International Crime Fiction Pick: PENANCE by Kanae Minato

• Post by Director of Suspense Molly Odintz

Kanae Minato’s second crime novel, Penance, already a popular mystery-turned-TV-series in Japan, was published early this year in US markets; from the first page Penance plunges the reader into a profoundly disturbing tale of murder, consequences, and retribution. After schoolgirls Sae, Akiko, Maki, and Yuko witness the murder of classmate Emily, they fail to accurately describe the murderer. Years later, with Emily’s killer still on the loose, the victim’s mother curses them with a need to seek penance for their failure if the murderer is not caught within 15 years, or the statue of limitations for murder in Japan.

As the deadline approaches, each woman reaches out to the victim’s mother with their own complex and suspenseful tales of atoning for their classmate’s demise. Each adds additional details of the murder, in a Rashoman-like series of overlapping and contradictory accounts, to what slowly builds to a gothic twist. Like the status-conscious novels of the 19th century and the wicked works of the 1950s, Kanae Minato’s Penance takes a look at the toxic consequences of obsession with status and guilt for those sins which belong to others, or which are not at all sins.

The women’s stories are presented in a variety of forms, showcasing the author’s versatility in the form and in her character development – a letter is followed by the transcript from a controversial PTA meeting; one woman’s story is presented as her confused recollections given to a therapist, while the fourth woman tells her version of the tale to hospital staff as she gives birth.

Sae’s identity is submerged by her husband into that of a doll, her acceptance of womanhood halted forever by her fear of the dangers maturity brings. The reclusive Akiko views herself as a bear, big and strong, cutting herself off from the appreciation of delicate objects after she ruins a ruffled blouse the day of the murder, and finally achieves her chance to protect the cute and delicate from harm years later when her brother’s adopted child is in danger.

Maki forces herself to enter an occupation she despises as self-punishment for her failure to save her classmate, only to find an opportunity to defend her students against a violent intruder on school grounds later on, while Yuko is inspired by the murder to begin shoplifting, her covetous gaze a theme throughout her encounters with the murdered girl. She covets everything from Emily’s family to small objects in shops; she envies the attention given to her sickly sister, and desires her sister’s policeman husband.

An AV Club review of the TV series based on the novel described the set-up as “pitched partway between folktale and cold-case procedural,” a fitting description for the original novel. Children are metaphorically devoured by their elders, while some characters experience symbolic metamorphosis into animals, objects, or each other. Fairytale monsters (in the form of a variety of damaged men) endanger others, and the women in the story must summon all their strength to protect themselves and others.

Yet Penance is also a modern tale of obsession, status anxiety, alienation, and covetous behavior. Coveting that which others possess drives not only the fourth woman’s desires, but in effect, the entire novel. Characters’ concern for their own reputations, and their jealousy of others’ status and possessions, directly result in most of the novel’s emotional and physical violence.

Hidden pregnancies, loveless marriages, fear of desirability, and fear of loss of status – each character either fears to covet or to be coveted. Some try to impose their own desires on others in the way they want, not in the ways their objects of desire wish to be valued; others run into trouble by accepting the desires of others without questioning them until they find themselves sublimating their entire identities to the desires of others.

Every character is defined by what they want but cannot have, or by what they deserve but will not allow themselves to possess – Emily is named for her grandfather’s lost love, Yuko wants the attention paid to her sister; Akiko denies herself the right to be girly; Maki forces herself to work at a job she hates; Emily’s mother (in flashbacks) will not allow herself to date the boys she likes, instead romancing a boy desired by her best friend; and Sae clings to the innocence of childhood, convinced that it was Emily’s physical maturity in comparison to her peers, not childlike vulnerablity, that allowed her to be a target of the strange man who caused her death.

