Review: THE GUN, by Fuminori Nakamura

The Gun, by Fuminori Nakamura. Published 2016 by Soho Crime. Translated from the Japanese by Allison Markin Powell.

The Gun is definitely not your usual crime novel. It's not a whodunit; it's barely a procedural, and the murder doesn't occur until the book is almost over. It reads more like an after-the-fact confession; the narrator, who is not named, recounts the slow burn of circumstance that leads to the killing. Out for a walk one night he finds a gun next to a body; he takes the gun and becomes obsessed with it. He's a student and when we meet him he's juggling two women, but nothing else in his life compares to the feelings he has for his new best friend.

Over time he begins to feel that he must fire the gun. Then he starts to plan a murder.

The Gun is Nakamura's first novel and the latest to be translated into English; first to come stateside was The Thief, which Soho published in 2002. Nakamura has a won several prizes for his writing including the 2002 Shincho Prize for New Writers for The Gun and the 2012 David Goodis Award, an American crime writing prize.

I can see why. Nakamura keeps the tone so even and so low-key even as the narrator descends more and more into madness and obsession. Even as he commits his crime, which comes and goes by so quickly I had to re-read the passage.

You have to be up for something a little different to get into The Gun, but I strongly recommend it for crime readers up for an adventure. I'll be reading more Nakamura sooner rather than later. (In fact I just entered a galley giveaway for his latest, The Boy in the Earth. I hope to win!)

Rating: BACKLIST

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

Review: RANDOM VIOLENCE by Jassy Mackenzie

Random Violence, by Jassy Mackenzie. Published 2010 by Soho Crime. Crime fiction.

I have another great volume 1 for my crime peeps.

Random Violence is the first in a series of mysteries by South African writer Jassy Mackenzie, starring Jade de Jong, a private detective who's just moved back home after some years abroad following the death of her policeman father in a gruesome car accident. Jade gets involved in the investigation of the murder of Annette Botha, a seemingly random attempted carjacking. Botha was shot outside her home trying to open a locked gate, and at first the case seems like just another act of violence, just another attack in a country where crime is rampant and nobody feels safe.

Jade thinks that something else might be up, though, and works with police detective- and friend- David Patel to find the truth. The search will take them through South Africa's corrupt police system, its brutal military and its absolutely bloodthirsty (literally) real estate speculation industry. Mackenzie has created a truly chilling villain in Whiteboy, a sadist responsible for many crimes, including many that no one even knows about. Alongside all of this, Jade is out to get revenge on the man she believes to be her father's killer, a man about to get out of prison, and for this she needs to reach back into the underworld. She's also got some interpersonal stuff with David.

I have to say I really enjoyed this book and want to read more in the series. I liked Jade a lot. She's complicated and tough and real. She gets some things wrong, and she learns and tries again. I bet her adventures will be fun to follow. The book is deeply atmospheric and gives a real sense of the paranoia and danger that South Africans live with, something I've noticed in a lot of books about the country. If you've read Absolution by Patrick Flanery you'll have noticed it there too.

I picked it up because she has a newish book out in the series that got a good write-up on NPR and since I enjoy reading about South Africa and I enjoy crime, I thought this would be a great fit. And it was. It was very hard to put down once the plot got rolling and though the violence could be gruesome at times, the horror of why these things were happening was almost worse than the violence itself. It ends well but it is dark, dark, dark, so take that into consideration. But for you dark-crime readers, Random Violence would be a great choice.

Rating: BEACH

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

Review: THE CORONER'S LUNCH, by Colin Cotterill

The Coroner's Lunch, by Colin Cotterill. Published 2005 by Soho Crime. Fiction. Crime Fiction.

So if you've been reading my "It's Monday, What Are You Reading?" posts for the past couple of weeks, you already know how I feel about The Coroner's Lunch, Colin Cotterill's first entry into the Dr. Siri Paiboun series of crime novels set in 1970s Laos. If not, well, let's just say I loved it.

Dr. Siri, as he's called, is a septuagenarian doctor who had hoped he'd be allowed to retire, but Communist officials in Vientiane, the capital, have decided to keep him on as a coroner, a job that he has never trained to do. Using whatever resources he has at hand, along with two misfit assistants and a local cop on the side of the angels, Dr. Siri recognizes pretty quickly that he can do more than just determine the cause of death. He is, he realizes, in a great position to solve crimes. And, as a coroner, he doesn't have to go looking for victims; they're delivered to his doorstep every day.

As Dr. Siri settles into his new role, he's presented with several strange deaths. First up is the sudden death of an older married woman whose husband insists food poisoning is at fault. Dr. Siri is not convinced though. Unraveling this one will involve taking down someone close to him and exposing local corruption. But the centerpiece mystery of this book is the strange death of three Vietnamese men who are found in a river, two tied with flimsy rope and one weighted down. This mystery gets to the heart of the difficult relations between Laos and Vietnam, and will find Dr. Siri alternately threatened and revered as the reincarnation of an ancient spirit. Lao spiritualism and mythology, and the battle in Siri's heart between tradition and modern scientific thought all come into play.

