book review – The Locked Room – Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

‘Don’t you ever read detective stories?’
‘No’
‘I read tons of them. Anything. And forget most of it as soon as I’ve finished. But that’s a classic. A room locked on the inside…’

By the eight book in a series of ten you start to fear that perhaps the initial high standards might have started to wear off. There is that worry that the characters that seemed so fresh at the start are by now hitting the boundaries of the descriptions their authors have written for them.

Those fears are totally understandable but utterly irrelevant with The Locked Room. Far from dipping in terms of quality Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo open the shoulders here and display a confidence about their world and their ability to deliver solid characters as well as well written plots. Martin Beck, the man who after all lends his name to the series, plays second fiddle here.

But what is fresh about the Locked Room is the injection of humour with some passages being almost Tom Sharpe like in the way the police descend into farce trying to catch bank robbers. The chief of police who leads an anti-vietnam march straight into a crowd of football hooligans is just one of the images that lingers.

At the heart are the parallel stories of the bank robbery that opens the book and the discovery of a dead man in a locked room who had suffered a shot to the stomach.

Police incompetence riddles both cases with Beck often expressing exasperation with his colleagues more than with the challenges of tracking down smart criminals. It is the ability to bring in the social and political background that makes the books from Sjowall and Wahloo so different because you are given an insight into a Sweden in the early 1970s, a society that dislikes the police and has political leanings towards the left. The witness who deliberately invents a get-away car does so to hinder the police and aid those he sees as fighting against society.

The other great skill in the Beck series is the way that along with the hard graft of policeman and women like Beck out there on the streets there is the way that luck plays a crucial role. They never overplay it and on the tightrope of keeping the reader believing you are always kept on the right side of falling into disbelief.

Onwards to the last couple in the series.

book review – The Man Who Knew Everything – Tom Stacey

“Few who patronised the Darwish did not know Gran Jones, and virtually every permanent resident of the island, native and expatriate alike, knew of him.”

At the start you can’t help but think of Graham Greene and his tales of hacks stuck out in remote places living on the expenses provided by newspapers based back in Blighty as they struggle with lives that are falling apart. But as you read deeper into the book that feeling starts to disappear.

What makes this different is the central character Granville Jones who is not only old, alone and at one point soaked in his own urine after a stroke but clearly is not benefiting from being the man who knew everything.

If anything it is what he doesn’t know that has landed him in trouble with his marriage falling apart, his position with the rest of the world shrinking as he becomes more and more marooned in his house in a remote Arab state. But his reputation is based on the friendships and relationships he established years ago.

So when a major story happens on his own patch, one he initially misses altogether, the question really becomes one of whether or not Jones has the appetite to go for the big story one last time. The fact he does is more down to a sense of wanting to find out what has happened to the ruler, someone he knows, as the result of a coup. But as he gets one of the biggest stories of his life the competitive urge kicks in.

As he struggles to file a story that will discredit the coup and change history and restore his friend the Emir to power Jones slips away.

This book in many ways is a swansong for those glory days of the foreign correspondents and those hacks who went all over the world in the hunt for the story. They are still out there but in the web age it is not the same and the world Stacey describes here seems to have gone forever.

bookmark of the week

This was sent to me a while ago by a fellow blogger and good friend Stuart Allen who slipped it into a book he sent me. Whenever I see it thoughts turn to him and his generosity.

bookshops worth a visit – Topping, Bath

one of the advantages of having family in Bath is that it provides a chance to go to a couple of great bookshops. Topping is the first selection and there will be another next week. What has to be said about this bookshop is that as well as having a great selection, it has all of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past as an example, it has a wonderful ambiance. It also hosts numerous writer events, none of which I am yet to get to but it is on the do list.

Thoughts at the half way point of The Locked Room

There is a great deal more humour in this book than some of the others in the Martin Beck series and there is incredible confidence being shown by the authors.

It’s hard to imagine anyone effectively sidelining the main character for half of the story as the action focuses elsewhere but this is what they do with Beck who as a result cuts an even lonelier figure.

In a tale dominated by bank robberies and blundering officials Beck concentrates his mind on working out just who killed the man in the locked room.

Review on completion soon…

book review – A Dreambook for Our Time – Tadeusz Konwicki

“Your sick,” he said, quietly. “You see everything in unnatural proportions and in weird associations. You suspect people of having complexes they don’t have. Please look at them, living their own lives, now better, now worse, they love or dislike one another, they work or idle, are sad and cheerful. But they’re normal. They’re healthy. It’s you who is sick.”

One of the most basic things you look for as a reader embarking on the journey of a fresh book is for the signposts that the author has decided to use to help you on the journey.

Is the book split into parts, long or short chapters or in this case none at all has a bearing on the experience. Clearly here the effect that was being aimed at was a stream of consciousness. As the main character Mr Paul drifts in between dreams, memories and the present the fact there are no breaks in the narrative is meant to make that effect feel more powerful.

Sadly for me it just didn’t work and it would be difficult to see it having the desired impact unless read at one sitting. But aside from the style the story itself is a tale of loss and that does get through and sticks with you.

