The Dying Detective – An Unrelenting Sleuth and a Cold Case

"Make the best of what you’ve got, don’t complicate things unnecessarily, and hate coincidence."

Swedish crime author Leif GW Persson is a retired professor of criminology (and a renowned psychological profiler in Scandinavia). His fictions have won the Best Swedish Crime Novel Award three times and also the Glass Key Award (annual award given to crime novel authors of Nordic countries). The Dying Detective (published in 2010 and translated to English by Neil Smith) features his ageing sleuth Lars Martin Johansson, once head of the National Criminal Police and known as the hero-cop who could see around the corners, but now retired and bored of his passive existence. The 67-year-old Johansson’s beloved wife, Pia (twenty years younger than him) works at the bank, while he roams around the city chatting with his retired colleague and best friend, Bo Jarnebring, and business-minded big brother, Evert.

Early in the novel, when Johansson is about to bite into spicy sausage, he just bought from a hot-dog kiosk, he has a stroke. The alert police offers eating out at the hot-dog stand rushes him to hospital, where he is put under the care of Doctor Ulrich Stenholm, who is greatly concerned about his weak heart and high blood pressure. While the doctor advises Johansson to get more exercise and go for good, green food, she also kind of triggers Johansson’s dormant detective instincts. Dr. Stenholm tells Johansson about the 25-year-old unsolved rape and murder case of a 9-year-old girl named Yasmine Ermegan. The doctor is haunted by this cold case because she heard about some undisclosed details regarding Yasmine’s brutal murder, from her father in his death-bed. Johansson is immediately intrigued by the case, and calls his friend Jarnebring for help, who actually was in charge of investigation of Yasmine's murder case in 1985.

While lying in the hospital bed, Johansson goes through boxes of case files, piecing out all the little details surrounding the little girl's murder. His former colleagues at the force are happy that their former boss is on the case though the statute of limitations has run its course. The investigation is also related to Johansson’s physical and mental recovery. Upon returning home, he keeps up his appointment with physiotherapist and cardiologist although he has a tough time confirming to the strict diet. He sneaks up a meal stuffed with cream sauce, and furtively gulps a glass of vodka. He has to adjust himself by walking with the help of crutch, and put up with dizzy spells, random pains in the chest, etc.

A tattooed, impertinent care-taker, Matilda and a beefy helper, Max are appointed to take care of him. But Johansson uses them to run his errands on the case. Matilda helps Johansson with google searches, whereas Max drives him around for face-to-face interviews with people related to the case. Of course, Johansson finds the killer, but it only presents him with more problems and more stress. As Max says, his boss is a good man, but ‘an evil man was eating him from inside’.

The Dying Detective is the eighth book in the Johansson & Jarnebring series, which also briefly refers to the character of Evert Backstrom (a rude, irascible, and funny detective who is the chief character in a series of Persson’s novels). The title is a nod to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Mycroft Holmes, the smarter older brother of Sherlock who solves mysteries without leaving his armchair. The novel is painstakingly detailed, balancing between unsavory, chilling details of the case and daily routines of the old detective after a near-death experience. Persson includes ample dose of black humor and social commentary to not get overwhelmed by the somber mood. The writing is very smooth and the interplay between characters is mostly entertaining. The novel doesn’t boast any great, unpredictable twists, but the very effective characterizations give the narrative a unique flair. The themes of justice and truth are well-handled; Johansson’s commitment to law is particularly fascinating. Once the killer’s identity is revealed, the book loses a bit of momentum. Yet the intriguing lead character keeps us engaged throughout.  

Death Notice – A Fairly Entertaining Chinese Crime Fiction that Lacks Finesse and Depth

Published in China in 2014 and sold over 1 million copies, Zhou Haohui’s crime thriller fiction, Death Notice was translated to English in 2018 (by Zac Haluza) and enjoyed great reception in the US, reserved in the recent years to high octane Scandinavian and Japanese crime fictions. Death Notice is the first installment in a trilogy of novels, which follows a team of detectives attempt to track down a highly intelligent vigilante, carrying the code name Eumenides (deities of vengeance in Greek mythology), who sends death notices to people he thinks have slipped through the hands of law.

