Jed Rubenfeld, The Interpretation of Murder (Headline, 2006)

Jed Rubenfeld's The Interpretation of Murder made a bit of a splash here by getting itself chosen by Richard and Judy as the best read of the year, and last year it was read as the book of the week on BBC Radio4. I took the long road to Cambridge and back yesterday and spent the eight hours on the bus reading this.

The story runs two parallel storylines, one centring on Freud's 1909 visit to the USA, and the other, the murder of a young woman in a bizarre S&M scenario in an expensive block of apartments in a posh part of New York City. When a second girl is attacked and survives, Freud and the circle of psychoanalysts around him become involved to help the girl recover her memory and identify the killer.

There is a good deal of atmospheric description of the social scene in New York City, and the first half of the book sets up the mystery rather well, I think. The problem is that as the novel draws to a close there is considerable difficulty in wrapping things up. I think that what has happened is that one layer of story has been laid upon another, all individually good ideas, but it ends up too layered and tying it all together becomes unwieldy. I see what Rubenfeld was trying to do and it is ambitious. The way that so much turns on the very simple detail of the monogram impression on the dead girl's neck, left there by the murderer, might have worked had it not gone through so many unnecessary twists, and when that details is 'explained' at the end, I'm afraid that it leaves you a little at a loss. Again, the idea that the killer is someone you never expected is certainly a satisfying part of a good crime novel. However, the way that this killer's motives are set within the context of psychoanalysis leaves one a little cold, almost unconvinced.

All the Freud and Jung stuff is quite interesting, the tension and rivalry between them. There's also the very enjoyable hint that Jung might be the murderer, not one you're supposed to take very seriously, but it's a bit of a giggle. And Freud and Jung occupy a position that is slightly off centre in the book. So the analysis, the investigating, the direct contact with the murder and the amnesiac witness, are all done by Dr Younger and Det. Littlemore. I think this might have rendered the presence of Freud greater had it been handled better, but as it is, they remained characters badly in need of more fleshing out.

Having said all of this, I did keep reading, and the weaknesses of the book only become apparent in the final 40 or 50 pages. Bring it on holidays. You'll enjoy it.

CJ Sansom, Revelation (London: Macmillan, 2008)

CJ Sansom has a doctorate in history from the University of Birmingham and is making jolly good use of it. He writes historical crime fiction. His detective is a lawyer called Matthew Shardlake who is working during the reign of Henry VIII. Revelation has just been published, the fourth in his a series of mysteries featuring the hunchback sleuth. I really enjoy this series and find these novels rather gripping. The plots are extremely good and Sansom sets up his stories within the wonderfully claustrophobic reign of Henry, where each wife is being beheaded one by one, and allegiances are shifting constantly. This creates a dynamic of mistrust and disquiet throughout that serves constantly to keep the tension levels high.

Revelation is the longest of the novels in the Shardlake series. In this novel Sansom is doing something a little different in that it is a crime with a distinctly modern edge. An old and trusted friend of Shardlake is horrifically murdered right at the heart of Lincoln's Inn. His widow asks Shardlake to help and he presents himself at the inquest to find out what happened. When the inquest is hushed up with indecent haste, it becomes obvious that greater powers are at work and he is duly brought before Cranmer who tells him that it appears not to be an isolated murder. Shardlake and Barak are taken into the confidence of the Archbishop. Their nervousness revolves around the king's recent interest in the widow Lady Latimer, Catherine Parr. These murders have a reformist edge and might be intended to throw an unfavourable light on her followers. But how can this be? The murders escalate quickly and a pattern begins to develop. It seems, in sum, that a serial killer is on the loose and he is constantly a step ahead of their every move. Can they act quickly enough to stop the escalation, and how can this be kept from the king. Not only is the novel fascinating for the usual historical, contextual detail, but they way that Shardlake and Dr Malton try to get inside the mind of the killer is also wonderful. They are proto-profilers, on the one hand trying to understand the killer and on the other trying to help a young man who has become paralyzed with guilt and remorse and in danger of getting himself burned at the stake for unauthorized preaching. Can they bring him round in time?

