BLACK SKIES by Arnaldur Indridason

Inspector Erlandur, the main character in Arnaldur Indridason's Icelandic police series, has taken some time off. While he's away, one of his team, Sigurdur Óli, never the most dedicated of crimefighters, takes the spotlight.

Sigurdur Óli has a friend who shocks the detective by revealing his wife-swapping behavior, then asks Sigurdur Óli to talk to a husband-and-wife amateur team of blackmailers and get them to knock it off. But when Sigurdur Óli goes to talk to them, he finds the woman has been beaten nearly to death and her home trashed. And Sigurdur Óli nearly gets his own head bashed in before the assailant takes to his heels. In the ensuing investigation, Sigurdur Óli does not quite reveal all the facts - trying to protect his friend, of course - to his colleagues and refuses to recuse himself from the case. The reader can safely trust that his failure to do so will come back to bite him in the derrière. 

While trying to track down the assailant, a homeless man, Andres, makes Sigurdur Óli the object of some mysterious declarations and sends the policeman a soundless 12-second filmstrip that shows a naked and terrified young boy. Sigurdur Óli can never pin down the constantly-in-motion Andres long enough to get direct answers, but then, even if he could, Andres's mental condition and habitually drunken state are not likely to improve his coherence. While Sigurdur Óli wrestles with these puzzles, he must also grapple with mounting personal issues including the break up of his long-term relationship and the revelation that his father has prostate cancer.

Throughout this series, Sigurdur Óli has never been a sympathetic character, and the same is true in this book. He is cold, cynical, callous, and profoundly snobbish. By book's end, the reader still may not like this character, but there will be dawning respect as his personal crises do cause Sigurdur Óli to spend some time in self-examination, and to find himself wanting -- and wanting to be better. In past books Sigurdur Óli has not been a hardworking detective, and his self-absorption and superior attitude have made him insensitive to nuances in witness statements. In BLACK SKIES, his sudden solitude makes him more willing to put in the hours: long, dull, thankless hours of legwork. His introspection awakens in him a new awareness that the people around him are people, not stereotypes. And his contact with the pitiful, broken Andres helps him toward a better understanding of why Sigurdur Óli is the way he is.

As bleak as this book is - and its title does it justice - as long as a character like Sigurdur Óli can begin finding greater humanity in himself, there is hope for us all.

RECOMMENDED but with the added caution that this book is at times so bleak that reading it in one sitting is not advised. Walk away a time or two, and maintain perspective.

PURGATORY by Ken Bruen

Oh, sure, I was prepared to like PURGATORY -- the book, not the concept -- from the outset. Ken Bruen? Jack Taylor? Wit and poetry and irreverence and, natch, violence? Just my cuppa.

But when Bruen introduces me to a quotation from Mark Twain, dissing Jane Austen? I went from pure reading pleasure straight on to literary paradise. No stops for purgatory -- the concept, not the book -- along the way.

Want to know what Twain said? Sure, you do. If you are as sickened as I am by the constant parade of cinematic pap for what amounts, IMHO, to little more than a collection of 19th-century soaps occasionally breathed on by the faintest breeze of humor, you want to know (if you don't already) what he said. And if you are one of the Army of Austenites, ready to take up teaspoonly cudgeons in her defense, you want to know, too, so that you might gird your loins for literary battle. So. What Twain said was:

'Any library is a good library that does not contain a volume by Jane Austen. Even if it contains no other book.'

You can't imagine my delight at reading that. Oh, Ken Bruen, how much I owe you for introducing me to that line! And knowing a bit about Twain, just enough really, it seemed likely that he had more than that to say about Austen's books. So I went looking and found, for the vindictive pleasure of we few, we happy few, we band of Anti-Austenites, this pair of nasty gems:

'I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
                             -- Letter to Joseph Twichell, 13 September 1898 

'To me his prose is unreadable -- like Jane Austen's. No, there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.
                             -- Letter to W. D. Howells, 18 January 1909

No, please, don't anyone send me any impassioned defenses of Ms. Austen's creations, or of any of the works that sprang (sprung? springed? spronged?) from them. It would be quite useless. Neither of us will persuade the other. Instead I will admit here and now to being a literary heathen. And I will continue to laugh every time I read one of Mr. Twain's remarks about her work. You may consign me, not to purgatory (the place, not -- you know), but directly to perdition if you like. I shall be happy to shake Mr. Twain's hand upon my arrival there.

