REVIEWS

THE MYSTERY OF A HANSOM CAB . . . Between the covers

Fergus Hume’s 1886 novel is rightly regarded as one of the building blocks of crime fiction.To put it into some kind of chronological context. Emile Gaboriau published Monsieur Lecoq in 1867, The Moonstone appeared in 1868, while A Study In Scarlet came out in 1887.

The story begins simply enough. It is the small hours of the morning in 1880s Melbourne. A cab driver sees two men, dressed in evening clothes. One appears to be very drunk. The sober man puts his drunken companion into the cab and walks away. The drunk is trying to explain to the cabbie that he needs to go to St Kilda, a suburb near the sea. Just then the sober man returns, and tells the driver to take them to St Kilda. About half way there, the sober man tells the cabbie to stop. He says that he will walk back into the city, but that his drunken friend will let the driver know where to drop him off. The cabbie continues for a while but, hearing nothing from the passenger, stops to check. The man is dead, a handkerchief soaked in chloroform across his face. The cabbie turns around and heads for the city police station.

Mr Gorby, the police detective investigating the crime, soon has the case cracked. The dead man is Oliver Whyte. His companion in the cab was, apparently, Brian Fitzgerald. The men were rivals in love, the lady in question being Madge Frettlby, the daughter of a rich businessman. Fitzgerald appears to be the only possible suspect, and he is arrested.

Awaiting trial, Fitzgerald frustrates his expensive lawyer by stating yes, he did meet Whyte and put him in the cab, then walked away but, crucially, did not return. We then have perhaps the earliest use of what has become a tried and trusted crime fiction trope – that of the suspect who has a genuine alibi, but dare not reveal it because of the dishonour it would bring down on someone else. Perhaps we could call this The Gentleman’s Dilemma.

Fitzgerald claims that a woman delivered a written message to him at his club, after he had left Whyte with the cabbie. The message implored him to visit a dying woman in a gin den in an alley off Little Bourke Street. The messenger was one Sal Rawlins who has since disappeared, being last heard of traveling to Sydney with a Chinaman. After a hefty reward is offered Sal is found and testifies, thus establishing Fitzgerald’s alibi. But who was the dying woman, and why did she need to use her final moments to talk to Fitzgerald? Hume’s solution is both neat and daring.

The book is certainly ‘of its time’ in some ways. One of the conventions of the day was that words spoken by ‘the menials’ – working class or peasant characters – were heavily phoneticised, so that no missing final ‘g’ in words ending in ‘ing’ or any missing ‘h’ at the beginning of ‘he’, ‘has’ or ‘home’ goes unpunished.

Imagined as a screenplay, TMOAHC is magnificently melodramatic, with enough betrayal, dark secrets, swooning, hands clasped to fevered brows and tarnished virtue to set Victorian (in both senses of the word) pulses racing. It is cleverly done, however, and the true identity of the killer is only revealed in the last few pages. Hume, towards the end, devotes several pages to the theme that we mortals are little more than chess pieces being moved about the board for their own amusement by the ‘Immortals’ of Greek myth. Just five years later, in 1891, Thomas Hardy was to end Tess of the d’Urbervilles with the same bitter thoughts.

Hume was forced to self – publish the first edition of this novel, but sales gathered pace thereafter, and it has been endlessly reprinted. In his preface to this edition Hume reveals that prior to publication he made several changes, including the identity of the killer. He also tells us that he sold the rights to the novel to a group of speculators, no doubt for a tidy sum, but in doing so cut himself off from later profits. He regarded himself as, first and foremost, a New Zealander. His parents moved from England to New Zealand when he was very young, and it was there that he was educated and graduated as a barrister. He then moved to Australia for a few years, but eventually returned to England, where he died in 1932 at the age of 73. If you click the image below, it will take you to Project Gutenberg where you can download a free digital copy.

