John Dickson Carr - The Eight of Swords

The Eight of Swords is the third of the Dr. Fell series of detective stories written by John Dickson Carr beginning in the 1930s. It begins with Fell returning from America and immediately becoming sucked into representing the Metropolitan Police at an investigation into a Country House murder. His investigation is hampered by an overly enthusiastic, and eccentric, bishop who is convinced he is an expert detective. The murder victim is an oddly named, Septimus Depping who turns out to be anything but the wealthy owner of the country house.

Unfortunately the book suffers from far too many supporting characters and an overly complicated investigation. As is his want, and tradition dictates, Fell does not reveal his insights until the end (though on occasion he does try, only to be interrupted). The story has a secret passage, midnight shootings, a tense scene in a village pub and a red herring tarot card. All these things ought to make for a cracking read, but I found myself bored and confused by the meandering story and unsatisfied by the outcomes. Why did the bishop slide down the bannisters? One for the fans.

Related Reviews

Carr - Hag's Nook
Carr - The Mad Hatter Mystery
Carr - The Hollow Man

Chester Himes - All Shot Up

In A Rage in Harlem we were introduced to two of the most memorable police detectives in fiction, Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones. All Shot Up is their second outing and is run through with many of the same themes that makes Rage such a fantastic novel. There is corruption, racism and grifting as Harlem's black community try to survive the terrible housing, police racism and poverty by looking for their big break.

Snow has hit Harlem, as a speeding, fancy Cadillac knocks over an old lady. She survives, but is them immediately, and gruesomely, killed by another car bring driven by three cops. The cops stop the first car, rob the passengers and steal the Cadillac and go on to get involved in a nasty shootout outside a Gay bar. Johnson and Jones have to pick up the mess, and start by assuming everyone is guilty of something - even if its just not admitting to seeing anything. Their roughing up of the drinkers in the bar has nothing to do with homophobia - the two cops seem to dislike everyone equally - and everything to their violent methods of chasing down the guilty. Knocking over a few witnesses publicly helps them get their lead, and we follow them through the dirty, snowy streets into an extremely complex plot.

One of the interesting things about All Shot Up, is that like A Rage in Harlem, several characters are transgender and there are some quite subtle comments on LGBT issues. Several of the gay men in the book lead double, but relatively public, lives. So while the book says nothing about Civil Rights struggles, there is a tacit bringing together of LGBT and racial subjects. This said, there is little or nothing about women's liberation in this - most of the female characters are sexualised and treated misogynistically by male characters. 

But the novel is driven by Jones and Johnson as they bully their way across the Harlem landscape, freezing in their beat up car, drinking spirits to keep going and absolutely happy to open up with their big handguns as often as they can. Chester Himes' novels revel in the chaos and complexity of a detective novel set in a place were everyone is grifting because no one really has anything. The reader is very much along for the ride.

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Himes - A Rage in Harlem

James M. Cain - Serenade

James M. Cain is best known for his two short novels The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. Both of these are brilliant, tightly written novels that delve deep into the underbelly of American society, so I was pleased to get this lesser known work for Christmas. 

Serenade is a very different novel. For a start it is longer than his better known works. Secondly it is much looser in terms of dialogue. Postman and Indemnity felt like the written was squeezing meaning out of every word. In Serenade there are extended discussions about music. The main character is a washed up opera singer, and this allows Cain to wax lyrical about composers, musical styles and musicians. It was a favourite subject of Cain's, and he clearly knew his material. It also helps us understand John Sharp, the washed up singer who gets a lucky break back into fame and fortune via a meeting with a Mexican-Indian prostitute.

We know Sharp because he is a man completely convinced of his own greatness, willing to take any opportunity to get back into the limelight, who falls heavily for Juana. Cain sets her up as the fall guy, the reader expects a moral lesson - where Sharp gets together with an unsuitable, non-white woman, and losses everything. That does, in a way happen, but the great surprise is that it is not Sharp's love for Juana that undoes him, but his previous love for a rich musical lover who happens to be male. 

Serenade is remarkable for a novel of its era in having gay sex, and romance, as a key plot point. It is true that the homosexual aspect is effectively used in a negative way. Sharp loses everything because he has to flee his past, and his personal narrative, and tragedy, rests on him breaking with his homosexuality and accepting his straight self. In many ways though it is Juana who is the real heroine here - standing up to the blackmailers and bullies and fighting for Sharp - though breaking from him when she has to.

Its a strange book, and readers will find some of it very difficult to stomach. There's a lot of racism and  some sexual violence - Sharp, in fact, rapes Juana early in their relationship - though he makes sure to tell himself throughout the book that it wasn't really rape as she wanted it. it makes for an unusual read, that won't be too everyone's taste and perhaps, tells us more about the times than the story itself. Cain does however write some excellent set pieces, particularly the scene when Sharp and Juana are trapped in a Mexican church in a violent thunderstorm - though there's no surprise that this was not made into a movie by Hollywood.

