At the Villa Rose

Chamber Music - Frank Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim

2012-02-02T12:00:00.000+01:00

The Problem With "The Final Problem"

2012-01-29T11:24:00.003+01:00

While one of the pivotal tales in the Canon - Sherlock Holmes dies! - The Final Problem is also one of the weakest. Despite its misleading title, this is not a detective story at all and the plot upon close examination makes little sense. Moriarty in particular is little more than a deus ex machina which Doyle conveniently pulls out of his hat so as to cause Sherlock's death; that he came to become one of the most famous characters in the Holmesverse is thus extremely ironical.

Of course these weaknesses may be explained away by the simple fact that Doyle was looking for the easiest way to get rid of a cumbersome character but even as a hatchet job The Final Problem is rather feeble; by no producing a corpse it leaves the door open to a possible "resurrection". Which leads us to the Big Question: Did Doyle really want to kill his creature? He could have settled the matter once and for all by giving him a proper "burial"; Holmes certainly would have had difficulties rising of the dead had his body been found and taken to the grave. Agatha Christie did this with Poirot and it's certainly one of the reasons why we don't see pastiches and continuations popping up on the shelves.

Doubts are furthered by the way Holmes was ultimately "revived". He had first returned with The Hound of the Baskervilles which Doyle stressed was set prior to the detective's "death". This approach was a sensible one and Doyle might have kept up with it; it was certainly simpler and more "realistic" than asking readers to believe Holmes had survived and spent years in hiding across the world before reappearing in a somewhat melodramatic fashion. So why did Doyle choose this latter option? And why does this "resurrection" fit so well with the events in The Final Problem, looking like their logical outcome rather than a later, recalcitrant change of heart? Is it possible Doyle knew all along that Holmes might be back someday?

Chamber Music - Chet Baker

2012-01-27T18:24:00.000+01:00

The P-word

2012-01-22T12:07:00.005+01:00

Like it or not, mystery fiction is a very plot-driven genre. This is not to say that plot trumps everything - characterization, writing, setting have their importance as well - but plotting is more crucial to mystery fiction than it is to, say, sci-fi or western; one might even say that it is a defining feature of it. How comes then that modern critics tend to focus on a mystery novel's literary virtues, while either downplaying or ignoring outright plot?

An obvious answer is that many contemporary mysteries tend to be stronger in the literary department than the plotting one, not necessarily because their authors are weak plotters but simply because their interests are elsewhere. And yet "literary" mysteries with strong plots get the same treatment. A good example is Thomas H. Cook who is regularly (and rightly) praised for the elegance of his prose and the depth and richness of his characterization but almost never for his plots even though he is arguably the finest plotter in American crime fiction since Margaret Millar (with whom he has a lot in common, but I'll leave that for another post) I do agree with critics that Instruments of the Night or Red Leaves are fascinating studies in character and tragedy, but they're also masterful exercises in bamboozling and their final twists are central to the books' effects.

One of the mistakes that dragged so much of "literary" fiction into the pit of irrelevance and self-indulgence was to discard plot as unimportant. It is thus worrying to see mystery critics follow in the same trap. A good plot, as any serious mystery buff knows, is a hard thing to find - and it should be celebrated rather than swept under the rug. The P-word is not a dirty word.

Etta

2012-01-20T19:29:00.000+01:00

And The Nominees Are.../Et les nominés sont...

2012-01-19T18:18:00.005+01:00

The nominations for the 2012 Edgar Awards are out. My thoughts:

- I've been complaining for years about the awards being too insular so I'm glad to see that four out of five Best Novel nominees are foreign; what's more, two hail from non-English-speaking countries! Let's hope it translates into an actual foreign winner, the last one to date being Jason Goodwin's The Janissary Tree in 2007.

- The Edgars should contemplate renaming themselves the Arthurs or the Conans, for they really seem in thrall of anything doylean. Michael Dirda is nominated in the Best Critical/Biography category for his latest book on Doyle and Neil Gaiman lands a (way overdue) nomination for Best Short Story with a sherlockian pastiche whereas both Best Play nominees reference the Great Detective. This makes Anthony Horowitz's much-hyped and critically acclaimed The House of Silk failing to get a nomination all the more surprising!

- The apparent absence of any Best Picture nominees tells probably a lot about last year's cinematic offering, though I can think of one worthy nominee or two.

On connaît à présent les nominations pour les Edgars; voici quelques pensées en vrac.

- Le grand évènement est sans aucun doute l'ouverture sur le monde après plusieurs années de relative insularité: quatre des cinq auteurs nominés pour le prix du meilleur roman sont étrangers; mieux, deux d'entre eux (Hagishino et Holt) viennent de pays non-anglophones! Rappelons que le dernier auteur étranger - non-américain si vous préférez - est l'anglais Jason Goodwin (Le complot des Janissaires) en 2007 et qu'aucun ouvrage traduit n'a été couronné depuis 1971 (Le policier qui rit, de Sjöwall & Wahlöö).

- Les Edgars devraient sérieusement envisager de changer de nom et de s'appeler les Arthurs ou les Conans, car rien de ce qui est doylien ne leur est étranger! Ainsi, le critique Michael Dirda est nominé dans la catégorie Meilleur Ouvrage Critique ou Biographique pour son dernier livre consacré à Doyle tandis que Neil Gaiman reçoit une nomination (bien méritée) pour une nouvelle sherlockienne; sans parler des deux pièces nominées pour le prix de la Meilleure Pièce, dont les titres se passent de commentaire... On ne peut donc que s'étonner de l'absence dans la liste de La maison de soie de Anthony Horowitz, dont la sortie s'est pourtant accompagné d'un vaste battage publicitaire et médiatique.

- Pas de nominés dans la catégorie Meilleur Film cette année. Cela en dit long sur la qualité de l'offre en 2011, quoique l'on aurait pu aisément sauver un film ou deux.

A Historical Event

2012-01-16T19:02:00.002+01:00

Historical mystery fan (and fellow GAD-er) Alan Cassaday-Bishop has just started a blog which he intends to be a "forum for comment" on his readings. Alan is the man behind Criminal History, a fine website about - you've guessed it - historical mysteries; need I say that I strongly advise you to visit it?

The Great Detective is back... on TV

2012-01-16T11:09:00.006+01:00

I haven't seen the British crime drama Luther for which Idris Elba just won a Golden Globe but its premise and creator Neil Cross admitting he took inspiration from Sherlock Holmes make it part of a most interesting trend in current television: the return of the Great Detective.

It's fair to say that the concept hadn't been very popular in the last decades, mostly because television's focus had increasingly moved away from the individual. Whereas most crime shows from the 50's to the 70's had been built around a single, often eponymous, character, ensemble police procedurals had dominated the airwaves in the 80s and 90s. The motto was realism, with cops being shown as everyday, flawed people working as a team to solve "regular" cases. The often impersonal titles of those shows - Hill Street Blues, Law & Order, NYPD Blue, Homicide: Life on the Killing Streets or Brooklyn South - reflected that new direction.

Then came a new century and all of a sudden everything changed. Adrian Monk, Robert Goren, Charlie Crews, Brenda Leigh Johnson, Shawn Spencer or Richard Castle - to name just a few - returned the eccentric detective with golden little grey cells to the small screen. Even a non-mystery show like House, M.D. featured a protagonist explicitly modelled after Sherlock Holmes. This ongoing phenomenon is all the more interesting as the Great Detective (for lack of a better term) has scarcely been seen on print recently and its revival as of now remains confined to television. It probably has a lot to do with practical concerns: obviously it is easier to create and manage a show with a single protagonist than an ensemble; also, the modern Great Detective almost always comes with the quasi-contractual angst and personal problems. But it's still good news to the traditional mystery fan as it suggests the genre keeps its appeal and can adapt to the times; it also suggests than not all revolutions (and the rise of the ensemble, modular procedural was undoubtedly one) are irreversible.

Chamber Music - Ramsey Lewis

2012-01-14T15:02:00.000+01:00

Pour saluer Reginald Hill

2012-01-13T17:44:00.003+01:00

C'est peu de dire que Reginald Hill, qui vient de nous quitter à l'âge de soixante-quinze ans, n'est pas très connu du public français, bien qu'il ait remporté le Prix du Roman d'Aventures en 1990 pour "Un amour d'enfant" (Child's Play en VO) Il fut ensuite l'un des auteurs-maison du Masque pendant une quinzaine d'années, sans jamais devenir une de ces figures "cultes" que l'on invite dans les festivals et auxquels les revues branchées consacrent leurs numéros. Hill avait le tort d'être étiquetté "classique" - anglais, qui plus est! - dans un pays qui ne jure que par le noir.

Classique, pourtant, Hill ne l'avait jamais vraiment été. Le mot ne peut s'appliquer sans rire à un personnage aussi hénaurme que son héros, le superintendant Andrew Dalziel ("Fat Andy" pour les intimes) Vulgaire, cynique, peu soucieux des règles et des convenances, le bonhomme est une offense permanente au politiquement correct et aux valeurs bourgeoises. Il forme un tandem merveilleusement mal assorti (et donc indestructible) avec le très "civilisé" Peter Pascoe. Tous deux évoluent dans une Angleterre très éloignée du petit monde douillet auquel ceux qui n'y connaissent rien réduisent trop souvent le roman policier anglais. Les thèmes abordés, leur traitement n'ont rien d'édulcoré, bien au contraire. Hill fait preuve du même esprit frondeur dans ses intrigues, et son approche du genre. Si ses premiers livres suivent assez fidèlement les sentiers du police procedural, les oeuvres ultérieures deviendront de plus en plus inclassables, Hill multipliant les expériences narratives, les références littéraires, les emprunts à d'autres genres: l'un de ses derniers romans traduits en français, Soeurs d'armes, réécrit l'Illiade! Toutes ces qualités se retrouvent en mineur dans son oeuvre "non-dalzielienne" comme la série de romans humoristiques mettant en scène le détective privé Joe Sixsmith ou les thrillers signés Patrick Ruell.

Alors oui, certes, ce n'est pas du noir. Ce n'est pas Ian Rankin. Mais il n'y a pas que le noir dans la vie. Et lire Reginald Hill est de ces choses qui la rendent plus belle. Espérons qu'un éditeur nous donne un jour de nouveau cette chance.

Suggestions de lectures:

Le partage des os (Bones and Silence, 1990 - qui valut à Hill le Gold Dagger Award)
Retour vers le présent (Recalled to Life, 1992)
Un si beau tableau (Pictures of Perfection, 1994)
Au bois mourant (The Wood Beyond, 1996)
Les chemins de l'enfer (On Beulah Height, 1998)
Les dialogues des morts (Dialogues of the Dead, 2002)
Good Morning Midnight (2006, inédit en France)

Some Modest Proposals

2012-01-07T20:48:00.005+01:00

One of the blogger's most cherished prerogatives is that he can give his opinion even when no one is asking - especially when no one is asking. So, as the time nighs when the nominees for this year's Edgar Awards are announced, I'd like to give the MWA some unrequited advice. Readers of this blog know I've long been interested in the most famous mystery award in the world (I even did a six-part series on the Best Novel prize some years ago) despite often scratching my heads at the comittees's choices. My aim in making these suggestions is to make the Edgars more reflective of the scope and variety of the mystery field while correcting some glaring injustices in the current process. The MWA are free to ignore them (which they'll probably do) or pick those they see fit or even the whole lot (I can dream, can't I?)

So here we go.

1°) Shorter fiction matters. There are currently five competive awards for novels but only two (counting the Robert L. Fish award) for shorter works. Considering that the Edgars honour the memory of one of the greatest short-story writers of all time, that's rather odd. Create distinct categories for proper short stories, novellas and novelettes would be a nice way to set the balance right and recognize the crucial importance past and present of short fiction to the genre.

2°) Stop discriminating against paperbacks. Why should a terrific novel be barred from competing for the Best Novel just because it was published as a paperback? It's discrimination plain and simple and like all discriminations it has little basis in fact. Whatever shape a book takes is irrelevant to its quality.

3°) Internet is here to stay. Few would deny that some of the most knowledgeable and perceptive writing on the genre is now done online - and that's why greater recognition in the form of a distinct category is badly needed. I realize it's hard job to monitor all of the many great crime/mystery blogs and websites around and pick a year's best; but it would definetely be worth it.

4°) Don't forget translators. The past decade has seen the American market finally opening its gates to foreign (i.e., non-English-speaking) crime fiction and it's a good thing. None of this would have happened without those admirable people who translate, and their work deserves recognition.

5°) What about critics? The Outstanding Mystery Criticism should be revived. With the genre being more and more popular, sound criticism is more needed than ever and must be recognized.

6°) Judge books by their covers. And give those who design them their due.

The Traces of Rinehart

2012-01-07T18:25:00.004+01:00

Sarah at Crimepieces had her first introduction to Mary Roberts Rinehart, and she liked it:

I have to admit I was a completely ignorant of the writings of Mary Roberts Rinehart and read it without any preconceptions. What immediately struck me was how modern the book was. Written in 1908, in England this is the period of Sherlock Holmes and Raffles and the Victorian era has not yet been shaken off. However, in the US, Rinehart wrote this book which seems to me to be firmly set in twentieth century America. Embezzlement, revolvers in the shrubbery, young women fleeing across the country by railroad. This is a country house mystery you couldn’t have written in England, although there is a whiff of Victorian (Wilkie Collins) melodrama about the plot.

The much-maligned (most often by people who hadn't read her books) Rinehart was indeed instrumental in bringing a distinctively American spin on the mystery tale, one that focused on the people affected by the crime rather than just those solving it. Such an approach, which was actually a throwback to the Sensation Novel of which Wilkie Collins was the most illustrious exponent, may seem commonplace today but was revolutionary at a time when most American mystery writers took their cue from England. Also, Rinehart merrily dispensed with the rather turgid protocolary tone which had been associated with the genre ever since Poe - her characters are supposed to be ordinary people (well, almost ordinary people) in extraordinary situations, and they write/speak accordingly. But most of all, her books were meant to have the reader eagerly turning the pages to see what's next; they were definetely not purely cerebral affairs. In short, she sowed the seeds from which a whole new genre - psychological suspense - would be born three decades later. That she all too often fails to get credited for that and remains clouded in oblivion is crying injustice.

Non merci/No Thanks

2012-01-07T12:03:00.004+01:00

Le livre numérique gagne du terrain, et ce n'est sans doute qu'un début. Certains parmi mes amis ont d'ores et déjà fait le grand saut, et s'en félicitent. Mais la révolution se fera sans moi. Je suis bien conscient qu'un jour viendra où je n'aurai plus le choix, et où je devrai m'adapter. Pour l'instant toutefois, je me cramponne à mes livres-papier.

Luddisme? Peut-être, et je ne le prends d'ailleurs pas comme une insulte. Mais le désaccord est essentiellement d'ordre "esthétique": je suis incapable de dissocier le support du contenu. J'aime une belle maquette, l'odeur et la sensation du papier et même s'ils ne me feront pas aimer un mauvais livre, ils participent à leur manière unique et irremplaçable de l'expérience de lecture. Les livres électroniques à l'inverse et quelque soient leurs nombreux avantages pratiques, sont avant tout des textes désincarnés*. A certains cela ne pose pas de problème (le nombre de gens qui considèrent le livre papier comme un simple support dont ils se passent sans problème ne cesse jamais de me surprendre) mais moi je ne peux pas, tout simplement. A chacun ses goûts, donc. Pour le moment.

E-books are all the rage now and it's only the beginning. Some people I like and respect have already made the jump and they say it's great. But as far as I'm concerned, it's still "no thanks". I know that sooner or later I'll no longer have a choice and I'll have to adapt - but in the meantime I prefer my books the old way.

Luddism? Maybe, and it's not a dirty word to me. But the core of the disagreement is an "aesthetical" one: I cannot dissociate the medium from the content, and the former is integral to my enjoyment of the latter. I love a beautiful cover art, I love the feel and smell of paper and while they can't make up for a poor book they enhance my reading experience in an unique, essential way. E-books on the other hand, no matter how their practical advantages, are texts devoid of any physical incarnation and while it can work for some (The number of people who don't need physical books nor care for them is a perpetual source of puzzlement for me) it doesn't for me*. To each his own. For now.

* Même s'il m'arrive d'en lire à l'occasion quand je ne peux pas faire autrement.

* Though I read them when no other option is available.

Chamber Music - Oscar Peterson

2012-01-04T17:15:00.000+01:00

Mystère à l'Italienne/Mystery, Italian Style

2012-01-03T18:23:00.003+01:00

Le roman d'énigme, c'est dépassé et ça n'intéresse plus personne. C'est du moins ce que l'on nous répète en France, et il n'existe d'ailleurs plus de collection spécialisée dans notre pays depuis que Le Masque s'est converti à la "modernité" dans les années 2000. A quoi l'on pourrait répondre: "Regardez en Italie". Car non seulement les célèbres Giallo Mondadori rééditent ponctuellement des classiques du genre, mais l'éditeur Polillo a crée une collection qui rassemble les plus grands noms de l'Age d'Or, d'Anthony Berkeley à John Dickson Carr en passant par Christianna Brand et J.J. Connington. "I Bassotti" (Le Basset) compte déjà une centaine de volumes, joliment présentés et choisis avec un goût exquis - et le succès semble être au rendez-vous. Si le roman d'énigme est mort et enterré, visiblement les Italiens ne sont pas au courant... et c'est tant mieux.

The traditional mystery is outdated and no one cares about it. That's what we're often told here in France, and the last local specialized imprint, Le Masque, converted to "modernity" over the last decade, leaving a wide gap that has yet to be filled. One might advice those doomsayers to check what's going on in Italy. Not only is the country's oldest mystery imprint, Giallo Mondadori, regularly reprinting classics of the genre but publisher Polillo started an imprint called "I Bassotti" (The Basset Hound) gathering the greatest names of the Golden Age from Anthony Berkeley to John Dickson Carr to Christianna Brand or J.J. Connington. As of the writing of this post I Bassotti has over 100 volumes, all well-chosen and exquisitely conceived. News of the traditional mystery's demise seem not to have reached Italian shores yet... luckily.

Halter rebondit

2012-01-03T16:44:00.004+01:00

C'est l'histoire absurde de ce début d'année: un auteur français de romans policiers, raisonnablement connu et détenteur de plusieurs prix, qui publie un nouveau livre... aux Etats-Unis. L'auteur en question n'est autre que Paul Halter, fréquent "invité" de ce blog, qui fait paraître ces jours-ci un recueil de nouvelles, "La balle de Nausicaa" via le service d'auto-édition américain Createspace. On pourrait croire que le torchon brûle entre Halter et son éditeur historique, Le Masque - 2011 n'aura vu la publication d'aucun inédit - si un nouveau roman, "Le visiteur du passé" n'était annoncé sous la fameuse couverture jaune pour le mois d'avril. Quoi qu'il en soit, "La balle de Nausicaa" est déjà en rupture de stock chez Amazon.fr, ce qui confirme la popularité d'un auteur que le Landerneau s'obstine à bouder. Espérons seulement qu'un éditeur traditionnel sache rattraper cette balle au bond et l'offrir à un plus vaste public...

2012

2011-12-31T18:35:00.001+01:00

Tous mes voeux pour cette nouvelle année à vous et à vos proches; puisse-t-elle vous apporter tout ce que vous souhaiter... et vous épargner le reste.

I wish you and your family and friends a happy new year, complete with everything you may want and more.

Juger un DVD à sa couverture

2011-12-30T19:51:00.003+01:00

Un cinéphile aime les films - beaucoup, passionnément, à la folie. Et ceux qu'il aime vraiment très fort, ceux qu'il veut avoir chez lui pour les regarder à volonté, il les achète en DVD (ou en Blu-Ray, s'il est à la pointe du progrès)

Et de fait, il faut vraiment avoir envie de voir un film pour acheter un DVD - car les éditeurs ne font vraiment rien pour rendre leurs galettes numériques attractives en tant qu'objets.

Un exemple suffira. Voici l'affiche française originale du film de Delmer Daves, Les Gladiateurs:

Et voici maintenant la couverture du DVD. Attention les yeux!

Bon, je suis bien conscient que ce film s'adresse à un public réduit (à une époque où un film est un "classique" au bout de vingt ans, 1953 c'est carrément la préhistoire) et que Fox ne va donc pas dépenser des sommes folles en packaging, mais tout de même...

La situation n'est pas beaucoup meilleure chez les éditeurs dits "cinéphiles" genre Carlotta ou Sidonis. Même si l'on n'y trouve rien d'aussi hideux que la monstruosité ci-dessus, le packaging reste au niveau du service minimum, avec le plus souvent une simple photo du film, plus ou moins bien choisie.

J'en entends déjà m'objecter que le contenu est beaucoup plus important que le contenant, que les petits éditeurs susdits font sur le plan de la restauration et des bonus un travail formidable dont les majors feraient bien de s'inspirer, et qu'il vaut mieux un bon film avec un packaging pas terrible qu'une nullité dans un écrin de luxe. Je n'en disconviens pas. Mais tout de même. Si le contenant a si peu d'importance, pourquoi s'en embarrasser davantage? La VOD donne le même résultat, et elle prend moins de place sur les étagères. Que diable, j'aime les films sur un support physique, et j'ai envie que ledit support anticipe sur le plaisir de la vision, le prépare en quelque sorte. Et ce genre de choses fait très moyennement envie.

Those Damn Amateurs

2011-12-30T12:10:00.002+01:00

Michael Sims on amateur detectives:

"This tradition goes through Miss Marple and Murder She Wrote — that amateurs would have this arcane, genius talent as if they were musicians or mathematicians or something. It's a hilarious idea if you stop and think about it."

Well, not really. The amateur detective appeared at a time - the nineteenth century - which saw many instances of amateurs/outsiders outwitting the professionals. Darwin was not a biologist. Pasteur was not a doctor. Early egyptologists/archaelogists like Maspero or Schliemann were self-taught. The idea that an amateur detective could challenge and outperforming the coppers thus made sense, especially given everyone's low regard for the official police.

Romanticism was also a key influence, with its notion that the Poet as some kind of a superman who can feel and see things invisible to mere mortals. Dupin is as much an embodiment of that ideal (and maybe more so) than of reason. Same goes for Holmes who, for all his professed rationalism, looks and behaves much like your standard romantic.

Of course in our highly specialized and less than romantic times, the whole stuff sounds, in Sims's words, "hilarious". But looking absurd now doesn't mean it was absurd then.

Who's Better? Who's Best?

2011-12-29T10:58:00.004+01:00

It's a testimony to how priorities in the genre have changed that hardly anyone is compiling lists of the "greatest detectives" anymore - though Sherlock Holmes is routinely assumed to be the greatest of them all. Since most modern sleuths are more remarkable for their personalities and predicaments than their ratiocinative skills, the exercise would be pointless.

Besides, evaluating the "greatness" of a detective is way trickier than seems firsthand for lack of an universal system of measurement. Every fictional sleuth is the greatest one in his own universe, being ideally and uniquely suited to solve the problems he is submitted. Ellery Queen's cases are not the same as Dr. Fell which on the other hand are different from, say, Philip Marlowe's and we don't know whether they could switch successfully. Neither can we be sure that Sherlock Holmes could solve the murder of Roger Ackroyd, or Hercule Poirot would escape from Cell 13. Only by having them all existing in a same universe and investigating the same case could we eventually work out who's best.

So in the end when making such lists we're not listing "greatest" detectives so much as those whose exploits most impressed us - and it might then be more helpful to specify which particular "performance" owes them their ranking.

Using this system, who would be your ten favorite detectives?

Chamber Music - Soul Rebels Brass Band

2011-12-28T20:27:00.001+01:00

Resolutions for 2012

2011-12-28T14:33:00.004+01:00

There are only three, but they're major ones:

Finally overcoming that damn reader's block.