Which locale, one muses, may be where Jack Taylor is heading. Anyone who has read much of the series probably thinks Jack has either already been to perdition or long been doomed to eventually end there. And yet, here in PURGATORY -- the book, not the other -- Jack seems to be managing his vices and character flaws better than he ever has; backsliding a bit now and again, but not only making a recovery, but wanting to make a recovery. Wanting to avoid the violence, the drugs, the booze, the cigarettes. Jack even manages not to immediately lay verbal waste to his arch-enemy, Father Malachy, when he discovers the ill-natured padre is reading FIFTY SHADES OF GREY. No doubt Jack is saving his barbs for his final downward spiral into perdition so that he has that one last feel-good moment before eternal damnation.

No, this isn't much of a review of Ken Bruen's fine book, is it? But what I said a few paragraphs back, about wit and poetry and irreverence and violence, that all holds true. This book is trademark Bruen in that, yes, his fans will find what they expect to find in a Jack Taylor book. And PURGATORY is also trademark Bruen in that his fans will find what they least expect to find as well. This is why Bruen is still the King of Crime Fiction in my universe.

RECOMMENDED.

THE PURITY OF VENGEANCE by Jussi Adler-Olsen

The fourth installment in the Department Q series finds police detective Carl Morck in the emotional throes stemming from new evidence in the case in which he lost one partner and another was left a quadraplegic. And his pangs may be more than emotional since much of the evidence damningly points at his involvement in the shootings.

And this is merely a subplot. The main plot has two branches, one of which grows from the cold case files Morck's team (comprised of the dangerous, mysterious, and oft hilarious Assad, and the multiple-personality plagued Rose) manages. Rose and Assad begin finding links between several missing-person cases: people who disappeared on the same day, people of differing occupations who came from different parts of Denmark but who all were in or were bound for Copenhagen when last seen, people who did not know each other but most of whom were known by an elderly, reclusive widow. The second branch of the plot involves a doctor, Curt Wad, whose medical ethics the reader will recognize as stemming almost directly from those of Josef Mengele. The less-than-good doctor is one of the founders and mainstays of the Purity Party, whose growing membership is chockful of right wingnuts, bigots, and extreme nationalists. Like the early Nazi party it so closely resembles, the Purity Party is secretive, elitist, and very, very dangerous.

The author does an admirable job of connecting the many disparate characters while sliding back and forth across more than four decades of story, though the backstory process goes on at some length and at the expense of the more sympathetic main characters. For such serious topics as eugenics, forced abortion and sterilization, rape, and murder, the story is fortunately leavened with a good deal of humor to offset the depressing banality of evil. That's good, yes, but the humor leans less on character and situation than in prior books, and more on basic bodily functions. An instance or two brings a smile to the reader, but after a time one begins to hope (in vain) for no further scatological revelations.

If this book has a serious flaw it is in the many villains the reader encounters. Dr. Wad is certainly a fine villain, and the primary example. He is cold, callous, intelligent while being obtuse, and horribly cunning. Yet the focus is continually pulled away to one of the many other villainous characters who, although evil enough in their own right, lack the mesmerizing quality of the inhuman doctor. I've long held that one single superb villain makes for a better story than a dozen such characters, and this book supports my argument.

Despite this, what makes the book an overall winner is the very nifty twist in the denouement, a Hitchcockian twist that this reader did not see coming, but should have as the author very fairly provided all the clues. And yet I have not felt so blindsided since the ending of the film, The Sixth Sense. The ending, plus the way the author made me feel that, no matter how populated the world is with evil, there is still hope; that as bad as things may be,  as wrong and unfair as the world can be, there is always, always hope - these things prompt me to RECOMMEND this book.

Robert E. Bailey, 1947-2013

The first check of my Facebook news feed today brought word of the passing of Robert Bailey, one of my favorite authors. I, and others, are deeply saddened by our loss. To Bob's wife, Linda, my deepest condolences. May the dear man rest in peace.

In memoriam, I am reposting an interview Bob granted this blog shortly after his initial diagnosis of glioblastoma in the summer of 2011.
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Hatchets, Fish & Detonics: An Interview With Robert E. Bailey

Robert E. Bailey is the author of the PI Art Hardin series. When Bob writes about PIs, he knows of whence he speaks: he did the job for twenty years, before the profession turned into little more than computer record searches. A Vietnam-era draftee, he retired from the military as a reservist and a field-grade officer. Bob's also an award-winning combat pistol shot. Guess I'm glad I only have good things to say about his books! Which, by the way, were all recently released in ebook format. You'll find the links below. You'll also find my review of PRIVATE HEAT here.