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Cain - The Postman Always Rings Twice
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John Dickson Carr - The Mad Hatter Mystery

I have been reading John Dickson Carr's Doctor Fell novels following my discovery of the later book The Hollow Man last year. That is considered one of the greatest "locked room" mysteries, and Carr's other works tend to work on a similar principle - a ludicrous or impossible situation is worked out by Fell who improbably refuses to divulge any information on his method until he has worked it all out. I suspect any genuine police officers who worked with Fell would have arrested him for "obstructing the course of justice" or some such misdemeanour.

Of course for the reader this is excellent as it allows them to concoct their own theories only for them to inevitably be destroyed by Fell's own explanation. The Mad Hatter Mystery is the second volume of Fell's stories, and follows this pattern closely. In fact, despite the blurb saying that the books can be "enjoyed in any order", this book does follow on relatively soon after the first story. It is better to read it in order in my opinion. Two seemingly separate sets of events are brought together in a murder. One is the repeated, and public, stealing of hats and their placements in public places. The second is the discovery and then loss, of a priceless and unknown short story by Edgar Allan Poe. 

The details of what takes place matter little, and their divulgence here might spoil the story for future readers. But I found the story incredibly complicated. There were a plethora of characters, many of whom appear to only exist to complicate the main story. The real joy in the book is the setting and the depiction of the police investigation for the murder takes place in the Tower of London and the police search takes our heroes across 1920s or 30s London. We get quite a few insights into drinkers' culture and the lives and loves of our upper-middle class characters. 

But I did not get any satisfaction from the ending. I had little invested in the characters and the central mystery of the Hats was disappointing. A few hours after reading I am not sure I can tell you what and why the murder actually took place. That might be stretching the truth a little, but the book lacked the dark overtones of the other Fell novels. 

Related Reviews

Carr - Hag's Nook
Carr - The Hollow Man

Christopher St John Sprigg - Death of an Airman

There are several remarkable things about Christopher St John Sprigg's Death of an Airman. The first one is that despite its popularity when first published in the early 1930s, it has been out of print for many decades and has only republished by the British Library's imprint.

The story is an unusual whodunnit, set around a small airbase in the south of England in the early 1930s. Flying has taken off as a hobby for wealthy young people who delight in the thrills and dangers, and the reader is introduced to an excellent selection of unusual characters who form the basis for the mystery. The reader arrives on the scene with the Bishop of Cootamundra, an Australian bishop, "on leave" in England who wants to learn to fly so he can better visit his scattered outback flock.

On the first day of his instruction the Bishop witnesses a crash and determines that there is something odd about the death, concluding that murder has occurred. Here's were the book gets a more unusual and interesting. One thing is the aerodrome's characters - most of these are women, including the young woman, Sally Sackbut, who manages the business - Sprigg clearly did not baulk at giving women characters key roles. Another thing is the motive behind the murder which is related to drugs trafficking. Drugs are an unusual plot device for a mainstream murder mystery in the 1930s and it leads our detectives into an international hunt for the killer. There are some fascinating period aspects to this, at one point a policeman expresses surprise at a murder being linked to drug trafficking, "We don’t often get that mixed up with drugs. Have you brought the stuff you found?" he says! Aircraft from the continent stop for customs checks in Kent!

Another interesting part to the book is the detailed descriptions of aircraft and flying. The author was a expert pilot himself, and in fact the most interesting thing about Death of an Airman is the author. Christopher St John Sprigg is better known to history by his pseudonym, Christopher Caudwell. In 1934, the year Death of an Airman was published, Caudwell was starting on a very intense engagement with Marxism and a few years later would publish his first Marxist book of literary criticism about poetry. Caudwell was also an accomplished poet and critic, whose life and work was cut short when he died fighting for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. He died firing a machine gun to cover the escape of his comrades in February 1937, having joined the British Communist Party in 1935. 

Reading Death of an Airman to find hints of Caudwell's emerging Marxism is a pointless task, though his inclusion of numerous female characters points to an individual who didn't accept at least some of the most common fictional stereotypes. In fact while Death of an Airman is an unusual novel, its not a brilliant detective one. The cast of characters, the unusual setting and the period details make it a worthwhile read, but the overall dramatic story was a little disappointing.

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Cain - The Postman Always Rings Twice

John Dickson Carr - Hag's Nook

Hag's Nook is a novel by the prolific John Dickson Carr and the first of twenty-three such books featuring his famous detective Dr. Fell. The novel opens with the young American Tad Rampole who is visiting England and has an introduction to Dr. Fell. At a station on route to Fell's  he meets the attractive young woman Dorothy Starberth who lives in the same village as Fell, and immediately falls for her. The Starberth's are an extremely wealthy family whose ancestors have been governors of the horrific Chatterham Prison, whose inmates were regularly hung from the gallows.