I read so little this year - so little mysteries that is, for I read a lot of comics, the only things not falling from my hands - that for the first time in memory I can't compile a Top 10 - and naming a best book of the year would be meaningless given the low number of candidates*. I sincerely hope for 2012 heralding a return to form.

Blogging on a more regular basis.

Obviously my reader's block didn't help me posting more often. But then it's a historical/theoretical blog, not a journal of my reads, so that excuse doesn't (quite) hold water. In 2012 I'll try to achieve a post at least every two weeks, come what may.

Poster davantage en français.

Je suis français et, à en croire les statistiques de ce blog, un certain nombre de mes lecteurs le sont également. Il serait donc logique que je m'exprime davantage dans notre belle langue. C'est donc mon troisième objectif pour la nouvelle année.

Easier said than done, but who knows...

* Still, if I was to name the best mystery I read this year, the honour would go to Albert Harding's "Death on Ravens' Scar". I know nothing of this author and Internet seems not to know much either, but it's an excellent book with a very good plot and equally good setting and characterization. Too bad Harding apparently never wrote anything else.

Just In Time...

2011-12-25T18:34:00.000+01:00

The Master Speaks

2011-11-27T18:01:00.001+01:00

Patrick Ohl's excellent "At the Scene of the Crime" has a two-part interview of French mystery writer Paul Halter, brilliantly translated from Molière's language by Ohl himself; resources on the modern master of the locked-room mystery are scarce online, be it in French or any other language, so the initiative is to be commended. The interview is well worth reading, whatever your familiarity with the author and his work. (I take exception however to his and interviewer Roland Lacourbe's assessment of Carr's characterization skills and I think he's unfair to Queen and Steeman.)

Back to the Future

2011-11-25T14:27:00.001+01:00

This article by A.O. Scott on nostalgia and the future of film misses the point entirely, in my view.

The parallel with the sound revolution, which proponents of new technologies often use, actually cuts both ways. Films indeed survived the arrival of sound. But it came at a double price, which was accurately forecasted by the doomsayers of the day. The barrier of language - not much of a problem in the silent era; all it took was to translate the intertitles - meant that films were no longer universal.

Also and perhaps even worse, sound made visual flair optional. Silence meant directors had to find visual ways to get their point across - avalanches of intertitles would quickly tire viewers. So well did they come to master their craft that the best later silents eschewed intertitles almost completely. With dialogue taking over as films's driving force, it became possible for films to be made that relied mostly or only on speech and offered little or nothing in the way of visuals. Like it or not, films looking like stage plays or movies of the week with greater budgets are a direct side-effect of the sound revolution.

This is not to say that new technologies will bring the end of the medium or turn it into garbage - they won't, and neither did sound - but we must remember that progress in one way almost invariably means regress in another. We'll certainly learn to live with that (just like we learnt to live with sound and colour) but whether the benefits will compensate for the costs is anyone's guess. The doomsayers may turn to be wrong on the big picture but they have points and one would like for Mr. Scott and people of his persuasion to admit it rather than just sneering or painting rosy pictures of an idyllic future.

Enter the Tramp

2011-11-23T13:10:00.001+01:00

I'm happy to report that mystery scholar extraordinaire Curtis Evans (arguably the world's leading authority on so-called "Humdrum" writers, and a long-time friend of mine) has now finally entered the blogging arena. His blog is called "The Passing Tramp" (wonderful title!) and while he's no sure how frequently he'll post there I'll surely keep an eye on it - and so should you.

The Beam In His Own Eye

2011-10-13T12:02:00.004+02:00

That Ian Rankin is no fan of Agatha Christie shouldn't be surprising - if he was, he would write a totally different kind of books. Nor should it be scandalous. As we say here in France, you can't please everybody. Still, the reasons for his "disdain" are worth closer examination as they are typical of a certain mindset quite widespread in the modern mystery establishment.

Rankin's prime objection is that the Christieverse is so remote from everyday reality:

"The world that she wrote about seems so alien to me. This pastoral, idealised vision of England, where there is this very big house in a quiet village. Someone is found poisoned in the snooker room or the library...."

A world in which the police never solve the crime.

"Some amateur detective, a little old lady or a gentleman, comes along to do that. At the end, everything is explained, and status quo returns."

Rankin, who was in India last month, admits he tried reading these stories when he was an adolescent. "But I grew up in a solidly working-class coal mining town... and that world meant nothing to me."

As it happens, I myself grew in a working-class area and Christie's pastoral world was never a problem to me - but then I was never that strange kind of reader who wants books to reflect his own life and experience. But I digress.

Rankin's depiction of the Christieverse is of course stereotypical - also, for his and the reporter's edification, Christie actually wrote some books where the police solves the case. She even made one of her detectives (admittedly less well-known and popular than Poirot or Marple) a police official. And to say that "status quo returns" at the end of And Then There Were None, Five Little Pigs or The Hollow requires an odd idea of status quo - or not being familiar with the books. But I digress once again.

To Rankin, the enduring success of Christie comes down to the comforting and unrealistic nature of her work:

"I can see why those books are successful," Rankin shoots back. "It offers this idea that human beings can solve all problems. That the world goes back to being a nice place when the killer is caught. Life ain`t like that."

[...]

He thinks it`s too far-fetched to imagine an amateur can solve a crime.

"When was the last time in real life that the little lady solved the crime that the police couldn`t solve?"

Rankin's work by contrast is blunt and unflinching in its examination of the dark realities of crime:

"The one realisation that Reebus has is that it doesn`t matter how many criminals he catches and puts in jail, there is never a vacuum. More criminals emerge. The society we created creates crime, imbalance and injustice. People will always be jealous and people will commit crime. A sense of grievance will always remain."

Besides, realism is what readers want:

He believes instead that a majority of current crime fiction readers want professionals -- pathologists or lawyers or cops -- to be solving the crime.

One might object that they're not given much choice anyway. But it would be digressing once again.

The question Rankin either carefully avoids or is not aware of is how much "realism" is possible in what remains an extremely codified genre. For all its documentation and literary and social pretensions, Rankin's work is barely more "realistic" than Christie's - Rebus in particular is a fantasy figure as remote in his own way from the average cop than Roderick Alleyn was.

If crime writers were to be really realistic, they would only write about crime as it happens in real life - something unglamorous, uncomplicated, committed and investigated by decidedly uncolourful people. Let's face it, it would be extremely boring and unlikely to make you "UK`s number 1 crime author". So crime writers prefer to write about detectives with strong personalities investigating complex cases; which accounts at best for 1% of real-life crime (but is the stuff of headlines and best-sellers) much like Christie did in her time. The difference being that Christie never pretended to give others lessons in "realism".

Wish more would follow her example.

A Case of Identity

2011-10-07T12:57:00.002+02:00

Being away from the Internet, I hadn't had the opportunity to read the debate between Patrick and Sergio about Julian Symons' perennial divider "Bloody Murder". There is much food for thought there, as can be expected from a discussion between two of the most knowledgeable and literate bloggers around. I'll add my two cents soon but for now I'd like to say some words about this comment from Patrick about Symons's insistence that mysteries are not proper "literature":

I find this point of view highly annoying, and I wonder why mystery fans are so tolerant of critics who insist the genre is sub-literary, nothing but entertainment, or not on the same level as other genres. If you tried saying this about science-fiction in the middle of a sci-fi convention, I guarantee you'd misplace several teeth that evening.

To which Sergio responds:

You are right that mystery authors have put up with that kind of superior crap in a way SF writers have not, but I will also say that the genres have tended to develop in less than equal ways - SF has always been a more literary genre by dint of its ability to deal with more complex themes which are hotwired into the conventions of the genre (who are we, where do we belong in the universe, is God real, am I real etc etc) so it was attractive to distinctive writers looking for original ways to express their ideas, not something you would often accuse Agatha Christie of - on the other hand, pulp writing is pulp whether its SF, crime, Western, horror or romance!

Actually, I think the main difference between Sci-Fi and the mystery genre (other than their respective popularity and visibility, which largely accounts for the difference in treatment) is that the former developed a culture of its own, with its own standards and values. Sci-Fi is primarily fan literature targeted to a fan audience, which accounts for its lesser accessibility to the average reader. Let's quote China Miéville:

I'm not a leftist trying to smuggle in my evil message by the nefarious means of fantasy novels. I'm a science fiction and fantasy geek. I love this stuff. And when I write my novels, I'm not writing them to make political points. I'm writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism, and what I want to do is communicate that. But, because I come at this with a political perspective, the world that I'm creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have... I'm trying to say I've invented this world that I think is really cool and I have these really big stories to tell in it and one of the ways that I find to make that interesting is to think about it politically. If you want to do that too, that's fantastic. But if not, isn't this a cool monster?

As a result, Sci-Fi people tend to be less worried by the judgment of the establishment than mystery folks are; neither are they much impressed when one of them is endorsed by the literati - Ray Bradbury is a prime example of an author with a large mainstream following but who is frowned upon by many in the SF fandom. A good Sci-Fi writer is one whose work pleases the fandom, no matter how "literary" it is in the end.

In contrast the mystery field tends to be obsessed with literary legitimacy. Authors emphasize the "serious" aspects of their work; critics tout any book that "transcend the genre" and is "more than a mystery". Both agree that the genre is first a medium for whatever moral, social or political concern the author may have; the "fan attitude" exemplified by Miéville is conspicuously absent. We're not in it for fun, we're serious people! Mystery folks are forever begging for respect from the establishment, bragging when it bestows some praise on one of them or when some noted literati adventures in the field, and having a tantrum every time some buffoon pours scorn on the genre.

So we have a genre with a strong identity and staunchly defending it versus a genre with a strong identity and trying to dilute it into the rigid canons of the establishment.Guess which one is the most fertile.

Les Anglais ne sont pas là

2011-10-04T17:52:00.002+02:00

Le roman policier britannique est très mal connu en France.

J'en vois parmi mes lecteurs qui froncent les sourcils, d'autres qui se demandent si je plaisante: ce n'est absolument pas le cas. Quantité d'auteurs britanniques passés et présents restent méconnus, sous-estimés et sous-traduits dans nos contrées.

L'une des conséquences de la déferlante noire de l'après-guerre fut la ringardisation de l'école anglaise. Pour des critiques et des lecteurs conquis par l'audace et l'énergie du roman noir américain, le polar anglais faisait figure d'anachronisme, fidèle qu'il restait pour l'essentiel à un genre - le roman d'énigme - que tout le monde s'accordait à reléguer au rayon des antiquités. De fait, "roman anglais" devint rapidement synonyme d'ennui et de routine sous la plume des critiques les plus "avancés". La seule collection restée fidèle à ce genre maudit, Le Masque, le paya de décennies d'indifférence/hostilité de la part des critiques et des jurys littéraires.

Cette anglophobie n'était pas systématique: les auteurs britanniques qui ne donnaient pas dans le "style anglais" étaient bien accueillis, parfois mieux que dans leur pays d'origine (cf. James Hadley Chase ou Robin Cook) et recevaient même des prix. Mais dans l'ensemble, les ressortissants de la perfide Albion, traditionalistes ou modernistes, restaient des mal-aimés sinon toujours de la critique, mais en tout cas de l'édition. Ainsi, le fait d'avoir remporté tous deux le Grand Prix de Littérature Policière ne suffit pas à garantir à Michael Gilbert ou à Shelley Smith d'être traduits régulièrement. Cyril Hare, Michael Innes ou Gladys Mitchell firent un ou deux petits tours et puis s'en allèrent sur la pointe des pieds. Julian Symons quant à lui sauta d'une collection à l'autre, la relative indifférence des critiques contrastant singulièrement avec son statut proéminent dans le monde anglo-saxon. Les "reines du crime", Christie exceptée, ne s'en tirèrent pas mieux: Ngaio Marsh n'intéressa vraiment les éditeurs qu'à partir des années 80, Margery Allingham fit des apparitions de-ci de-là et Dorothy Sayers vit ses oeuvres soit charcutées, soit traduites avec cinquante ans de retard (son maître-ouvrage, Gaudy Night, restant inédit à ce jour.) Et encore nous en tenons-nous à ceux des auteurs qui eurent la chance d'être traduits, car il nous faudrait également inclure des gens comme Edmund Crispin ou Celia Fremlin qui durent attendre pour l'un les années 80, pour l'autres les années 90 avant de faire leurs débuts français.

Les années 80 marquèrent un début de réhabilitation de l'école anglaise, sous l'effet du rouleau-compresseur P.D. James/Ruth Rendell mais aussi avec la réactivation du Masque et l'apparition d'une nouvelle collection, "Grands Détectives" chez 10/18. On commença de rééditer les introuvables et de traduire les négligés, ce qui faisait du monde. Hélas, bien des aventures restèrent sans lendemain: "Grands Détectives" laissa tomber Michael Innes et Gladys Mitchell au bout de quelques livres et la nouvelle orientation du Masque entraîna l'abandon de plusieurs auteurs et de projets excitants comme la première édition intégrale en français des oeuvres de Sayers. Arrivés en 2011 il reste encore bien du retard à rattraper sans qu'on voit trop bien comment au vu des moeurs actuelles des milieux de l'édition. Qui aura assez de courage et de discernement pour nous permettre de lire enfin des classiques comme The Moving Toyshop, Tragedy at Law ou The Colour of Murder, poursuivre l'édition des oeuvres de Reginald Hill ou Robert Barnard, ou nous faire découvrir les oeuvres de maîtres modernes comme Martin Edwards ou le transfuge de l'horreur, Christopher Fowler, dont les romans mettant en scène Bryant et May font les délices des amateurs de crimes impossibles?

Ink, Blood and Celluloid

2011-08-27T11:59:00.001+02:00

The differences between the American and British schools of mystery fiction - what makes them so different despite a common ancestry - is an old favorite topic of mine which I think over now and again. One of the main dividing lines, in my opinion, is the influence of movies - American mystery writers seem to have absorbed and embraced the new medium sooner and faster than their British colleagues.

Typically American genres such as hardboiled, noir or psychological suspense with their ebullient rhythm and terse, elliptic narration are unimaginable in a world without movies; conversely, they received a great deal of attention from the film industry. But the influence of the silver screen can also be observed in the traditional mystery genre; despite basically obeying the same rules, the American whodunit is extremely different from its British counterpart, even when trying to imitate it.

The standard British Golden Age mystery was basically about linking two points - murder and solution. The detective patiently interviewed suspects, collected evidence and then named the culprit in the end. This is not to say that nothing happened as the frequent and seemingly indestructible stereotyping of the genre would have us to believe; it's just that authors saw no reason to hurry up and took the time to delineate the elements of the problem and the path to its solution. The Yankees, on the other hand, were more interested in the spectacular, exciting aspects of the genre; their books started on a high note and tried to keep it to the end. Baroque situations and unexpected twists abounded, the detective often had to do some leg work and the pacing was significantly faster. The game element remained, but detecting was no longer a serene, merely intellectual demeanour - it was action. In short, these were mysteries influenced by, and suitable for, the silver screen and it's no surprise the works of Ellery Queen, Stuart Palmer, Erle Stanley Gardner, Baynard Kendrick or Rex Stout found a positive echo in Hollywood. America having a stronger film industry and culture than Britain at the time certainly accounts for that; though a sociological explanation is possible as well. British mystery writers were mostly upper-class and college-educated and thus tended to shun movies which they saw as trivial entertainment for the masses. (A good reflection of that attitude can be found in Robert Altman's Gosford Park.)

Of course, this rule like all rules has its exceptions. Agatha Christie for instance was much more "cinematic" than S.S. Van Dine though the latter's popularity (and William Powell's portrayal of Philo Vance) also made him a Hollywood darling for a time. The case of John Dickson Carr is a good illustration of the divide, however. Even though most of his work is set in Britain and he was an ardent and sincere anglophile, Carr was still a quintessentially American author writing quintessentially American books, as evidenced by the comparatively faster tempo and roller-coaster nature (each chapter ends on a revelation or a twist) of his stories and his relatively low interest in the proper mechanics of detection. Also, movies are a strong influence on his writing, whether in the guise of his screwball-like romances or the expressionism of his early work (I have always thought The Lost Gallows or Castle Skull would have made nice Murnau or Fritz Lang films) Why he failed to generate any significant interest from Hollywood or the film industry at large is a mystery.

The love story between the American school and the silver screen has been going strong for decades, and shows no sign of wearying out. The British school's celluloid incarnations have been more scarce including at home*, television proving to be a more welcoming and suitable medium - but its fortunes might change as the divide between American and British mystery fiction increasingly narrows with the latter adopting some of the attitudes and themes of the former. For better? For worse? Don't miss the next episode.

* Though films like Green for Danger or The Woman In Question proved the British detective story, in capable hands, could work beautifully on the screen.

The Wrong Hensher: An Addendum

2011-08-24T19:19:00.005+02:00

As I said in my response to Philip Hensher's diatribe, the mystery genre being "rule-bound" doesn't mean it is necessarily adverse to originality and innovation. Shakespeare, Spenser, Wordsworth and Auden all wrote sonnets and it doesn't seem to have hindered their creativity nor their individuality. But there was no one around to tell them what their themes should be or which language they should use; as long as they played by the rules (or didn't subvert them too openly) and didn't write anything too outrageous or offensive, they were free to do as they pleased.

Mystery writers on the other hand are repeatedly told - and most often agree - that their genre of election is realistic by definition* and that its sacro-sanct mission is to "explore the dark side of human nature" or "comment on the grimmy aspects of society" or both. They are also strongly advised to write in a straightforward manner, one that avoids anything too recherché or obscure. It is not my intention to belittle this approach to mystery writing: some outstanding work has been and is still written according to those guidelines. But turning them into "articles of the faith" I think is detrimental to the genre's vitality. We should see mystery first as a form, one that allows and calls for many uses and interpretations. If X wants to use mystery to explore the human psyche and comment on society, that's fine. But if Y is more into genre-bending or narrative experimentation or "just" fair-play plotting, that's fine too. We must make the tent bigger and more welcoming. Above all, we must no longer be afraid of the "I" word. Then and only then we'll have our own China Miéville to show the Henshers of the world.

*Which is at best debatable, but it's not the subject of this post.

Chamber Music - Marcel Bianchi

2011-08-12T07:00:00.000+02:00

Chamber Music - Johnny Clegg & Savuka

2011-08-03T14:51:00.001+02:00

Meet The Tiger's

2011-08-03T12:22:00.003+02:00

Nearly forty years after it premiered, Les Brigades du Tigre remains one of the finest French TV shows ever; one of the most popular too, as evidenced by the many reruns and the (awful) movie adaptation made in 2006. Its success was not merely a French-French thing as it was sold to about twenty countries including Japan, though it remains nearly unknown in English-speaking territories.

The 36-episode series chronicles the exploits of cops Valentin, Pujol et Terrasson from the Belle Epoque up to the Thirties. Valentin and his colleagues belong to the Brigades Mobiles launched in 1907 by Interior Minister Georges Clémenceau (whose popular nickname was "The Tiger" hence the title of the show) and as such are called to investigate a number of cases all across the country.

Unlike most American shows which are written by a team, Les Brigades du Tigre is the work of a single man, Claude Desailly, a helluva of a writer who wrote all of the episodes. Conversely, the series had only one director, Russian-born Victor Vicas, better-known to American audiences for his 1957 drama The Wayward Bus. With only two men in command, one might think the show quickly became routine, but it didn't. Since both their competences and their juridiction were quite large, the Brigades fought all kinds of criminals from gangs to psycho killers to murderous cults and terrorists, even spies and Raffles-like master thieves. Les Demoiselles du Vésinet, arguably the best episode in the series - and certainly the funniest - pits the trio against two loveable yet extremely dangerous old ladies straight out of Arsenic and Old Lace. The show works also wonderfully as a period piece, offering a convincing and detailed chronicle of French society in the first thirty years of the twentieth century. As the years pass by, fashion and mentalities change - and so do criminals. Vicas' direction is sharp and dynamic; Claude Bolling delivers a memorable score and then there is the acting which is uniformally excellent, be it the three leads or the guests.

The series' few defaults are tied to its age and comparatively low budget; CSI viewers may find the pacing rather slow and the image is somewhat grainy. Still, if you're willing to admit the limits of 70's French television, Les Brigades du Tigre is a terrific show, one of the few productions of ours that can measure up to the best of British and American productions.

One can't but regret that the seventh and final season was never shot due to a change of executives at Antenne 2, the network that produced and broadcasted the show - the new rulers were no fans and decided to pull the plug on it. As you can see, moronic network executives are not an American specialty.

The Wrong Hensher

2011-08-02T11:56:00.001+02:00

Philip Hensher is no fan of "thrillers":

Thrillers are, at root, escapist and consolatory ... There is nothing wrong with being entertained by that from time to time, just as there is nothing wrong in reading about overcoming obstacles to find your great dark man in novels of romance. But there is something overdone about the extent of the thriller's grasp on us," he writes in the Telegraph. "The best thrillers are rattling good yarns in ways which Middlemarch or Buddenbrooks never aspire to be. We turn away from the unspeakable, inexplicable horrors of the newspapers, events with no resolution, into a world where a single running policeman can put everything right. You would have to be a dull reader not to enjoy that sometimes. But never to want something better, deeper, less resolved, you would have to be a moron.

He also thinks that:

the liveliness and extravagance of current genre-writing in fantasy and science fiction, such as China Miéville's remarkable novels, make the field a much more plausible candidate for literary exaltation than the rule-bound thriller.

I agree with Mr. Hensher that academism is rampant in today's crime fiction. I also agree that anything written by George Eliot or Thomas Mann, is definetely not a rattling good yarn.

Where we part is his condemnation of "thrillers" as being the literary equivalent of comfort food (It's not; besides, what's wrong with entertaining and consolating and why would it necessarily be antagonistic to "literary" greatness?) and being unable of any kind of innovation or originality because of their adherence to a set of rules (One wonders what Hensher thinks of classical poetry, or the Oulipo)

As to his categorization as "morons" of readers unwilling to read the deeper, less resolved (and, probably, less entertaining) kind of fiction he advocates, it suggests respect and tolerance are among the rules Mr. Hensher successfully freed himself from. Good for him. Bad for us.

Further reading:

Steve Mosby's comprehensive takedown of Hensher's diatribe, with many good points and a marvelous last line.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Sur les traces du serpent (The Trail of the Serpent)

2011-07-30T21:50:00.004+02:00

This article is bilingual. Please scroll down for the English version.

La postérité est parfois bien capricieuse: romancière à très gros tirages de son vivant, Mary Elizabeth Braddon connut après sa mort une longue période d'oubli relatif, ses oeuvres disparaissant progressivement des rayons des librairies et n'intéressant plus guère que les historiens de la littérature. Son retour en grâce au cours des trente dernières années n'en est que plus spectaculaire qui l'a vue hissée au rang de figure majeure du sensation novel, ce genre typiquement victorien dont Wilkie Collins est le plus célèbre et le plus talentueux représentant, et ses oeuvres même les plus obscures rééditées et abondamment commentées. Braddon a également trouvé sa place dans la généalogie du roman policier, grâce à son Secret de Lady Audley mis par d'aucuns sur le même plan d'importance historique et artistique que La dame en blanc ou La Pierre de Lune dudit Collins. Le phénomène n'a pas épargné la France, où les éditions des oeuvres de Braddon se sont multipliées au cours de la dernière décennie, sous la double égide de la collection Labyrinthes du Masque et des éditions Joëlle Losfeld. Domaine public aidant, les éditeurs ont parfois porté leur choix sur les mêmes livres, de sorte qu'il existe à l'heure où j'écris deux éditions du Secret de Lady Audley, dans des traductions différentes.

