rania, and Islamic terrorists and opposing military intelligence, and soon finds a price put on his head.

The Abrupt Physics of Dying is a thriller tale focused on the disaster capitalism of the oil industry and the environmental and social collateral damage of drilling in a politically unstable region. The tale is mostly set in Yemen at the point where the country is teetering on the edge of civil war. The protagonist is Clay Straker, a man with a troubled past from his time in the South African army, who has been drifting since his discharge. Trying to regain some stability he’s set up his own company doing environmental testing and social liaison work with local communities for oil companies. He’s been hired by Petro-Tex, a company owned by a couple of Russian billionaires, whose deposit in Yemen is running out and is seeking new sources. Straker and his driver are kidnapped, with the driver held hostage only to be released if Straker discovers why children are dying in a village near to Petro-Tex’s facility. Straker’s investigation places in confrontation with his bosses and also Yemeni military intelligence. Unwilling to sacrifice his driver, or the local villagers dying, Straker sets out to discover the truth, unsure who to trust, given just about everyone wants him to fail. Hardisty spins out a decent thriller, keeping the pace and tension high, with plenty of action and twists, and threading through a love interest in the form of Rania, an investigative journalist. While the tale has the usual credibility issues of thrillers, what elevates the book above the pack is the context and setting in Yemen, and the spotlight on the environment, social and political consequences of oil industry. Overall, an engaging, entertaining and thought-provoking read.

Review of The Three Evangelists by Fred Vargas (1995 French; 2006, Vintage)

Opera singer, Sophia Siméonidis, wakes to discover that a tree has been planted in her Paris garden overnight. Her husband has little interest in the event, but she cannot put it out of her mind. She turns to her new neighbours, three down-at-luck historians and a disgraced ex-cop, who have rented the dilapidated house next door. They agree to help, digging up the tree to see if there is anything underneath then placing it back. They find nothing, but a few days later Sophia goes missing just before her niece and her son turn-up. There is no sign of her until a woman is found burned to death in an abandoned car. Already directing the case, the ex-cop starts to orchestrate the murder investigation using the detective assigned to the case and the three historians.

The Three Evangelists is the first of a three book series featuring three historians turned detectives - Marc, Mattias and Lucien (named St Mark, St Matthew and St Luke by Vandoosler, Marc’s godfather – hence the book title). In this outing, they initially investigate the appearance of a tree in the garden of their next door neighbour, opera singer Sophia Siméonidis. They are aided by Vandoosler, an ex-cop who resides with them. The case, however, soon turns into a murder mystery with the discovery of Sophia’s remains. The charm of the book are the three evangelists, each of whom specialises in a different period – prehistoric, middle ages and Great War – and has quite different personalities. They are drawn together by circumstance – they are lacking work and need to share to afford rent. Their haphazard approach to the case is given shape by Vandoosler, who was forced to give up his police career after letting a murderer get away. Vandoosler believes in giving some slack to Sophia’s killer to help smoke them out and to see what they do next. Though it gets results, it’s a dangerous strategy as it places people in harm, and it quickly becomes clear that the killer will murder again to avoid being caught. The plot has the feel of a golden age of crime tale, given its relatively small cast, puzzle like set-up, and its twists as different characters are moved into the frame. Through the four main characters, Vargas keeps the tale lightly humorous and engaging. The only real blip is the reveal which just didn’t sit right; while plausible, the clues for the reader were light and not convincing, and the denouement felt clunky. Nonetheless, an entertaining read.

Review of All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2014, 4th Estate)

Marie-Laure became blind at a young age. As war breaks out she flees Paris with her father, the locksmith at the Museum of Natural History. Their flight takes them to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo in Brittany where they take refuge with a great-uncle and his housekeeper. In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig lives with his younger sister in an orphanage. He is intrigued by radios and science and becomes an expert at building and repairing them. At the start of the war his endeavours secure him a place at an elite Nazi school, where he helps invent a radio direction finding device. As Marie-Laure gets drawn into aiding the resistance and her uncle broadcasts messages, Walter is drafted into the army tracking down enemy transmitters. Their paths seem destined to cross as the war draws to a close.

