SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH BOOKS

Note: This book won the Novel of the Year Award at the Irish Book Awards.  (11/27/13, Irish Times).

–Well, said his da now in the pub.  –Facebook. Yeh know it, yeah?

–I do, yeah, said Jimmy.

–What d’you make of it?

–I don’t know.

–Yeh don’t know?

–No, said Jimmy. –Not really.

–But you’ve kids.

–I know tha’, said Jimmy. –I’ve four of them.

–Is it the four you have?  said his da.  –I thought it was three.

Twenty-five years ago Jimmy Rabbitte and his mates in the working class Barrytown section of Dublin decided that the best way to change their economic situation for the better was to form a rock band.  In the first novel of author Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown Trilogy (1988), named The Commitments for the rock group they formed, Jimmy and his hopeful friends tried for big-time success, and in the trilogy’s subsequent novels (The Snapper and The Van), they continued their earnest and energetic, though unsophisticated, plans to improve their lives.  Now, after twenty-five years and four children, Jimmy has achieved modest success in the music business, though not as a performer, and in his new novel, The Guts, he revisits many aspects of his life, his family, and his friendships as he evaluates where he is in the Grand Scheme of his own grand schemes over the years – ever since he first dreamed of success with a rock band.  Like the earlier novels, The Commitments and The Van,  Doyle’s The Guts is hilarious, filled with humor that ranges from the dark to the most boisterous and profane, but it also shows an older, more thoughtful Jimmy whose life has taken a sudden turn in a new direction:  Jimmy has just learned that he has cancer, and he has not yet told anyone.

When Jimmy and his father meet at the pub after work, the reader sees a different culture from that of Jimmy and his family twenty-five years earlier.  His father, despite his playacting about his ignorance of the internet, now texts friends about “going for a pint,” and he wants to know about Facebook and websites on which older women (cougars) chase young boys.  Soon Da is in his cups and discussing aspects of his own sexuality with Jimmy, treating him as an equal in a new way.  Without warning, Jimmy tells his father about his diagnosis, a shock which his father first tries to pass off, and then tries unsuccessfully to share.  Though his father is not a demonstrative person, Jimmy notices that he “was trying to get nearer to Jimmy without actually moving.  Without making a show.  He leaned across the table and put his hand on Jimmy’s arm.  He kept it there.”

Doyle’s novel of the Commitments was the basis of a musical which opened in London in October, 2013,

Here, as in most of his other novels, Doyle’s characters are so clearly conceived that his dialogue and the subtle actions of the characters often take the place of real narrative.  The language of the streets pervades the novel, just as it does the lives of the characters, and the jokes and humorous byplay that friends and family enjoy with each other, like the da’s “inability” to remember how many children Jimmy has, keep the reader entertained at the same time that s/he is learning much about individuals and their attitudes.  Jimmy’s announcement about his cancer, his da’s basic questions about it, and his da’s wish to be closer to his son all reveal the relationship between the two, and as they walk toward the exit of the pub, after the big announcement, “Jimmy let his da lead the way.” Later, Jimmy creates a list of the people he needs to tell about his cancer in person, fussing over the order in which he will tell them about his planned surgery and chemo so that no one is offended by learning the news late.

Aoife, Jimmy’s wife, gives him a present.

As the novel progresses over the next six months, Jimmy tries to reconnect with some family members who have moved on and had no contact with him or his parents for years.  Typically, he also comes up with a new scheme to make money, this time from the Eucharistic Congress and the possibility that Pope Benedict will be coming to Dublin for the first time since 1932.  He also creates a new kind of music business to take the place of his previous one, which has become dated and is now unprofitable.  Throughout, music forms the bridge allowing Jimmy to communicate with many people without becoming more personal than he is able to deal with.

