Crime Uncovered: Detective [1 ed.] 9781783205226, 9781783205219

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crime uncovered series detective

detective

Crime Uncovered: Detective is an examination – and celebration – of the most iconic police detectives in crime fiction, film and television, identifying the individual characteristics that define these much-loved protagonists and discussing how they relate to their surroundings, country and class – and the criminals they relentlessly pursue. Focusing on a number of international figures from across the genre – from Kurt Wallander, Adam Dalgliesh and Jules Maigret, to more recent examples such as Sarah Lund, Saga Norén and Harry Bosch – Detective investigates the changing role of the authority figure in crime fiction, and analyses how the most imaginative creators cleverly subvert expectations of both police procedure and the crime genre itself. Including character case studies, interviews with P. D. James, Ian Rankin and Henning Mankell, and general essays, Barry Forshaw offers an exploration of some of the most influential and popular fictional police detectives in the long and bloody history of the genre. Barry Forshaw is one of the UK’s leading experts on crime fiction and film. His books include Euro Noir, The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction, Death in a Cold Climate and the Keating Award-winning British Crime Writing encyclopedia. He has written on crime fiction for various newspapers and teaches an MA course on the subject.

intellect | www.intellectbooks.com

crime uncovered series

Editor Barry Forshaw

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detective detective detective detective detective

Detective

intellect Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA

First published in the UK in 2016 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK First published in the USA in 2016 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Copyright © 2016 Intellect Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Series: Crime Uncovered Series ISSN: 2056-9629 (Print), 2056-9637 (Online) Series Editors: Tim Mitchell and Gabriel Solomons Copy-editing: Emma Rhys Cover Design: Gabriel Solomons Layout Design and Typesetting: Stephanie Sarlos Production Manager: Tim Mitchell

ISBN: 978-1-78320-521-9 ePDF: 978-1-78320-522-6 ePUB: 978-1-78320-632-2 Printed & bound by Bell & Bain, UK.

Detective edited by Barry Forshaw

intellect Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA

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Contents

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E D IT O R ’ S I N T R O D U CTI O N

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C A S E S T U D IE S

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I N TE R R O G A TI O N s

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REPORTS

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CONTRIBUTOR B I O G R A P H IE S

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E D IT O R ’ S I N T R O D U CTI O N Barry Forshaw What is the reason for the enduring popularity of detective fiction? The answer may be a multinational one. American titans of the genre (past and present), may appear to dominate, but that is to ignore the wealth of distinctive sleuths from all points of the compass – in languages other than English – since the genesis of the genre in nineteenth-century Britain, with Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins being the progenitors of the police detective (the subject of this study, as opposed to the private detective). The duo produced (almost by accident) a variety of key elements – dogged protagonist, complex plotting, surprising revelations. By the early twenty-first century other elements had been added to the mix, freighting in a greater degree of psychological realism and (notably in the Scandinavian branches of the field) elements of acute social critique and even subtle philosophical underpinnings that frequently stray into the realms of ‘serious’ literary fiction, according the genre a belated intellectual recognition. All these notions are to be discussed (from a variety of perspectives) in the following pages. In an increasingly unstable world (where, for example, the rise of totalitarian religious fundamentalism has spread from theocratic countries to the secular West), novels featuring detectives are particularly satisfying in that we are invited to relish the chaos unleashed by the crime and criminals before the status quo is re-established – a process that has a particular resonance for the British character (more so than for, say, Americans – the barely contained pandemonium of the large American city is never really tamed). Of course, when (as mentioned earlier) Dickens and Collins introduced several of the key tropes of detective fiction (in such classics as Bleak House [1852] and The Moonstone [1868]), neither author had any thoughts of creating a genre (although it is instructive to remember that their books, while massively popular, lacked the literary gravitas in their day that later scholarship dressed them with; this was the popular fare of the day, dealing in the suspense and delayed revelation that was later to become the sine qua non of the genre). Apart from the sheer pleasure of reading a good detective novel, the ‘added value’ in many of the best examples has long been the implicit (or sometimes explicit) element

