Bullet Points: Presidents’ Day Edition

Sorry for the recent paucity of posts on this page, but my free time lately has been devoted in large part to a major reorganization of my books. When I undertook this task, I imagined it would demand less time and effort than it has—moving volumes around my house, cleaning all of the shelves, integrating works previously stored in boxes into the existing arrangement of titles, and culling out books that I’ve decided need to be in someone else’s collection. I’m now about 95 percent of the way through this project, with a few more days still to go. But I decided to take today off and write, instead. Which brings me to these crime-fiction-related subjects worth sharing …

• As has been reported elsewhere, Swedish writer and reformed criminal-turned-criminal rehabilitation authority Börge Hellström has passed away from cancer at age 59. With journalist Anders Roslund, Hellström penned more than half a dozen thrillers, among them The Beast (2005), Cell 8 (2011), Three Seconds (2010), and the upcoming UK release, Three Minutes (Riverrun). In 2010, Rap Sheet contributor Ali Karim conducted an excellent interview with Roslund and Hellström. You’ll find Part I of their exchange here, and Part II here.


Yours truly at Bouchercon 2010 in San Francisco, flanked by best-selling Swedish novelists Börge Hellström, on the left, and Anders Roslund. (Photo © Ali Karim)

• Justine Browne, daughter of Ned Kelly Award-winning Australian crime novelist Marshall Browne, e-mailed me recently with the news that prior to her father’s demise in 2014, he’d completed work on a fourth installment in his much-lauded series starring false-legged Inspector Anders of the Rome police force. “I have worked with his editor and most recent publisher to have it published in Australia in December 2016,” Justine explained. Titled Inspector Anders and the Prague Dossier, this latest novel is currently available only Down Under, from Australian Scholarly Publishing. Justine adds, though, that “I am very much hoping to work on getting it published in the U.S. and UK in the future.” Browne’s previous Anders novels were The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders (1999), Inspector Anders and the Ship of Fools (2002), and Inspector Anders and the Blood Vendetta (2007).

• An obituary of Richard Schickel, the former Time magazine film critic who passed away this last weekend at age 84, contains his brilliant response to “an article in The New York Times whose author had written, ‘Some publishers and literary bloggers’ view the shrinkage of book reviewing in many of the nation’s leading newspapers ‘as an inevitable transition toward a new, more democratic literary landscape where anyone can comment on books.’” Schickel opined:

Let me put this bluntly, in language even a busy blogger can understand: Criticism—and its humble cousin, reviewing—is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions of a book (or any other cultural object). It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge and a fairly deep sense of the author’s (or filmmaker’s or painter’s) entire body of work, among other qualities.

I’m thinking of taping that quote above my computer screen.

• A couple of podcasts that are worth your attention: The second episode of Writer Types features interviews with authors Joe R. Lansdale, Reed Farrel Coleman, and Jess Lourey, as well as short fiction from Erik Arneson; while in the 17th episode of Two Writers and Microphone, oft-playful hosts Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste talk with Adrian McKinty and guest reviewer Kate Moloney.

• I was an enthusiastic watcher of made-for-TV movies during the 1970s and ’80s, so am pleased to see the Crime Film and TV Café hosting its “first annual Movie of the Week Blogathon.” (Can something be considered “annual,” though, if it has only appeared once?) Included among the teleflicks under consideration are Gidget Grows Up (1969), Death Takes a Holiday (1971), Horror at 37,000 Feet (1973), and Strange Homecoming (1974).

• Speaking of TV films, Peter Hanson’s Every ’70s Movie blog pays tribute to That Certain Summer, a 1972 production starring Hal Holbrook, Hope Lange, and Martin Sheen that’s considered to be “the first made-for-TV movie to present homosexual characters as dignified protagonists.” It was written by Columbo creators Richard Levinson and William Link, the latter of whom told me during a 2010 interview that he’s quite proud to have found a spot for that controversial picture on ABC-TV during the illiberal Nixon era. “I still look back and say, that’s incredible,” Link said.

• Every ’70s Movie also reviews Cannon, the 1971 pilot film for William Conrad’s long-running CBS-TV series in which he played overweight Los Angeles gumshoe Frank Cannon. “Particularly because this pilot has such a fine supporting cast of versatile character actors, it’s unsurprising the movie connected well enough with audiences to trigger a series,” Hanson remarks. “But, still, the sheer laziness of the whole enterprise—this [detective]’s different, see, because he’s fat! There’s a reason they used to call TV a vast wasteland.”