When Jimmy and some former band members go to a music festival, one of the acts features Christy Moore, from County Kildare

At times, when Jimmy wearies and becomes fearful, not knowing whether the outcome of his surgery and his chemo will be successful, the author, with his own boundless energy, picks him up and sets him aright as he continues on his journey.   This is the Jimmy Rabbitte that those who loved The Barrytown Trilogy, both in book form and in film and the theater, will remember and love.  This Jimmy, however, is now a grownup, and, like the rest of us as we have aged, he has begun to move beyond the immediate to think about bigger and more “gutsy” subjects than he did as a teenager and young adult.  Though it is not perfect in its structure, and does, sometimes, wander off under its own steam, the novel is  funny and thoughtful and sensitive, a worthy successor to the earlier Barrytown books, despite its limitations, which feel minor compared to the book’s dauntless, ebullient spirit.

Note: Also reviewed here:  THE DEAD REPUBLIC,     A STAR CALLED HENRY,       SMILE.       LOVE,      LIFE WITHOUT CHILDREN

Photos, in order: The author’s photo appears on http://www.independent.ie

The photo from the musical version of The Commitments, which opened in London in October, 2013, appears on http://www.cheaptheatretickets.com

Chemotherapy and Radiation for Dummies is a real book by Alan P. Lyss, et. al., available on Amazon.http://www.amazon.com/

The photo of Christy Moore, part of a rave review of one of his concerts in 2012, appears on http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

“He saw something move in the gloom, on the sink, a couple of antennae swinging to and fro.  A cockroach.  It was the size of a thumb…He shivered.  It was cold comfort knowing they were more frightened than he was.  Sometimes he had the feeling alcohol had done him more good than harm.  He closed his eyes and tried not to think.”  Harry Hole, after his first day in Bangkok.

English speakers were first introduced to the work of Norwegian author Jo Nesbo and his damaged main character Harry Hole, in 2006, with the publication of The Redbreast, the third book in the Harry Hole series, a novel so good that it won the Norwegian Booksellers Prize for Best Novel of the Year in 2000, when it was published in Norway.  In 2004, it also won the award for Best Norwegian Crime Novel Ever Written, as chosen by Norwegian Book Clubs.  The eight novels in the series written since  The Redbreast have been published consecutively through 2011, and show Nesbo’s increasing skill manipulating more complex characters, more daring plot lines, and a variety of genres (from historical mystery through the most horrific of horror).  In 2012, however, Nesbo’s first novel, The Bat, released in Norway in 1997, was suddenly released for English speakers, shortly after the publication of Phantom, one of Nesbo’s best new novels,.  The Bat, too, was a prize-winner when it was first written, though Nesbo was obviously a much less accomplished writer fifteen years ago.  The publication of this early novel provided fun for Nesbo’s many long-time fans, and suggests some of the excitement that was to evolve further in his later novels.

Now, following another of Nesbo’s most exciting novels, Police (the sequel to Phantom), comes the English language release of Cockroaches, originally published in Norway in 1998, the second in the Harry Hole series. This novel has won no prizes, however, and those who read it, as I did, in the hope of seeing the continuing development of an author who made a quantum leap from his fairly simple first two novels (The Bat, and Cockroaches) to the complex and superbly developed novel The Redbreast, his outstanding third novel, may be disappointed by this novel’s consistent lack of clear focus.  In Cockroaches, Detective Harry Hole is chosen by the Norwegian Foreign Office to go to Thailand to investigate the murder of Norway’s ambassador to Thailand, who has been found in a brothel with an elaborate old knife in his back.

Hole himself is a psychological mess, an alcoholic trying to stay sober, and a man who caused a death during his youth and still feels guilt for it.  He also grieves for his sister, a Down Syndrome child, who was raped and impregnated, and he blames himself for not being able to solve that case, which has now been closed.  He has no interest in going to Thailand, even for a short time, to investigate this murder, under the aegis of the foreign office, and he suspects that he has been chosen because they expect him to fail so that the foreign office can close the case without revealing details publicly.  The victim, Ambassador Atle Molnes, is a crony of the Norwegian Prime Minister, and the nature of his murder would be embarrassing to the foreign office and the Norwegian government.  Hole, smart enough to realize this before he leaves, makes a deal with the head of the Oslo police department that if he goes to Thailand for one week to work on this case that he will be given access to the files in his sister’s case, in return.