December 26, 2024 0

THE DISAPPEARANCE . . . Between the covers

At the heart of this excellent legal thriller is the conundrum of how it is that the legal team defending seriously evil people can do their job. The novel is set in Poland, but we can look at notorious cases in the UK. Brady and Hindley, Shipman, Dennis Nilsen, Dale Cregan – each had lawyers and barristers fighting their corner in the courts, and trying their best to convince the jury that their clients were innocent. The fact is that the legal teams are taught not to believe or disbelieve what their clients are saying. They have one job, and one job only, and that is to use every skill at their disposal to present the available evidence to the court as persuasively as possible. It is not in their remit to search for ‘the truth’. That is real life, of course, but in crime novels, lawyers regularly break away from witness statements and points of law to go ‘into the field.

Joanna Chylka, senior member of a top Warsaw law firm, is called by an old acquaintance from younger days, Angelika Slezyngier. Joanna is solitary, abrasive, and abrupt. She has few friends, and Angelika is certainly not numbered among them. Angelina’s three year-old daughter has been abducted from the lakeside house, near the border with Latvia and Belorus, and the police have decided that Angelika and her businessman husband, Awit, are responsible.

To the police, the case has all the elements of a locked room mystery. Awit says he set the alarm, covering most of the windows and doors, but not the skylights, at 7.00 pm, when (they say) Nikola was safely in bed. No alarms were triggered, and there is no sign of a break-in, but the little girl is gone. An elderly man, Antoni Ekiel, who lives near the Slezingier house. tells Joanna that he saw Awit walking away with Nikola on the night of her disappearance.

When Joanna and her trainee, a young man called Kordian Orynsk, arrive at the scene, they are confronted with a complete lack of evidence. The house has an extensive alarm system covering all the doors and windows, and it seems a physical impossibility for the toddler to have been taken away through one of the skylights.

Kordian is younger and has fewer battle honours than his senior partner. He is inclined to believe what Angelika and Awit are saying, but Joanna keeps insisting that what he believes is irrelevant. Their job is to convince the court that the Slezyngiers are not involved in their daughter’s disappearance.

Mróz gives us few clues about Joanna’s age or appearance. We are left to assume that she is perhaps in her late 30s, and still very attractive, as she turns heads whenever she and Kordian go into a bar or a restaurant. Her treatment of Kordian is little short of cruel. She is sarcastic, constantly critical of his opinions and judgments, and scathing about his lifestyle choices. She is firmly in the red meat camp, while Kordian is edging towards vegetables or – if he wants to indulge – ethically sourced fish.

The case comes to court, and Angelika makes a statement which turns the case on its head, compels her to employ a different legal team, and puts Awit in the line of fire. When Joanna is involved in a serious road accident, and barely escapes with her life, Kordian has to follow his instincts while Joanna is in intensive care fighting for her life.

In the end, the initial instincts of Joanna and Kordian prove to be wide of the mark, as the fate of Nikola Slezyngier is revealed. The court scenes are intense, and the Polish landscape is a memorable background to this tense and nervy thriller. Disappearance was translated by Joanna Saunders, published by Zaffre Books, and is available now.

December 10, 2024 0

DEAD SWEET . . . Between the covers

A well-connected Reykjavik civil servant and former politician fails to turn up to his 50th birthday party. The body of Óttar Karlsson is later found on an isolated beach. He had been beaten, and has died of his wounds. Police detective Sigurdís Höllódottir is part of the investigative team. She has just returned to duty after being reprimanded for over-enthusiastically restraining a young man who was beating up his girlfriend. Sigurdís’s intolerance of such behaviour is rooted in her own traumatic childhood, where her father was a serial abuser. After he served a prison term for a serious assault on her younger brother, Einar he disappeared. The family hope he is gone for good but Einar receives a message on Facebook. It seems that his father is working on a farm in Denmark, and is using the name Daniel Christensen but, much worse, he is determined to return to Iceland.

