Crooked Heart

As a rule, I avoid stories that involve children in distress.  Since becoming a parent, such stories cause irrational anxiety.  Having heard an interview with Lissa Evans, I guess I knew that such a child was at the center of Crooked Heart (HarperCollins, 2015) - it revolves around a boy evacuated from London during the Blitz - but somehow it came across as a little lighter.  And the story does, ultimately, delight and uplift and sadden.  It is a rare book that can hit that sweet spot.

A child's pain is a necessary part of the story in Crooked Heart.  After the death of his beloved godmother, Noel Bostock is evacuated to the countryside right before the bombing gets bad in London.  You wouldn't necessarily call Noel Our Hero, because he's not conventionally heroic, seeing as how he helps his evacuation host perfect a scheme to scam patriotic Britons into giving money to their various non-existent widows and orphans funds.  Yet he has a sharply defined moral code - that would be the Heart of the title - which pushes the story into more thoughtful territory.

We've all heard of the heroic Britons, who stood up to the Nazi threat with stiff upper lips, a sense of humor, and polite queues.  All that is here, but in addition . . . everyone is on the make, and it is OK!  Pretty much every character here has his or her little private method of bending the rules, getting ahead, making a bit on the side.  Everyone is able to justify their actions, at the same time that they might threaten to reveal those of others.  But where does it end?  There is a spectrum along which such activities fall and to a child, for that is what Noel is despite his preternatural intelligence (not necessarily mature, just wicked smaht), the place of all the various activities going on in this novel are crystal clear.  One action, perpetrated by an air raid warden, outrages Noel and is the cause of the more dramatic events of the last third of the novel.

Noel tries to explain to his teacher, Mr. Waring.

  "'There's been an injustice.  Someone took some things from someone else and the person who took the things ought to get punished and the person who lost the things ought to get them back again, but the only other grown-up who knows what happened won't actually do anything about it.'
  'Why not?'
  'Because she - because this other grown-up is afraid of getting into trouble for doing something else.  Something that isn't nearly as bad as the other thing.'
  'A venial as opposed to a mortal sin?'
  'Yes.  If "venial" means "not nearly as bad".'
  '"Pardonable" would be the definition.  Have the victims of this different sort of badness offered their pardon?'
  Noel paused.  'The victims don't actually know that they're victims,' he said.
  'They don't?'
  'No.'
  'Well now . . .' Mr Waring clasped his hands together and clicked the knuckles like press-studs.  'That would be what we'd call a moral dilemma.  Is a crime any less wicked because its victims are unaware of its perpetration?'
  'Yes,' said Noel, with certainty.  No one who had contributed to Vee and Noel's charity-box had ever been carted off to an asylum, screaming that they'd been robbed.  'So now something really bad - a mortal sin - isn't being rectified.  And it ought to be.  It ought to be.'"  (171-172)

Mr. Waring is more perceptive than Noel thinks.  In fact, he seems like a rather good teacher, shepherding a class of mostly numbskull 10 year-olds with some wit and insight.  Noel stands out from that pack as only the fiercely brilliant ones ever do:  ostracized for the most part, not really to their dismay, happy to wrap themselves in their superior intellect as a barrier against contact with lesser peers.  And yet - he is ten.  So his interactions with adults swing between a childish essentialism and a mature worldview.

  "'You all right, son?' asked a woman ticket collector.  'Had a bit of a fright, have you?'
  'I told that policeman about a crime' - his voice was loud and indignant - 'and he didn't do anything.  He didn't even ask me the name of the criminal.'
  'What sort of crime?'
  'Theft.  From people who've been bombed out.'
  She nodded glumly.  'There's a lot of it going on.'
  'But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be stopped.'
  There was a crash outside that jarred the whole floor.
  'You'd better get downstairs,' said the collector.
  'So you're saying that because it's common it's acceptable?'
  'I'm saying that unless you get underground you're liable to get blown up.'
  'You mean that collective safety's more important than collective morality?'
  'Go downstairs.'
  'Which makes us actually no better than the enemy that we purpose to despise.'
  'Gus!' - she was calling over his shoulder - 'Gus!  I need a hand.  Can you make this blinking little walking dictionary get into shelter?'"  (219-220)

 Noel's situation is ultimately heartbreaking.  You think of your own ten-year-old, and know she might not make it through his trials.  But maybe, maybe, children have that funny resilience that we experienced growns sometimes lack.  The war and circumstances break down his walls in a way, and in tandem with the dim (maybe not dim.  Unlucky?  Unable to take advantage?) but determined Vee, he not only survives but in a weird way, thrives.

