Blackout by Ragnar Jónasson

Published in Iceland in 2011; published in translation by Minotaur Books on August 28, 2018

A tourist discovers a dead body in one of Iceland’s unpronounceable northern villages. The murder victim, Elías Freysson, was beaten to death with a board. It’s the kind of story that Ísrún would like to cover, but the Reykjavik newsroom only assigns her fluff. Her editor, in fact, fears that Ísrún might be promoted over his head. When Ísrún fights to cover the story, it is clear that she is pursuing a personal interest, but the reason for Ísrún’s intense desire to investigate the murder will not be revealed until the novel nears its end.

Why Freysson was murdered is revealed in flashbacks that develop his unhappy past. We also learn, rather quickly, that Freysson was connected to a young woman who has been brought to Iceland under false pretenses and who is now locked away. Yes, this is another human trafficking story, but the trafficking is a background element that doesn’t try to milk the hysteria that so many human trafficking thrillers depend upon.

Freysson had been working on a construction site in another unproduceable northern village, where Ari Thór Arason is trying to make a career with the police. Hlynur Ísaksson has more seniority than Arason, but the boss believes that Hlynur has lost his edge and assigns Ari Thór to find out what he can about Freysson. Hylnur has been receiving disturbing emails about his bullying past, a distraction from work that becomes an important subplot.

Learning who killed Freysson requires Ari Thór to figure out why he was killed. The reader soon suspects that Freysson was engaged in unlawful behavior and that others within his orbit may also be at risk. Ari Thór wonders if the murder was linked to a retired doctor whose alcoholism was responsible for three patient deaths. He also explores Freysson’s link to a man who was raised on the same abusive farm when Freysson was a child.

All of that gives the reader a good bit of substance to ponder as the story picks up steam. The various subplots give Ragnar Jónasson the opportunity to develop interesting (and usually tormented) secondary characters with nearly as much depth as he brings to the primary characters.

Ari Thór has a caustic personality that certainly doesn’t breed respect for the police. His personal problems stem from his broken relationship with the woman he left behind in Reykjavik, opening the door to another subplot that contributes to the action in the novel’s last chapters.

After developing characters and story threads, Ragnar Jónasson opens the throttle in the novel’s concluding chapters. This is Iceland, so there aren’t any mindless shootouts or the kind of fights that let dimwitted heroes with Special Forces training demonstrate their martial arts prowess. Rather, Jónasson demonstrates his ability to escalate tension without undue violence. The focus is on people and their emotions, not action, but that focus does not diminish the pace. Blackout is easy to recommend as a fine addition to the reader's shelf of Icelandic crime fiction.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Tzer Island will return on Friday with a new review.

Newcomer by Keigo Higashino

First published in Japan in 2001; published in translation by Minotaur Books on November 20, 2018

A woman named Mineko is murdered, leaving behind an ex-husband and an estranged son. The victim was eating rice cakes before she died. Perhaps the person who brought her the box of rice cakes was her killer. The police, however, aren’t sure who brought them, so Detective Kaga begins to ask questions. Kaga is a newcomer, having only recently transferred to the precinct, but his intense curiosity will soon help him discover everything there is to know about the neighborhood.

Naho lives with her father and grandmother, who all work together in the family rice cake shop. The day after an insurance man named Takura picks up a hospitalization certificate from Naho’s grandmother, Kaga comes to the shop to inquire about the time of Takura’s visit. Could Takura have been the killer?

A young restaurant employee named Shuhei bought rice cakes from the shop at the direction of his boss, a man named Taiji. Could Taiji have been the killer? And what about the restaurant manager, Yoriko, who seems to have meddled with one of the cakes? Or Mineko’s friend, who promised to help Mineko get established after her divorce, but suddenly decided to get married and move to England? Are the friend and her fiancé suspects? And why did Mineko move to the neighborhood where she was killed without making contact with her nearby son?

Kaga is Tokyo’s Columbo, trying to add up all the loose ends, make sense of inconsistencies, and annoy witnesses by repeatedly turning up to pose new questions. As he prowls around the neighborhood where the crime was committed, his investigation takes him to a home goods store where Mineko ordered chopsticks, a cutlery shop where she bought expensive scissors, a clock shop where an owner claims to have seen Mineko while walking the family dog, a pastry shop where Mineko was a regular customer, and a handicrafts store where someone bought a top.

Kaga uncovers secrets and lies everywhere he goes, generally involving domestic drama, although the secrets aren’t necessarily relevant to the murder. In his own way, he helps people overcome the burdens of the secrets they conceal. Kaga thinks that finding ways to comfort people in their daily struggles is part of a detective’s job (an attitude that may be unique to Japanese police detectives, or perhaps to fictional Japanese police detectives).

I loved Newcomer’s episodic structure and its atmospheric depiction of a “premodern” Tokyo neighborhood. The story portrays women who are torn between traditional roles and a desire to lead interesting lives in a male-dominated workplace. In a number of the linked episodes, Keigo Higashino also illustrates the family tensions that arise as younger generations depart from Japanese traditions to pursue their own lifestyles.

But this isn’t a social justice novel or a detailed exploration of changing norms in Japanese society. Newcomer is an entertaining version of a Detective Columbo story that weaves Japanese culture in a Tokyo neighborhood into a murder mystery. Kaga is an entertaining character and his self-effacing interaction with a jealous colleague makes him all the more likeable. The plot is equally entertaining. Newcomer is the kind of police procedural that lets the reader follow a chain of evidence while wondering where it will all lead.

I became a fan of Higashino when I read The Devotion of Suspect X. Newcomer cements my fandom. The novel should appeal to fans of crime fiction generally, as well as being a treat for fans of Japanese crime novels.

