You may recall that I rather raved about the first J. Robert Janes novel that I read, Mayhem, featuring an unlikely pair of detectives from the Sûreté, Jean-Louis St-Cyr, and the Gestapo, Herman Kohler, set in Occupied France. I love the conceit of crime carrying on during the occupation, the developing relationships and respect between St-Cyr and Kohler as they find common ground against their enemies (sometimes from within their own systems), the damp and dank and depressingly realistic images of the City of Light in Nazi darkness.
Nevertheless, about, oh, I don't know, maybe 20 pages into the sequel, Carousel (1993, SohoCrime edition 1999), I found myself thinking, yes, but this one is worse than the first! Let me put it another way, for about 50% of this book, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON. Well, that's not fair, I do know that there were three (perhaps four) murders, a few more related deaths, a couple of possible rapes, a healthy dose of familial deceit, not to mention black market dealings, looting of luxury goods, Gestapo rafles (roundups) of hostages, and any number of people - French, German, others - looking out for themselves first and their country or cause second. I do know that our heroes are in it up to their necks, since no one trusts them after they turned up a murderous Gestapo colonel in the first book (at least . . . I think this is what they did). And I do know that Paris is dark, and damp, and hungry, god is it hungry, and the only people with enough to eat are the Germans.
Maybe I am getting old or slow or am just plain too stupid to have survived the labyrinth of loyalties that marks this world of German dominance and French collaboration. I cannot keep all the Germans and their departments straight, nor the various French factions (most of whom work for the Germans, in this story anyway). Janes' habit of referring to people and organizations obliquely, by the street name or the branch of service that they represent, for example, is a challenge if you can't remember that this group at this address follows that service, and so on. And I just find the idea of calling St-Cyr "the Sûreté" all the time, a bit contrived.
But I did have an ephiphany while reading a scene in which St-Cyr and Kohler are in with Kohler's boss at the Gestapo, Walter Boemelberg. I found myself thinking, if I could see what was happening, watch this scene play out, I'd know instantly what was happening. I'd have visual cues galore of uniforms, props, faces. Without that, it all jumbles together. So maybe Janes is a closet scriptwriter.
The fragmentation of plot works against a clear trajectory, but as was the case with Mayhem, there are beautifully written scenes that pop up now and again. As in that first book, St-Cyr visits his lady friends Chantal and Muriel, an elegantly aging couple who run a very high-end parfumerie and lingerie shop on the place Vendôme. They take him in for a few hours, feed him, bathe him, provide a new suit of clothes, offer any number of nubile young lingerie models should he wish for that kind of diversion, and provide valuable clues in the form of perfume identification and professional knowledge about the state of German-controlled silk supply chain. St-Cyr and Muriel spar over a sample.
"'Lemon grass' breathed the Sûreté [see what I mean?] with excitment. 'Rosemary and coumarin.'
'Yes, yes, don't trouble me,' she scolded.
The nose was flattish, the cheeks still strong - indeed all of Muriel's features exuded strength. But in perfumes and their concocting she had perhaps her only sign of weakness, apart from her friend and lifelong companion. The voice was one of gravel and incongruous in a perfumer. 'There is musk and civet in this and it has the anger, Jean-Louis, of a woman who knows her own mind and body. What we used to call a "fast" woman.'
'Sex . . . sex with many men,' whispered Chantal with great modesty.
'The civet is subtle, the musk has been used mainly to accent its sharpness. There is some Balsam of Peru, some sandalwood - she wanted those elements of mystery - the wildness of thyme as well. A woman of much abandon, Jean-Louis. One who teases, or did so, since she can longer be so young and foolish.'
'The cloves of Bourbon and a touch of sweet fennel?' he said, watching her every expression wiht all too evident admiration.
So loyal! Ah, Mon Dieu, it was at once tragic and elevating to see Monsieur Louis and Muriel exchange views like this. A sensitive man, an unmarried man now, a widower. Childless too. Another tragedy but for the best. Ah yes.
'The lime is for the acid with which she would turn each of her love affairs into bile.'
'Are you certain?' he asked. One could have heard a pin drop.