A strange condition of the Starberth's inherited wealth is that at 25 the male heirs must spend the night in a locked room. Their they have to follow some secret instructions in order to qualify for their inheritance. But the night after Tad's arrival, the elder brother of Dorothy dies while trying to follow these instructions. Fell, together with the local chief constable, Tad and others must work out what has happened. In doing so, they find a dangerous well, a disgusting swamp, a lot of rats and some dark secrets.

As with other Fell novels this is a locked room story told in great detail. Fell refuses to give any hints until he has worked out the whole solution to the puzzle, and we follow events through the supporting characters, in this case Tad. The book begins, and Tad experiences his arrival in the village, as a sort of gothic horror. Nameless evil seems to lurk inside Chatterham, defying the sleepy romance of the village. Tad's romancing of Dorothy can be contrasted with the frightening reality of her families bizarre traditions, and sudden death.

Carr was an American and his descriptions of rural England betray a lack of familiarity with the countryside. The nights are full of croaking frogs, a difference that cannot be down simply to the collapse in biodiversity in Britain's rural areas. Descriptions can, at times, be a little over the top. Though there is a satisfyingly pompous butler, who loves melodrama at the movies, and so nice misdirection.

But as with all locked room mysteries, the delight is in the reveal (something Carr made a big point of in Fell's most famous mystery, The Hollow Man). This one is done brilliantly and even though it seems impossible Carr's genius is in making it feel believable.    

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James M. Cain - Double Indemnity

***Spoilers***

There is, in many ways, very little that can be said about James M. Cain's Double Indemnity that I didn't already say about his The Postman Always Rings Twice. Both are tight novels, language and description parred back to the raw basics, leaving the reader feeling like they've been dragged through the story. It is no surprise that both novels made for famous films, they feel ready made for the scripts.

But both books also have a similar story, seeing a relatively straight male figure brought to their knees by a femme fatale. In Postman Frank Chambers brings it on himself, his desire for Cora, a married woman, meaning he is willing to commit the ultimate crime. In Double Indemnity Walter Huff throws his settled life and successful career away after being seduced by the beautiful Phyllis Nirdlinger. Unlike Cora, Phyllis is a serial schemer, confident that she can manipulate Walter to commit a crime that she can benefit. Walter puts together the perfect crime and is only foiled because his friend smells a rat immediately.

Like Postman, Double Indemnity's title has a dual meaning. In this case it refers to both the insurance scam that Walter and Phyllis are hoping to pull off, and the double cross that Walter experiences. Unlike Postman though the characters in Double Indemnity experience a kind of redemption, as they realise that their plans have come undone and they cannot escape. The ending is, however, different to the film but, after reading it twice, I found it more satisfactory. 

Most people will know Double Indemnity for Barbara Stanwyck's famous depiction of Phyllis. I'd encourage fans of the film to pick up this tight little thriller. It is well worth the read.

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Cain - The Postman Always Rings Twice

John Dickson Carr - The Hollow Man

I discovered John Dickson Carr's The Hollow Man quite by chance on a random bookshelf in a completely disorganised second hand bookshop. I am very glad I did. Carr's work is that of classic detective stories, updated for the 20th century, but with an occasional remarkably unique spin. 

The Hollow Man is known for being on the of the great locked room mysteries. The main character, an eccentric academic Professor Charles Grimaud, is approached by a stranger who warns him about his dangerous brother. Grimaud seems to shrub off the threat, but then commits a number of strange acts - buying and displaying a strange painting and waiting for the killer in his room. Grimaud is murdered in a literal locked room and there are no signs of his killers' escape. Another murder ten takes place in the middle of a street, the undisturbed snow seeming to prove that the killer cannot even have been there.

The police and Carr's hero, Dr. Fell, arrive at the scene of the first crime within minutes - yet only Fell appears not to be baffled. Fell is an intriguing character in himself. Clearly modelled on Sherlock Holmes, he is a polyglot who keeps his private life private. Yet he is also unusually described - a massively overweight character, with a gift for making witnesses talk, and an infuriating way (at least to the police) of not explaining anything he thinks as they career from place to place investigating and finding evidence.

But The Hollow Man will stand out not for this mystery - which is extremely fun and satisfyingly complex - but for its exposition of the whole theory of locked rooms mysteries. Chapter seventeen is nothing less than a lecture by Fell on the theory of locked rooms mysteries. "I will not lecture on the general mechanics and development of the situation which is known in detective fiction as the 'hermetically sealed chamber'." Fell tells his fellow investigators... and to ensure the reader knows exactly what is happening Fell tells his audience that this must be done because "we're in a detective story, and we don't fool the reader by pretending we're not". Having smashed the fourth wall, Fell continues by telling us (and his other fictional characters) all his theories of how such crimes can be committed and then solving the one that he is a character in. 