There is another strand concerning the reappearance of Sigurdís’s father. The violent evening where he nearly killed Einar was the culmination of years of abuse melted out to his wife. He was a serving police officer and his colleagues, including Sigurgeirsson, knew perfectly well what was going on – and they did nothing. Now, however, Sigurgeirsson is determined to redeem himself by monitoring the man very closely, if and when he returns to Reykjavik.

The search for Karlsson’s killer opens up the proverbial can of worms, as it becomes obvious that the dead man had many secrets, not the least of which is his time in America as a young man, and his involvement with a mysterious cult and its charismatic leader.

To say the denouemont is unexpected would be an understatement. The author cleverly leads us away from the truth page by page and red herring by red herring. Neither Sigurdís or her boss Garđar Sigurgeirsson really come near the truth until Sigurdís makes a trip to Minnesota, on the pretext of taking a week’s leave, and hears the real history of Óttar’s time in America.

Sigurdís’s primal fear of her father’s reappearance starts off as side issue, but the consequences of his return to Iceland are explained in the final two pages, and strongly hint that there may be a sequel. Dead Sweet is an excellent debut novel by Katrín Júlíusdóttir who is a former politician herself, having held the position of Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs of Iceland. This experience undoubtedly adds authenticity to the pacy narrative. Dead Sweet is translated by Quentin Bates, published by Orenda books and is available now.

December 10, 2024 1

PAST REDEMPTION . . . Between the covers

The new Aector McAvoy novel by David Mark begins with a bloodbath. A man is being literally ripped to pieces with the savagery torturers used to flay saints in medieval times. Just as it seems the victim is done for, someone comes to his rescue, in the shape of a small but fierce woman. We soon learn that the tortured man is Decland Parfitt who would, after he made an almost miraculous recovery, be jailed for child sexual abuse. His rescuer? Aector McAvoy’s long time boss, the formidable Chief Detective Superintendent Trish Pharaoh.

The story actually begins with a man driving in the pouring rain along a remote minor road in East Yorkshire. The driver, a man named Joe, is getting an ear-bashing from his ex-wife – who is on speaker phone – over the way he has let their daughter down. Distracted by her tirade and with the windscreen misting up, he feels a large bang, and knows he has hit something. When he gets out of the car he sees what appears to be a large black bag lying in the road. Rapidly calculating that there will be no cameras nearby, he gets back in the car and drives off. The bag is later found to contain a body – that of John Dennic, jailed for a savage assault on a police officer, and an acquaintance of Parfitt in prison. Dennic had been on day release when he went missing.

Parfitt was an arch-deceiver. He brought fun and laughter to countless youngsters across the region as a children’s entertainer. Dressed rather like Lofty in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, he was everyone’s favourite uncle, with his jokes, his performing animals and his sunny disposition. He was a single man, but that rang no alarm bells with the local authorities when he applied to be a foster parent to two damaged sisters. Incredibly, his request was granted. One of the girls, Gaynor, suffered such abuse at his hands, that she later committed suicide. Younger sister Ruby, however, adored her foster dad and swore on oath that Gaynor was in a state of drug induced delusion.

Trish Pharaoh has two major problems to deal with and, by definition, they become McAvoy’s too. It seems that the prison authorities are determined to release Parfitt from prison, and Pharaoh needs to stop this. Second, she needs to disturb Ruby’s deep conviction that her foster father is a decent man who was wrongly convicted. Pharaoh is also convinced that Parfitt was also responsible for the abduction and murder of at least two girls, whose bodies have never been found.

The cast of villains in many of David Mark’s novels resemble the creations of the great Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. Bosch was obsessed with the darker side of humanity, and if you take a magnifying glass to his paintings, you can see tormented individuals, scurrying this way and that in the hellish landscape in which the painter has placed them. Bosch painted a figurative mouth of Hell, a gaping maw into which humans are sucked. Mark’s villains, such as Parfitt and Dennic are consumed by a metaphorical hell created from their own misdeeds. This is dark stuff, and not for the cosy crime community. Past Redemption is, however a fierce and gripping tale of evil deeds committed against the grey and dreary background of a city once vibrant with the noise and smells of its fishing industry, but now reduced to a backwater trying to celebrate what it once was.