Immediately after finishing up Penance, I ordered in a copy of Minato’s best-selling first novel, Confessions, a psychological thriller known as the Gone Girl of Japan (despite its publication years earlier). You can read Steph Cha’s compelling review of Confessions for the LA Times here for a better idea of the disturbing depths Minato gleefully explores. According to various reviewers, Kanae is known in Japan as the “queen of iyamisu”, or “eww mysteries,” a new subgenre of mystery celebrating the grotesque and visceral.

Both Confessions and Penance explore the vengeance of mothers and the cruelty of children. Both celebrate female psychosis in a way normally reserved for horror films, and in a way reminiscent of Natsuo Kirino’s chilling tales Out and Grotesque. Those looking for the disturbing, the complex, and the utterly compelling, look no further.

Penance is Japanese crime fiction at its most disturbingly meta – identities shift and change, characters slough off large portions of their self in order to atone for another’s acts, and the fresh mountain air of the small village where the attack took place serves as metaphor for the problems inevitably caused by human nature, no matter how quaint, rural and pristine the setting may be.

You can find copies of Penance on our shelves and via bookpeople.com. 

Shotgun Blast from the Past: Two from Simenon

• Post by Director of Suspense Molly Odintz

 

Simenon is my favorite writer to capture post-war European malaise (when he wasn’t banging away at his numerous and utterly charming Inspector Maigret novels), and the contrast between his pre-war and post-war work shows the same loss of innocence and sense of amorality verging into guilt that defined much of European literature in the 1950s and 60s.

I recently picked up Simenon’s The Blue Room (La Chambre Bleue) after it had been abandoned by a browsing customer. I felt compelled by this sleazy tale of cheating and betrayal from the very first sentence, as one lover asks another, “Did I hurt you?” The answer may be “no” to start with, but as we dive further into this sordid tale of cheating husbands and wives, it’s hard to believe the answer will remain “no” for much longer.

After a lovers’ chat in a hotel room ends abruptly with the unexpected return of the woman’s husband, the narrative veers back and forth between an ongoing affair between two married people and police interrogations of the cheating husband (as unreliable a narrator as can be). The affair began after a chance meeting by the side of the road, as a man stops to help a woman change a tire, only to realize that when the two were together at school, she had a crush on him the whole time.

At first put off by her statuesque beauty, describing her as seemingly made of stone, the man takes the woman up on her offer to finally kiss him and discovers an unbridled sensuality that both appeals to him and frightens him. Not a first-time cheater, but a first time participant in a long-term affair, the man feels no guilt, only fear. He worries that this time, his dutiful, meek wife will discover his extramarital affairs and put an end to what seems to him to be a perfect life. As we read further into the novel, the police ask him disquieting questions about the nature of his marriage and the details of his affairs, as he reveals all while protesting involvement in an as-yet-unspecified crime.

The Blue Room is as explicit and as menacing as many of the NYRB releases from Simenon, despite its publication as part of Penguin Classics’ reissues (which have tended to concentrate on the Maigret series). It has the feel of a Patrica Highsmith novel; The Blue Room exudes dark sensuality while it pillories the hypocrisy of the 1950s successful, obsessed with the appearance of success while continuing to embrace their darkest desires in secret.

Collectively, his non-Maigret novels are known as “romans durs,” or hard novels, most of which Simenon wrote during the war while holed up with his wife and mistress, and immediately after the war, while still living quite happily with both women. One wonders if he was able to have a reasonably functional relationship with not one, but two women (and any number of others) because he poured out his more sadistic images of sexuality into the pages of these novels. Anyone who watches enough horror films will agree that lust, obsession, and violence, inextricably entwined, make for very good entertainment. I encourage the readers of this blog to embrace the voyeurism inherent in the crime genre and check out The Blue Room, and Simenon’s other sultry, sordid tales.

Chief among Simenon’s romans durs, for me anyway, is my favorite of his wartime novels, Dirty Snow. This novel also happens to be one of the only works I’ve finished in French. Simenon’s deceptively simple sentence structure and oh-so-disturbing themes make his works perfect for practicing one’s language skills, although I am grateful to Penguin and NYRB for their superb translations of his work. In Dirty Snow, or La Neige Etait Sale, the snow isn’t the only thing turned to grey miserable slush – each character was morally ambiguous even before the war began, and in their lives under the occupation, they descend to new levels of compromising behavior.