Set mostly in the lead up to and during the Second World War, All The Light We Cannot See tracks the lives of two children, Marie-Laure Leblanc a blind French girl, and Walter Pfenning a German orphan obsessed with radio. As the war starts, Marie-Laure flees Paris to Saint-Malo, while Walter is escapes work in the local mine to enrol in a military school. As Marie-Laure becomes a courier for the resistance, Walter joins a radio-direction unit tracking down resistance members in Russia, Austria, then France. Doerr tells their two stories through parallel threads, along with a third thread related to a Nazi treasure hunter trying to trace the location of a precious diamond removed from the museum Marie-Laure’s father worked at. The story is not told chronologically but rather jumps back and forth, with the Allied siege of Saint-Malo acting as a fulcrum point. The story is essentially about two good people trying to get by during a war. It is beautifully told, with some evocative prose and enchanting scenes. The first half was a wonderful read. Then the sections became progressively shorter and the timeline more choppy and it loses some of its charm. The denouement is nicely done, avoiding a saccharine conclusion, but rather than finish at the war’s end, it’s natural end point in my view, it stutters to a halt by jumping forward over time. The result was the second half of the story lost some of its compelling nature.

Review of Early One Morning by Robert Ryan (2002, Headline)

The mid-1920s, William Grover-Williams flees Ireland and his life as an IRA get-a-way driver to France. There he gets work as a chauffeur for William Orpen, an Irish artist whose muse and mistress is Eve Aubicq. Williams and Aubicq start an affair and marry, and she seed-finances his foray into racing cars. A natural driver, he is soon driving for Bugatti in grand prixs with his team mate and rival, Robert Benoist, a former First World War fighter ace. Benoist, Williams and Aubicq form a close friendship at and away from race circuits. When the Second World War starts Williams heads for England where he enlists, before being recruited into SOE. He’s then dropped back into France, reuniting with his wife and setting up a resistance network with Benoist and fellow racing driver, Jean-Pierre Wimille. As they build their network and start to undertake actions, the German SD are closing in, determined to put a halt to their work.

Early One Morning is a fictionalised account of the true story of William Grover-Williams, Eve Aubicq and Robert Benoist. Built around Williams, the tale covers from the mid-20s to the end of the war, with a separate thread tracing Williams’ SOE handler still seeking answers many years later. The main focus is the war years, especially Williams’ recruitment and training for SOE, his drop back into France and his work building a network with Benoist, and subsequent capture and internment in France and Sachsenhausen concentration camp. As with all such fictionalised accounts of real people and events there is always a question as to the extent to which the author has taken artistic license with history, and undoubtedly Ryan has filled in detail – speculating on dialogue and action, and altering timelines for dramatic effect. But the broad arc seems roughly faithful, detailing the daring lives of two racing drivers and one of their wives. A little bit of a slow burner, the book picks up pace, intrigue and emotional resonance as it progresses. Overall, an interesting and engaging read.

Review of Prussian Blue by Philip Kerr (Quercus, 2017)

1956. Bernie Gunther, former Berlin Kripo detective, is working as a concierge on the French Riviera. Gunther has a colourful past including working as a private investigator and for the upper echelons of the SD and SS; the latter under duress as he’s no Nazi. He’s also a wanted man for war crimes he didn’t commit. Ernst Mielke, the deputy head of the East German Stasi, wants Gunther to travel to Britain to murder a female agent that’s fallen out of favour. To make him compliant, Mielke’s brought along a small team led by Friedrich Korsch, an old Kripo colleague. Despite making the penalty for failing the mission clear, Bernie is reluctant to participate and loses his chaperones, making a break for West Germany. As he heads for the border, pursued by the Stasi and the French police who suspect him of a double murder, he recollects the last case he worked with his former Kripo colleague. That took place in early 1939 when he was asked by Martin Bormann and Reinhard Heydrich to investigate the shooting of a SS officer on the terrace of Hitler’s mountaintop retreat in Obersalzberg. Heydrich considers Gunther the best detective in Germany, and one not driven by political ideology. It’s unthinkable that a man can be killed on the Fuhrer’s terrace, especially a week before the leader’s fiftieth birthday, and Bormann gives Bernie one week to catch the killer or face dire consequences. Bernie soon discovers there are no shortage of suspects given the widespread corruption linked to the development in the area. The problem is identifying which snake in the grass is the murderer and to tread carefully enough that he doesn’t end up dead as well. However, full of methamphetamines to keep him at work night and day, Bernie has big feet and the drugs make him emboldened. 