The novel plays out with dramatic revelations of people who have pretended to be one thing, but were something else entirely. It is no coincidence that the man who nearly killed Parfitt, and may have killed Dennic has the nickname Virgil. David Mark himself plays Dante’s Virgil, as he leads us through Purgatory and Hell, contrasting his monstrous villains with McAvoy who, although, a physical giant, is gentle, endearingly clumsy, but fiercely brave. Past Redemption is a magnificent reminder that the English Noir genre, pioneered by Ted Lewis and Derek Raymond, is alive and kicking. The novel is published by Severn House and will be available on 3rd December.

December 2, 2024 0

NIGHT AND DAY . . . Between the covers

This is a collection of macabre tales from the creator of PI Charlie Parker, the private investigator from Portland, Maine. As fans of that series will testify, Parker is no stranger to the paranormal and the deadly creatures it allows into the human realm. Here, John Connolly presents a variety of supernatural experiences, ranging from the whimsical, through science fiction to extreme terror.

The Pilgrim’s Progress: A Tale of The Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository

Here, we learn the origin of one of the strangest libraries in the world. Its stock consists solely of first editions of great novels, each of which has been presented to the collection by someone (dressed as, if you are sceptical) one of its characters, shortly after the author’s death. We are in the precincts of Westminster Abbey in the fifteenth century, and in the company of William Caxton and his apprentice Wynkyn de Worde. The building they rent from the monastery contains the printing press that has recently produced the first bound copy of The Canterbury Tales. They are astonished when, one fine day, who should turn up on their doorstep but the Knight, the Miller, the Wife of Bath, the Nun’s Priest and the Summoner? What follows stretches Caxton’s credulity to its limits, and raises the interesting problem that, should he print a version of the New Testament, would it trigger The Second Coming?

And All the Graves of All the Ghosts

In this poignant story, Connolly gives us a perfectly normal family who move into an old house, and soon discover that there is ‘a presence’. In a corner of one of the rooms, it is always cold. There is a mysterious draught and, very soon, a misty shape begins to manifest itself. The shape eventually becomes more solid, and the young woman it resembles is clearly in mortal terror of something she has discovered on the floor at her feet. This phantom causes the family to disintegrate, and the narrator is left, more in tune with the nameless spectre than with his real-life family.

Evenings With Evans

Ghosts and phantoms are meant to be malevolent and spiteful, determined only to avenge wrongs inflicted on them when they were corporeal, they can also be benign. Here, a man is driving his car, his family alongside him, when he instinctively swerves to avoid a fox. The car crashes, fatally injuring his wife, son and daughter. Living alone in the old house they shared, he vows to find – and shoot – the distinctly marked fox that he blames for the death of his family. As his obsession grows ever more fierce, he is distracted by bizarre happenings in his ancient wine cellar. He sees flickering candlelight and, when he investigates, he finds a table set out with a wine glass, and a bottle of his very decent claret. This plays our beautifully, and Connolly suggests to us that death is not the end, and reunion with those we have loved and lost is not impossible.

Abelman’s Line

This a strange one, and no mistake. I had to use the ‘back button’ several times to clarify in my mind what was going on. It is what could be called science fantasy. We have a group of scientists, sometime in the not too distant future. They have devised a device that can warp physical time, and basically create parallel time lines for people they choose as subjects. Perhaps ‘targets’ is a better word, because the physicists are all Jewish. They take Nazi war criminals who are now long dead, but have evaded justice to die in relatively peaceful old age, often somewhere in South America. Put simply, the scientists ‘rewind the tape’ (to use an analogue term) of the Nazis’ lives, and then cause something deeply unpleasant – and terminal – to happen to them before they can pass away in their sleep in, say, a Chilean care home. I have to add the rider that I think that was what was going on. Readers with other ideas, please feel free to get in touch!

