A Delicate Truth.  John Le Carré.  2013.  Viking (Penguin).  Pp 310.  $37

Ken Strongman

‘A Delicate Truth’ is Le Carré at his best.  He poses moral dilemmas of the type that only the English can face with the right degree of intellectual and emotional squirming.  No quick wild west decisions here; rather, hours of agonizing about what to do as the balance between ‘what is right’ and self interest changes from moment to moment.

Some three years before the main ethical delicacies play out, a clandestine night-time mission is mounted in Gibralter, which is still, perhaps anomalously, part of English soil.  Involved are some American mercenaries and some British operatives on loan from special forces in that ‘we will disavow all knowledge’ way.  The mission has been mounted by a Junior Defence Minister who’s ambition has put him in the pocket of a very shady private defence contractor and some American muscular Christians.

The group is in the nominal charge of Kit Probyn who has been plucked from government department obscurity precisely because he is obscure and hence manipulable.  Meanwhile, not even the Minister’s private secretary, Toby Bell knows what is going on, although, having a sort of generalized suspicion that all is not right, he makes a nefarious tape-recording of an otherwise secret meeting involving his Minister.

Three years on and Kit Probyn has become Sit Christopher Probyn, having had a wonderful pre-retirement posting to the Caribbean and now lives in Cornwall with his wife.  Toby has risen in the civil service ranks to a fine position having spent the three years in overseas postings.  Then one of the British operatives involved in Operation Wildfire surfaces to say that all was not as it might have been; far from being successful, the mission had tragic consequences that have been covered up.

Toby is summoned to the Cornwall manor house by Sir Christopher and the moral dilemma fills his head.  On the one hand, his career and Probyn’s reputation is at stake.  On the other hand is the truth.  Overseeing all are some very powerful governmental forces.

Nobody does the confrontations between good and evil better than Le Carré.  This is a far cry from ‘The Spy who came in from the Cold’ and its many sequels, but very similar forces are at work.  The vast machinery of the British state manipulating the human cogs that make it function.  The assumption is that everyone is essentially self-seeking, but it is sometimes a misplaced assumption.

The language in which ‘A Delicate Truth’ is written exactly matches the subtlety of the intricacies it portrays.  This makes for a most satisfying few hours of reading.  There are even memorable, almost Shakespearian, comments the import of which lasts beyond the book.  For example, “Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue”.  Le Carré is a very fine writer and this is one of his best.

Fred Vargas

The Ghost Riders of Ordebec.  Fred Vargas.  2013.  Pp360. $36.99

Ken Strongman

To be clear from the start, Fred Vargas is a French woman, an historian by background.  “The Ghost riders of Ordebec” is the latest in her thinking person’s crime series involving Commissaire (equivalent to Superintendent) Adamsberg and his unlikely, quirkily talented crew of Parisian detectives.  Vargas’s novels are completely absorbing, this being the most compelling so far.

Adamsberg is drawn into three cases at once – at least he considers them to be cases, although his superiors might disagree.  A pigeon is found outside the cop shop, forlorn and malnourished, its feet having been tied together.  A wealthy industrialist is found burned to death in his car, a local tearaway being seen as the perpetrator – he has torched cars previously.  And Adamsberg is visited by a demure woman from Ordebec in the Normandy countryside, with a story that the ghost riders have been seen again in the woods by her daughter and have begun to seize and kill the locals.

The various plots thicken and interweave, more deaths occurring with complexities twisting their way onto every page.  But the plots, although very well contrived, are not what makes Vargas’s books unique in crime fiction.  Rather, it is character and atmosphere.

Adamsberg is so vague that his unfocused thinking barely reaches the level of intuition.  He is small, shabbily dressed and drifts through his life and work, but remains highly respected by his team.  Each of his detectives is flawed – lazy, unintelligent, rigid, having a sleep or a drinking disorder and so on.  But between them they have the skills to be effective.

Adamsberg is not unlike Mr Spock in Startrek.  He seems almost emotionless and so, therefore, do “The Ghost Riders” and Vargas’s other books.  The description of events is detailed, engulfing one into this somewhat odd world.  Although some of the events are extreme, they seem to occur in an almost passionless atmosphere.  People have feelings but they are described in a remote and somehow detached way.  And if the detectives are quirky, then those who live in the Normandy countryside demonstrate what quirkiness really is. The atmosphere that all this engenders is a delightful concoction of a good-humoured, tongue-in-cheek irony.

One cannot help becoming caught up in Adamsberg’s unusual world as he drifts from the pigeon to the torched car to the ghost riders and from Paris to Normandy.  All the while he is getting to know his son of 28 of whose existence he has only just become aware – perhaps the extreme of drifting through life. The son is curiously like the father.

