Crime Fiction Alphabet: F is for France

Posted on February 14, 2011 by bernadetteinoz

Given that Paris is the location for what is (arguably) the world’s first detective story I thought France would be a suitable topic for this week’s contribution to the Crime Fiction Alphabet. I’ve chosen a mixture of books by French natives as well as books set in France written by ‘outsiders’.

France From Outside

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe‘s short story The Murders in the Rue Morgue was first published in a magazine in 1841. Set in Paris it depicts C. Auguste Dupin as a detective who solves the murder of Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter in the fourth floor locked room of an apartment building on the fictional street of the story’s title. Several of the conventions which later became the norm for crime fiction, including the use of the detective’s friend as the story’s narrator and the use of deductive reasoning to resolve the mystery, debut in this story.

John Dickson Carr was another prolific American author who used France as the setting for some of his crime fiction. The first of his novels to do so was 1930′s It Walks By Night featuring Henri Bencolin, a judge d’instruction (or examining magistrate) as the protagonist. After watching both entrances for some time police raid a Parisian gambling den and find a head severed from the kneeling body of a man. There are no secret passages to explain how the murder took place while the police looked on. M. Bencolin went on to feature in 4 more of Carr’s novels.

Georges Simenon was Belgian but set his most popular series of stories, 75 novels and 28 short stories featuring Commissaire Jules Maigret, in France. Maigret was a pipe smoking, cider drinking, coat wearing police detective relying on a mixture of intuition and method to solve all manner of crimes. His last appearance was in 1972’s Maigret and Monsieur Charles which opens with Maigret refusing a promotion because it would stop him being ‘hands-on’. Instead he investigates the disappearance of a wealthy Parisian lawyer who has a secret life involving call girls (who know him as Monsieur Charles) and associated seediness.

Cara Black‘s series of novels featuring Aimée Leduc, a French/American private detective who specialises in corporate security, runs to 11 novels with this year’s release. The first of these was 1999′s Murder in the Marais in which Aimée is asked by a rabbi to decode an encrypted photograph from the 1940′s but when she goes to deliver it as requested she finds the body of an elderly Jewish woman. A tale of neo-Nazis, war-time collaborators and modern immigration disputes follows as Aimée and her business partner, the only dwarf in crime fiction (?), pull off several super-human feats of deduction and crime solving.

France From Within

Tonino Benacquista is a French novelist and screenwriter whose crime fiction books have been translated into English. Holy Smoke is the first of several novels to feature Antoine Andrieux, a young Basque in Paris who works as a handler in an art gallery by day and plays billiards by night. The publisher’s blurb gives this synopsis “Some favors simply cannot be refused. Tonio agrees to write a love letter for Dario, a low-rent Paris gigolo. When Dario is murdered, a single bullet to the head, Tonio finds he has been left a small vineyard near Naples. The wine is undrinkable, but an elaborate scam has been set up. The smell of easy money attracts the unwanted attentions of the Mafia and the Vatican and the unbridled hatred of the locals. Mafiosi aren’t choir boys, and monsignors can be very much like Mafiosi.” Badfellas is a standalone novel by Benacquista that tells the story of an American gangster who moves to a small town in France as part of the witness protection program and was shortlisted for the 2010 CWA International Dagger Award.

A book that I have on my TBR and plan to read for this year’s Global Challenge is Xavier-Marie Bonnot’s The First Fingerprint. The blurb for the book says it “…introduces a policeman as polished as he is brutal, as charming as he is streetwise and as deceptively noble as he is coarse. Michel de Palma, called “the Baron” by his colleagues, knows the dark underside of the city of Marseille as do none of his rivals. But his enemies are everywhere: in the crime-infested sinks of the suburbs; in the sleek and squalid bars of the old quarter; even in the police ranks themselves. When Marseille is thrown into turmoil by a series of savage murders, each signed with a print of a three-fingered hand, the Baron is ordered to drop his present investigation into the puzzling death of historian Christine Autran. But the Baron ignores his instructions, for unbeknown to his colleagues he has discovered a bizarre connection between the two cases. Autran was researching Le Guen’s Cave, an underwater cavern containing some of the earliest engravings known to man – including a crude drawing of a three-fingered hand. De Palma heads to the university in Aix-en-Provence to investigate further, but the clique of pre-history professors he encounters are as hard to unravel as the meaning of the cave-drawing itself. As he gets closer to the truth, the group of academics closes ranks. Deliberately and alone, de Palma begins pursuing a mystery that dates back to the Ice Age.” This is the first book in a planned quartet.