The grownups in this story, like the questionable activities, fall along a continuum of good to bad, but all with a flaw or some damage.  One of the most interesting is Noel's godmother Mattie, who dies early - so early in the story that this is not a spoiler.  It is clearly Mattie who honed Noel's formidable intelligence and finely honed sense of right and wrong.  She may or may not have approved of his and Vee's activities, but you know that she would have stood up and applauded his efforts to right the wrong referred to above.  You wish you could spend a little more time with her, a game old gal if ever there was one.

There are lots of characters here, each picking his or her way through the moral minefield of the homefront.  Mattie and Noel and Vee are the most interesting, but you can consider many ways people survived this war in reading the various experiences.  And to be sure, there is a certain amount of predictability to the story:  Vee and Noel come to depend on each other, and to care.  She matures and he softens.

But so what.  Crooked Heart is one of those books that you think about when you are not reading it, and that you continue to think about long after you are done.  For a light story, it offers an unexpected and compelling depth of perception.  It is a wonderful story that you should read as soon as possible.

Down Among the Dead Men

Sometimes I wonder what it is about crime fiction that I find so enjoyable.  Certainly the escape factor - you can't fret about section allocation or committee staffing when murder is at hand!  And my focus on non-US, non-contemporary means that whatever I read gets me out of myself.

But a key piece for me is character development.  If you've spent any time with Crime Pays, you'll know that I particularly enjoy a well-developed character.  Whether funny - a la Bryant and May - or wicked smaht like Flavia de Luce or Quirke, or conflicted like Martin Limon's MPs or any le Carre character, the more complex Our Hero is, the better the story is.

This is why I was underwhelmed with the first Peter Diamond investigation I read.  Just didn't get it about this vaguely grumpy, slightly cynical cop.  Not that I mind grumpy or cynical, but there didn't seem to be a strong reason for him to be so.  So when a new book by Peter Lovesey showed up in my monthly Soho shipment - now several months ago, I am sadly behind - I did not jump on it.  The Soho club readings have been uneven, and I added this to the pile.

Then I read a capsule review in the always-helpful Crime column in the New York Times Book Review.  Marilyn Stasio is a good indicator, and I think the word stylish may even have been used.  I wouldn't go that far, but it intrigued me enough to pick up Down Among the Dead Men (Soho Press, 2015) and see what I'd missed.

Plenty!  I still think Our Hero Peter Diamond is not a particularly complex character.   He falls into the DCI Banks model of good cop/irrascible man, a model which you see just a little too often and which seems to be deployed as a form of complexity.  I'm still not sure why he is a bit cynical or slightly lazy.  But in this story, Diamond and his commanding officer, Georgina Dallymore, are sent off to Sussex to investigate a possible case of internal misconduct.  The misconduct piece almost becomes secondary to the clever characterization of Georgina, who is by turns overconfident, insecure, misguided, shrewd, and ultimately supportive of Diamond's approach.

  "Satisfied, she rubbed her hands.  She almost clapped.  'We're a team that gets things done, Peter.  Two intereviews already, Henrietta Mallin and her brother, and both went rather well, with me setting the agenda, so to speak, and you following up on the detail.  If people see us as Miss Nice and Mr. Nasty, so be it.  That's a well-tried method of interrogation.'
  She meant good cop bad cop.  Miss Nice and Mr. Nasty was another nugget to tuck away."  (147-8)

Our Hero finds himself a bit conflicted with respect to his deeply annoying but ultimately fairly effective boss.

  "'I don't know how you stand it, Peter.  I lost my cool with her, as you saw.'
  'Practice.  Georgina and I understand each other.  In fact, I've got to know her a lot better since we came on this trip.  I dicsovered she has a soft underbelly.'
  The crossed swords of the Victory Arch in Baghdad were no higher than Hen's eyebrows.  'The mind boggles.'"  (194)

Lovesey has fun drawing Georgina as a foil to Diamond but doesn't make her a complete joke.  And Diamond himself is funnier than many Brit cops, not veering too far into the sardonic.

