SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH BOOKS

“I am going to reveal something which you suspect [your Honour], something which you don’t want to admit and which torments you in secret…You are afraid of yourself, of a certain frenzy which might take possession of you… We are almost identical men, your Honour…and I acted with premeditation, in full consciousness of my act.”

Belgian author Georges Simenon (1903 – 1989), a prolific author, published two hundred novels and over one hundred fifty novellas during his long career, most of them involving mysteries of some sort.  Though he is the author of the Inspector Maigret series, hugely successful in the film versions and TV series in addition to the novels, he was particularly proud of his much more serious novels, his “roman durs,” psychological novels in which he reveals his interest in how ordinary people deal with the many shocks and betrayals of their personal lives.  Act of Passion, published in 1947, is one of these romans durs, a novel about which critic Roger Ebert has asked, “Why is there no sense at the end [of the novel] that justice has been done, or any faith that it can be done?…There are questions for which there are no answers.  Act of Passion is essentially a question posing as an answer.”

Ebert is not being coy.  The main character here, a physician named Charles Alavoine, admits from the outset that he is guilty of premeditated murder, but he has had a good relationship with this magistrate, who investigated his story and interviewed the crime’s witnesses over the course of six weeks, and he feels that this magistrate, who is assigned only to investigate the case and not to try it, will understand him if the magistrate learns about his inner life.  If he can understand that, then, Alavoine believes, the magistrate will understand why he committed murder.  This is essential to Alavoine because “to understand him would be to forgive him,” not with any hope that he might be cleared or excused of his actions, but because he believes that by committing this murder he has permanently freed himself and the victim from the torments inflicted by phantoms.  He sees the magistrate as a kindred spirit, and “Since I had the courage to go to the bitter end, why not, in turn, have the courage to try to understand me?” he challenges the magistrate.  By killing his lover, he believes he has “delivered her,” allowing their love to last forever, unsullied. “Until someone has admitted [that I acted with premeditation], I shall be alone in the world.”

Place of birth of Georges Simenon, in Liege, Belgium. Photo by Flamenc.

What follows is a thorough investigation of the doctor’s life, told from the doctor’s own point of view.  He is the first generation of his family to have become educated and successful, and he notes that when his mother had to testify at the trial, she was “ashamed.  Not ashamed of me…but ashamed of being target of all those eyes, ashamed of disturbing such important persons.”  He remembers the testimony regarding the death of his first wife, who died two hours after giving birth to their second child, and he blames himself for her death. His desire for a big, healthy son had led him to ignore his wife’s thinking, and when she eventually produced their second baby, who weighed just short of twelve pounds, she died as a result.  His second wife, the “serene” Armande has testified in a controlled and dignified manner, befitting, he believes, the rather cold approach she has always had toward life, a life in which she has taken complete control of his home and family, at the expense, sometimes, of his doting mother, while he himself feels an increasing sense of emptiness in their relationship.

It is these memories of Armande which lead him to ask the magistrate to imagine that “all at once, the shadow accompanying you [during your walk] disappears…And suddenly there you are in the street without a shadow…You begin to feel yourself all over…You turn on your heel and look down, there is no dark spot on the bright stones of the pavement.”  Though the world is full of reassuring shadows, the dreamer is “seized with anguish…Can you imagine the anguish of wandering alone without a shadow in a world where everybody else has one?”  The symbolism is obvious.  Except for one brief encounter many years ago with a young woman in Caen, Alavoine has never even come close to feeling real love, and the emptiness is overwhelming him.  That soon changes.

Michael Gambon, as Maigret, a role he played for several years in the 1990s.

The doctor, successful in his field, has far less knowledge of himself and about what constitutes success in personal relationships than he believes he does, and it is this lack of awareness and lack of experience which set him up for the disaster which is his own unmaking.  Ironically, he believes it is a triumph, not just for him, but for his lover (and victim) as well.  Limited in emotional insights, Alavoine makes broad ethical statements, and tries to “define,” rather than to feel and express.  He can remember the past in enormous detail, when it comes to places and appearances, but he has little insight.  He defines love in terms of “the need of nearness,” and “the thirst to explain” but says little about real feeling, the idea of putting someone else’s desires and needs ahead of one’s own.  The author, too, seems to have absorbed some of these attitudes in the writing of  this book.  By presenting the killer’s thinking in great detail, he tries to create a feeling for the killer on the part of the reader, believing it possible to make the reader share the killer’s feelings.  He almost succeeds.