• Did you know that there was only one color episode shot of the original Perry Mason television series? Titled “The Case of the Twice Told Twist,” it aired originally on February 27, 1966. Blogger Rick29 observes that while the color photography “doesn't add anything to Perry Mason, it’s still fun for the show’s fans to learn, for example, that the familiar courtroom walls are gray.”

• The New York Times notes that in the frightening age of Donald Trump, bookstores have become meeting places and coordinating centers for the political opposition. Explains Julie Boseman:

Political organizing is perhaps a natural extension of what bookstores have done for centuries: foster discussion, provide access to history and literature, host writers and intellectuals.

“All bookstores are mission-driven to some degree—their mission is to inspire and inform, and educate if possible,” said Elaine Katzenberger, publisher and executive director of City Lights in San Francisco, a store with a long history of left-wing activism.

“When Trump was elected, everyone was just walking around saying: ‘What do I do. What do we do?’” she added. “One of the places you might find some answers is in books, in histories, in current events, even poetry.”

• While we’re on the subject of political resistance, it should be noticed out that Ben H. Winters, author of Underground Airlines and World of Trouble, has contributed to Slate’s “Trump Story Project,” which “imagine[s] the dystopian future of Trump’s America.” Winters’ predictably grim-edged tale is titled “Fifth Avenue.”

• The Spy Command, which just a few days ago remarked on “long-term issues confronting the [James Bond film] franchise” (including financial problems for its longtime home studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), now picks up on rumors that the 25th Bond picture “may film in Dubrovnik, Croatia.”

• Oh, and the same site highlights calculations that “Daniel Craig’s tenure as James Bond is now second-longest,” following Roger Moore’s time playing Ian Fleming’s protagonist in the film series. Those judgments, explains Spy guy Bill Koenig, are “based on the date each Bond actor was announced publicly.” Until recently, Pierce Brosnan (GoldenEye) had held the No. 2 spot. Sean Connery, the first big-screen 007, has now fallen to fourth place in this assessment.

• B.V. Lawson recently mentioned that ABC-TV’s “magician FBI drama pilot Deception has found its lead in Jack Cutmore-Scott, who takes on the role of superstar magician Cameron Black. When his career is ruined by scandal, Black has only one place to turn to practice his art of deception, illusion, and influence—the FBI.” Let’s see if Cutmore-Scott can be any more successful with the prestidigitator-turned-investigator concept than Bill Bixby was with his own undervalued, 1973-1974 drama, The Magician.

• Also from Lawson’s In Reference to Murder:

Finland-U.S.-based Snapper Films has unveiled a new TV series, Sherlock North. It’s based on a Conan Doyle short story where Sherlock Holmes travels to Scandinavia after faking his own death and is on the run from nemesis Professor Moriarty. Under a false identity—an explorer named Sigerson—Holmes settles in dark and cold Lapland, in northern Finland, sparking a culture clash between the upper-class, fast-talking and eccentric Brit and the down-to-earth Nordic characters.

One hundred and thirty years after his first print appearance (in A Study in Scarlet), it seems Arthur Conan Doyle’s “consulting detective” still hasn’t lost his appeal.

• So how did Sherlock Holmes get his moniker?

• Check out these three interviews: MysteryPeople talks with K.J. Howe about her debut novel, The Freedom Broker; S.W. Lauden quizzes Steph Post, author of the intriguing new Lightwood; and Crime Fiction Lover interrogates Chris Ould, whose second Detective Jan Reyna novel, Killing Bay, is finally reaching British bookshops.

• You knew Playboy’s no-nudes policy couldn’t last, right?