Norwegian Embassy in Bangkok

In Bangkok, Harry gets started on the case and quickly discovers that the ambassador was a practitioner of many perversions, which extended beyond the “normal” prostitution, rampant in Bangkok, to paedophilia and child pornography.  The knife used to kill him belonged to the most powerful heroin dealer in history, who now finances most of the new hotels in Burma and manages the opium trade in the north of Thailand.  In addition, the ambassador is indebted to loan sharks, and trailed by their goons, as a result of his gambling addiction.  By the time the novel reaches page one hundred, a large number of characters and an equally large number of criminal enterprises and perversions have been mentioned as the investigation of the ambassador’s murder goes off in many different directions.  The purpose of all these disparate threads in the structure of the novel is unclear, and the descriptions of their crimes often become tedious.

Gigantic roach, about the size of a thumb, which some people enjoy as pets. Photo by Cameron Richardson/Newspix/Rex/USA

The ambassador’s personal relationships, presumably with numerous lovers, add yet another level of complication, and suggest both blackmail and resulting political problems for the ruling Christian Democrats in Norway, should the ambassador’s secret lives become public.  Eventually, even currency trading and the bankruptcy of a major firm have their moments in the spotlight.  Additional grisly murders take place as the novel progresses, but they are presented primarily through talk and not through action scenes, leaving the novel with surprisingly little drama, lacking the kind of tension which has made the other Harry Hole novels so compelling.  As more and more threads take Harry in still more directions, the reader quickly becomes as frustrated as the detective, since there are few, if any, real connections which would draw the reader into all the threads and create interest in all the characters.  Mistaken identity, betrayals, and surprise revelations do create suspense, but part of that suspense lies in to trying to figure out how Harry Hole is going to make sense of this whole, complicated mess.

Click on map to see a larger version.

Jo Nesbo’s fine sense of drama, honed to razor sharpness in his later novels, is enhanced in those novels by Nesbo’s development of sympathetic characters (or at least interesting ones).  As the series develops and characters repeat throughout, the reader comes to know Harry Hole, with all his weaknesses, and the many other characters with whom he associates, both within the police department and in the Oslo community.  Readers who have enjoyed the later novels may be surprised by Cockroaches, which shows little about Harry himself and even less about the secondary characters.  Those who have read all the other Harry Hole novels, however, will probably also read this one, for the sake of  “completion,” if nothing else.  Those new to the series may want to begin with The Redbreast, certainly one of the best of the series, and then read the others in the series in the order in which they were published (see Wikipedia).  Both The Bat and Cockroaches will be of primary interest to those who have already finished all the other books in the series.

ALSO by Jo Nesbo (See Wikipedia for order of release):  THE BAT, THE REDBREAST, NEMESIS,     THE DEVIL’S STAR,     THE REDEEMER,     THE SNOWMAN, THE LEOPARD, PHANTOM,     POLICE,     THE SON (2014),     BLOOD ON SNOW (2015),              MIDNIGHT SUN (2016),     THE THIRST (2017,     KNIFE (2019)

Photos, in order: The author’s photo may be found on http://www.zimbio.com/

The Norwegian Embassy in Bangkok may be seen here:  http://www.emb-norway.or.th/

One of the world’s largest species of roaches, this one is the size of a thumb, often sold as a pet in Asia and Australia: http://www.peoplepets.com Photo by Cameron Richardson/Newspix/Rex/USA

The map of Thailand and its neighbors is from     http://www.visit-thailand.info/information/map-of-thailand.htm

“Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory, Gene Hackman’s character, Brill, in Enemy of the State, that’s what he was turning into.  The obsessive, the lone lunatic, the conspiracy nut who lived his life in discussion forums…He might as well get his own home page, a cottage in the woods, and a wall covered in newspaper cuttings; then everything would be perfect.” – HP Pettersson, “a slacker with a big ego.”