Dissolution (2003) is the first in the series of Shardlake mysteries. We are introduced to a hunchback lawyer who has been charged with a delicate matter. Thomas Cromwell is attempting to get the monasteries to accept the King as head of the church. Most are complying, but the political connections some of the monasteries have are, too, posing problems. So when the monastery of Scarnsee, on the Sussex coast proves difficult, a commissioner is dispatched to put some pressure on the abbot. Things begin to go very wrong when the commissioner ends up murdered, actually, beheaded, and the high altar has been desecrated with a sacrificed rooster. Cromwell needs to know what's going on, who killed the commissioner, and most importantly, he needs the abbot to sign papers relinquishing the monastery. So far so good. Shouldn't be too difficult to find out who did this. It is, after all, a closed-room mystery, more or less. And there aren't that many monks. But Shardlake gets a fright when people start to die around him, and he looks himself to be a target. With pressure mounting from Cromwell and a killer getting closer and closer to killing him, Shardlake desperately does not know who to trust.

Dark Fire (2004) is the second in the series and sees Shardlake return after having been left in peace for three years. A strange case comes to his attention. A young woman has been accused of murdering her young cousin, throwing him down a well. She has refused to say anything, and will soon be put under peine forte et dure in order to confess, to innocence or otherwise. But there's something odd about her silence that puzzles Matthew. The case is hopeless. She will die under the torture and the case will amount to nothing. Until, that is, Cromwell intervenes. He needs Matthew, known for his acumen and discretion, to investigate something. And he has put pressure on the judge to give him ten days grace to do so. The book proceeds, then, with the two stories running parallel (a common thread through Sansom's plotlines). Cromwell has been given to believe that some ancient formula for dark fire has been rediscovered in the cellar of St Bart's in London. He has even been given a demonstration of how it works. And he's convinced. Finding himself increasingly out of favour with the king, he sees this as his chance to become a trusted member of the inner circle again. Shardlake's mission is to find out how progress goes on Dark Fire and to get ready for the demonstration before the king the following week. Straightforward enough. Except, the very first people they interview, the makers of this dark fire, have been brutally murdered just moments before they arrive. And Shardlake, along with Cromwell's assistant Barak, must find out whether there is any substance to the claims for Dark Fire and just who is behind these brutal murders? The brutality of the killings, and the fact that Shardlake himself gets closer and closer to becoming his next victim, keeps the pace up, and all the while political chaos is gradually unfolding. Cromwell's grip is giving way and his impending downfall provides a brilliant backdrop for the denouement.

Sovereign (2006) is the third in the Shardlake series. The action is set in the Autumn of 1541 and the Progress to the North, culminating in the submission of the rebels in York. Shardlake has been entrusted with a secret mission to keep an eye on a prisoner with sensitive information. He must be kept alive long enough for questioning in the Tower and what information he has must be extracted from him (without killing him). When a glazier has a fall and makes some enigmatic remarks to Shardlake just before he dies, things begin rapidly to get out of control. The murders become more numerous and the King is ever approaching York. Can he work fast enough to find out what is going on and get to the bottom of these killings, and how does this prisoner fit in to the puzzle? This, combined with the intense interest in the snippets of information from the highest men in the realm all leads one to feel that there might be a lot more than is at first evident. A mysterious package of documents containing astonishing information is at the heart of the matter. Can he recover these cursed documents, and worst of all, what will happen if he ever finds out what is really in them? Sovereign is marvellous for the way it sets up some very implausible claims at the beginning of the novel that gradually become less and less so, until the truth is so shocking and the consequences so terrible, perhaps it is better to know nothing. A nice problem for a lawyer.

I've greatly enjoyed reading these novels and highly recommend them.