Dirty Snow follows Frank Friedmeier, son of a brothel owner catering to Nazi officers, after he kills a German soldier late at night and wanders aimlessly through the streets of Brussels, unsure of the meaning of his act but ready to say the literary equivalent of “f*** you” to anyone who tries to stop him. He is the ultimate antihero, and like his mother’s assistant (a former prostitute suffering from long-term injuries caused by a sadistic German) the reader can’t help but find him attractive, even while full of disgust for both the character and his actions. His only saving grace is his behavior after his sudden and unexpected arrest by the occupying forces. He refuses to cooperate, and his belligerent behavior, ruthless and dastardly when it comes to his mother’s workers, turns into something resembling nobility when directed at occupying Nazis.

Most antiheroes are tempered by their love for at least one other person in their lives. Holden Caulfield had his brother, Dallas Winston had Johnny, Dexter Morgan had his adoptive family, and so one. Frank Friedmeier is more along the lines of a Thomas Ripley, or a Pinkie Brown (of Grahame Greene’s Brighton Rock) if suddenly in the midst of their schemes and sprees they had been placed in a scenario wherein continuing the same behavior suddenly made their actions honorable.

Frank taps into a vicious part of ourselves that values honesty over morality. He sees his world as it is, not some version of what it could be, and his ability to survive for a time in occupied Brussels makes for interesting fodder in discussing sociopathic behavior in wartime. One has the sense that for Frank, life is filth and always has been, and the Nazi takeover of his nation only confirms what he already suspects the world to be.

Dirty Snow is light-years ahead of the same conclusion’s arrival at the cinemas in the French film Lacombe, Lucien. The film recounts the story of an amoral teen from the countryside who, after he is deemed too young to join the French Resistance, joins the Gestapo instead. Lacombe, Lucien explores the uncomfortable nature of impulsive choices made outside any moral parameters. The screenplay, recently reissued by Other Press, was written by Patrick Modiano, a crime writer and Nobel Prize winner whose father survived the war through collaboration.

No one likes a hypocrite, yet anyone with a strong concept of morality is almost invariably a hypocrite – if we stuck to all of our own rules, we’d live miserable lives full of second-guessing and free of compassion and compromise. Every once in a while, though, I find it refreshing to read the story of a badly behaved character who stays consistent to his lack of morality for the whole ride. The characters in Simenon’s Romans Durs  never change – they merely enter into increasingly bad situations, where inevitable consequences put an end to their bad behavior once and for all.

You can find copies of many of Simenon’s works on our shelves or via bookpeople.com. 

MysteryPeople Review: ODD NUMBERS by Anne Holt

MysteryPeople Contributor Scott Butki splits his time between education, advocacy, and reviews and interviews. You can find a full list of his interviews and reviews at http://thinkingandtalkingandacting.blogspot.com/2015/11/an-index-of-my-interviews-with-authors.html. Below, you’ll find his review of Anne Holt’s latest Norwegian noir, Odd Numbers,  a disturbing and timely read. 

• Review by MysteryPeople Contributor Scott Butki

With Odd Numbers Anne Holt has written a fascinating, intricate novel about life in Norway in awful, exhausting circumstances. The book is the ninth and penultimate in her series featuring cold case specialist Hanne Wilhelmsen.

The novel’s action begins with a bomb going off in an upscale part of Oslo, targeting the Islamic Cooperation Council’s headquarters and killing 23 people. Law enforcement suspects an extremist organization is responsible for that and future attacks. That said, they are finding it hard to prove that assertion.

Holt does an excellent job explaining what characters in Norway think about Muslims living in Norway – some are racists, some encourage diversity, and many draw less clear lines.

