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Third crime is the charm #3 – Nice, London and Tokyo
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.
Five crime fiction books, all different
Friendship Is a Gift You Give Yourself by William Boyle (2018) French title: L’amitié est un cadeau à se faire. Translated by Simon Baril
This is my second book by William Boyle after The Lonely Witness and he’s definitely an author I want to keep reading.
Friendship… is set in Brooklyn, in the Bronx and upstate New York. It all starts when Rena Ruggiero, the widow of a mafia gangster, kicks her eighty years old neighbor and thinks that she killed him as he lays unresponsive on her floor. High on Viagra, he tried to rape her.
Rena takes his car and drives to the Bronx where she wants to stay with her estranged daughter Adrienne and rekindle her relationship with her granddaughter Lucia.
She arrives there just as Richie Schiavano decides to steal money from a mafia gang.
Rena and Lucia find shelter at Adrienne’s neighbor’s house. Lacey, ex-porn star known as Lucious Lacey, welcomes them in her home and they end up fleeing the Bronx with the mafia on their tail.
The book takes a delightful Thelma and Louise turn and the reader is in for a fantastic ride.
William Boyle has a knack for a crazy plot, for attaching characters and an fantastic sense of place. A wonderful discovery by Gallmeister.
Alabama 1963 by Ludovic Manchette & Christian Niemiec (2020). Not available in English.
This is a French crime fiction novel set in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, just before President Kennedy was assassinated and right in the middle of the Civil Right movement.
Girls are rapped and murdered. Bud Larkin, a white PI, former police officer, is volunteered to help a black family find out who killed their daughter. His former colleagues also hire him a black cleaning lady, Adela Cobb. In segregated Alabama, she’ll be an asset to Larkin as black people talk to her but not to him.
As other murders happen, Bud and Adela get more and more anxious to find out who’s behind these crimes. And if this adventure can help them sort out their lives, all the better.
I’m always a bit suspicious about books written by French writers and set in America, written as if they were American writers. This one was OK, and the fact that the two authors’ day job is to translate American TV series into French probably helps writing a convincing story. They know all the codes.
I had a good time reading it, I got attached to Adela and Bud.
As the Crow Flies by Craig Johnson (2012) French title: A vol d’oiseau. Translated by Sophie Aslanides.
This is the 8th volume of the Walt Longmire series. I read them in English now since the French paperbacks are no longer published by Gallmeister but by Pocket. The books aren’t as nice, so, the original on the kindle is better.
This time around, Caddy, Longmire’s daughter is getting married in two weeks on the Cheyenne reservation when Walt discovers that she no longer has a venue.
He’s on his way to visit another location with his friend Henry Standing Bear when they see a woman fall from a cliff and die. She had her six-month old baby in arms when she fell. The baby miraculously survived.
Walt Longmire will mentor the new chief of the Tribal Police, Lolo Long during this investigation. She’ll learn a few tricks, soften some hard edges and see how to navigate the tricky relationship with the FBI. Very useful skills if she wants to keep her job or stay alive while doing it.
As always, Craig Johnson delivers. The plot is well-drawn, a part of fun is introduced with Lolo Long’s blunders and the relationship between Walt and Caddy is lovely. This volume is set on the Cheyenne reservation and it rings true, at least to my French ears.
Craig Johnson doesn’t disappoint and I’m looking forward to reading the ninth book.
Sœurs de sang by Dominique Sylvain (1997, reviewed by the author in 2010). Not available in English
I’ve read several books by Dominique Sylvain. Kabuchiko, set in Japan, Les Infidèles and Passage du Désir set in Paris. The three books are different and Soeurs de sang is closer to Passage du Désir than to the other ones.
We’re in Paris. Louise Morvan is a PI who is hired by Ana Chomsky to find a former lover that she spotted as a character in a video game. Louise starts investigating, discovers that he’s Axel Langeais, one of the creators of the game.
It could stop here but Victoria Yee, the lead singer of the group Noir Vertige is murdered on Axel’s barge, in front of his sister Régine. Louise embarks on a murder investigation that will lead her to Berlin and Los Angeles and into the strange artistic world of the Victim Art.
I read this with pleasure, a novel set in a very peculiar milieu, the one of extreme art and I was curious to see how the story would unfold.