The internal affairs case turns out to be part of something larger and more sinister (no surprise there, else where would be the story?) and there are several plot lines that actually all pull together more or less in an ending that does not strain credulity (that is a compliment).  Art, plants, and diving - it is something of a feat to tie those up!  More interesting characters pop up along the way.  There is a girls school with some well-drawn students and are-they-or-aren't-they evil teachers, some artists who are more than they appear, parents with pasts, and a quite excellent vignette in a trailer with the parents of a missing girl.

  "Diamond had been watching Barry Mallin for any sign of what was really going on in his head.  Here was a controlling man who had raised a daughter who haad rebelled, sold just about everyting he owned to rescure her and pull her back into line.  Now he was faced with another huge family crisis.  How had he dealt with it.  Was he responsible for hte disappearance of Joss?"  (138)

I like how Lovesey gets a little bit into the head of the unpleasant Mallin and there is more of this.

Don't mistake any of this for the witty and kooky folks you might find in a Dr. Siri mystery, or the deeply conflictedly convoluted characters of The Secret Agent.  But Lovesey does find the balance, and a touch of humor never hurts.  You might just go pick and give ol' Diamond another try.

A Monumental Mystery

If you actually follow both of my blogs, you'll know that we recently took an awesome trip to Belgium and France, where we spent about half our time exploring World War One-related sites.  You can read all the gory details over on The Right People Travel.

Along the way, my two areas of interest merged and I started to develop a rather brilliant mystery idea.  Here goes.

A body is found (mutilated?  mysteriously dead with no markings?  just a torso?  with ink?) in an American military cemetery in France, or maybe at one of those grand American monuments.  Perhaps the body was tossed from high atop the monument, or arranged among the graves, or pieces line the path, or it was placed in a praying posture in the little chapel.  At any rate, there has been . . . a MURDER.  Of course, the body is probably discovered by a local walking his dog, or a maintenance person, early in the morning, with very French details like the person is smoking, or bringing a bottle of local wine somewhere or something.  (I'm getting a little Martin Walker/Inspector Bruno vibe here.)

Meanwhile Our Hero (probably male, about which I am, yes, conflicted) is a staffer with the American Battle Monuments Commission, and is stuck in dull talks in France during a hot August, when everything is closed and only the tourists are out.  The Yanks are considering pulling back on some of their commitments to local staffing of these places (it is expensive, no one from the States comes anymore, esp. to the WW1 sites), which of course doesn't thrill the French.  Our Hero has been sent as the "expert" on the sites to accompany the Senator (Congressperson?) at these talks.  But the pol is really just on a junket and interested in making a publicity splash, so deals in soundbites and uninformed commentary.  Our Hero privately disagrees with the idea of reducing US involvement, but it's not his show and he tunes a lot out, and tours around a bit on his own.  Until the body shows up, and there will be some connection - not sure what but of course that is the point of the whole mystery - to the site itself.

Will it be a historical connection?  German person dead, descendant of a soldier or commanding officer, killed by a vengeful French person?  You could substitute several nationalities for the killer here:  Belgian, English, American.  You could go the other way.  It could be a decades-old crime of passion.  Or maybe it will be a modern terrorist event, and the victim will be Israeli or Palestinian or a citizen from some former colonial territory of the warring powers, making a statement about how these conflicts just gave birth to modern problems.  Maybe the crime will turn out to have nothing to do with WW1 but instead reveal a human trafficking network that operates through France.  So many possibilities!

The character development piece - which as you might know is key for me - comes as the crime is investigated and the question of jurisdiction comes into play.  Has this crime taken place on French or American territory?  Who should investigate and who will get to prosecute?  Our Hero is no cop, but must work with French authorities - a smart and sympathetic but maybe a little cynical or hard to read or has-a-past French cop - because Our Hero has the expertise on the site itself which may hold the key to solving the crime.  The Frenchie isn't happy about it, but they'll sort it out.  (Note:  there will be NO ROMANCE.  I hate that in crime fiction.)  Maybe there are also some MPs who seem doltish and brutal but are really kind of cool.  Our Hero has a PhD, maybe a family at home, and doesn't stick his nose in but because he knows more about this site than anyone else, he has to be part of the investigation.  He's a good eater.  Or maybe just learning about it, and his French counterpart can't believe he knows so little about cheese.  There will be meals.