Interestingly, Holt explains in a postscript that “comments placed, directly or indirectly, in the mouths of extremists on both sides in the novel are slightly paraphrased quotes from real statements.”

This part of the novel was difficult for me to read considering all of the seemingly senseless attacks against civilians around the world in recent months and years. In a word, it’s still too raw.

It probably didn’t help that I finished this book and typed up this review the weekend Nazis and white supremacists rallied in Charlottesville, Va., reminding us that the kinds of hate Holt described are front and center here still.

There’s a subplot that I prefer regarding solving a cold case decades old, with more interesting characters and plot twists.

I am new to Holt’s writings and would probably have liked and understood some parts of the book better had I read the earlier novels. That said she proves with this book why Jo Nesbo has called her the “godmother of modern Norwegian crime fiction.”

You can find copies of Odd Numbers on our shelves and via bookpeople.com. 

 

MysteryPeople Q&A with Mark Pryor

Mark Pryor is one of our favorites here at MysteryPeople – we’ve followed his Hugo Marston series from the very beginning, and we’re happy to welcome The Sorbonne Affair, the seventh volume of the series, to our shelves. Mark joins us to speak and sign his latest on Saturday, August 26th, at 6 PM, along with James W. Ziskin and Traci Lambrecht of P.J. Tracy. Ahead of the event, our Meike Alana sat down with Mark to ask him about the book, Paris, his busy schedule, and what’s next. 

 

• Interview by MysteryPeople Contributor Meike Alana

Meike Alana: Your love of books (which you share with your protagonist, Hugo Marston) is on full display in the series (titles include The Bookseller and The Paris Librarian). Your latest, The Sorbonne Affair, deals with a best-selling American romance writer who discovers a hidden camera in her room at Paris’ Sorbonne hotel. You poke some fun at the romance genre–Hugo is slightly disdainful towards romance, and is incredulous to discover that many of his accomplished, intelligent friends are fans of the author. Do you care to elaborate on your own views?

Mark Pryor: Absolutely—my position is that a good book is a good book. As such, I hope it comes across as people poking fun at Hugo for being a book snob. I know for a fact some of my readers are also lovers of the romance genre, and just last month I gave a talk to a crowded and enthusiastic room of romance writers.

Ha, but you’re wondering if I read romance, though, aren’t you? Yes, I have and I would. My problem is that I don’t have time to read much, and almost all my reading time these days seems to be taken up blurbing books for other people. That means I have to prioritize, which in turn means I have a giant stack of unread books in my bedroom!

But again, what I’m trying to point out in a playful way is that if a book is good, its subject or genre shouldn’t matter, and yet there are some people who insist their reading or writing are more… let’s say elevated and don’t include one genre or another.

MA: This is the 7th installment of your series featuring the Paris-based Hugo, although Hugo has traveled to London (The Button Man) and Barcelona (The Reluctant Matador). For anyone planning a visit to Paris I always recommend they read one of your books–you so aptly capture the Parisian energy and mystique. Yet you’re a Brit who lives in Austin, Texas. How do you manage to capture the spirit of the City of Light so perfectly? And what’s your favorite spot in Paris?

MP: Thank you for the kind words, I try hard to bring Paris to my readers. To do so, and I know it’s tough, but I try to make myself go there as often as possible. Choke down a croissant or two, suffer through a dozen garlic snails, drag myself along the city’s boulevards on crisp autumn evenings. We all know artists suffer, and as you can see, I suffer as much as any of them…

As for my favorite spot, well, I have several. I always visit the bookstore Shakespeare & Co., and a walk in front of Notre Dame is a must. Other than that, I try to find new places to explore and share. There are always undiscovered cafes and restaurants, little parks and squares and churches.

MA: Previous Hugo novels have hinted at his previous FBI career but we’ve never learned the details about why he left that agency. We learn more about that in The Sorbonne Affair. What made you decide it was time for the reader to learn about the events leading up that his career change?