And then there's Dr. Siri himself, curmudgeonly and tough and funny. What made the book for me was his character and his ongoing battle with just about everything around him. I loved the combination of politics and tradition, modern and mythic, and the black comedy that rises between the interplay of traditional Lao culture and the straight laced Communists running the country. The character of Dr. Siri brings all these elements together in a perfectly delightful package. I highly recommend The Coroner's Lunch to mystery and crime readers who don't mind a little mysticism thrown in alongside the bodies, and I will certainly revisit his world!

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

REVIEW: Murder in the Marais, by Cara Black

Murder in the Marais, by Cara Black. Published 1999 by Soho Crime. Crime Fiction.

Murder in the Marais is the first of an eleven-book series starring Detective Aimée Leduc, a French-American private detective whose beat is the streets of Paris. A Jewish woman, Lili Stein, has been found murdered with a swastika carved into her forehead; Leduc is called in to investigate by a local synagogue based on her late father's reputation and his relationship with the man who approaches Aimée. Aimée for her part is up to her neck in debt and can't say no to a lucrative job.

Since this is the first book in the series, Black spends a certain amount of time establishing Leduc's character and background. The daughter of an American mother who abandoned her and a French father, she's a chameleon. She can blend in with skinheads one minute and dress up in designer duds and fit in to high society the next. She can totter on Paris rooftops in high heels or she can sit quietly by the bedside of a dying man, pulling the wool over the eyes of hospital staff. But she can't seem to untangle the identity of the killer.

Of course she does, eventually, but not before we're treated to a kind of snapshot history of French anti-Semitism and how it lingers into the present day. Lili, the dead woman, managed to stay hidden during the war along with her friend Sarah, who was the lover of a Nazi soldier turned present-day diplomat. But Sarah's relationship with Helmut was far from simple and when he returns to Paris to take part in sensitive treaty negotiations on the status of immigrants, they find they have some unfinished business after all.

I had fun reading this first entry into the Leduc series. It's gripping and suspenseful and gritty. I enjoyed watching the conspiracy at the heart of the story unfold and I think it's a great choice for crime readers. A customer of mine at the bookstore liked this book so much she called me the next day to say she stayed up all night reading it. If you like crime and mysteries, you should definitely add Aimée Leduc to your list of detectives worth investigating.

Rating: BEACH

FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.

REVIEW: The Ghosts of Belfast, by Stuart Neville

The Ghosts of Belfast, by Stuart Neville. Published 2009 by Soho Crime. Crime Fiction.

Lately I've been on a bit of a crime-fiction bender, and it doesn't look like I will come in any time soon.

The most recent book I've finished is Stuart Neville's very-good-indeed The Ghosts of Belfast, about IRA veteran Gerry Fagen and his quest for nothing more than peace. Gerry is a "retired" assassin and terrorist for the Irish Republican Army; he served a stint in prison and now times have changed. The IRA, through its political arm the Sinn Fein, wants respectability and the freedom to pursue its criminal agenda unimpeded by its public-relations and law-enforcement difficulties. Gerry wants respite too, from the ghosts of his victims, who continue to haunt him in the form of twelve spirits from his past. (The original title of this book was The Twelve.)  Unfortunately, putting these spirits to rest means more people must die.

The first man to die, Michael McKenna, draws the ire of Paul McGinty, a former IRA leader trying to refashion himself as a decent public figure. Suspicions pile up alongside the bodies and soon McGinty and David Campbell, a double agent, are on his trail. Complicating matters is Gerry's relationship with Michael McKenna's niece Marie, on McGinty's bad side after a relationship with a police officer which resulted in a little girl named Ellen. Gerry is drawn to Marie and Ellen and the normal life they represent, but life with Marie and Ellen may be a dream not destined to come true.

From here the book takes off like a shot, a series of fights, flights and suspense. Quite violent and gritty, Neville has written an intense, gripping literary novel about the lives left ruined in the wake of Irish sectarian violence. He paints the IRA as a bloody criminal organization and its members as ruthless greedy thugs, hardly as the romanticized freedom fighters many Irish-Americans think of them being. On the contrary, Neville goes out of his way to disabuse readers of this particular illusion.

I really, really enjoyed this book. As I said, it works as a literary novel as well as a page-turning thrill ride.  Neville creates characters that got under my skin- good and bad- and situations I had no idea how to resolve. I just had to keep turning those pages to find out. I strongly recommend The Ghosts of Belfast for readers looking for a really smart thriller, one to keep your paper-flipping-fingers moving as well as your brain.

Neville has a new one coming out this fall, Ratlines; I plan to read it in the next month or two and get back to you around its release date.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from Soho Press.