At one point Alavoine suggests that he and his beloved go to the Vincennes Zoo, where, in a darkly ironic twist, a pair of loving chimpanzees serve as a model of behavior

As he develops Alavoine’s psyche, Simenon cannot disguise Alavoine’s arrogance.  Alavoine seems to believe that his expertise in one area of life, his career, makes him an expert in other areas of life, such as love and its mysteries.  Slowly and inevitably, the author sets up Alavoine and his lover, and it becomes sadly ironic to watch as Alavoine, firmly convinced that his behavior is good and right, reveals how limited he is in true understanding.  As the doctor and his lover mover closer and closer to their destiny, the reader follows along, always wondering how much the “we” of the narrative really involves a sense of sharing and how much it may be the doctor imposing his will on his naïve partner.  Ultimately he declares, for better or worse, that “I shall live in her, with her, for her, as long as I possibly can, and if I imposed upon myself that sort of circus which was called a trial, it was so that she, no matter what the cost, may continue to live in someone…We wanted the totality of love.”

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

The author’s birthplace in Liege is depicted here:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/. Photo by Flamenc.  Later he makes a trip here to visit the places where his lover grew up.

Michael Gambon played the role of Maigret, a Simenon creation,  for several years in the 1990s. http://tvbeatsmovies.blogspot.com

The loving chimpanzees at the Vincennes Zoo serve as a model for Alavoine and his lover, at one point in the novel. http://www.hsi.org/

“Noel feels tense.  When he lifts his eyes to his reflection, it seems he is looking at an overgrown reptile.  He feels the familiar lurch of disappointment.  He looks away.  Whatever happened to the facelift?”

A professional dancer from the age of eleven, Noel Coward (1899 – 1973) spent the rest of his life in “show business” as a playwright (of thirty-nine plays), composer (of over three hundred songs and sixteen musicals and operettas), film maker (of fifteen adaptations of his plays), and actor-director-producer connected with two dozen additional productions.  Now, however, it is 1971, as this novel about his life opens, and he is seventy-two and dealing with an endless series of heart and lung problems, no doubt exacerbated, if not caused, by his persistent smoking.  (So constant was the smoking that when I was looking for a portrait of him for this review, I could find only a handful of pictures without the ubiquitous cigarette.)  Living for much of the year at Firefly, his Jamaican studio and retreat at the top of Captain Morgan’s Lookout toward ocean, he is attended by Patrice, a young Jamaican in his twenties who is particularly excited by this temporary position, since it will allow him, he hopes, to obtain a reference from The Boss so that he can apply for a job at the Ritz in London as a “silver service waiter.”  He has no training or experience for this position, but he is desperate for the chance to succeed.

Patrice becomes an anchor throughout this novel, a charming, naïve, and ingratiating young man who quickly elicits the reader’s empathy in his ambition to improve his life, while also acting as a dramatic foil for Coward’s petulance and impatience.  It is Patrice who must try to convince Coward to walk around the swimming pool at least once or twice without stopping, as his brief exercise each day, something that Coward has promised Graham Payn, his life partner, that he will do.  Payn, twenty years younger,  with whom Coward has spent the past twenty years, lives down the hill from Firefly in the estate’s guest house at Blue Harbour. There he acts as a surrogate host to guests like Elizabeth Taylor, Peter O’Toole, Johnny Ray, Sir Alex Guinness, David Niven, Richard Burton, and once, the Queen Mother.  Payn also acts as a casual caregiver to Coward on the daily trip he makes up to Firefly to visit Coward each day – or at least most days.  It is Patrice who walks the fine line between the testy (and often very ill) Coward and the rest of the world, now that Graham Payn is forced, by Coward’s ill health, to live his own life, mostly without Coward, and it is Patrice who accompanies Coward on little trips to town to the barber or the local bar, where he has a tab.