Prussian Blue is the twelfth instalment of the Bernie Gunther series. As with the last few outings the story is split into related threads, one set in 1956, the other in 1939. In 1956 Bernie is on the run from the East Germany Stasi who want him to murder a rogue agent and the French police who want him for murder. While fleeing from the French Riviera towards West Germany, Bernie remembers the last case he worked with the man now in pursuit of him. That involved him searching for the murderer of a high-ranking SS officer serving at Hitler’s mountaintop retreat, conducting the investigation while trying to deal with several senior Nazis and widespread local corruption. As with the other tales, the undoubted draw of Prussian Blue is the acerbic, world weary lead character whose principles have slowly been eroded over the years, and the historical contextualisation. A bit like Forrest Gump, Bernie has a habit of rubbing shoulders with a range of high profile historical characters and real-world events. Both threads are engaging, but there’s an unevenness in the telling. The 1956 thread is quite linear and operates as a short story interleaved between episodes of the more developed, complex 1939 thread. In many ways the 1956 thread more acts as a framing for the 1939 story and a bridge to the next episode in Bernie’s tale, moving him back to Germany. While the 1939 tale is engaging and rich in historical detail it’s also somewhat drawn out, with quite a bit of unnecessary explication, and in my view would have benefitted from quite a bit of pruning. Overall, despite my quibbles, another enjoyable addition to the series.

Review of The Other Side of Silence by Philip Kerr (Quercus, 2016)

1956, Cote D’Azur.  An ex-kripo detective in pre-war Berlin, Bernie Gunther is now working as the concierge in the Grand Hotel du Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, spending his days helping guests and nights playing bridge or trying to drink his troubles away.  And Bernie has a habit of attracting or creating trouble.  When he spots an old foe, an ex-gestapo member and accomplished blackmailer, Harold Hebel, enter the hotel he senses the past might once again be about to come back and haunt him.  Not long after he’s asked by the novelist and former spy Somerset Maugham, who is residing locally, to be the intermediary in paying a sum of money for a compromising photograph.  Reluctantly, Bernie agrees wanting justice for past misdeeds but knowing that they’ll be much more to the sting operation if Hebel is involved.

The Other Side of Silence is the eleventh book in the Bernie Gunther series.  This one is mainly set in 1956 in the south of France, but shuttles back to Berlin in 1938 and Konigsberg in 1944/45 for brief interludes.  Bernie is his usual self-depreciating, world weary and sarcastic self, living a life where he unwittingly comes into contact with famous people and gets dragged into and implicated in key events.  In this case, he’s drawn into the world of Somerset Maugham and the Cambridge spies, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt, as well as recounting his link to the sinking of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff in 1945, in which around ten thousand people perished.  The central hook is Bernie being hired by Maugham to act as intermediary in a blackmail payment to an old foe and former gestapo member, the odious Harold Hebel.  It’s a nice setup and Kerr spins out an interesting tale, working in a femme fatale, a sinister twist, and a murder subplot.  At times, the pacing and plotting felt a little uneven, and the murder subplot was a bit of an unnecessary distraction, but there are plenty of really well-crafted scenes.  The denouement, in which Bernie creates a large lie to save himself while placing his head in another noose, is particularly nicely done.  As usual, Kerr draws a strong set of well realised characters and nicely situates the tale historically.  Overall, an enjoyable addition to the series that fills in more gaps in Bernie’s eventful life.

Review of Mr Midshipman Hornblower by C.S. Forester (1950)

1794 and seventeen year old Horatio Hornblower is starting his career in the British Navy.  Despite his reserved nature, clumsiness and naivety, Hornblower is bright, has an inner determination and does not want to be seen to be weak.  As such, he’s prepared to do his duty and to take calculated risks.  Not long after boarding his first ship and sick of being bullied he challenges a shipmate to a duel where only one pistol is loaded.  His brave but foolhardy tactic earns him a transfer to a larger war ship.  What follows is a series of adventures fighting the French and Spanish at sea and on land as Hornblower comes of age and works his way towards gaining promotion.

Mr Midshipman Hornblower was the first book chronologically in a series of eleven books charting the career of Horatio Hornblower as he worked his way up the career ladder in the British Navy and tussled with French and Spanish forces.  The book is written as a set of interlinked short stories, with each chapter telling the tale of a mini-adventure.  The tactic ensures an even, quick pace, that there is plenty of action, danger points, and critical decisions, and that the tale can span a handful of years.  It also ensures that it crosses over into young adult market.  Some of the tales are a little weak and underdeveloped, but what makes the book compelling is the character of Hornblower, who matures quickly, learning to take control and act bravely and honourably, but doesn’t lose his insecurities.  The result is an enjoyable adventure yarn.