It's been my pleasure to correspond casually, off and on, over the last few years with Bob. I also had the great pleasure of meeting him in 2007 at the annual Ann Arbor Book Festival. Not only was he charming and funny, like his books, but he took the time to tour the festival with me, answering candidly every question I asked.

 In August, 2011, Bob was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a form of malignant brain cancer.  He underwent surgery in late August and is on his third round of chemotherapy. He has some mild aphasia but continues to work on a new novel. And if you know what aphasia is, you know what a struggle that must be for anyone, but especially for a writer. Still, you might never guess it from his responses to some questions I recently put to him.

Q: Your first book (PRIVATE HEAT) reads like a seasoned writer at the top of his game. Great pacing, characterization, and story arc. Is it true you had to be shot in order to get you to write this book? And did you consciously emulate any other writer? If not, what crime writers (if any) would you claim as your influences and/or favorites? 

Bob: I was injured working on an undercover job in so stupid a manner that I am embarrassed to tell you! I had to move my van, and running down the sidewalk, I broke my knee and ankle stumbling over a wheelchair ramp. I wish there was a better story! (I survived the better stories.) I was in a wheelchair before I could get back on my feet, and that took about a year. Hence, the first novel.

Thank you for the wonderful compliments. For the first novel, I was writing an homage to all the old writers that I enjoyed, specifically, Mickey Spillane, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler. I think Robert Parker deserves his own mention. My story was meant to thank them for all their great stories. Interestingly enough, PRIVATE HEAT was rejected twenty-three times by publishing houses, who said they had read it all before and we didn’t need another one.

Q: I've just finished rereading PRIVATE HEAT. There's a lot of humor and a good bit of action, yet there are many details that seem very authentic. Is it all fiction or did you draw on some real-life events? I'm thinking especially of the hatchet attack on PI Art Hardin by the woman he's been hired to protect. Anybody ever take a hatchet to you?

Bob: No one ever took a hatchet to me. I can remember certain folks armed with baseball bats, various lengths of pipe, and wooden beams, boards, and sign poles. Usually I didn’t allow angry people to get that close to me. Some mob types did shoot up my vehicle while I was in it.

Q: Say what?

Bob: I was pulling into a drive and a fellow put one 9mm in my windshield, one into my radiator, and one in my oil filter. Lucky for me a first bullet ricocheted off the window as I was driving upwards from the street.   The next two bullets were good but stayed in the engine.  Instead of stopping, I nailed the gas and the shooter departed in a pickup truck.  I chased him but I couldn't figure out why my car kept going slower and slower. While this happened thirty-five years ago, many of the men involved are still in the Detroit "business." We have made a peace of sorts.

Q: You have had an interesting, not to say exciting, career in government and private security. Would you care to fill in the details, and tell me which job was your favorite and why?

Bob: I liked undercover work, being close and working as one of the bad guys. (Maybe I liked that too much!) I usually got arrested with the criminals that I pretended to be. In court, they were usually surprised to find that I was a detective. I did surveillance in the Army and as a private detective. I worked as the director of security operations at Great Lakes Sugar and Warehousing. While I was there I also worked with World Investigations and Security Engineers, filling in on a part-time basis. When they tore down the Sugar Shack, I took a full time position for WISE as the supervisor of their western Michigan office in Grand Rapids. After I left WISE, I opened my own agency, and did film surveillance around the state for the government as a contractor as well as working for hire by private businesses. I really liked everything I did.

Q: Karen Smith, the young woman Art Hardin is hired to protect in PRIVATE HEAT, is a great character. She's a wonderfully funny mix: kind of street smart, kind of dumb, kind of cynical, kind of naive. A lot of heart to her. I was delighted when she reappeared in DEAD BANG (the third Art Hardin book). Where'd she come from?

Bob: Karen’s character reminded me of young ladies that I met in college and business. She is parts of many people that I knew. They could be very, very smart, but sometimes use their hearts instead of their heads.My next novel is close to being finished. It’s called Déjà Noir. It’s not about Art Hardin. It does involve a PI, together with cops and crooks. Each chapter is told in first person, from the point of view of a different character. Misty’s chapter will warm the hearts of Karen’s fans. This time you get to talk with the character personally.