Locked room mysteries are, like magic tricks, inherently disappointing. When you understand them, they immediately lose something. Fell tells the reader exactly this, "the effect is so magical that we somehow expect the cause to be magical also. When we see that it isn't wizardry, we call it tomfoolery." But the genius of this tale is that the reader doesn't feel fooled or tricked. The solution is, of course, simultaneously obvious and fantastically complex. There are plenty of red herrings littering the landscape to through the reader off as well.

In short, this is a brilliant piece of crime fiction that turns the tropes on their head, places the reader in the story in a very unusual way, and serves up a complex locked room mystery with a rather neat solution. I must admit to being rather taken by both John Dickson Carr and his Dr. Fell. I look forward to others in this numerous series.

James M. Cain - Postman Always Rings Twice

*** Spoilers ***
Apparently James M. Cain hated that his novel was described as "hard-boiled", yet it is difficult to come up with a better adjective. When published in 1934 it caused outrage for its sex and brutal violence, and today it feels no less raw, though we lack the outrage. 

Frank Chambers, a young drifter, arrives at a gas station and diner, where he tries to scam the owner out of a meal. The owner, a Greek immigrant called Nick Papadakis runs the place with is beautiful wife Cora. Nick gives Frank a job, and quickly Frank and Cora begin an affair. The pair plan to murder Nick and take over the diner, but Nick survives the attempt without any memories of it taking place. A second attempt is successful and Cora is put on trial for murder. A clever lawyer manages to get the pair off, by playing the insurance companies off against the judge but in the aftermath Cora and Frank fall out. A reconciliation after Cora discovers she is pregnant is abruptly ended as Frank crashes his car, killing Cora and putting Frank on trial for murder. The coincidences have piled up, and the innocent (in this case) Frank is eventually executed - the text of the novel forming his final thoughts before his death.

The novel hits the reader hard. Cain's clipped prose encourages the tension. With the exception of the innocent, and naive, Nick, most of the characters are grotesque - from the murderers to the prosecutors, and the lawyer everyone is out to grab a bigger slice of the pie. Frank and Cora's lawyer is particularly neatly drawn in this regard - he refuses a huge payment as he knows that the case itself has made his career. The ending too is shocking, by depicting the execution of Frank for a crime he didn't commit the reader is tempted to feel he is absolved of his crimes. But he is not, in anyway, an innocent.

The Postman Always Rings Twice is very much about fate. Everyone has two chances here - Nick survives a murder, only to be killed a few weeks later. Frank and Cora avoid the execution block, blackmail but then get their comeuppance. Even the legal system gets its chance for a second try,

The Postman Always Rings Twice is perhaps watched more than it is read. This is a shame as the novel is powerful and the work is itself a lesson in how writers can put a lot into a few words. You can see why the film industry adored it.

James Ellroy - The Cold Six Thousand

The Cold Six Thousand is the follow up to James Ellroy's American Tabloid. That book finished with the assassination of John F Kennedy, and this one begins almost minutes later. The dirty alliances that formed the complex network of conspiracy in the first book are unmade and then remade by JFK's death. J. Edgar Hoover wants to ensure that the narrative of the assassination is focused on the lone gunman, and sends Ward Littell to Dallas to make sure this happens. As Littell manages the investigation he discovers wider conspiracies around Mafia money, Jimmy Hoffa and Howard Hughes' plans to take over Las Vegas. At the same time, French Pete Bondurant is locked in a personal, but CIA funded, war against Communism. This means incursions against Cuba, but quickly spreads to Vietnam as the US war there gets more and more involved. Drugs are funnelled from South East Asia to the ghettos of America, further enriching various criminal forces. Wayne Tedrow Jr, the son of a millionaire, far right businessman, arrives in Dallas from Vegas with six thousand dollars in order to find, and kill, a low level criminal who has upset the casino mafia.

Under the pressure of events, Martin Luther King's Civil Rights' campaigning is becoming more and more anti-capitalist. Drawing the wrath of the "deep state", Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and a host of real life characters are under threat from several growing conspiracies that seek to strengthen the hand of organised crime and undermine the liberal left.

As with the first book The Cold Six Thousand deals with the monstrous underbelly of the US in its most turbulent years. As the Civil Rights movement explodes onto the streets, the far right and the racist establishment look to fight back. The swirling conspiracies might not be historically true, but they certainly fit the facts. This is America at its most unequal, violent and interventionist. The only decent characters are those one the streets trying to change things, but they face the most unpleasant and violent resistance. Ellroy's staccato style might not be for everyone, and I found this book slower paced than the first - perhaps because the climax of that book was the murder of JFK. But its worth persevering with Ellroy - each page is punchy and the end is a shock.