The Mire at Fox Tor

Connolly is very much in traditional ghost story mode here. We have the familiar trope of two men dining together, and one has a tale to tell. These fellows only ever have surnames, and they are usually bachelors with a public school or military background. Tenley, is one such, and an austere sort of chap who used to go on long hikes across hills and moors. He had been determined to navigate the dangerous Fox Tor Mire on Dartmoor. I instantly thought of Grimpen Mire in the classic Hound of the Baskervilles, but Fox Tor Mire conceals terrors even worse the Conan Doyle’s spectral dog. As Tenley strides across the morass, stepping from tuft to tuft, a mist descends, and he loses his sense of direction. His compass work has been honed to perfection, but now the needle seems to swing this way and that, leaving him totally disoriented. When a little boy appears out of the miasma, his troubles are only just beginning.

The Bear

This is a whimsical little story which has a deep vein of sadness and an ineffable sense of loss. I think it works as an allegory, rather an account of literal events. We are in Ireland, with a mother and her two young boys. Their father is no longer part of the family, and so the woman and her sons have taken a holiday cottage in North Kerry. While the mother is away shopping, a bear appears. The lovely illustrations by PJ Lynch show that this isn’t a wild beast, but more of a Pooh or Paddington. What happens when the mother returns changes the mood altogether.

The Flaw

This is probably my favourite story in this collection, because it is pure MR James. Did you ever read his tale The Mezzotint? It describes a museum curator who receives a mysterious print, which begins to change, and shows a rather nasty figure bit by bit abducting a child from a house. In Connolly’s version, a man buys a painting of some ancient standing stones. The character, Hayden, has inherited a cottage, and from his bedroom window, he can actually see the stones, known as The Five Good Children. What happens next is deeply disturbing, but I strongly suggest that you buy or borrow the book and find out for yourself.

Unquiet Slumbers

This is as charming a short story as I have ever read, but it is hard not to give the game away with spoilers. We are back in The Caxton Library. Remember, its unique way of sourcing books is that when author dies, a copy of their most famous work is left on the library’s doorstep, usually accompanied by the main character from the book. For no other reason than it is a deeply spiritual place the library has relocated to be in the sacred shadow of Ely Cathedral, with its mighty tower and unique Octagon. The librarian, a Mr Hanna, is peeved that someone has broken a window trying to get in. He repairs it, but when it happens a second time, he is astonished to see that he has a visitor. If I tell you that the year is 1848, and you have an amazing song written by an 18 year-old woman in 1978 running through your head, you might guess the identity of Mr Hanna’s visitor.

Our Friend Carlton

From Victorian Cambridgeshire we move to modern day New Jersey and a trio of crooks. We never learn the narrator’s name, but the other two are Stanhope and Carlton. Carlton has become something of a liability, as in terms of money belonging to some deeply unpleasant people, he has adopted a very loose understanding of the old Latin phrase, meum et teum. So he has to die. The trio go to the depths of Wharton State forest, ostensibly for a leisurely stroll, and Stanhope puts a .22 hollow point into Carlton’s skull, and they bury the corpse. Sadly, that is not the end of the matter.
“Stanhope couldn’t understand why our friend Carlton wouldn’t, or couldn’t, accept that he was dead and do what dead people did, which was stay that way.”

What we have here is a collection of stories written over the years by John Connolly, each commissioned differently, as he explains at the end of the book. Perhaps this explains the dramatic variety in moods, textures and themes of the tales. What is astonishing is that here is a writer skilled enough to shape-shift in style subject matter and tone, without compromising quality. Published by Hodder and Stoughton, Night and Day is available now.