Muriel took a last breath of the scent. 'It was called Revenge, Jean-Louis, and it was made by a German in the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. Gerald Kahn. He died in an automobile accident in Cannes in 1926.'" (193-194)
Fantastique, eh? I love the tension, and again, this is a scene I can totally see playing out on screen. Would that they were all this contained and clear.
I don't know if I'll rush out for the next in this series right away. I need to recover from the hopelessly complicated final scene, which involves all the possible killers of all the dead people, and a few others as well. But I wouldn't mind smelling Revenge!
Showing posts with label J. Robert Janes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label J. Robert Janes. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Mayhem
Was it worth the hype? Yes, but it took a little longer than I expected to get there.
J. Robert Janes' Mayhem (Soho Press, 1992) is the first in a series featuring the unlikely combination of a Gestapo agent and a member of the French Sûreté, in occupied Paris, 1942. Why must they work together? Well, as Kohler (Gestapo) points out in his interview with the haughty countess (yes, a cliché, but well, it wouldn't feel right without them!), "Crime doesn't stop just because there's a war." (120) In other words, the Nazis are not stupid, mon ami. They know that they must retain elements of the French security apparati, if they want to maintain any sort of calm in the land they know rule. Most of the men (for they are really all men of course) who work for the Sûreté are all too happy to collaborate, being already anti-semites, power-mad, or just plain jerks. St-Cyr, one of Our Heroes (Kohler being the other) is not one of these. He tries to walk a very fine line between doing the job he's been trained for, and obviously loves - being a detective - and collaborating with the enemy who have deprived him of decent meals, good tobacco for his pipe, and his wife's affections. At one point he is targeted by the Resistance, and his German colleagues must help extricate him from a death sentence - which they do with their usual casual brutality.
So you see, it goes back and forth, back and forth. One minute you can comfortably hate the all Germans, but the next, one of them shows a surprising sensititivity to the terrible jurt they've caused to all of France. For every stereotypical screaming scarred SS General in his gleaming boots with his perfect Aryan henchmen, there's a Gestapo chief who worked with St-Cyr in Austria before the war, and who obviously saved him from certain arrest as the Germans entered the City of Light. The Germans, although the victors (so far), are also riven by their own divisions- the Wehrmacht was in charge of security in France, but was then replaced by the Gestapo, and what exactly the SS get up to, nobody really wants to know too much. So the Wehrmacht hate the Gestaop and the Gestapo don't trust the SS and everyone fears Berlin. This is their weakness, and its exploitation is a central element to the plot.
To emphasize this sense of never quite knowing who you can trust or even really what is going on (I had to read the bit on the different meetings with Sûreté, Gestapo, and Wehrmacht chiefs three times before I confirmed who was who), Janes employs a tricky narrative device of switching perspective constantly during any scene. At the start of the book, it is downright confusing if you are not paying close attention. Here's a short example, just at the start, when the first body is found on a road in Fontainebleau Forest:
"The Bavarian nudged the corpse with the toe of his right show but didn't look up. 'So, what about it, Louis?'
The accent was harsh, gutteral, the French quite passable because Hermann, being Hermann and stubborn, had seen to it that he spoke the language. One found out so much more that way. It facilitated things - all things. Gestapo things. Especially girls. [okay, this is obviously Kohler thinking]
St-Cyr chose not to answer immediately. ["chose" to me indicates that this is St-Cyr] A last leaf fell through the hush to crash into some boulders with its load of frost and scrape its way to patient rest.
Hermann took no interest in the leaf, in the beauty of its death, the curled edges, the ring of encrusting frost, not even the fact that the leaf was from a plane tree and that such trees were a rarity in this part of the Fontainebleau Forest.
Always it was blitzkrieg, blitzkrieg. December, 1942, the Occupation. Now the whole of France, as of last month. [I like Kohler for this, he's a little tired of the gung-ho Nazis, pleasures of Paris notwithstanding]
'We shall have to see won't we' he said at last. [you may think that is Kohler, because we've been listening to his inner dialogue briefly here, but it is St-Cyr!]
Accustomed to such delays [Kohler again], the Bavarian sucked on a tooth and snorted, 'It's one less Frenchman for us to worry about.'