• And The Bookseller says that “Swedish publisher Norstedts has revealed the title for the fifth installment in the Millennium series created by Stieg Larsson as The Man Who Hunted/Chased His Shadow (Mannen Som Sökte Sin Sugga).” Like 2015’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web, this new Lisbeth Salander/Mikael Blomkvist thriller will be composed by Swedish writer David Lagercrantz. There’s no word yet on the plot of this novel—which will be published by the UK’s MacLehose Press in September under a less-unwieldy English title—but Lagercrantz says “the idea for the fifth book struck him on a family holiday.” Does that mean we’re in for The Girl in the Bloody Bikini or The Girl with an Umbrella in Her Drink? One’s mind reels at the possibilities …

Browne Out

Marshall Browne, the Ned Kelly Award-winning Australian author of such crime novels as The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders (1999), Inspector Anders and the Ship of Fools (2001), and Rendezvous at Kamakura Inn (2006), died of cancer on February 14 at age 78. As “Bookmarks” columnist Jason Steger reported in Melbourne’s Age newspaper:

Browne was an international banker--he racked up 37 years with NAB [National Australia Bank]--and one of his forebears was a founder of Australia’s first bank. But the former paratrooper who once hankered for a spell in the French foreign legion loved writing and had three books published in Britain in the early ’80s when writing was still “an occasional Sunday activity”. Then came a couple of historical novels about Melbourne in the late 19th century, The Gilded Cage and The Burnt City. It was with The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders, published in 1999 and featuring his one-legged policeman investigating the murder of a magistrate who was himself investigating the killing of an anti-Mafia judge, that he really struck a chord with readers. It won the Ned Kelly award for a first crime novel and was shortlisted in the 2002 Los Angeles Times book awards. Browne then turned his attention to Nazi Germany, writing three novels starring Franz Schmidt, an auditor, as their hero. Schmidt has only one eye, and Browne told “Bookmarks” he was interested in damaged heroes. He included Hideo Aoki, the hero of his 2006 novel, Rendezvous at Kamakura Inn, a disgraced Japanese policeman intact physically but not psychologically. Browne wrote three novels about Anders, and Australian Scholarly Press, which published The Gilded Cage in 1996, will bring out the fourth later this year. The book was at the editing stage when Browne died. But only 10 days earlier he had a bookshop signing for The Sabre and the Shawl, the novella published by ASP last month that The Age review described as “a romantic evocation of the historical time and place, with great characterisation and an exploration of the creative process”. Publisher Nick Walker said Browne was delighted by the queue of people who bought books but exhausted by the time he got home. When people assembled for a celebratory drink he told them in his characteristic self-deprecating way, with a smile on his face, that they were looking at the ghost of Marshall Browne.

Steele Curry, a Rap Sheet reader from Calgary, Alberta (and author of the Citizen of the World Guides), who had recently been in e-mail contact with Browne, forwarded a note to me that he’d received from the Melburnian this last January 7. It reads in part:

Unfortunately, my health has deteriorated. Now pretty much house-bound. My cancer in progress for 4 years has now reached the last phase & medicos expect me to bow-out later in 2014. No pain, just intense fatigue.

However, I have a book just out--not a mystery or crime thriller--a novella titled The Sabre and the Shawl published by Arcadia imprint of Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne.

I’ve finished the 4th Inspector Anders novel: Inspector Anders & the Prague Dossier which, hopefully, will come out about June with the same publisher.

At the pace of a snail! I'm working on a sequel to Rendezvous at Kamakura Inn--titled Black Ice--Inspector Aoki is back! & I hope to get it done.

In another note to Curry, sent to him just yesterday by ASP publisher Nick Walker, Walker wrote:

I have sad news--Marshall passed away just over a week ago. He had a book launching ([The] Sabre and the Shawl) just a few days before, and it was a great success. We shall look after his books and shall release the new Inspector Anders mid-year--it’s now with an editor.

So we can at least look forward to one additional Browne work of fiction The status of the aforementioned Black Ice is less clear. I shall update this post when I hear back from Nick Walker, to whom I have just sent an inquiry regarding that work.

Our best wishes go out to Marshall Browne’s wife, Merell, and the remainder of their family at this time of sorrow.

READ MORE: “The Book You Have to Read: Who Killed Palomino Molero? by Mario Vargas Llosa,” by Marshall Browne (The Rap Sheet); “Australian Crime Fiction Snaphot: Marshall Browne,” by Perry Middlemiss (Matilda).

The Book You Have to Read: “Who Killed Palomino Molero?” by Mario Vargas Llosa

(Editor’s note: This is the 67th installment of our ongoing Friday blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. Today’s selection comes from Ned Kelly Award-winning Australian author Marshall Browne. A onetime banker and former paratrooper, Browne penned three novels about a false-legged Roman detective, Inspector Anders, including Inspector Anders and the Ship of Fools [2001] and Inspector Anders and the Blood Vendetta [2006]. He also wrote the thrillers The Eye of the Abyss [2003] and Rendezvous at Kamakura Inn [2005]. Browne’s latest novel, not yet available in the States or Britain, is this year’s The Iron Heart.)