MP: Your boss. Seriously. That marvelous bookseller Scott Montgomery has said to me since the very first novel that he was sure there was a story behind Hugo and Tom leaving the FBI. I assured him on multiple occasions that no, there really wasn’t.
Turns out he was right.

As for why, I think it’s because I’m always trying to show a new side to Hugo. He’s a hard man to get to know so this particular event gives us a really good look at his psyche, and why his friendship with Tom means so much—to both of them. I better stop there before I give too much away.

MA: Given the complexity of your plots, the evocative Paris setting, the well-developed characters many readers would be surprised to know that you don’t write full-time; in fact, you balance your writing with a challenging legal career and a full family life including 3 young children. How in the world do you find time to write? Do you have to be very disciplined and organized, or do you just randomly throw words on the page when you can carve out a few free minutes?

MP: It’s all about the discipline, filling every spare moment with either writing or something book-related. The way I explain it is to say that I never, ever, have a moment in my life when I think, “Oh, nothing going on today, what should I do?” Ever. Even on July 4 I had to take time to write a couple thousand words in between pool trips and burger-making.

That said, I have no complaints at all. I have a fascinating job, books I love to write, and hugely supportive family and friends (and readers!). So, yes, I’m crazy busy but in all the best ways.

MA: What’s next for Hugo?

MP: I have a few ideas rolling around in my head but so far it’s all a little hazy. More than likely he’ll be paying a visit to Lake Como in Italy, which won’t be too much of a hardship I suspect (for him or me!). I want to develop the secondary plot like from The Sorbonne Affair a little more, the new threat to Hugo and Tom. And I think I want a princess in the book. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

MA: In addition to the Hugo series, you wrote the outstanding psychological thriller Hollow Man. (For anyone who hasn’t read it, the book tells the story of Dominic, a psychopath British district attorney who lives in Austin. Pryor is a British district attorney who lives in Austin. He assures us the work is “completely fiction.” Hmm….) Any plans for another book about Dominic?

MP: Dang it Meike, you know what a sweet, kind, non-psychopathic chappie I am! I haven’t killed anyone for ages and ages, I promise!

Actually, on January 30, 2018, the sequel to Hollow Man will be published by Seventh Street Books. It’s called Dominic, which is suitably ego-centric for that character. This time around he’s set his sights on a judgeship that he would like, but to get there he has to deal with two significant problems: a colleague going for that same position, and a detective who still has questions about Dominic’s role in a murder that someone else went to prison for.

MA: We always like to ask for reading recommendations from our favorite writers. Read anything lately that you want to tell us about?

MP: Oh, good, this lets me have a quick rave about Erik Larson’s Dead Wake, which is one of the best non-fiction books I’ve read in years. I’m also about to delve into Unsub by Meg Gardiner and Blame by Jeff Abbott. Oh, and the new James Ziskin, Cast The First Stone. Love that series. As you can see, my TBR pile is greater than my recently-finished stack, but to be fair it’s because I’m reading some manuscripts for blurb purposes, and not so much published work.

You can find copies of The Sorbonne Affair on our shelves and via bookpeople.com. Mark Pryor joins us Saturday, August 26th at 6 PM to speak and sign his latest. He’ll be appearing with fellow crime writers Traci Lambrecht (of P.J. Tracy) and James W. Ziskin. 

The Hard Word Book Club Pulls Another Score With Parker

The Hard Word Book Club meets the last Wednesday of each month to discuss the best of hard-boiled and noir crime fiction. On Wednesday, August 30, at 7 PM, the Hard Word Book  Club will meet on BookPeople’s third floor to discuss Comeback by Richard Stark. 

• Post by Crime Fiction Coordinator Scott Montgomery

The August 30th discussion of The Hard Word Book Club will look at the return of of one of the hardest of hard boiled anti-heroes. In the aptly titled Comeback, Richard Stark (the pen name of Donald Westlake) brought back his heist man Parker after a twenty-three-year hiatus. As the book proves, the bad man hasn’t slowed down.