That's about as far as I got.  There could be a whole series, taking place at different monuments and cemetaries (WW2 at Normandy or the Philipines!).  But it is hard to keep them from becoming formulaic, so maybe this is a standalone.

By now you surely realize the chief benefit of this project:  much research time will have to be spent in France.  Do I have any takers as assistant?

Who Knows What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men . . .

the SHADOW knows mu wha ha ha ha ha

Today in MYSTERY HISTORY tells us that today is the 85th anniversary of the debut of The Shadow on The Detective Radio Hour.  I learned about the Shadow (and the Whistler and A Tale Well-Calculated to Keep you in . . . SUSPENSE!) listening to the Armed Forces Network when we lived in Germany in the late 1970s.  On Sunday evenings they'd play classic radio shows like these mysteries and Jack Benny.  I can still see that green galley kitchen with the funny little pull-out table, and the clock radio on the windowsill.  And probably a dog somewhere.

The Ways of the World

When you cross something off that is near the top of your to-read list, and then find it again, near the bottom, you know you are just not keeping up.  Here I was thinking that Robert Goddard's The Ways of the World was a newish book set in immediate post-World War One Paris, and therefore good prep for my imminent vacation, when in fact it was published in 2013 (Random House in the UK, Mysterious Press here) and there are already two sequels!

You might also find that your to-read list offers insight into the evolution of your reading tastes.  I'm pretty sure I put this on the list when I started because it was international, and I know I added it more recently because of the WW1 angle.  But I also know that my interests have been honed in the few years since I started keeping track of what I write, and this story doesn't quite thrill as much as it might have.

It is 1919, the War to End All Wars has ended, and Our Hero, James "Max" Maxted, is looking into the possibilities of opening a flying school in England, aided by his loyal wartime mechanic Sam Twentyman (which is one of my more favorite names in crime fiction).  That plan is upended when Max's father dies unexpectedly in Paris, where he has been part of the British delegation negotiating the Treaty of Versailles.  Max and his snotty brother Ashley go to Paris to collect their father's remains, and it becomes clear to Max anyway that All is Not What it Seems with their father's death.  There's an elegant mistress, for starters, and a mysterious list, and some Russian exiles and fairly stereotyped diplomats:  inscrutable Japanese, warm Argentines, loud and heavy-drinking Americans.  And did I mention the elusive German spy and his lithe thief sidekick, Le Singe (The Monkey)?  Yes, even though this story is complicated in the grand tradition of good espionage tales, the characters feel a bit stock. 

I’m sure Max is handsome, and Sam is stocky, and Appleby (the British secret service detailed to the delegation) smokes a pipe.  But I like characters with a little more complexity, or quirkiness, or even ambivalence.  Le Carre and Philip Kerr always satisfy the last, and probably the first, and who can forget the ultimately quirky Bryant and May, or Dr. Siri Paiboun, or those rascals at Slough House?

Lesser characters seem to drop out of the picture, which is a little frustrating.  We hear a lot about irritating Ashley (whom I picture as the ineffective Frahnces from Poldark) and his striving wife, and there is the intimation that they are going to try and have Max removed as executor of the father’s will – but then we don’t hear about them for chapters and chapters, really until towards the end of the book when the tale takes Our Hero back to London.  And while Sam is presented as a kind of sidekick, and does act that way at times, he is really more of an independent operator than one might expect. 

This story is also curiously action-less, at least for the first half.  Max spends a lot of time going around Paris talking to people, to try and find out what actually happened to his father.  This is in fact what normal people would do, but while perhaps realistic it is a wee bit boring for the reader. 

But you have to bear in mind that this is the first of a trilogy, so you can imagine that the author felt he had time to bring characters in and out of the action (such as it was), and to develop that action in a more leisurely fashion than a stand-alone might suggest.  I gather that the story is really wrapped up in the third volume, with a big ending.*  Will I get to it?  Not sure.  I did not love this book, although I certainly did not hate it.  The laxity of this review lays it out:  it did not excite with character or prose, although it did not disgust.  It wasn’t a book that I thought about during the day, when I wasn’t reading it, which is my idea of a really good book.

*Goddard has written a number of books, and according to his website is the "master of the clever twist."  I don't love a clever twista, but they have their uses.