Guillermo Martínez, The Oxford Murders (Abacus, 2005)

This novel is Martínez's first to be translated into English and is the winner of the Planeta Prize in Spain. Last year they filmed some of it here in Oxford and I thought I'd give it a read and see what the fuss was about. Only now I get around to it, having picked up a cheap copy at the Oxfam booksale on Saturday morning. The story revolves around an Argentinian post-doctoral student who arrives in Oxford to work with a famous maths don. He lodges with a little old lady who gets murdered and whose murder appears to be one in a series that follows a mathematical logic. Can they identify the series and predict the next murder or will the killer be too clever for them?

The maths is quite interesting, the plots has been competently sketched, apart from a clunky ending, but the characterization and writing is terrible. And I mean, really terrible. It might be a question of something being lost in translation, but the characters all lack any depth or interest. I know that often these kinds of books will rely on plot and conceit to carry them, so we're supposed to think that the maths makes up for the lack of characters. Oxford is supposed to be a wonderful setting, but unfortunately it's all a little heavy-handed, with lots of silly mistakes like porters emptying bins in dons' rooms in Merton. It felt far too like what Dan Brown did for Rome with Angels and Demons. And if the maths were done in a more clever way, he might have pulled it off. But unfortunately it is all pretty straightforward, and the maths doesn't come out of it in any mysterious way, as it should have. It seems liked a missed opportunity, and I'm afraid to say that I recommend that The Oxford Murders be your missed opportunity.

Ian Sansom, The Mobile Library: The Case of the Missing Books (Harper, 2005)

The Mobile Library is the first in a series featuring “one of literature’s most unlikely detectives”, Israel Armstrong, a Jewish vegetarian sensitive type who arrives in a small Northern Irish village to take up a position that just might make his CV look passable. Everything that can go wrong does to wrong in his first twenty-four hours. Not least of his problems is that the books have gone missing, and in order to get out of his contract, he must find them.

Sansom is a very smart writer and there are many laugh-out-loud moments in the book. I like the twist of a Jew trying to navigate all the religious and political sensitivities in the North. I like the way this detective is an outsider. I like some of the characters in the book.

But I’m not sure that it is a sincere book. And sure, perhaps it is not meant to be. (I can just hear the cavils now about sincerity...but not to sound too much like one of Sansom's characters, you'll know it when you see it). It is a book that just screams something like “Postmodernity can be fun kids”, and I have at least three problems with such a statement. There are some genuine moments, certainly, but my overall impression was an unsettling sense of being manipulated by cleverness rather than invited to share in the playfulness.

Dorothy L. Sayers, Nine Tailors (Gollancz, 1934)

It is with a little embarrassment that I admit to reading only now the crime fiction of Dorothy Sayers. It was with her work on Dante that I was first acquainted, and only later saw that she was a such an accomplished crime novelist. The novel I started with is a late one in the Lord Peter Wimsey series, and it is a very enjoyable read. The prose is getting a little creaky, and Wimsey himself is a funny character and not entirely one that you can believe or sympathize with. However, the story is marvellous, and its dénouement reminds me a lot of Murder on the Orient Express, only a little better because it's more shocking in many ways. Having spend a very short time ringing bells once in Dublin I was totally absorbed in all the bell stuff, and you've got to be to enjoy the book. The story is also very complicated, which requires immense skill to keep control of, to prevent it from dissolving. I shall certainly read soon Murder Must Advertise and Gaudy Night. And it was with delight and shock with equal measure that I read about her work as a copywriter on the Toucan Guinness adverts. I'll never drink a pint the same way again.

Also just read another of the Jonathan Argyll series by Iain Pears, Giotto's Hand (HarperCollins, 1994). I find these very enjoyable, though they are very light and frothy things. Great for a lazy Sunday when you're not in the mood for the papers and you've had a late night. Next on my list is Dibdin's last, and that will get a review certainly.

