The Whites (2015) by Richard Price: Richard Price's newest crime novel is a delight from start to finish, a pungent look at police and criminals and New York City. Our protagonist is Billy Graves, a Manhattan night-shift detective whose past as a member of a group of patrol cops who called themselves the Wild Geese may finally be catching up with him.
Billy is a flawed, wounded, introspective protagonist. He's also a very good detective who finds himself in two parallel situations that may not be so parallel. Someone seems to be stalking Billy and his family in pursuit of vengeance for some unknown wrong. And the lives of perpetrators investigated by Billy and his former Wild Geese are being snuffed out -- these perpetrators were never convicted for their crimes and are thus known to Billy and company by the slang term 'Whites.'
Price deftly draws the characters and their relationships, presents cop life in all it sordid details, and presents page after page of note-perfect dialogue. It's the sort of novel that someone who loved The Wire would love. Highly recommended.
The Redbreast (2000/ Harry Hole#3-Oslo Trilogy#1) by Jo Nesbo, translated into English by Don Bartlett: The Nazi Occupation of Norway supplies the back-story for this, the third of Jo Nesbo's detective-thrillers about Norwegian police officer Harry Hole and the first of the 'Oslo trilogy'-within-a-series. Harry gets caught up in trying to track down an assassin who was one of the Norwegians who fought alongside the Nazis during the Siege of Leningrad during World War Two.
Harry is on pretty good behaviour in this novel as he fights his demons (alcoholic and otherwise). Section dealing with the Norwegian collaborators of World War Two and the war's aftermath fascinated me -- it's not an area of history I knew anything about beyond the name 'Quisling.' The depiction of Harry's detective work is also top-notch. Norway itself fascinates, in the past and present, in Nesbo's depiction of Neo-Nazis and apologists and unctuous civil servants and historians and many others. Recommended.
Birdman (1999/ Jack Caffery #1) by Mo Hayder: Glastonbury region police detective Jack Caffery makes his first appearance here in a strong though flawed first novel from Mo Hayder. Caffery is of that ilk of police detectives who really should be private eyes -- like Luther or Jo Nesbo's Norwegian Harry Hole, his ability to stay employed by the police often shreds suspension of disbelief. But not so much here in his first adventure.
Caffery, as wounded a presence as almost any fictional detective I can remember, is, seemingly like all wounded detectives public or private, also the Best Damn Detective on the Force. In his first novel, Caffery faces a puzzling case that begins when a building project results in the discovery of several female bodies buried in a mass grave. They all have similar mutilations and surgery scars. What does this mean?
Well, we'll find out eventually. Caffery has to deal with a racist fellow detective whose beliefs send the investigation careening off course. He has to deal with his unsatisfying girlfriend. He has to deal with what must be the world's largest Scotch bill at the liquor store -- seriously, Caffery drinks single-malt Scotch the way other people drink all other liquids consumed in a normal day. And Caffery must wrestle with the demons of his own past, a brother abducted and never found when Caffery was just a boy.
Hayder skilfully creates the mystery and its halting solution over the first 90% or so of Birdman. Alas, the perilous stereotypes of the thriller in the age of the Hollywood blockbuster make the climax somewhat disappointing, as it gives us yet another absurdly competent serial killer and yet another sidekick imperiled by the stereotype of the dead partner (See: narratives going right back to Gilgamesh). These things seem rote and boring. But the rest of the novel is very good, and Hayder and Caffery will get better as they go along. Recommended.
The Devil's Star (2003) (Harry Hole #5) by Jo Nesbo. Translated by Don Bartlett 2005: Harry Hole (pronounced HO-LEH) appears in his fifth adventure here. The Norwegian police detective's adventures weren't originally available in publication order in English translation, and the three I've read have lacked any overt explanation of when they occur. That's a bit annoying until one can get onto the Internet and discover publication order. So it goes. I still have no idea how Michael Fassbender can play the gaunt, weathered Hole in the movie of The Snowman.
This time around, Hole grapples with alcoholism, a fellow detective whom he suspects of being a criminal, and his relationship with his girlfriend. Oh, and there's a serial killer. Plot-wise, this is a satisfyingly complex and engaging detective thriller -- and the red herrings really work beautifully and surprisingly.