Sur les traces du serpent (The Trail of the Serpent) est le premier roman de Braddon, publiée en 1860. Le livre suit pour l'essentiel les faits et méfaits d'un sinistre individu se faisant appeler Jabez North puis plus tard Robert (de) Marolle, et dont le moins que l'on puisse dire est que les scrupules ne l'étouffent pas dans sa quête forcenée de la richesse et du pouvoir. Il se rend directement ou indirectement coupables de plusieurs morts avant de trouver son maître en la personne d'un inspecteur qui, pour être muet, n'a pas les yeux dans sa poche.

Bien que la quatrième de couverture insiste sur le rôle "fondamental" de ce personnage, Sur les traces du serpent n'est pas un roman policier au sens moderne du mot. Le coupable est connu dès le départ, l'enquête ne démarre pas avant la moitié du livre et le détective doit au moins autant à la chance qu'à ses talents déductifs. L'intérêt historique est donc limité. Quid de l'intérêt littéraire?

Pour un jeune auteur dont c'est la première oeuvre publiée, Braddon fait montre d'une bonne maîtrise du récit et d'une forte personnalité, manifeste dès l'ouverture du livre, laquelle est une manière de tour de force. Elle sait écrire et fait preuve d'une belle verve satirique. Mais c'est un jeune auteur, et à ce titre elle ne sait pas se borner. D'où une tendance lassante à la longue à se regarder écrire, à sermonner et à coucher sur le papier tout ce qui lui passe par la tête. Surtout, elle reste prisonnière des conventions de l'époque. L'intrigue manque de rigueur et multiplie coïncidences et épisodes mélodramatiques; le dialogue, parfois brillant, est souvent ampoulé à l'extrême - et le narrateur omniscient est tellement intrusif et verbeux que celui de Tom Jones est en comparaison un modèle de discrétion et de laconisme.

Est-ce à dire que le livre est illisible? Certes pas. Comme je l'ai dit, Braddon même à ses débuts sait trousser une histoire et créer des personnages intéressants, même si pas particulièrement profonds ni mémorables. Il s'agit juste de savoir à quoi s'attendre; Sur les traces du serpent est une oeuvre de jeunesse, tout à fait agréable si l'on fait abstraction de ses nombreux défauts, et présente tout de même un certain intérêt historique. Mais ce n'est pas le livre à lire si l'on veut s'expliquer la fortune posthume de l'auteur; on lui préférera le déjà cité Lady Audley et, surtout, ses nombreuses et souvent remarquables nouvelles, meilleures souvent que ses romans - comme beaucoup de femmes de lettres de son époque, Braddon n'a pas toujours écrit pour l'amour de l'art, et la prédilection de son époque pour les pavés n'était pas pour arranger les choses.

Posterity is a whismical mistress: a best-selling author in her lifetime, Mary Elizabeth Braddon entered a long period of near-oblivion after her death - most of her books fell out of print and only scholars expressed interest in them. Her comeback in the last thirty years is all the more impressive: suddenly she was hailed as one of the major figures of the sensation novel right up there with Wilkie Collins; her works were reissued and abundantly commented. What's more, she found a place in the genealogy tree of mystery fiction, as Lady Audley's Secret was seen by some as a pionneering work in the genre, equally important as the aforementioned Collins' The Woman in White and The Moonstone.

The Trail of the Serpent (1860) is Braddon's first novel and (mostly) concerns itself with the deeds and misdeeds of a nasty piece of work successively known as Jabez North and Richard (later "Of") Marolles. Not one to be bothered with silly things like ethics, he brings directly or indirectly several deaths and a lot of sorrow before he is finally outsmarted by a mute yet observant detective.

While the blurb of the French edition emphasizes the "fundamental" role of the latter character, The Trail of the Serpent is not a detective novel. There is no mystery as to the identity of the culprit, no investigation until halfway through the book and the sleuth's success owes as much to good luck as to his deductive skills. The book's historical interest is thus limited. What of its literary value?

For a first-published author, Braddon displays a good mastery of storytelling and a strong personality which manifests right from the virtuoso first chapter. She can write and has a sharp wit. Still, she is a freshwoman and has no sense of nuance. Hence a quickly tiresome tendency to overwriting, sermoning and digressing at her heart's content. What's worse, she remains enthralled to the literary conventions of her time. The plot lacks rigour and piles up coincidences and melodramatic situations; dialogue while at times clever is most often laughably purple - and the ominiscient narrator is so intrusive and verbose as to make that of Tom Jones look like the epitome of laconism and discretion.

Is it to say that it is an unreadable book? Certainly not. As I said before, Braddon even at this early stage of her career could tell a story and create interesting, if not particularly deep or memorable, characters. You just need to know what to expect. The Trail of the Serpent is an early work with a lot of appeal to those willing to tolerate its many flaws, and its historical interest is not to be denied. Still, this is not the one to begin with if you're trying to find out what the fuss is about Braddon. The aforementioned Audley is a better place to start, but I for one would recommend to check her abundant shorter fiction which at its best equals and possibly exceeds any of her novels - like many women writers of her time, Braddon didn't always write for the love of the craft; and living in a period when a good novel had to be long didn't make things better.

The Revolutionary Archaism of Conan Doyle

2011-07-22T19:02:00.003+02:00

While A Study in Scarlet came out nine years after Green's The Leavenworth Case and only one year after Fergus Hume's early best-seller The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, you'd be easily forgiven for switching the chronology as Doyle's book actually seems to predate them. Doyle's contradictions as a mystery writer are in full display in the novel that introduced Sherlock Holmes to a then-indifferent world: on the one hand Doyle manages to create the final synthesis of the Great Detective and thus forever change the course of the genre; on the other, his plotting techniques are comparatively primitive and suggest that while Doyle self-admittedly had a great debt to Poe and Gaboriau, he wasn't much aware of the work of their followers.

First there is the two-part structure. Part I deals with Holmes' investigation and solving of the murders of Enoch Drebber and Joseph Stangerson; Part II is a long (and, to some, tedious) flashback providing the background to the murders, followed by a conclusion which discusses the fate of the murderer and allows Holmes to explain how he unfolded the truth. Doyle believed like Gaboriau (and Poe) that the detective story is primarily a demonstration - the great detective takes on a problem that baffled everyone else, solves it as easy as pie and then explains how he did it. Works well for a short story; not so much for a novel - it needs some fleshing-out to be palatable, and turning back the clock is as good a way as any. Doyle borrowed the technique from Gaboriau and used it again - and much more successfully - in The Sign of Four and The Valley of Fear.

Doyle's "demonstrational" approach to mystery writing also means he has not much interest in the guilty party's identity. The murderer might be anybody, and turns out to be a character never seen or heard of prior to his designation as the Man Who - a device Doyle would use liberally in his later work. So secondary is the matter to Doyle that he gives it away halfway through the book - obviously, Drebber and Stangerson's acts in Utah were of greater significance to him.

Had Doyle written two decades earlier, none of this would have been of much concern. The problem is, the mystery genre had moved a great deal forward by the time Doyle wrote A Study in Scarlet, and he apparently didn't take notice. Though neither Green or Hume was a match for Doyle in terms of literary skills, they both had showed that it was possible for a novel to focus on a mystery and its unravelling in a linear (well, almost) fashion; they had also realized the naming of the culprit was a climax in itself which worked even better when said culprit turned out to be one of the members of the cast rather than a rabbit pulled out of the hat at the last minute.

Because he was a mystery writer out of necessity rather than vocation and held his work in the genre in pretty low esteem, Doyle never really cared to 'evolve' over the years. Still, he showed at times a more modernistic approach to his craft. The Hound of the Baskervilles, probably the only later Holmes story he wrote with pleasure, adopts a "modern" linear structure and for once the whodunit element really matters; it's a mystery why Doyle didn't seem to learn from this achievement and later reverted to type with the admirable yet archaic The Valley of Fear.

None of this should be taken to belittle Doyle's contribution to the genre and to literature at large. For all their occasional (and, on second thought, relatively minor) archaisms, the Sherlock Holmes stories basically set the tone for all of the detective stories to come - even hardboiled writers more or less adopted Doyle's template. Holmes is a wonderful creation and the stories bear multiple re-readings with no sign of wearing out. It's no exaggeration to call Doyle a revolutionary, one of the very few genuine ones in the history of the genre, though it's certainly a paradox.

Here's To The Ladies

2011-07-01T16:41:00.002+02:00

Matthieu Esbrat, an old friend of mine sharing my passion for mysteries, has just created a nice Youtube video celebrating "Queens of Crime" past and present; he asked me for a link and I'm more than happy to oblige:

Matthieu's tastes being more catholic than mine, there are a lot of contemporary writers including some Scandinavians and one French. Some are easily recognized, some others much less so. A virtual glass of beer is offered to the first person to correctly identify all of them!

Nothing's New Forever

2011-06-18T11:31:00.006+02:00

John at Pretty Sinister Books has a nice review of Helen Eustis' classic The Horizontal Man. He admits to be baffled at the initial reception and enduring status of the book and admittedly some parts of it haven't aged well at all, starting with the then-shocker of a final twist which has now entered public domain. Still, The Horizontal Man illustrates for better and for worse the mood and style of one of the most creative periods in the history of the genre.

The decade following WWII saw mystery writers breaking free from the old rules and eagerly conquering new territories. The appearance of more flexible forms made it easier to write books that dramatically expanded the scope of the genre on formal, psychological, sociological, even political grounds. Suddenly it was possible and fashionable for a mystery to have no detective, or to deal with previously taboo topics, or to dispense with any criminal element. Being a product of the era, the Edgar Awards in their early years reflected the prevailing mood.

The problem with emphasizing innovation is that it's an extremely volatile concept, especially in as derivative/emulative a genre as mystery fiction. Critics who raved about The Horizontal Man and jurors who bestowed an Edgar upon it saw it (correctly) as a book that broke new grounds and played new tricks on the reader. As Eustis' discoveries went public domain, though, all that was left was an interesting but flawed book - an artifact.

Now That's What I Don't Call Music

2011-05-28T14:30:00.004+02:00

My reaction to contemporary pop music is easily summarized: I don't get it. God knows I've often been at odds with fashions and trends but I could at least understand the other side's arguments whereas the appeal of this, this, this or that for instance is unfathomable to me. I find these "songs" to be loud, heavy, repetitive and musically crude, and the only emotions they elicit from me are boredom and irritation. Now I realize that this stuff is primarily aimed at dancefloors as are two-thirds of pop music nowadays, but a tune can be both danced with the feet and listened with the ears. I can see how Single Ladies might eventually fit the first requirement, but the second one? Besides, is dance everything there is to music? By dint of focusing on danceability, technology and look (not necessarily in that order) that brand of pop ends letting go of the basics of not only songwriting but music as a whole. And no, I don't get it.

How Do They Say "Asking for Information" in Norwegian?

2011-05-22T18:49:00.003+02:00

It's yard sale season here now which means I buy lots of books - even though my reader's block is still painfully in force; go figure. Among my latest purchases is a book by a Norwegian writer previously unknown to me, Gunnar Staalesen. Has anyone read him? I ask this question as I know several readers of this blog hail from Scandinavia and may be familiar with his work.

Still Here, More or Less

2011-05-01T18:50:00.004+02:00

I haven't posted anything in almost two months and I'd like to reassure those kind enough to keep visiting the Villa: the blog is not dead, just sleepy - not for too long, I hope.

This is not the place to discuss my private life - not that I'm one to dwell on it anyway - so let's just say that I'm currently not in the mood for blogging. Not to help things out, I'm stuck with major reader's block - my house is filled with books that sound great, but the impetus to read them is missing. There again I can't but hope it doesn't last too much longer. But enough with the autobiographical stuff.

One of the reasons why I started At The Villa Rose was a perceived dearth of blogs exclusively focusing on older mystery fiction; now there were recurrent events like Patti Abbott's Friday Forgotten Books and erudite diarists like Martin Edwards frequently payed tribute to the classics but still most of the mystery blogosphere was primarily concerned with contemporary writing. Four years on I can't say this blog is extremely popular (my very irregular posting habits certainly accounting in no little part for that) but at least it exists and I hope its few readers enjoy it overall. What's more, it's no longer alone in defending and promoting the old stuff as the excellent blogs Detection by Moonlight, At The Scene of the Crime, Pretty Sinister Books, In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel and Tipping My Fedora demonstrate. I've added them to my favorites and I strongly suggest you do the same.

All that could give an impression that I'm comtemplating retirement, but I'm not. While regular posting is out of the question for now, I have no plans to retire and I'll try to post at least once or twice a month, if only not to lose my grip. So keep an eye on the Villa; it's not empty yet.

It's Not All There Is

2011-03-04T12:08:00.002+01:00

Fellow GAD-er and long-time virtual friend Curt Evans has a brilliant two-part article on "The British Golden Age of Detection's Deposed Crime Kings" at the American Culture; I strongly suggest you read it all.

Curt is right that the Crime Queens are not all there is to British Golden Age writing and tend to overshadow equally praiseworthy figures of the period. While the achievements of Christie, Sayers or Marsh (Allingham is an acquired taste, which I haven't yet acquired) are not to be denied or belittled, to equate them with Golden Age is both a fallacy and a rewriting of the past.

Quote of the day

2011-02-02T20:50:00.002+01:00

"Both novels also include several elements from the gothic novel, including the haunted house, the clairvoyant child, and the grieving widow-bride of The Dead Letter and the tower room and sleepwalking governess of The Figure Eight. The gothicism may come as a surprise to some readers, but it probably should not if we recall the blood relation of detective fiction and gothic horror in Poe's work. The gothic mode is always oscillating between the concealment of secrets and their dramatic revelation, and we can think of detective fiction as a more rationalized patterning of the same process."

Catherine Ross Nickerson, introduction to Metta Fuller Victor's The Dead Letter & The Figure Eight, Duke University Press, p. 5

Late Golden Age (1939-1950)

2011-01-31T17:23:00.002+01:00

This article is the third and final instalment in the Golden Age(s) series.

When we last left Golden Age writers, they were questioning - and in some cases, rejecting - their old certitudes. Dictatorships on the rise in Europe and a new war threatening made the detective story's triumphalist ethos seem increasingly shaky and artificial. Moreover, there were growing signs of impatience about the rigidity of the "rules" and a desire for a greater freedom. Newcomers displayed a more flippant, skeptical and in some cases hostile attitude to the conventions of the genre whereas the elders either tried new ways or called it quits. All this leading to and culminating with And Then They Were None, which was both a kind of apotheosis of the genre and a hint of things to come. Late Golden Age sees those trends deepen, translating by the end of the decade into a durable parting of ways between the American and British schools.

While the formal detective story remained dominant throughout the war and a major force afterwards, it was no longer the only player on the field. Moreover, it experienced some drastic changes though in a comparatively mild fashion. The cases of Ellery Queen and Patrick Quentin are very representative of the new directions taken by the genre.

Queen's earliest works were superior imitations of the then-reigning king of American detective fiction, S.S. Van Dine. By the mid-thirties, however, they had become tired with challenges to the reader and from Halfway House (1936) progressively ditched most of their vandinian mannerisms with Ellery for instance changing from a brainy snob into a fallible and somewhat sentimental fellow, leading to that turning point, Calamity Town (1942) What makes this book important is not its plotting (adequate, nothing more) but that Queen, that most baroque of all detective writers, finally discovers America. The setting is an ordinary American little town, Wrightsville, and the characters are not that spectacular either - they're ordinary people, a brand that mysteries tended to neglect at the time (and still do to some extent, but that's a subject for another article) Queen did not transform overnight into a naturalist writer - some of their wildest plots were still ahead of them - but most of their later work kept that "realistic" approach to setting and character.

Patrick Quentin's trajectory is an even more radical one as they proceeded and succeeded to ditch the cerebral element out of the detective story - the Puzzle books featuring Peter & Iris Duluth, while keeping all of the trappings and surprises of the genre, take on a wholly different direction. The Duluths are no dilettante detectives toying with crime; they are personally (and in most cases, dangerously) involved in the cases. By taking the focus away from those who solve the puzzle to those who are embedded in it, Quentin plays a decisive part in the rise of a new genre: psychological suspense.

Though I chose American (or in Quentin's case, America-based) examples, similar trends were at work in Britain where the flamboyant amateur genius of the previous period slowly made way for more down-to-earth characters, most often professional detectives or lawyers. The setting changed as well, becoming more urban and, yes, democratic. The move away from country houses and upper classes to great cities and people of the common had actually begun in the thirties, but only with the war did it became a heavy trend. From Christianna Brand to Michael Gilbert nearly all of the British talents to emerge during the period are modernists opting for daily-life settings and casting people of the law as heroes.

Where America and Britain diverged was on what new clothings the genre took. The American school, which had always been more flexible, readily embraced psychological suspense as a way to continue the detective story by other means. The new genre allowed for all the shenanigans of the old while being much more plastic and better-suited to the post-war reader's taste for fast-paced, thrilling narratives. Hardboiled fiction, too, showed interest in some "traditional" techniques and themes.

Both genres were marginal in Britain, and remained durably so. Besides, most British authors were quite happy with the basic structure of the detective story; they updated it stylistically, sociologically and - we shall see - philosophically and politically, but left the fundamentals intact. However, a sizeable minority led by increasingly influential newcomer Julian Symons retained Iles and Hull's lessons and decided to either do away with the puzzle or at least downplay it considerably in favor of psychology and social comment. Detective stories rebranded as police procedurals on one hand and "crime novels" on the other would be the dominant players on the British field for the next four decades, only marginally threatened by spy novels and thrillers.

Changes I've discussed so far were for the most part of a formalistic nature, affecting how detective stories were written. The deepest changes at work, however, were of an intellectual order. Detective story up to the late Thirties had been a fundamentally elitist genre, not only sociologically but philosophically, putting society's security in the hands of superminds unconcerned with procedures and the subtleties of law. It also displayed a strong metaphysic optimism, assuming that the world was an ordered place and crime a momentary and remediable disruption of said order. However, beginning in the years immediately preceding the war, some writers began to challenge the dominant worldview. The rise of the professional detectiveand the general trend towards the humanization of the detective figure, which I've discussed earlier, are the most visible symptoms of this change of mood, but more subtle ones could also be observed, such as the greater attention paid to secondary characters not just as suspects or sidekicks but as human beings; the growing skepticism of existing social order; the willingness to mock the rules of the genre; the realization that bringing a solution to the problem doesn't mean that everything will be fine again.

The book with which we'll end this survey and this series typifies all of these changes. On the outside, Cyril Hare's An English Murder is the uber-traditional mystery, with all of its components straight out of the Golden Age textbook: a country house, gentry people, murder, amateur detective. What makes it different is its outlook. The class-system is in tatters and survives paradoxically because of the servants' dogged refusal to let it go, the gentry is more to be pitied or ridiculed than admired and suffers a particularly nasty blow in the end, the new ruling classes are not better than the old - and the amateur sleuth solving it all is a foreigner who is one of only a handful decent people in the book and happens to know English law and history better than the natives. That the book is in many ways a remake of Styles adds to its subversive power. We'll never know for sure what were Hare's intentions in writing it, but as an eulogy for an era it was quite perfect.

John Barry, R.I.P.

2011-01-31T17:17:00.000+01:00

2011

2011-01-01T00:00:00.000+01:00

Je souhaite aux lecteurs de ce blog (et aux autres) une très bonne année; puisse le meilleur vous gâter, et le pire vous oublier.

I wish readers of this blog (and others) a very happy new year; may it bring you all of the Best, and none of the Worst.

'Tis Christmas

2010-12-24T10:00:00.001+01:00

The Good, The Bad and The Genrely

2010-12-17T18:30:00.004+01:00

Laura Miller's reply to Edward Docx's now infamous article on the alleged inferiority of genre fiction is well worth-reading. My only quibble (well - the only I'll discuss here) is that Miller, being a "literary" reader like Docx, shares much of his outlook. They both believe that there is something like "good" and "bad" writing and that presence of the former is what separates "literature" from "trash"; where they differ is that Miller thinks it's possible to enjoy both, which is fine and dandy but doesn't go far enough in my view.

I agree with Miller that genre fans tend to over-react to such attacks, but it's due in large part to them still sticking to academic, "literary" standards of "good" and "bad" writing. If you really believe that, say, Ichiguro is the gold standard for writing, then you can't but feel vexed when someone tells you that, no, you're not Ichiguro. This is not to say that genre fiction should not thrive for literature nor that all conventional standards should be abandoned - but maybe it's time for us to develop our own and accept that they may be just as valid as those set forth by the Literati.

(Via)

Paul Halter - "La Corde d'Argent"

2010-12-17T12:13:00.004+01:00

To my English-speaking readers: This post is bilingual; scroll down for the English-language version.

Gravement blessé pendant la Bataille d'Angleterre, David Davenport n'a plus jamais été le même. Incapable et peu désireux de travailler, souffrant de dépression nerveuse, il vit à présent avec sa soeur et infirmière Alice, dans le charmant petit village de Ravenstone. David rêve souvent d'un double maléfique qui cherche à le tuer. Une nuit, il se "voit" tuant son oncle Arthur, un ancien militaire retiré dans la campagne normande. Le cauchemar devient une réalité encore plus cauchemardesque quand le corps du vieil homme est découvert à son domicile, la mort ayant eu lieu à l'instant précis où son neveu la "rêvait", et dans les mêmes décor et circonstances. Et, pour ajouter encore à l'insolite effrayant de l'affaire, le suspect numéro un est un mystérieux visiteur qui, d'après les témoignages, ressemblait à David comme deux gouttes d'eau... Le jeune homme aurait-il donc le pouvoir de sortir de son corps et de se trouver à deux endroits en même temps? Et ce pouvoir serait-il lié à la série de crimes impossibles commis en Inde trente ans plus tôt? L'Inspecteur Hurst et son ami le Docteur Twist auront fort à faire pour démêler le vrai du faux, et apporter une réponse à l'insoluble.

Comme je le disais l'autre jour, Halter n'est jamais à court d'imagination s'agissant de problèmes sortant de l'ordinaire. Ce court résumé n'offre donc qu'un pâle échantillon d'une matière très riche qui comporte également un fakir aux pouvoirs mystérieux, un frère jumeau perdu et retrouvé, et un secret de famille pour le moins étrange - entre autres; et le lecteur se demande comment et si Halter va retomber sur ses pieds. De fait, les explications finales - il fallait peut-être s'y attendre - sont décevantes. La solution des meurtres indiens est extrêmement banale; quant au problème de bilocation, il repose sur une astuce narrative qui, pour n'être pas vraiment malhonnête, reste assez douteuse. En outre, bien des éléments de l'intrigue semblent n'avoir d'autre fonction que de mener le lecteur en bâteau et/ou justifier la longueur du livre. C'est d'autant plus dommage que La Corde d'argent se lit très agréablement, et qu'il s'agit là du meilleur livre de Halter depuis Les larmes de Sibyl. L'écriture est moins maladroite qu'à l'accoutumée, avec des passages franchement inspirés; les personnages sont intéressants, et auraient gagné à être davantage développés. Les tics et obsessions de l'auteur sont relativement mis en veilleuse, même si l'on retrouve ça et là sa misogynie et sa vision très sombre des relations humaines. Reste son manque de compréhension de la société et de la culture britannique, frustrant malgré une anglophilie sincère. Les personnages de Halter ne sont jamais britanniques que par l'état-civil; ils ne se comportent ni ne pensent comme de vrais citoyens de Sa Majesté, et leurs références demeurent françaises: (Hurst cite Tintin, et les personnages utilisent le titre français - La flêche peinte - du roman de J.D. Carr, The Judas Window)

Ever since he was wounded during the Battle of England, David Davenport has had... well, issues. Now unable (and unwilling) to work and fighting bouts of depression, he lives in the charming village of Ravenstone with his younger sister Alice, who also acts as his nurse. David has frequent nightmares of a nefarious double bent on killing him; one night he dreams of murdering his uncle Arthur, a retired colonel living in Normandy, which becomes an even more nightmarish reality when the old man is found dead at his home, his death having occurred at the very same time and in the same circumstances that his nephew dreamed of. Even more puzzling and frightening is that the prime suspect is a mysterious visitor bearing a strange likeness to David... Is the young man really able to travel outside his body and be in two places at the same time? How is this "ability" related to a series of impossible murders that took place in India thirty years before? Inspector Hurst and his friend Dr. Twist will have a hard time sorting it out and finding an explanation to the apparently unexplainable.