Mario Vargas Llosa is a famous writer, but Who Killed Palomino Molero? appears to be relatively unknown. I came across it in 1989, the year after its publication, and it has stayed in my head ever since. My edition’s a Faber and Faber paperback, translated from the Spanish by Alfred MacAdam (who deserves a cheer).

The book came to my notice via a newspaper review by an Australian critic, Laurie Clancy, headlined “Detective Thriller Runs Deep.” Clancy wrote (in part), “Who Killed Palomino Molero? is, on one level, a detective story, and it will offer great encouragement to those who believe that this genre can reach the heights of accomplishment of any other branch of fiction. Sparsely written with not a superfluous word, taut, filled with ironies, it is a superbly gripping novel right up to the deliberately irresolute revelation at the end.”

I went out to buy Llosa’s book, fairly confident that it would be right up my alley, and it was.

The opening paragraph sets the scene for all that’s to follow:

“Sons of bitches.” Lituma felt the vomit rising in his throat. “Kid, they really did a job on you.” The boy had been both hung and impaled on the old carob tree. His position was so absurd that he looked more like a scarecrow or a broken marionette than a corpse. Before or after they killed him, they slashed him to ribbons: his nose and mouth were split open; his face was a crazy map of dried blood, bruises, cuts, and cigarette burns. Lituma saw they’d even tried to castrate him; his testicles hung down to his thighs.

The time is the 1950s. Constable Lituma and his superior officer, Lieutenant Silva, are the two cops at the Guardia Civil post in a small Peruvian coastal town called Talara. They set out, in the heat and dust, to investigate this horrific crime. They don’t have a lot going for them--not even motor transport. To get around they rely on the local taxi driver, who complains that they lose him money, though the lieutenant always pays for the gasoline. Otherwise, they bum lifts from passing truck drivers. But it’s the wall of silence they run into which puts the brakes on the investigation.

Lituma says to a cousin: “‘It’s going to be tough. Nobody knows anything, nobody saw anything, and the worst part is that the authorities won’t lift a finger to help.’

“‘Wait a minute, aren’t you the authorities over at Talara?’ asked Josefino, genuinely surprised.

“‘Lieutenant Silva and I are the police authority. The authority I’m talking about is the Air Force. That skinny kid was in the Air Force, so if they don’t help us, who the fuck will?’”

That is the nub of their dilemma. The murder victim, Palomino Molero, was a new recruit at the nearby Air Force base and everyone on the base has clammed up. It transpires that Molero was also a bolero singer and guitar player, who was sought by both the Air Force officers and gringos at the International Petroleum Company (IPC) to entertain at their parties and serenade their sweethearts. It’s this part of the slaughtered kid’s life which the crime comes out of--at the heart of which is the stony-faced base commandant, Colonel Mindreau, and his spoilt and troubled daughter. It was Molero’s tragic misfortune to come up against these people.

Silva and Lituma go out to the Air Force base to interview
Colonel Mindreau. Casting his eye around, Lituma observes bitterly: “Some of these fuckers know what happened.” The colonel treats them like dog turds.

“He really put us through the ringer, didn’t he, Lieutenant?” Lituma dried his brow with a handkerchief. “I’ve never met a guy with a worse temper. Do you think he hates the Guardia Civil just because he’s a racist, or do you think he has a specific reason? Or does he treat everybody that way? Nobody, I swear, ever made me swallow so much shit as that
bald bastard.”

But Lieutenant Silva is in a good humor. “Appearances are tricky, Lituma. ... As far as I’m concerned, the colonel yakked like a drunken parrot.”

As the author clearly shows, we are dealing with two distinct worlds: the one of the base, where the officers live in proper houses with gardens and swimming pools and good food; and the poverty-stricken and mean shantytown existence of the locals, which is the existence of Silva and Lituma. As Lituma comments: “They really live it up. Like the gringos at the IPC, these lucky bastards live like movie stars behind their fences and screens.”

It’s against this contrast of lives that the “runs deep” of the aforementioned review headline comes into focus: the virtual impossibility of justice, the abuse of power in a society grounded in inequality--the “big guys,” as the locals call those from the parallel world, are never touched.