Harry remains a somewhat improbable figure throughout. The novel deals with the probability that he will either quit his job or be fired at pretty much any moment, but Harry's superhuman detection skills pretty much ensure that that will never happen regardless of what stupid things he does in the course of an adventure. And boy, does he do stupid things in every novel.
It all fits into what some might call The House Paradigm -- the story in which someone's ability at one's job makes him or her impervious to criticism for other failings, no matter how grievous. That's sort of tiring, though at least Harry doesn't kill anyone in a drunk-driving accident this time around, only to escape all punishment because Everybody Looks Out For Harry.
I've read three of Jo Nesbo's Hole novels now, and I'll note one other problematic recurring plot point: once again, one of Harry's loved ones is imperiled by the killer. If this happened as often in real life as it does in novels, TV shows, and movies, no one would be a police officer. Enough already. Create suspense without the repeated threat of horrific violence to a woman or child. So it goes. Recommended.
The Bat (Harry Hole #1) (1997/ Engish translation 2015) by Jo Nesbo, translated into English by Don Bartlett: The first of Jo Nesbo's Harry Hole series about a Norwegian police detective wasn't released in English until after several other Hole mysteries were. That's probably because this mystery/thriller occurs in Australia, where Hole has been sent to liase with Sydney police as they investigate the murder of a young Norwegian woman.
The great thing about the early goings-on in The Bat involve the revelation of the pronunciation of Harry's last name. Thank god for Australia, I say! It's supposed to be pronounced 'Hoo-lay' but the Australians keep calling him Harry Holy, both of which are preferable (to Harry and to me) to how his last name looks like it should be pronounced.
There's a pretty good whodunnit-and-why in The Bat, occasionally drowned out by Nesbo's attempts to hit every quadrant (or whatever) of commercial appeal, including a climactic scene that seems to be aimed straight at movie adaptation. And that scene is completely ridiculous. So, too, a plan put in place to catch the killer by Harry and the Australian police that's unforgivably stupid and stupidly implemented. I didn't believe it for a second, and neither should you.
We also get a lot of back-story for Harry and his alcoholic ways, a tour through some interesting Australian locales, a bit too much mystical-native stuff that verges at points on turning into a version of America's much-maligned 'Magical Negro' trope, and a not-entirely-believable serial killer. It's a fast-paced, enjoyable read, but one will pine for the Fjords by the time the climax arrives. Are there fjords in Norway? Well, whatever. Harry Hole is a cold-weather animal. Lightly recommended.
Foundation (1942-1951/Collected 1951) by Isaac Asimov: The first Foundation novel (it's really a paste-up of novellas and novelettes) was written by Isaac Asimov between the ages of 22 and 24, with the exception of the opening story, written specifically for Foundation's first book publication in 1951. It holds up beautifully today as a tale of the far future modeled explicitly by Asimov on the Roman Empire as imagined in Edward Gibbons' late-18th-century historical work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
What Asimov helped to give to science fiction in the original Foundation trilogy was space opera without the opera. Instead, Asimov re-imagined all the space empires and clashing worlds that had been a fixture of science fiction from the late 1920's onwards in American pulp magazines. The precocious Asimov instead made his space opera into a Novel of Ideas.
Asimov also gave the world Psychohistory, the backbone of the Foundation series. Perfected by super-historian Hari Seldon, Psychohistory allowed Seldon to plot the future dynamic of the dying Galactic Empire so as to allow members of the two Foundation institutes to shorten the post-Imperial galactic Dark Age from tens of thousands of years to only a thousand.
So the Foundation series generally works with a group hero, embodied in one or a handful of people in each section, as it jumps decades or even hundreds of years forward in each section. Sometimes the recorded hologram of Seldon shows up at various crisis points to offer suggestions to the Foundation members. Sometimes they figure out the crisis point themselves.
It's all handled with a minimum of violence, bloodshed, and Star Wars stuff. Most of the Foundation series involves dialogue and historical theorizing. Asimov and American science fiction were both young, which leads to the occasional exclamation of "Great galloping galaxies!". But the overall approach is cerebral and humanistic.
Along the way, Asimov also gives us entries from his Encyclopedia Galactica, forebear of so many similar volumes in science fiction. And there's religion as an intentional instrument of state control, an idea that several of the writers who published in editor John W. Campbell's Astounding Magazine in the 1940's would tackle, writers that included Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Fritz Leiber, and A.E. Van Vogt.