An action-packed debut novel in which reality and virtual reality overlap, Game reflects the game of life with an alarming twist, one that raises serious questions about how much control over our own lives any of us readers might be willing to give up in exchange for the excitement and ego-stroking of an on-going virtual reality game. Here, Henrik “HP” Pettersson, a young Swede in his thirties, with too little to do and no sense of responsibility, finds a cell phone on the commuter train to Stockholm.  Not surprisingly, he decides to keep it.  When he opens it, he discovers a message:  “Wanna play a game?”   He ignores it, wanting only to figure out how to use it as a phone.  When the message changes to “Wanna play a game, Henrik Petterson?” he is stunned.  And when the phone will not take no for an answer, HP concludes that some of his friends are playing a trick on him.  He decides that the only way to get back at them is to play the game and beat them at it.

Author photo by Sveriges Radio

HP’s first assignment, to steal the red umbrella being carried inside a bag by another passenger, is easy, and HP earns 100 points, receives the Rules of the Game, and is then shown on-line videos of his own performance as he steals the red umbrella.  He continues with the Game, and as his assignments become more complex, HP realizes that the Game is much bigger than he thought – it is not a creation of his little group of friends.  Instead, a powerful Game Master is “running” carefully selected players throughout the country and around the world, controlling their behavior by manipulating their psyches.  With no record of success in other areas of his life, HP quickly becomes more and more addicted to the praise he earns when he performs well, and he glories in his starring role in the videos of his performances during his various assignments, which are judged by other participants.  Gradually, the assignments become more complex and more dangerous, not only to him but to the community as a whole, and HP becomes one of the highest point-scorers among all the players of the Game throughout the world, a “hitman in the service of the Game Master.”

One of HP's first assignments is to stop the clock on the top of the NK Department Store.

During the entire time that HP is participating in the Game, the author is alternating the point of view between HP and a young woman, Rebecca Normen, whose focus and ambition are complete contrasts to HP’s laziness.  With little to interest the reader in terms of her personality, Rebecca is a cipher, working a security detail for the police as a “personal protection coordinator,” a bodyguard for one of the ministers of the Swedish government.  When she saves the minister’s life during an apparent terrorist attack, she is promoted to the Alpha group, an elite group being formed for protection for the high-ranking officials who will soon be coming to Stockholm as Sweden takes over the EU presidency.  Gradually, the reader discovers Rebecca’s secrets and her hidden past.

As the novel develops at breakneck speed, the action never falters, with one surprise after another as HP discovers the hazards of the game, the fact that absolutely nothing in the Game is accidental, that “some things are true, and some were stitched together just for [him], that he was “a Pawn in the Game, no more, no less…A pathetic little pawn that could easily be sacrificed so the Game could move on.”  As one of his more astute friends tells him, “The Game gives you your very own starring role, complete with a fan club…Suddenly you’re the leading man instead of a spectator.  From nobody to VIP in the space of a few days…Pretty soon you can’t get enough of [the attention].  And all the Game asks in exchange for this massive trip is a few tiny little assignments.”  Even when he realizes that the majority of the most important political “accidents” and successes on the world stage are actually controlled by minions of the Game Master who have no contact with each other, HP still wants to continue playing.  Eventually, however, he is determined to learn more about the Game and the Game Master.

A later assignment for HP is to remove the wheels of a Ferrari in Sture Square Plan, a high-end shopping area which features this "mushroom."

