Recent crime novels
Andrew Taylor
The Murder Farm (Quercus, £8.99) is Andrea Schenkel’s first novel and has been hugely successful in her native Germany and elsewhere. Based on a real case, it is set in the 1950s and deals with murder of a farmer, his wife, daughter, grandchildren and maid. It is a short book with an unusual structure — an account of the case which seems to be compiled by a narrator from outside the area is intercut with witness statements giving glimpses of events, people and relationships in this isolated rural setting, and also with a handful of impassioned prayers. Gradually the reader, who is in the privileged position of knowing more than any of the characters, assembles information about what really happened and why it had to end with a frenzied murderer wielding a pick-axe. The remote community in which the drama unfolds has a universal quality. This short but impressive novel is a dark and powerful fable whose ending leaves unresolved the ultimate question of why people sometimes run amok and kill each other.
There’s a welcome return for H.R.F. Keating’s long-running series hero in Inspector Ghote’s First Case (Allison and Busby, £19.99). Ghote first appeared in The Perfect Murder (1964), earning his creator the first of his two Gold Daggers. Self-effacing, humane and tenacious, he has now appeared in 23 books. Here, Keating takes him back to 1960. It is a time of great excitement for Ghote: he has just been appointed inspector and has won a coveted transfer to the Detection of Crime Branch of the Bombay Police; and his wife Protima is heavily pregnant with their first child. Sir Rustom Engineer, the formidable retired Commissioner, asks him to look into the suicide of the wife of an old British friend. The case seems sad but straightforward. But there are deeper currents here, and Ghote finds himself drawn towards old tragedies and their unexpected consequences. Expertly plotted, the novel shows that Keating has lost none of his skill. The postimperial twilight casts long shadows over the characters and their concerns. Ghote is a detective for all seasons. Let us hope this is the first of many returns.
Another series protagonist returns in Laura Lippman’s Another Thing to Fall (Orion, £18.99). Tess Monaghan, her Baltimore private investigator, is hired to protect the monstrously spoiled young star of a TV series which is being made in the city. But what looks like a bread-and-butter assignment turns into a complex case involving kidnapping, murder, arson and several varieties of good, old-fashioned theft. Though the format is familiar and the plot occasionally strains belief, Lippman writes with crisp authority about Baltimore and the strange universe that lies behind the scenes of a television series. She’s excellent at narrative too, and best of all her characters have the priceless ability to edge their way into the reader’s imagination. All in all, it’s an impressive performance.
Ariana Franklin’s previous novel, Mistress of the Art of Death (Bantam, £12.99), introduced a highly unusual 12th-century detective — Adelia Aguilar, a woman graduate of Salerno’s medical school (apparently there were a few). The Death Maze (Bantam, £12.99) continues Adelia’s adventures in the violent and uncertain world of Henry II’s England. This time the King orders her to apply her forensic skills to the sudden death of his beloved mistress, Fair Rosamund. Is it murder? If so, Eleanor of Acquitaine, Henry’s estranged queen, is the prime suspect, and there is every prospect that the country will soon be plunged yet again into civil war. Franklin exploits with gusto the many gaps in the historical record — Fair Rosamund, for example, is an overweight monster guarded by a contemporary Mrs Danvers in a location bursting with sexual symbolism. Adelia, struggling to maintain herself and a bastard child (the father’s a bishop) in a dangerous man’s world, is a memorable creation. Franklin is clearly aware that the novel’s relation to history is sometimes strained beyond the improbable, but there’s ample compensation in her lively narrative and the dark drama that enfolds her characters. This is history as it ought to have been.
Jean-François Parot handles history in a rather different way. The Man with the Lead Stomach (Gallic Books, £11.99) is the second book in his series about Nicholas Le Floch, a dashing young police officer in Louis XV’s Paris. Here Le Floch investigates the apparent suicide of a young nobleman, unpicking a complex affair whose ramifications stretch deep into the court and approach the throne itself. It’s an intriguing title, but there are signs that the author found the setting more interesting than either the characters or the story. Parot clearly knows the period backwards: he lays on his research with a trowel, complete with footnotes, and much of it is indeed fascinating though not always entirely germane to the plot.
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