Ames animales by JR Dos Santos (2021). Not available in English.
This was one of our Book Club choices and it was a promising read.
It’s a Portuguese novel set in Lisbon. The main character is Tomas Noronha whose wife Maria Flor is involved with a charity that works on animal intelligence. When the director of this charity is murdered, she’s the last one to have seen him and is accused of murder.
Chapters alternate between the crime plot and flash backs where the militant and director is enlightening Maria Flor about the latest researches about animal intelligence. These lengthy explanations were too didactical for me, cut the flow of the crime investigation and I lost interest.
I abandoned the book. I don’t read crime fiction to read scientific lectures, there are radio podcasts for that. A missed opportunity.
I have also read The Hot Spot by Charles Williams but this one is so good that it deserves its own billet.
Three good entertaining books by Dominique Sylvain, Pierre Christin and HG Jenkins
Let’s face it, my TBW is out of control, the end of the year is coming and with the second lockdown, I keep reading. I’m not used to mixing several books in a billet but I’m doing it today, mostly focusing on light and entertaining books. See it as an attempt at taming the TBW.
First, we’re going on a trip to Japan with Dominique Sylvain. Her crime fiction novel Kabukichō takes us to Tokyo’s red-light district.
Kate Sanders works in a hostess bar, Club Gaia, and shares an apartment with a coworker, Marie. One night, Kate doesn’t show up for work. Her father in London receives a text message, a photo of his daughter with the caption “She’s sleeping here”.
A few days later, Kate is found dead. Captain Yamada is appointed to the case. He and his lieutenant Watanabe will investigate Kate’s life in Kabukichō. She was very good friend with Yudai, a charming young man who owns a host bar, the male version of the hostess bar.
I’m not familiar with Japan and I found Kabukichō fascinating for its description of the functioning of this red-light district. The crime plot was well-drawn, mixing the private lives of Kate, Marie and Yudai. Captain Yamada, old school compared to his lieutenant was an attaching policeman. All the characters have cracks in their souls, minor but irritating like a never healing small wound or major rifts that make them cross-over to the side of craziness.
It was a quick read, entertaining and enlightening with a stunning ending. It would make a wonderful film. Sadly, this book is not available in English.
Obviously, Kabukichō is exotic for a French reader. For me, the setting of Little Crimes Against Humanities by Pierre Christin was almost as foreign as Tokyo. The whole book is set in the French academic world and there’s a specific vocabulary related to positions and to the French university system. I’ll use American terms, as best as I can.
In Little Crimes Against Humanities, we’re in the small university of Nevers, in the center of France, basically the French equivalent of Iowa.
Simon Saltiel wrote his PhD thesis about Death in Art. Think about vanity paintings and such things. At the moment, he’s a teacher at the Humanities department but without a tenured post. He’s friend and roommate with an older teacher, Etienne Moulineaux. Their dean is Goulletqueur, notorious for preferring local candidates to others and this is why Simon has failed again to get a permanent position. The dice are loaded.
Léon Kreisman, a famous academic, art and book collector, collapses on the university stairs after a lecture. Fatal heart attack. He has no wife or children, only a pit bull secretary Madame Danitza.
Simon was among the first people on the premises and is dragged in spite of him, in the intrigues coming after Kreisman’s death. People want to put their hands of Kreisman’s collections. Goulletqueur wants to have a new library and hope that these resources will attract foreing academics and finally put the Nevers university on the international map of universities. L’Hours, a big man in the ministry of Education in Paris wants the collection to fill a new museum he will inaugurate. A private collector wants this collection for himself.
A mysterious poison-pen letter writer sends vengeful messages to several members of the faculty. The police get involved. The poor commissaire has his hands full with this foul business at the university on top of agricultural happenings from the Confédération Paysanne, a radical agricultural union that doesn’t have the decency to follow the usual methods of demonstration of the established union, the FNSEA.
Mild-mannered Simon finds himself in the middle of all this and with the help of two other colleagues, things won’t pan out as expected for the hot-shot and ambitious academics.