Readers who spend a good deal of time on social media – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, virtual reality games, discussion forums, networks, and even blogs – may find the premise of this plot far more “realistic” than do other readers, but I suspect that everyone will be chilled by the parallels drawn by Swedish author Anders de la Motte to some of the events in the news recently about “lone lunatics” and those who become so caught up in virtual reality that the rules of actual reality no longer seem to apply, at least to them.  In its political implications, that some unseen Game Master (or ideology) can impel some people to perform terrible actions they would never think of on their own, and do it anonymously via a computer or Game, the horror becomes even more vivid, raising once again the conflicts between security and freedom on the internet and the use of human drones to perform often small, individual actions in the service of a larger, more sinister goal, on which people can even place bets. The excitement of the novel keeps all these issues fresh as the plot develops, no doubt a result of the author’s own experience as a police officer and director of security at “one of the world’s largest IT companies.”

While hiding in a rural area, HP is discovered and must run from a plane, a scene in which he likens himself to Cary Grant.

For all its excitement, the novel is sometimes confusing as the points of view shift back and forth, and the speaker is not always clear, sometimes requiring some page flipping to determine whose point of view is being revealed.  Flashbacks and the inclusion of extraneous dreams do less to expand the characters than to confuse the reader with new information not fully integrated and sometimes irrelevant. The writing is often uneven – sometimes lively, and sometimes much less so.  Since there is little character development, the novel often reads like the précis of a film – and this novel has the potential to be a blockbuster film! – even better than the novel itself.  Since Game is the first part of a trilogy, and will be followed by Buzz, coming out in January, and Bubble, coming in February, it will be especially interesting to see how this story concept develops further in the next two installments.  Surprises in the conclusion suggest some ominous new directions.

Photos, in order: The author’s photo by Sveriges Radio, appears on  http://hedengrensbokhandel.blogspot.com

The photo of the NK department store, shows the iconic clock tower and clock, which HP must stop in one of his early assignments.  Photo by Holger Ellgaard on http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Varuhuset_NK.jpg

Sture Square Plan, a high-end shopping area, is the site of another HP assignment, in which he must remove the wheels of a Ferrari.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stureplan Photo by Varfgklo.

Cary Grant, to whom HP compares himself in a scene in which he must outrun a plane, is seen here in North by Northwest:    http://www.ritholtz.com/

ARC:  Emily Bestler Books, Atria, Simon and Schuster

Note: Jane Gardam is WINNER of the Heywood Hill Literary Prize for a lifetime’s contribution to the enjoyment of literature. She is also the only author to have been a two-time WINNER of the Whitbread (now Costa) Award.

“If there is anyone here this afternoon whom I have convinced that books are meant to be enjoyed, that English is nothing to do with duty, that it has nothing to do with school..then I am a happy man…To hell with school. English is what matters. ENGLISH IS LIFE.”–ARNOLD HANGER, author/speaker.

This week I read A Long Way from Verona, newly released by Europa Editions, having previously read and loved seven other Jane Gardam novels, and I was puzzled as I read this one because it seemed unusual, and while not out of character, a lot less sophisticated in terms of structure than her usual. Though I knew from its description that it was a “coming of age” novel, it was not until I finished both the book and my review that I discovered, to my great surprise, that A Long Way from Verona was also Jane Gardam’s first novel, originally published in 1971. Here, the as-yet-unpublished author examines the growth of a writer from her days as a thirteen-year-old schoolchild in a small British village during World War II, to the publication of her first poem, providing insights into the “mania” of writing, what impels it, and the frequent agonies which accompany it, especially when the writer is an enthusiastic adolescent.

Photograph of Jane Gardam by Eamonn McCabe / Rex / Christopher Thomond

Like many other debut novels, it is often sparkling and insightful, and though it may not completely satisfy every reader, especially those who are fans of her later, more mature and successful novels, it becomes especially significant when one recognizes just how much of the realistic adolescent angst of this novel must be autobiographical. Jessica Vye, the richly described main character, tells her own story, filled with the confusions of a thirteen-year-old who is trying to figure out who she is. “I am not, I am glad to say, mad,” she informs us, but she does see herself as set apart from other girls her age as a result of an experience she had when she was nine. “A man came to our school…to talk to us about becoming writers.” During the assembly, she is overcome with a fit of giggles and nearly has to leave the room, “and I suppose my whole life would have been different if I had,” she says, drily. Instead, she finds that the speaker, Arnold Hanger, to her surprise, is “absolutely marvelous.” With readings from many classic books, and also poems, stories, conversations, and bits of plays, all in different voices, Hanger is mesmerizing, and Jessica,,who loves to write, decides to dedicate her life to writing, as Arnold Hanger has done.

