Showing my age

I finished Henning Mankell's The Man Who Smiled just in time to watch it this Sunday on Masterpiece Mystery. It should make for a good screen adaptation: a few murders, a landmine and car explosion, a castle at the center of the mystery. The aging Wallander goes a little gung-ho at the end. Never thought of him as an action hero, but should be fun to watch Kenneth Branagh, who does a great job, struggle through. Rupert Graves plays the castle owner. Saw him most recently as an aging bad boy artist in an episode of Masterpiece Mystery's Inspector Lewis series so a little jarring to see him again so soon in another role. In the last one, though, he was a mess and in this one he should have commanding control of a vast and nefarious business empire.

Minor quibble with the book: Wallander has a lapse in ethical judgment, I think, employing a non-cop in a possibly dangerous subterfuge. Not that Wallander can't have his flaws, he has plenty. Just didn't seem true to character to have him put an innocent bystander in jeopardy.

Speaking of aging: I wrote that I like Blue Bloods, CBS' new Friday night cop show. Apparently, it has the oldest audience in TV-dom. Not sure how significant that is since the audience for all TV is getting older and older.

Mystery convention, etc.

The annual Bouchercon world mystery convention is next weekend in San Francisco. The four-and-a-half day event includes loads of panels on such subjects as science fiction and mystery, political mysteries, and many on writing mysteries, featuring tons of authors, including the event's guests of honor Lee Child, Denise Mina, Laurie R. King, Eddie Muller and Maddy Van Hertbruggen. The site says registration is closed, but if you're already in the San Francisco area you can show up and purchase a $75 day pass. Visit the site to get all the info and see an incredible list of events and authors.

In my post on new TV shows, I forgot to mention AMC's Rubicon. The slow-moving show requires lots of patience, but that patience is beginning to pay off. Sunday's episode was chock full of action -- Will escapes getting killed after Spangler puts out a hit on him; Kale cleans up the debris from it; Katherine discovers a letter left by her dead husband; Will tells Katherine what he thinks the conspiracy is all about; and the API team, led by the ambitious Grant, who is cozying up to Spangler, cracks a major clue in their al-Qaeda case. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you're late to the game and will have to watch or read up on previous episodes at the AMC site. But beware: the plot moves at near-glacial speed for the first, uh, 10 episodes, but is picking up steam at the end.

I'm still slogging through Henning Mankell's The Man Who Smiled. It's a little slow-going too, but my mind may be wandering for reasons other than the book. I'll talk about it more when I'm done.

Scandinavian writers

Fellow blogger and Balloon Juice reader Linkmeister told me about Detectives Beyond Borders, an exemplary blog on non-American mysteries, which features a lengthy blog roll that includes Scandinavian Crime Fiction. (Linkmeister also solved my ‘small footer’ problem for which I am forever grateful.)

It never occurred to me to create a blog on such a specific subject, but if I did it might have been Scandinavian crime fiction. Good thing I didn’t because I am a near neophyte, having read only four (well, five) authors:  Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, Jo Nesbø, Henning Mankell and Stieg Larrson. 

I have a definite order of preference among those, starting with the Martin Beck series by Sjöwall and Wahlöö. It’s hard to explain why these books are great. The writing is spare and plain -- adjectives are hard to find -- and no detail is too mundane for these authors, who often recount scenes like a court reporter.

Yet I’ve never read anything as suspenseful as the stake-out of the suspect in the series' first book, Roseanna. The police are investigating a crime in which catching the killer is like finding a needle in the proverbial haystack. They have zeroed in on someone, but he has done nothing yet to justify their suspicions so they employ a woman detective to entice him into making a move. In the meantime, they watch him day and night while he follows an ordinary, boring routine. The capture was a bit predictable, probably because the scene has been done to death since the book was written in the 1960s, but it’s the mind-numbingly dull stakeout scene that I love. For the cops, it sounds like it must be like watching paint dry, but for the reader it is ultimate suspense. 

The books are not whodunits in the typical sense; you’re not presented with a cast of likely suspects. The crimes are central to the books, but the criminals make only cameo appearances, usually with little to no dialogue, and only when they are in the sights of the police or at the end when they are apprehended.  (I should say I know this to be true only of the first three books in the series.) 

All that is because the books are about the police. The reader stands side-by-side with the police, not the victims or the victims’ families or the suspects or the criminals.  And, as others have pointed out, the books are about Swedish society. 

As I’ve already written, I like Henning Mankell very much. He follows in the same unsentimental, realistic style of Sjöwall and Wahlöö, and Kurt Wallander is as essential to Mankell’s books as Martin Beck is to the Sjöwall and Wahlöö series. But Mankell adds more convoluted plots, some usual suspects and commentary on the world. Wallader is gloomy and emotional while Beck tends to be more inured. 

I shouldn’t really comment on Nesbø. I’ve only read Nemesis and I don’t remember it, but I have a vague recollection of feeling like the plot went off in too many directions. But that may be unfair. 

As for Larsson, I’ve only read the first of his insanely popular trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I put that book down after about 200 pages, picked it up a month later and finished it in a day or two of near-constant reading. It was compelling reading, but, gotta say, I didn’t love it like apparently most of the rest world did. A thorough, page-turning plot, but I find the characters a bit cartoonish, especially Lisbeth Salander. The big crime at the center of the book feels almost incidental to the plot and I find some stuff involving Salander gratuitous. I do find the corporate intrigue interesting. Maybe in one of the later books that becomes a focus. 