Stark hits the ground running with the robbery in progress. The mark is a big time evangelist at a stadium revival. Things go wrong, gunfire erupts, and Parker is separated from the money by one of the gang members, Liss. To track down the double crosser and the loot, he takes the guise of an insurance investigator to team up up with the church’s head of security chasing the gang down. Full of reversals, terse dialogue, and visceral violence, this is Parker returning in full form.

Comeback gives us much to talk about. Some of the topics will be how Parker and the books have changed over the twenty years, the series in general, and heist novels. We will be meeting on Wednesday, August 30th, at 7PM on BookPeople’s third floor. The books are 10% off for those planning to attend.

You can find copies of Comeback on our shelves and via bookpeople.com. 

Crime Fiction Friday: FANCY FOOTWORK by Robert Dean

• Selected and introduced by Crime Fiction Coordinator Scott Montgomery

One of the great things about hard boiled crime fiction is it’s visceral appeal. I recently met an author from our home base in Austin, who goes by the name Robert Dean, who has that down. In this take on the boxing crime story, Dean delivers a few fresh takes and a lot of brutality. If you’re a fan of Frank Bill or Benjamin Whitmer, you will like Robert Dean and if the first paragraph of this story is too much, the rest of it will kill you.

Fancy Footwork

By Robert Dean

A fist the size of a phonebook crashed into Jimenez’s mouth like driver spinning on a DUI. He felt the sting of the knuckles moving past the lips, through the canines and headed straight for his molars. Canines rocked loose in their sockets while blood pooled where the rips of flesh barely held the teeth in place. Goddamn, did this son of a bitch have a punch.

Despite having a skull like a bag of concrete, the strikes Jimenez endured felt like a whole new agony. Defenseless, he sat with his arms tied to the back of a metal folding chair.

Chuckie May, Anton DeRulo’s goon was hard at work beating the ever-loving fuck out of him. Chuckie struck Jimenez like he was living out a fantasy, taking shot after shot, but also turning the event into a strange sexual exploitation as he threw fists into the meat of Jimenez’s core.

MysteryPeople Q&A with Traci Lambrecht of PJ Tracy

• Interview by Crime Fiction Coordinator Scott Montgomery

 

Nothing Stays Buried, written by the mother-daughter duo P.J. Tracy, puts the Monkeewrench gang of crime-solving programmers in rural Minnesota for a missing persons case that leads to more than a few bodies. It is also the last one co-written by P.J. Lambrecht, who passed away right before Christmas of last year. Her daughter Tracy, who will be joining Mark Pryor and James Ziskin, for our Scene Of The Crime discussion at BookPeople on August 26th at 6PM, talked to us about the book and how it was tied to her mother. 

MysteryPeople Scott: Nothing Stays Buried is an odd book in the sense it has at least three kinds of stories that the plot snaps together by the third act. What was the seed of the idea for the latest in the series?

Traci Lambrecht: Initially, it started out with a news story about a lion that had escaped a wild cat rescue and rehabilitation center near PJ’s farm, but ultimately the book became cheap therapy. We sketched it out several years ago during a time of some deep personal losses for both PJ and I, one of which was her diagnosis with severe heart failure, so we explored the theme of loss in different ways against the requisite backdrop of murder. We wanted to incorporate some hope and a little magic into the book as well, which is how the multiple storylines came about. Things were just a little too raw for us emotionally at the time, so we shelved it and wrote Shoot to Thrill instead. When we revisited the partial manuscript a couple years ago, we found the passage of time had given us the objectivity we needed to finish it.

MPS: This is one of the books where the Monkeewrench gang goes to the country. What does the more rural setting allow you to do as a writer?

TC: There is a whole world outside any urban environment and more than anything, exploring it provides grounding in an entirely different life perspective. We’ve always found that writing about rural settings and people is a way to reconnect with basic values and work ethic. Lots of revelations can come from the simplicity of lives that still have deep connections to the land.

MPS: Did Grace being pregnant effect writing for her in any way?