Must he be so blatant? [St-Cyr again!] 'We've no evidence he was involved with the Resistance, Inspector. Perhaps . . . " (9-10)
So, you get a little sense. This kind of perspective shifting happens throughout the story, and delays one's settling in. Yet while confusing, I think it achieves a nicely unsettling tone that captures the essence of the time. We all know the Germans are in charge right now, and disobedience can exact a disastrous price. But the French, collaborators aside, are determined to undermine that dominance in ways large and small.
And I have to point out that being French, they are not immune to a good meal or glass of wine.
"'A family business,' said St-Cyr dreamily. 'The salt pork with lentils to your liking?'
'Too much,' sighed the Bavarian. 'That sausage and red cabbage . . . '
'And the paté, the bread, the green salad, and the leek-and-potato soup. If one strained credulity, Hermann, it's almost as it was before the war.'
The coq-au-vin had been superb." (100-104)
This meal also includes a Pouilly-Fumé of "truly remarkable vintage that [St-Cyr] had always found to his taste, a gunflint wine, though not of a gun or flints . . . " (100-104). Hermann can barely stay awake for his dessert of "Chantilly cream with baked pears and chocolate sauce with almonds." (104) Almost as it was before the war, bien sur.
Janes' writing has a few annoying tics - references to Kohler as The Bavarian feel forced after about one (is he a dessert?), and the French characters' constant use of the pronoun me, as in "me, I think," grates. This last may be done to make it all sound more French, (eh, moi, je pense que les Nazis . . . ). Mais alors, as St-Cyr is often saying to split the hair . . . the fine atmospherics, intricate plotting that really didn't give anything away, and intriguing joint protagonists, well, me, I can put up with the tics for another book in this series, I think.
J. Robert Janes' Mayhem (Soho Press, 1992) is the first in a series featuring the unlikely combination of a Gestapo agent and a member of the French Sûreté, in occupied Paris, 1942. Why must they work together? Well, as Kohler (Gestapo) points out in his interview with the haughty countess (yes, a cliché, but well, it wouldn't feel right without them!), "Crime doesn't stop just because there's a war." (120) In other words, the Nazis are not stupid, mon ami. They know that they must retain elements of the French security apparati, if they want to maintain any sort of calm in the land they know rule. Most of the men (for they are really all men of course) who work for the Sûreté are all too happy to collaborate, being already anti-semites, power-mad, or just plain jerks. St-Cyr, one of Our Heroes (Kohler being the other) is not one of these. He tries to walk a very fine line between doing the job he's been trained for, and obviously loves - being a detective - and collaborating with the enemy who have deprived him of decent meals, good tobacco for his pipe, and his wife's affections. At one point he is targeted by the Resistance, and his German colleagues must help extricate him from a death sentence - which they do with their usual casual brutality.
So you see, it goes back and forth, back and forth. One minute you can comfortably hate the all Germans, but the next, one of them shows a surprising sensititivity to the terrible jurt they've caused to all of France. For every stereotypical screaming scarred SS General in his gleaming boots with his perfect Aryan henchmen, there's a Gestapo chief who worked with St-Cyr in Austria before the war, and who obviously saved him from certain arrest as the Germans entered the City of Light. The Germans, although the victors (so far), are also riven by their own divisions- the Wehrmacht was in charge of security in France, but was then replaced by the Gestapo, and what exactly the SS get up to, nobody really wants to know too much. So the Wehrmacht hate the Gestaop and the Gestapo don't trust the SS and everyone fears Berlin. This is their weakness, and its exploitation is a central element to the plot.
To emphasize this sense of never quite knowing who you can trust or even really what is going on (I had to read the bit on the different meetings with Sûreté, Gestapo, and Wehrmacht chiefs three times before I confirmed who was who), Janes employs a tricky narrative device of switching perspective constantly during any scene. At the start of the book, it is downright confusing if you are not paying close attention. Here's a short example, just at the start, when the first body is found on a road in Fontainebleau Forest:
"The Bavarian nudged the corpse with the toe of his right show but didn't look up. 'So, what about it, Louis?'
