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20 Books of Summer 2023 and a joker- My list!
I was happy to see that Cathy from 746 Books hosts her 20 Books Of Summer event again this year. I know I could pick 10 or 15 books instead of 20 but I’m going to challenge myself a bit, even if reading isn’t a competition.
Picking the 20 books is already a lot of fun. This year I chose books from my TBR and according to three categories: books I’ll read as part of already set-up readalongs, books I want to read around my summer trip to Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota and other books from various countries, just for armchair travelling and making a dent in the TBR.
Books from my readalongs:
Ballad of Dogs’ Beach by José Cardoso Pires (1982) – Portugal. French title: Ballade de la plage aux chiens.
We’re in 1960 and a rebellious officer is found dead on a beach. He was killed after evading from prison with his girlfriend after an aborted coup. The novel is about his life and the investigation on his death.
L’Autre by Andrée Chedid (1969) – France. Not available in English
Andrée Chedid is a French poetess. When I browse through the book, I see it’s made of three short stories, that these stories include poems and texts with a weird layout. I’m curious about it.
The Moving Target by Ross McDonald (1949) – USA. French title: Cible mouvante.
I’ll finally read my first Lew Archer investigation! I’ve read only good reviews about this series and in France it is published by Gallmeister in a new translation by the talented Jacques Mailhos.
The Catcher in the Rye (1951) – USA. French title: L’attrape-coeurs.
I’ve read it in French when I was a teenager. This time I’ll read it in English. I wonder how I’ll respond to it now that I’m older.
Letters to wilderness by Wallace Stegner – USA. French title: Lettres pour le monde sauvage.
This is a collection of non-fiction essays by Wallace Stegner. I think these texts were put together by Gallmeister and translated by Anatole Pons-Reumaux. I’m not sure this exact collection exists in English. I’ve read Crossing to Safety and Remember Laughter and I love his prose. I’m looking forward to reading his essays.
Books for my trip to Montana and Wyoming
An Unfinished Life by Mark Spragg (2004) – USA. French title: Une vie inachevée.
I got this as a gift and I’ve seen it has been made into a film with Robert Redford, Morgan Freeman and Jennifer Lopez. Here’s a excerpt of the blurb “After escaping the last of a long string of abusive boyfriends, Jean Gilkyson and her ten-year-old daughter Griff have nowhere left to go. Nowhere except Ishawooa, Wyoming, where Jean’s estranged father-in-law, Einar, still blames her for the death of his son.”
Justice by Larry Watson (1995) – USA. French title: Justice.
I’ve already read Montana 1948 and Justice is a prequel to it.
Spirit of Steamboat by Craig Johnson (2013) – USA Not available in French.
A Christmas story with sheriff Longmire. Maybe it’ll be a little strange to read a Christmas story in the summer. I don’t know, I’ll let you know how that feels. 🙂
Fall Back Down When I Die by Joe Wilkins (2019) – USA French title: Ces montagnes à jamais.
A young ranch hand has just lost his mother, owes a lot of money for her medical bills and his son’s cousin comes in his care. It sounds like a great story of a man and a little boy who both need a lot of TLC.
Savage Run by C.J Box (2003) – USA French title: La mort au fond du canyon.
This is the second volume of the Joe Pickett series. It’s a perfect read for the 21 hours of travel from Lyon to Billings.
If Not For This by Pete Fromm (2014) – USA French title: Mon désir le plus ardent.
I’ve read his novel A Job You Mostly Won’t Know to Do and his essay, Indian Creek Chronicles and a collection of short stories, Chinook. All were outstanding. Needless to say I’m looking forward reading another book by him.
Montana. La reconquête de l’Ouest (2018) – Belgium Not available in English.
This is a collection of essays about Montana’s history. It’s only 85 pages long, a short read then.
Armchair travelling and TBR management
Proud Beggars by Albert Cossery (1955) – Egypt. French title: Mendiants et orgueilleux.
Albert Cossery (November 3, 1913 – June 22, 2008) was an Egyptian-born French writer of Greek Orthodox Syrian and Lebanese descent, born in Cairo. Proud Beggards is set in Cairo but written in French.
Children of the Bitter River by Fang Fang (1987) – China. Frencht title: Une vue splendide.
