Book Around the Corner

• Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson (2020) French title: Huit crimes parfait. Translated by Christophe Cuq
• The Garden Folly by Johana Gustawsson (2021) Not available in English. Original French title: La Folly.
• Alone in Her Mansion by Cécile Coulon (2021) Not available in English. Original French title: Seule en sa demeure.

Here’s a new episode in my Third Crime is the Charm series, and today’s about three very different crime fiction books that in the end, have something in common. And no, it’s not murder.

The narrator of Eight Perfect Murders is Malcolm Kershaw.

He owns and runs the crime fiction bookstore Old Devils in Boston and used to have a literary blog. Years ago, he wrote a blog post about eight crime fiction books with perfect murder devices, designed in such a way that the actual perpetrator gets off scot-free.

Gwen Mulvey from FBI comes knocking on the Old Devils’s door because she thinks that somebody is killing people according to this list. Malcolm has his own demons to fight and decides to cooperate and do a bit of sleuthing on his side.

I liked Eight Perfect Murders but I thought Swanson tried too hard to tie a perfect knot on a perfectly delivered crime fiction book.

The devices were a bit too obvious to me, doing too many nudge-nudges to the reader. It embraces the codes of the genre: first-person narration, femme fatale and a normal guy taking a wrong turn at some point and engaging on a criminal path.

It’s also a wonderful homage to crime fiction and I did note down the books Swanson refers to. (All Anglo-Saxon but one. The man needs to expand his horizons) It’s still great entertainment.

Since I’m sure you’re dying (haha!) to know the eight-book list, here it is:

Book title in English	Book title in French	Author	Year	Country
The Red House Mystery	Le mystère de la main rouge	A.A. Milne	1922	UK
Before the Fact	Préméditation	Anthony Berkely Cox	1931	UK
The A.B.C Murders	ABC contre Poirot	Agatha Christie	1936	UK
Stranger on a Train	L’Inconnu du Nord-Express	Patricia Highsmith	1950	USA
The Drowner	Le bouillon rédempteur	John D. McDonald	1963	USA
Death Trap	Piège mortel	Ira Levin	1978	USA
The Secret History	Le Maître des illusions	Donna Tartt	1992	USA
Three of a Kind	Assurance sur la mort	James M. Cain	1943	USA

After this one, my next crime fiction book was The Garden Folly by Johana Gustawsson. This one goes back and forth between present day in Lac-Clarence Québec, Paris in 1899 and Lac-Clarence in 1949.

It opens with the murder of Philippe Caron who was stabbed to death by his wife Pauline. They were known figures of the village and devoted to each other. Why would Pauline kill her beloved husband in such a horrific way? Lieutenant Maxine Grant, back from maternity leave and overwhelmed from trying to balance her job and her family life, leads the investigation.

Gustawsson takes us to Paris in 1899 where Lucienne Docquer loses her two daughters in the fire that burnt down their Parisian town house. And they we meet Lina in 1949 who is bullied in school and at the church choir. She’s 13 and struggling with her changing body.

As you may guess, we slowly discover the link between the women of these three different times.

I know from her interviews at Quais du Polar last year that Johana Gustawsson is fascinated by secrets and histories that carry on from one generation to the other and impact people’s lives. She explores that topic here and also the place of women in our world and the weight of biology on their lives, the complex relationship with motherhood.

My Book Club friends loved it more than me, probably because two elements put me off it.

One is the use of supernatural stuff which is always a no-no for me and the other is the style. These French Canadians didn’t speak French from Québec and it bothered me. That’s on me, the others really enjoyed it as it is very suspenseful and the ending keeps the reader on their toes.

Then I received my new book from my Kube subscription, Seule en sa demeure by Cécile Coulon. It means “Alone in her mansion” but the use of the word demeure holds something sinister, as dernière demeure is a metaphor for cemetery and it has an old-fashioned ring that brings back memories of Once Upon a Time stories.

The novel is set in the Jura mountains in France, near the Swiss border in the second half of the 19^th century. Aimée marries Candre, the local lord of the manor. He’s very considerate, very religious but a bit creepy. Too perfect to be true and so different from the masculine standards of the time that I wondered if he was gay. He lost his parents when he was young and was raised by his nanny/servant Henria. She’s very protective of him.

Aimée arrives in this mansion set in the middle of the Forêt d’Or, as forestry is Candre’s family business. She has a hard time adjusting to the place and feels that some secret is lurking in its corners.

Cécile Coulon plays with the codes of fairytales, not the Disney ones with the little birds flying around the princess’s head but the Grimm/grim ones. It’s a very atmospheric novel with a main character who is determined to understand what happened between these walls that feel like a golden prison to her.

Like Gustawsson before, Coulon explores the condition of women and the little choices they have in their lives. Aimée isn’t free. Her life choices lie in “get married” or “get married”.

I enjoyed her style but I guessed where the story was going way too early. That’s the kiss of death for a book that walks the thin line between Lit fiction and crime fiction. That said, I might be too finicky, after all, 100 000 readers loved Seule en sa demeure.

These three books have in common one or several women whose life, death or life sentence were under the control of the men in their lives. They tried to break free, to love differently and paid dearly for it or turned into monsters themselves.