The accent was harsh, gutteral, the French quite passable because Hermann, being Hermann and stubborn, had seen to it that he spoke the language. One found out so much more that way. It facilitated things - all things. Gestapo things. Especially girls. [okay, this is obviously Kohler thinking]
St-Cyr chose not to answer immediately. ["chose" to me indicates that this is St-Cyr] A last leaf fell through the hush to crash into some boulders with its load of frost and scrape its way to patient rest.
Hermann took no interest in the leaf, in the beauty of its death, the curled edges, the ring of encrusting frost, not even the fact that the leaf was from a plane tree and that such trees were a rarity in this part of the Fontainebleau Forest.
Always it was blitzkrieg, blitzkrieg. December, 1942, the Occupation. Now the whole of France, as of last month. [I like Kohler for this, he's a little tired of the gung-ho Nazis, pleasures of Paris notwithstanding]
'We shall have to see won't we' he said at last. [you may think that is Kohler, because we've been listening to his inner dialogue briefly here, but it is St-Cyr!]
Accustomed to such delays [Kohler again], the Bavarian sucked on a tooth and snorted, 'It's one less Frenchman for us to worry about.'
Must he be so blatant? [St-Cyr again!] 'We've no evidence he was involved with the Resistance, Inspector. Perhaps . . . " (9-10)
So, you get a little sense. This kind of perspective shifting happens throughout the story, and delays one's settling in. Yet while confusing, I think it achieves a nicely unsettling tone that captures the essence of the time. We all know the Germans are in charge right now, and disobedience can exact a disastrous price. But the French, collaborators aside, are determined to undermine that dominance in ways large and small.
And I have to point out that being French, they are not immune to a good meal or glass of wine.
"'A family business,' said St-Cyr dreamily. 'The salt pork with lentils to your liking?'
'Too much,' sighed the Bavarian. 'That sausage and red cabbage . . . '
'And the paté, the bread, the green salad, and the leek-and-potato soup. If one strained credulity, Hermann, it's almost as it was before the war.'
The coq-au-vin had been superb." (100-104)
This meal also includes a Pouilly-Fumé of "truly remarkable vintage that [St-Cyr] had always found to his taste, a gunflint wine, though not of a gun or flints . . . " (100-104). Hermann can barely stay awake for his dessert of "Chantilly cream with baked pears and chocolate sauce with almonds." (104) Almost as it was before the war, bien sur.
Janes' writing has a few annoying tics - references to Kohler as The Bavarian feel forced after about one (is he a dessert?), and the French characters' constant use of the pronoun me, as in "me, I think," grates. This last may be done to make it all sound more French, (eh, moi, je pense que les Nazis . . . ). Mais alors, as St-Cyr is often saying to split the hair . . . the fine atmospherics, intricate plotting that really didn't give anything away, and intriguing joint protagonists, well, me, I can put up with the tics for another book in this series, I think.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Seasonal Reading
Is crime fiction a dish better served in the fall and winter? Looking over some past posts I find that most of our heroes of late have been depressed and depressing (Rebus, Zen, Quirke). I'm just starting J. Robert Janes' Mayhem, much beloved in historical crime circles, and I see no letup from this theme in one of his protagonists, St-Cyr. I'm just getting to know Kohler, St-Cyr's reluctant partner in Occupied France criminal investigations, so hard to know if he is depressed or just dense, like a fox. It's hard to wallow pleasurably in their darkness when it is so darn nice outside, and you are grilling some dinner in anticipation of eating on your lovely deck in the middle of your surprisingly-lush-for-the-almost-city neighborood. Somehow one just doesn't have the patience for crime that winter brings.
There is also a new Andrea Camilleri out, that is winning a lot of awards. Given that it is pretty much always hot in Sicily, it may be time to check that out. And, I've got the last of Colin Cotteril's great Siri Paiboun series, which, being set in Laos or southeast Asia more generally, may provide more climat-suitable crim reading for the summer.
There is also a new Andrea Camilleri out, that is winning a lot of awards. Given that it is pretty much always hot in Sicily, it may be time to check that out. And, I've got the last of Colin Cotteril's great Siri Paiboun series, which, being set in Laos or southeast Asia more generally, may provide more climat-suitable crim reading for the summer.
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