As I said in my previous post, Halter is never short of imagination when it comes to outrageous premises and this summary gives only a glimpse of what the book has to offer, which also includes among other things a fakir with mysterious powers, a lost twin and an odd family story - and the reader can't help but wondering/worrying how, and how well, Halter will make sense of all that. Perhaps unavoidably, his explanations disappoint - the solution to the Indian murders is a letdown, and that of the bilocation, while not outright dishonest, relies on an authorial sleight-of-hand. Also, too much material in the book seems to have no purpose other than to muddy the waters and/or justify its length. It's unfortunate as La Corde d'Argent is an extremely readable book and Halter's best effort since Les Larmes de Sibyl (Sibyl's Tears, 2005) The writing is less clumsy than usual, at times inspired, and the characters are interesting if under-developed. Halter's obsessions and mannerisms are less obtrusive as well, except for the persistant if muted misogyny and dour view of human relationships. His lack of understanding of the British identity remains frustrating, however, despite his obviously sincere anglophilia. Halter's British characters are only so by name and setting; they never act British and their behavior and references (Hurst quoting Tintin for instance, or Carr's The Judas Window being mentioned under its French title) remain Gallic.

En cours de lecture/Currently Reading

2010-12-12T17:55:00.004+01:00

Tout comme Agatha Christie en son temps ("A Christie for Christmas!") Paul Halter est un auteur extrêmement ponctuel, qui chaque année à l'approche des fêtes se rappelle au bon souvenir de ses lecteurs. Il nous revient donc avec "La Corde d'argent" et un nouveau crime impossible placé cette fois sous le signe de la bilocation et du voyage astral: on le voit, Halter est peut-être un écrivain limité mais son imagination, elle, ne l'est pas. Bien que n'étant pas de ses amateurs inconditionnels, je ne manque jamais aucun de ses livres, d'abord parce qu'ils sont toujours extrêmement lisibles et rarement dépourvus d'intérêt, ensuite parce que je considère comme mon devoir en tant que zélateur du roman d'énigme de soutenir l'un des très rares auteurs français oeuvrant dans ce domaine. J'entame tout juste son dernier-né et je ne manquerai pas de vous faire part de ce que j'en pense sitôt que je l'aurai terminé.

Like Agatha Christie yesterday ("A Christie for Christmas!") Paul Halter is an extremely punctual writer, never or rarely failing to mark the end of the year with a new book. This year's effort is titled "La Corde d'Argent" ("The Silver Rope") and deals once again with an impossible crime on a background of bilocation and astral travel: Halter as a writer may be limited but his imagination, fortunately, isn't. Although I'm not an uncritical admirer of his work, I never miss any of his offerings, first because they're usually quite readable and rarely devoid of any interest and second because as a zealous defender of the traditional mystery I think I have to put my money where my mouth is and support one of the very few French practicioners of the genre. I'm only one-third in his new one, but I'll post a review on this blog as soon as I'm finished. Stay tuned.

P.S.: English-speaking readers of this blog who'd feel intrigued and curious about this very peculiar writer might like to know that John Pugmire, an authority on everything Halter, has translated the novel "Le Roi du Désordre" under the almost literal title "The Lord of Misrule" which can now be ordered from Amazon in e-book and trade paperback formats. If you're looking for a perfect gift to do yourself for Christmas, well, this isn't the worst option you have.

Live From The Houmfor

2010-12-03T20:00:00.001+01:00

A chant rather than a song, set to a perculating tribal beat, this is pretty much what voodoo disco/funk would look like, if voodoo priests were into disco/funk. This "song" was a number one hit in Britain, despite not even denting the Billboard Hot 100.

The Mysterious And The Weird

2010-12-03T11:21:00.003+01:00

Something that has always fascinated and puzzled me over the years is the close relationship between mystery (a supposedly realistic genre, at least according to critics) on one hand and imaginative literature on the other, be it of the sci-fi or, more specifically, supernatural kind. Not only have they often overlapped, but many authors have dabbled in both, and became masters in both fields. It may have to do with mystery fiction's extreme plasticity - you can set a crime almost anywhere, anytime - as the prolific subgenre of historical mysteries demonstrate. But I can't help thinking it may also have to do with our favorite genre's deeply ambiguous nature. Even in its most realistic-looking guises, mystery is a fundamentally artificial genre relying on rare, if not downright improbable, combinations of events and characters that have themselves little relation to everyday reality. Most true crime is trivial, uninteresting but on a philosophical/sociological level - and the lives and personalities of those investigating it are not the stuff of novels. It's possible to write good mainstream fiction about nothing happening to nobodies, but a crime novel that would deal with uber-ordinary crime solved by uber-ordinary detectives would be a yawn-fest committing the genre's gravest offence: boringness. All genre fiction is about being interesting and captivating, and is thus fantasical at the core; mystery is no exception, even though it goes to greater pains than others to hide it.

But back to the special relationship I evoked at the outset of this post. It goes back a long way - not only is Poe - rightly or not, that's another question - a patron saint of mystery fiction, he always serves that function for sci-fi ("Hans Pfaal" is often regarded as an early specimen) and supernatural fiction, especially horror. Had Poe not existed or stuck to poetry, this blog might not exist. Also, the lines between the genres took a long time to be delineated - the Victorian and Edwardian eras were home to rationalists like Holmes or Thorndyke as well as to specialists of the paranormal like Carnacki, Flaxman Low, or John Silence. Better still, the literary techniques of mystery fiction were sometimes applied to stories of the supernatural; Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan for instance is structured quite like a detective story and H.P. Lovecraft's later Call of Cthulhu makes effective use of a "backwards" structure (from the effect to the cause) similar to that of the mystery genre - and the protagonist acts like an investigator. Conversely, ghosts (real or forged) hypnosis and futuristic weapons were long a fixture of mystery fiction, much to the ire of purists like Mgr. Knox or S.S. Van Dine. It took the advent of hardboiled, and the subsequent call for greater realism in the genre, for the lines to be settled - mostly. They seem to have remained porous somewhat longer in Britain though, as demonstrated by the group of writers I affectionately call the "British Weirdoes" which comprises the likes of Mark McShane, John Blackburn, Colin Wilson and the mother of them all, Gladys Mitchell. (The most recent example of that school I can think of is J.H. Wallis' 2002 novel Dancing With The Uninvited Guest)

The proximity between mystery and "imaginative" fiction is, I think, more than just a matter of occasional meetings. It's one of kinship; mystery itself, especially in its most traditional incarnations, being a branch of imaginative literature. It's my own interpretation, not a minority view and open to discussion, but I do like it. I report and you decide; feel free to disagree and let me know your opinion on the matter.

CADS 59

2010-12-02T18:10:00.002+01:00

As I grow older, I am less and less excited by the prospect of a year ending and another beginning, since it means that, well, I will age one more. Still, there are reasons to rejoice for as December comes again, so does CADS as an advance Christmas gift for the crime/mystery nut. Issue 59 is typically rich in well-written, well-researched and passionate articles on everything (fictionally) criminal. Stand-outs include one "revisitation" of John Dickson Carr's Locked-Room Lecture by my friend John Pugmire, a beautiful essay on Father Brown's philosophy by Josef Hoffmann and an examination of Anthony Berkeley's lesser-known work by Arthur Robinson - among lots and lots of interesting, fascinating stuff. (Especially delightful to me was Mike Ripley's paean to the wildly imaginative and inclassable John Blackburn, one of my favorites ever since I read his wonderful, way too little-known Blue Octavo.) I could go on on lines and lines without ever exhausting the plenty of great material this issue has to offer.

If this post made you curious, you may ask your copy to Geoff Bradley, 9 Vicarage Hill, South Benfleet, Essex, SS7 1PA. Believe me, you won't regret it.

Bye, Leslie

2010-11-29T17:45:00.002+01:00

Viktor Lazlo, "Pleurer des Rivières"

2010-11-28T21:20:00.000+01:00

Most French-language covers of American pop standards are weak or downright suck - mainly because our language, while beautiful, is much less musical and rhythmic than English. Still, there are exceptions now and then. Viktor Lazlo's version of Cry Me A River (French title, Pleurer des Rivières, is an almost literal translation of the original) is one of them: classy, slick and sensual. Also, the lyrics are quite good - but you'll have to trust me on this one, since I lack the time to do a translation. :D

En cours de lecture/Currently Reading

2010-11-28T20:13:00.005+01:00

(This post is bilingual; scroll down for the English version)

Après une longue bouderie dont je serais bien incapable de préciser l'origine, je retrouve enfin le roman policier - le "rompol" comme elle dirait - avec Coule la Seine, de Fred Vargas. Il s'agit d'un bref recueil de trois nouvelles (bien) illustrées par un certain Baudouin. Je finis en ce moment la première, Salut et Liberté, une histoire très enlevée qui met le commissaire Adamsberg au prises avec un étrange tailleur et un assassin épistolier. Je ne suis pas vraiment fan de Fred Vargas, mais c'est un auteur très intéressant du point de vue traditionaliste qui est le mien, puisqu'elle a réussi à s'attirer les faveurs du public et de la critique alors même qu'elle oeuvre dans un genre - le roman d'énigme, retoqué à la mode Vargas - que beaucoup considèrent moribond et démodé. Mieux, personne ne semble s'en aviser. Pourtant, Vargas reconnaîtapprécier Agatha Christie et Sherlock Holmes, et peu goûter la fiction criminelle moderne, notamment sous sa forme politiquement et socialement engagée à la Manchette et suivants. Aussi, il y a en elle - n'en déplaise à François Guérif - plus qu'un peu de Pierre Véry. Et puis n'oublions pas que le premier essai de la dame - qu'elle ne semble plus trop assumer - remporta le Prix du Festival de Cognac à une époque où son promoteur, les Editions du Masque, étaient très orientés "whodunit". Bref, comme elle a de plus une faiblesse qui m'est très sympathique pour les intrigues baroques (parfois trop, comme dans le désastreux* Sous les vents de Neptune) c'est un auteur que je suis de loin en loin, et il ne me déplairait pas qu'elle fasse des émules.

After a long period of sulkiness whose cause eludes me, I'm finally returning to mystery fiction by reading "Coule la Seine" by Fred Vargas, a collection of three short stories rather well illustrated by one Baudouin. I'm now finishing the first story, Salut et Liberté (Salute and Freedom) a nice piece that pits Commissaire Adamsberg against an odd tailor and a murderer with a taste for (anonymous) letters. I'm not really a Vargas fan, but I find her case to be quite interesting from my traditionalist point of view as she managed to get massive critical and commercial success by writing books of a kind - traditional mystery, Vargas-style - that is usually seen as outdated and moribund. Even more fascinating is that nobody seems to notice how traditional she is; yet Vargas admits a liking for Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes and, conversely, a lack of feeling for modern crime fiction, especially of the social/political kind initiated by Manchette. Also, she has a lot in common with Pierre Véry and her first foray in the genre was greeted with the Cognac Prize at a time when the publisher associated with this award, Le Masque, specialized into traditional mysteries. And since she has a very sympathetic fondness for baroque plots (with results that are not always happy; think of the disastrous* Sous Les Vents de Neptune) she is an author I've set my eyes upon, and I hope her success generates some emulation.

* Une opinion minoritaire, j'en suis conscient/I'm aware that it is a minority opinion.

Hoagy's 100

2010-11-25T20:46:00.001+01:00

Taken (Pierre Morel, 2008)

2010-11-24T00:17:00.003+01:00

Peu de films français peuvent se targuer d'avoir engrangé 150 millions de dollars au box-office américain, ce qui suffit à assurer à Taken une place dans l'histoire du cinéma que ses qualités intrinsèques auraient été bien en peine de lui valoir. Non qu'il s'agisse d'un mauvais film, mais c'est pour l'essentiel un produit de série, aux ambitions très terre-à-terre: produire un cocktail de sensations fortes assez efficacement doté pour ne pas laisser au spectateur le temps de réfléchir. Pari dans l'ensemble réussi, pour peu que le spectateur accepte de jouer le jeu et d'oublier que l'histoire est un tissu platement filmé et à peine cohérent de situations et de personnages vus et revus cent fois. Liam Neeson y est pour beaucoup et si vous doutiez encore qu'il soit un grand acteur, alors c'est le film que vous devez voir, car il tire le maximum du matériau qui lui est donné, et arrive presque à rendre crédible son personnage de super-agent-à-la-retraite-mais-toujours-redoutable. D'autres auraient joué la carte du second degré ou assuré le service minimum; Neeson lui y va à fond, sans nuances, et ça marche. Chapeau l'artiste!

Very few French films can be said to have grossed over 140.000.000 $ on the American market, so that feat alone makes sure Taken has a place in the history of cinema - a place that its own qualities would've had difficulty to secure. Not that it is a very bad film, but it is essentially a cookie-cutter product whose ambitions are fairly down to earth: to embark the viewer on a roller-coaster ride so fast and eventful that no time is left for thinking. This objective is mostly met, assuming the viewer is good-natured enough not to notice how the whole thing is a poorly-directed rehashing of situations and characters seen a hundred times before. Liam Neeson is the film's main (sole?) driving force and if you still have doubts regarding his acting abilities then Taken is the film you need to see as he makes the most of what he is given (not much) and makes his retired-merciless-and-almost-indestructible-special-agent almost credible. Others might have played it tongue-in-cheek or opted for minimal service but Neeson goes for the jugular, without caring too much for nuances - and it works. Chapeau l'artiste!

There Are Still Changes Being Made

2010-11-23T19:42:00.002+01:00

As you can see, I've changed the background image - less bookish, less colorful, but more personal. According to the website from which I borrowed the picture (I hope they don't mind) this is Villa Adrienne in Antibes - and I can't help but thinking it would've made a wonderful setting for a Golden Age mystery; a fitting illustration for this blog then.

Holding On

2010-11-23T12:06:00.001+01:00

Ed Gorman is right: Elizabeth Sanxay Holding is one of the greats. Not only her books are awesome, but they make awesome movies, too:

Some auteurists will say that you can't go wrong with Max Ophuls behind the camera, and James Mason before it was certainly a plus, but the excellence of the film also rests on a nice script that is quite faithful to its source, including the decidedly amoral ending (a flagrant violation of the Hays Code; God only knows how it escaped the censor's ire)

Has anyone seen the remake starring Tilda Swinton?

There Are Some Changes Being Made, Ctd.

2010-11-22T20:39:00.002+01:00

I just offered the Villa Rose a facelift, and I dare to say it was much needed - I hated the old template and had long wanted to drop it. I also imported the tiny archives from The Small Back Room and added some new features and links. This is of course a work in progress. Let me know how you like the new version so far.

There Are Some Changes Being Made

2010-11-22T13:08:00.001+01:00

When The Villa Rose opened its doors, three years and fourteen days ago, I didn't think it would live that long. My previous blogging experience had been short-lived for the same reasons I thought would plague this one: a lack of regularity in posting and a natural shyness keeping me from marketing myself, meaning that I would be my sole reader. I was right to worry about the former - more on that later - but wrong about the latter, and I'd like to thank the few but faithful readers who kept reading and encouraging me over the years.

Now to the point. As you may know, I own two other blogs - three actually, but the third was never officially launched, so it doesn't count. Mayhem Parva is supposed to be a French-language version of this blog, whereas The Small Back Room's aim is to collect my film criticism. Both are pretty somnolent, because of my recurring bouts of writer's block and the simple fact that managing three blogs, while a bed of roses in theory, proves to be quite difficult in practice. Since I've decided in the meantime to launch yet another blog devoted to my creative writing, I thought it might be a good idea to merge all those dealing with my "random thoughts" into a new, and I hope improved, Villa Rose. No, you won't have to update your bookmarks: this blog remains the same, at the same address. The only difference is that it will be bilingual, and, while remaining a mystery blog first, will occasionally deal with non-mystery matters such as film or the other kinds of books I read.

If you have any complaint, question or suggestion about these changes, feel free to voice it in the comments, or drop me a line - I love mail.

Lost in Translation: Stanislas-André Steeman

2010-10-31T12:36:00.003+01:00

Martin Edwards' glowing review of Six Dead Men ("Six Hommes Morts") provides me with a much-needed opportunity to revive my "Lost in Translation" series (when I said it would be irregular, I didn't mean it would appear only once a year!) and tell you about one of the greatest authors of the French Golden Age, and arguably one of the greatest mystery writers of all times: Stanislas-André Steeman.

It's hard not to think of his fellow-compatriot Georges Simenon when considering Steeman's trajectory. Both were French-speaking Belgians ("Wallons") hailing from Liège, stopped their studies early and dabbled into journalism. Both were precocious writers and gained celebrity thanks to their mystery novels. What sets them apart, however, is that Simenon mostly saw the mystery genre as a vehicle - and a convenient, if sometimes boring, way to make a living - whereas Steeman always regarded himself as a mystery writer first and foremost, one fully at home in the genre and its conventions - while never afraid to subvert them. Most of all, Steeman had an almost carrian devotion to fair-play which he always kept even though he distanced himself from the formal detective story in his later years.

Steeman, as said above, was a precocious fellow - he created his first comics (Steeman was as gifted with a pencil as he was with a pen) at age six. He later branched into poetry and wrote several "histoires légères" for Parisian specialized magazines whose editors were unaware of their prolific collaborator's tender age. Then he joined the staff of the "Nation Belge" where he befriended journalist Herman Sartini, a.k.a. Sintair. Together they wrote what they intended to be a parody of the roman-problème so popular back then, and sent it to the French publisher Le Masque as a joke. To their great bewilderment, it was accepted and Le mystère du zoo d'Anvers (The Anvers Zoo Mystery) was published in 1928. It was followed by Le treizième coup de Minuit (The Thirteenth of Midnight), Le maître de trois vies (The Master of Three Lives), Le diable au collège (Devil at High School) and Le guet-apens (The Trap). Sintair, however, never intended to become a full-time writer and their collaboration ended; Steeman was now on his own.

His first three solo detective novels were experimental works at the fringe of the genre as commonly known then: one of these, Zero, introduced Inspector Aimé Malaise who can be described as Steeman's own Maigret. He struck gold with the comparatively more orthodox Six Dead Men, which earned him the Grand Prix du Roman d'Aventures in 1931, and definetely established him as a major mystery writer at only 23. The book marks the first appearance of Steeman's favorite detective, urban and witty Wenceslas Vorobeitchik, and sets the tone of his later production: extremely clever, ironic, respectful of the rules while at the same time gently poking fun at them.

Steeman followed with another Wens mystery, La Nuit du 12 au 13 then surprised everyone with an atmospheric novel in the Simenon vein, Le démon de Sainte-Croix, manifesting that he was not one to be bound by categorizations. Steeman's output in the thirties, while not as prolific as his fellow-compatriot's, is extremely varied in tone, genre and style. "Traditional" mysteries featuring Mr. Wens alternate with thrillers (Le lévrier bleu*), fantasies (Feu Lady Anne**) parodies (L'Infaillible Silas Lord***) and more psychological works like Le mannequin assassiné**** (Malaise again) or La maison des veilles *****. Even in his comparatively more orthodox work, Steeman finds room for experiment: L'ennemi sans visage, which borders on weird fiction, is a good example. His works are very representative of the French Golden Age of mystery fiction with its emphasis on originality and inventivity, while rivalling at the same time with the Anglo-Saxon masters in terms of rigour, fair-play and cleverness. The points culminants of this period are Le trajet de la foudre (The Course of Lightning) and L'Assassin habite au 21 (The Murderer Lives At Number Twenty-One) a London-set story of a serial killer going by the name of Mr. Smith, arguably his masterpiece in the whodunit genre. This book provided Henri-Georges Clouzot with his first shot behind the camera, and the result was a film that is as brilliant as its source, with Pierre Fresnay starring as Mr. Wens.

As the war broke, Steeman slowed down. He started an imprint in Belgium, Le Jury, which revealed promising writers like Thomas Owen, Paul Kinnet or André-Paul Duchâteau. The experiment was short-lived as the German occupation forces because of the imprint's (and its creator's) alleged "anglophilia". Steeman published only one novel during the war years, Légitime Défense, a brief yet seminal work as Steeman went further in "pushing the envelope" than ever before - the result is a psychological crime novel to please Julian Symons - except that Steeman even there didn't abdicate his fondness for clever plots with surprise endings. Henri-Georges Clouzot made a remarkable film out of it, arguably the best adaptation of Steeman's work and one of the summits of French cinema - Steeman, while recognizing the film's qualities, resented that it changed the guilty party; Steeman's relationship with the big screen was always a sour one.

The post-war period brought some radical changes to the genre, and Steeman's work experienced some as well. After a final traditional mystery, Crimes à vendre (Crimes for Sale) Steeman engaged in increasingly experimental work. First he dabbled into soft-boiled fiction with three novels starring private investigator Désiré Marco: Madame La Mort (Madam Death) Dix-huit fantômes (Eigtheen Ghosts) and Faisons les fous (Let's Go Crazy). Then he brought Mr. Wens back, but a Mr. Wens nothing like the old one. The Wenceslas Vorobeitchik of Poker d'Enfer (Hell's Poker) and Six hommes à tuer (Six Men To Kill) is a fregolian, desincarnate character who can and does assume any appearance and identity; who he is, where he is and what he does replaces the standard "who's done it" as the books' big questions. Naturalism in these stories is completely abdicated but not Steeman's usual outstanding cleverness, and the plots, wild and hard to follow as they are, remain scrupulously fair.

The last decade of his life saw Steeman turning to suspense fiction, and his work getting increasingly bitter and darker. Impasse des Boiteux, Le condamné meurt à cinq heures (The Convict Dies At Five) Une veuve dort seule (A Widow Sleeps Alone, much admired by Boileau-Narcejac) and his final novel, Autopsie d'un viol (Autopsy of a Rape) a courtroom mystery set in the United States, display a grim worldview with none of the author's previous flippantness. Not gone, however, was his mastery of plotting and misdirection which remained firm and strong to the end. When Steeman died in 1970, he still had a lot of projects (including a promising Crime On Orbit) which never came to fruition - and this world is a poorer place for that. He was only 62.

Steeman, while not a household name like Simenon and often berated by fans of the latter, is a capital name in the history of French-speaking mystery fiction. He was one of the earliest writers to take the form seriously, both formally (he was a notorious perfectionist, and entirely re-wrote some of his early books as they didn't please him anymore) and conceptually. He was also one of the few pre-war mystery writers to try and come to terms with the new paradigms that emerged after WWII, and managed to stay relevant without abdicating any of its individuality and principles. Finally, he was one of the greatest and most inventive plotters of all times, ranking with Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr for the period before the war and Margaret Millar or Fredric Brown for the period that followed. It is a shame that he remains so little-known in English-speaking countries where only two of his books were translated.

Let's end with an anecdote typical of Steeman's sharp wit. Having stayed in a hotel whose service he found mediocre, Steeman as he left was asked by the manager to write some words in the hotel's golden book. He complied and wrote: "Souvenir of an unique stay at the X hotel". The manager gushed with pride and asked: "Unique? Why?" To which Steeman dryly replied: "Because it is the only one I'll ever have!".