Firefly, the retreat/studio of Noel Coward in Jamaica.

As the narrative evolves, impressionistically, Coward’s mind is seen wandering, and he frequently dozes off.  He dreams of the Jazz Age and Gertrude Lawrence, and he sometimes relaxes by reading one of several children’s books by E. Nesbit which he loved as a child and still enjoys reading.  He drinks too much, eats too little, refuses to see many people, and becomes annoyed if Graham Payn is not at his immediate beck and call.  Often Payn is with Cole Lesley, “Coley” (formerly known as Leonard Cole), who began his association with Coward as a British valet, then became his secretary, manager, and occasional cook, and who will eventually write a long biography of his boss.  He reminisces about his earliest sexual experiences with other boys and older men, his spying at a crumbling public lav near Leicester Square in London, and his work in hospital wards during World War II.  He thinks about his parents and the rooming house they operated, and his first successful play, The Vortex, and the sycophants who suddenly appeared, wanting to become his friends.

This portrait of Noel Coward is one of the few in which he is not seen brandishing a cigarette.

His memories come at random, and his trust of Patrice is obvious when he shares with him the memories of his first meeting with Graham Payn.  A sudden shift, however, and he is remembering his first trip to Hong Kong in 1927, then “seeing” Gertrude Lawrence with her feet up on the sofa, though he knows she is dead, and having a dinner date with his friend Sir Michael Redgrave years ago.  At his almost nightly get-togethers with Graham Payn and Coley Lesley, the three reminisce, eventually talking about the memorable visit of the Queen Mother to Firefly.  Ten years have now passed since Jamaica became independent from the British Empire, and some of his Coward’s friends are thinking about selling up and leaving Jamaica for other places.

Noel Coward with partner Graham Payn

When Coward returns to the present, his heart skips a few beats as he observes the trunks and suitcases that Graham and Coley are beginning to pile up, anticipating the departure from Jamaica and a return to Coward’s house in Switzerland.

Suddenly he flashes back again to 1938 and a time when he gave John Gielgud a ride home from a shopping trip to Harrods, then moves forward to the present and a scene in which he is insulting (and cruel) to poor Patrice, before flashing back to the much more distant past and the story of his brother.  As he readies himself for the return trip to Switzerland, the reader knows that Noel Coward’s life is nearly over.  He is resisting a wheel chair because it shows how limited he is – he, the former dancer and entertainer, the toast of the town, no longer able to walk more than a few feet without feeling heart palpitations and perspiring from the effort of breathing.

Sir Alec Guinness playing with towel and pool float as “Lawrence of Arabia.”

For those who are already fans of Noel Coward, this book will be a bittersweet trip down memory lane as the story of his life, told from his own vantage point, unfolds.  It is not Noel Coward at the height of his powers, however, and it will probably not make fans of those who have heard of Noel Coward but do not know his work.  Sadly, too, at a time in which rap music is popular and raves are ubiquitous, the witty and clever lyrics for which Noel Coward is so famous, and which depend so much on word play and the rhythm of precise and careful (British) speech, may be a completely unfamiliar “language” to younger readers who pick up this book hoping to learn about Coward’s work.  Fame is fleeting, and never more regrettably so than with an author/ writer/ composer/screenwriter like Noel Coward, who was also brilliant, articulate, and gifted beyond measure.  Though the novel does not focus on Coward’s many theatrical achievements and may be occasionally awkward in its use of dreams and memories to convey his past, it admirably achieves the author’s larger goal of drawing the world’s attention, once again, to a genius whose work still inspires awe among devoted theatre-goers.