Star Wars certainly borrows much of Asimov's set dressing (and more than one name) for its own Galactic Empire, framing them in a world mostly devoid of ideas, much less Ideas. This is the real deal, one that's sparked so many other writers to imagine their own galactic empires and their own millennia-long view of human history. Highly recommended.
Northern Frights 3 (1995): edited by Don Hutchison; contains the following stories:
Wild Things Live There by Michael Rowe
Silver Rings by Rick Hautala
A Debt Unpaid by Tanya Huff
Imposter by Peter Sellers
Exodus 22:18 by Nancy Baker
The Suction Method by Rudy Kremberg
Sasquatch by Mel D. Ames
Grist for the Mills of Christmas by James Powell
Tamar's Leather Pouch by David Shtogryn
Snow Angel by Nancy Kilpatrick
The Perseids by Robert Charles Wilson
Widow's Walk by Carolyn Clink
If You Know Where to Look by Chris Wiggins
The Bleeding Tree by Sean Doolittle
The Dead Go Shopping by Stephanie Bedwell-Grime
Family Ties by Edo van Belkom
The Pines by Tia V. Travis
The Summer Worms by David Nickle
Solid third volume in Canada's Northern Frights series of mostly original anthologies has one moment of editorial fright early on -- not only is the Table of Contents regrettably centre-justified, but it lacks page numbers for the stories. What the H?
The stand-outs include "Wild Things Live There" by Michael Rowe, a dandy bit of horror that anticipates some of the horrors of Laird Barron's terrific series of stories about the Children of Old Leech while remaining steadfastly Canadian -- the story even involves a migration from Ontario to British Columbia by, well, some things. Oh, Canada!
Another fine story is "The Perseids" by Robert Charles Wilson. Wilson is known as a highly regarded Canadian writer of fairly 'hard' science fiction. Here, some of that scientific and astronomical 'hardness' is present in what is otherwise a subtle, unnerving piece of cosmic horror. Or at least cosmic weirdness.
"If You Know Where to Look" by Chris Wiggins is also a nice piece of dread set in the Maritimes and involving a Scottish legend that seems to have migrated to Nova Scotia along with the Scots. And yes, he's that Chris Wiggins, Canadian actor. And he really shows an ear for believable dialogue and dialect in this story.
None of the stories are duds, though there are a few bits of whimsy that don't work as horror, weird, or whimsy. Editor Don Hutchison does his normal good work, even without page numbers on that Table of Contents. Recommended.
The Snowman (Inspector Harry Hole#7) (2007) by Jo Nesbo (translated into English from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett): Say what you will about the Scandinavians, but people sure love their mysteries and thrillers. Especially publishers looking for the next Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (or Smilla's Sense of Snow, going back a few years). That's why The Snowman is the first Jo Nesbo-penned Harry Hole (!!!) police procedural translated into English but the seventh overall: this Norwegian thriller is the most marketable of the Hole books.
Why? It's got a nigh-omniscient serial killer, the sort of serial killer who's nigh-omnipresent in movies, television, and novels but nigh-non-existent in the real world. Especially serial killers who actively seek out the cop hunting them for a showdown. So far as I know, this has never happened in real life, ever, anywhere on the planet. In fiction, though, it's such a common occurrence that one is surprised that there are any homicide detectives left alive on planet Earth.
But enough of my kvetching. The Snowman is a tensely plotted, satisfying twisty fun-machine that involves the horrible murders of several women over a 15-year period. Harry Hole, Oslo detective and possessor of a name that I personally would have changed for English-language publication, is an alcoholic trainwreck who is also the Best Damn Detective in Norway. He must stop a serial killer dubbed The Snowman, in part because The Snowman seems to have taken a personal interest in him.
One of the reasons The Snowman was selected as the first English-language appearance of Hole is, I believe, its cinematic touches. There are several set-pieces that seem to have been written expressly for film. And hey, Michael Fassbender has apparently been cast in the long-gestating Snowman film adaptation! He looks nothing much like the character described in the novel other than their shared attribute of Tallness, but so it goes.
Anyway, this is an enjoyable thriller. And Hole is an engaging character. The serial killer is ludicrous on a number of levels once revealed, but less so than a lot of serial killers (including every incarnation of Hannibal Lecter). And Nesbo makes Norway seem interesting in an odd way, like a small town masquerading as a country. The translation by Don Barrett seems solid to me. Recommended.