* The Blue Greyhound.

** The Late Lady Anne

*** The Unfallible Silas Lord

**** The Murdered Dummy

***** The Waking House

Tony Curtis

2010-09-30T19:01:00.001+02:00

Hats Off to Barry

2010-09-27T18:31:00.001+02:00

As those kind - and patient - enough to follow this blog on a regular basis must know by now, I'm an enthusiastic defender and promoter of the short story, which I regard as the most demanding (and thus most rewarding) form of fiction, especially mystery fiction. Stanley Ellin, Henry Slesar, Robert Arthur, Edward D. Hoch or John Collier rank high in my personal pantheon, and Donald Westlake's or Lawrence Block's shorter work I always found to be more interesting than their longer efforts.

Before going further I must admit to a slight bias here as the author I'm about to discuss is a personal friend and has been for years, even though we never actually met - only Internet may make such things possible. Barry Ergang is one of the highly interesting fellows I've encountered on the highly interesting GAdetection board; we come from opposite corners of the mystery field, being of a decidedly traditionalist bent while he is more of a hardboiled guy (nobody's perfect) but our common liking for the Man Who Explained Miracles and our devotion to short stories made sure we'd get along very well, if not always seeing eye to eye. As many GAders, Barry doesn't content himself with reading mystery fiction: he writes some, too. And I think he does quite well.

Years ago I was one of the privileged ones he asked to review his then-latest effort, a piece called "The Play of Light of Shadow". To review a friend's work is always a difficult experience, as you have to balance criticism and sensitivity in a more careful way than you do when asked to judge the work of someone you don't know. Regarding "The Play of Light and Shadow", however, I didn't need to worry about that, since it was just excellent. Barry successfully blended there his two favorite themes, the tough and the impossible. I don't want to spoil anything and I'm not that good at summaries anyway, so let's say that it's about an impossible crime solved by a hardboiled dick going by the name of Darnell and that it's an absolute winner, both in term of plotting (with an elegant and - to me, at least - original solution) and good characterization, especially of the lead character. (I have spent the last half-decade or so asking Barry for a sequel as I think Darnell has a lot of potential - and I'm still waiting) And then there is the writing - lean, sparse, precise.

His latest collection, "A Flash of Fear" displays Barry's pointe sèche at its best. It is a collection of six flash stories - or short-shorts if you're not into Internet neologisms. As I said above, the regular short story is the most demanding of all forms, and the short-short is the most perillous of its variations - telling, as opposed to outlining, a compelling story in a few lines requires virtues that not every writer possesses. Barry does, however, and if you think I'm just pouring friendly praise on an old comrade, you might like to know he's a past winner of the highly coveted Derringer Award, in - guess what? - the "Flash Fiction" category.

On AFF's evidence it's easy to see why. Each one of the six vignettes has enough material for a more verbose writer to make a novel or at least a novella out of it; Barry for one packs it all in a few lines, complete with endings as sardonic as anything Jack Ritchie ever deviced. I mention Ritchie here as, I think, he would have approved of such sarcastic gems as "The Merchant of Varnish" with its devilish pun, "Moaning Lisa" or "Mother's Day Present" - he would, too, have liked the darker "No Such Thing" where Barry shows he can handle serious issues and drive his point home without hammering it (a poor pun as you'll realize when you read the story, but I couldn't help it) Ritchie was after all a master of both the cynical twister and the compassionate noir.

The best piece, however, reminds one of Hammett in its extremely stripped-down, yet evocative, prose. Barry says it was intended to be "an experiment in the objective style" and for fear of seeming overly complimetary I'll just say it is very effective. "Ambition" may not be the cleverest story in the collection, but it summarizes what, in my view, makes Barry a writer to follow, that is, his ability to suggest a setting, invoke a character and a situation in a unique, convincing way with a few words and just basic English. Quite a feat and, in these times, worthy of encouragement. I strongly advice you to encourage Barry by reading his works.

Further reading:

All of Barry's works previously discussed, as well as a few others, can be found (and, for some, bought) as Smashwords e-books (click here)

Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

2010-09-26T20:55:00.000+02:00

Inglourious Basterds est, si mes comptes sont bons, le sixième long-métrage de Quentin Tarantino, et c'est le premier dont je puisse dire qu'il m'a vraiment plu. Ce qui ne veut pas dire que je suis soudainement converti au tarantinisme - les réserves que m'inspirent le réalisateur et son approche du cinéma subsistent; elles sont même, paradoxalement, renforcées.

Comme le film est assez récent et a rencontré un franc succès - le plus gros de toute la carrière de Tarantino, avec plus de 300 millions de dollars au compteur - je ne pense pas avoir besoin d'en faire un résumé très approfondi. Sauf à avoir passé les deux dernières années sur une île déserte, ou dans un abri anti-atomique dépourvu de toute réception radio ou télévisuelle et de toute connexion internet, vous savez probablement que l'action du film se déroule pendant la seconde guerre mondiale, et suit en parallèle les exploits d'une bande de "salopards" spécialisés dans le nazicide sanglant, emmenés par le sémillant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) et la vengeance de Shoshanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) contre les nazis responsables de la mort de toute sa famille. Un tel point de départ, et Tarantino aux manettes, laissait supposer que Inglourious Basterds ne serait pas un film de guerre académique. Supposition qui s'avère on ne peut plus fondée, et participe du succès du film. Tarantino applique en effet ses méthodes habituelles - citation/récupération/plagiat d'oeuvres célèbres ou complètement obscures, clins d'oeil au spectateur, violence décomplexée, dialogues-fleuves - à un genre souvent pétrifié qu'il renouvelle avec vigueur. Il n'hésite pas non plus à s'asseoir sur la vérité historique - et le fin du Reich telle qu'il la voit est certainement plus... galvanisante (au sens propre comme figuré) que le triste "dernier tango à Berlin" de la réalité. Vous vouliez voir Hitler se faire réduire en charpie à la mitraillette? Tarantino fait de ce rêve une réalité. On saluera également le coup de poker qui consiste à faire porter le film sur les épaules d'un acteur peu connu, incarnant un personnage résolument ignoble. Car c'est bel et bien ce Landa, interprété avec génie par l'Autrichien Christoph Waltz, qui s'avère le personnage le plus intéressant du film, celui qui reste le plus vif dans le souvenir. Voilà belle lurette que l'on n'avait pas vu une telle figure de salaud, et l'adage de Hitchcock - "meilleur est le méchant, meilleur est le film" - se vérifie donc une fois de plus.

Mais nous sommes chez Tarantino, ce qui veut dire que ce qui fait la force du film est également ce qui pose problème. Le dépassement de la vérité historique - qui ne me pose, en soi, aucun problème: c'est l'une des prérogatives de la fiction - s'accompagne également d'une oblitération du contexte. La seconde guerre mondiale n'est ici qu'une toile de fond, et les nazis sont des méchants comme les autres, parfois ridicules mais pas particulièrement violents ni impitoyables, puisque tout le monde ou presque dans le film est violent et impitoyable. Tarantino s'est fait plaisir en tournant une histoire pleine de sang, de bruit et de fureur dont le cadre se trouve être la France occupée parce que c'est exotique, et les méchants des nazis parce qu'ils sont tellement cinégéniques - bref, il a fait du Tarantino: un cinéma référentiel et au final parfaitement abstrait. Que le brouet prenne ici remarquablement bien, n'empêche pas de se poser des questions sur la recette et sur les intentions du chef.

Tarantino m'a toujours paru la démonstration par l'absurde de la théorie des auteurs, et de son inutilité fondamentale. Si par "auteur" on entend un réalisateur au style immédiatement reconnaissable, aux thèmes récurrents et personnels et dont la "vision" se retrouve de film en film, alors Tarantino est indubitablement un auteur. Mais ce style, ces thèmes, cette vision sont au service de rien. Il ne s'agit pas de reprocher à Tarantino de n'avoir "rien à dire" - ce qui est l'un des reproches les plus stupides que l'on puisse faire à un artiste. La filmo de Tarantino donne cependant plutôt l'impression d'une suite d'exercices de style que d'une oeuvre véritable; l'auteur s'amuse avec le petit train cher à Orson Welles, mais on reste au niveau de l'amusement: tout ceci n'est qu'un jeu. Et parfois, Tarantino est le seul à s'amuser comme dans le déplorable "Boulevard de la Mort" qui pousse la méthode à son extrême masturbatoire. Rien d'étonnant, donc, à ce que Inglourious Basterds soit vide de toute perspective morale; c'est le cas de tous les films de Tarantino et on ne voit d'ailleurs pas pourquoi il en serait besoin, puisque tout cela est un jeu. N'empêche que la cruauté universelle de ce monde où la violence est seule loi, a quelque chose de glaçant, surtout ici, et débouche sur des résultats assez paradoxaux, les "bons" étant presque plus effrayants que les "méchants". On peut évidemment y voir une volonté de "subversion" de la part de Tarantino, de dynamitage des conventions et des idées cinématographiquement reçues. On peut. Mais on peut également - ce n'est pas exclusif - y voir une indifférence souveraine aux enjeux, à la limite de l'irresponsabilité. Tout cela n'est qu'un jeu, après tout.

La fille du bois maudit (The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, Henry Hathaway, 1936)

2010-09-23T14:27:00.000+02:00

Sorti en 1936, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine est l'un des tout premiers longs-métrages en technicolor trichrome, et le premier tourné en extérieurs. C'est également l'un des plus beaux films de Henry Hathaway, à coup sûr l'un des metteurs en scène les plus sous-estimés de l'âge d'or hollywoodien.

L'histoire explore un thème récurrent du cinéma américain, à savoir la rencontre entre la nature et la civilisation - et ce qui en résulte. La nature est ici incarnée par June Tolliver (la délicieuse Sylvia Sydney) et sa famille de hillbillies coupés du monde et plongés depuis des temps immémoriaux dans une guerre sanglante contre leurs voisins, les Falin; la civilisation vient bousculer tout cela sous la forme d'une voie ferrée et de son séduisant ingénieur, Jack Hale (Fred
McMurray) Si les deux cultures semblent raisonnablement s'accorder dans un premier temps, les choses se gâtent très vite comme la civilisation commence d'exercer son influence "délétère" sur le clan Tolliver, June surtout qui, bien que fiancée à son cousin Dave (Henry Fonda) lui préfère de plus en plus Jack Hale, et se met à rêver d'émancipation. Mais c'est l'ingérence de Hale dans le conflit entre les Tolliver et les Falin qui précipitera la tragédie...

Le film est également une méditation sur la violence, son absurdité et son coût humain exorbitant. June naît littéralement au milieu du champ de bataille (admirable prologue) et la haine que se vouent les deux familles, à force d'exclure tout autre sentiment, les maintient dans
la misère, voire une certaine forme d'animalité: tout ce joli monde est analphabète, signe les contrats d'une simple croix et ne reconnaît un chèque qu'au logo de la compagnie ferroviaire qui y figure. Dans un tel contexte, il n'y a guère de place pour la beauté (les papillons sur lesquels on s'exerce au lancer de couteaux) ou l'intelligence: la scène qui résume le mieux le propos du film est celle de la mort du petit Buddie Tolliver - qui rêve de devenir ingénieur et a commencé d'apprendre à lire - victime d'une bombe posée par le plus dégénéré des fils Falin. Même l'amour maternel (bouleversante Beulah Bondi) est impuissant à mettre fin au carnage. L'opposition entre nature et civilisation, je l'ai dit, est un thème cher aux cinéma américain, mais elle ne tourne pas ici à l'avantage de la première, quand bien même le film reconnaît l'impossibilité de la dompter entièrement(June, malgré son bref passage en ville, retourne "à l'état sauvage"après la mort de son frère)

Hathaway joue remarquablement du contraste entre ces ténèbres humaines et la beauté luxuriante du décor, admirablement filmé et photographié. Ceux qui pensent que le Technicolor est nécessairement artificiel et criard (ce qui n'est pas forcément une mauvaise chose, mais
passons...) gagneraient à regarder ce film aux couleurs magnifiques et surtout naturelles, au point qu'il faut parfois se pincer pour se souvenir que le film date de 1936, et que le procédé n'en était encore qu'à ses balbutiements. L'interprétation est d'un très bon niveau, mais c'est le tout jeuneot Henry Fonda qui se distingue par son jeu très moderne, tout en non-dits et en retenue. On sent déjà pointer la grande star qu'il deviendra quatre ans plus tard.

NPR List Fails To Thrill

2010-08-07T18:17:00.007+02:00

Remember the lacunal, maddening, consterning and ultimately useless lists of the allegedly best in crime fiction devised by The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian? Bad ideas sadly travel better than good wine and now we find the NPR weighing in with a list of 100 "Killer Thrillers" as selected by its audience. Like the Guardian's round-up, it is fairly inclusive - as it happens, Jurassic Park does show its reptilian head in both. For NPR's and its audience's defence, it might be said that "thriller" is so nebulous a concept (much like "crime novel") that you can put virtually any kind of book under its broad tent - and this is what happens:

Of course, there will be arguments about whether some of these books truly count as "thrillers." (You know who you are, Shogun.) The many 19th-century novels, in particular, may raise eyebrows. But David Morrell, novelist and co-editor of the recent anthology Thrillers: 100 Must Reads, defends such choices. "A lot of people see 'thriller' and think 'spy book,' " Morrell says. But a book like The Last of the Mohicans is "unquestionably a thriller — filled with chases and derring-do." Morrell also mentioned Dracula ("take away the supernatural elements and it's a serial-killer novel") and The Count of Monte Cristo. "As long as you have that breathlessness and sense of excitement," Morrell says, "then they're in."

I'm old enough to remember the time when The Last of the Mohicans was considered an adventure novel and people routinely described Dracula as horror and The Count of Monte Cristo as a story of revenge. But it was yesterday and today is a busy time, too hury to care with definitions and categories. Let's drop them all and let's paint everything with the same brush, the broader the better.

"Thriller" was historically meant to refer to a peculiar brand of fiction, lying somewhere between adventure and the burgeoning crime genre, whose aim was - of course - to thrill. Main features of the form included fast pacing (making up - though not always - for coherence) high action quotient (in the guise of plot) and brave, courageous protagonists facing incredible (in every sense of the term) dangers to defeat crime bosses, secret societies or evil masterminds bent on controlling/destroying the world - which at the time and the somewhat ethnocentric world of standard thriller fiction, meant Great Britain and its empire. Since those books had little time or use for subtlety, they were often crude in their effects and execution. Still, at their best they displayed a wild imagination and stamina that makes the best of them still readable after all those years - it's no chance that Edgar Wallace, the archetypal thriller writer, still maintains a small but loyal following.

Of the NPR's 100, only a few are thrillers in the historical sense, and the presence of Stephen King, Carlos Ruiz Zafon or Cormac McCarthy demonstrates how far the term has derived from its original meaning - or any other for that matter. Whether or not it's a good thing, you decide.

Why CADS matters

2010-06-03T12:44:00.001+02:00

Every new issue of CADS (Crime And Detective Stories) is an event on itself - because of both its irregularity and the invariably high quality of the content. The last issue, bearing number 58, is in a league of its own however as it marks the twenty-fifth aniversary of - let's not mince words - the best crime fiction periodical since The Armchair Detective.

Readers of this blog know one of my recurring complaints is about the sorry state of mystery scholarship and the general lack of interest of authors, readers and critics alike in the history of the genre. That's what makes CADS so important - it is a magazine made by and for people who care for the What, Why, When and How of crime and mystery fiction. If you're looking for in-depth examination of the works of Mildred Davis, George Bellairs, Helen Simpson or Hilda Lawrence - all persons whose names would leave most in the fandom scratching their heads in bewilderment - then CADS is the place to go. While emphasis is put on the elders and betters of the genre, contemporary fare is not neglected and one of my favorite features is Bob Cornwell's Questionaire of an author - in this issue, Frances Fyfield - which refreshingly dispenses with the phony questions (and answers) of standard promotional interviews.

That such a magazine lived long enough to celebrate its first quarter century is a miracle and a testimony to the passion of both its editors and readers. If you want the miracle to continue and CADS to turn 30, 50 and (why not?) 100, then you might consider joining the club by asking for your copy to Geoff Bradley, 9 Vicarage Hill, South Benfleet, Essex, SS7 1PA.

Be warned, though: CADS is a dangerously, if delightfully, addictive experience. Which might be the final and best reason why it is so indispensable.

Further reading:

"25 Great Years" by Martin Edwards

"CADS" by Catherine Poulson

L&O's Law

2010-05-27T19:10:00.002+02:00

So it's over. Law & Order won't beat Gunsmoke's record and become the longest-running drama ever. I hadn't watched it for years, still it makes me feel sad - and kinda nostalgic.

I was vacationing in Nice when I saw my first L&O. It was 1994, the show had just began airing on France 3 - and the guys there took great pains to make sure it didn't become a hit. For all its run on France 3 Law & Order was what the French call a bouche-trou: something to air when there was nothing else to air. The show moved from Saturday afternoons to Sunday nights; at one point you had to stay awake until 2.am to see it. (Universal-owned cable channel 13ème Rue then picked the show and gave it saner schedules and a greater visibility. As of this article, the show and its spin-offs are now "owned" by TF1, the greatest French network - how things change.)

And yet I was hooked. I didn't miss an episode and often found myself championing the show to people who'd never heard of it. I cheered when the show finally won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series in 1997*. Looking in retrospect, Law & Order was the first TV show I watched seriously, not just for entertainment.

Why?

Back in 1994 and for a long time afterwards L&O looked like nothing else on French television. Homegrown dramas in particular looked antediluvian in comparison - dull, preachy, simplistic and devoid of any ambiguity. L&O on the other hand managed to pack intricate plotting, compelling drama and unflinching takes on explosive issues in 45 minutes and made you ask for more. It was both extremely formulaic and completely unpredictable - you could almost never guess where the murder-of-the-week would lead, and prosecuting the culprit was often more difficult and trickier than finding him. To a young French viewer, the spectacle of American judiciary proceedings was often even more fascinating than the who's-why's-how's of the crime. I also liked the show's willingness to disturb. Not all episodes ended with the good guys winning and all questions being solved. Sometimes the system worked, sometimes it didn't and sometimes victory was more problematic than defeat. Complex issues were dealt with in a complex way, and it was often up to the viewer to make his own opinion, come up with his own answers. Everyone - and I mean everyone - could turn to be a baddie on L&O, no matter his milieu, race, politics or religion. This I liked too. L&O was my absolute favorite show up until Carey Lowell's departure.

All good things must come to an end, however, and I began taking my distances in the Wiest years as the stories became more predictable - in terms of both story and stance. The show started looking like a French drama - there was a good side and a bad side, and writers wouldn't let you choose; the once wonderfully arcane plots became simpler and repetitive. Sure it still had great actors doing a great job, but what good is an actor without a good part to defend and a good story to serve? The spinoffs finished killing the show for me. SVU I found even preachier than the original and too focused on a particular brand of crime to be surprising on the long run; CI was good and Vincent d'Onofrio gave a wonderful performance as Robert Goren but it lacked a concept. Jury might have been great but ratings didn't give it a chance. I'll check the upcoming L.A. but I don't expect much of it - hopefully I'll be proven wrong.

*A revealing anecdote: when asked by the now-defunct magazine Generation Series how they felt about the crowning of "their" show, France 3 executives replied that they didn't know about it, some going as far as to say they didn't even know about the show itself...)

Regeneration (Raoul Walsh, 1915)

2010-05-27T11:45:00.000+02:00

L'histoire des hommes et celle du septième art entretiennent des rapports étranges. Ainsi, 1939 marque à la fois le début de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale et le point culminant de l'Age d'Or hollywoodien (Gone With the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Of Mice and Men, Wuthering Heights, il n'y a qu'à se baisser...) Il en va de même, à une moindre échelle, pour 1915. D'un côté, les tranchées; de l'autre, trois films extrêmement importants sortent en l'espace de quelques mois: Birth of a Nation de Griffith, Les Vampires de Feuillade et celui qui nous occupe ici, Regeneration. Que deux de ces trois films soient américains ne doit pas surprendre: c'est "grâce" à la guerre en Europe que le cinéma américain, jusque là assez mineur, va progressivement s'emparer du leadership mondial, tant sur le plan commercial qu'artistique.
Regeneration est le premier film de Walsh, qui avait fait l'acteur quelques mois auparavant dans Birth of a Nation; c'est également l'ancêtre d'un genre, le film de gangsters, qui marquera les années vingt à quarante - et dont Walsh réalisera quelques uns de plus beaux fleurons. L'argument est relativement simple, et tient dans le titre: un jeune homme, Owen (interprété avec une modernité stupéfiante par Rockliffe Fellowes) que la misère et le manque d'amour ont poussé hors du droit chemin est "régénéré" par l'amour d'une jeune fille. C'est le traitement qui fait tout l'intérêt historique et artistique du film; on comprendra mieux pourquoi en comparant l'approche du débutant Walsh à celle des plus expérimentés Griffith et Feuillade.
Ce qui frappe tout d'abord dans Regeneration, c'est son absence de romantisme et de sentimentalité, du moins selon les standards de l'époque. Walsh, contrairement à Griffith, ne donne pas dans le pathos édifiant. La misère, la violence sont filmés frontalement, sans chercher à ménager le spectateur. Les scènes de l'enfance d'Owen sont remarquables à cet égard, et encore très éprouvantes un siècle plus tard. Le Bowery vu par Walsh est un enfer à ciel ouvert peuplé de mendiants, de gouapes, de brutes ivrognes et de gamins abandonnés à leur propre sort qui vivotent entre la rue, les bouges et des logements crasseux; que Walsh ait choisi de tourner sur les lieux mêmes ajoute encore à l'aspect documentaire du film et à son impact. Cette recherche du "détail vrai" rapproche Walsh de Feuillade qui avait tourné plusieurs scènes de son Fantômas dans la zone, et fit grand usage du Paris désertifié par la guerre dans ses Vampires.
Sur le plan formel, Walsh s'inscrit clairement comme disciple de Griffith, dont il reprend et prolonge les expériences sur le cadre et la lumière, mais en les intégrant à un projet et une vision tout à fait personnelles. Il ne s'agit pas pour lui d'agrandir, de magnifier les personnages ou le décor mais d'en saisir l'essence, et d'impliquer le spectateur. Même s'il manifeste un souci de recherche visuelle que l'on associe rarement à Walsh - sans doute parce qu'il optera dès son arrivée chez Warner pour une mise en images plus nerveuse, plus fonctionnelle - Regeneration est un remarquable exemple de cinéma américain premier, par opposition à celui plus teinté d'influences étrangères qui se développera à partir des années vingt.
Mais c'est sur le plan de l'interprétation que Regeneration est le plus remarquable, et le plus moderne. La direction d'acteurs walshienne est complètement exempte de l'emphase mélodramatique qui rend certaines scènes de Birth of a Nation ou Intolerance assez difficiles à supporter en gardant son sérieux - tous ces tics que Feuillade qualifiait dédaigneusement de "vieux ciné". Walsh demande - et obtient - de ses acteurs des interprétations aussi nuancées et naturelles que l'époque et les limitations du medium le permettaient. La jeune héroïne en particulier n'est pas une créature éthérée telle que Griffith les affectionnait, et annonce les futures égéries walshiennes - des femmes indépendantes, dont l'obstination n'a rien à envier à celle des hommes, et qui ne s'abaissent jamais devant eux.
En bref, Regeneration est un film qui justifie pleinement la petite heure de votre vie que vous lui consacrerez, et vous la rendra au centuple. Un bon moyen aussi de remédier à certaines idées reçues sur le cinéma de cette époque.