Fred Vargas is a subtle writer who makes her characters fascinatingly believable.  Adamsberg is a wonderful creation but whether he would be tolerated in a real gendarmerie is another matter.

Ian Rankin and Rebus

Ian Rankin

Standing in Another Man’s Grave.  Ian Rankin.  2012.  Hachette. Pp458.  $36.99

Parts of this article are based on a telephone interview with Ian Rankin in September.  And a slightly different form of the article first appeared in the The Press Weekend Review, Christchurch, on November 3, 2012.

Ken Strongman

Ian Rankin has written many books, mainly of crime fiction.  Some have been stand-alone, others have featured Detective Malcolm Fox, but most have been centred around Inspector John Rebus, Rankin’s best known protagonist.  Rankin’s books have been translated into 36 languages, he has received four Dagger Awards from the Crime Writers’ Association and in 2004 received America’s Edgar Award.  At another level entirely, he has also received honorary degrees from five Universities and has been awarded the OBE.

Rebus:  ‘…a puzzle in which words are represented by a combination of pictures and individual letters…’  Historically ‘…an ornamental device associated with a person to whose name it seemingly alludes.’  (N.O.D.E.)  It was a very clever name to choose for a character that is definitely an intriguing puzzle although Rankin’s books are no ornamental devices.

John Rebus is a fine old-fashioned cop, but is also a decidedly awkward bugger.  He solves crimes but annoys nearly everyone he touches. Like so many memorable fictional detectives there is more than a hint of self-destructiveness about him and he cannot stop himself from a sort of cynical directness.  With Rebus there is no innuendo and no hidden messages; WYSIWYG, with brutal frankness.  Integrity abounds and comparisons are inevitable with Mankell’s Wallendar (more angst-filled)in Sweden, Nesbo’s Harry Hole (more self-destructive) in Norway and McBride’s D S Logan (grittier and tougher)in Aberdeen.  Interestingly, however, when Ian Rankin created Rebus, more than a quarter of a century ago, he had read very little crime fiction.  But he had long been intrigued by Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde.

Rebus is nothing like Rankin’s other Edinburgh cop, Malcolm Fox, who polices the police, particularly police like Rebus.  No-one likes an internal affairs man, but a few do at least respect Rebus.  And thinking of Edinburgh, the city is the other main character in Rankin’s books.  Read them and one comes to know Edinburgh without ever visiting it.

Rankin’s latest book, ‘Standing in Another Man’s Grave’ very cleverly brings Rebus back from his retirement, five years ago in “Exit Music”. This seemed like the end of the line for Rebus, 25 years after he began in “Knots and Crosses”.  But here he is again, even more like himself than ever, working as a civilian for the police, dealing with cold cases.  One of these cases begins to lead forwards rather than backwards, pointing to a series of disappearances.  Suddenly, Rebus has managed to inveigle his way back as a consultant to his old unit.  He is working for Siobhan Clarke, who used to work for him and whom, to some extent, he created in his own likeness.  She is therefore simultaneously very pleased and yet horrified to see him back, much as he would have been in similar circumstances.

Meanwhile, Rebus’s old nemesis, Edinburgh ex-crime boss Big Ger Cafferty keeps dropping round to see him to persuade him out for a pint.  This is exactly the sort of thing that makes Malcolm Fox (who also appears in this book) even more suspicious of Rebus than he already is.  Neither does it please Rebus much; he still treats Cafferty with a sort of contempt laced with a clear understanding of what drives him.

Rankin says that the idea for this book occurred to him well before he realized that he could bring Rebus back into it.  He wanted to write what he describes as a ‘road book’, one that concentrated on the A9, which runs up the length of Scotland.  He also wanted to explore the lives and motivations of parents who had lost a child in mysterious and unexplained circumstances.  He manages both in “Standing in Another Man’s Grave”.

Rankin’s way of bringing Rebus out of retirement was practicality itself.  He had him retire at a time when at 60 he had to retire because of the requirements of the Scottish police.  Then a few years later, as a cost (pension) saving exercise, they put the retirement age back to 65 or more.  So Rebus could not only be working as a civilian helper to the police, but could even apply for his old job.  This was just as well, because as Rankin puts it “It’s work that keeps Rebus going”

It is great to have John Rebus back and very clever of Rankin to have found a way to do it.  As much as anything, it seems to have been prompted by the death of Jackie Leven, a singer-songwriter friend of Rebus.  They had even toured and recorded a show together.  The title ‘Standing in Another Man’s Grave’ was inspired by one of Leven’s songs.   Rebus is clearly one of the great creations of crime fiction.  He is anarchic, maverick, independent, cynical, self-destructive, direct and because of all this, might seem flawed.  In short, he is the puzzle that his name suggests and which draws one inexorably to the next book.