Q:  Okay, other heroes carry Colts, Kimbers, Barettas, Smith & Wessons. Art Hardin is the only character I know about who carries a Detonics. I had never heard of the brand (even though Sonny Crockett carried one in a leg holster on MIAMI VICE). Why choose that firearm for him?

Bob: The Detonics Combat Master is small, and easier to conceal. And it’s still a .45. It’s a wonderful weapon for a pistolero, but not so good for the inexperienced shooter. I had one of the first Detonics they made. I always said it took two men and a small boy to lock and load.

Q: The last Art Hardin book, DEAD BANG, was published in December, 2006, so you've been out of the publishing world for several years now. Whatcha been up to? Your books are set in Michigan but I know that you moved south some time ago.

Bob: DEAD BANG ended up hidden in a drawer at the publisher, and my writing profession was stuck in there with it. They wouldn’t print DEAD BANG and would not take any more Art Hardin stories. The fact that I used Middle Eastern terrorists after 9-11 upset some people, who were afraid to print what I said in that book. My agent suggested that I write something else, but my wife, Linda, had died. I launched myself into rebuilding my house outside Grand Rapids — and sold Art’s house.

In 2006, my publisher was sold to Rowman & Littlefield, and DEAD BANG was taken out of the drawer. It was a little harder for me to get started writing again. I moved to Richmond [Virginia], and back among my writing friends, and started writing, but slowly. I worked for an armored car company, which took a lot of time. I married my second wife, Linda, too, in a bookstore! Linda and I have written a screenplay about an armored car robbery. Would love to see that one on the screen!

[Besides working on the new novel, Déjà Noir] I do have a new Art Hardin short story out, The Small Matter of Ten Large. It is available on Nook and Kindle, for 99 cents. I also found the first Art Hardin story that I ever wrote, which I wrote sitting on a surveillance in 1979! I would love to see that in print. If I get a chance I will go back to the fourth Art Hardin novel, which I had started and been unable to finish when my wife died. It’s called A Tisket, A Casket.

Q:  I know that recently your health has been in jeopardy. Is that something you care to talk about? 

Bob: While I was working on Déjà Noir, my words began to disappear. Within ten days, they were gone. Linda took me to her doctor — I didn’t have one — and her doctor sent me to the emergency room. I had a malignant tumor right in the speech and language area of my brain. I had a five-and-a-half-hour craniotomy on August 17, 2011. To many peoples’ surprise, I woke up and could walk and talk.

Q: I, and I know your other fans, too, wish you all the best. I am amazed and heartened by your spirit. How has your writing been affected by all of that? And is it hard to recapture Art's voice after so much time has passed since we last saw him in print? 

Bob: Writing was a little harder. I had to learn to read and write words that everyone else understood. For instance, you need to use a “cup” to order coffee. I spent half an hour writing “cup” over and over, trying to fix that word back in my brain. Some of the harder words took longer. Most interesting is that all of those words are in my head, but just don’t want to come out. Sometimes the wrong word comes out, like, these days, “fish” for any type of meat. And I don’t even like fish! Right after radiation I couldn’t read or write at all, and had trouble speaking for about two months. My spelling is still not what it once was. A page and a half takes me about four hours to write now. That’s a page and a half of work, but ten pages of rewriting! The book I’m working on is not about Art, but I think it would be easier to recover Art’s voice than to do the characters I am now writing.

Q: Your wife is also a writer. Do you give each other advice and criticism? And do either of you take it? 

Bob: Linda and I are the first persons to read each other's work. This is not always a happy discussion. Sometimes I may disagree tonight, and the next morning change my mind. Linda says that she is always happy about my critique. Sometimes this is not the truth; sometimes we bang heads. (I can only bang on one side now.) There is no point of discussion if we didn’t have sincere disagreement. Only that moves the work forward.


Q: The industry has changed significantly since your last book. Will you shop Déjà Noir to a publisher or will you take it straight to ebook yourself?

Bob: Linda and I have discussed what was best to do. I don't know that I will have two years to march the novel to publisher — and it's a year to get it printed. It seems that the best plan would be to go direct to ebook. We are thinking about it — first thing I have to do is get it done.

Thank you, Bob. If humor is a sign of grace, you have it in abundance. For those interested in reading more about Bob and his work, his blog is The Trials of an Aphasic Writer. For those who want to read his Art Hardin series, PRIVATE HEAT, DYING EMBERS, DEAD BANG, and The Small Matter of Ten Large are all available in Kindle format at amazon and in Nook format at Barnes & Noble.