Valuing the idea that “keeping it simple” is important to the success of mystery stories, author Marco Malvaldi draws deliberate parallels between the conclusion in Leonardo Sciascia’s, A Simple Story, in which the main character suddenly finds “where the light switch is,” the clue that allows him to solve the entire mystery, and the final resolution in Malvaldi’s own Game for Five, as bartender Massimo Viviani suddenly solves the murder of a young woman. Simple deductions have been the key to his success. This short, uncomplicated, and often very funny novel depends for its success on more than the mystery itself, however. Quirky characters, three of them in their mid-seventies and one in his eighties, gather regularly at Massimo’s Bar Lume to pass the time playing heated games of briscola and gossiping about everyone and everything in a coastal community outside of Pisa. Massimo, the thirty-ish bartender/owner at the Bar Lume, humors these characters, often joining in their card game as a fifth player when times are slow, and chatting and sharing their lives with them, valuing their commentary on all subjects and offering his own, sometimes contrary observations to keep things lively. The solution to the mystery, which is delayed till the very end, is almost unimportant to the fun of the book. It is Massimo’s point of view which carries the novel – his comments about life in the town, about its people, and about Italy, reflect his good nature and his never-failing sense of humor, making this novel closer to comedy than to noir.
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If the title of this book doesn’t pique your curiosity from the outset, the photo of the author in Eskimo dress probably will. The astounding ironies – the contrasts between what we are seeing in the author photo vs. what we expect when we see someone wearing traditional Eskimo (Inuit) dress – are only the first of many such ironies as Tete-Michel Kpomassie, a young man from Togo in West Africa makes a journey of discovery to Greenland. For the first sixty pages, the author describes life in Togo in lively detail, setting the scene for his lengthy journey from Togo to Copenhagen to get a visa for Greenland, an autonomous country within the kingdom of Denmark. As he travels over the next ten years through Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Mauritania, before arriving in Marseille, Paris, Bonn, and eventually Copenhagen, he clearly establishes his background and experiences and the mindset and cultural background he will be bringing with him when he finally gets to Greenland. With a wonderful eye for the telling detail, Kpomassie becomes real, a stand-in for the reader who will enjoy living through his journey vicariously. The people he meets not only represent their culture but emerge as individuals through their interactions with him. Despite language differences, he is able to communicate and share their lives, and because of his honesty and his curiosity about their culture, he makes many friends in Greenland – and with the reader who shares his enthusiasm for discovery.
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The vibrantly descriptive opening lines of this novel set in Nairobi, Kenya, introduce a chapter that is a textbook example of good writing, drawing in the reader, establishing an atmosphere, suggesting character, hinting at a father’s relationship with his son, and presenting a familiar scene in which that child is just itching for his first bicycle. By the next page, the author has created a much broader, more dramatic context for these characters, expanding the setting, placing this small episode in the context of the larger community, and suggesting ominous new directions for the action. In less than three hundred words, I was hooked. The author’s writing is so confident that I, too, became confident that this debut novel would deliver a well-wrought story with well-developed characters within the fraught atmosphere of Nairobi in 2007, and that it would do so with style and intelligence. I was not wrong. Author Richard Crompton, a former BBC journalist who now lives in Nairobi with his family, understands the city’s social, economic, and political conditions and reveals them through his precise descriptions, his insights into his characters’ motivations, and his appreciation of the tribal loyalties and conflicts which affect virtually every aspect of daily life within this complex society. The main character, forty-two-year-old Police Detective Mollel, has been a national hero for his selfless actions during one national emergency, but he is now a pariah within the department for challenging his superiors and often expressing his rage at the lack of “justice” he sees in society. He is called upon to solve the murder of a prostitute, just as the violent 2007 elections are about to take place.
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This can’t-put-it-downer of novel about the interconnected lives of a disturbed family excites and unnerves the reader at the same time that it puzzles and sometimes terrifies with its eerie atmosphere and constant sense of imminent doom. A coming-of-age novel with a twist, it reveals the trials of a young boy, age six when the novel opens, constantly moving through dark locales in and around Copenhagen with his father, who is obviously hiding a terrible secret, not only from the boy, who is never named, but also from everyone else. The boy and his father clearly love each other and want to help each other, but they are constantly moving, and their lives are always changing with the father’s succession of oddball, low-paying jobs. Filled with surprises, the action in this novel is non-stop, and many readers will be unable to put down the book, once they get into it. The sense of menace throughout contrasts with the intrinsic “niceness” of the boy allowing the reader to wish fervently for his success while fearing the worst. The author releases information and paces his dramatic moments effectively so that there are no “dead spots” in the novel. Past and present overlap, often converging unexpectedly and then veering in new directions to provide new information. The author is so good at controling his tone and the sense of atmosphere, that it may not be until the conclusion that readers will begin to wonder about some of the “reality” here and whether it actually makes sense. Outstanding novel which defies genre.
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Otto Steiner, an Austrian whose diary from July, 1939, to August, 1940, forms the basis of this novel, is not worried here about any imminent danger because of his Jewish descent. Few people even know of his Jewish background because he has never practiced any religion, and he is not really concerned much with politics. He is a “pariah,” however,” because he is dying of tuberculosis and is confined to a sanatorium, not allowed to mix with the general population. As author Raphael Jerusalmy develops Steiner’s story, he incorporates many details of Steiner’s daily life in the sanatorium, along with the variety of people who live and work there, all drawn together because of a terrible illness and not for political or religious reasons. Jerusalmy uses Steiner’s personal isolation and his pre-occupation with his terminal illness to provide a new slant on events in Austria, 1939 – 1940. By limiting Steiner’s “world” to the sanatorium, his illness, and his dedication to music, the author avoids repeating details (and clichés) so common to “Holocaust novels.” When Steiner is visited by his friend Hans, who, like Steiner, is a writer about music and a critic, he learns that Hans has been preparing the program for the next Festspiele, set to occur in Salzburg in late July, 1940. The audience will be primarily Nazi officials and military. The entire music program, usually heavily Mozart (an Austrian), has been changed into a propaganda tool by the German occupiers, and he wants Steiner to help him by writing the program notes. Steiner is galvanized by this news and finally realizes that “Mozart must be saved.”
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