Related Reviews

Ellroy - American Tabloid
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James Ellroy - American Tabloid

American Tabloid is the dark underbelly of the American dream. Set in the years leading up to the assassination of President John F Kennedy, it follows the interweaving stories of three main characters, each of them representing different violent, racist, right-wing sections of the USA. We have FBI agents out organising to ensure black people in the South can vote, while working with the KKK to push their interests elsewhere. There are political assassins, mafia agents and dirty lawyers.

We've got corrupt politicians, businessmen and union leaders (step forward Hoffa) pushing their interests, by preparing to assassinate, bribe and steal their way to further wealth and power. We've got right-wingers and anti-Communists organising to overthrow Castro in the Bay of Pigs, and happy to work with any armed bigot they can, and we've got a handful of people who think the world could be a better place.

Its a compelling, vicious read. As Ellroy weaves the stories together (each of his characters trying to compartmentalise different bits of their life from each other) all the threads head towards Dallas and November 22 1963, as JFK is heading out on a motorcade.

Fiction and reality mingle here. Real life characters like JFK, Bobby Kennedy and Howard Hughes interact with some truly nasty fictional characters. Sometimes its difficult to work out who is real and who isn't. The real problem is that it feels so real, that it seems Ellroy's got his hands on some secret US government files and knows what really happened.

The frightening thing, and Ellroy's great achievement, is that it could be. Ellroy's punctured prose is a bit like the noise a machine gun makes and sometimes I lost track of who was speaking or being shot. But it certainly kept the tension up. I'm looking forward to the remaining volumes in the trilogy.

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Elmore Leonard - Maximum Bob

I first read Elmore Leonard's Maximum Bob about twenty years ago. It was first published in 1991, but many of its themes feel incredibly relevant today. The novel focuses on Bob Gibbs, a bigoted and right-wing judge who sees his role as deploying "maximum" punishments to offenders with the belief that most of his (black) defendants are guilty, or will be guilty, and should simply be locked away.

But several plot lines swirl around this. Bob's in a loveless marriage with Leanne, who believes she is challenging the spirit of a young slave girl Wanda Grace. Bob uses his position of power and influence to seduce multiple women, blaming his wife for his infidelity. He plots to drive his wife away by introducing a live alligator from the Florida swamps into their garden. Her terror of these animals is linked to a near death experience when she was a mermaid performer at a Florida water park.

Finally, Kathy Baker, is a probation officer, trying to make sure her clients stay within the law, but are also treated equitably by the law. She quickly butts head with the Judge who immediately attempts to sleep with her. 

Baker's clients, the Judge's victims and many other amusing characters are set up for a complex story as plots of revenge against Maximum Bob get mixed up with his attempts to drive his wife away. A second major plot line deals with Bakers blooming love affair with a policeman who is trying to understand what is going on.

Maximum Bob deals with a broken justice system, but it is essentially a black comedy. It doesn't have much of an insight into the dark under-belly of the United States, though this is certainly in the back ground. I think it might have been written different in a Black Lives Matter world. There is also an amusing reference to Donald Trump, as one character refers to his wealth and another hasn't heard of him. 

Maximum Bob is now is slightly dated, but still an entertaining read and Leonard certainly has an brilliant ability to weave various storylines together and bring them together with a bang. The final sentence certainly hit me hard.

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Jane Harper - The Lost Man

Set in the deep outback of Australia, where cattle farmers struggle against the heat, desert, lack of water and the narrowminded communities that they live in, this tight thriller is a tense read. The best thing about Jane Harper's book is undoubtedly her depiction of out-back Australia, a place were few go except farmers, their families, a few back packers and a handful of state employees. But she has also constructed a brilliant story, full of tension and misdirection, where the outback is as much a character as the group of people at the heart of the story.

When Cameron Bright is found dead, no one can understand it. A relatively successful rancher and family man, with no enemies and no reason to commit suicide, there seems to be no explanation. Yet there are enough inconsistencies to make his brother Nathan suspicious. Something is just not quite right. As the heat of the summer swamps Christmas, Nathan's explorations of his brother's family open some deep wounds and it soon becomes clear that Cameron was killed. But why? And by whom?

I really enjoyed Harper's gradual expose of the Bright families secrets. The parallel stories of Nathan's own dark history are handled neatly too, as is his relationship with his son and ex-wife. The ending is remarkably satisfying, tying up a load of lose ends very well. This certainly is a page turner, and I while I am not normally one for tension, and enjoyed this a lot.