Jessica falls for a 14-year-old male friend because she thinks he looks like poet Rupert Brooke, who died in WW1.

Dividing the novel into three parts – “The Maniac,” “The Boy,” and “The Poem” – Jane Gardam tells Jessica Vye’s story, emphasizing the three most important influences in Jessica’s life during that one emotionally volatile year when she was thirteen. While Jessica is in many ways typical of young teens, with their mood swings, teary outbursts, and difficulties with peers and parents, she also has little guidance. Her father, a busy pastor and writer of philosophical essays, is always with his books, his parishioners, and his writing, and her mother, overwhelmed with the responsibilities of Jessica’s much younger brother, also seems to be responsible for virtually everything at her husband’s church, except the sermons. With a war on, and so many of the community’s men away fighting in Europe, many of the young people, like Jessica, are on their own when the school day ends, and their issues and confusions become even more emotionally fraught when they have no one to talk with.

Bomb damage to a residential area in North Shields, on the Tyne River, near Jessica’s home.

Though Gardam’s depictions of her characters from several generations ago ring true, most of these characters are teenagers interpreting life as teenagers, and some readers may find this wearisome. At the halfway mark, however, the action becomes far more dramatic and far more typical of some of the themes – alienation, religious doubt, and the need for empathy with those less fortunate – which Gardam explores in her later novels. Romantic and gullible, Jessica faces two crises, though one will resonate more fully with the reader. First, she finds herself attracted to a particularly handsome fourteen-year-old boy who seems as alienated as she is, and who, remarkably (in her opinion), seems attracted to her. He is, however, a long-time fan of her father’s writing and prefers spending as much time as possible talking with her father when he visits. An avowed communist at the age of fourteen, the young man takes it upon himself to show Jessica “real life” around the slums and docks, and that revelation does not reflect the glories which her church suggests comes to all who love God. The odd characters she meets there evoke much sympathy in their plights, and represent some of the best writing of the novel, but disaster strikes while Jessica and her young man are visiting, and no one is the same afterward.

Throughout the novel, the sensitive Jessica is disturbed by the conclusions drawn by Thomas Hardy in JUDE THE OBSCURE, who believes that happiness will not happen. “BECAUSE IT NEVER DOES.”

Jessica grows noticeably in knowledge about herself and others, and in the final section of the novel, “The Poem,” she works around the clock, putting all she has learned and felt into a poem, one which she feels is so strong and heartfelt that for the first time she regards it as completely “finished.” She has grown in sophistication in her reading and in her appreciation of literature during the year, and she believes that this poem “says it all” – for her, at least. The poem, called “The Maniac” connects the end of the novel with the first part in many ironic ways.

Throughout the novel, Jane Gardam shows her now well known-wit and her ability to choose exactly the right words and images to convey Jessica’s feelings and her seemingly psychic insights into the people around her. In the later part of the novel, Gardam creates strong feelings within the reader for the insights she gives into the creative process. Younger readers (even Young Adult readers) may especially relate to Jessica’s personal quandaries and her learning curve, while older readers will appreciate Gardam’s style and her insights into the many genres and moods of the writing discussed here, from the bleakness of Thomas Hardy to the more romantic efforts of Arnold Hanger himself.

