The Shape of Water

Reading the first novel of a detective series always fills me with anticipation.  Will this be a series I will like and give me pleasure over multiple books?  It was with that hope that I picked up The Shape of Water, featuring Inspector Salvo Montalbano, a police detective in Sicily.  By the end, I was pleased to add another European mystery series to my 'read more' list.

The novel opens when Silvio Luparello, a successful developer and political power, is found, literally, with his pants down in The Pasture, an insalubrious area around a deserted factory where local go to seek out prostitutes.  Luparello died of a heart attack in a highly compromising situation.  According to everyone, it looks like an open and closed case of death by natural causes, but Montalbano does not find the scenario implied to be credible.

As he digs deeper, he finds inconsistencies.  One of the most curious details is pointed out by Luparello's widow, the fact that his underpants are on inside out.  The cast of characters widens to include families, political rivals, and others out to seize the advantage afforded by Luparello's death.  Montalbano proceeds to solve the case, protecting and doing good deeds for the (relatively) innocent in the process.

Montalbano is both detail oriented and highly intuitive, with a kind streak.  In other words, he's a character I wouldn't mind spending more time with.  And joy of joys, thirteen of his books have been translated into English!

The Keeper of Lost Causes

Continuing with my recent fascination with Scandinavian mysteries, I chose this book by Jussi Adler-Olsen, which takes place in Denmark.  

The Keeper of Lost Causes introduces chief detective Carl Morck.  Morck is not doing very well: two of his colleagues were shot and he blames himself for not drawing his gun fast enough.  Besides not being fully engaged at work lately, he was never very good at playing the political game anyway, having many run-ins with the Deputy to the Chief.  The Chief struggles with what to do with him.

Fortuitously, the government puts aside money to create a department to follow up on old cases, particularly those involving prominent people.  What a great opportunity!  Let's create Department Q, promote Morck to run it, relegate him to the basement, give him one quarter of  the money allocated to Department Q, and divert the rest to the regular funding of the department.  The whole proposal has a high bird-to-stone ratio.

One of these cold cases catches Morck's interest and so unfolds a fascinating journey into the long-dormant case of a politician who disappeared years ago and is presumed dead.  Morck's fresh eyes bring new light to the case.

I look forward to reading more from this series.

Faithful Place

Frank Mackey is a Dublin police officer.  He has done his best to distance himself from his dysfunctional family and the memories of growing up poor in a cramped flat on the little street called Faithful Place. 

Mackey escaped from Faithful Place twenty years ago.  He and his girlfriend Rosie were to meet late one winter night and escape to England where they could get married, get good jobs and have a better life.  When she didn't turned up, Frank just never went back to Faithful Place.  An ambiguous note he found at their meeting place kindled his belief that Rosie abandoned him and made her way to England herself.

Mackey built a life as a policeman and married a beautiful woman from a much higher social class but he never got over the pain of Rosie's loss, dooming his marriage to failure.

Now, twenty years later, he gets a call that Rosie's body has been found, and he is sucked back to Faithful Place and into the heart of his family.  Family dynamics haven't changed much over the years and this story is as much about delving into those past relationships within the Mackey family and among the families on the street as it is about solving the mystery of Rosie's death.  Poor Frank Mackey is caught in the middle, trusted neither by the street, nor by the police as he doggedly pursues although not officially assigned to the case.

Faithful Place is a walloping good story and Tana French's writing is strong.  She evokes a real sense of place in Dublin and the bitter picture of a family full of bitterness and resentment.  I am definitely going to be reading more French.

Interestingly, French grew up in Ireland, Italy, the US and Malawi.  But she seems to set all her writing in Ireland.

Light Summer Reading

Just finished a delightful mystery, very suitable for summer reading on the deck.  Still Life by Louise Penny is a mystery set in Quebec's Eastern Townships.  It's a quick, light read, and I really warmed to Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of Surete Quebec. 

This book won several awards for best first mystery book, and Penny has written several more Gamache mysteries. She's certainly on my future reading list.

Penny is a former CBC journalist who now lives in 'a small town outside Montreal near the US border', in other words, a town very similar to Three Pines, the site of this mystery.

Involuntary Witness

Having just read an American-based legal novel (Innocent), I've continued my habit of reading books based around the world, with Involuntary Witness by Italian author Gianrico Carofiglio.  And what a contrast in legal systems between America and Italy.  If American TV and books are even vaguely realistic, the case described in this Italian novel would never go to court.  There is extremely flimsy circumstantial evidence, but in Italy, it seems so compelling that the accused is being advised to plead guilty for a lesser sentence. The system seems mind-boggling in its unfairness.  

The author Carofiglio should know the Italian system well.  He is is an anti-Mafia judge in Bari, a port on the Adriatic coast of Italy. He has been involved with trials concerning corruption, organized crime and the traffic in human beings.  He sounds like a brave individual.  News reports suggest that taking on the Mafia in Italy can be a distinctly unhealthy and often terminal hobby.

One of my favourite series is the Donna Leon series with police detective Guido Brunetti solving crimes but fighting the system in Venice.  This is another, discouraging, look at the Italian justice system through another set of eyes.

Again, I recommend this book and intend to read more of Carofiglio's books myself.