Philip Kerr - The One from the Other

This is the first of the "later" Bernie Gunther novels, detective "noir" set in Germany from the 1930s onward. This one opens with Gunther running his wife's hotel on the outskirts of Dachau after the war. After his wife's death he sells up and returns to being a detective, this time in Munich. His cases are mostly finding missing persons - there are plenty of those in Germany after 1945. A beautiful woman hires Gunther to find her former husband, now a wanted Nazi war criminal, so that she can prove him dead in order to remarry. Gunther is drawn into a the circles protecting former Nazis trying to escape to South America, and finds himself in the midst of a complicated scheme involving a lot of money, murder and the CIA.

By the time of this novel Gunther is tired and broken. The death of his wife and his entrapment by nefarious characters seem to wear him down dramatically. By the end of the book there's precious little wisecracking, though there's still a lot of cynicism.

But the story is too convoluted and too unlikely. From the prologue, where Gunther finds himself in Palestine with Adolf Eichmann, onward, I found myself rolling my eyes at how unlikely it all seemed. Philip Marlowe's cases may have been moved forward on occasion by unlikely coincidences, but Gunther's life seems to be determined by some of the most unlikely of events ever. Kerr's attempts to link Gunther to just about every person in Nazi Germany are increasingly annoying, but this plot is simply too over the top to be able to suspend belief.

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Philip Kerr - A German Requiem

After finding the first two volumes of Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy unsatisfactory and unpleasant, I was intent on reading the third volume A German Requiem merely for the sake of completion. It is, in my mind, better - perhaps because it doesn't deal with the claustrophobic atmosphere of Berlin during the Nazi era. The war is now over, Bernie Gunther has finished his stint on the Eastern Front (after a brief period in the SS where he witnessed many atrocities) and time in a Soviet POW camp. He is now eking out a living in the ruins of Berlin, where he and his wife survive mostly because she is receiving presents from a US Army Officer that she is having an affair with.

Gunther is earning a few coins after returning to his old line of work. But Berlin in 1948 is a tense place as the Russians and Western Allies begin to square off. After being approached by a Russian officer apparently on behalf of an old acquaintance, Gunther travels to Vienna to try and solve a crime and get an innocent man off Death Row. In Vienna, Gunther escapes his wife's infidelity, and gets sucked into a vortex of crime linked to the black market and former Nazis.

A German Requiem doesn't quite fit with the Berlin Noir title - being almost entirely set in Austria. That said, Kerr does show the vast difference between the two capitals, though both are being pulled apart by the conflicts of the various occupying powers. Vienna is back on its feet much quicker, there's less damage and, as Gunther quickly learns, despite the involvement of many of its citizens in the Nazi era's crimes - the Western Allies are happy to imply that Austria was an unwilling participant in Hitler's Reich.

Much of the novel is focused on Gunther's attempts to find out what happened when his acquaintance was linked to the murder of a US army officer. But the real story centres on former senior Nazis who are being used by the Americans. Here Kerr is on firm historical ground, and he (and Gunther) are suitably cynical about the way that some Nazis are found guilty and executed and others are given new identities and jobs. 

Vienna forms the backdrop, and as a neat joke, Gunther finds himself present at a couple of events linked to the filming of The Third Man, the classic film noir set after World War Two in similar circumstances. The novel is less misogynist than the previous one - women are less likely to throw themselves at Gunther as soon as they see him. Though there is at least one such scene. There is also a rather gruesome killing of a female character. 

Finishing the last of the trilogy I was left conflicted. I enjoyed them for their evocation of the Nazi era. Something Kerr excels at. He also writes a good Noir mystery. But I was left unhappy with his depiction and use of female characters. In his regard, the final novel is at least better than the first two. I remain unsure as to whether I'll return to Gunther's adventures as a result.

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Kerr - March Violets
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Philip Kerr - The Pale Criminal

Volume two of the Berlin Noir trilogy featuring Philip Kerr's detective Bernie Gunther is similar to the first. While women still, improbably and repeatedly, throw themselves at Gunther, the plot is refreshingly different. Gunther is hired to find out who is blackmailing the gay son of a rich publishing house owner. Seemingly unrelated to this, Gunther is pulled into investigating a serial killer who appears to be targeting young, blond school girls. The Gestapo have found an innocent Jew to pin the blame on, as the method of murder is similar to an anti-Semitic trope being regularly used by a Nazi newspaper - Der Stürmer. 

Gunther is reluctantly brought back into the German police force by no less a figure than Reinhard Heydrich. With the powers that he has from this he tries to find the serial killer before the general public learn of the killings. As with the first novel Kerr tells us a great deal about Berlin in 1938 - the racism, paranoia, violence and increasingly militarised society through Gunther's experiences. The backdrop to the novel is the Sudeten Crisis and the Munich Agreement. Gunther's convinced there will be war, most others are not. The tension filters through all the characters.