Fang Fang is a Chinese writer from Huhan and I’ve never read her. Here’s the blurb of the book which “narrates a Chinese version of the Horatio Alger myth of a poor boy achieving fame and fortune. In addition to daunting poverty, the hero, Seventh Brother, must overcome the trauma of physical abuse. His story and that of his six brothers traces the history of China from the 1930s to the mid-1980s.
Ping-Pong by Park Min-kyu (2016) – Korea Not available in English
I’ve already read his Pavane for a Dead Princess but Ping-Pong seems a lot more playful. Two adolescents are bullied at school and they discover a field with a ping-pong table. It becomes their safe haven. They meet with Secrétin and strike a bet with him. The book mixes realism and science fiction.
Sputnik Sweethearts by Haruki Murakami (1999) – Japan. French title: Les amants du spoutnik.
I have it in English on the kindle, perfect for travelling. I hope I’ll like it as I’m not always fond of Murakami’s novels. We’ll see.
The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma (2015) – Nigeria. French title: Les pêcheurs.
I’m trying to read more African books and I picked this one a couple of years ago. Here’s the blurb: “In a small town in western Nigeria, four young brothers take advantage of their strict father’s absence from home to go fishing at a forbidden local river. They encounter a dangerous local madman who predicts that the oldest boy will be killed by one of his brothers. This prophecy unleashes a tragic chain of events of almost mythic proportions.”
High Rising by Angela Thirkell (1933) – UK. French title: Bienvenue à High Rising.
This is another light read for planes and airports.
Gratitude by Delphine de Vigan (2019) – France. Original French title: Les Gratitudes.
Another book that I have on the kindle. Delphine de Vigan never disappoints and I’m sure I’ll enjoy it.
A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee (2016) – UK. French title: L’attaque du Calcutta-Darjeeling.
This is a book I bought at Quais du Polar. It’s the first instalment of the Sam Wyndham series set in colonial India.
The Gringo Champion by Aura Xilonen (2015) – Mexico. French title: Gabacho
I remember where I bought this novel. It was in an indie bookstore in Barcelonnette, in the South of France. This town has a special relationship with Mexico as a lot of people emigrated to Mexico in the 19thcentury, became successful businessmen there and came back to their hometown and built sumptuous mansions. An incredible story.
So the local bookstore carries Mexican lit and I was drawn to The Gringo Champion, the story of a young Mexican boy who emigrate illegally in the US and tells his story as a clandestine.
That’s my list for the summer. Five books are on the Gallmeister catalogue and we’ll go to Portugal, France, America, especially Montana and Wyoming, Egypt, China, Korea, Japan, Nigeria, UK and Mexico. That’s quite a tour!
Have you read any of these books? Will you be doing the 10 / 15 / 20 Books of Summer too?
Crime fiction in August: Mexico, America, South Africa and New Zealand
Let’s have a tour of my August crime fiction travels. First, let’s go to Madrid.
Adiós Madrid by Paco Ignacio Taibo II (1993) French title: Adiós Madrid. Translated by René Solis
Paco Ignacio Taibo II is a Mexican crime fiction writer. I’ve already read Days of Combat featuring the PI Héctor Belascoarán Shayne. Adiós Madrid is the seventh or ninth book of the series.
This time, Belascoarán is sent on a mission to Madrid by his friend Justo Vasco, the assistant manager of the museum of anthropology in Mexico. He’s going all the way to Madrid to deliver Vasco’s threat. The Black Widow, “ex-rancheras singer, mistress of an ex-president of Mexico who had recently passed away, ex-icon of the Mexico nightlife and ex-landlord of the country.”, lives in Madrid.
Belascoarán has to tell her that if she tries to sell the plastron of Moctezuma, an antique that belongs to the anthropology museum, Vasco will leak all kinds of embarrassing information about her.
Belascoarán is happy to get a free trip to Madrid, the city where his parents grew up and it’s a bittersweet experience for him to confront the Madrid that his parents described to the actual and modern one. And then of course, things don’t go according to plan as far as the threat delivery is concerned.
Adiós Madrid is a very short book for crime fiction (102 pages in French) and it was good fun but nothing more. No need to rush for it.
After Madrid, it was time to fly to Washington DC and let George Pelecanos drive me through his hometown.
The Cut by George Pelecanos (2011) French title: Une balade dans la nuit. Translated by Elsa Maggion.