Before concentrating on the main character look at the situation he is living in and the people around him all are scarred by the past in a small polish village. He is in a valley dominated by a forest and river where a partisan leader is reputed to live even though the war ended many years before. The woods are full of ghosts anyway with an abandoned German bunker that was being built by Hitler, graves of those killed by the Red Army and the memories of the villagers who sought shelter there in times of occupation.

But the forest is now turning against the valley with engineers and machinery turning up with plans to dam the river and flood the valley. The past will be sealed under water and the shadow of that forthcoming flooding hangs over everyone.

The book starts with the main character coming round from an attempted suicide, although even that remains slightly vague with his reasons for taking poison never really unfolding. Surrounding the ill man on the bed is a cast of oddballs all with their secrets. Count Pac, who denies his aristocratic heritage, is arguing with the partisan Krupa who is denying he is a Jew. Then there is the railwayman who is struggling to talk of the past and the horrific deaths of his wife and children.

But the main focus is of course on Paul and his battle to come to term with his own past. As he unravels his own memories he reveals a life as a partisan, killer and a loner living in the woods fighting the Germans and trying to find a place to settle after rejecting his parents.

As he talks of leaving the village he believes he has met a figure from his past but as he tried to get closer to resolving history it slips away from him. Even his attempts at some sort of future happiness escape from him.

As you stand back from it you start to widen the story to summarise the feelings of a nation. Invaded and fought over by the Germans and Russians the Poles are left wondering just where they stand. Where is safe and what land can be called home? Everywhere you look there are ghosts and the actions of the living intertwine with those of the dead.

A difficult book to get through and one that at moments seems to be going down a dead end but as the train pulls away from the station and alone Paul has to decide about his future you do feel engaged and you understand the predicament of someone haunted by their own history.

Thoughts at the halfway point of The Man Who Knew Everything

One of the problems with this book is that it reminds you of some many others. You think of Our man in Havana, The Quiet American by Greene and it also sparks off other memories of films. But putting that familiarity to one side the story does slowly start to creep up on you.

Trying to identify with an aged hack who has based himself on a small Arab nation is not something that comes naturally but underneath the old exterior the desire to get the story out still seems to be there.

In many ways it is describing a lost world of foreign correspondents, Fleet Street and newspapers of the old school. Waiting to see how the second half develops.

Review soon…

Thoughts at the halfway point of A Dreambook for Our Time

This book takes a while to get going partly because it has such a disorientating start. The lead character emerges from a poison induced coma to find that he is surrounded by the villagers from a small Polish town.

The year is in the early 1960s but for those in the village it could easily be further back in the past as most have an existence dominated by the shadow of the Second World War. The village is also dominated by the nearby woods which are reputed to be the hiding place of a partisan leader as well as the burial ground for war victims. Hitler started to build a bunker complex there and the memories of the events of the war are supported by the physical reminders.

So it is no surprise with all the memories and the general looking back to the past that the main character starts to unfold his own memories. Just what he is doing in the village is unclear but he seems to be looking for someone and the woods and the partisan leader hold the key. But he is also influenced by the experiences of those around him and he seems to be searching for someone he knew in the war.

Full review soonish…

book review – The Story of Mr Sommer – Patrick Suskind

“…I’d just been watching a man who all his life was on the run from death.”

Sometimes books should stand out against the conventional novel offering an experience that is different but just as valuable. The reason why this book first stood out in a shop that displays its books stacked up on a circular table was because of the illustration on the front and the quality of the paper.

This tale of growing up is interspersed with lovely illustrations that at first make you mistakenly think that this is a children’s book. Its audience is squarely adult with the tale of growing up in a village in Germany one that has its lighter moments but also has a darker side.

What you find as a reader going through the collection of anecdotes that are linked with the background presence of Mr Sommer is that you find yourself nodding with not necessarily the same exact memories but certainly the same feelings of inadequacy that the young author feels as he tried to deal with girls, bitter old piano teachers and the demands of his TV loathing parents.

The main focus of the story is the elusive and mysterious Mr Sommer who spends his time strolling round the countryside walking constantly inviting both childish ridicule as well as adult suspicion about what is his driving force. Is he claustrophobic or is he running away from a dull marriage? You don’t find out for a long time that he is running away from death in perhaps the only way he knows how a very literal escape.

Although there are a few anecdotes here with the family, bicycle and piano teacher being unwrapped next to the Sommer overarching story it is the sense of change as the main character grows up that unites them all. He is writing about a period when television is just emerging, cars are starting to crop up on the roads and the isolation of the little villages is coming to an end. In many senses Sommer is a character that is stuck in the past opting to walk and refusing the chance to get a lift in a car and spurning possessions.

The ending is a very sharp reminder that some events can shape a life forever and some of the moments of extreme tragedy we witness as children can imprint on our minds and stay there influencing thoughts about the world.

bookmark of the week

Clearing out some old bookselves I came across this Lord of the Rings bookmark with the blurb about “one ring to rule them…”. It is one of those film promotional bookmarks that crops u in books shops for a while to tie-in with the film.