ALSO by Jane Gardam:  CRUSOE’S DAUGHTER,     GOD ON THE ROCKS (my personal favorite),     LAST FRIENDS,    THE MAN IN THE WOODEN HAT,     OLD FILTH,     THE PEOPLE ON PRIVILEGE HILL,    QUEEN OF THE TAMBOURINE,     THE FLIGHTS OF THE MAIDENS

Photos, in order: The author’s photo, by Eamonn McCabe/Rex/Christopher Thomond, appears on http://www.theguardian.com/

The painting of Henry James is from http://biography13.com/

The bomb damage at North Shields, on the Tyne near where Jessica lives, is part of a photo essay on   http://news.bbc.co.uk/

World War I poet Rupert Brooke, whom Jessica believes her boy friend resembles, is depicted on http://theyearzero.org. According to Wikipedia, Brooke died after a mosquito bite became infected.

The cover for Jude the Obscure is from an early Dell edition of the Hardy novel:
http://chesscomicsandcrosswords.blogspot.com

ARC: Europa Editions

Note: This novel is the third novel in the Commissario Ricciardi series.  Like the others in the series, it can be read and enjoyed separately.

“He had scrupulously kept himself at a safe distance from all passion.  He’d walled emotions out of his life, keenly aware as he was of how love could destroy and corrupt.  Every grave in every cemetery is full of love, he thought.  And so the best thing to do is to remain alone and observe love from a distance…And yet, for the past few months this distance had been growing narrower…”—description of Commissario Ricciardi.

Commissario Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi must deal with his personal ghosts and memories at the same time that he is also working to solve murders as head of the Department of Public Safety in Naples during the reign of Benito Mussolini in 1931.  Ricciardi, a compulsively private man who shares nothing about his life with those he works with, lives in his family’s home in Naples with his Tata Rosa, who has taken care of him all his life. The orphan of aristocratic parents, Ricciardi has no siblings and no life outside of his office.  Each night for the past year, his only real enjoyment has been peeking out his bedroom window and across the way to the sitting room of Enrica Colombo, a pleasant-looking young woman who tirelessly works on her embroidery. Enrica and Ricciardi have recently begun exchanging shy waves to each other from their respective windows, but though they have met once, by surprise as part of an investigation, they have never spent a private evening together except behind window panes.

Neapolitan author Maurizio de Giovanni, exceptionally sensitive to all his characters and their stories, so clearly identifies with his “people” that he never hits a false note as he develops the action and shows their reactions to what life has in store.  Horrific murders take place, and his characters show their weaknesses and personal traumas, but this novel, like the others in the series, is more of a “people novel” than what one usually thinks of as “noir” or “hard case crime.”  De Giovanni is clearly enjoying himself – having fun – as he writes, and while there is little obvious humor here, there are moments that are almost farcical, especially with some of the subplots involving love.  Throughout, the author’s smile is often easy to hear in his “voice” as he tells the stories within the stories here.

Crowded Naples, with its myriad neighborhoods.  Photo by James Martin.

Everyone in Their Place, subtitled “The Summer of Commissario Ricciardi,” suggests that the Commissario himself may finally open up to life’s pleasures during this especially hot summer, perhaps allowing himself to feel the blossoming of love. The Commissario, however, has a unique, supernatural ability (or curse), one which gives him direct access to the mystery of death, and he is fearful of involving anyone he might love in the problems he faces daily as a result of his tormenting insights. If Ricciardi spends a few moments alone with a murder victim at the crime scene immediately after a death, he makes a direct psychic connection with the victim.  He is able to hear the victim’s last thought, the one which comes at the very moment when the victim knows that the angel of death has arrived. Ricciardi recognizes these puzzling and even terrifying statements as a unique trust, one which he accepts with almost religious dedication.

The murder of Adriana Musso takes place in the palazzo across from Santa Maria La Nuova, shown here.