The novel is set in the city of Chengdu in the year 2002. Eighteen years earlier (in 1984), police sergeant Zheng Haoming was part of a covert task force that investigated the murders of then Vice-Commissioner of Chengdu police, Xue Dalin and two police academy students. The students perished in an explosion, whereas the Vice-Commissioner was murdered in cold-blood. Death notices were found at the crime scene; the executor mentioning the punished ones’ crimes. The task force, however, has failed to nab the criminal and the crimes weren’t repeated. But in 2002, Zheng receives an anonymous message that makes him feel the killer has returned.

Few days later, Zheng is lying in a pool of blood, his throat slashed. He is found by Pei Tao, a captain stationed at a small county named Longzhou. Pei has received a message from Zheng, urging him to meet Zheng at his house. Interestingly, Pei like Zheng was connected to the 1984 murders. Initially a suspect, Pei was friends with the two students who died in the bomb explosion; one his lover Meng, and the other his best friend Yuan. The official version is that having first seen the death notice issued toYuan, Meng rushed to rescue him. While trying to defuse the bomb strapped to Yuan at an abandoned warehouse, they both died. However, there are few discrepancies and mysteries surrounding the case that has haunted Pei’s mind forever.

Meanwhile, the task force set to hunt down Eumenides is reformed, now headed by Captain Han Hou. Pei is also part of the team alongside Special Police Unit (SPU) captain Xiong, a geeky technology expert, and a gifted plus beautiful psychologist Mu Jinayun. This time around Eumenides get bold and start to directly challenge the police force. Unlike the 1984 murders, the vigilante gives his death notice in advance. He names the victim, their crimes, and the date he is gonna commit the act. Considering the resources at their disposal, the task force wonders about the validity of these notices. But they soon witness their enemies’ formidable nature and the meticulousness of his/her plans. As Eumenides’ elaborate plan for delivering justice begins to unfold the police just get stringed along.

The thrills of Death Notice are well conceived, although the language feels too cliched or unappealing at times (don’t know if the problem lies with translation). The novel doesn’t offer much of crime fiction tourism as in the novels of Keigo Higashino, Hideo Yokoyama, Jo Nesbo, Arnaldur Indridason, etc. The cultural descriptions are largely absent and social commentary rears its head now-and-then in the book with the story alternating between pent-houses of the rich and the dirty shacks of the poor. Nevertheless, the social commentary isn’t very specific to China. The justification provided by vigilante for his actions is very common and lacks depth (emotional or intellectual). 

Death Notice has got intriguing set-pieces. We feel the thrill when the police are left to run like the rat in a maze. But the revealed truths weren’t as convincing, since much of the characters here aren’t developed a bit. Everyone from Pei to Mu just remain as functional characters throughout. They do good bit of detective work, but there’s nothing to make us root for their survival. The logic and motive of the killer is also underdeveloped and sounds ridiculous.

Overall, Death Notice had a great start that made me wonder when the next two sequels will be released in English, but the later-half of the novel got rid of this eager anticipation I had for the sequels (still I hope the sequels are really good).

Newcomer – Yet another Cleverly Plotted and Emotionally Involving Keigo Higashino Mystery

“Aren’t you supposed to be investigating her murder, Detective?”

“Oh, I am investigating the murder; of course I am. But my job as a detective should go beyond that. People who’ve been traumatized by a crime are victims, too. Finding ways to comfort them is also part of my job.”