Review of Murder in the Marais by Cara Black (Soho Press, 1999)

Paris-based Aimée Leduc and her business partner, Rene, specialise in technical investigations, hacking into systems to discover the truth.  After losing her father to a terrorist explosion she has vowed to avoid more traditional cases.  However, given their dire finances and the pleas of one her father’s oldest friends she takes on a case to discover the whereabouts of an elderly Jewish woman’s relatives deported fifty years previously.  When she arrives at the woman’s home in the Marais, the old Jewish quarter of Paris, she finds her dead with a swastika carved into her forehead.  Vowing to seek justice for the dead woman she is soon tangling with far-right neo-Nazis, trying to keep herself alive, and attempting to work out how the past has resurfaced with deadly effect in the present.

Murder in the Marais is the first instalment in the Aimée Leduc series, a sassy female PI operating in Paris.  The story very much fits into the mold of a crime thriller, with Leduc raising against time and fighting a set of baddies as she tries to determine who has killed an elderly Jewish woman.  The pace is high from the start, with a couple of intersecting plot lines concerning historical events during the war and relations between Jews, collaborators and Nazi officials, the return to Paris of one of those officials in his new role as a high-ranking German government trade delegate, and the politics and antics of present-day neo-Nazis.  Leduc careens through these threads, creating much havoc as she seeks to undo and quite happy to break the law in numerous ways for greater justice.  As long as one can suspend realist sensibilities with respect to the plot then it’s an engaging ride that leads to a suspenseful denouement – though the resolution was a little telegraphed.  I was happy enough to go along with the ride and enjoy Leduc’s brand of investigation. 

Review of Nazis in the Metro by Didier Daeninckx (Melville House, 2014)

On returning to Paris, the elderly Andre Sloga is brutally beaten in the underground car park beneath his apartment building and left for dead.  When private detective Gabriel Lecouvreur reads about the story in the newspaper the following morning he feels compelled to find out more.  Sloga had been a gifted but controversial writer who had drifted into obscurity as his books dropped out of print.  With Sloga clinging to life in hospital Lecouvreur tries to retrace his recent life to look for clues as to the perpetrators.  He discovers that Sloga was nearing completion of a new book, one that exposes a sordid and dangerous political underworld, and he sets out to determine who exactly attacked Sloga and to complete his work.

Didier Daeninckx has a reputation for being one of France’s most controversial crime fiction writers.  Nazis in the Metro is a relatively short tale (178 pages) that has a fairly linear plot which seems to more a vehicle for revealing the sordid political underbelly of modern France than performing a crime tale.  Although quite nicely told, my sense was that the plot was weak and truncated throughout and in particular fell apart somewhat at the end.  As such, while the substance was interesting and the character of Gabriel Lecouvreur appealing, the tale fell short of expectation and was ultimately a little disappointing.  This was a shame as Daeninckx clearly has something interesting and worthwhile to say about French society and its politics.

Review of All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye by Christopher Brookmyre (Abacus, 2005)

Jane and Alexis both had events in their teenage years that irrevocably changed their lives.  Whilst enjoying being a punk in Glasgow, Jane became pregnant, married and settled down to a boring married life.  In Canada, Alexis hacked into a classified site and ended up on the run in the South of France working for a shadowy high-tech, private security contractor who does lethal work for hire.  Now forty six and a grandmother, Jane still dreams of being a secret agent, going on dangerous adventures and playing in the casinos of Monte Carlo.  Alexis wants to give up fighting and killing baddies and to go to College.  Both are trapped in their respective lives.  But then Jane’s son Ross, a specialist in non-lethal weapons, disappears.  Alexis’ firm is hired to locate him and they soon form a partnership with Jane, who’s steely determination to track him down means she soon living her James Bond dreams.

Brookmyre’s tales are always good fun, invariably a thriller tale wrapped up in dark humour and spun out as an edgy comic caper.  So it is with All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye, which has a very nice hook about a dour Scottish housewife making a transformation into Lara Croft as a secret agent.  The set-up is very nicely done, as is the unfolding of the plot and the denouement, with the action sequences particularly well conveyed.  As usual, Brookmyre develops a colourful cast of characters, placing them a number of them slightly or fully out of place, and riffing on their interplay.  The result is humour is ever present, though rarely spills over into belly laughs.  The only downside is there is far too much explication and back story, with rambling long passages that added little but padding.  Some judicious editing would have added a little pace and verve.  Overall, an entertaining, well conceived, tongue-in-cheek thriller.