As well as sheer, extremely well-written entertainment, Ian Rankin’s crime fiction is driven by his fascination with the nature of good and evil. The progression of his novels represents his exploration of the balance between the two and of the horrors that seem always to be there beneath the surface.  He even sees his city, Edinburgh, as representing this tension.  The tourist sees an elegant, nicely appointed city.  Under the surface, unspeakable things occur, as they do everywhere.  For which, we need Rebus to keep going.

Zane Lovitt

This review first appeared in The Christchurch Press on 15/9/12

The Midnight Promise.  Zane Lovitt. 2012.  Text Publishing.  Pp 283. $37.

Ken Strongman

The subtitle of ‘The Midnight Promise’, Zane Lovitt’s first book, is ‘A detective’s story in ten cases.’  There are indeed ten cases described for John Dorn, who styles himself as a private inquiry agent.  Mostly, the cases involve stuff-ups, either for the person in trouble, or for John Dorn or simply for life in general in the western suburbs of Melbourne.

Each case is unique and each involves one of life’s imponderables and yet they build inexorably to the final case in which John Dorn meets his midnight promise.  This final case is grittier than the others, but still revolves round some surprising puzzles.

The publisher’s blurb describes this as “The outstanding literary debut of the year”. Setting side the hyperbole that typifies such comments, this might well be the best first book to appear in Australia this year, and it is definitely interesting and unusual as an example of crime fiction, but ‘outstanding’? Almost.

John Dorn is a typical private eye, going from non-paying case to non-paying case, helping the abject and the bereft in the true Robin Hood style.  He has a seedy, run-down office, that, as his life worsens, eventually doubles as his living quarters.  He struggles to stop thinking about the woman to whom he was once engaged.  He struggles to remain un-envious of a successful layer friend who attempts to throw him crumbs of financial comfort.  Above all, he has a wryly self-deprecating view of life – the stuff of internal smiles rather than guffaws.

‘The Midnight Promise’ is, then, nicely amusing, particularly in the tortuous conversations that John Dorn has with his clients as he makes his slightly bemused way around suburban Melbourne. But its singularity comes from Dorn’s way of looking at life.  He sees merit where others do not, he sees angles that remain obscure to others.  In many ways, he gets himself into situations that beset all other fictional private inquiry agents, but for all the wrong reasons.  And it is this that makes the book unique.

The final puzzle for Zane Lovitt is what he will do next for John Dorn.  There have to be further cases. To predict their direction is hard, but they will be singular.  Lovitt is a new voice in crime fiction.

Chris Culver

This review first appeared in  the Christchurch Press on Saturday Sept 8, 2012

The Abbey.  Chris Culver. 2011. Sphere.  Pp391. $27.99

Ken Strongman

“The Abbey” is Chris Culver’s first novel and it is inevitable that it will prove to be the foretaste of a successful series.  There has been so much crime fiction written that it becomes increasingly difficult to find a new angle.  But Chris Culver has done it.

Ash Rashid is a former homicide detective now working for the prosecutor’s office and attending law school part-time.  As an Arab, he is also enshrouded in the Islamic faith and if possible has prayers twice a day with his wife and daughter.  But the strictures of his faith apart, he needs one or two quick snifters to get him through his day and uses a mouthwash to keep it from his wife.

In the way of crime fiction detectives, Ash is both tough-bodied and tender-hearted.  And he is driven in his battle with Indianapolis’s forces of darkness by his previous mistakes.  Why set the book in Indianapolis?  Well, as one of the characters says, it is only six hours drive from 50% of America’s population.  One always learns something from crime fiction, if such observations can be believed.

”The Abbey” of the title is a nightclub that caters to young would-be vampires in goth garb.  The drinking of phials of blood is part of this sub-culture.  The plot of the book revolves round an interplay between said phials and the import into the USA of other phials of a liquid, agua rica, that forms a stage in the process of making pure cocaine.  Along the way, young people, including Ash’s niece, are murdered; thus his involvement.

“The Abbey” is a fast, satisfying read with nefarious criminals, corruption in high places and some iffy members of the IMPD.  There is even a highly qualified female biochemist who essentially forms a modern version of the yellow peril. Murders are made to look like suicide or made to seem committed by the wrong people.  Ash Rashid walks on the edge of the law and at one point even manages to be arrested. He is a compelling new protagonist, an Islamic Dirty Harry with a prayer mat.