Note: I have reviewed several of Noel Coward’s plays on Amazon at these links:    HAY FEVER (1925),     PRIVATE LIVES (1930), PRESENT LAUGHTER (1939), and STAR QUALITY (1967), Coward’s last play

Photos, in order: The author’s photo appears on http://www.writers-clinic.com/

The photo of Firefly, the retreat/studio of Noel Coward in Jamaica may be found on http://www.yardietours.com. Wonderful additional photos of the inside of the property may be found here: http://mwapoleni-bunty.blogspot.com

This portrait of Noel Coward is one of the few available in which he is not brandishing a cigarette.   http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Noel Coward and Graham Payn, in a Getty Image, appear on  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Sir Alec Guinness, wearing a towel and riding a pool float, plays the role of Lawrence of Arabia at Firefly.   http://www.firefly-jamaica.com/

NOTE: Irish author Kevin Barry was WINNER of the IMPAC Dublin Award for City of Bohane. In this new story collection,  Dark Lies the Island, “Beer Trip to Llandudno” was WINNER the Sunday Times Short Story Award, and “Dark Lies the Island” was SHORTLISTED for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.

“The end came sharply…She said she would email and that I could phone but six years have passed and never once did she reply to an email, never once did she answer her phone, and after a few months, the line was dead…[But] I must believe that she is out there, somewhere among the dreaming cities…still beautiful, foul-mouthed, and inviolate.”

With this quotation, epitomizing the attitudes and ideas in this collection, IMPAC Dublin Award winner Kevin Barry shows his complete mastery of the short story form, presenting startling, eye-opening stories of love and loss, hope and despair, and acceptance and resistance. Many of the characters here reflect an almost religious belief that misery, for whatever reason, need be only temporary if one has the strength and will to search within. As they confront their challenges, Barry draws in the reader, inspiring hope that these individuals will prevail, either alone or with the help of friends. The characters spring from the page, face a demon or two, and then retire to small lives lived between the cracks of a larger society which does not notice them. The “unremarkable” people whose stories are told here often overcome challenges of universal significance, giving a resonance and a sense of thematic unity which is often lacking in other collections. This is not to say that these are “easy” or “comfortable” stories for the reader. Most of the characters are at least a little bit “off-kilter,” their problems at least a little bit beyond those of most readers, and their lives at least a little bit more bizarre than most of us who are reading about them. Unfortunately, some of these characters are also too weak to see hope; some do not have the energy or desire to change; and some are so dependent on others for their emotional stability that they are not equipped to face the present, much less the future. Barry shows them all as they face turning points in their lives, for better or worse.

Kevin Barry.  Photo by Bryan O’Brien

In the wonderfully condensed opening quotation, for example, a naïve young writer, only twenty-one and in a foreign country, finds himself in thrall to a creative and challenging woman, a magazine photographer. He discovers that the people he meets through this woman are “all addictions and stylish madness. Every other hour, there was a crackup, or an arrest, or an abortion…They were attuned to the wild moment, while I was yet nervous, careful, locked to the past.” Suddenly, the young writer discovers that their relationship is over, and though initially he has the hope that his “muse” will respond to emails and phone calls, he must, eventually, accept the fact that she is gone from his life. Depressed and then angry, however, he rallies, preferring to believe that she is “out there” somewhere, that her beauty and his feelings for her have been real and worthwhile.

Killary Harbour, photo by Unukorno

“Moving on” becomes one of the major themes here. Some characters gain new insights, and some do not. In the delicate opening story, “Across the Rooftops,” the reserved and shy main character meets a woman at a party, and they go up on the roof overlooking Cork. He would like to initiate a relationship, but he does not know how to begin. She appears not to be interested, and as dawn rises, they both come to recognitions. “The Fjord of Killary,” the story of a poet who buys a remote hotel in an area where it rains “two hundred and eight-seven days of the year,” focuses on “the last of the hopeless romantics.” The poet works as his own bartender at the hotel, a job which does not really suit him, since he does not understand the easy give and take – and the camaraderie of gossip, profanity, and a shared lifestyle – with which the long-time bar patrons spend their evenings. When a local emergency occurs, the speaker realizes that “one must learn the rigours of acceptance…be it a watery grave in Ireland’s only natural fjord…or a wordless exile..” “A Cruelty,” shows Donie, a sad and quiet man, only thirty-six, who has taken the Dublin to Sligo train from Boyle Station every morning for the past twenty years. If the train is even twenty seconds late, he becomes nervous and fretful. The unexpected intrusion of a stranger, who sadistically invades his space, is a life-changing event.