Jean-Patrick Machette’s thriller Three to Kill was originally published in 1975 but only translated into English in 2002 (seven years after the author’s death). It tells the tale of an ordinary businessman who purely by chance witnesses a murder which puts him in the path of two hired hit men and he goes on the run. While it might sound like a tired old ‘average man in peril’ scenario it is a cut above the usual fodder in that crowded space. It’s lean, dark and full of the author’s left-leaning social commentary (which does occasionally get a bit tiresome but is largely forgivable due to the insight offered into French life). This one really is worth getting hold of if you can unearth a copy.

Dominque Manotti has written police procedurals and thrillers set in her native France. The only one I have read is Affairs of State which is a novel about the corrupting influence of power on…well…pretty much everyone. I thought the book lacked suspense (after a few pages it was pretty clear it would all end in tears) but the political insights and writing were top notch. I have another of Manotti’s books on order from the library.

Fred Vargas is probably one of the best known French crime writers because she has been so successful in winning awards. She has a series of procedurals featuring a peculiar police investigator but my favourite of her novels is a standalone called The Three Evangelists. In it an opera singer becomes obsessed by a tree planted in her garden without her knowledge and she turns to her neighbours, three young historians and a disgraced policeman, to discover how the tree came to be planted and what it means. The book is a little surreal at times but an absolute delight to read.

A French book I have yet to read but which was discussed by Maxine at Petrona last year is Bruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker (who is not French but lives there and has done for many years). Publisher’s Weekly had this to say about the book “Policing in Chief Bruno Courrèges’s sun-dappled patch of Périgord involves protecting local fromages from E.U. hygiene inspectors, orchestrating village parades and enjoying the obligatory leisurely lunch—that is, until the brutal murder of an elderly Algerian immigrant instantly jolts Walker’s second novel (after The Caves of Périgord) from provincial cozy to timely whodunit. As a high-powered team of investigators, including a criminally attractive female inspector, invade sleepy St. Denis to forestall any anti-Arab violence, the amiable Bruno must begin regarding his neighbors—or should we say potential suspects—in a rather different light.” I’ve yet to get my hands on it but I will. Soon.

Historical France

Quinn Fawcett‘s Death Wears a Crown is the second of two books to feature Madame Victoire Vernet who is the wife of the head of the military gendarmes in the Napoleonic era. In this novel she is called upon to foil a plot to assassinate Napoleon just as he is to be crowned Emperor.

Claude Izner is the pseudonym for two French sisters who have published a series of light historical mysteries set in and around Paris in the late 19^th Century. Their hero is, like them, a book seller on the banks of the Seinne who gets into a series of scrapes. His first outing is in Murder on the Eifel Tower and he becomes involved in the investigation of a death at the opening of the iconic structure. This year sees the release of the 6th novel in this series.

Among the many (many) standalones and series set during or just after the Second World War in France my favourite is probably J Robert Janes’ series of 12 novels set in the 1940’s featuring one detective on each side of the conflict. In the first book, 1992’s Mayhem, Jean-Louis St Cyr of the Sureté and Herman Kohler of the Gestapo investigate the discovery of a body near the Fontainbleu forest. Assuming the crime is resistance related the Nazi authorities want Herman to ‘solve’ it quickly with the ‘right’ result but the two detectives persevere with a proper investigation and discover that even in wartime family secrets and other mundane matters can be just as responsible for criminal acts as the armed conflict.

I know there are plenty more crime fiction tales set in France so please do tell me your favourites.

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Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise is hosting the crime fiction alphabet meme which requires the posting of an article relating to the letter of the week. Do join in the fun by reading the posts and/or contributing one of your own. You don’t have to write every week.