OK, so why did this story stay in my head over the years, along with only a handful of other novels? It’s short--150 pages--and for many would be a rapid one-sitting read, perhaps best taken in a single shot. On the other hand, some might prefer to take it easy and linger over great writing which develops the characters, infuses a haunting tone in the narrative, and creates an atmospheric sense of place. Witness how the squalid dump that is Talara, wilting in the hard sunlight beside the dirty, oily ocean, offering its residents just a few grains of hope in their lives, is invested with atmospheric, even poetic touches, by the author. He’s sparse with description, but when he puts out those touches come as rays of light in the basically gritty, realistic narrative--yet, rays of light connected to the unfolding story.

It was a warm night, quiet and starry. The mixed smells of carob trees, goats, birdshit, and deep frying filled the air. Lituma, unable to erase from his mind the picture of the impaled and bloody Palomino Molero, wondered if he’d be sorry he’d become a cop ...

And another brain-aching morning:

It wasn’t even eight yet and the sun was blazing hot. The restaurant was pierced by luminous spears of light in which motes of dust floated and flies buzzed. There were few people on the street. Lituma could hear the low sound of the breaking waves and the murmur of the water washing back
down the beach.

The two cops go to a nearby town, to interview the dead bolero singer’s mother:

Amotape is thirty miles south of Talara, surrounded by sun-parched rocks and scorching sand dunes. There are dry bushes, carob thickets, and here and there a eucalyptus tree--pale green patches that brighten the otherwise monotonous gray of the arid landscape. The trees bend over, stretch out and twist around to absorb whatever moisture might be in the air; in the distance they look like dancing witches. In their benevolent shade, herds of squalid goats are always nibbling the crunchy pods that fall off their branches; there are also some sleepy mules and a shepherd, usually a small boy or girl, sunburnt, with bright eyes.

It’s this kind of everyday scene that makes Lieutenant Silva, and Lituma, sweat, and their heads ache; the impossible investigation is a taste-bud-searing sauce on the dish of their hard lives.

As you might have gathered, much of the story in Who Killed Palomino Molero? is told from Constable Lituma’s point of view. He diligently initiates several inquiries in support of his boss, which all fall in a heap. A romantic kind of guy, dark-skinned, of the lower classes--the cholos--he is overwhelmed by the situation they’re in. Unlike the sharp-minded, pragmatic, handsome, and fair-skinned lieutenant, Lituma is anxious about their lack of progress, and having nightmares featuring the murdered kid. He watches his boss with admiration but without much understanding. The lieutenant’s cunning moves, and obscure motives, leave him bewildered. The laconic Silva, despite the seeming hopelessness of the investigation, is not done with the “big boys.” He’s chipping away at the wall of silence, and laying his plans to undermine it. Throughout this tale, the lieutenant is a benevolent and amused mentor to Lituma, though that doesn’t stop him from shafting his junior officer with his corrosive wit.

“Are you kidding me, Lieutenant?”

“No, Lituma. I’m trying to distract you a little because you’re so edgy. Why are you so edgy? A Guardia Civil should have balls like a brass monkey.”

“You’re a bit jumpy yourself, sir. Don’t try to deny it either.”

Lieutenant Silva laughed involuntarily. “Of course I’m jumpy. But I cover it up so people can’t see. You look as though you’d shit in your pants if you heard a mosquito fart.”

Lieutenant Silva is laid-back and self-contained, but there is one big chink in his armor and that is where the author’s commentary on the macho attitudes of the male, in this society, in particular, are threaded into the narrative with flashes of humor. The lieutenant is obsessed with Dona Adriana, the proprietor of the seaside shack were he and Lituma take their frugal meals. Silva is not put off by her being married to an old fisherman who captains The Lion of Talara. Or by anything else. He’s been running a relentless campaign to lay her. Her infuriated rejections are like water off a duck’s back to him, only serving to fire up his desire to incendiary levels. Silva tells Lituma: “I’ve got that chubby broad under my skin, goddamnit.”

Lituma is perplexed. The lieutenant could have any girl in town. He thinks: “Who could figure it? She was old enough to be his mother, she had a few gray hairs in that tangle on her head, and, last but not least, she bulged all over, especially in the stomach.”