Boyle Station, where Donie takes the train every day. Photo by Ben Brooksbank.

“Beer Trip to Llandudno” in Wales, winner of the Sunday Times Short Story Award, tells of a trip by seven friends as they participate in the July Outing of the Liverpool Ale Club to Llandudno, Wales. As they move from bar to bar, they reveal much about their inner lives, at the end of which they become “sentimental as a famine ship,” looking forward to their return home. “Dark Lies the Island,” shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award,” uses the point of view of a young woman (an unusual change for this collection) who compulsively cuts herself. Having completed one educational program, she is taking a “year out” before starting a new program, living in her father’s summer house and trying to get control of her life. Whether these characters will conquer their demons or succumb becomes the focus of these stories.

View of Llandudno, site of the Beer Trip.  Photo by Nigel Swales.

Other stories deal with characters who are on the lam from the police; two elderly women who decide that they will, by hook or by crook, become the mothers of a baby; a man who cannot accept the fact that his beloved daughter has discovered men and has gained a reputation for easy sex; a young man who lets himself become involved in a bombing; and a man who runs into his former love and then needs reassurance from someone else that he really did see her. A sense of menace pervades the collection, and the author’s use of the cadences and slang of everyday street life gives the dialogue a feeling of dramatic realism and a sense of spontaneity. With every story leading up to a clear climax and some sense of resolution, for better or worse, the author shows that even those characters who have no real chance of avoiding the fates they see coming still wish for positive change, even if they have little hope. Dramatic, powerful, and frequently bizarre, this collection is just as often sensitive, delicate, and even subtle. Lovers of the short story will celebrate Barry’s latest achievement, one which shows all his talents to their greatest effect.

ALSO by Kevin Barry:  CITY OF BOHANE,     BEATLEBONE,     NIGHT BOAT TO TANGIER

Photos, in order: The author’s photo, by Bryan O’Brien, is from
http://www.irishtimes.com

Rural Killary Harbour, in this photo by Unukorno, may be found on  http://commons.wikimedia.org

Boyle Station, where Donie took the train every morning for twenty years, is seen in this photo by Ben Brooksbank on http://en.wikipedia.org/

The photo of Llandudno, from Great Orme’s Head, is by Nigel Swales.  It is here that seven men participated in the July Outing of the Ale Club. http://en.wikipedia.org/

The July Outing of the Ale Club visited pubs like this in Llandudno: http://www.albertllandudno.co.uk/

ARC:  Graywolf

Note: This novel was WINNER of the Salambo Prize for Fiction in Spain in 2001 and WINNER of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in the UK in 2004.  It was also NOMINATED for the IMPAC Dublin Award.

“There are no heroes in peacetime… no living heroes.”

In this unusual metafictional novel of the Spanish Civil War, author Javier Cercas experiments with the voice of his main character and with the form of this novel, which he describes as “a compressed tale except with real characters and situations, like a true tale.”  The unnamed speaker, a contemporary journalist in his forties, is investigating the story of Rafael Sanchez Mazas, a “good, not great” writer of the 1930s, who, in the final days of the Civil War (1936 – 1939) escaped a firing squad and lived to play a role in Franco’s Nationalist government.

Author photo by Joan Tomas for RandomHouse Mondadori

The speaker believes that “forest friends” may have helped Sanchez Mazas survive the end-of-the-war turmoil, and he becomes obsessed with locating them, identifying the Popular front soldier who chose not to reveal Sanchez Mazas’s whereabouts, and learning why these “forest friends” behaved as they did.  As he investigates the story of Sanchez Mazas and the complex political alliances of the Civil War, the speaker realizes that he actually knows very little about this complex war, “not much more than I know about the battle of Salamis.”