This is the second round of the meme which was first run from late 2009 to early 2010. My contributions that time were discussions of books with one word titles.

A Classic Crime Curriculum

Posted on January 7, 2010 by bernadetteinoz

Rob Kitchin needs the assistance of crime fiction readers everywhere. He wants your suggestions for the ten classic* crime fiction books that a fan of the genre who is more familiar with contemporary fiction than the older stuff should read.

As I mentioned in my review of the Patricia Moyes book the other day I’m fairly ignorant of the classics myself but surely we all know by now that I’d never let a lack of knowledge get in the way of having an opinion.

Last year I prepared a ‘Dartmoor Dozen’ list of books in a variety of mysterious sub-genres and three of those are books I would recommend to Rob

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders at the Rue Morgue (blame my mother, when she got through the poetry she started reading Poe’s murder mysteries to baby Bernadette assuming that it was tone of voice rather than content that was important)
Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Final Problem (actually I have a giant volume of Doyle’s collected works and if I had the power I’d make Rob read the whole thing – it’s a delight)
Ngaio Marsh’s The Nursing Home Murder (published in 1935 it tackled weighty political issues like pre-Israel Palestine among the murder and mayhem)

From my own reading I would only add another three to the list

Rex Stout’s Fer-de-Lance (it’s his first and one of the best and does a great job of introducing all the players)(plus Rob might enjoy the plot of a university professor being killed)
Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile (we’ve talked about this book before)
Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Vagabond Virgin (legal procedurals are a sub genre of crime fiction that seem to be out of favour these days but Gardner’s 85 Perry Mason books were damned good crime solving yarns)(I could have chosen any one of several books but seriously aren’t you just dying to know what the heck a vagabond virgin is?)

That’s it. I can’t come up with four more classics I’ve read that I would recommend (I have actually read a few more than this but not all old books are great) (sorry Dashiell Hammett and Arthur Upfield but …well…”ugh” on both counts).

However I’ve been preparing my own list of classics to read and I’m planning to read

Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (Hume was arguably Australia’s first writer of detective fiction and this 1886 novel was discussed on a local radio show last year and was said to influence the great detective writers including Arthur Conan Doyle) (though this may be hogwash, we Aussies tend to believe we’ve had more influence on the world stage than is actually the case)
Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White (I’m pretty sure I have read this before as it’s one of a collection of 20 leather bound books I inherited from my paternal grandmother and I read them all as a teenager but I cannot recall a single detail of the Collins)(which is every sad because Collins was a protégé of one of my favourite writers ever, Mr Charles Dickens)
Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train (does it count that I’ve seen the film a bunch of times?)
Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (It’s highly unlikely I will like Chandler but stranger things have happened)
Something by Margery Allingham (I’ve no idea what as to be honest none of the titles immediately appeal but I feel I ought to read something)

Actually ‘planning to read’ sounds a bit more organised than I really am. So far all I’ve done is make the list. But I’m in no great rush and I’m not going to devote oodles of reading time to books that are decades old when there is so much new stuff that intrigues me. I don’t mind delving sporadically into my favourite genre’s heritage but I’m not about to devote my life to such pursuits.

Please head over to Rob’s site and leave him your suggestions and I’ll check them out too. I am open to the idea of adding some more titles to my own ‘crime fiction to read before I die’ list.

*Rob defines classic crime as anything published before 1970. I define it as stuff published before I was born (spot the self-absorbed one). Oh and my date is 1967 (I have plenty of hang-ups but you knowing how old I am isn’t one of them).

Sunday Salon: What to read first (a revised Dartmoor Dozen)

Posted on February 22, 2009 by bernadetteinoz

Last week I wrote about being unable to meet Uriah Robinson’s challenge of putting together a list of books in these categories as a reading list for someone new to this genre. I was told by more than one person that I was missing out on a golden opportunity to recruit new people to the crime fiction cult fold and, when Uriah created a new, more varied list, I decided I’d give it a go in the interests of spreading the word to the uninitiated. And so, my recommendations to you, the novice crime reader.