Constable Lituma puzzles out that the lieutenant’s current life is dominated by two forces: beneath his calm, patient exterior there’s a deep-seated drive to solve the Palomino Molero case, and more on the surface is his desire to conquer Dona Adriana. Some afternoons, he slips away with his binoculars to a headland above a secluded bay, where Dona Adriana goes alone to bathe. He says he’s going there to watch for smugglers, but that’s not the case. One afternoon he takes Lituma along.

“This is the greatest gift I’ve ever given anyone, Lituma. You’re going to see Chubby’s ass, nothing less. And her tits. And, if you’re lucky, her snatch with its curly little hairs. Get ready, Lituma, because you’re going to die when you see it all. It’s your birthday present, your promotion. How lucky you are to work for a guy like me!”

Lituma regards the lieutenant as honest, fair-minded, and dedicated to his work, yet flawed by a mind, which in regard to Dona Adriana, verges on the pornographic. However, the day is coming when Dona Adriana comprehensively destroys Silva’s macho pride. It’s one setback that he can’t take in his stride.

Nonetheless, the indefatigable lieutenant is patiently closing in on solving the case. When he ties it up, so far as it can be tied up, the irony is that no one in the town believes that he’s nabbed the real killers. As Clancy said in his review: “they stick with stubborn prejudice to their belief that the real killers were the ‘big guys,’ who were never touched--which is true, of course, but not in the way they think.”

However, the lieutenant and his officer are left in no doubt that they’ve touched the big end of town. Silva breaks the news to Lituma:

“Bad news for you. You’ve been transferred to a little station ... somewhere in Junin Province. You’ve got to get there right away. They’ll pay for the bus ticket.”

“Junin?”

“I’m being transferred, too, but I still don’t know where. Maybe the same place.”

“That’s got to be far away.”

“Now you see, asshole,” the lieutenant teased him affectionately. “You were so eager to solve the mystery of Palomino Morelo. Well, now it’s solved, and I did it for you. So what do we get for our trouble? You’re transferred to the mountains, far from your heat and your people. They’ll probably find a worse hole for me. That’s how they thank you for a job well done in the Guardia Civil. What will become of you out there, Lituma? Your kind of animal just doesn’t grow there. I feel sorry just thinking about how cold you’re going to be.”

“Sons of bitches.”

Who Killed Palomino Molero? is one of those rare and satisfying dishes, the taste and memory of which stay with you. I wondered what happened next to Silva and Lituma in their lives--I fear nothing good.

I haven’t read any other of Mario Vargas Llosa’s fictions. Years ago, though, I saw the terrific movie, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, which was based on this author’s 1977 novel of the same name and starred Peter Falk and Barbara Hershey. (The film was retitled in the States as Tune in Tomorrow.) I’ll read that if I can ever find it.

An Investigative Middle Ground?

Bill Clinton used to talk a lot about “Third Way” (or “radical middle”) politics, beginning when he ran for president of the United States in 1992. Britain’s Tony Blair and Italy’s Romano Prodi have voiced a similar philosophy of governance. But now Perry Middlemiss of the Australian books blog Matilda has come up with a Third Way in crime fiction. In a review of Marshall Browne’s latest novel, Inspector Anders and the Blood Vendetta, Middlemiss writes:

There is a theory, to which I am becoming more and more attuned, that tension in British and US police procedural crime novels is created in two, very different ways. In the US version, the main protagonist fights the bulk of his battles with other branches of the justice machinery: if he works in homicide, then the FBI tries to interfere, and if he works for the Justice Department then it’s likely to be a local detective that gets under his feet and in his way--Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch is an excellent example of this. Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus, on the British side of the equation, has no such external agencies getting in his way. He has to work against his superiors, acting as an outsider to their bureaucratic inertia. Rebus is considered a maverick by his bosses, while Bosch is looked upon almost as a star by his.

There is, by implication, a third way: a pan-continental approach that uses tensions within and across countries, and between varying political forces, both legal and illegal. I have come across very few of these novels outside the purely “spy thriller” genre, such as [Frederick] Forsyth’s [The] Day of the Jackal. Few straight-forward mystery novels attempt to tackle the tensions listed above; whether for wont of material or ambition I’m not sure. So it is with a genuine sense of interest and the prospect of a new direction that we can approach the Inspector Anders novels of Melbourne writer Marshall Browne.

To learn more about the plotting approach Browne takes with his Anders books, read this January Magazine review of Inspector Anders and the Ship of Fools.

(Hat tip to Campaign for the American Reader.)