The speaker, who is obviously Javier Cercas himself, soon begins to expand the scope of his tale, investigating more than the facts about Sanchez Mazas and musing philosophically about the passage of time, the transience of youth, the dubious legacy of war, and the nature of heroes.  Wartime heroes live only as long as their friends remember them, and lives and memories are short: one must seize the moment and dance a paso doble in the time available.

Gen. Franco (left) with Rafael Sanchez Mazas (center) as they examine a document about the church’s role in fascism.

The complex history of the Spanish Civil War in the first part of the novel is slow, full of unfamiliar names, places, and political alliances, but as the story of Sanchez Mazas and the people involved with him unfolds, the reader gradually becomes involved with the action and warms to the speaker’s quest to learn everything he can about the incident in the forest.

The scenes near the end of the book, set in a nursing home, are full of touching and emotional realizations, conveying powerful, universal messages about war and heroes from one generation to another (and to the reader) without being didactic.

Cercas’s style is honest and full of self-mockery, though some readers may be put off by his syntactically complex sentences, which are sometimes a page long.  Focusing on what it means to be a hero, the novel is a tour de force in which the reader learns as much about the creative process of author Cercas as he does about the almost forgotten author Sanchez Mazas.

ALSO by Cercas:  OUTLAWS

Generalissimo Francisco Franco

Photos, in order: The author’s photo by Joan Tomas for RandomHouse Mondadori appears on  http://www.mediterraneosur.es

The photo of Gen. Franco and author Rafael Sanchez Mazas is from http://thetraditionalcatholicfaith.blogspot.com/ They are examining a document about the church’s role in the growth of fascism.

Gen. Franco’s photo may be found on http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

“Just as most climbers in the world have never got as far as the foothills of K2, you can work all your life without ever being on a case like this one. If this case had been cracked in the first weeks it would soon have been forgotten. For what is it that all legendary criminal cases in history have in common?…They took time. They were an uphill climb.” – Mikael Bellman, Chief of Police, Oslo

Cover for the international edition.

He’s done it again! With over twenty million copies sold, and over a dozen Nordic prizes and nominations for crime writing under his belt, Norwegian author Jo Nesbo is certainly at the top of his game, and this novel, which fans will almost certainly agree is the best one yet, is sure to win him even greater recognition and even more readers. The dramatic and terrifying teasers at the end of this novel also guarantee that devoted readers will be waiting in line for the next novel in this Oslo based series, which centers on the troubled and alcoholic Inspector Harry Hole and those he has worked with in the Oslo Police Department. In Phantom, the preceding novel, Harry Hole suffers grievous injuries, and this novel begins where that one left off.

Author Jo Nesbo. Photo by Ruth Fremson

(No spoilers here.) Officer Anton Mittet has been guarding a comatose patient in a private room in the basement of the Rikshospital for months. Even he does not know the name of the patient, who is “a potential witness…If he wakes up, he probably has the goods to bring down some important heroin dealers in Oslo. Plus he can tell us who was trying to kill him.” What the reader does know from the introduction is that “Isabelle Skoyen, the Councillor for Social Affairs at Oslo City Hall and Mikael Bellman, the newly appointed Chief of Police, hope they [will] never see him again. That no one [will] see him again,” a strange reaction, one might think, but one which readers of Phantom will appreciate (and which new readers will come to understand from the action which follows). When the patient appears to be coming out of the coma, panic sets in among his enemies and those who have much to lose.

The first murder occurs after a policeman is lured to a ski slope at night.

Many familiar characters appear in this novel – Beate Lonn, the head of Krimteknisk, who has a reputation as a kind of “Rain Woman,” thanks to the fact that she is one of only thirty people in the known world who has the ability never to forget a face; Stale Aune, a psychologist, who provides insights into the criminal mind and its motivations; Gunnar Hagen, head of the Crime Squad; Katrine Bratt, recently released from a stay in a mental hospital, a woman who is able to “see patterns where others see only chance”; and Bjorn Holm, an expert in forensics. All these officers have worked with Harry Hole, and as a series of new crimes terrorizes Oslo, they miss his iconoclastic approach to law enforcement and his willingness to flout the rules if that will ensure the right outcome.

Two characters here drive old Volvo Amazons, more than forty years old.