Besides the plot about Kreisman’s heritage, this is a satirical picture of the French universities, a milieu Christin knows from inside out. He shows the bureaucracy, the lack of money, the pettiness and the ambitions. An institution whose tenured posts are trusted by people who were young the the 1970s, a time when the Humanities were polarized, Trotskyists or not in the aftermath of 1968. He also shows an institution that, at local level, tries their best for their students. Their janitor is a genius at repairing anything with little means and teachers remain invested in their job.
Very humoristic about universities, small town France, Parisian centralization and the Ministry of Education but also about international academic relationships and symposiums. It’s almost as if David Lodge had written cozy crime.
Still on the lookout for easy and entertaining reads, I asked for recommendations to fellow book bloggers. Jacqui came up with Patricia Brent, Spinster by Herbert George Jenkins. Published in 1918, it’s in the same vein as Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, a way to spend a moment in a bubble far away from 2020.
Patricia Brent is 24 and works as a private secretary to a “rising MP”. She lives at the Galvin House Residential Hotel, in other word, a boarding-house.
One night, she overheads the other tenants talk about her and commiserate that she was lonely and never went out with young men. Piqued, Patricia invents herself a fiancé, tells them that she won’t be there for dinner the next day because she was to meet him at the Quadrant. She plays along, actually shows up to the restaurant, intending to dine there on her own when she realizes that the Galvin House gossipmongers are there to spy on her. She plops herself on a chair at a man’s table and asks him to play along. This is how she meets Lt.-Col. Lord Peter Bowen, DSO.
The outcome of the book is a given from the first chapters but Jenkins draws a colorful picture of the guests at the boarding house, the MP’s family and Lord Bowen’s circle. It’s a great comedy, the light plot designed to cast an amused glance at the different classes of the London society. I loved Jenkins’s sense of humor. Today, he’d write TV shows. His characters are quick at repartee, here’s a sample:
“Can you, Mrs. Morton, seriously regard marriage in this country as a success? It’s all because marriages are made in heaven without taking into consideration our climatic conditions.”
And
Bowen turned slowly and re-entered the taxi. “Where to, sir?” enquired the man. “Oh, to hell!” burst out Bowen savagely. “Yes, sir; but wot about my petrol?”
He’s also extremely funny in his descriptions of places, people and manners.
Mr. Archibald Sefton, who showed the qualities of a landscape gardener in the way in which he arranged his thin fair hair to disguise the desert of baldness beneath, was always vigorous on Sundays.
The whole book is a fast paced comedy. Patricia Brent, Spinster did the job. Easy to read, entertaining and good escapism. Much needed this year but as Jenkins writes, When you lose your sense of humour and your courage at the same time, you have lost the game.
PS: I have the Jenkins on kindle with a bland cover so I added the cover of the original edition that I found on Goodreads. It’s terrible, isn’t it? These eyes seem ominous.
QDP Day #3 : The Unfaithful by Dominique Sylvain
The Unfaithful by Dominique Sylvain. (2018) Original French title: Les Infidèles
This is Day 3 of Marina’s and my Quais du Polar and I’m a little late with my billet. Isolation or not, I’m still quite busy. Before diving into The Unfaithful by Dominique Sylvain, let me share Guy’s review of The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre and Andrew’s review of In the Name of Truth by Viveca Sten. Manue thanks Guy and Andrew for your participation to our virtual Quais du Polar. It was great to have you on board.
Now let’s go back to Dominique Sylvain and her great novel.
Alice Kléber runs the website lovalibi.com: she sells stories and alibis to people who cheat on their spouse. She fabricates fictitious seminars, night work sessions and other professional emergencies for people who need an excuse not to go home. She makes up excuses and provides her client with material evidences of the thing they were supposed to be at.
Alice lives in an isolated home in Burgundy and suffers from the aftershock of an aggression. She doesn’t feel safe and uses a lot of coping mechanisms. She’s also convinced she’ll die young and soon and it impact her way-of-life and her decision making process. Alice is single and very fond of her niece Salomé, a young journalist who works for TV24. She sees her as her heir and she feels close to her.
Problem: Salomé is found dead in a trash can near the hotel La Licorne, in the 15th arrondissement of Paris. Salomé had decided to do a reportage on these unfaithful people, to understand why they do it and buy services to her aunt. Did that lead to her death? Does her boss at TV24 know something? Or is it someone from her personal life?