I like to find people who confirm my feelings, not to dump on Larsson but just so I know I’m not alone. I know there have been some mediocre to bad reviews of the books, and now the World Socialists organization has weighed in.  The critique is much more academic than mine, but echoes some of my problems with the book. (He also takes the Martin Beck series to task which I will not sign on with.) 

I found the link at the above mentioned Scandinavian Crime Fiction, where I hope to continue to find more Scandinavian authors like Leif G. W. Persson, Camilla Lackberg, Ake Edwardson and others to add to my to-read list. 

Do you like to read authors from a specific part of the world? 

'Murphy's Law,' etc.

I finished Rhys Bowen's Murphy's Law. I liked it. The resolution made sense and just when you thought it was going to be resolved a little too neatly, a final twist was the better denouement. I could do without the budding romance between the main character and main cop, but it's not a deal breaker, as Liz Lemon would say. 

I am now reading The Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell in anticipation of the Masterpiece Mystery version being shown next Sunday on PBS. I am excited the TV series featuring Kurt Wallander, Mankell's detective played in the TV series by Kenneth Branagh, starts tonight with the first Wallander book, Faceless Killers. I highly recommend it, probably my favorite of the excellent PBS show. (Another favorite is Foyle's War. If you've never seen it, get it on DVD. I am praying there are more; the final one ended with Foyle retiring and heading to America to find someone, leaving the door wide open for more episodes.) After Wallander, there is a modern-day take on Sherlock Holmes. Believe it or not, I've never read any of the Arthur Conan Doyle classic.

While I was at the library I picked up Nevada Barr's Track of the Cat, the first in her Anna Pigeon series of mysteries set in the southwest and already considered a classic, on the library sale table. I also checked out The Laughing Policeman. I'd rather own it but the local bookstores are out. It is considered the best of the 10-book series by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.

And am happy to see a new book by John Le Carre coming out Oct. 12. A new book by Martin Cruz Smith is already on bookshelves.

Talk of Foyle's War reminds me: can anyone recommend a mystery set during WWI or WWII?

Welcome

I always wanted to own a bookstore and I figured in the time of the mega-store, a specialized shop might work. 'Histories & Mysteries' was my first idea, but, try as I might, I don't read much history. I read mysteries. Always. No matter what else I may be reading, or trying to read, there is always a mystery on my nightstand.

Thus 'Cops & Cozies,' named for the two broadest categories of mysteries -- police procedurals and the so-called cozy. I don't think the bookstore is ever going to happen so I am doing what I hope is the next best thing -- creating a place for me and other readers to talk about mysteries.

So I'll start. I am just about finished with Murphy's Law, the first in a series of mysteries set in turn-of-the-century New York City and featuring Molly Murphy, a young Irish emigrant. I discovered the author -- Rhys Bowen -- on a recent trip to the library, on the to-be-shelved cart. She's also written a 'cozy' series set in Wales and featuring a detective named Evan Evans.

I am enjoying it. It requires some suspension of disbelief -- Molly traipses from one end of Manhattan to the other without running out of steam or luck -- but it doesn't shy away from the gritty details of the time. People live in filthy tenements and most men only want to take brutal advantage of Molly. She's incredibly self-sufficient and brave but believable and not without fault. I love the historical details, including talk of Tammany Hall, but have no idea if the book is accurate.

Without giving away anything, the books starts with Molly's unexpected trip from Ireland to New York, where a passenger from her boat is murdered on Ellis Island. She's tangentially involved and decides she must help the police -- led by the attractive Daniel Sullivan -- solve the crime or else she may end up in the infamous Tombs herself.

I have about 40 pages left so can't say whether the resolution makes sense but so far so good -- everything about the murder and the chase makes perfect sense and little time is wasted on superfluous scenes or information.

I just finished A Corpse in the Koryo, another new author I discovered recently. (I can't remember how, I think through the New York Times' Marilyn Stasio, who reviews mystery/crime novels regularly in the Sunday Book Review.) The book is the first of four books in a series featuring Inspector O, a hamstrung detective in North Korea. The author is James Church, a pseudonym for a former American intelligence officer who worked in Asia and, according to jacket reviews, understands North Korea like an insider.

I was fascinated at the idea of a book set in North Korea, a country I know next to nothing about. The book is well-written and evocative. With few words, the author creates a world in which everyone is watching and being watched. No one can be trusted and the basics of life are in short supply. Inspector O, for example, is constantly is search of a cup of tea. Not a good cup of tea, but any cup of tea.

The book is cinematic. Despite being set in North Korea, I kept seeing Humphrey Bogart talking to Sydney Greenstreet or Claude Rains in conversations where the words had little to do with what was really being said.

But it took until the exact mid-point in the book for the plot to kick in. Before that, Inspector O goes from city to city, sent by cryptic bosses on seemingly meaningless missions that lead nowhere for both the Inspector and the reader. Once the plot takes off, the book is a quick and mostly compelling read. (I did skim a few parts, which is not a good sign and not something I like to do.) Still, I recommend Inspector O and will read the next one after a break and few other reads in between.

Next up could be any of the following: The Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell because the great Masterpiece Mystery series starring Kenneth Branagh is showing it in mid-October; The Laughing Policeman, the fourth in the classic Martin Beck series set in Stockholm, the first three of which I read recently and absolutely loved; or The Friends of Eddie Coyle because I saw the movie starring Robert Mitchum a few months ago and because I'm on a mission to read classic mysteries.

So: what are your reading? What do you recommend? Leave a comment.