Death in Spain, Murder and Race Relations in Boston and Philly- Part 3

The Flanders Panel (TFP) by Arturo Perez-Reverte was written by one of my favorite authors. I have read about 80% of his novels that have been translated into English. The writing is always outstanding. Unlike with many authors, these novels span genres, styles and subject matter, and have settings that are modern or historical, or both.

Chess plays a big role in TFP. Earlier this autumn I read and discussed Katherine Neville's cult classic, The Eight, in which the game of chess is also central to the story. TFP isn't a stuffy book by any means, however. We experience a world of Madrid's beauty, love and betrayal in distant the past and present, modern dance clubs and vices, art galleries, collectors and dealers, threatening businessmen, fast-living bums and studious academics. Oh, and plenty of murders that don't seem to make sense.

In TFP, first we meet Julia, a beautiful art restorer who is working on The Game of Chess, a painting from by the Flemish master Van Huys that needs some work before it can be auctioned. Julia has just received a set of X-ray photographs of the painting, and they reveal a surprising and startling secret. Underneath layers of paint, yet dating to the time of the original painting, is a Latin inscription visible only via the X-ray results:

Quis Necavit Equitem

The translation she immediately carries out yields "Who killed the knight?" It turns out that other slightly different translations are also possible, and perhaps valid.

Although "The Game of Chess" had been known for 500 years, and even hung in the Prado during the early part of the 20th century, the discovery of a hidden inscription has the chance to increase the painting's value greatly at auction, so the wolves start circling immediately. An auction is planned shortly in order to raise money for the once-patrician, and currently dysfunctional, family that owns the piece of art and history.

I like the idea of a place, Spain is this case, where a stunningly beautiful woman devotes herself to restoring and researching art and who has the background to read Latin with aplomb and write brilliant summaries and analyses of the provenance and authenticity of classical paintings. In such a place, I could perhaps live happily, maybe with a job as museum guard. Even though this seems like one idiot's version of paradise, the idiot being me, Julia is in for an extended patch of stormy weather. However, she may turn out to be one of the lucky inhabitants of this intriguing place where new and old worlds collide.

One of the pleasures of this book is the chess puzzles, the first of which is the puzzle left by the painter on the the canvas, one that does not require X-rays to be revealed. The painting shows a chess game between two men, a nobleman and a soldier, being played while a woman sits in the background reading a book. The whole scene is reflected in a mirror, and the floor tiles of the room represent the pattern of a chessboard. The actual chessboard used for the game is placed between the two male subjects, who are rendered precisely, as are all of the details of the room. The artist painted in an intricate style, and even the room's reflection in the mirror can be seen. The chess pieces and their placement on the board are clear, and the game has progressed quite far, though not very conventionally.

The first part of the puzzle is to work the painting's game in reverse and determine which piece took the white knight. Why? Because the painter seems to have constructed the entire painting to be a set of clues to a centuries-old murder. Julia solves this puzzle and its sad secrets with help from friends- an old family friend and a new recruit from a local chess club. The chess puzzles in the book are enhanced by pictures of chess boards, so you can try to work out the next (or previous) moves on your own.

However, while further researching the painting and its refractory inscription, odd events begin to occur around Julia, and several of her friends are murdered. It seems that she and her friends have to solve a new chess puzzle based on the game in the painting. The new puzzle is being set for them by some sort of deranged chess master, and it seems to encompass the lives and deaths of the painting's subjects and of Julia et al. The killer starts playing the painting's game forwards, and the taking of pieces corresponds to more murders. Anticipating the next move becomes a matter of life and death.

Will Julia survive? Is she the White Queen? Which of her friends are represented by the other pieces on the board? Which themes from Greek tragedy will play a prominent role? Perhaps the day be will be saved by Julia and an unlikely hero, an introverted chess master who never wins a game, but settles for showing his opponent that he could win if wanted to. At least this one time, settling for a moral victory could prove fatal. With all the confusion, possible betrayals, accelerating pace, and substantial odds against Julia's coterie, perhaps the game will will be lost. Read The Flanders Panel to find out.

Note added afterwards: I forgot to mention that I especially enjoyed reading that Julia listens to the music of Michael Edges! Mr. Hedges was never edgier.

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Death in Spain, Murder and Race Relations in Boston and Philadelphia- Part 2

A Drink Before the War (ADBTW) is a tale of dirty politicians, drug wars, race relations (good and bad), and private eyes who operate outside the law with impunity. Add to this an unhealthy dose of behavior right out of a Greek play by Aeschylus and you have enough ammunition for a high-energy, high body count thriller. However, author Dennis Lehane doesn't stop there in his first novel about private detectives Angie Gennaro and Patrick Kenzie. He takes on the problem of battered spouses, and he adds the baggage of growing up in a neighborhood where "hood" is the operative word, and the criminal in question may well be your Dad.