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Heads You Win by Jeffrey Archer

Published by St. Martin's Press on November 6, 2018

Stories about immigrants are particularly important in a time when so many American nationalists seem to have forgotten that they are only Americans because their ancestors were once welcomed as immigrants. Too many Americans also forget the role that immigrants have played in fighting the nation’s wars. Jeffrey Archer provides a powerful reminder of those facts in Heads You Win, a unique novel that explores the two paths a Russian refugee’s life might have followed, depending on whether he boarded a ship bound for England or the United States.

In 1968, Alexander Karpenko’s father, Konstantin, is secretly attempting to organize a trade union when Alex’s friend, Vladimir, betrays Konstantin to the KGB. The betrayal produces Konstantin’s “accidental” death and fuels Alexander’s suspicion that Vladimir bought his way into the KGB by being a weasel. As a result of his treachery, Vladimir is given an education he doesn’t deserve, while the more capable Alex is given a job at the docks. Alex’s mother Elena, with an assist from her brother, decide that Alex will only have a future if he escapes from the Soviet Union.

There are two ships, two choices: England or the United States. He flips a coin. So where does he go? Archer imagines both fates, splitting Alexander in two and exploring both lives. In half of the novel, Alex and Elena travel to the United States. In the other half, Sasha and Elena disembark in England. Sasha’s voyage is more pleasant than Alex’s, perhaps because British seamen more civilized than Americans, but both versions of Alexander manage to survive and prosper, combining their natural talent with hard work to forge successful lives in their adopted countries.

In fact, thanks to his goalkeeping and math skills, Sasha lives something of a charmed life, despite discovering the trouble that a privileged kid can cause for a Russian immigrant. A bit of adversity, however, doesn’t prevent Sasha from helping his mother move over the course of time from chef to acclaimed restaurant owner.

In America, Alex and his mother are dependent on the apparent kindness of a Russian named Dimitri, a man Alex suspects to be a spy. But Alex’s biggest problem, apart from pursuing his dream of wealth while attending NYU, is the draft and Vietnam, a war that will haunt him for the rest of his life. This being America, Elena does not open a posh restaurant, but puts together a chain of pizza parlors.

At Cambridge, Vietnam isn’t on the horizon for Sasha, but a political career seems to be beckoning. Alex, on the other hand, pursues a business career. Both versions of the Russian immigrant would like to return to Russia to run for president and bring true democracy to the country.

The parallel stories are an unusual device. When Alex eventually travels to London and Sasha to New York, we learn that Alex and Sasha both exist, not in separate realities but (within the logic of the story) as two separate people inhabiting the same world, apparently having split in two at the moment of the coin flip. That element of fantasy requires the reader to suspend disbelief, but the twinned stories are so absorbing that I easily accepted the premise that made them possible.

As an idealized story of how an immigrant can make a difference, Heads You Win is admirable. Life for both Alex and Sasha might be too easy — certainly easier than the lives of most immigrants, whose families typically benefit from their hard work after a generation or two — but Horatio Alger stories are inspiring, and this one is captivating thanks to the wealth of detail that Archer brings to both lives. Some parts of the story (including a clever plot that Alex orchestrates near the end) are too improbable to be credible, but in a story that is ultimately a fantasy, improbability can be forgiven. The ending of one story is a surprise, but it might have been the only ending that would not do violence to history as we know it.

The story is one of hope, albeit tempered by realism. It is largely apolitical, although it pointedly rejects nationalism as both versions of Alexander strive to build a world that emphasizes our commonality rather than our differences, a world based on principles of equality and cooperation. In the atmosphere of America First and Brexit, any story that reminds us of the value immigrants bring to a nation and of the evils of nationalism is easy to recommend, particularly when it is executed with the storytelling skill for which Archer is known.

RECOMMENDED

Irontown Blues by John Varley

Published by Ace on August 28, 2018

Much of Irontown Blues is told from the perspective of Sherlock, a cybernetically enhanced bloodhound. Sherlock is honest and a bit snarky. His thoughts are translated by a human who has been trained to interpret communications from cybernetically enhanced animals.

The story starts with Mary Smith visiting Chris Bach. She believes she was deliberately infected with a designer form of leprosy and wants Bach to find the man who infected her. The Sherlock & Bach detective agency is located on the moon, one of the places where humans have dwelled since the alien invasion that claimed Earth.

Bach’s investigation takes him to Irontown, where the dregs of Lunar society live. The story delves into Bach’s past, to a time when the central computer went bonkers, which caused Bach to participate in unfortunate events in Irontown. (A subset of Irontown residents are known as Heinleiners. Unsurprisingly, they are libertarians. Fortunately, John Varley makes clear that he understands the limits of libertarianism. So did Heinlein, but Heinlein's reliance on “personal responsibility” as an alternative to a responsible government is too often honored in the breach by people who think libertarianism means "every man for himself.")

Eventually an organized crime group wants to kill Bach for convoluted reasons that aren’t quite plausible. All the background elements, including the alien takeover of Earth, the revolt of the central computer, the Heinleiners, and the organized crime angle, will probably seem confusing, or at least underdeveloped, to readers who are unfamiliar with Varley’s Eight Worlds universe of novels and stories. I recognized most of the references but the novel still seemed disjointed to me.

I set aside my difficulty suspending disbelief in major plot elements of Irontown Blues for the sake of digging the parts of the story that focus on Sherlock. I’m a sucker for stories told from a dog’s point of view, and while Irontown Blues isn’t one of Varley’s better efforts, I enjoyed it simply because a snarky bloodhound plays a dominant role. Varley captures the sense of loyalty and devotion, the need to be part of a pack and the willingness to view humans as the alpha dog, that makes dogs so special. The novel leaves room for a sequel, and as long as Sherlock is part of it, I’ll advance it to the front of my reading list.

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