Both Kripos and the Crime Squad are collaborating here on a series of cases in which a serial killer is murdering policemen who have been unsuccessful in solving sensational murder cases in which they have been involved at some time in the past. Each policeman or investigator is murdered on the anniversary of that unsolved murder, and usually in the same location as that murder. The first policeman dies a grisly death at a ski slope at night, and the similarities between this death and a past unsolved case are immediately obvious to the investigators. Subsequent murders of police involve “sex, sadism, and the use of knives,” and frequently violence to the face with a blunt object. One murder may be a homosexual hate crime. As the pressure on Mikael Bellman, the new (and self-serving) Police Chief ratchets up, he and Isabelle Skoyen, the Councillor of Social Affairs at City Hall each try to protect turf by taking credit for some progress and blaming others for impeding it.

The Police College in Oslo, where several investigators have been teaching and where Silje Gravseng is a student.

As many new characters and suspects are introduced, Nesbo, always clever in creating bizarre details to make these characters memorable, also focuses on their psychiatric problems, using Stale Aune as the fictional mouthpiece to provide this information. Some of the crimes unfolding here are grotesque – even nauseating – and as pressure grows to solve these, the author shows how investigators from the lowliest newbie in the department to the very top of the hierarchy become desperate, even panicked, as they face their day to day lives. The biggest question is how the murderer gets a police officer to appear at the scene of the crime (and the scene of what becomes his/her own murder) on the date of a past murder which s/he has investigated and failed to solve,  a date s/he would certainly remember.

A postcard of Svolvaergeita in Lofoten, found in a suspect’s apartment, provides an important clue. Photo by Doug Pearson

Nesbo, always an author who enjoys surprising or shocking his readers, plays a wicked cat-and-mouse game with the reader which goes way beyond the usual suspense.  Giving the reader just enough information, he sets up overt expectations and encourages the reader to draw conclusions which match those of the investigators. Just when it looks as if some real progress will be made in the solution to one of the many crimes here, however, Nesbo suddenly jerks the reader around and shows how all the reader’s expectations are wrong, and certainly naive. It is a more show-offy style for Nesbo than we are accustomed to, and very quickly the reader decides not to be taken in again and to distrust every new piece of information. As the need to solve various crimes becomes greater, and the number of pages left in the book gets smaller, however, the reader begins to trust once again that some new revelation will match his/her own expectations regarding the ending of the book. And virtually every time, Nesbo will again jerk the chain and show how wrong we were to trust ourselves – and him.

Even for those who are new to Nesbo, this may be a can’t-put-it-downer, but I would suggest that the new reader begin with Phantom, so s/he fully understands the background and characters on which this novel depends. Amazon reviewers in the UK, where this novel was released a month ahead of the US release, have already shown that many newbies do love this novel. Those who have read Phantom, however, have a much greater appreciation for the characters and the author’s ability to devise a complex plot, tying up the loose ends for major crimes but leaving a few questions. In the case of this novel, there are major teasers in the last couple of pages which I suspect will guarantee the purchase of the next novel in the series.

ALSO reviewed here:  THE BAT,     THE REDBREAST,     NEMESIS,     THE DEVIL’S STAR,     THE REDEEMER,    THE SNOWMAN,     THE LEOPARD,     PHANTOM,      COCKROACHES (1998),      THE SON (2014),      BLOOD ON SNOW (2015),     MIDNIGHT SUN (2016),    THE THIRST (2017),     KNIFE (2019)

Photos, in order: The author’s photo by Ruth Fremson appears on http://www.nytimes.com

Night Skiing may be found on http://www.brokenriver.co.nz

A Volvo Amazon, more than forty years old, is the car of choice for two different characters in this novel: http://www.cargurus.com/

The Police College in Oslo, where some of the police, past and present, are instructors and where Silje Gravseng is a student, is from http://en.wikipedia.org Photo by GAD

The photograph of Solvaergeita in Lofoten is may be found on http://www.allposters.com/ Photo by Doug Pearson. A postcard of this scene in a suspect’s room provides a clue for the police.