JDC/HPL

2010-04-12T01:48:00.001+02:00

It's been three months since I last posted on this blog, and I apologize to my few devoted readers for this unforgivably long silence. Let me say as an attempt to an excuse that I depend on inspiration to write - and, for several reasons I won't bother you with, inspiration just wasn't there. Now it seems to be back, at least for the time being, and I seize the occasion to raise this blog from the dead.

Michel Houellebecq's essay on Howard Philips Lovecraft is an old favorite of mine, somewhat surprisingly at first glance if one considers that I am not a fan of either the author or his subject. I never read any of Houellebecq's novels and the few Lovecraft stories I sampled left me cold. Why then do I re-read this slim volume on a regular basis? Well, first, because it's eminently readable, informative and insightful - but this is not the whole story. What interests me most is Lovecraft's literary doctrine, this definitive refusal of realism rooted in a no less definitive refusal of reality. Lovecraft, Houellebecq says, found both the modern world and life in general to be boring and repellent, and antithetic to artistic creation. Hence the radically abstract character of his work: Lovecraft had no interest in painting a faithful portrait of the society he lived in, nor in creating psychologically sound characters; instead he created a mythology, an architecture, even a geography (Arkham, Innsmouth, the Miskatonic Valley) out of scratch and peopled his universe with puppets whose sole purpose was to meet some unspeakable horror, write about it and either die or getting mad. As Houellebecq notes, such an approach is quite radical even within the weird genre and none of Lovecraft's many imitators and followers adhered completely to it.

To the mystery fan, Lovecraft's anti-realistic stance reminds strongly of another author with a taste for the baroque and no time for the trivialities of daily life: John Dickson Carr. Both had more in common than one would imagine - extremely intelligent and well-read people with a markedly reactionary mindset and almost pathologically good manners. Like Lovecraft, Carr hated realism in fiction, and made it a central tenet of his own literary doctrine, which he defended with vehemence against all enemies (or, to be more accurate, against the enemy, his evil twin Raymond Chandler) The early Bencolin novels have a distinctly weird flavour and the supernatural (or appearance of such) always played a major role in Carr's work, culminating with The Burning Court. Both HPL and JDC thought of themselves as "displaced persons" born in the wrong time and the wrong place; they also seemed ill-adjusted to adulthood (which Lovecraft compared to "hell") How comes then than their works are so markedly different?

Carr's irrealism is not as radical as Lovecraft's; it is first and foremost a rejection of verisimilitude: Carr can't be bothered with concepts like probability or plausibility. Still his stories as outlandish as they are take place or are supposed to take place in the world he and his readers inhabit. His Paris may be ghastlier, his Germany more baroque, his London more foggy than the real things and his countryside may be somewhat idealized, but they are (admittedly distorted) projections of real places. Attention is paid to the mores of the times, especially in the heavy-on-documentation historical novels he wrote in the second part of his career. Also, while his characterization skills were and still are heavily debated, Carr grants his protagonists real if sometimes sketchy backgrounds and feelings. The only bigger-than-life characters in Carr's work are his detectives, and even they remain concrete and at least possible.

These differences stem probably in part from the psychological and ideological differences between the two men. Carr, for all his yearning for a bygone era, never fell for Adolf, Benito or Francisco; neither did he embrace racist theories. He was definetely not a puritan and sex is a driving force in his universe - a Carr book without a female character is unimaginable whereas Houellebecq counted only two appearances of women in Lovecraft's whole output. Also, Carr was less cerebral, less solispstic than Lovecraft; fiction to him was about fun, at least in his younger days - the greatest game in the world - and while his worldview may not have been necessarily sunnier than his Providence colleague's, he always took pains not to pollute his work with it.

Middle Golden Age (1926-1939)

2010-01-16T14:19:00.002+01:00

This article is the second instalment in the Golden Age(s) series.

To most people, the period I am now about to discuss is the one and only Golden Age. A time of eccentric detectives and baffling mysteries when the genre reached unparallelled heights of virtuosity and ingeniosity. A time when locked-room murders and dying messages were business as usual and the police would routinely turn to gifted and wealthy amateurs to solve the most complicated cases. A time when the game element of the genre was emphasized with many books including challenges to the reader and rules being set out to prohibit cheap tricks. And yet a closer look at the period paints a more complex picture, one that is rife with contradiction and dissension; it also helps to correct some enduring misconceptions.

Middle Golden Age for the most part continued, amplified and institutionalized the changes initiated in the previous period; it also added a major one of its own. Early proponents of fair-play valued it on both aesthetical and ethical grounds; to hide major clues from the reader ruined the story's overall effect and was an appalling thing to do. Their successors, on the other hand, objected to not playing fair because it was cheating. The detective story, in short, had become a game, a "recreation of noble minds" and games need rules. Mgr. Knox in Britain and S.S. Van Dine in America were happy to oblige. While the former was chiefly concerned with purging the genre of antediluvian clichés that still showed up now and then, the latter's commandments amounted to a bill of divorce from standard fiction.

Practice differed sensibly from theory, however. Middle Age detective fiction for all its challenges to the reader and assertions of fair-play was actually more akin to prestidigitation than cluedo. The author presented the reader with a baffling problem and - ideally - gave him all of the clues, yet at the same time used his best smoke and mirrors to make sure he couldn't make sense of the evidence, revealing in the end the unsuspected truth to general bafflement then thunderous applause including from the defeated reader. Pace Van Dine, the closer equivalent to a detective story was not a ball game or a cross-word puzzle but a magician pulling a rabbit off his hat.

One might think - and it has often been told - that this conception of the detective story as well as the existence of a firm corpus of "laws" resulted into standardization - authors writing much like the other, books so alike that reading one spared one reading the rest. Another frequent criticism is that by focusing on the plot and viewing their books as mere games, authors ignored or at least neglected characterization, "realism" and social comment. Both criticisms are correct to an extent, and wrong on the whole. The period admittedly had its share of formulaic writing of no more literary merit than a sudoku problem but it was not the end of the story. Contrary to popular wisdom, playing "the grandest game in the world" was not contradictory with literary ambition (Sayers, Wade) genre-bending (Carr) parody (Innes) or wild imagination (Mitchell) Also contrary to accepted wisdom, whodunit is not the only genre thriving in the period. Middle Golden Age also sees the dawn of hardboiled (Hammett) and noir (Cain) fiction as well as of the crime novel (Francis Iles, Richard Hull, Mrs. Belloc Lowndes) whereas the transmutation of HIBK into suspense is underway with Ethel Lina White in Britain and Elisabeth Sanxay Holding in the US.

At the core of Middle Golden Age writing was the triumphalist notion that crime was only a temporary disruption in the immutable order of things and that reason would always prevail. This notion suffered repeated blows in the Thirties as totalitarian regimes took hold of Europe and war became increasingly probable. Detective fiction by the end of the period is more prosperous and fertile than ever, but the seeds of doubt have been sown with Berkeley and Sayers defecting and newcomers displaying a more skeptical attitude to the rules of the genre as well as its ethos.

As with the former period, Middle Golden Age closes with a Christie book, this time And Then They Were None which fittingly appeared in 1939. This book, one of its author's masterpieces, combines the extreme cleverness in plotting which is typical of the genre and the era with a gloomy worldview that is much less so: No one on Indian Island is innocent and there is no Poirot, Holmes or Wimsey in sight to rescue the inhabitants from their fate and restore order in the end. The jolly days of Mayhem Parva were gone; now detective fiction must deal with the sound and fury of a definetely disordered world. How it would an whether it could is what we'll see in the next and final instalment in this series.

Only Ten?

2010-01-07T12:20:00.007+01:00

Rob Kitchin has a challenge for classic mystery aficionados:

Imagine a reader new to crime fiction and wanting an education in the classics. Or consider a seasoned crime fiction reader who’s barely read a crime novel published prior to 1970. Well I’m that latter reader. I’ve read several hundred crime novels but nearly all of them are from the contemporary period. This is the year I intend to right that by reading some of the crime fiction canon. What I need though is a curriculum - a list of ten must-read crime fiction classics.And this is where I need some help. So to that end I’m setting up a relatively straightforward challenge, one that doesn't even require any reading. The challenge is to set a ten book, pre-1970, crime fiction curriculum and to either post the list on your own blog and send me the link or post the list in a comment to this post by January 31st. I’ll then compile a curriculum based on the most popular choices (and provide link-backs to posts). Ideally, the selection of books needs to try and capture different crime fiction sub-genres and styles.

Needless to say, I have a plenty of suggestions, but Rob wants only ten books. All of those I have in mind have an equal claim to greatness and importance and choosing one rather than another is a pretty painful experience, but that's what challenges are about. So here is my not-so-final round-up of the ten mysteries you should read before I change my mind again; it is as varied as could be given my admittedly biased tastes, but no one I think will waste his/her time checking these out.

John Dickson Carr, The Emperor's Snuff-Box - His most atypical work in many respects - no impossible crime, no hint of the supernatural and no Fell/Merrivale - but a towering achievement all the same for its deceptively simple plot and excellent characterization (go read it and tell me Carr had no sense of character...)

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown - Absolute perfection. Period.

Agatha Christie, Five Little Pigs - Not her most-often cited book, but the one where she's really at the height of her powers as both a plotting genius and a writer.

Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone - If you are to read only one detective novel in your life, be it this one (or The Hound of the Baskervilles)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles - If you are to read only one detective novel in your life, be it this one (or The Moonstone)

Stanley Ellin, The Eighth Circle - A private eye novel with a difference by one of the greatest short-story writers ever.

Cyril Hare, An English Murder - A dirge for a society, a class-system and a whole genre; the mystery equivalent of Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game.

Charlotte Jay, Beat Not the Bones - A thriller like no other: Joseph Conrad meets Cornell Woolrich.

Margaret Millar, A Stranger In My Grave - Her whole output would deserve inclusion here; I'm picking this one in particular because of its superb title and the character of Steve Pinata which sadly never reappeared again.

Dorothy L. Sayers, Whose Body? - One of the most brilliant debuts in the history of the genre, and the best was yet to come.

Readers of this blog are strongly encouraged to submit their own "classics" in the comment section.

(via Petrona)

Romancing the (Moon)Stone

2010-01-01T18:56:00.003+01:00

The Moonstone is one of my personal candidates for the title of best mystery novel ever written (other nominees include The Hound of the Baskervilles, Gaboriau's Le Crime d'Orcival or J.D. Carr's The Three Coffins among many, many others) and this review sums up what makes this book so great very well.

Believe it or not, it remained on my shelves for ten years before I actually got around to read it - I was negatively impressed by the length of the book as well as by his age; surely its only interest was of a historical kind. And then one day I finally opened it, read the first three pages and I was hooked. I couldn't put it down and the only disappointment I felt when finally closing the book was that it was already over.

Pace Barzun, T.S. Eliot had every right to label this book "the [...] greatest of English detective novels" (he also thought it was the first, but was wrong on this count as primogeniture belongs to Charles Felix's obscure The Notting Hill Mystery) as everything about this book is perfect or near-perfect from the masterful construction to the equally wonderful characterization. It is also strikingly modern, absolutely not the period piece you might expect. One century and a half ago, the detective novel had already taken on most of its definitive shape and to see it emerge before one's eyes is but one of the book's many pleasures.

Now talking about it makes me feel like reading it again. A good way to start a new decade, isn't it?

2010

2009-12-31T20:34:00.001+01:00

I wish all readers of this blog a happy new year. May it bring you all of the good and none of the bad.

Golden Age, Delayed

2009-12-30T23:26:00.002+01:00

Recurring computer problems and even more recurring bouts of writer's block mean, I guess to no one's surprise, that I won't meet the announced deadline of December, 31 for the publication of the articles on Middle and Late Golden Age. I'm currently in the middle of Middle, which should hopefully appear somewhere in January.

I sincerely apologize to my readers for this delay.

Early Golden Age (1920-1926)

2009-12-23T01:08:00.006+01:00

This article is the first instalment in the Golden Age(s) series.

There are at least two reasons to choose 1920 as the beginning of Golden Age. The first and more obvious is that it saw the first published efforts of two of the giants of the period, namely Agatha Christie (The Mysterious Affair at Styles) and F.W. Crofts (The Cask) The second is that it follows one of the dreariest periods in the history of the genre. The Detective Story had been one of the unsung casualties of the Great War, all but disappearing from the literary landscape during the conflict. Not only does 1920 herald a new era but it also marks the rebirth of the genre, a new start - but not a start from scratch. Authors from the previous era were still there and picked up where they had left before the war while newcomers progressively rejuvenated a formula that had been mostly left unquestioned for the last forty years; the ancient merged into the modern. The first six years of the new era is a period of transition, which we'll call "Early Golden Age" from now on, and it's revealing of the stature of the First Lady of Crime that it opens and closes with a Christie book.

To a 2009 reader Styles looks astonishingly modern whereas The Cask is a thing of the past if an extremely enjoyable one, and he may find hard to believe they were published the same year. Styles's elaborate architecture and misdirection are striking announcements of things to come; The Cask on the other hand harks back to pre-WW1, even pre-holmesian (Gaboriau's influence is sensible throughout) detective fiction with its emphasis on detection rather than deception. Still, they are both transition works, at the crossroads of two eras. The Hercule Poirot of Styles, for instance, is not quite the one most readers are familiar with. He has the same appearance, most of the same personality traits, but he is a comparatively more "physical" sleuth and pays a greater attention to material clues, in line with detective mores of the time when the book was written (1916). Conversely, the complex criminal scheme and alibi-breaking of The Cask set it apart from its models' simpler, more straightforward narratives. So none of these books is entirely modern, but none is entirely "primitive" either. It is a fair summary and assessment of the whole period.

Early detective fiction but for a few exceptions was short, relatively linear (expose of the problem - investigation - solution) and cared little for whodunit, placing the emphasis instead on the "how" and "why" of the case. Astonishing as it may seem to a modern reader, murder was not the capital offence it would later become; sleuths might just as well deal with thefts, disappearances, blackmail or any insolit chain of events. But the most striking difference from later mystery fiction was with regard to the place and role of the reader. Since detective stories were thought of as exercises in logic, the thrill of the game was to be found in the puzzle and the detective's mental prowess; the reader was to be a spectator, not a player, let alone a partner. Fair-play was thus scant, and misdirection almost non-existent.

High Golden Age writing shares some of the previous era's characteristics: whodunit was still regarded by most as a secondary issue and detectives were still expected to make spectacular deductions based on physical evidence or arcane knowledge. What changed is that authors set to write detective novels rather than stories, and longer works require meatier content: problems became more "spectacular" while plots got more complex and twistier. Detectives too "evolved", getting increasingly "ideosyncrastic" personalities. The genre as a whole shifted slowly away from the previous era's nominal realism to a more avowedly "stylized" approach.

The relationship between the author and the reader underwent some changes as well. No longer was the latter expected to just sit and marvel, starry-eyed, at the master sleuth's exploits. R. Austin Freeman insists in his Art of the Detective Story that he must be given the same chances as the detective to solve the case, and no clues must be hidden from him:

This failure of the reader to perceive the evidential value of facts is the foundation on which detective fiction is built. It may generally be taken that the author may exhibit his facts fearlessly provided only that he exhibits them separately and unconnected. And the more boldly he displays the data, the greater will be the intellectual interest of the story. For the tacit understanding of the author with the reader is that the problem is susceptible of solution by the latter by reasoning from the facts given; and such solution should be actually possible. Then the data should be produced as early in the story as is practicable. The reader should have a body of evidence to consider while the tale is telling. The production of a leading fact near the end of the book is unfair to the reader, while the introduction of capital evidence — such as that of an eye-witness — at the extreme end is radically bad technique, amounting to a breach of the implied covenant with the reader.

This is the stone on which the concept of "fair play", a cornerstone of Golden Age and later detective/mystery fiction, would be built. Freeman unlike Van Dine didn''t regard the genre as a simple mind-game and neither did he belittle "literary" endornments such as character or atmosphere. He believed, on the other hand, that detective stories must be somewhat "interactive". Chesterton in the past had already expressed similar views, but they had remained a dead letter. Now those ideas were finally catching on, but old habits die hard. Most "Ancestors" as well as some newcomers kept using the good old tricks and would still do for a long time.

This formative period, as I've written earlier, ends in 1926 with another Christie novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. This book, possibly the most famous detective story of all time and also one of the most controversial at the time of its publication because of the trick it played on readers, put its author definetely on the map. Perfecting the approach initiated in Styles six years earlier, Christie makes her novel a trap - her aim is not to demonstrate, to solve, but to deceive. Critics and colleagues alike faulted her for not playing fair - and this, too, was something new. Neither Van Dine (whose Benson Murder Case was published the same year) or Knox had yet written their "commandments" but the existence and necessity of rules was being increasingly accepted. Another period, the one most of us associate with "Golden Age", was about to begin.

The Age Before Golden Age

2009-12-06T20:53:00.001+01:00

Henrique Valle, commenting on my initial post, asked an important question:

"Are Trent´s Last Case and the earlier Chesterton, Mason (of At The Villa Rose fame!), Freeman and Philpotts works, among others, outside the Golden Age?"

This raises once again the definition problems I highlighted in my article. Is Golden Age a period, a style, or both?

If we choose the first option and stick to the commonly accepted chronology (Golden Age beginning somewhere in the early Twenties and ending either before or shortly after WW2) then the issue looks settled once and for all: Trent's Last Case, being published in 1913 and probably written sooner, is not part of the Golden Age and neither are works by Chesterton, Mason, Freeman and others that were published prior to the Great War.

Things are less clear by the second option, as many of these works exhibit features associated with GA-style detective fiction and, indeed, exerted a decisive influence on it. As to the third option - regarding Golden Age as a certain period dominated by a certain model of detective stories - it leaves our candidates out of the picture once again since neither Trent's Last Case or The Eye of Osiris for instance are typical products of their era; one of the reasons of their enduring appeal is how ahead they were of their time.

Now even these apparently firm answers generate further interrogations: If it's not yet Golden Age, what is it then? How do we call the period that preceded, and led to, proper Golden Age?

Some scholars including Julian Symons have called it "the first Golden Age" and there is justification for this. The thirty or so years between the first publication of A Study in Scarlet and the outset of the World War I saw the genre coming to maturity - as I've written elsewhere, all of mystery fiction as we know it was either in germ or full-blown by the early 1910s - as well as conquering a vast audience. Most of all, it was marked by some of the earliest and most lasting triumphs of the genre - its relative novelty as well as the absence of firm rules (soon to be remedied to, alas) boosted authors' creativity. That it most often manifested in the guise of short stories rather than novels, something we've lost the habit of, makes it all the more impressive.

To call such a period a Golden Age would certainly not be an exaggeration, but it is somewhat confusing in my view, especially if you think like I do that GA in its traditional acception is already a plural entity. If we start numbering Golden Ages like we do with World Wars and French Republics we end up emptying the whole notion. Why not a third or a fourth Golden Age? Is not each period a Golden Age of sorts? Also, I like the that when I'm talking about GA in the broadest sense, I don't need to specify which one I'm referring to. It makes discussion and debate much easier. Silver Age then? This might do, but the appellation might apply just well to the period immediately following the standard GA and preceding the thriller boom of the early Sixties...

I welcome any suggestion.

Happy As A Censor

2009-11-30T19:43:00.001+01:00

Given that Harlequin - yes, that Harlequin - has been squewering romance for decades, it's not surprising they now apply the same treatment to mystery. What's more, they are proud of themselves!

"Remember, our intention was to publish the stories in their original form. But once we immersed ourselves in the text, our eyes grew wide. Our jaws dropped. Social behavior—such as hitting a woman—that would be considered totally unacceptable now was quite common sixty years ago. Scenes of near rape would not sit well with a contemporary audience, we were quite convinced. We therefore decided to make small adjustments to the text, only in cases where we felt scenes or phrases would be offensive to a 2009 readership. Also, grammar and spelling standards have changed quite a bit in sixty years. But that did entail a text edit, which we had not anticipated. AND, we had to clear those adjustments with the current copyright holders, if we had been able to locate them. And of course, the covers: Though we used the original covers, they had to be scanned and touched up."

I don't dispute that vintage mysteries often include stuff that is hard for the modern reader to stomach, and while I don't think it should necessarily invalidate the corpus delictii's artistic value, I can see why readers and publishers might prefer to stay away from it. Had Harlequin finally decided not to reprint material it deemed offensive, I wouldn't have minded - more adventurous publishers might have taken the relay and it was just fine.

But this is not what Harlequin chose to do, instead they decided to butcher books from another era to make them palatable to modern readers deemed too stupid or too sensitive to tackle "hot stuff" from the past.

Yes Virginia, the past is a foreign country, people do - and write - things differently there and you won't change that by deleting words and editing content. What you will do, however, apart from a disservice to both literature and history is emasculating a story and thus depriving it from a vital part of its interest and importance. That the whole thing seems to have been done without asking anyone's permission is further testimony to the moral quality of the enterprise.

I said in a recent post that preservation of the classics of the genre was up to fans, be them readers, critics or independent publishers, and that story provides further confirmation of it. That mystery is now the top-selling genre in the world doesn't mean it's taken more seriously and respectuously by people with money (and nothing much else) on their minds and will resort to anything to make some bucks - the kind of people, in short, who run the publishing industry.

Better Late Than Never

2009-11-29T18:01:00.002+01:00

Eons ago, I wrote a post suggesting that Golden Age be divided in three periods, with a brief outline of each stratus and its main characteristics. I would, I promised, expand on that in future posts. As procrastination, oblivion and lack of inspiration played their ordinary nefarious role, those future posts never came up. Even worse, I let a typically perceptive comment by Henrique Valle without the answer it deserved. As this blog has recently entered its third year of existence, it's time to get the work done and start this long-promised series. If I don't get writer's block and keep a good health it should be completed by December, 31. First instalment will take place on next Sunday.
Stay tuned...

Our Job

2009-11-19T19:08:00.006+01:00

Les Blatt over at GAdetection mourns the loss of John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, John Rhode, Emma Lathen and others whose works have been out of print for eons, with no better future in sight:

This thread hits on a very sore point for me - the fact that so many classic authors are completely (or nearly so) out of print, at least in the US. As far as I know, all of Sayers's, nearly all Christie's and a fair percentage of Marsh's books are still in print. Allingham, as you say, is being reprinted by Felony & Mayhem, who also has been reissuing most of Crispin (curiously excluding The Moving Toyshop) and Elizabeth Daly. So much for the good news. Once you get past Rue Morgue Press and, of course, Crippen & Landru, however most of the other publishers seem to have only a very limited assortment available, particularly of GAD authors. Poisoned Pen Press in Arizona has some available; ditto Merion Press, and I've found some Leo Bruce books published by Academy Chicago Press. I guess I should note that the Mystery Guild does have a handful of classics (usually multiple-novel volumes) available, amid the usual "blockbuster-hits-only" lists. I suspect that the problem too often is orphan rights. It seems criminal (pun, I suppose, intended) to me that Carr and Queen are totally out of print, not to mention Arthur Upfield, John Rhode and even later authors, including Emma Lathen and Patricia Moyes. I'm not sure I can offer an easy solution - but I do think that today's readers are being cheated. And I'm grateful to Doug Greene and to Tom and Enid Schantz, among others, for their work in trying to bring some excellent authors back.

The distressing gap between the huge popularity of the genre and the widespread ignorance of whole strati of its past is a familiar topic of this blog. It is not helped by classics going extinct. How can you fault someone for not knowing John Dickson Carr, or having never read anything by him, when the only way to do is to dig in the dusty shelves of some back-alley used book store? Availability is the first condition of notability.