THESE NINE STORIES TAKE UP JUST OVER HALF THE BOOK.
THE FINAL STORY, HORROR EXPRESS, IS NOVELLA LENGTH,
SO I WILL REVIEW IT SEPARATELY.

November 28, 2024 0

A KILLING IN NOVEMBER . . . Between the covers

Somehow, I missed this first time round, but reviewed books two and three in this excellent series but Simon Mason. In Ryan Wilkins and Ray Wilkins we met one a rather unusual cop partnership. Ryan is something of a chav, scruffily dressed and with a huge chip on his shoulder. He is, however, very astute. Equally clever, but much more an establishment man, despite his ethnic origin, is black officer Ray. He is a family man, suave and well spoken, and clearly destined for higher things. Their beat is Oxford.

The contrast between the Oxford educated Ray and Ryan, graduate of a seedy South Oxford caravan site (trailer park for American readers) couldn’t be greater. Simon Mason chooses a superb location for their first professional engagement. Barnabus College is where a young woman has been found strangled in the rooms of the college Provost. Ray is all diplomacy and respect, while Ryan, much the more observant, needles the well-to-do members of the college by refusing to grovel at the altar of their social and academic status. It is eventually confirmed that the dead is Syrian, from a wealth family, but due to the political situation, has been forced to earn a living as a porn model. Working as a domestic servant in the college is Ameena Najib, also from Syria, but from a very different background. She is a devout and militant Muslim, and when she is found dead, also strangled, the mystery deepens.

In the background to this murder investigation is civil unrest in the Oxford district of Blackbird Leys. A child has died after being hit by a police car, and protests are violent and bloody. The Leys is a real place, and is a superb example of urban planners concocting idyllic rural names for dire housing estates. I was at Teacher Training College nearby and, trust me, if it was announced the Leys was where you were sent for Teaching Practice, you were not happy.

Simon Mason lets us know, in one of the most scary scenes in the book, why Ryan is so disturbed. Ryan’s wife Michelle died of a drug overdose, leaving him to bring up their little son, also called Ryan. When Ryan senior fails to collect the lad from nursery, the staff phoned one of the contact numbers – that of the little boy’s grandparents. Bad call. They are a disaster. Grandma is, literally, bruised and battered by her feral husband, and when Ryan and Ray break into the shabby caravan on the grim site in South Oxford to rescue the child, all hell breaks loose.

Ryan’s propensity for violence, his unwillingness to ‘play the game’, and his chaotic personal life make it inevitable that he is dismissed from the force. However, his sharp insight into what makes people tick combined with his intuition, enable him to solve the mystery. Ray, despite his initial horror at Ryan’s manner and attitude, keeps the phone line open with his former colleague, and the Barnabus killer is brought to justice.

This is a wonderful read, and I finished it in just a few sessions. My only quibble is that Ryan Wilkins is such an outrageously out-of-kilter character, dressed in his trackies, trainers and baseball cap (back to front, naturally) that it is hard to imagine him making senior rank in the modern police force, which is notorious for signing up to all the latest DEI fads, and renowned for its many acts that seem woker than woke. Simon Mason has created a brilliant – and unique – member of the Cri-Fi Detective Inspector union, and any crime enthusiast who doesn’t enjoy this needs to collect their hat and make for the nearest exit. A Killing In November is published by Riverrun, and is available now.

November 28, 2024 0

THE WICKED OF THE EARTH . . . Between the covers

I live in what could be called Cromwell Country. Oliver’s former house in nearby Ely is a tourist attraction, and he is well commemorated in Huntingdon. Was he a Great Englishman? He was certainly an excellent military commander and a successful politician, but I find him hard to warm to. This novel takes us back to the England of 1650. The Civil Wars were over, the King was dead, but the peace was deeply uneasy.

