Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

Published in 2014: A new twist for King

Stephen King has a way of writing about the mundane and the extraordinary, juxtaposing the two in a way that defies easy comparisons. In Mr. Mercedes, published in 2014, King enters the field of the hard-boiled detective novel, while both bowing to the past and updating the genre. In this book, King pits a retired, bored (almost to death) detective and a psychopathic young man, which America seems to produce far too often in recent times. (Of course, it doesn’t hurt the crazy cause that we allow almost unlimited armaments to anyone who wants to buy some.)

It’s a cliché, but I can’t help saying that King is a master storyteller. He draws in the reader by alternating between the twisted mind and world of a killer and more normal folks. I don’t know how accurate his portrait of a warped, young American male is compared to actual deviants of this type, but it sure seems real. And he creates ordinary, mostly good people who work to stop these evil deeds and restore some justice to the world. The main character, Bill Hodges, the retired cop, is a good, if flawed guy, who, like many of us, displays his best when engaged in doing what he knows best. And as in many a good detective story, the persons helping the detective provide contrast and aids to the hero-detective, in this case a bright young black man, a slightly crazy forty-something woman, and an attractive divorcee. King brings all of them to life, as persons you might meet in the course of day. Not extraordinary, but capable, sometimes in surprising ways when called upon to rise to a challenge.

King also provides a clean, well-connected plot and brisk pacing that gains tension and moves to thriller status as the story progresses. No wonder this guy sells millions and millions of books (not to mention the screen versions that they spawn). In this novel King has created an outstanding addition to the American version of the detective story, one that will certainly support more appearances of Mr. Hodges and his friends. 

Edinburgh Underside: A Review of Hide & Seek by Ian Rankin

The work of Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin has been a favorite since I first encountered one of the Rebus novels some years ago at ICPL.  (On tape or CD--I'm not sure how long ago I'm talking). Since then, I've decided to go back and follow Rebus through his beginnings, so this is the second in the series (earlier I read Knots and Crosses). In this book, Rebus investigates what seems to be an unintentional overdose of a junkie. But Rebus is a skeptic and a determined one at that. As Rebus digs deeper, he peels back a veneer on top of wealthy Edinburgh that's intended to remain hidden.

The series works because Rankin makes Rebus work as a human being. Rebus is a complex character with a daughter, an ex, and current love interests all muddled together with work, sleep, and life in general. And he has colleagues and superiors, not all of whom help him.

I won't go on because I've praised Rankin/Rebus before, and I suspect that the series (this is my third) will only get better. Now that's something to look forward to.

Still Going Strong: A Review of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: A Hercule Poirot Mystery by Agatha Christie

The Mayfair Auditorium looking smart in its heyday

An image of the auditorium interior, but I not that old!

One of my early recollections, at least in the "I'm a big boy now" category, comes from seeing a production of "Ten Little Indians", a play by Agatha Christie. The Southwest Iowa Theater Group performed the play at the Mayfair Auditorium in 1961 or 1962. This 1920s-era auditorium was built in the early days of radio, when KMA, a radio station in our little town of Shenandoah, was big player in the radio business. The auditorium was a grand affair with ornate decorations. (The owners tore it down a few years later and replaced it with a hideous looking lime green office building. But I digress.) It was a fine night out for a grade-school kid. A  neighbor girl sat beside me. During the play, several (off-stage) murders occurred and a there was even  a gun shoot in the dark. It was all pretty cool.

I think of all this because at Indian bookstores one found rows of Agatha Christie books. And it occurred to me that I'd never read one. I'd seen plays and movies, yes, but I'd never read one of her classic mysteries. Thus did I buy a title considered by many as one of her best and most representative, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1927). The book features her most prominent character, the Belgian detective (here retired to an English village), Hercule Poirot.

The setting is a quaint English village in the 1920's. The characters read like a list from the game of "Clue", and clues are strewn liberally here and there, some red herrings, others of significance. But it's unlikely that the reader will recognize the murderer until the end. In one sense--although probably not at the time of its original publication--it seems almost formulaic, but that only adds to its venerable status. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And for all its recognizable qualities, it still holds a hint of shock. After all, this is murder we're reading about. And while in Christie's world the crooked is made straight, it takes the concerted effort of the hero. In this case, the eccentric but delightful Mr. Poirot.

If you want a whodunit of the classic variety, something different from the gritty world of contemporary police procedurals, one couldn't do better than this classic. It took me back to my roots, and it was a fun visit indeed.

Stalin's Ghost: Arkady Renko #6 by Martin Cruz Smith

In reading a recent article about Russia and the Ukraine, the author noted that about one-half of those who support Putin do so because his strong leadership mimics that of Stalin. The other half support him because he doesn’t act like Stalin. Such is the enigma of Russia. It is this type of enigma in this culture that gives us Dostoevsky and Chekov’s characters, the nightmare of Soviet politics, and the Martin Cruz Smith novels about Russian detective Arkady Renko. 

In this novel, late-night riders going through a Moscow subway stop report a seeing Stalin. Superiors, eager to get Renko out of their way, assign him to the ludicrous matter. But as Renko digs deeper, we learn that more than an apparition of Stalin looms in a late night subway stop. The leader-butcher looms over Renko’s personal and family history as well as over elements in contemporary politics. Indeed, the digging in this novel becomes more than metaphorical when Renko is assigned out of Moscow to work in a town with old WWII battlefield nearby that locals search for military memorabilia. What they find is not what they want, but that’s often the way the past works. It is what it is, not what we want it to be, try as me may (and as Stalin tried) to re-write it.  

Renko’s work as a detective is set against the two persons in his life he seems to genuinely care about: the enigmatic Eva, the Ukrainian physician whom he met during his investigation around Chernobyl (Wolves Eat Dogs) and Zhenya, the mute boy whom he “adopted” (in a very loose sense) that runs his own course and who has become a chess prodigy (how Russian!). 

These novels work for me because they do what detective fiction can do better than any other genre: look at the underside of a society as well as its public face. One gets a sense of what it might be like to live in contemporary Russia (which was a part of the Soviet Union at the time that Smith wrote his first book in the series, Gorky Park). Smith is an American, and who knows if he’s accurate in his perceptions of contemporary Russian society, but he certainly gives a sense of verisimilitude that makes the story hum. 

Stalin’s ghost in the Moscow station is an apparition that only portends a much larger presence that looms over the story and that makes this another intriguing time spent following detective Renko along his dogged path. 

Published in 2007, this installment immediately follows Wolves Eat Dogs.