The big question of course is why those once well-regarded authors fell off the train whereas their companions continued their travel more or less comfortably. Some will say it's estate's fault, others will insist that it's publishers'; still others will say that it's just because their works have not stood the test of time. They all have a point. Some estates are indifferent at best, provided that you can locate them. Publishing is a notoriously risk-averse industry and it's no coincidence that Rue Morgue, C&L and others are independents. Finally, times have changed and so have readers and their expectations, which to me is the most important factor.

Like it or not and for better or worse (no need to tell you which side I'm on) readers nowadays have a wholly different attitude to mystery fiction than they had back in the first half of the last century. Golden Age and later authors whose works have not faded into oblivion are those who satisfy the new standards or just provide a not-too-guilty pleasure.

Christie admittedly owes a great deal of her popularity to her amazing plotting skills and the legendary figures of Poirot and Marple, but an even larger part of her enduring appeal lies in what has come to be called "Christie-land", that quiet and gentle rural England with its retired majors and inquisitive spinsters. It is of course an oversimplification of her work and one of the reasons why she still fails in some quarters to be taken as seriously as she should, but this oversimplification is what makes the brand survive and the books sell.

The appeal of the other Crime Queens - Allingham, Marsh, Sayers and Tey - is of a different, more highbrow sort. While Christie is often (unfairly) chided for that modern capital sin, poor characterization, her sisters in crime are essentially lauded for their literary merits, in keeping with the contemporary liking for mysteries that "transcend the genre". Hardly anyone reads Tey or Allingham for the puzzles; their appeal lies in the elegant writing and the comedy of manners; Marsh and Sayers are stronger plotters but the dynamics are the same with, in the latter's case, a phenomenal plus in the person of Lord Peter Wimsey.

The forgotten men (and women) of mystery have none of all those advantages. John Dickson Carr for instance also wrote about rural England, but in a decidedly unquiet way no bound to please the cozy reader. Ellery Queen built several of their stories on psychology and the characterization in the Wrightsville books is superior but their plots (nor Carr's) had the deceitful linearity of Christie's - it takes much more attention and concentration to read Ten Days' Wonder or The Mad Hatter Mystery than And Then They Were None. Their books sometimes pushed the envelope but they didn't transcend the genre; they weren't character-driven, were scant on direct social comment and worse of all to a modern audience, they were doggedly unrealistic.

This is not to say that any revival is impossible; fortune may sometimes have happy reversals. But it will take time as the potential audience will not be easily won. Time being money, it is something big publishers are not readily prodigal of so don't expect them to lead the way in the rescue of the lost classics of mystery fiction; and while the aforementioned independent presses do a marvelous job, the bulk of the work is up to fans - it's up to us. Fans don't have money, they don't have power, but they have a plenty of that thing that move mountains: enthusiasm. Let's use it to enhance the visibility of our favorite writers, either by promoting them to our friends and relations or using the new tool we have been given or any other venue we can find. I can't say for sure it will result in the reprint of E.R. Punshon's complete works, but every travel begins with a single step.

Lost in Translation: René Reouven

2009-09-27T13:20:00.001+02:00

To write about René Reouven is for this blogger a source of both greatest pleasure and deepest frustration. Pleasure, because the man happens to be one of my all-time favorite mystery writers. Frustration, because readers of this blog unless they are fluent enough in French will never be able to read any of his books. Despite being one of the most important authors to emerge in the genre in the second half of the twentieth century and having won both of his country's top awards for crime writing, Reouven remains a French-French phenomenon. This makes him a logical choice to inaugurate this new feature.

René Reouven was no debutant when his first mystery, Octave II, appeared under Denoël's famous Crime-Club imprint in 1964. As René Sussan (his real name) he had already published two mainstream novels, La Route Des Voleurs (Thieves' Road, 1959) and Histoire de Farczi (The Story of Farczi, 1964) which received the Prix Cazes, starting a long series of prizes and accolades. He had also made a foray into science-fiction with Les Confluents (1960) and would become a noted writer in this genre under both his real name and his pseudonym.

Crime-Club, later to be known as Sueurs Froides, was home to what has come to be called "suspense à la française" a homegrown genre which emphasized clever plotting, usually revolving around complex machinations, and elegant writing in the fashion of the imprint's locomotives Boileau-Narcejac. CC's regulars included authors relatively familiar to English-speaking audiences such as Hubert Monteilhet or Sébastien Japrisot, but also less lucky ones such as Louis C. Thomas or Jean-François Coatmeur. Alike them, Reouven would stay faithful to Denoël and its crime imprints for the whole of his career.

Reouven's works of the first period are elegantly-crafted exercises which blend murder, dark humor and satire, most often of the upper and middle classes or civil servants; the writing is brisk, literate and filled with puns and allusions to literature and pop culture. Theatre is a strong influence on the books: Reouven's plots often revolve around quid pro quos and the clever, deliberately unrealistic dialogue reminds at times of Guitry or Wilde. Highlights of the period include the locked-room mystery Les Humeurs Assassines (The Murderous Humors, 1968) L'Assassin Maladroit (The Awkward Murderer, 1970) which earned him the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, Cinq Personnages En Quête de Meurtre (Five Characters in Search of a Murder, 1972) and Le Bouton du Mandarin (The Mandarin's Button, 1976)

The half-historical, half-contemporary Les Confessions d'un Enfant du Crime (The Confessions of a Child of Crime, 1977) and the "Biblical mystery" Tobie or not Tobie (Tobiah or not Tobiah, 1980) are turning points as they herald the direction Reouven's work would take for most of the next two decades. A largely self-taught man of Renaissance erudition, Reouven uses his vast culture to re-write history or literary works, sometimes blending both. Like Tim Powers of whom he is somehow the mystery fiction counterpart, he sticks scrupulously to facts and sources but links and interprets them in a way all his own, with such mastery that you end up wondering where fact ends and fiction begins. Nowhere is this genius as evident as in the cycle of holmesian pastiches this registered member of the French Sherlock Holmes Society wrote in the eighties and this is why I will discuss it in detail in the rest of this article.

The first book in the cycle, Elementaire, mon cher Holmes (Elementary My Dear Holmes, 1982) does not directly feature Sherlock despite its title. Reouven postulates the survival of the first draft of Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a book that is such a concentrate of pure evil that it turns everyone who reads it into a murderer. The masterfully constructed plot follows the book's "adventures" in reverse from his last owner to the first, better-known under the nickname "Jack the Ripper" and whose surprise identity is but one of the book's many pleasures. This is arguably one of Reouven's masterpieces, and deservingly won the Prix Mystère de la Critique.

Holmes appears in person in L'Assassin du Boulevard (The Boulevard Assassin, 1985) which takes place during the Great Hiatus and takes Sherlock to the Gay Paris where he becomes a civil servant and meets the originals of Georges Courteline's play Messieurs les ronds-de-cuir while tracking down Huret, the Boulevard Assassin - as one of his victims called him in a last breath, in a Paris plagued by anarchist attacks. The identity of the criminal is well-hidden and well-clued, though the main clue lies on a pun which may not be easily translatable.

Holmes' next appearance is in the episodic novel Le Bestiaire de Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes' Bestiary, 1987) which deals with untold stories such as the Giant Rat of Sumatra or Isadora Persano and its worm unknown to science. Joseph Conrad, Beryl Baskerville and H.H. Holmes co-star as well as an evil scientist whose name begins with M - no, it's not Moriarty. While the solutions brought to the individual cases are uneven, the way Reouven fuses them in a single narrative and points the finger at an unlikely enemy is properly astounding.

Le Détective Volé (The Stolen Detective, 1988) is certainly the most unusual and daring item in the series. Tired to see comparisons being made between his creature and Poe's C. Auguste Dupin, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sends Holmes and Watson in the past via H.G. Wells' time machine to find the real-life person who provided Poe with the inspiration for his character. Holmes and Watson first "travel" to early nineteenth-century France to meet Vidocq then to New York and Baltimore to work out the murder of Mary Rogers and the mystery of Poe's death. As to the "real" Dupin... send me a mail if you want to know the answer.

The cycle ends with Les Passe-Temps de Sherlock Holmes (The Pastimes of Sherlock Holmes, 1989) which sees Holmes solving three "literary" mysteries including the authorship of Shakespeare's plays, pointing a rather surprising author, and the death of Gérard de Nerval. I didn't like it as much as the previous four, but it's certainly an engrossing experience.

A full coverage of René Reouven's output would require a much longer article - the man is also responsible for a delightful Dictionnaire des Assassins and his science-fiction work, which often includes mystery elements, would deserve a entire post. I regret not to have place enough to tell you about another masterpiece of his, La Raison du Meilleur Est Toujours La Plus Forte (The Best One's Will is Always the Strongest, 1986) which doesn't fit in any of his usual veins.

What I hope is to have made you curious about Réouven, and make you feel why he is in my view one of the best mystery writers around even though I don't think any translation will occur soon as his brand of civilized, erudite mysteries is not "marketable" enough, not to speak about the difficulties in translating the many puns in his writing. Also, as Michel Lebrun pointed out, Reouven is an extremely cultivated writer aiming at a similar audience; much of the zest of L'Assassin du Boulevard passes you out if you don't know Courteline and/or don't know about the anarchist attacks that stroke France and the rest of Europe in the late nineteenth century. Still, it's worth sampling the work of the man who, in the words of Jacques Baudou, "makes the parallels meet".

Further reading:

Reouven's holmesian pastiches have been collected as Histoires Secrètes of Sherlock Holmes, while his revisionist histories have been gathered in the two volumes of Crimes Apocryphes.

Lost in Translation

2009-09-24T19:27:00.000+02:00

Anglo-Saxon publishers and readers have shown an increasing interest in foreign-language mystery fiction over the last decades. Henning Mankell, Arnaldur Idriodarson, Andrea Camillieri and my fellow-compatriot Fred Vargas have now achieved notability outside their respectives spheres, some of them winning prestigious awards in the process. I can't but rejoice of this, no matter my personal feelings about these authors. Still, they are only the top of the iceberg and a lot of great stuff remains to be uncovered, most particularly a lot of great French stuff. Gallic mystery fiction, despite having followed sometimes paths which I find to be regretable or at least objectionable, has a tradition of excellence that long predates the creator of Commissaire Adamsberg, and certainly deserves to be better known.

A new feature of this blog, "Lost in Translation" will focus on those of my fellow-compatriots who, despite being popular and/or celebrated in their country, have never made it in the Anglosphere. Some had a handful of their books translated but failed to build an audience. Others were initially acclaimed then slipped into obscurity. Still others were too original. Most, sadly, were just never given a chance. Have you ever heard of Frédéric Dard, Michel Cousin, Noël Vindry, Madeleine Coudray, Jean-François Coatmeur, Jacques Decrest, Pierre Siniac, S.A. Steeman or Martin Méroy? No? That's what "Lost Translation" sets to correct. I have no hope that it will move publishers, but it should at the very least arouse some curiosity and, who knows...

The series will be irregular but I'll try to make it as frequent as possible. Don't hesitate to use the comments section to inquire about an author or suggest a name; I'll be happy to oblige as far as my readings and information allow me to.

Don't miss the premiere this Sunday. Our first guest will be René Reouven.

A Belated Obituary

2009-09-21T13:53:00.001+02:00

One of this blog's policies is to remain polite even in the face of events and behavior that defy politeness, so I'll refrain with extreme difficulty from using stronger words than "shameful" to describe the media's abysmal coverage of the death of Celia Fremlin. It took two months for the mystery world to know of the sad event thanks to the invaluable Martin Edwards who proved thus to be a more reliable news source than The Times and The Guardian. We tend to think our genre enjoys a better treatment nowadays than it once did, but stories of this kind remind one the path is still a long one.

Not that the whole thing is entirely surprising: Celia Fremlin was never a best-selling writer, she was not very prolific and most of her output was out of print. Her kind of books - psychological suspense - was no longer "hip" and was always somewhat marginal in her own country. It's telling that the only award she ever got was from a foreign organization, the MWA.

Even more saddening in a way is that the few people remembering Fremlin do so because of just one book, the Edgar-winning The Hours Before Dawn and mostly because of its feminist overtones. I don't dispute the validity of such a reading but it is way too narrow in my view. Hours Before Dawn is first and foremost a splendid piece of craft, especially if one considers that it was Fremlin's debut. The characterisation and the depiction of suburbian life are superb and the writing is sharp and quietly ironic. The plot may sound familiar to the modern reader, but it's only because it has been much recycled on both print and screen since 1958. Even so, Fremlin plays the reader's nerves with expertise and the book is hard, almost impossible to put down - I, for one, couldn't. That it appealed so much to Edgar voters comes as no surprise: Fremlin's blend of the ordinary and the creepy probably reminded them of their homegrown school of domestic terror, most notably Charlotte Armstrong and Ursula Curtiss with whom Fremlin has a lot in common.

The not-that-young newcomer seemed poised for great things, and she delivered in the dozen books (including my own favorite, The Long Shadow ) and the many short stories that followed. Unfortunately she never became a household name despite admirers as prestigious as Ruth Rendell or P.D. James. Now that she's gone, let us hope that her work won't go the same way and that interest, even misguided, for her best-known work will bring the rest of her output back in print. It's way overdue.

Further reading:

Her obituary in The Times, alas more concerned with her stance on euthanasia than her crime writing.

Her obituary in The Guardian, somewhat more detailed and interesting.

A review of The Hours Before Dawn on Steve Lewis' MysteryFile blog.

A profile of Fremlin and another review of Hours on the Tangled Web site.

Fremlin on How To Be A Writer.

A Quizz Just For You

2009-09-10T18:07:00.003+02:00

Its title is "How Well Do You Know Mystery Classics?" and you can it take it here.

Feedback much encouraged.

Some Thoughts on Barzun & Taylor's Catalog of Crime

2009-09-01T09:27:00.010+02:00

Mystery scholar Douglas G. Greene once described the CoC (as it is now known in the community) as a "supremely quirky book" which is a masterpiece of understatement. A review of it done in the authors' oh-so-distinctive style would go something like this:

A pretentious hogwash of arbitrary judgements, haughty dogmatism and proud narrow-mindedness, cooked by two academic sourpusses. Best read as a companion piece to Julian Symons' equally obnoxious Bloody Murder.

Rather abrupt and somewhat unfair? But then these epithets apply exactly to the CoC for its most part, which wouldn't be too much of a problem were it given as a polemical essay rather than a scholarly work. Despite Barzun's typically modest assertion that his book "should not only help to steer clear of dull imitations [but] should also help to develop [...] needful critical standards", ultimately the CoC tells the reader only about the own very particular tastes of those who wrote it and while it may arouse curiosity, only the converts in the end will be won to its cause. All in all, it is basically the flipside of Bloody Murder, which is not surprising since Barzun & Taylor and Symons share the same premises; they only differ with regard to their conclusions.

Both B&T and Symons display for instance conservative conceptions of "literature" which preclude mystery fiction from being part of it, either because of the genre's innate inferiority (Symons) or of its fundamental alterity (Barzun & Taylor) They also agree on the importance of realism - though B&T's definition of it is not quite the same as Symons's - characterization and credibility taken in its narrowest sense; it won't surprise anyone thus that both the CoC and Bloody Murder frown on John Dickson Carr and Ellery Queen and praise the serious and civilized who keep their fancy under control. Wild humor is not the genre de la maison either, of course.

Where our killjoys part, however, is on the question of books that push the envelope (Symons would probably say "transcend the genre") or at least don't quite follow Mgr. Knox's Decalogue. Symons predictably endorses them and give them highest marks while B&T stick to the orthodoxy, which is their absolute and inalienable right but doesn't quite put them in the proper frame of mind to appreciate mysteries that are "different". Their devotion to tradition, coupled with their belief that the genre can't and mustn't be about matters deemed to be the Novel's province leads them to rather extreme statements such as this condemnation of A.E.W. Mason's classic The House of the Arrow:

Romance, melodrama, good characterization, and by no means negligible humor cannot compensate for Hanaud's failure to play fair with his Watson.

Wow.

Similarly, John Dickson Carr's The Burning Court, while avoiding its author's usual "failings" still misses B&T's approbation because of its "hybrid" nature.

Another B&T's own feature is the rampant misogyny, though it may not be the more apt word to describe their attitude which reminds this reader of French mystery criticism in the Fifties: female authors are OK, some are even great, but only as long as they don't write in a "feminine", "ladylike" way - both words being invariably used in a derogatory fashion.

Now I wouldn't give an impression that the CoC is a total wreck, not worthy of one's time. The authors' erudition is quite impressive and their judgements, when not overly opinionated, are quite sound and interesting. Also, they are much more exhaustive than Symons and include some authors that inexplicably failed to get a mention in Bloody Murder such as Robert Bloch, Fredric Brown, Joel Townsley Rogers or Charlotte Armstrong. Granted, none of them gets high marks but B&T at least are aware of their existence and significance.

Still, we are left with one question: why is the mystery genre so fertile in authoritarian folks whose conception of criticism consists in trashing anything they don't agree with and tell others what they should write, and how? As infuriating as they were, neither B&T nor Symons started the trend and, sadly, neither did they end it.

Further reading:

A more charitable review of the CoC by Martin Edwards.

A Fiction of Dreams

2009-06-02T01:48:00.000+02:00

Readers of this blog know the lack of theoretical thinking in contemporary mystery fiction is one of my pet-peeves. Modern authors, talent notwistanding, have often nothing or little of substance to say about the genre. China Mieville's featured article on Jim Scalzi's blog makes a refreshing exception. There are many good points there, but the most important might well be this one:

"[...]Crime novels are not what they say they are. They are not, for a start, realist novels. Holmes's intoxicating and ludicrous taxonomies derived from scuffs on a walking stick are not acts of ratiocination but of bravura magical thinking. (Not that they, or other 'deductions', are necessarily 'illogical', or don't make sense of the evidence, but that they precisely do so: they make it into sense. The sense follows the detection, in these stories, not, whatever the claim, vice versa.) The various manly Virgils who appear ex nihilo to escort Marlowe through his oneiric purgatories are not characters, but eloquent opacities in man-shape: much more interesting. Dalgliesh's irresistibility to hyperrealised moral panics du jour the poor man manages to contract SARS is an elegiac opera of Holland Park angst, rather than any quotidian gazette of a policeman's unhappy lot. Detective fiction is a fiction of dreams. Not only is this no bad thing, it is precisely what makes it so indispensable."

One of the reasons why I am skeptical of any kind of "realism" in mystery fiction is that I think the genre actually belongs in the realm of imaginative literature, up there with ghost stories, fantasy, sci-fi, chansons de geste and fairy tales to which detective stories have so often been compared. Today's conception of the mystery genre as an offshot of naturalism to me is a profound and in many ways tragic misunderstanding. I may elaborate on this later.

(via Sarah Weinman)

Edgar Week: the 2000s

2009-05-01T20:34:00.004+02:00

Here we are in a new century and a new millenium. Edgar voters celebrate this double event by doing some changes of various amplitude and desirability, mostly in the demographic department, while remaining faithful to the core principles outlined in the previous two decades - what French politicians call "changement dans la continuité".

The Eighties and the Nineties were marked on one hand by older laureates with no pressing need for an(other) award, and better showings of female writers (especially in the latter decade) on the other. The 2000s see a relative rejuvenating and renewal of the average winner, which is welcome, and an almost complete eradication of women, which is much less so. S.J. Rozan (Winter and Night) is the sole female winner of the decade, taking us back to the jolly good days of the Sixties and Seventies. Let us hope the next decade will be kinder to the better half of mankind, though I wouldn't bet on this.

Nor would I bet that Edgar in the 2010s will make a greater place to foreign offerings. Ian Rankin (Resurrection Men) and Jason Goodwin (The Janissary Tree) are the only non-American, continuing the trend towards insularization started in the Eighties. A repeat of the 60's British Invasion is unlikely to occur any time soon, though Karin Alvtegen's nomination (and Stieg Larsson's much-talked-about snubbing) might indicate a Scandinavian invasion is possible.

While Dick Francis doesn't win any award in the decade, the flame of multiple-winning is still shining on the Edgar Awards. S.J. Rozan makes history by winning Best Short Story in 2002 for Double-Crossing Delancey and Best Novel the following year, while T. Jefferson Parker follows in Dick Francis' and James Lee Burke's steps by winning the prestigious statuette twice in four years* (Silent Joe in 2002, then California Girl three years later)

As far as books go, voters keep favoring literary, character-driven, realistic fiction and increasingly ignore genre distinctions as evidenced by Jess Walter's win for Citizen Vince. They show much less enthusiasm for series than they had in the previous decade, however, and the main event of the 2000s might well be the return of standalones as Edgar's darlings: only two of this decade's winners are part of a series, one of which (Rankin) is clearly a Grand Master in disguise. This, as well as the increasingly insular nature of the award, reminds strongly of the Fifties except for the place of women.

Has the Edgar come full circle?

* He has since added a third Edgar to his collection, winning Best Short Story last night for "Skinhead Central". The rumor has it that he is busy writing a new novel to be published in paperback, so that he can compete next year in that category, the only one to date missing in his curriculum. Mr. Parker declined to comment.

Edgar Week: The Nineties

2009-05-01T00:47:00.001+02:00

This decade is an oddity in Edgar history as it continues the previous one instead of repudiating it. As we browse the list of the winners, we find the same trends, the same demographics and in some cases the same people as in the Eighties.

The most remarkable event of the decade is the massive presence of female writers, especially American female writers. Julie Smith becomes the first local to win since Charlotte Armstrong thirty-four years before and the mid-decade sees three women (Margaret Maron, Minette Walters, Mary Willis Walker) winning in a row. The Fifties may be proportionally the most female-friendly decade in the history of the award, but the Nineties come close second. The following decade, however and in true Edgar fashion, would be another setback for the fairer sex.

Some choices in the previous decade had suggested Edgar voters were in love again with books that "push the envelope" after two decades of ignoring them. The Nineties confirm this as well as reveal a slight change in the meaning of "pushing the envelope". Edgar voters in the Fifties were seeking books which expanded the boundaries of the genre by offering deeper characterization, tackling unfamiliar subjects, experimenting or revisiting its conventions. Their successors on the other hand are interested in works that transcend the genre and look like "serious" literature. This new approach accounts for winners of this decade being comparatively more earnest and displaying greater "awareness" than their predecessors and found its logical outcome with the crowning of a mainstream novel with only formal connections to the genre, Mr. White's Confession by Robert Clark.

"No Country For Young Men" was a tempting title for the Eighties; so it is with respect to the Nineties. Dick Francis in 1996 not only breaks his own record by winning a historic third award, but he also sets another one: at 76, he is the oldest winner ever*. While no other laureate of the decade is that old, at least four of them are quinquagenarians and none to my knowledge** is under 40. Also in keeping with the Eighties, some winners are actually multiple winners: Francis of course, but also Lawrence Block who had won for Best Short Story in 1985 and went to score twice more in that category in 1994 and 1998, and of course James Lee Burke whose Cimarron Rose made him the second author to win the Best Novel Award more than just once. All but three (Walters, Walker and Clark) of the laureates had been around for at least one decade, Block being the one with the longest career, and only two are of foreign origin.

Finally, series are as popular in the Nineties as they were in the Eighties: only three books not featuring or introducing a recurring character. Which changes would the next century bring (or not)? We'll see that tomorrow in the sixth and final episode of this series.

* He is also the only author to have won both Best Novel and Grandmaster in the same night, and Sid Halley to date is the only series character to appear in two Best Novel winners.