Review of Summertime, All the Cats are Bored by Philippe Georget (Europa Editions, 2013, French 2009)

It’s the height of summer in the French Mediterranean town of Perpignan.  A young Dutch woman is found bludgeoned to death on a beach and shortly afterwards another disappears in the city, along with a local taxi driver.  Inspectors Sebag and Molino are tasked with trying to locate their whereabouts.  Neither cop has much appetite for the case - they are hot, bored, distracted by family matters, and prone to extended breaks.  But Sebag used to be a good detective and he senses that there is more to the case than meets the eye.  When an attempt is made to snatch a third Dutch woman on her way home late at night the investigation shifts up a gear, with a hotshot from Paris seconded to the case.  In response, Sebag regains some of his old sparkle, determined to find the missing Dutch woman, but at the same time he’s worried about the fidelity of his wife and drifting apart from his kids.  He sacrificed his career to spend time with his family and just as he rediscovers his verve for the job they seem to be slipping away.  The life of a young woman though lies in the balance and that has to take precedent.

Summertime, All the Cats are Bored is a police procedural set over a few hot weeks of early summer in Southern France and the local police’s attempts to save a young woman who has been kidnapped and two murders.  The strength of the story is the sense of place and characterisation.  Georget firmly places the reader in the Perpignan region during tourist season and captures the team dynamics and interactions of the investigative team.  The narrative mostly focuses on Inspector Gilles Sebag, a cop who’s slipping into a midlife crisis as the case starts - he’s prioritised his family over his career, but now his teenage kids are making their own way in life and his wife is spending increasingly more time with friends and holidaying on her own and he suspects she’s having an affair, and his boss wants him to apply for promotion.  His basis of his sense of self seems to be on shifting ground and now he’s trying to deal with a case where the life of a young woman is under threat.  The intertwined scenarios of Sebag’s crisis and the perplexing investigation provide a nice hook and plot.  However, the telling unfolds at a too leisurely pace, with a little too much unnecessary explication.  The cats might be bored, but the reader veers towards that state a little too often until the final third of the book.  Overall, an interesting character study and investigative case that too often lacks pace and edge.

Review of The Panda Theory by Paschal Garnier (Gallic Books, 2012; French 2008)

Gabriel is something of a lost soul.  When he arrives in a small Breton town he quickly makes friends through small acts of kindness.  However, he’s somewhat of an enigma, revealing little about himself.  And whilst he’s outwardly friendly, he’s also haunted by his past.  To those who he befriends he’s something of a godsend, but they increasingly remind him of what he has lost and why is wandering from one place to the next.

The Panda Theory is a literary crime novella.  It charts a week in the life of Gabriel and the people he befriends - a small bistro owner whose wife is in a coma, a lonely hotel receptionist, and two down-and-out hotel guests.  Garnier’s narrative is quite loose, rather than being driven forward by a focused story arc -- a mix of observations and droll asides, interspersed with short flashbacks.  It’s a style that’s deceptively engaging, aided by some black humour.  There’s always a sense that things are not quite what they seem, but there’s no real sense of foreboding.  I found it a joy to read up until the last quarter.  At this point, the story turns through ninety degrees and becomes something else entirely.  This twist might work well for some, but to me did not ring true the plot or character and felt quite jarring.  Consequently I was bumped a little out of the story.  Nevertheless, The Panda Theory is an interesting and engaging read and I’d be interested to try some of Garnier’s other stories as I think he creates an interesting blend of literary style and crime fiction.

Review of Pietr the Latvian by Georges Simenon (1930, reprinted 2013, Penguin)

Detective Chief Inspector Maigret of the Parisian Flying Squad receives notice that the Pietr the Latvian, a notorious con artist is on his way to Paris.  He heads to the Gare du Nord to meet the train he is travelling on.  As the travellers disembark, Maigret thinks he’s spotted Pietr, but a commotion at a carriage reveals a man matching Pietr’s description shot dead in a toilet.  Maigret trails the first man to an upmarket hotel, where he has booked into a suite and is preparing to meet an American millionaire.  Meanwhile, an examination of the dead man’s possession points to a link to a coastal town.  Maigret travels there, identifying the dead man’s family, and spying a man who bears a strong resemblance to both the dead man and one resident in the hotel.  Returning to Paris, he steps up his observations on the hotel, hoping that the police presence will prompt who he believes is Pietr to make a mistake.  What it prompts is a second murder and a deadly game of cat and mouse.