The plot is complex, and gruesome. Kerr has depicted police procedural methods from the 1930s with seeming accuracy. However irrational the Nazi regime was, the solution to the murders and the ending of the novel are somewhat unbelievable. As is the way that Kerr ties up a lose end from the first book in a very unsatisfying way. The book is readable, enjoyable even, for the atmosphere if not the plot. Except...

In my review of the March Violets I expressed my concern at a deeply unpleasant and unnecessary described rape scene. The Pale Criminal doesn't have this, but there is a extremely unnecessary scene involving a young sixteen year old girl who arrives at Gunther's apartment to collect money for Winter Relief. There's an uncomfortable scene between her, and Gunther - who while he rejects her advances, there is too much salacious detail. This left me wondering quite how Kerr thought women behaved and why he felt he needed to include these scenes. 

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Philip Kerr - March Violets

Many people have recommended Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther detective novels to me. Most of them are set in Berlin during, or after, the Third Reich and they are acclaimed for historical accuracy and the transportation of Detective Noir from the United States to a completely different setting.

March Violets is the first of the trilogy that make up the Berlin Noir series. The Gunther novels proved popular enough that Kerr produced more of them. But the first three are the classics. March Violets is set in 1936, as Hitler is consolidating his power and the Nazi Reich has deposed of its opponents. Attacks on the Jews are yet to reach their height, as Hitler is still concerned about the watching world. Gunther tackles his case as the Berlin Olympics take place, and the regime hides its most outward examples of antisemitism.

Kerr's detective is investigating the loss of some diamonds - owned by the daughter of one of Germany's most wealthy, and least Nazi supporting, steal magnates. The daughter and her husband have been murdered, and Gunther is asked to find the diamonds. Quickly he finds that the case is much more complicated and there are links to senior Nazis, as well as organised crime.

Its a complicated plot worthy of a classic Noir novel. Gunther is wise-cracking, tough, alcoholic and cynical. He's also not a fan of the Nazis - though to be fair he doesn't really like anyone. Readers who enjoy the likes of Philip Marlowe will appreciate the work that the author has put into recreating the atmosphere and characters.

But. And it's a big but. Gunther is not Marlowe. For a start he's to misogynist and homophobic. Marlowe was a cynic, but he wasn't openly offensive. More problematically is how the book treats women. Women throw themselves at Gunther and the sex scenes are crude. The only female character of any depth, one that Gunther falls for, disappears at the end of the book. There is also, it must be said, a particularly unpleasant rape scene which is described in far too much detail. It's unnecessary, crude and soured the book for me. 

At its best the book is a clever exploration of the way that the Nazis transformed the whole of German culture. I am not sure that it was quite as common as Gunther seems to imply that people spoke critically of Hitler and the Nazis, but by placing Gunther at the heart of the Nazi beast (and even in a Concentration Camp at one point) Kerr does manage to evoke an impression of Berlin in the late 1930s. But in this book at least, I found the negatives far outweighed the positives.

Related Reviews

Kerr - The Pale Criminal
Kerr - A German Requiem

Georges Simenon - Maigret at the Crossroads

*** Spoilers ***

Somehow Maigret at the Crossroads is the only Maigret that I've read. Georges Simenon's French police detective featured in 75 novels and a couple of dozen more short stories. But even just reading this one novel you can see why the stories were so popular. Published in 1931 this is an insight into a very different France. In fact, the otherworldliness of the book is one of its charms and this is extenuated by the book's is rural setting. At the crossroads of the title is a petrol station and garage and nearby a large country house. The owner of this house, is under questioning at the start of the book as a Jewish diamond trader has been found dead in his house.

Pausing only to have his wife pack him a bag, Maigret travels to the scene of the crime. The Three Widows' Crossroad, as its is known, seems eerie and lonely. Through the night cars and lorries pass on the long road to Paris, and the house itself is strange. Carl Andersen and Else Andersen, the owners, behave strangely. Else keeping herself locked in the bedroom when her husband is away. But Maigret's keen eye quickly notices things aren't right.

Like many detective novels of its era the book is short, but Simenon packs a lot in. There's a surprising amount of gun action, and some interesting backstory for the Andersens. One thing that I didn't appreciate early on is that those found guilty of murder face the death penalty, and in France at the time that meant the guillotine. It makes a the ending denouncement particularly spine-chilling. Highly recommended.