The political situation in 1650 was complex. The country was ruled by the Council of State, a group of forty or so senior politicians who held supreme executive power. It would be another three years before Oliver Cromwell became Head of State, styling himself as Lord Protector. The most significant former Royalists were businessmen and merchants. Their riches and commercial acumen were essential for the country to regain some form of equilibrium after the turmoil of the war years irrespective of their having backed the losing side.

James Archer, a native of Newcastle, is something of a contradiction. He made himself locally notorious by breaking away from his Royalist roots and signing up to fight for Parliament. Although still in his twenties, he has seen – and participated in – great violence, including Cromwell’s barbaric campaign in Ireland. He is sent back to his home town by the Council of State, ostensibly to check that the former King’s men who ran the vital mining and shipping of coal were playing by the rules.

Archer’s subsidiary mission is to investigate the findings of the now infamous Newcastle Witch trials, which took place in 1649 and 1650. The deaths of these women are only of procedural interest to the Council, but Archer certainly has a dog in the fight, as his sister Meg was one of the accused.

What made me distinctly uncomfortable in Bergin’s narrative is his reminder that a society dominated and swayed by hellfire preaching and scriptural quotes is a deeply unstable one. Archer observes the Newcastle town-folk, crowded on the benches of St Nicholas Church, quaking as Dr. Jenison, “so skeletally angular that it appeared he was already half way to the grave,” spits out his sectarian venom, and his demeaning view of the place of women in society. Thank goodness we have no places of worship in Britain where this still goes on. Oh, wait….

After a series of violent encounters, Archer becomes the victim of a conspiracy involving the Great and The Good of Newcastle’s commercial and political world, and he resolves to abandon the town, and head north into the countryisde to search for his sister. As the bruised and battered Archer ventures into border country, he notices something.
“…no men were to be seen. The old had died in the hard winters, the young not yet returned from the wars.”

It is in the Teeside village of Norham that Archer finally earns the truth about his sister, and Bergin has created a masterly ironic twist that is worthy of Thomas Hardy. There is so much to admire in this novel, but one or two things stand out. The fight scenes – and there are several – are superbly described, and the reader can almost hear the clash of steel, and smell the sweat and blood of the participants. Bergin’s historical research is immaculate, as befits a Cambridge history graduate, and his portrayal of the dark and foetid alleys of 17th century Newcastle is vivid and memorable. Published by Northodox Press, this fine novel is available now.

November 22, 2024 0

FLOWERS FROM THE BLACK SEA . . . Between the covers

Revenge thrillers come in many shapes and sizes, and Flowers From The Black Sea by AB Decker (left) begins with the main character, a barely competent English security consultant called Matt Quillan travelling to end-of-season Turkey on an all-expenses-paid favour for his old university chum Ben Braithwaite. Quillan’s task appears relatively simple, and it is to locate the whereabouts of a man called Ahmet Karadeniz, last known of in the vicinity of Karakent, a small town on the south coast. Any job is a job as far as Quillan is concerned, and so he fetches up in Karakent and starts to ask questions. However, on his bus journey from Istanbul he meets a mysterious stranger called Rekan, who gives him a USB flash drive for sage keeping. Anyone with a grain of sense would probably have refused, but Quillan takes it, and when the bus is stopped by the police, and Rekan is taken into custody, our man begins to wonder.

After being questioned by the police Quillan is allowed to continue his journey, and soon makes the acquaintance of a local English estate agent, Pearl, and then her sister Amber, who is in town for her annual holiday. Eventually Quillan learns why he has been sent to Turkey. Ben’s sister Peggy married Karadeniz but died in circumstances which were, from a distance, highly suspicious although, according to Muslim custom, Peggy was interred very quickly, and autopsy was ever carried out.

Having reported back to Ben via phone, Quillan is surprised when his wealthy friend arrives in Karakent, aboard his luxury yacht. Quillan is, perhaps, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and he is persuaded to stay around while Ben exacts revenge for the untimely death of his sister.

