Book Around the Corner

Boccanera by Michèle Pedinielli (2018) Not available in English. (Yet?)

This was our Book Club choice for April.

Ghjulia “Diou” Boccanera, the Boccanera of this crime fiction book by Michèle Pedinielli, is a PI who lives and works in Nice, on the French Riviera.

She’s hired by Mauro Giannini’s boyfriend after Mauro was murdered. The police would like it to be a homophobic crime, Diou thinks that it’s too easy a scenario for it to be accurate.

She starts investigating and takes us around Nice, its old town, its Promenade des Anglais and its gay scene. The story is well-sewn and the pleasure of this book lies in the suspense of the plot (who did it?), the colorful and attaching characters that populate Diou’s life and the author’s love for her native city.

Boccanera wants to be Nice’s Montale but I think that Izzo was a more gifted or more experienced writer. We’ll see how the author’s style and characters develop in the next volumes. It still is an excellent book for entertainment and armchair travelling. Nice is a few fours from Lyon, too, opposite direction of the Vosges mountains and totally different vibe but very tempting too.

Boccanera is a series and I got the second volume, Après les chiens, at Quais du Polar and got it signed by this friendly and enthusiastic writer.

Body Language by A.K. Turner (2020) French title: Body Language.

A.K. Turner is another author who was invited at Quais du Polar, I was reading her book during the festival and I attended a panel where she discussed the setting of her crime fiction series. Body Language is the first volume of her Cassie Raven series.

Cassie Raven is a mortuary assistant at the morgue in Camden Town, London. Her parents died in a car accident when she was four and she was raised by her grand-mother. She had a rather chaotic adolescence, lived on the margins for a while until her teacher, Geraldine Edwards, mentored and tutored her until she got her diploma.

On the police side, Camden Town has a new detective, Phyllida Flyte. She’s a transfer from the Winchester police and she’s a by-the-book police officer. She needs to adapt to policing in Camden Town while she works through her personal drama.

When Geraldine’s body arrives at the morgue after a death in puzzling circumstances, Cassie starts investigating. The police tends to think it was an accident, Cassie isn’t so sure.

Cassie, with her Goth style and her past as an outsider couldn’t be more different from her. Flyte’s first instinct is to be suspicious of this weird mortuary assistant. As the story progresses, the two will forge a tentative work relationship.

The plot moved forward at an good pace, Cassie and Phyllida have catching backgrounds and life in Camden town is part of the book. A.K. Turner explained that this neighbourhood’s culture sits well with Cassie and asks Phyllida to adjust.

Body Language is an entertaining book, like watching a TV series and I wouldn’t mind spending more time with Cassie but I left London for Paris and then Tokyo with Louise Morvan.

Baka! by Dominique Sylvain (2007) French title: Baka! Not available in English.

Baka! is a Japanese word that means idiot. Dominique Sylvain is a French author who lived a few years in Japan. She first wrote Baka! in 1995 and then rewrote it in 2007. I have the last version, the first one is OOP.

Baka! is the first volume of the Louise Morvan series. She’s a PI who lives in Paris. She inherited her uncle’s PI agency when he died in action. She’s still working through his death and is trying to find her footing at the head of the agency.

She’s hired by Bishop Chevry-Morvan to go and check on his nephew Florent who has moved to Tokyo. Florent has asked his uncle for a substantial loan and the bishop is worried. Or so it seems.

Louise arrives in Tokyo, speaking English but not a word of Japanese, like most of us, I guess. She quickly realizes that things aren’t as straightforward as the bishop said and that she got herself into a dangerous mess.

Tokyo and Japan are an important part of the book: the geography, the customs, the way-of-life. I thought that in this one, Dominique Sylvain tried to embrace too many things at the same time. As we say in French Qui trop embrasse mal étreint, literally meaning that if you try to hug too many things at the same time, you don’t hold onto them very well.

There are too many plot threads in the book, the characters are all connected and have their personal goal or issue in the global picture. I thought it was a bit too much.

However, I really liked Louise Morvan as a character. Unapologetic. Bold. Fearless. In Baka!, we didn’t stay long in Paris before and after the Tokyo trip, but Louise Morvan has the same kind of microcosm as Ghjulia Boccanera in Nice. Familiar faces in a local café and informal relationships with the cops.

Other reviews of books by Dominique Sylvain:

• A standalone also set in Japan: Kabuchiko an excellent one that needs an English translator who speaks French, knows France and Japan. (Wonder who that could be? 😊)
• A standalone set in Paris Les Infidèles
• The second volume of the Louise Morvan series Soeurs de sang,
• Also set in Paris, the first volume of the Lola Jost & Ingrid Diesel : Passage du Désir. This one is available in English and is entitled Dark Angel.

I also started and abandoned 19500 dollars la tonne by Jean-Hugues Oppel. It didn’t work for me.

Upcoming crime fiction billets: the excellent Darktown by Thomas Mullen, the incredible Dancing Bear by James Crumley and the masterpiece Moth by James Sallis.