The good guys, the bad guys and the men, women and children who straddle the moral line come mostly from Irish, Italian, and African American ethnic groups that dominate various Boston neighborhoods. There is no correlation between socioeconomic status and moral character, though the poor and homeless beat the Statehouse crowd hands down when it comes to true character.

So, what is different about this book from all similar crime novels? The book differs in the way it addresses issues of race and class, head on, and pulls no punches. Some of the book touches raw nerves, but it does so by providing dialog and scenes that authentically portray how some black and white friends (and enemies) would discuss and argue and fight and make truces, or not make truces, depending on how far things had gone. Of course, this means that the book doesn't offer us any easy answers, or any answers at all, but with many of these issues, a whole a lot talking needs to go on before it will be possible for communities to agree on answers. ADBTW adds to the dialog and doesn't exploit the characters.

One additional subplot that rings true is the way that Kenzie, who has been in love with Gennaro since childhood, constantly subjects her to sexual harassment in the course of their professional partnership while simultaneously acting as avenging angel towards Gennaro's wife-beating husband. Patrick Kenzie isn't perfect, and he isn't a saint, and he still hangs out with old friends who are serious criminals, and he can barely control himself when it comes to Angie, and he doesn't have pat answers to serious problems facing society. On the other hand, with any matter not involving Angie, he does know right from wrong, if right and wrong can actually be identified. In this book, as in life, just identifying the right course of action can be difficult, and following it can cause considerable anguish, offering no reason for celebration once the final step is taken.

James K. Bashkin

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Murder in China and Tibet, and London; Peter Rozovsky!

OK, so I read Qiu Xiaolong's books a while ago and gave an impressionistic synopsis of the first one, Death of a Red Heroine that was probably influenced by the second (A Loyal Character Dancer). If you want to read a more more detailed series of analysis, complete with references to major newspaper articles, and insight, go to Detectives Beyond Borders, which the author Peter Rozovsky kindly referred me to, and search for Qiu Xiaolong. Sorry, I can't get the link to work to take you to exactly the right place yet. But, so much for my "no objective standards" comment- now I feel pressure! Added later: here is the link to Qiu Xiaolong I was missing.

So, on to The Skull Mantra (TSM) by Eliot Pattison and The Murder Room (TMR) by P.D. James. I read both of these in August, with rather different results. I won't repeat my comments about the Pattison book already made to Peter Rozovky's blog, so here is where to search for them (my answer to the question in the Sept 1, 2007 post). Again, sorry about my poor HTML skills- I have to sort out why the links I had were not working.

I did struggle a little at the beginning of TSM, and had started it before but not gotten far. This time I had the good sense to read on. Contrast this with TMR, which starts with a beloved T. S. Eliot quote (from Burnt Norton)* and moves quickly to that area outside of London much loved by fictional characters, being approximately three miles north from 221B Baker Street, and by real people, including authors: Hampstead Heath. The Heath is crisscrossed by roads but is really quite large, with open grassy areas, wooded regions and walking or running paths to tempt lovers, criminals and healthy English people of a certain age. The reader is immediately put in the care of a perfect host, the urbane Commander Adam Dalgliesh, a published poet* whose day job happens to be at New Scotland Yard. TMR was easy to start, like candy or a bottle of single malt.

*see Qiu Xiaolong's inspector Chen!

Now, before I go on, I should dispense with some psychological baggage. Until this August, I had boycotted P. D. James for about 30 years. Why? Because the books were bad? No, rather the opposite. I found the writing to be so good, the characters to be so engaging and the story to be so gripping that when I finally learned who the villain was the last time I read James, I was too depressed to want to go through that experience again- the fellow was too likable (ignoring the crime, anyway). Oddly enough, looking over the back catalog online today, I haven't been able to figure out which book caused this reaction- I'll have to go to the library and read the last chapters of all of them, because I remember that chapter vividly (given the way my 49-year old memory works, I might well find out I was boycotting the wrong author, but I will get to the bottom of it).

So where are we? TSM has us spending time inside a prison work-camp and building roads by hand, high on a Tibetan mountain. While doing so, we start to learn about Tibetan prayers and religion through the eyes of a true outcast, a hated Chinese prisoner embedded within the Tibetan prisoners. However, in a spirit that may be relatively unique to Tibet, some of the imprisoned monks welcome their Chinese "comrade", if over time, so that he is much more at home with the prisoners than with the abusive Chinese guards, Warden, or any other ethnic Chinese he is likely to meet in Tibet.