I love reading Keigo Higashino mysteries from the time I first read The Devotion of Suspect X. His simple, to-the-point prose (translated by Alexander O. Smith or Giles Murray), his attention to details, the way he generates deeper questions out of seemingly insignificant actions, and his fly-on-the-wall observations of the idiosyncrasies of Japanese culture and society are all my favorite aspects in the tales of mystery master. Moreover, there’s unparalleled humanist quotient in his novels which most of the procedural authors drop off in an effort to construct a ‘cerebral’ mystery. Higashino’s whodunits or howdunits does possess an inscrutable crime and an ever-deepening conundrum at its center, but what I eventually take away from his tales are the moments of grace and humane gestures which gives off the feeling that an order is restored and the chaos of reality temporarily averted. 

Newcomer is the eighth novel in his Detective Kyoichiro Kaga series (published under the title ‘Shinzanmono’ in 2009). But it’s only the second Kaga series novel to be translated to English (in November 2018 by Giles Murray), following Malice. Kaga is an eccentric sleuth who despite his uncharacteristic clothing sense (a blue short-sleeved shirt over a t-shirt) is good at tracking down the truth using his Holmesian skills. While his methods are laser-focused, Kaga is also very good at discerning people’s emotions. In Newcomer, Kaga is recently transferred to the Nihonbashi precinct, a district in Tokyo where old and new Japanese culture intersects. The story sets in motion when another newcomer to the district is murdered in her apartment (strangled to death). Forty-five year old Mineko Mitsui, a divorcee living by herself, is the murder victim. Teamed with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, Kaga scrutinizes every aspect of the woman’s lives, starting with the people she met or called on the day of her murder to the objects found in her small apartment.

Newcomer is structured in the form of (eight) intricately connected vignettes, each answering the different strange aspects in the case and eventually points to the perpetrator. Kaga’s investigation first unfolds by him tracing the truth behind little discrepancies surrounding the case. An insurance agent’s lie, a man who has supposedly the last person to visit Mineko, takes Kaga to a rice-cracker shop run by an ailing old lady and her caring motherless granddaughter. A wasabi-spiked sweet pastry found in Mineko’s apartment brings Kaga to investigate the restaurant’s owner. Most of the vignettes are seemingly unrelated to the central mystery of Mineko’s killing. Yet by solving these mysteries, Kaga gets to know the area (like us readers). The wit and humanity of all these shop owners, apprentices, and clerks whom Kaga repeatedly investigates (or nags) keeps us thoroughly hooked, even though it is only in the second-half of the novel, Mineko’s recent past and possible motives for her murder are explored. And in each episode, Kaga comes off as the guardian angel bearing good news. Since the Japanese family dynamics revolve around some unwritten rules of etiquette (where lot of things are left unspoken), the truth Kaga unearths comforts these disparate set of people.

Few of the episodes (especially towards the end) could be accused of being too sentimental. But most of these stories of failed relationship, unexpressed love, and sacrifices carry the scope of mystery/crime novels beyond gory details and last-minute twists. At its core, Newcomer is a microcosmic as well as a dramatic examination of the Japanese family dynamics, the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of it. Adding to the fun is the author’s portrayal of the uniqueness of Nihonbashi district (it’s social and cultural relevance).Kaga’s impressive observational skill generates one intriguing small mystery after another. And every time we think of a loose-end, Higashino comes back and ties it all neatly (up until the last page). Some of the answers to the mysteries in Higashino’s novels may seem mundane or too simple (considering the built-up). But the author’s stories are never boring and offers good emotional payoff (especially for a procedural about solving crimes).

 

The Big Sleep – American Detective Fiction at its Most Seductive

“What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that.”

Philip Marlowe -- the sardonic, morally ambiguous, and occasionally chivalrous fictional private detective created by American novelist Raymond Chandler -- came into existence with the 1939 hard-boiled mystery The Big Sleep. It is easy to understand Marlowe’s enduring, universal appeal: a world-weary loner and outsider who withhold certain moral codes while fighting against deep corruption and cirme. At the same time, this archetypal detective character of Depression and post-Prohibition era dabbles with a kind of unique Americanisms that has turned him into an iconic figure of American imagination (like the ‘noble Cowboys’ of Western genre, ‘Superman’, etc). Before Philip Marlowe, of course there were Dashiell Hammett’s archetypal gumshoes like the unnamed Continental Op (‘Red Harvest’) and Sam Spade (‘The Maltese Falcon’) who also scored high in terms of sarcastic repartee and ‘quote-worthy’ street-slang. However, Chandler’s universe emphasizes more on the atmosphere (the elaborate, unwinding prose beautifully sets up the mood) while it’s a bit light on mystery.

