Image by Stefan Schweihofer from Pixabay
A
lot of my reading tends to be opportunistic. I don’t usually decide
beforehand, “Oh, I want a sci fi book”, or “It’s been too
long since I’ve read a mystery”. We always have a couple of
shelves full of volumes we’ve picked up at the local second hand
bookstore. I’m typically reading several things concurrently, some
in ebook form and some in print. When I’m looking for a new print
read, I’ll browse through those shelves, waiting for a title to
grab me.
Hence
it was a bit of a surprise for me to realize that in the past month
I’ve read three detective stories. This certainly wasn’t
intentional. Even more interesting, each of the three books was
written by an author from a different country. The similarities and
differences motivated me to review all three in a single post.
Faceless
Killers by Henning Mankell
On
a remote farm in rural Sweden, an elderly man is viciously bludgeoned
to death, while his wife is left beaten, barely clinging to life,
with a noose around her neck. The senseless ferocity of the attack
raises a public clamor for justice. The old woman’s final word -
“foreign” - dramatically increases the urgency for police
detective Kurt Wallander to solve the crime. Anti-immigrant sentiment
is on the rise in formerly generous Sweden. As Wallander and his team
meticulously sift through clues and follow up the most tenuous
threads of evidence, vigilantes start targeting innocent refugees,
and Wallander himself.
Faceless
Killers
is the first book in Mankell’s popular Kurt Wallander series, but
the second that I’ve read. (You’ll find my review of The
Fifth Woman
here.)
Like the previous novel, this one is unrelentingly bleak. Mankell
skillfully evokes the flat, featureless terrain of Skåne province
and its dank, chilly weather, as well as the largely empty,
routine-filled lives of its inhabitants. The horrific violence of
the crimes Wallander investigates offers a startling contrast to both
the dull, mundane environment and the tedious, detail-oriented nature
of police procedure.
Despite
the darkness, these books fascinate. Wallander is a wonderfully
flawed character, devoted to his job but almost helpless in dealing
with his family and his personal life. He has learned to trust his
intuition about his cases; he reacts without thinking in situations
that require physical action, risking life and limb in the process.
More than anything else, he’s persistent. He cannot let go of a
case, even when it appears he has failed to apprehend the villains. I
don’t think it will be too much of a spoiler to tell you that in
this mystery, the trail goes cold for more than six months before
Wallander has an unexpected breakthrough.
I’d
expect this series to be depressing, but somehow it’s not. One
reason is the moral issues that underpin the story. Mankell is
seriously concerned about the “immigrant problem” in Sweden. He
knows there’s no simple solution. Wallander reflects his creator’s
confusion.
Indeed,
if you’re interested in the complexities of immigrants and their
stories, I recommend Mankell’s recent novel The Shadow Girls
(which is not a mystery).
Malice
by Keigo Higashino
A
famous writer, Kunihiko Hidaka, is found murdered, in a locked room,
in his locked house, by his wife and his best friend, fellow author
Nonoguchi. Despite the fact that Nonoguchi has an iron-clad alibi,
police detective Kyochiro Kaga senses something not quite consistent
about his story. As Kaga delves deeper, Nonoguchi confesses to the
crime, a revenge killing for his supposed friend’s long-time
extortion. Still, Kaga has his doubts. Only when he revisits
Nonoguchi’s and Hidaka’s childhood together does he manage to
uncover the whole truth.
Malice
is an intellectual exercise, a so-called puzzle mystery, full of
unexpected twists and clever deductions. Unlike the Mankell novel, it
does not strongly engage the emotions – or at least, it did not
engage mine. Detective Kaga seems to be primarily a vehicle for
generating plot twists. He did not strike me as particularly
realistic and I had little or no sense of who he might be aside from
his mental acuity. Still, like Wallander, he is doggedly stubborn
about ferreting out the true story behind Hidaka’s case. Even when
he has a confession from the so-called murderer, Kaga can’t let the
case go.
He
is similar to Wallander in his trust of intuition as well. Although
mental gymnastics play a far more important role in Malice
than in the Wallander mysteries, it is Kaga’s feeling that things
don’t quite fit together that propels him to deeper research.
A
Case of Two Cities by Qiu Xiaolong
Inspector
Chen of the Shanghai Police Department is a rising star – but
perhaps someone wants to stop his ascent. His superior has assigned
him a nearly impossible case, namely ferreting out the details about
a web of corruption that involves the highest echelons in Chinese
society, and bringing the players to justice. In a country where
wealth and political power go hand in hand, where connections to the
ruling Party ensure impunity, how can a lowly inspector, even one as
intelligent and perceptive as Chen, make any headway? Indeed, digging
too deeply into the affairs of the rich and influential members of
the syndicate may be personally dangerous, as demonstrated by several
murders that occur as Chen inches closer to uncovering the .
Like
Kurt Wallander, Inspector Chen Cao is the hero of a series of
detective novels. In each one, he tries to solve a case while
struggling against dark political forces. Chen truly wants to serve
society, but he’s too smart to ignore the abuse of power that
surrounds him. He walks a tightrope between fulfilling his
assignments and falling prey to the bribery and other seductions.
He’s similar to Wallander in his strong moral compass, and his
tendency to ignore his better judgment when called upon to act.
However, he’s far more intellectual and introspective than
Wallander.
Chen
grew up wanting to be a poet, but the Party called him to other
duties. Poetry still runs in this veins, though. The spontaneous
quotations from classical Chinese verse are one of the joys of this
series.
I’ve
read most of this series, though not in the original order. Overall I
didn’t like this book as much as the earlier ones. It seems that
the series has become somewhat formulaic. At the same time, the tale
has its brilliant moments, especially when Chen is pulled off the
case and sent to St. Louis as the nominal head of a group of Chinese
writers involved in a cultural exchange. Qiu shows us American
culture viewed through the lens of the Chinese. These revelations are
sometimes funny, sometimes embarrassing.
In
my favorite section of this novel, Chen persuades a monk in a Chinese
temple (in the US) to allow him to step in and tell fortunes as a way
to gain information from the villain and his mother. Drawing on his
literary background, Chen does such a fantastic job that he impresses
not only his marks but also the monk.
Of
the three authors discussed in this post, Qiu Xiaolong is the only
one who writes in English. In fact, he is a professor at a U.S.
university. His deep disillusionment with the current government in
China shows in every page. His perspective is so unfailingly negative
that it makes me uncomfortable. I’ve visited China five times in
the past two years. I know that the corruption, the authoritarianism
and the hypocrisy that Qiu highlights is very real. At the same time,
I can’t help feeling that his own experiences as an expatriate have
blinded him to some of the more positive aspects of modern China.
Or
perhaps I am wrong. Maybe the dark picture he paints is realistic. In
any case, his books in a way are more political polemics that true
mysteries. If you’re looking for a pure whodunnit, I would not
recommend the Inspector Chen novels.