1] The Origins:

Naturally enough it’s all my mother’s fault. My obsession with crime fiction that is. She has admitted to reading her favourite writer, Edgar Allan Poe, to her children as babies. She started with the poetry but soon moved on to the darker prose. She could be forgiven for thinking that 6 month old me wouldn’t understand anything but her tone of voice but something must have seeped into my teeny developing brain because as soon as I could choose my own books I was reading mysteries. And I’ve never stopped. In honour of my mum then I would have to recommend you pick up a copy of Tales of Mystery and Imagination and read the two stories featuring the adventures of Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin, probably the world’s first detective and definitely a direct ancestor of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Or, as it’s freely (and legally) available on the web you could get started on The Murders at the Rue Morgue right now.

2] The Age of Sherlock Holmes:

I’d just turned 20 when I moved to Sydney to take up my first ‘real’ job after leaving Uni with a fascinating but almost useless politics degree and the clothes on my back. The place I moved to had a pretty woeful library (countless rotating stands full of Mills & Boon books and two shelves of mechanical manuals for Holden cars) and my budget didn’t run to buying a lot of books. I scoured second hand shops though and discovered a set of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories and I read the lot, cover to cover, several times over that year. The Adventure of the Final Problem is my favourite Holmesian adventure though only by a bee’s whisker from almost everything else. It’s quite fascinating to trace back many of the character traits today’s fictional detectives display, including arrogance (albeit justified), above average intelligence and a predilection for self-destructive behaviour, to Holmes.

3] The Golden Age:

In Australia it’s fairly common practice to appropriate all the good things that come out of New Zealand as ‘ours’ so here I will recommend a novel by New Zealand author (Edith) Ngaio Marsh. First published in 1935 The Nursing Home Murder was the third of 32 novels featuring British police detective Roderick Alleyn and on the surface it’s a standard police procedural about the death threats being made against a leading British politician. Like much of Marsh’s work though it has a serious undercurrent and tackles the weightiest political issue of the time namely the rule of what was then called Palestine by Britain. Even today it is illuminating and as a bonus Marsh wrote superbly.

4] Hardboiled:

Without question this is my least favourite of the sub-genres. I’ve read a few over the years but can’t recall being engaged by a single one. All the things that define the genre: the sex and violence, the focus on plot over character development, the kind of first person narrative many of them use, leave me cold. To top it off I generally find them pretty misogynistic and although I can accept they were a product of a different time there’s not enough incentive for me to forgive that. If forced at gunpoint I’d recommend Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon as the ultimate example of the genre but I find it difficult to recommend something I didn’t enjoy.

5] The Police Procedural:

In contrast to the previous category this is one I adore. I have read avidly and compared techniques of fictional police investigators all across the US, the UK, Europe, and parts of Africa. Of late I’ve been discovering my own country’s rich offerings in this arena too and therefore will recommend Peter Temple’s The Broken Shore. It’s a dark, sometimes funny, tale of the investigation into the death of a local businessman in a rural Victorian town. It’s a very Australian story and although when I first read it I lamented its grimness it has stuck with me long after many other books have been forgotten. It also features some of the clearest, most concise writing you’ll see in the genre.

6] Detectives [police, forensic and private]:

Another category where I am spoiled for choice. However I’ll continue to highlight Australian talent and recommend Kathryn Fox‘s Without Consent which features forensic doctor Anya Crichton who helps police investigate a series of brutal rapes which may, or may not, have been committed by a man recently released from prison after serving 20 years for rape and murder. I was delighted when I first read this book because it reminded me of the early Patricia Cornwell novels (the ones that actually made sense and had a credible plot). Crichton is a fabulously believable character with no super human powers and the book has a real humanity too in the way it tackles the issue of rape and its affect on its victims.

7] Psychological suspense:

Don’t tell anyone but I’m not much of a fan of Barbara Vine novels. I know it’ll probably get me thrown out of the crime fiction fan club (or at least earn myself a few demerit points) but of those I’ve read I’ve found most of them dull and ponderous. For that reason I have tended not to read other novels in this genre but one I can happily recommend is Dead Lovely by Helen Fitzgerald (another Australian author although she lives in Scotland now). On the very first page of Dead Lovely we’re told that Krissie has killed Sarah, her best friend since they were four. The book then looks retrospectively at how the friends’ relationship deteriorates from ‘best friends’ status and also at the aftermath of the killing. The book’s chapters are short and sharp and Fitzgerald does a great job of differentiating between the voices of her very believable characters, especially Krissie who is struggling with the responsibilities and feelings she experiences as a new mum.