Andrew Martin - The Last Train to Scarborough

I bought this novel on a whim on a trip to Scarborough a few months ago, intending to read it in the hotel. I wish I had done, because it certainly evokes the place and would have been quite atmospheric to read on location, so to speak. Andrew Martin's "railway detective" novels all feature Jim Stringer, a railway obsessed former train driver turned railway policeman. Martin's target audience is clearly the slightly railway obsessed reader of crime fiction, though the book works better as historical fiction. Set in March 1914 Martin does well to give a sense of the era, but at times goes to far, describing every little thing to tell the reader they are really in the past.

Stringer travels to Scarborough undercover as a railway fireman to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a rail-worker who was staying in the inapt named Paradise guest house. There Stringer encounters, and falls for, the beautiful owner of the home while finding her brother and the other guests distinctly uncomfortable. The best thing about the book is that Martin does this really well. The guesthouse is creepy, the guests weird and there's a dreamlike feeling to Stringer's interaction with them all as he gropes towards trying to work out what's happening.

But while readable, the book doesn't really work as crime fiction. The best thing about it is the atmosphere. Unfortunately the plot is limited - the denouncement isn't particularly interesting or exciting and doesn't warrant the buildup. But the biggest problem is the structure. Martin constructs the book by having two interweaving timelines, one that follows Stringer on his investigation, and the other that is near the end. The latter takes several chapters to get going and is really confusing (and unnecessary). At the end of it I found myself jumping back and forwards trying to work out what was happening.

I am told that others in this series are better, and perhaps this was not the best starting point. Readers might enjoy it for the atmosphere but that was about it for me.

Raymond Chandler - Trouble is my Business

This collection of stories by Raymond Chandler will be familiar to anyone who has read any of his other works. They all begin from a similar theme - the lonesome, hard drinking, cynical detective confronts a conspiracy or mystery that usually involves a beautiful woman. First published as a book in 1946 the stories were themselves published in magazines between 1933 and 1939 and carry a flavour of their times. Prohibition is over, but gangsters, millionaires and confidence tricksters rule the roost in an underground that frequently erupts into violent crime. Mostly ordinary working people are bystanders - like the hotel staff that the hero of Guns at Cyrano's slips cash too because they wages don't stop their hunger (though perhaps he's the gullible victim here?).

Cyrano's is a slightly unusual story for Chandler, as it initially focuses on a boxing match were one fighter has been asked to take a dive. The mob feature heavily, but it soon becomes clear that the real criminals are one step removed and no-one is actually telling the truth.

The title story Trouble is my Business is the most Marlowe of  the novels though the detective doesn't share the name (which doesn't stop publishers marketing the book as being a collection of Marlowe stories). Here is a convoluted plot that involves a wealthy heiress, a no good lover with gambling debts and a really annoying butler that carries the reader along rather than tells a story. Chandler once said about his style:

The denouement would justify everything. The technical basis of the Black Mask type of story on the other hand was that the scene outranked the plot, in the sense that a good plot was one which made good scenes. The ideal mystery was one you would read if the end was missing. We who tried to write it had the same point of view as the film makers.

This is very true of these stories here. Like those science fiction stories that are read just for the twist ending, the resolution of the story is key here. Though the resolution is not always the ending, that is usually the bit where Marlowe (or whoever) bemoans the fact that the beautiful heroine has left/been murdered/or rejected him.

Chandler was very aware that he followed a formula when writing. One of the problems reading several of his stories or novels in succession is that you notice they all have very similar scenes. There's almost always a point when a couple of policeman play good cop/bad cop with the detective and threaten him because it looks like he killed someone. There's also always a bit when Marlowe (insert other name here) discovers a body then leaves after cleaning all traces of him. Then his apparent pre-knowledge of a killing allows him one over others in the story.

These sound like negative points, but Chandler was writing to sell stories, and his style worked. Nonetheless he isn't just a hack writer, he has a knack of painting pictures with a couple of sentences, and creating scenes with barely a paragraph. None of us has ever seen Benny Cyrano, but when Chandler tells us that he was "shaped like two eggs, a little one that was his head on top of a big one that was his body" we can all picture him instantly. The opening paragraph to Red Wind is classic Chandler:

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.

Its a paragraph that drags you in to the whole story. The ending to Goldfish was for me, marked not by the actual location of the missing pearls, but the realisation that the wife of the main criminal almost pulls the wool over the eyes of the detective who is trying to recover them for the insurance agency. That he is doing so for reward money to split with a policeman who has been kicked out of the force for marrying a known criminal who is now in prison makes it all the more brilliant.

If you've not read Chandler this is a good place to start, though its also true that Chandler's short stories never quite get it as much as the full length novels. Nonetheless they're fun and classics of a genre that stand out from among tens of thousands of similar tales.

Related Reviews

Chandler - The Long Good-Bye
Chandler - Playback
Chandler - The Little Sister
Chandler - Farewell My Lovely
Chandler - The Big Sleep
Hammett - Red Harvest
Hammett - The Maltese Falcon