The Big Sleep’s insanely convoluted plot opens with a crippled, dying oil baron General Sternwood hiring the L.A. PI Philip Marlowe to handle a black-mailing scheme directed against the younger of his two troublesome daughters, Carmen Sternwood. Marlowe follows the ‘polite’ black-mailing note to a bookstore run by Arthur Gwynne Geiger. What starts off as a simple case of blackmailing, however, turns complex as two murders happen in quick succession (one of them is Geiger) and Marlowe get deeply pulled into intricate schemes of kidnapping, pornography, corruption, and extortion. Guns are often waved at Marlowe but the guy mostly bluffs his way around without getting fired at. The seedy city and its inhabitants keep throwing curve-balls at him. Even so he keeps himself composed, makes peace, and remains content with making $25 a day.

The Depression-era classic pulp fictions of Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Raymond Chandler later influenced the visual mood and narrative schemes of the misanthropic war-time and post-war Hollywood crime features, which was addressed as ‘Film-Noir’ by the French critics. Chandler’s second Philip Marlowe novel ('Farewell, My Lovely') was the first to be adapted into a movie titled ‘Murder, My Sweet’ (1944). Dick Powell played the central character. But it was Humphrey Bogart’s wry, cool persona that worked perfectly for the on-screen avatar of Marlowe in Howard Hawks’ 1946 adaptation of The Big Sleep (Elliott Gould was equally great in his turn as Marlowe in Robert Altman’s 1973 adaptation of ‘The Long Goodbye’; Robert Montgomery, James Garner, and Robert Mitchum are some other actors who have portrayed Marlowe in films).

The Big Sleep could be relished for Chandler’s linguistic flourishes, his suave non sequiturs, and distinctly poetic evocation of the atmosphere. The first-half of the novel is lot troubling to follow as we constantly try to piece together each character’s angle, how they are connected to each other, and what their part is in the larger mystery. Geiger, Joe Brody, Owen Taylor, Lundgren, Eddie Mars, Harry Jones, Canino --- these names are repeated throughout the narrative and it took me sometime to understand who’s who and their tangled personal histories. The same problem afflicts Hawks’ movie adaptation too. It was said that Howard Hawks sent Chandler a telegram questioning ‘whether Owen Taylor, the General’s chauffeur, was murdered or he committed suicide?’, to which Chandler replied, “Dammit I didn't know either”. Yes, some of the mysteries aren’t answered, and if these loose ends are resolved it wouldn’t matter much since the answer to central mystery happens to be quite simple. The movie version of The Big Sleep, nevertheless, gained classic status due to Hawks’ meticulous direction and the presence of seductive central pair (Bogart and Bacall). 

Humphrey Bogart and Lauran Bacall in Howard Hawks' 1946 movie adaptation

 Likewise, Chandler’s novel despite all the convolutions is immensely enjoyable due to the terse dialogues and the manner with which the cagey and calculative Marlowe smoothly handles array of crazy situations. At some point in the novel, Marlowe emphatically declares, “I'm not Sherlock Holmes or Philo Vance. I don't expect to go over ground the police have covered and pick up a broken pen point and build a case from it….” This pretty much suggests how the heroes of the era's hard-boiled fiction are wildly different from the idealized fictional sleuths (like Holmes or Hercule Poirot) since the social context of Chandler or Hammett repeatedly state how crime and corruption are very much in the fabric of society or governing bodies. Hence Marlowe, like his other hard-boiled detective counterparts stay morally ambiguous and understand that the world is possibly irredeemable. Overall, The Big Sleep is a riveting, preeminent novel of hard-boiled detective fiction that still holds up today.