Category Archives: Ernesto Mallo

Putting the mockers on (or thoughts on the CWA International Dagger Award 2011)

Posted on by

Friday night (well Saturday morning my time) at the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate the winner of the CWA International Dagger award for 2011 will be announced.

Of the seven shortlisted novels I have read six (but ran out of puff for the seventh) and definitely have my favourites though I am almost reluctant to speculate on a winner given my notoriously poor form with such matters. Though perhaps it is a smidgen narcissistic to believe that my actions could have a negative outcome on the results?

The six books I have read (in order) are

So….there are three books (marked with *) that I would be happy to see win the award and only one that I would genuinely grizzle about if it were to win (marked with ^). Until two days ago I was madly hoping for a win by Needle in a Haystack but having finished Death on a Galician Shore this week there’s now stiff competition in my heart. On balance though I think Needle offers a more well-rounded reading experience through tackling some weightier issues and being more tightly written. So I’m still crossing my fingers for a win by Mr Mallo and hope this hasn’t put the mockers on his chances. Of course Jean-François Parot’s The Saint-Florentin Murders, which I didn’t get around to reading, might be the best of them all and if it wins I’ll have to accept that the judges knew best, though it probably won’t stop me taking issue with them ;)

I am a little disappointed in this year’s shortlist as it doesn’t quite live up to the high quality of last year’s and I can think of a book or two that I’d have rather seen included (in particular Shuichi Yoshida’s Villain (Japan) and Liza Marklund’s Red Wolf (which even if it isn’t her best work is vastly superior to Three Seconds in my humble opinion). But I’m still genuinely thrilled that there is such a depth of translated crime fiction on offer to us pathetically monolingual readers and applaud the CWA for acknowledging this under-appreciated aspect of fiction which (hopefully) helps to ensure we will have more translations in the future.

 

Review: Needle in a Haystack by Ernesto Mallo

Posted on by

In 1976 Argentina’s Dirty War had begun and its environment of state-sponsored illegal arrests, torture, killing and forced disappearances provides a brutal backdrop for what would otherwise be a simple tale of a policeman investigating a murder. Superintendent Lascano is asked to follow up on a report of two bodies being found but when he arrives at the site there are three bodies. Two are of young people who were clearly killed by the Junta’s death squads and their deaths will not be investigated further but the third body is an older man’s which appears to have nothing to do with the others. It is this death that Lascano decides to investigate and he learns it is the body of an Auschwitz survivor who is now an almost universally loathed money-lender.

I have ranted at length about the enormous (seemingly unedited) tomes that are produced in such numbers these days so it is worth noting that I did a little happy dance when I opened this book on my eReader and found it to be 192 pages short. If anyone needs evidence that an engaging, thoughtful story can be told in less than a house brick sized lump they need look no further than the rather haunting Needle in a Haystack. Told from the perspective of several different characters and not in chronological order, the story comes together as a kind of literary jigsaw puzzle with some pieces being found early and having to lie on the table for a while, awaiting their connecting pieces to appear before the full picture could become clear. The book’s snappy length enabled this to be a very successful storytelling mechanism.

There are very memorable characters here, both good and evil. Lascano is a widower who has struggled to come to terms with his wife’s death and the scenes describing his home, from which nothing of hers has been removed, are sad but very credible.  His determination to his job, in the face of widespread corruption and overt threats is also credibly portrayed. Some of the most memorable characters have only fleeting appearances, like the General’s wife who thinks the baby she has adopted hates her, but they are all beautifully drawn.

I must admit I found the long blocks of italicised text which eschewed quotation marks and other punctuation a little off-putting as they slowed down my reading pace and I’m still not sure what the format was meant to add to the story. Also the sex scene which spoke of Lascano’s ‘sex being reborn and wanting to fly’ just made me laugh and the schmaltzy tone of the whole scene seemed out of place with the rest of the book. Overall though these are minor quibbles about an excellent book which is both a sound mystery and an unsentimental depiction of what must have been a horrifying time to live through.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This book has been reviewed at Crime Scraps, Euro Crime and Petrona and is one of 7 shortlisted titles for the 2011 CWA International Dagger Award

I’m using this as the second book for the South American leg of this year’s global challenge

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 4/5
Translator Jethro Soutar
Publisher Bitter Lemon Press [this translation 2010, original edition 2005]
ISBN 9781904738565
Length 192 pages
Format ePub
Book Series The first in a trilogy (I believe the second has been translated into English and will be released soon)
Source I bought it