Pietr the Latvian is the first book in Simenon’s famous series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, which ran for 75 novels and 28 short stories.  Maigret makes for an attractive lead character, with an assertive presence and tenacity in his pursuit of justice, pushing himself and prompting others into action and mistakes.  Simenon writes in a tight, all tell and no show fashion using a workmanlike prose, keeping the story moving at a fair clip, with little in the way of character development and no derivation from the essentials of the storyline.  Although the book is relatively short at 160 pages, quite a lot happens in its plot, which has enough feints and minor twists to keep the reader engaged, though its general arc is quite linear and telegraphed. And although the story was published in 1930, it does not feel too dated, other than Maigret trying to get warm by always stoking the stove in his room, partially because the story seems a little timeless and placeless.  Overall, an interesting and enjoyable start to the series.

Review of The Dark Angel by Dominique Sylvain (2004 French, 2013 Maclehose Press)

After leaving school Khadidja and Chloe work in Maxime Duschamp’s cafe, sharing their Parisian apartment with blond haired Vanessa.  Returning home one afternoon, Khadidja and Chloe discover Vanessa’s body minus her feet and half a million euros in cash.  Commissaire Jean-Pascal Grousset is assigned to the case.  Labelled the ‘garden gnome’ by his colleagues, he is arrogant and useless.  He initially focuses his attention on the two flatmates, convinced they murdered their friend.  Unhappy with his boss’ approach, Lieutenant Jérôme Barthélemy calls on his recently retired commissaire, Lola Jost, who lives nearby for advice.  When the gnome shifts his focus to the womanising Maxime Duschamp, whose wife was murdered twelve years before and whose case was never solved, Lola joins forces with American wanderer and masseur, Ingrid Diesel to try and discover who really killed Vanessa.  

The Dark Angel was originally published in French with the title ‘Passage du Désir’ in 2004.  The story teams up the elderly, overweight, crotchety and brilliant former commissaire Lola Jost, with the tall, athletic, impulsive and forthright American, Ingrid Diesel, who try to solve a local murder given the ineptitude of the assigned commissaire.  Lola and Ingrid make for an interesting double act, but whereas Lola is well developed and engaging, Ingrid is less well flashed out, lacking in personality and depth -- a colourful back story and striking physique is not the same as ‘aliveness’.  The result is a somewhat lopsided relationship.  Similarly, the other characters are a little flat and one-dimensional, especially Maxime, who did not come across as an attractive lothario.  The story itself is enjoyable enough, with a few action sequences and twists and some nicely observed scenes, as long as one is happy to accept that it is simply a vehicle for introducing Lola and Ingrid given the procedural elements are weak, the police are fools, the pair make some silly decisions for dramatic effect, and the resolution is somewhat contrived.  Overall, a mildly amusing and dark tale of love, jealousy and rage.

Review of Death in Bordeaux by Allan Massie (Quartet Books, 2010)

In the spring of 1940, an old family friend of Superintendent Lannes is found dead in an alley in Bordeaux.  The victim had clearly been tortured and mutilated.  Lannes starts to investigate, suspecting that the man had been murdered not because of his sexuality but for political reasons.  The phoney war is holding, politicians are posturing, and he is soon warned to drop the case.  Lannes, however, is unwilling to fully let go, continuing to probe, all the while worrying about his son who has been drafted into the army and is positioned facing the Germans.  In the meantime, he investigates hate mail sent to a prominent Bordeaux family, headed by a callous patriarch.  As France falls and a new government is put in place, Lannes has to adjust to working in a police force collaborating with the enemy.  He still hasn’t let the original case drop, but pursuing it becomes increasingly dangerous and he has to contemplate letting justice slide to avoid becoming a victim himself; a compromise he has difficulty coming to terms with.

The premise of Death in Bordeaux - a cop constrained by circumstance - is an interesting one.  Massie manages to keep the uncertainty and concessions working until the last page, but the tension is undermined somewhat by a fairly long-winded narrative, pedestrian pace, and the contrived nature of the plot concerning de Grimaud family.  Lannes is an interesting enough cop, dogged and reflective, who worries for the safety of his family, and feels increasingly at sea in the new political terrain, and the characterisation in general is nicely done.  And there is a good sense of place and historical contextualisation.  However, I never really connected with the story, which felt ponderous and flat.  Overall, a run of the mill, historical police procedural.