** The dates of birth of some authors are unknown or at least not available on the World Wide Web.

Edgar Week: The Eighties

2009-04-29T22:34:00.000+02:00

The main event of the Seventies had been American writers coming back from an almost decade-long exile. The Eighties confirm that they're back for good, and that Britain's glory days are definetely over: seven of the decade's winners are of local origin, the highest number since the Sixties. A less spectacular yet just as remarkable return is that of female writers, who had all but disappeared during the Seventies, with two women finding their way to the statuette. Both of them, however, are foreign.

Stylistically, the decade may be divided into two parts. First half is yet again dominated by thrillers, though of a very different kind than those popular with voters of the Seventies. They tend to be darker, more violent and are definetely not "comfort reads". William Bayer's Peregrine may be the most emblematic book of this period. Second half is more varied, with police procedurals (L.R. Wright's The Suspect and Stuart Kaminsky's A Cold Red Sunrise) a psychological crime novel (Barbara Vine's A Dark-Adapted Eye) a more or less traditional mystery (Aaron Elkins' Old Bones) and the only third P.I. novel to win the award since its creation (James Lee Burke's Black Cherry Blues) That several of these books deal with unusual subjects and/or play relatively loose with the conventions of the genre suggest voters are back to their early "progressive" ways, which the next decade would confirm. The aforementioned A Dark-Adapted Eye is certainly the most ambitious and challenging work to take the award home since, say, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.

Other phenomenons worth-noticing as they, too, would persist in the following decade are the comparatively higher age of laureates, and the blossoming of series.

Dick Francis was 61 by the time he won a historical second Edgar for Whip Hand* becoming the first sexagenarian winner since Raymond Chandler twenty-five years before. It was a sign of things to come. With seven of them being over 50 at the time of their crowning, Edgar-winning authors of the Eighties are on average markedly older than their predecessors and their careers no surprisingly span a much longer time: Elmore Leonard, the most seasoned of them, started writing in the Fifties. Forty-six-year-old L.R. Wright is the only writer in the decade to win for a debut.

Some post-war critics thought series were a thing of the past, a purely commercial device that kept the genre from achieving real artistic grandeur by trapping it into formula. Standalones, they said, were the format best suited to mature mystery fiction. Edgar voters agreed - to an extent. Books introducing series were ok since they set formulas rather than just following them; those being part of series, on the other hand, were to be taken cautiously. The Sixties had been rather series-friendly with five winners introducing or featuring recurring characters, while the Seventies had heavily favored standalones. The Eighties are the first decade where series are clearly dominant: only three books (La Brava, Briarpatch and A Dark-Adapted Eye) are proper standalones. The rest either begins (Peregrine, Billinsgate Shoal, The Suspect) or continue (Whip Hand, Old Bones, A Cold Red Sunrise, Black Cherry Blues) a series.

* While Francis was the first and, until 1998, the only author to have won the Best Novel Award more than once, he was not the only laureate of this decade to already own a specimen of the ceramic bust. Both Ross Thomas and Ruth Rendell had already won Edgars in other categories, respectively Best First Novel in 1967 and Best Short Story in 1975 and 1985.

Edgar Week: The Seventies

2009-04-28T01:33:00.004+02:00

If "Rule Britannia" was the humiliating motto of the previous decade, "America is back" might be that of the one we examine today - though the simpler "Action!" might fit just well, too.

The Seventies are marked on one hand by the spectacular comeback of American writers and on the other by the ubiquitousness of thrillers in all guises and stripes. Voters in those days liked their books to be rife with guns, gangs, chases, kidnappings, assassinations, spies, transfuges and the ilk. As a result, very few of the period's laureates are proper mysteries even in the broadest sense - and bestowing an award for the best mystery novel of the year on Brian Garfield's Hopscotch certainly requires a very broad conception of the genre. Another side-effect of this thriller-craze is that major authors who debuted, came to proeminence or penned their best works during this period, but didn't specialize in the boom-bang-a-bang vein, went ignored. Some got their belated due in the following decades while others stayed empty-handed or had to content themselves with consolation prizes.

One might get an impression from what precedes that Edgar winners of the Seventies are all disposable Cold-War actioners. It would be wrong. First because, as I said, some of them are "real" mysteries, if not always of the traditional sort: Sjöwall & Wahlöö's The Laughing Policeman, Tony Hillerman's Dance Hall of the Dead and Robert B. Parker's Promised Land, the first P.I. novel since Ellin's The Eighth Circle two decades before to win the precious ceramic bust. As to the proper thrillers, at least two have become classics: Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal and Ken Follett's The Eye of the Needle, while the others remain eminently readable if sometimes a little dated, a frequent trapping of the genre. The problem with this period is not one of quality. It's one of ambition.

Edgar voters of this otherwise stormy decade are much more conservative than their predecessors: only the crowning of Sjöwall & Wahlöö may be considered a (relatively) risky move. Other winners are well-crafted (and often commercially successful) pieces of storytelling but their eventual attempts at innovation are shallow and inoffensive: Dance Hall of the Dead's originality rests almost entirely on its setting and characters, and Spenser brings nothing really new to the Shamus figure.

Would the Eighties confirm this trend, or would they mark a return to first principles? Stay tuned.

Edgar Week: The Sixties

2009-04-27T00:53:00.001+02:00

In 1960, for the first time since the Best Novel Award's inception, none of the nominees were American: both Philip MacDonald and winner Celia Fremlin hailed from the United Kindgom. While The Hours Before Dawn was very much a 50's book, it was a fit prelude to a decade marked by a British Invasion even more ferocious as the one striking pop music around the same time; it was also the last bow of a genre - psychological suspense - which had been dominating the mystery field for the last ten years.

Except for Charlotte Jay's inaugural win, the Edgar in the Fifties was largely what it has sadly become again over the last decade: a local award for local writers. Only three foreign writers achieved a nomination between 1956, the first year for which we have a list of nominees, and 1959. This makes the 1960-67 British takeover all the more impressive, though not that surprising. The Sixties were not exactly American mystery writing's brightest hour, and natives didn't fare much better abroad as a quick glance at the other two major awards of the time, Britain's Gold Dagger and France's usually americophile Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, shows. The British on the other hand experienced a spectacular ressurection after a period of relative lethargy and suddenly sounded "edgier" to both readers and critics than their colleagues from across the pond. Donald E. Westlake's win in 1968, nine years after Stanley Ellin, may have sounded like a restoration confirmed the following year by the crowning of Jeffery Hudson/Michael Crichton. This restoration, however, didn't last as another three years of foreign occupation followed, culminating with the unprecedented (and, to this day, unique) victory of a translated book.

Whatever may be, voters seem to have drifted away from their earlier commitment to "progressive" mystery writing - only a few of the decade's laureates can be said to "push the envelope" and bring something new - in favor of a greater eclectism: police procedurals (J.J. Marric's Gideon's Fire, Nicholas Freeling's King of the Rainy Country) spy novels (John Le Carré's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, Adam Hall's Quiller Memorandum) thrillers (Crichton's A Case of Need, Dick Francis' Forfeit) a mystery comedy (Westlake's God Save the Mark) a caper (Eric Ambler's The Light of Day) an ambitious crime novel (Julian Symons' The Progress of a Crime) and finally, incroyable mais vrai, a whodunit (Ellis Peters' Death and the Joyful Woman) That Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby could find its way to a nomination is further proof that ideas about what constitutes an Edgar-worthy novel had significantly loosened over the decade.

All this came at the expense of the ruling class of the previous decade: Ross MacDonald's unfruitful three nominations marked the beginning of a long eclipse of the P.I. novel while psychological suspense went the way of dinosaurs - a demise most certainly hastened by the progressive marginalization of female writers. Only in the Eighties and the Nineties would some equilibrium be (temporarily) achieved again but that's another story.

Edgar Week: The Fifties

2009-04-26T02:25:00.002+02:00

Since the first Edgar Award for Best Novel was given in 1954, the Fifties are the shortest decade in this survey. It would be a mistake, however, to underestimate its significance on this sole basis; size isn't everything and we're having yet another proof there.

The fifteen years following World War II were, at least in America, a period of tremendous change and innovation in the mystery field. Authors, breaking free of the largely self-imposed limits and conventions of traditional mystery writing, eagerly ventured into new territories. This "Atomic Renaissance" as Jeffrey Marks called it largely benefited from the rise of a new genre, psychological suspense, whose relative absence of rules left more room for experimentation. Best Novel winners of the decade reflect this state of mind.

The choice of Charlotte Jay's Beat Not the Bones as inaugural laureate almost amounts to a declaration of intent. This oppressive, slow-paced "exotic thriller" (for lack of a better term) closer in mind and tone to Conrad than Christie looked like nothing else in the genre at the time or, for that matter, ever since. The MWA from then on and for the rest of the decade would bestow their top prize on authors who broke new ground and "advanced" mystery fiction either in form or content, or both: Raymond Chandler and Stanley Ellin brought the private eye novel to full maturity, Margaret Millar explored abnormal psyche, Charlotte Armstrong conclusively demonstrated the possibility of writing a suspense novel without any violent death and Ed Lacy gave the world the first convincing African-American private detective.

This progressive approach largely accounts for the extremely high overall quality of the decade's winners, but also had its shortcomings: some books depended so much on the novelty aspect that a great deal of their initial charm went lost as time passed and their audacities became public domain. Millar's Beast in View is a case in point: it is as good as you might expect from the author of How Like an Angel or A Stranger in My Grave and well worth your time, but even the dimmest modern reader is likely to work out the surprise ending halfway through the book. The same is true of Celia Fremlin's suburbian gothic The Hours Before Dawn* which has elicited a sheer number of remakes over the years with a peak in the early nineties, in the wake of the success of The Hand That Rocks The Cradle.

Another feature of post-war mystery fiction reflected by the Edgars is a sociological one: the domination of female authors who from Charlotte Armstrong and Ursula Curtiss to perennial Edgar-loser Patricia Highsmith were responsible for some of the edgier, most original stuff of the moment. The Fifties are arguably if somewhat counter-intuitively the most female-friendly period in all Edgar history; four out of the seven winners of the decade belong to the so-called fairer sex. The same phenomenon is found at the nomination level. Female authors outnumber their male colleagues in 1956 while both 1957 nominees are women. Only in 1958 do men (temporarily) take the advantage. This "Golden Age" of female mystery writing proved to be short-lived, though, and was followed by a long and severe setback as psychological suspense made way for grittier fare... written by men.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that jurors at this stage distinctly favoured standalones rather than series, in keeping with their commitment to "progress" in mystery writing . Only Chandler's The Long Goodbye feature a recurring character (Ed Lacy would revive Room to Swing's Toussaint Moore only once, seven years later)

* The years of reference for this series are those of publication. The Hours Before Dawn, which was published in 1959, is thus included in this article even though it won in 1960.

Introducing At The Villa Rose's Edgar Week

2009-04-24T21:05:00.001+02:00

I guess you all know next week is Edgar week: the most famous mystery awards in the world will be given on Thursday. As a way to commemorate this event (and, hopefully, boost this blog's traffic) I'm launching tomorrow a six-part series on the Edgars focusing on the top prize, the Best Novel Award, over its half-century of existence. For better or worse, the MWA's choices and non-choices provide a fascinating overview of the definetely nonlinear evolution of the genre during the last five decades. Which period was the most female-friendly? Why were Donald E. Westlake's and Robert B. Parker's wins near-historical events? Are series more popular with voters than standalones? You will find answers to these questions and many others you didn't even think of asking in this breathtaking series (being modest never helped getting more readers)

See ya tomorrow.

Upside Down

2009-04-19T00:32:00.001+02:00

Just found a one-year-old interview (in Molière's language) of Edgar-winning author Tana French, and the following passage got me, well...

"Moi-même, je reprends les traditions du polar mais je les chamboule. Par exemple, mon narrateur parle à la première personne, une coutume du roman policier, sauf que là, il ment."

Rough translation:

"I myself carry on the traditions of mystery fiction but I turn them upside down. For instance my book is narrated in first person, which is an old convention of the genre except that in this case the narrator lies."

I'm no scholar, but it seems to me unreliable narrators have been a feature of mystery fiction for a long, long time. It can even be tracked back to a relatively obscure twentieth-century British author going by the name of Agatha Christie and her almost completely forgotten 1926's book "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd". Turns out Ms. French may not turn conventions as way upside down as she thinks.

But then isn't that a predictable result of the presentism currently prevailing in the mystery field? It's a rather fascinating paradox that the more popular the genre gets, the less known it is. A lot of critics, readers and writers have what may charitably be called a perfectible knowledge of its history, and classics are often more revered than actually read. What we have as a result is books praised for allegedly groundbreaking originality while they have in fact many predecessors. And authors congratulating themselves for breaking rules that were broken long before they were born.

A Review of a Review, Cont'd

2009-02-26T11:19:00.002+01:00

In the wake of my article on his review of Kate Atkinson's Case Histories, critic Jeff Turrentine sent me a thoughtful reply which I post here with his permission:

Xavier:

Hey there. I just came across your review of my review of Kate Atkinson's Case Histories, the novel I reviewed for the Washington Post some years back. I very much enjoyed your spirited rebuttal. As a critic, which is to say someone who likes to believe that people still care enough about books to argue about them, I'd much rather encounter friction than silence, which is what most of us encounter after our reviews are published. (You seem astonished to learn that my review has, in the four years since it was published, elicited no comments or responses. In fact, though I still dream that my book reviews will spark controversies and lead to literary bar brawls, the only person who ever has anything at all to say about them -- positive or negative -- is my mother.)

In any case, I'm sitting in a coffee shop right now, where I'm supposed to be working on a novel of my own. Which means that I'm supremely grateful for the opportunity to ignore my responsibilities and write to you in a highly caffeinated defense of my review.

As I'm sure you have, I've devoured the works of Chandler, Hammett, et al., and hold them all in the highest regard. But I don't find it at all ridiculous, or indeed defamatory, to assert that a defining characteristic of detective fiction is the happy subservience of character development to plot. Indeed, this is why I read detective fiction, and I'd be willing to bet it's the reason most people do. Which isn't to say, of course, that writers of thrillers or detective fiction haven't, over the years, given us great characters like Holmes, Spade, or Marlowe. But I'd maintain that the modes of character development are so qualitatively different from the modes of character development in so-called "literary" fiction that my assertion can be justified. John Updike -- or Dickens, or Cervantes, for that matter -- are allowed to, indeed are required to, spend paragraph after paragraph and page after page burrowing into the psyches of their characters, in long expository passages that implicate personal history, past and present relationships, etc. Typically -- and I'm choosing that word very consciously, as I did in my review, aware that it allows for plenty of exceptions to the rule -- detective fiction doesn't grant its authors as much expository freedom or flexibility. They're expected to reveal character more immediately: through hard-boiled dialogue, for example, or through clever displays of deductive prowess, or through their response to exigent crisis. I think there is a very good reason for this: namely, that the point of a puzzle is to solve it. We read mysteries for different reasons than we do character-driven literary fiction. I realize it's easy to see a statement like that and simply figure that, if it comes from a mainstream literary critic, then it must be assuming some sort a hierarchy -- that said critic must be assigning unequal values to the two styles of fiction. But I swear to you that I love Raymond Chandler every bit as much as I love John Updike. (I love Chandler more, actually.)

I wouldn't go as far as Todorov does in his oft-cited structuralist analysis of detective fiction, but I think he's basically correct when he writes that the "story" of the detective (as opposed to the "story" of the crime he's investigating) is "a story which has no importance in itself, which serves only as a mediator between the reader and the story of the crime." He goes on to say of these two parallel stories -- that of the investigated and the investigator -- that "one is absent but real, the other present but insignificant." Like I said, he goes too far. But he's essentially acknowledging the same point, that the conventions of the genre are fairly strict in the sense that they don't allow too much time for a detective's personal reflection, e.g., musings on his unhappy childhood, sexual insecurities, mental replaying of emotional traumas, etc. There's a murder to be solved, goddamnit.

I also think it's fair to claim, as I did in my review, that the multiple-narrator structure of Case Histories is formally atypical. I'm certain that you've read many more thrillers than I have, and are ready to counter that claim with dozens of notable examples, but even so: Perhaps we can stipulate that the vast majority of thrillers are written as first-person accounts or are narrated by an omniscient third-person voice who follows the detective's progress, and no one else's, very closely. I can't help but think that the reason this is so is that the smartest of these writers know that, fundamentally, detective fiction is so much fun to read because it suggests that we, as individuals, are somehow capable of solving even the most intractable riddles by ourselves, through our wits and our reasoning. Single narrators, be they first-person or third-person, reinforce this epistemological link between reader and detective. (I also think this is why detectives are so often cast as lone wolves, working in solitude, operating outside of legal or social norms.) By limiting the narrative voice to one and only one, these writers acknowledge the primacy of the investigation -- Todorov's "second story" -- and, in a way, make their books all about the ability of one person to decipher and comprehend systems of gargantuan complexity. In this way, I think, the best of these writers are not unlike the great existentialist philosophers.

Well. That's quite enough, as I'm sure you'll agree. Back to anemic novel-writing for me. Keep up the good work, even if the good work means skewering me from time to time. I love to learn that there are people out there who still care enough about literature to blog about it.

All best,
Jeff Turrentine
Los Angeles, USA

Necessary Distinction

2009-01-19T17:57:00.001+01:00

It had to happen. After the Daily Telegraph and the London Times, it's the Guardian's turn to issue a list of the supposedly best in crime, as part of a series on the 1000 novels everyone must read - no less. Purists will certainly be surprised by the first entry, Nelson Algren's The Man With The Golden Arm. Let them be warned that it's only the beginning as other surprise-guests (some of them very surprising) include Joseph Conrad, Fedor Dostoevsky, Alexandre Dumas, Theodore Dreiser, Ian McEwan, Mark Twain and - no kidding - Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park*. For some reason Victor Hugo's Les Misérables did not make the final cut and Honoré de Balzac's Murky Business was similarly discarded even though it's arguably much more of a crime story than Native Son (a "landmark thriller" according to Xan Brooks)

But then this is the kind of macedonia to be expected from a list that purports to "reflect as much of the crime spectrum as possible, as well as the regularity with which literary novelists have made evildoers their theme" even though "the latter break genre rules, typically eliminating the hero who solves or prevents crime." It is also a predictable outcome of using as broad and nebulous a term as "crime novel" which can be applied to virtually any kind of novel dealing with a crime or a criminal, regardless of the author's intentions and priorities or the actual importance of the criminal element to the book. The crime/detective/mystery/suspense/thriller genre is so diverse and fragmented that it's better to stick to multiple categories with genuine meanings rather than a single one that means nothing at all.

*Apparently unbeknownst to the Guardian, Michael Crichton actually started his career writing proper thrillers under the aliases Jeffery Hudson, John Lange and Michael Douglas. Some of them went recently back into print thanks to Hard Case Crime. Are The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park more seminal crime novels than A Case of Need? Really?

Edgar Allan Poe On Mystery Fiction: "I Found the Recipe, I Didn't Cook the Meal"

2009-01-18T13:10:00.005+01:00

Being 200, even by the relaxed standards of our jaded times, is quite an achievement. It comes as no surprise, then, that Edgar Allan Poe was literally flooded with interview requests as his two-hundredth birthday approached. It's a great honour for At the Villa Rose that ours was the only one he granted.

Let's start with a stupid question: how does it feel to be 200?

Well, very much like being 100 or 150. You know, the first hundred years are the really hard ones. After that, your reputation is secured and you can stop worrying. Not that I, for one, ever worried. I knew people would recognize my genius sooner or later but I'd sure have preferred it to be sooner.

Mystery writers, critics and readers are particularly active in the celebrations as they regard you as the founding father of the genre; it is common wisdom that your "The Murders on the Rue Morgue" launched the whole thing on. Was it voluntary on your part?

It will probably pain a lot of people in the mystery community, but the answer is no. I had no intention, as I wrote "Rue Morgue" and my other tales of ratiocination, to set up a new genre. I realized they were something new, and so did the readers, but that was all and I never held them in much esteem. If you'd ask me at the time what part of my work I thought would last for the ages, my picks would have been my poetry and my critical work. I would have been half right as some of my poems survive, but hardly anyone reads the Marginalias today - and I'd dare to say that it shows. Returning to your question, I think my actual contribution to the mystery genre is not to have first cooked the meal, but to have found the recipe. All the ingredients later used by my "heirs" can be found in the tales of ratiocination, but their handling and the general purpose are not the same.

May you elaborate?

The "tales of ratiocination" label sums it up perfectly. Dupin's reasoning are the subject and the motor of the stories; one might say they are demonstrations rather than narrations. Everything else, including the puzzle and Dupin themselves, is subservient. Had for instance Sir Arthur Conan Doyle written The Hound of the Baskervilles following my method, the actual case would have been briefly outlined in the first chapter, with Sherlock Holmes spending the rest of the book explaining the logical process by which he discovered the truth. Holmes, by the way, would be a much less distinctive figure, just a name, one or two quirks and a brain to reason.

So who, according you, is the real father/mother of the mystery genre?

I don't think there is only one progenitor. All of the pionneers made significant, decisive contributions. I'm not even the first one to have written about cases solved by detectives, as your listmate Bob Schneider has found out. But if you really want one and only one name, then it has to be this fellow-compatriot of yours, Emile Gaboriau. He made actual if not always good fiction out of my little exercises and is fully responsible for the definitive form of the genre, including some of its worst features such as the need to fill hundreds of pages with unnecessary details about surroundings and people's lives.

You may know that the Mystery Writers of America have chosen to honour your memory by naming their annual awards after you?

It's very kind from them, but every year as the nominees then the winners are announced I wonder what it has to do with me. It's not only because of my weak ties to the genre; I have grown accustomated to be referred to as the Great Ancestor. No, the problem I have with the Edgars is that most of the works they reward are in almost total contradiction with my ideas on writing. Think of one Robert Louis Stevenson award given to Margaret Drabble and you will see how I feel.

What are your main objections to your namesake awards?

Well, first, they have four prizes for novels and only one for shorter fiction - I don't count the Robert L. Fish award. Now I have nothing against novels as such; I managed to complete one in my lifetime, though considerably shorter than most recent Edgar winners. But I repeatedly hailed the short story, the tale, as the purest of all art forms - which was not innocent in a time when novels reached and sometimes went beyond phone-directory sizes. So you might expect awards bearing my name to make some place for the miniature. The Hugos or the Bram Stoker awards have categories for short stories, novelettes, novellas and anthologies; why can't the Edgars? Also they like their crime fiction to be realistic, character-driven and socially conscious. My work was none of that. I wrote stories that were improbable at least and set them in places where I'd never been and knew next of nothing of. So much for realism. I didn't have much time for characterization either, at least if you use this word to mean three-dimensional, believable characters. Mine were nebulous entities, with only minimal physical and personality traits - most of the time I didn't even bother to give them names! My work, if anything, has always been effect-driven and characters as well as places and even situations were nothing but parts of that effect, mere cogs in the wheel. As for social consciousness, well, I am definetely not the author to read if you are looking for a reflection of American society in the early nineteenth century. My tales are atemporal, concerned only with themselves and, once again, the effect they seek to produce. This is, I guess, the reason why the late Jorge Luis Borges was such a fan of mine; we are kindred spirits.

Don't the Edgars just reflect the dominant mood in crime/mystery fiction today?

Absolutely. Modern crime and mystery writing is balzacian, dickensian, jamesian, hemingwayian, faulknerian, what you want, but definetely not "poesque" if this barbarious word ever had any sense. I have no problem with that, but maybe it would be more honest from the mystery community to acknowledge this fact, bid farewell and let me go.

Further reading:

Poe at 200 by Nick Mamatas.

The DNA of Detection by Andrew Taylor.

Edgar Allan Poe and the Origins of Mystery Fiction by Steve Rachman.

And don't forget the Poe Bicentennial Blog.

And also:
A beautiful slideshow on the New York Times website.