The matter of the flash drive and what it contains is central to the plot. I haven’t been to Turkey since the 1970s, and I won’t pretend that it was an altogether pleasant experience. Yes, countless British holidaymakers go to tourist resorts these days and experience nothing but enjoyment, but these places are pretty much gated off from the real Turkey. Back in the day, we were ‘hippy’ travellers with little cash and, shall we say, we had our moments. Today, Turkey is pretty much an autocracy, and its treatment of minorities such as Kurds and Armenians is often in the news.

This novel is not a sermon about the shortcomings of Muslim societies, but it reference the mistreatment of women in what is predominantly a patriarchal society, by any Western standards. I suppose, aside of the dramatic plot, Decker is simply reasserting what we have known for centuries. Turkey is very much a ‘twixt and between’ place, never sure if it belongs to the urbane West or the visceral certainties of the East.

Long story short, Ben and Matt are captured by gangsters, Ben’s yacht is seized and run aground but, thanks to an intrepid Kurdish nationalist called Leila, the mysterious contents of Rekan’s USB drive, all’s well that ends well. Except it isn’t. Literally in the last paragraph, we have an act of violence that redefines the nature of revenge. Decker has written a convincing and engaging thriller which captures the sense of menace and political uncertainty in a complex country. Published by The Book Guild, it is available now.

November 20, 2024 1

VICTIM . . . Between the covers

Former Oslo police officer Alexander Blix is trying to put his life back together after serving a spell in prison for killing the man who murdered his daughter Iselin. There was eventually a retrial, and he was acquitted and released. He is doing nothing in particular, while he waits for the full compensation package to come through from the government. He knows he can no longer work as a policeman, but then his world is turned upside down. Back in the day, his most significant failed investigation was the disappearance of Elisabeth Eie, a young mother. The whereabouts of her body, if indeed she was killed – and the identity of the person who abducted her – remain a mystery. Then, out of the blue, he is contacted by a man who claims to be Elisabeth’s killer. Almost simultaneously, a party of school children out on a forest nature walk discover a body. It is that of Elisabeth.

Blix has few friends, but one is investigative journalist Emma Ramm, with whom he has co-operated on previous cases. She, too, is no longer working, but living on the proceeds of a true crime book she wrote. She is approached by a young woman called Carmen who asks for her help. Carmen’s stepfather, Oliver Krogh is in police custody, suspected of the murder of a young woman – Maria Normann – who worked in his fishing and hunting store, which was destroyed in a mysterious blaze. The only sign of Maria, however, was traces of her blood on the door of one of Krogh’s gun cabinets. Carmen is convinced that Krogh, the only father she has ever known, is incapable of murder.

Blix’s relationship with his former colleagues is, at best fraught, and he is kept at arm’s length as the disappearance of Elisabeth Eie becomes a murder case. The killer seems to be fixated with Blix, however, and has invaded his personal space. here are many brilliant moments in this novel, but one stands out. In order to keep himself vaguely sane, Blix makes fishing flies. It is a process that requires delicacy of touch and a great deal of patience. One particular fly has been very testing, and he has left it unfinished while summoning up the mental energy to have another go.

“He stepped aside and moved over to the bench. A cold shiver ran through him. The fly was finished.“

It is obvious that Blix has a stalker, and one who has the keys to his apartment.

The past weighs heavy on Blix. His mother had Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy, and kept him constantly unwell by lacing his food with debilitating drugs. After she died of cancer he walked away from his neglectful father and went to live with his grandparents. His father is still alive, but in the later stages of dementia in a nursing home. Eventually, we learn who Blix’s stalker is, and that he had a similarly traumatic upbringing.

Emma finds out how and why Maria Normann died, and there is a dramatic face-off between Brix and his tormentor. Co-authors Thomas Enger and Jørn Lier Horst have captured the ambience of a bleakly autumnal Oslo, and have written a dramatic and atmospheric thriller, with two investigators who are perfect foils for each other. The novel is translated by Megan Turney, published by Orenda Books and is available now.