8] Caper and comic crime fiction:

I have written before about the elusive nature of comedy in fiction. I’ve lost count of the number brand new Janet Evanovich books I’ve given away unread because people keep giving them to me as gifts. They’re not funny (to me) and I wish people wouldn’t make assumptions. It’s probably not quite a match for this category but I’m nominating Ian Sansom’s The Case of the Missing Books anyway. It features the world’s most reluctant mobile librarian, Israel Armstrong, whose trials and tribulations while recovering the lost books of the Tumdrum and District Public Library (Northern Ireland) were, for me at least, genuinely laugh out loud funny. And it’s the only book on this list in which no one dies so it’ll suit the weak-stomached reader.

9] Historical crime fiction:

Here I can’t go past Elizabeth Peter’s Amelia Peabody books which combine several of my favourite things in fiction: a strong female character, humour and Egyptology (I dreamt of being an archaeologist as a child). The series is still going today but I think for this series you have to start with the first book, Crocodile on the Sandbank. It’s 1884 and our heroine, Amelia Peabody, travels to Egypt for the first time meets the man who will become her husband and solves her first archaeological mystery. It’s a rollicking, old-fashioned puzzle with loads of suspense, fantastic characters and a whole lot of heart.

10] Thrillers:

Mostly, for me, this category is my ‘summer/airplane’ reading: fast, fun and a bit forgettable. They generally don’t have the memorable characters that take a book from good to great on my scale but, on the flip-side, the genre has some of the best story tellers in all of fictiondom. To introduce a newbie to the genre I’d recommend Airframe by Michael Crichton. Actually I’d recommend almost anything by Crichton but this one in particular because it takes such a mundane subject and makes a thoroughly entertaining, edge-of-your-seat story out of it. I’m sure it takes skill to make thrilling stories out of international espionage or ancient curses but to make one out of aircraft design and maintenance demonstrates another level of genius all together. It shows, as always, his skill in turning extensive research into entertainment and my only caveat would be to suggest nervous travellers choose something else to read on their next flight.

11] Crime fiction in translation:

I’m sad that the rest of my list is entirely populated by books written originally in English but in my defence I’ve only been actively seeking out the translated stuff for about a year. Until then I relied on my local library for advice and, frankly, they stick pretty much to the mainstream. However it’s hard to pick just one of of all the marvellous translated books I’ve read in the past 12 months but I am going to choose something I only read this month. Fred Vargas’ The Three Evangelists is a truly marvellous book (here’s my review) and, I think, a particularly good pick for people new to the genre as it has a fairly literary feel to it.

12] The Wild Card category:

Here I’ll stick with the translated fiction and recommend Asa Larsson’s The Savage Altar (published as The Sun Storm in the US). It was the first Scandinavian crime fiction I read and I think it encapsulates the best of the standard procedural while successfully moving the genre to a modern setting. If you haven’t read translated fiction it’s an excellent place to start because it evokes a wonderful sense of its unfamiliar (to me) Swedish setting yet there are familiar plot devices such as the investigative techniques used by the police so you don’t feel completely like a fish out of water. And the characters are wonderful.

And then…?

There are many, many books I couldn’t squeeze into the above categories. Where does the amateur sleuth/cosy fit for example? It’s an enormously popular sub-genre and one I dabble with on occasion. And none of my Dick Francis favourites seemed to fit either although he’s just about written enough for a genre all of his own. And in most categories I have a lot of equally good suggestions as the book I chose. However I’ve decided not to be too concerned about the books not listed as I’m confident that once my target reader has sampled what the genre has to offer via these recommendations they’ll be in touch for the names of the several hundred other books on my shortlist for this challenge.

Other people who’ve met Uriah’s Challenge