Lesley Grant-Adamson, Guilty Knowledge (Faber, 1986)

Trinity Rare Books is a wonderful second-hand and antique bookshop in Carrick-on-Shannon (that's in Co. Letirim, in the northwest of Ireland, for my international readers) and I paid a visit on Saturday to wish Nick and Joanna festive greetings. They have good stock in the shop, especially Irish literature and local material. There are some nice early McGaherns and you often see lovely Kavanaghs and Yeats there. There's even an early Ulysses, though I don't think that's for sale. I picked up a couple of nice things, including Arsenio Frugoni, Incontri nel Medioevo (Bologna: il Mulino, 1979), and a copy of Carlo Levi’s Cristo si è fermato a Eboli, as well as the book I review below. The Frugoni is a collection of previously published articles, some of which are very famous, such as his very interesting work on circumstances surrounding Boniface VIII's jubilee year of 1300 (the year in which Dante sets the Commedia). His daughter Chiara is a famous medieval historian too. Mad Christmas dinners in that house, I should think. I once went in to Trinity Books after they'd bought a load of wonderful Italian stuff and picked up copies of Peter Armour, The Door of Purgatory: A Study of Multiple Symbolism in Dante's Purgatorio (Oxford: OUP, 1983), and his Dante's Griffin and the History of the World, as well as John Took, "L'etterno piacer": Aesthetic Ideas in Dante, John Freccero, Dante: The Poetics of Conversion and Rachel Jacoff (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Dante. Except for the last all hardbacks, and all in great shape. I actually thought I was having a mirage to see all that stuff in one place in what is the least densely populated part of Western Europe. I may have started to hyperventilate or at least make some form of alarming moaning noises. You just never know where or when a book is going to turn up. Of course it's the stuff I didn't buy then that still sticks in my mind, like Patrick Boyde's Dante Phylomythes, to be republished imminently in paperback, or Anthony Cassell's Dante's Fearful Art of Justice, or the folly purchase which would have been three volumes of Edward Moore's Studies in Dante (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896). But I'm getting over it, and was very grown-up about the whole thing. I've nearly forgotten about them. Three years later.

Lesley Grant-Adamson's third novel is called Guilty Knowledge and was published in 1986 by Faber. The novel's heroine, Rain Morgan, a gossip columnist with the Daily Post, hatches a plan to get a junkit to the Cote d'Azur for a few days in the depths of winter. She will interview Sabine Jourdain, the mistress of a famous artist, who rumour has it wants to talk. Off she goes with her on-off lover, a cartoonist named Oliver, and before you know it they are up to their necks in it. It seems that Rain and her questions have been the catalyst in a whole series of murderous events that leads even to her own safety being threatened. At the heart of the mystery seems to be the reclusive and brilliant artist Marius Durance and the group of glamourous people around him. There are the high-powered dealers, Benjamin and Merlyn Joseph, and Philippe Maurin, the charming gallery owner. And then the remains of Durance's coterie of beautiful women, Sabine herself, and Barbara Coleman. It seems the minute that Rain starts asking questions, both Sabine and Barbara are being urged not to speak, by the Josephs and by Maurin, but what could they have to say that threatens everyone?

Grant-Adamson's novels often have a female detective, or in this case just a nosey journalist who wants to get to the bottom of a murder (or two), and her strength is in the way she draws women who are both frightened of the situations they find themselves in, and determined to understand those situations. In this story Rain and Oliver are constantly about to catch a flight back to England but Rain wants to talk to one last person to put another piece of the puzzle in place. She is always about to say enough, this story isn't worth what's happening, but at the same time she is constantly making connections that draw her deeper and deeper, until eventually she gets in a little too deep. The book is well structured and interesting, though the title, Guilty Knowledge, does not quite work for the story and is, perhaps, a little banal. It's a pity because it is not written that way. It gets a little complicated at the end as the different threads are being brought together, but the killer and their motives (keeping it gender neutral there for you) have a powerful simplicity, like all the best murder stories. And the whole book has been preparing you for that simplicity.