In The Cut, Spero Lucas, a former marine who was in Afghanistan, works as a non-licensed investigator for a lawyer, Tom Petersen. Spero’s job is to unearth useful clues that help Petersen during procedurals.
Spero starts on a case where he finds crucial clues that unable to bail Petersen’s client’s son out of jail. The thing is: Petersen’s client is Anwan Hawkins, head of a marijuana trafficking organization and currently in jail. Hawkins uses the “Fedex method”: send the drug via Fedex at the address of an unsuspecting citizen, follow up the delivery on internet, be on location at delivery time and intercept the parcel.
Now two parcels went missing and the loss amounts to 130 000 USD. For a 40% cut, Spero is ready to track down the missing parcels. And that will prove to be more dangerous than expected, even for an ex-marine.
Spero Lucas is a well-drawn character, we see him struggle with his military past and his father’s death. He comes from an unconventional tight-knit family with Greek roots and the personal side of the book was a nice addition to the crime plot.
My only drawback is Pelecanos’s style. You can see that he’s used to writing scenarios as it is very cinematographic. Lots of descriptions of driving the streets of Washington DC were hard to picture and didn’t bring much to the book. In my opinion, it could have been more literary. It was Good entertainment though.
Then, I traveled to South Africa to read my first Deon Meyer. He’s a writer I’d seen and heard at Quais du Polar and had wanted to read for a long time.
Dead at Daybreak by Deon Meyer (1998) French title: Les Soldats de l’aube.
Dead at Daybreak is, according to Goodreads, Matt Joubert book #1.5. This is a series I’m very tempted to read after this introduction to Meyer’s literary world.
Zatopek van Heerden is a former police officer, he’s adrift and when the book opens, he’s hungover in jail after fighting in a bar in Capetown. Like Spero Lucas in The Cut, he’s hired by a lawyer, Hope Beneke, to help her with her client Wilhelmina van As. Here’s the reason she hired van Heerden:
Johannes Jacobus Smit was fatally wounded with a large-calibre gun on 30 September last year during a burglary at his home in Moreletta Street, Durbanville. The entire contents of a walk-in safe are missing, including a will in which, it is alleged, he left all his possessions to his friend, Wilhelmina Johanna van As. If the will cannot be found, the late Mr Smit will have died intestate and his assets will eventually go to the state.’
It seems simple enough: find the will. Van Heerden will have to get out of his drunken funk, informally reconnect with his former colleagues, solve the case, get paid and move on. However, the case takes him to another affair that happened in 1983, during the time of the Apartheid and economic sanctions against South Africa.
Dead at Daybreak is a fantastic crime fiction book and it has it all. A riveting plot. Fascinating thoughts about South Africa, the change of regime and relationships between the black and white communities. Well-drawn characters.
The plot driven chapters are third person narrative, with the reader following the investigation. They alternate with chapters with first person narrative, where van Heerden writes about his life, from his childhood to the events that brought him to get into bar fights and drink too much. These chapters were captivating too. The ending of the book was both the closing of the investigation and closure for van Heerden.
Excellent book: highly recommended.
My next crime fiction book took me to New Zealand where I was happy to reconnect with Maori police officer Tito Ihaka.
Fallout by Paul Thomas. (2014) Not available in French. Published by Bitter Lemon Press.
Fallout is my second book by Paul Thomas as I’d already read and loved Death on Demand.
Fallout has a triple plot thread with interconnected stories. It starts with Finbar McGrail, the District Commander in Auckland who is on the verge of retirement. His first murder case in 1987 is still unsolved and he recently had a new lead. He asks Ihaka to look into it and see if he can find who murdered Polly Stenson at the posh Barton party in 1987.
Meanwhile, Ihaka’s former colleague Van Roon is hired as a non-licensed investigator to find Eddie Brightside. This man has been hiding abroad for years and he was seen in New Zealand.
On the side, Miriam Lovell, Ikaka’s ex-lover, contacts him regarding his father’s death, some twenty years ago. Lovell is writing her PhD thesis about work unions in New Zealand and as Ikaha’s father was a well-known unionist, she comes across breaking news: Jimmy Ihaka might not have died of a heart attack but could have been murdered. Ihaka decides to investigate his father’s death.