Review of Bed of Nails by Antonin Varenne (MacLehose, 2012, French 2009)

Shunned by his colleagues for investigating a fellow police officer who seemingly committed suicide, Lieutenant Guérin has somewhat ironically been reassigned to deal with suicides in Paris.  His sidekick is the naive and jumpy, Lambert, who slides in and out of daydreams.  The socially awkward and intelligent Guérin was on the fast track before it took a sharp turn into a dead-end.  Now he lives in his dead mother’s apartment, accompanied by her aging parrot who heckles him, and quietly continues to investigate his colleague’s death, convinced he was murdered.  In fact, his over-active brain is constantly searching for connections and patterns in the city’s suicides, convinced that there is more going on.  One of those cases is Alan Musgrave, an American ex-soldier who suffers from post-traumatic stress and expresses his conflicted emotions through drugs and his fakir show (piercing himself with needles and hooks).  Like Guérin, Musgrave’s reclusive friend and former therapist, John Nichols, thinks that there might have been foul play and starts to investigate, aware that the US authorities would prefer if he did nothing.  Guérin and Nichols start to work the case from different ends, both seeing it as part of a larger but different conspiracy.

Bed of Nails is somewhat of a curious book - a police procedural that doesn’t easily fit the genre, with a misfit, and at times almost cartoonish, lead character.  The plot is quite complex, weaving together different strands, which veers towards being opaque on occasion; it not always clear quite how Guérin is fitting his clues together or what exactly is going on.  As a result, the first half of the book was interesting, but was not compelling.  In the second half, the narrative becomes more engaging, and in the last quarter shifted gear into a different register which recast the whole story.  The closing pages in particular were an emotional rollercoaster as Varenne provides a thoroughly noir ending to the story; one that opened up a number of questions about morality and just rewards.  Overall, a dark, quirky tale that progressively became more gripping, noirish and philosophical. 

Review of Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie (1935, Hamlyn)

Hercule Poirot is flying from Paris to London.  In the same section of the plane are ten fellow passengers - a Parisian lady, a countess and her friend, a businessman, a dentist, a hairdresser who has won the Irish sweepstakes, a Harley Street doctor, father and son archaeologists, and a detective author - who are served by two stewards.  As they near the airport at Croyden, one of the stewards tries to wake the Parisian lady, Madame Giselle, only to discover that she is dead.  At first it appears that she has died of a reaction to a wasp sting, but the ever observant Poirot finds at her feet a small blowpipe dart disguised as a wasp.  The puzzling questions are who killed her and how were they not observed doing it given that none of the passengers witnessed another using a blowpipe?  On landing Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard is on hand to investigate.  It soon transpires that Madame Giselle was a wealthy moneylender who profited from making loans to selected individuals and made sure they paid by holding damaging information about them, and her will leaves her fortune to the daughter she gave away at birth.  Whilst Japp flounders, Poirot uncovers some fairly clear links between some of the passengers and Madame Giselle, though others appear to have no connection or motive for her death.  Through careful deduction he slowly pieces together what happened on the plane before denouncing the culprit.

Death in the Clouds is a classic locked room mystery - a murder is committed in a space occupied by thirteen people, yet no-one witnesses the crime and all of them could conceivably have a motive for the death.  Christie excels at creating such puzzles and telling them in an engaging, often witty voice, that is all show and no tell.  The secret is clever plotting that slowly reveals how various elements of the murder were committed and why, but which keep as many suspects in the frame as possible until a final denouement whilst feeding the reader red herrings and leading them down false paths as they try to determine the killer’s identity.  Her telling is aided by well drawn characterization, especially Poirot and Japp, and some nice observational touches that keep matters plausible.  There are two weaknesses to her style of storytelling, however, both evident in Death in the Clouds.  First, the story is all about the puzzle and rarely do they open up wider reflective questions for the reader.  The effect is a tale that is intriguing but which lacks contemplative depth.  Second, it is almost impossible for the reader to deduce the identity of the murderer before the denouement as some crucial clues are held back and often they are quite outlandish.  Nevertheless, Death in the Clouds is an enjoyable read and Poirot is a delight.