As the summer gets hotter and hotter, the conflicts become more and more intense and lead to murder associated with the theme of love.   Brigadier Raffaele Maione, Ricciardi’s long-time assistant and the one person Ricciardi feels he can trust (though he never actually confides in him), has finally decided to lose weight.  Over two hundred sixty-five pounds, he wants his dieting to be a secret from his wife, an outstanding cook, so he volunteers to work on Sundays and at times when he would normally be enjoying her ragu and special pastas.  She, however, sees that he is avoiding her, and she panics.  Meanwhile, Enrica Colombo, who believes she loves Ricciardi from afar, is hoping that someone will introduce her to him socially.  At the same time, her family has decided to choose a suitor for her.  The beautiful Livia Vezzi, widow of the world’s greatest tenor, who was murdered at the San Carlo Opera House (in I Will Have Vengeance, the first novel of the series), has decided to take an extended holiday in Naples.  She, a noted flirt, wants to find out why Commissario Ricciardi, who investigated her husband’s murder, had been so indifferent to her allure – and she decides to work her wiles on him now.

Livia Vezzi’s husband, famed tenor Arnaldo Vezzi, was murdered at the San Carlo Opera House, between performances, in the the first novel of this series.

The eventual murder of Adriana Musso, the Duchess of Camparino, who had been having an extramarital affair, involves Ricciardi and Maione in an investigation into the secret aspects of her life when Ricciardi overhears her last thoughts.  Adriana, her bedridden and dying husband Matteo, and her stepson Ettore, who hates her, have been living in their generations-old palazzo across from the church of Santa Maria La Nova, but their separate lives have taken them in different directions.  The son leads a mysterious intellectual and social life and does not hide his on-going hatred for Adriana. Ricciardi  tirelessly seeks the guilty party in Adriana’s murder, even when he is warned by his superiors to beware of alienating “important people” in the government of Mussolini as he investigates, and the full impact of the power of the elite, even at the expense of justice, becomes clear.  Throughout the novel, anonymous characters from other levels of society give a broader picture of life in Naples through their first person comments about their lives and their gossip about other characters in the novel.  Though the reader may be hard pressed at the beginning to identify who is who, their identities later become clear.

Livia Vezzi is a friend of Rachele Mussolini, wife of Benito, and their daughter Edda, shown here in 1923, when Rachele was 33 and Edda, 13.

Emphasizing the effects of Benito Mussolini’s philosophy on the populace in 1931, the characters throughout the novel represent very different social backgrounds and confirm the perceived importance of everyone staying in “their place.”  The servants in the household of Matteo Musso, the Duke of Camparino, and his wife Adriana have no choice but to stay in their “places” if they want to survive and keep their jobs, but even Ricciardi must be careful.  Author Maurizio de Giovanni keeps the tone light, even as he explores murder and the most serious aspects of Italian social and political history in 1931, and the reader, carried along by his attitude, follows, too, so intrigued (and often charmed) with his characters, and Commissario Ricciardi, in particular, that the wait for the next novel  seems very long.

Note: Also by Maurizio de Giovanni:  I WILL HAVE VENGEANCE (#1, Winter),       BLOOD CURSE (#2, Springtime),        THE DAY OF THE DEAD (#4)        BY MY HAND (#5),      VIPER (#6),     THE BOTTOM OF YOUR HEART (#7),       GLASS SOULS: MOTHS FOR COMMISSARIO RICCIARDI (8),     NAMELESS SERENADE (9)

Inspector Lojacono series:    THE CROCODILE (#1),     THE BASTARDS OF PIZZOFALCONE (#2),    DARKNESS FOR THE BASTARDS OF PIZZOFALCONE (#3),    COLD FOR THE BASTARDS OF PIZZOFALCONE (#4),     PUPPIES (#5)

Photos, in order: The author ‘s photo is from http://www.napolimagazine.com.cn

The photo of Naples with its crowded neighborhoods, by James Martin, appears on http://goeurope.about.com

Santa Maria La Nova, across the street from the Palazzo of the Duke and Duchess of Camparino, is shown on   http://pl.wikipedia.org/

The San Carlo Opera House may be found on the website of http://robertarood.wordpress.com

Benito and Rachele Mussolini and their family, including their daughter Edda on http://www.historyinanhour.com/

ARC: Europa