TC: It really did. Grace is such a tough cookie, so it was both fun and challenging to envision a gentler side while trying to stay true to her core character. And the pregnancy was unexpected – for both the characters and for us! But it seemed right – we wanted some positive forward movement in Grace’s and Magozzi’s relationship and this opened up so many possibilities. I jokingly blamed PJ for this impulsive decision, and she jokingly blamed me, but we were very happy with the opportunity to expand the development of those characters.

MPS: In writing for an ensemble do you and your mother have any technique to make sure each character pops?

TC: We just focus on fully immersing ourselves in the lives and minds of each character, which makes it easier to speak with their voices. And in a long-running series, that becomes more effortless with each book as the players become frighteningly real to you. It’s kind of like flirting with multiple personality disorder.

MPS: Due to the passing of your mother last year, fans have been wondering what the fate of the series is. What can you tell them?

TC: Monkeewrench is alive and well – the ninth Monkeewrench novel is completed and in edits, and I’m working on the tenth one now, along with a stand-alone novel. I’m also considering a spin-off of the Monkeewrench series featuring Iris Rikker, the rural sheriff from Snow Blind who endeared herself to a lot of fans. PJ is still a part of every word I write, a constant presence and inspiration, because PJ Tracy was an entity and voice we created together, not the sum of separate parts. We had our own language and we were both fluent in it.

MPS: There is a Christmas book coming out that both of you did. What can you tell us about it?

TC: Return of the Magi is a quirky, uplifting story of redemption about two elderly, mentally ill sisters who fervently believe they are two of the three wise men. With the reluctant help of a career thief who is doing community service at their care facility outside Las Vegas, the three of them escape and cross the desert to search for the baby Jesus in the city of sin. This is probably the most meaningful bit of writing PJ and I ever did together and was a beloved side-project for many years. On the morning she died, I got the good news that it would finally be published and was able to pass this news along to her before she began her journey to someplace new. Knowing her, I suspect that journey was in-step with the characters as they crossed the desert, and she kept them laughing all the way.

You can find copies of Nothing Stays Buried on our shelves and via bookpeople.com. Traci Lambrecht joins us Saturday, August 26th at 6 PM to speak and sign the latest PJ Tracy novel, Nothing Stays Buried. 

Murder in the Afternoon Book Club to Discuss: ANOTHER MAN’S MOCCASINS by Craig Johnson

The Murder in the Afternoon Book Club meets to discuss Another Man’s Moccasins by Craig Johnson on Monday, August 21st, at 1 PM on BookPeople’s third floor. You can find copies of Another Man’s Moccasins on our shelves or via bookpeople.com. 

• Post by Crime Fiction Coordinator Scott Montgomery 

On August 21st, we continue our annual tradition of reading the next novel in Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire series. Another Man’s Moccasins is the fourth book in the series and my personal favorite. Unlike previous volumes in the series, Another Man’s Moccasins takes a deeper look into aspects of the Wyoming sheriff’s past that still haunt him.

The book is actually two mysteries, linked by a mysterious woman from Walt’s past. Walt and his deputies get a call alerting them to a body dump – a Vietnamese woman has been found murdered. On her person, they find a photo of Walt’s younger self playing piano in a Saigon bar. To solve his latest murder, Walt must look back to his first murder case as a CID officer.

With its explorations of Walt’s experiences in Vietnam and the past’s relationship with the present, Another Man’s Moccasins gives us much to discuss. We’ll be meeting on BookPeople’s third floor, Monday, August 21st, at 1PM. The books are 10% off to those who attend.

International Crime Fiction Pick: EASY MOTION TOURIST by Leye Adenle

• Post by Director of Suspense Molly Odintz 

Out from Cassava Republic, a press specializing in the new wave of Nigerian writers, Leye Adenle’s Easy Motion Tourist is superb international crime fiction. Set in the sprawling metropolis of Lagos, Easy Motion Tourist follows a British web journalist on assignment to cover the Nigerian election. Just arrived in the city and out to enjoy the nightlife, the journalist instead witnesses a ritual murder of a prostitute just outside a popular nightclub catering to wealthy clientele and foreign tourists. The hapless Brit immediately gets himself arrested when he attempts to cover the story; the neighborhood cops want the crime hushed up, worried about its potential impact on tourism in their posh part of town.