I loved Fallout as much as I loved Death on Demand. Ihaka is an incredible character. He’s a maverick police officer with a code of conduct of his own. He’s loud, crude but loyal. He’s either respected or despised and he’s not good with precinct politics. This is Ihaka, assessing a witness.
Gentle, thought Ihaka; sensitive; arty. Probably plays the guitar and writes songs about how hard it is being gentle, sensitive and arty in this fucked-up world.
Political correctness is not Ihaka’s strong suit and that’s why I enjoyed my time with him.
Fallout is a tour de force. I never felt lost between the three investigations, mixing up characters or stories. It was perfectly orchestrated, a fine-tuned mix of standard crime, personal matters and political issues as it branches out on the topic of New Zealand anti-nuclear stance in the 1980s. Fascinating stuff.
Excellent book: highly recommended.
So, that was my month of August with crime fiction. All in all, it was a good pick of books, various places and well-drawn characters and plots. I’m looking forward to reading more by Deon Meyer, so don’t hesitate to leave recommendations in the comments below.
All these books belong to my 20 Books of Summer challenge.
PS : Fallout is published by an indie publisher, Bitter Lemon Press, their books are available online and well, the more books they sell, the more chances we have that they bring us great crime fiction books.
Spanish Lit Month: Exemplary crimes by Max Aub
Exemplary Crimes by Max Aub. (1956) Original Spanish title: Crímenes ejemplares. French title: Crimes exemplaires. (Translated by Danièle Guibbert.)
| Après, ici, n’importe quel malheureux petit mort, ils l’appellent cadavre. | But then here, any tiny little dead body, they call it a stiff. |
This is my first participation to Spanish Lit Month organized by Richard and Stu. I started with Exemplary Crimes by Max Aub.
Max Aub was born in 1903. His mother was French and his father German but he adopted the Spanish language when his family moved to Valencia in 1914. After the Spanish Civil War, he moved to Mexico where he remained until his death in 1972. He worked as a salesman, he was the one who ordered Guernica to Picasso for the Republican Government and worked with André Malraux. Among other things.
Exemplary Crimes is a Literary UFO, one of those books that don’t belong to a pre-defined category. In France, it won the Grand Prix de l’Humour Noir in 1981 and that says a lot about it. It is a cultural and literary prize created in 1957 that rewards works of black humour. Raymond Queneau used to be in the jury and my dear Quino also won it in 1981, in the Comics category.
So what is Exemplary Crimes exactly? It is a collection of 130 assassinations, all done in good faith according to their perpetrator. Each is described by a phrase, a paragraph or a page maximum. Each is the confession of the murderer who tells how or why they killed their victim. They all have what they consider a good justification for their deed. They don’t feel guilty or they try to convince themselves that their victim deserved it. Sometimes it’s written in a very candid tone:
| Je l’ai d’abord tué en rêve, ensuite je n’ai pu m’empêcher de le faire vraiment. C’était inévitable. | I first killed him in my dreams and then I couldn’t help myself, I killed him for real. It was inevitable. |
It can be almost poetic in its twisted way…
| – Plutôt mourir! me dit-elle. Et dire que ce que je voulais par-dessus tout, c’était lui faire plaisir. | I’d rather die, she said. And me, I wanted to please her above all. |
Or sometimes they’re totally unapologetic in front of an imaginary jury at their trial:
| Qu’est-ce qu’ils veulent de plus ? Il était accroupi. Il me présentait ses arrières d’une manière si ridicule et il était à ma portée de manière si parfaite que je n’ai pu résister à la tentation de le pousser. | What more do they want? He was crouched. He presented me with his rear-end with such a ridiculous manner and he was within my reach so perfectly that I couldn’t resist the temptation to push him. |
Indeed, what is there to understand? Isn’t that obvious to anyone? Others will show you that there was no other way out. Their victim called it upon themselves.
| Pourquoi essayer de le convaincre ? C’était un sectaire de la pire espèce, comme s’il se prenait pour Dieu le Père. Il avait la cervelle bouchée. Je la lui ai ouverte d’un seul coup, pour lui faire voir comment on apprend à discuter. Que celui qui ne sait pas se taise. | Why try to convince him? He was a sectarian of the worst species, as if he were God himself. His brain was clogged up. I opened it for him all at once, just to teach him how to talk things out. Ignorant people should shut up. |
Oh the irony. Some try to be rational…
| Il m’avait mis un morceau de glace dans le dos. Le moins que je puisse faire était de le refroidir. | He had put an ice cube in my back. The least I could do was to ice him off. |
…or to explain how exasperated they were when they committed their crime. They try to show how their victim pushed them over the edge with their obnoxious behaviour.
