SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH BOOKS

In this alternative history set in 1952, debut author Guy Saville assumes that the negotiations of Lord Halifax, a British advocate of appeasement throughout the war, has led ultimately to détente between Great Britain and Germany. In 1943, the two countries, wanting to avoid war, had met at the Casablanca Conference and agreed to divide the African continent into two spheres of influence. The divisions would be primarily along the historical colonial lines: West Africa would remain largely under German rule, while much of East Africa would remain British. In a dramatic opening scene, a British assassin arrives in Kongo disguised as an SS surveyor, hoping to kill Walter Hochberg, the Governor General of Kongo. Cole stabs him to death, then escapes with some of his co-conspirators, only to discover later that Hochberg is somehow alive. Reading this novel is like reading a movie. The action is so graphic and so cinematic, that it is easy to imagine a hardcore action thriller, peopled with characters as impervious to pain as Superman. By the halfway point, Burton Cole and Patrick Whaler have been beaten, stabbed, slashed, smashed, and tortured to what would be the breaking point if these bigger-than-life men could be broken, but the chases and escapes continue. The characters on both sides are stereotypical, but Saville is an exciting new author with a suspenseful, dramatic style, but I’ll be hoping for more depth of character and more fully developed motivation to bring his future novels to life.

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Simon Howe, editor of the weekly newspaper in rural Maine, has just hired a new employee, previously an employee of a Portland newspaper and a former farm team player for the Red Sox, now an ex-con who served six years for assault on a woman. Amy, Simon’s wife, takes the side of the woman victim, wondering aloud if the victim, too, has a new job, and if she’s gotten over the trauma of being sexually assaulted. The new employee has told Simon that there are two sides for everything, but Amy feels such crimes are too damaging to women to be forgiven and she does not want to meet him. Soon after, Simon receives the first of what will eventually number six postcards from around the country, none of them signed, gradually hinting at some terrible deed that Simon unknowingly committed in the past. As the cards are mailed from closer and closer destinations, first from the Great Salt Lake, and then from Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and Portland, Simon and Amy become more stressed and more impatient with each other. The final card is hand-delivered to the family’s mailbox, and the message demands that Simon meet with the sender during his 25th reunion celebration. Author George Harrar ratchets up the tension to the breaking point, and few readers will be able to resist seeing this book as a classic Alfred Hitchcock film. Ironies abound here in this tension-filled study of universal themes as seen through the seemingly simple life of a respected man in Red Paint Bay.

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Set in Naples in 1931, during the early years of Mussolini’s rule, this novel is a study of character, especially that of Ricciardi, the Commissario of the police, who has the occult ability to hear the final thoughts of murder victims. Here he investigates the death of the world’s greatest tenor, just before his performance of Pagliacci. Consummately romantic at heart, with exaggerated but likable characters and heart-breaking situations more akin to opera than to real life, Maurizio De Giovanni’s surprising mystery is both dramatic and compassionate, filled with a kind of charm rare among dark mysteries. Lovers of opera, and I am one, will be intrigued with all the references to love, vengeance, murder, sorrow, pride, envy, and jealousy which seem to motivate most operas, and, Ricciardi would have us believe, most murders. As is also the case with opera, the characters are sometimes stereotyped, their actions pre-ordained by the traditions of operatic plot. Having established Ricciardi’s occult talents in the opening pages, the reader understands that a significant amount of “willing suspension of disbelief” is necessary here, and as Ricciardi’s own life, like those of the other main characters, is also its own romantic opera, there is no pretense of realism.

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Using different genres for each of his three novels which available in English, Horacio Castellanos Moya creates dramatically different tones, despite their common settings in Central America, and translator Katherine Silver’s own versatility is obvious as she recreates the different moods. Senselessness (2008), Castellanos Moya’s most powerful and most dramatic novel, conveys the horrors of Mayan genocide in an unnamed country which resembles Guatemala. By contrast, Tyrant Memory (2011) often verges on farce in its satirical depiction of the popular rebellion against a pro-Nazi dictator in El Salvador in 1944, an otherwise serious subject. The She-Devil in the Mirror (2009), also set in El Salvador and the least political of the three novels, is a murder mystery, told as a long monologue by Laura Rivera, a privileged, upperclass woman whose best friend has just been murdered. Castellanos Moya’s pacing is flawless as he suggests but does not always confirm the reader’s conclusions about these characters as described by Laura, and the novel’s finale is memorable, perfectly in keeping with tone and character. The details and subject matter are universal, rather than specific to El Salvador, and readers from around the world will be entertained and often amused by Castellanos Moya’s foray into noir fiction.

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A choirboy whose voice was akin to the divine has grown up, as this novel opens, and his life has changed even faster than his voice. Now forty-eight, former choirboy Gudlauger Egilsson has been working for a Reykjavik hotel as a doorman, general handyman, and during this holiday season, as the hotel’s Santa Claus. For many years he has lived in a small room in the basement of the hotel, leading a solitary life with no connection to his family. When Inspector Erlendur of the Reykjavik police is called to his room by the hotel, however, he finds Santa in decidedly compromising circumstances, his costume in disarray, and a knife protruding from his chest. With the dark humor that he has made his trademark, Icelandic author Arnaldur Indridason describes the murder scene and the reaction of his assistants to it, and even prissy readers will be amused by some of their reactions and comments about this dark and ironic scene. And when Erlendur, who has no plans for Christmas, helps himself to the exotic holiday buffet upstairs, enraging the chef, this wild and darkly funny noir novel takes off, filled with terrible crimes committed by seemingly innocent people.

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