Everything, and I mean eventually EVERYTHING, is turned upside down by the discovery of a headless body by the prison work crew, right where they are supposed to build the rode. The only experienced detective in the region is the mysterious Chinese prisoner whose file contains no information because he committed no crime, except to attempt to expose corruption by a Party official too powerful to fight. It is a bit like the world of the Chateaux d'If from Alexandre' Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo or The Man in the Iron Mask, where a note from royalty could imprison a man for life without due process. Oh, it sounds a bit like imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay, too, though I hope that will come to an end before long. So is the mystery going to be placed in the hands of the lowest of the low, a former inspector reviled and made to disappear by his fellow Chinese and reviled by many of the Tibetans he will meet? (Tibet has been colonized violently by China in an ongoing process that started on October 1, 1949)

As I read deeper into TSM, the memories of his institutionalized mistreatment and cherished, but deeply hidden, memories of time with his father show us a man who has learned to survive by fighting his instincts, keeping his head buried, and now, against his will, that head is plucked out of the sand, its eyes are forced open, and he is given the choice of solving the crime or watching the massacre of his fellow prisoners. Why such drama? Because the Tibetan respect for the dead and fear of evil spirits means that the road building will not restart unless and until the murder can be cleared up in a way that mitigates all superstition. So, solve this crime for me and make sure I like the answer, is essentially what the local military commander orders the prisoner, who is given some freedom of movement, a driver and a translator.

Much tension in the book comes from mixed allegiances amongst Chinese military, political and policing institutions and amongst Tibetan factions, tribes or monasteries, some of whom may be dealing illegally with drugs, antiquities or both. Some witnesses and other participants in the events belong to these various factions. However, the slow re-emergence of the inspector's pride, which seemed to have been beaten and starved out of existence, provides a forward motion to the story, as the inspector struggles less and less with himself and more with the mystery at hand. The inspector is not the only person who finds his pride re-awakened by the circumstances: his assigned army chauffeur/guard/watch-dog is forced to face the humanity of the Tibetan people he is oppressing, and forced to recognize that his "work" is a sad, shameful and unsuitable end to a proud military career.

One of the best parts of the book is the development of our relationship with the military commander (not the same person as the prison camp warden). This man is not shown as a caricature, and ultimately he needs the truth as badly as the inspector, creating a situation that could prove fatal for all.

The nearby presence of a Western mining operation and the first bus-load of tourists for the season place spatial and temporal bounds on the investigation, yet long journeys across high desert and through dangerous mountain passes must be negotiated in attempts to track down a witness before he can be killed by the as-yet unidentified murderer(s).

Further complicating things is the discovery of a cave, in between the prisoner's work camp and the Western-leased mine, filled with skulls dating back to the beginning of Tibet's recorded time. This introduces a possible motive for murder, in that some group, Chinese or Western, is looting the artifacts, a highly illegal act.

Ultimately, an unwavering attention to detail in the face of the many feints and misdirections carried out by the murder(s) allows the inspector to track certain key artifacts that may or may not be missing, and to tease out the web of people connected with them so that the crimes begin to unravel. However, even with many of the basics of the case seemingly within our grasp, a series of absolutely shocking, yet immediately credible, revelations awaits us.

The end of TSM is a typical race against time in some ways, but there is nothing typical about the setting or the motivations of its key people, let alone the brilliant manipulations that have been carried out to insulate the puppet master(s) from the actions that caused so much destruction of life. After the slow start lasting maybe 12 pages, I read the book pretty much straight through, trying not to rush or miss anything, trying to keep separate and distinct the different temples and tribes and their roles, but increasingly anxious about the fates of all concerned.

So wither The Murder Room? TMR has plenty of its own misdirection, with contemporary murders in a museum apparently copying a set of murders from long ago, memorialized in that very museum (which is dedicated to the period between WWI and WWII). There are sympathetic characters, there are unpleasant characters, there are characters about whom one is ambivalent. After the first crime, there is more murder and attempted murder, and more lives may seemingly yet be lost at any point. So we have urgency. We also have the parallel story of Dalgleish's love interest, who is inconveniently located at Cambridge, and some internal police politics that are trumped by "larger" concerns, a catch-phrase for so much now, as it probably always has been (sorry Caesar, the seating plan for today's committee meeting is "need to know, only").

The problem is that the larger forces at play (i.e. National Security) really aren't at play. Instead we have a bunch of government ministers, judicial appointees, and wealthy people trying to protect each other, regardless of whether the case is solved or not (and with blatant disregard for potential additional victims). This may have resonated strongly in the U.K. after the revelations about how false confessions were obtained by torturing suspected IRA members, but in today's world, in the USA, this seems like an old story, a story that is probably being acted out now in real life, but one that has no more hook than last year's headlines. It is expected behavior, and why should we care how some other member of the privileged classes justifies his or her self-serving behavior? Fine, throw them in jail (or pardon them if you are President Bush), but don't expect me to be shocked that somebody in authority lied, or even compromised National Security for personal or political gain. I've been living with a Vice President who outed a covert CIA operative during wartime. Didn't we formerly execute people for treason? Now they go on the lecture circuit. So, for me, this book started out like gangbusters and ended up a bust. It is an OK read- the language is good (which is not so common these days), the minor characters are well drawn, and the workings of Dalgleish's mind are a pleasure, but the final third of the book is a major disappointment that left me feeling completely disconnected from the fate of the criminal(s).

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