| Et jusque dans la salle de bains : et ci et ça et autre chose. Je lui ai enfoncé la serviette dans la bouche pour qu’elle se taise. Elle n’est pas morte de ça, mais de ne plus pouvoir parler: les paroles ont éclaté à l’intérieur. | And even in the bathroom: and this and that and blah blah blah. I shoved a towel down her throat to shut her up. She didn’t die from this but from not being able to talk anymore. The words burst inside of her. |
Some premeditated their crime and regret more getting caught than killing someone. I loved this one, it reminded me of Olivier Norek, a French crime fiction writer who is also a police officer.
| Je l’ai empoisonné parce que je voulais son siège à l’Académie. Je ne pensais pas qu’on le découvrirait. Mais il y a eu ce romancier de merde et qui de surcroît est commissaire de police. | I poisoned him because I wanted his chair at the Academy. I didn’t think they would find out. But there was this crappy novelist who’s also a superintendent. |
Imagine the investigation in the corridors of the Academy and the crime investigator turned writer who unearths a crime in a community who supposed to be very civilized.
I read Exemplary Crimes during the football UEFA Euro 2016 in France and I couldn’t help chuckling when I read this one:
| C’était comme si c’était fait ! Il n’y avait qu’à pousser le ballon, avec ce gardien de but qui n’était pas à sa place…Et il l’a envoyé par-dessus le filet ! Et ce but était décisif ! Nous nous foutions complètement de ces putains de minables de la Nopalera. Si le coup de pied que je lui ai balancé l’a envoyé dans l’autre monde, qu’il apprenne au moins à shooter comme Dieu le demande. | It was almost done! He just had to push the ball, with this goalie who wasn’t in his place…And he sent it over the net! And this was a decisive goal! We didn’t give a damn of these bloody losers from Nopalera. If the kick I threw his way sent him into the other world, let him learn how to shoot as God requires. |
Thankfully, I don’t think any football player met the same fate during the competition. I also thought about all the guns circulating in the USA when I read this short one:
| Je l’ai tué parce que j’avais un révolver. J’avais tant de plaisir à le tenir dans ma main ! | I killed him because I had a gun. I had so much pleasure holding it! |
Chilling.
A last one. A husband was killed because he broke the household’s precious soup tureen.
| Je ne l’ai pas fait avec le pic à glace. Monsieur, non, je l’ai fait avec le fer à repasser. | I didn’t do it with the ice pick. No Sir, I did it with the flatiron. |
We’re far from glamourous Sharon Stone and her Basic Instincts. We’re closer to shrew territory or to Susanita’s mother in Quino’s comic strip at best. Plus soup was involved, which brings me back to Quino too.
I had a lot of fun reading this and I highly recommend it as a summer read. For French readers, it’s like reading a book by Desproges. For English speaking readers, I’m sorry to report that it is not available in English. Another Translation Tragedy. However, the texts are short and it can be a good way to practice your French or your Spanish if you feel like it.
PS: I did the English translations the best I could. I hope they reflec the tone of the original.
Days of Combat by Paco Ignacio Taibo II
Days of Combat by Paco Ignacio Taibo II. (1976) French title: Jours de combat. Translated by Marianne Millon.
This is my second contribution to Spanish Language Literature Month, hosted by Richard at Caravana de Recuerdos and Stu at Winstonsdad’s Blog.
Paco Ignacio Taibo II was present at the book festival Quais du Polar. I have a signed copy of Jours de Combat and now I wished I had read one of his books before meeting him. I have tons of questions for him. Days of Combat is the first volume of the series featuring the PI Héctor Belascoarán Shayne. I’m afraid it’s OOP in English but other volumes of the series are available.