Enter local activist Amaka, whose mission is to protect Lagotian prostitutes from the dangers of their profession. She has other plans for the investigation. She secures the journalist’s release (not knowing that he works for a far less prestigious publication than his initial claims to the police force) and recruits him to aid her as she looks into the private lives of those powerful men she suspects of murder. As the two get closer to the truth behind the young woman’s murder, their growing attraction is just as compelling as their investigation.

Adenle’s book takes its name from a Nigerian High Life song, and is just as bright, dynamic and whimsical as its namesake. Adenle conjures such a sense of place, the reader may finish the book and wonder that they haven’t been physically transported to the colorful setting. Inequality is extreme in the city of Lagos, yet high and low rub shoulders more than one might expect in Easy Motion Tourist. Cheerfully corrupt politicians mingle with wily sex workers, hopeless car thieves, and earnest NGO workers for a portrait of a complex city with a fine line between illicit industry and legal.

Bars full of wealthy tourists one moment are flooded by prostitutes fleeing police raids the next; scenes shift between palatial mansions full of imported goods, to working class slums teeming with creative small industries. Some neighborhoods bribe the police force to protect them, while others rally en masse to keep strike forces out (one particularly dramatic arrest sequence takes place in a neighborhood where arrests must be made at night – police are not welcome in the daylight). Upon finishing Easy Motion Tourist, I had the sense that despite Adenle’s timeless mastery of the mystery genre, his plot could only have taken place at the exact time and in the exact place in which he set the novel.

Ritualistic killings mingle with modern motivations for a murder mystery that holds its cards close until its shocking denouement. Casual violence appears throughout the book as a fact of city life, yet Adenle never dismisses the value of lives so casually cut down, drawing attention to the precarious safety of Lagos’ most vulnerable residents. Stylish action sequences and well-choreographed gun battles lend an aura of 70s cinema to the novel, and one would hope this story makes its way on screen sooner rather than later. In an interview with fellow Nigerian writer Jowhor Ile, Adenle picks Tarantino as the ideal filmmaker to turn Easy Motion Tourist into a film, and I have the same hope for this ultraviolent, ultrastylish thriller.

You can find copies of Easy Motion Tourist on our shelves and via bookpeople.com. 

 

 

Three Picks for August

• Selected by Crime Fiction Coordinator Scott Montgomery

Nothing Stays Buried by PJ Tracy

The Monkeewrench Gang goes to rural Minnesota to assist with a missing persons case only to be drawn into the plot of a serial killer and drug cartels. The fine plotting and stand out ensemble of characters make Monkeewrench a stand out in is series thrillers. Co-author Traci Lambrecht will joining Mark Pryor and James Ziskin for our Scene Of The Crime discussion on Saturday, August 26th at 6 PM. You can find copies of Nothing Stays Buried on our shelves and via bookpeople.com. 

Safe by Ryan Gattis

A former gang banger turned DEA safe cracker thinks he’s found a way to redemption by stealing a huge sum of drug money, placing him between both sides of the law. A tight yet haunting crime novel where Gattis uses his knowledge of L.A.’s toughest streets to dive into the humanity of his characters. You can find copies of Nothing Stays Buried on our shelves and via bookpeople.com. 

Every Day Above Ground by Glen Eric Hamilton

Former soldier and former thief Van Shaw goes back to his criminal ways, for one last time he tells himself, for a fortune in gold, only to find himself, for fortune of gold. The job puts them in the sights of some highly trained killers. One of the most intriguing series characters in modern crime fiction. You can find copies of Every Day Above Ground on our shelves and via bookpeople.com.