Commandant Barnier and his partner lieutenant Maze are in charge of the case. All the people around Salomé are under investigation. Is the murderer lurking in the shadows, ready to strike again?
Said in a few words, the plot is quite simple but the book stands out. Its flavor comes from Sylvain’s brand of writing and her knack for characters. She imagines unique characters. They have their quirks but are not caricatures. They sound real and interesting with their unusual profession or their singular personal lives.
Alice is special, with her questionable business. She seems tough but she’s not that much and howls for love. Her niece is very important to her and she longs to have someone who loves her and has her back. But Salomé isn’t the innocent and punchy young woman that her aunt wants her to be.
Salomé’s boss, Alexandre Le Goff has an unusual family, with his wife Dorine and her slightly handicapped brother Valentin living with them. They draw a lot of attention. Valentin works as a janitor at TV24 and has a crush on Salomé.
Even the cops are special. Instead of two cops with clashing personalities who need to work together anyway, Dominique Sylvain imagined a partnership between two men who are attracted to each other. Maze is stunning and openly gay. Barnier is married with a son, his marriage is in a bad shape and he doesn’t understand his sudden fascination for his colleague.
Dominique Sylvain has a wonderful writing voice. I enjoyed her descriptions of Burgundy, the dialogues between the characters and her original images in her prose. I wanted to know who had killed Salomé and I enjoyed the ride, like a gourmet in a good restaurant.
Unfortunately, Les Infidèles is not available in English but another of her books, Passage du désir has been translated as The Dark Angel. I recommend it warmly and my billet is here.
PS: Dominique Sylvain is from Lorraine and it slips into her writing when she says :
“Elle agrippe Alexandre aux épaules et le secoue comme s’il était un mirabellier plein de mirabelles bonnes à manger”.
She takes Alexandre by the shoulders and shakes him up as if he were a mirabellier tree full of mirabelles ready to be eaten.
The mirabellier tree is typical from Lorraine and produces mirabelles, small yellow plums that are very sweet and juicy.
The Dark Angel by Dominique Sylvain
The Dark Angel by Dominique Sylvain (2004) Original French title: Passage du désir.
Dominique Sylvain was signing books at Quais du Polar and when I picked Passage du désir and chatted briefly with her, I discovered that she was born in the same area as me and that her book opened on a quote by Romain Gary from Life Before Us. It seemed that Passage du désir and me were meant for each other.
It is actually the first investigation of her series featuring Lola Jost and Ingrid Diesel. This duo is made of a former commissaire (Lola Jost) and an American masseuse (Ingrid Diesel). They are neighbors and when a murder is committed nearby, they start investigating together and giving information to Lola’s ex-colleagues.
Dominique Sylvain wrote a compelling page-turner where two unusual characters join their forces to ensure that the real culprit is discovered and that their friend Maxime Duchamp is not wrongly accused of the murder. The characters are well-drawn, they are damaged enough to be interesting but not too much to be implausible. The author embarks the reader on a ride in Paris, in the life of a Parisian neighborhood, in the night life of the capital and its shady corners. Ingrid has a crush on Maxime and wants to help him; Lola still has to deal with her early retirement from the police force. And her former team misses her. The side stories were good companions to the murder investigation. I couldn’t put it down. It was fun, entertaining as hell and I really enjoyed the time I spent with Lola and Ingrid.
I will read other books by her. They are perfect for travels, not too complicated to read but very gripping and written in a sassy and quirky language. Good style, good plot, promising characters : everything is aligned for an excellent reading time. The French cover of the book is a good representation of the atmosphere while the English covers is a faithful representation of the two main characters. Guess who’s Ingrid and who’s Lola.
Since I’ve read the book, I know where the English title comes from. It’s unfortunate that the French title wasn’t translated literally. It should be Desire Road, not The Dark Angel. The French title relates to the succession of events that will lead to crime but it also refers to desire as a force that moves the characters forward, criminals, victims and investigators. The English title focuses on the murderer. It’s a different approach but I mostly think that The Dark Angel is a darker title that leaves behind all the sass of the characters. It’s more straightforward.
This one is highly recomended to crime fiction lovers. Dominique Sylvain is on my mental list of writers to turn to when I look for something good and entertaining.
Book Around the Corner 