We’re in Mexico and Héctor Belascoarán Shayne has just left his wife and his job to get a PI license and start his own investigation business. He shares offices with a plumber, Gilberto Gómez Letras. He’s still questioning the financial viability of this adventure but he was tired of his old life. He worked as a foreman in a factory before he left his tidy life behind. The catalyst of the change is the series of murders committed by a serial killer who leaves messages as the Cervo. (At least, that’s how it’s translated into French, “brain” with a spelling mistake. I supposed it could become “brayne” in English)
In a city where the police are corrupt and useless, Héctor Belascoarán Shayne decides to chase this strangler. Three threads are fascinating to follow in this first opus of the series. First, we get acquainted with Héctor Belascoarán Shayne, his life, his thoughts and his family. Then of course, we follow the investigation and the unusual PI methods that belong to Héctor Belascoarán Shayne. And last, he takes us all over Mexico, to the point that the city becomes something fundamental in the novel.
Our main character, Héctor Belascoarán Shayne comes from mixed origins. His father is Basque and his mother is Irish. He was born around 1944 and is freshly divorced from Claudia. The divorce is was difficult. He has a sister, Elisa who’s coming home after spending several years in Canada and a brother, Carlos, who’s an active unionist. The siblings are reunited in this novel and start to get each other again. Belascoarán Shayne also meets the girl with the ponytail who will obviously become a recurring character in the series.
Héctor Belascoarán Shayne is a detective who relies on psychology and understanding of the killer’s motivations. If I had to compare him to another famous investigator, I’d choose Commissaire Adamsberg, the policeman in crime fiction books by Fred Vargas. In Days of Combat, instead of looking for material clues, Héctor Belascoarán Shayne decides to bait the killer by participating to a TV show on famous stranglers in crime history. It’s a game like Jeopardy. If he answers the questions correctly, he keeps playing and wins a prize. He’s not there for the prize, though. He’s there to tease the strangler, to tempt him to get out of the woods and above all, let him know he’s on his trail.
I won’t tell more about the murders and the investigation. I said earlier that Mexico plays an important part in the novel. Following Belascoarán Shayne all around Mexico gives us an idea of the city. The novel is atmospheric and the strong impression is enforced by the author’s gift for descriptions.
| Le soleil tapait là-haut et l’idée romantique que le soleil l’accompagnerait toute la journée l’abandonna peu à peu, peut-être malgré lui. La ville était une flaque d’asphalte dans laquelle nous transpirions tous. | The sun was hitting hard over there and the romantic idea that the sun would accompany him his all day long left him progressively, perhaps in spite of himself. The city was a pool of asphalt in which we were all sweating. |
But Mexico is a hard city to live in. The police are inefficient and violence is part of everyday life.
| La ville se nourrit de charogne. Comme un vautour, comme une hyène, comme l’urubu si mexicain qui se repaît des morts pour la patrie. Et la ville avait faim. Aussi les faits divers dégoulinèrent-ils une nouvelle fois de sang, ce jeudi-là : un accident entre un autocar de ligne et le train de Cuernavaca qui avait fait seize morts, un homme criblé de balles par sa femme « pour qu’il n’emmène plus jamais son copain voir les putes », une vieille femme poignardée pour trois cents pesos à la sortie du métro, la répression d’une grève dans la colonia Escandón, dont le bilan se soldait par deux ouvriers blessés par balle et une femme d’un quartier proche intoxiquée par les gaz. | The city feeds itself on corpses. Like a vulture, like a hyena, like the so-Mexican urubu that feeds on people who died for their country. And the city was hungry. Therefore the news trickled down with blood that Thursday. An accident between a coach and the train to Cuernavaca with a death toll of sixteen people. A man riddled with bullets by his wife “so that he will never again bring his friend to the whores”. An old woman stabbed for three hundred pesos at the metro exit. The repression of a strike in the colonia Escandón, whose casualties were two workers hit by bullets and a woman in the neighbourhood, intoxicated by fumes. |
Mexico sounds like a bloodthirsty ogre intent on devouring its children. At the same time, Paco Ignacio Taibo II shows its liveliness, the streets, the restaurants, the people.
Days of Combat is a novel with a strong sense of place people with unusual characters. After reading it, I want to know more about Belascoarán Shayne, what will happen to him and his family. But I also want to know more about the Mexico he pictures. Political criticism seeps through the lines, which always interests me. It’s crime fiction that aims to be more than a quick read about an investigation. And it succeeds. Highly recommended.
PS: Guy has reviewed several books of the series:
Book Around the Corner 