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of social criticism freighted in by the more challenging writers. Among popular literary genres, only science fiction has rivalled the crime novel in ‘holding the mirror up to nature’ (or society). Bestselling modern writers such as Ruth Rendell, Ian Rankin and P. D. James have kept alive (and developed) the tradition of social commentary via their police sleuths, which was always a key element in the genre, although rarely at the expense of sheer storytelling skill, the area in which the crime field virtually demolishes all its rivals. British detective fiction can (and often does) divide into two distinct (although not mutually exclusive) genres. The first is the undemanding divertissement, wherein the puzzle (and its ingenious solving) is central: in this area, British writers, notably Christie and the like, have had few equals. But the other stream, that of the dark investigation of psychological states, is generally perceived as being more endemic in the Nordic countries, though it remains a central strand in writing from the United Kingdom (French and Italian detectives add intriguing new elements to the mix, redolent of particular national characteristics). And not just writing; note is taken here of the many impressive films and television adaptations of detective fiction. Fourteen key detectives In 1962’s Cover Her Face, P. D. James introduced Detective Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh, a necessary yet pessimistic, critical embodiment of ‘the spirit of ’45’, the postwar welfare state whose aims were to be eclipsed by the onset of Thatcherism. James’s Dalgliesh, in contrast (Lisa Fluet argues in her chapter), moves among private charity organizations resistant to the influx of expert public planning, landed gentry, lower-middle-class life and council estates, suggesting that the emblematic ‘gentleman detective’’s peculiar perspective on the dispensing of justice in aid of public welfare will bring into relief those figures most immune to feeling anything towards the proffering of aid. The character of James’s detective is crucial to this study of Dalgliesh’s movements through the post-war, Thatcherite and twenty-first-century time frames. Katarina Gregersdotter’s chapter discusses one of the most influential fictional characters in Scandinavian crime fiction. In Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s ten crime novels, Detective Martin Beck is clearly the protagonist, but he is at the same time part of an investigative team. Gregersdotter discusses and compares Beck, the professional detective, to Beck, the private family man in his home. He responds to, and is affected by, both environments, but in varying ways. Martin Beck is also discussed as a product of a society, yet a critical and active member of the same. He is critical of society at the same time as he is a protector of this society in which he lives. These multiple, and often contradictory, roles make him still a unique character in crime fiction. A great part of the international success of Andrea Camilleri’s series set in a fictional Sicilian village, is due to his protagonist, Commissario Salvo Montalbano, modelled on the figure of Inspector Maigret. Like his literary colleague, Montalbano is a

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Editor’s Introduction

lover of good food and has an analytical mind and a powerful gift of insight that enables him to understand people and their behaviour. Unlike his French forefather, however, he lives alone and he has a stormy long-distance relationship with his fiancée, Livia Burlando. Barbara Pezzotti shows how, through the character of Montalbano, Camilleri fights against a repository of clichés about Sicily and Sicilians. Indeed, contrary to the crime fiction tradition of having a Northern Italian policeman investigating in the South, prey to the Mafia and plagued by omertà (code of silence), Montalbano and his efficient team are all Sicilians. The range of crimes he investigates and the relation between the police force and the local population in Camilleri’s stories show a different Sicily, more homogeneous – for better or worse – with the rest of Italy and the entire world. Exactly what did Jules Maigret do during the war? Jon Wilkins’s chapter on Georges Simenon’s phlegmatic French copper looks at his creator: Simenon the man and Simenon the writer. How did he square his own ethical beliefs with the aesthetics of writing? Wilkins investigates the claims of collaboration and anti-Semitism against Simenon and considers what Maigret would have been doing with those values during the war years. Simenon wrote six Maigret novels from 1939 to 1945, but not one of them mentioned the war. Is it over-simplistic to say that Simenon believed so much in the timeless format of novel writing that he didn’t consider the war was relevant to his stories – or was there a darker reason? Michael Connelly’s Detective Hieronymus ‘Harry’ Bosch is a Los Angeles cop of the darkest hue; his origins (argues Darren Brooks) as complex as the city in his soul: born in the City of Angels to a prostitute murdered in his pre-teens, his early life was one of foster homes until the army intervened. Post-Vietnam, he returned to LA and its police force, the bomb damage of his childhood and military service combining with his early experiences as a beat cop to create a powerful cocktail of a detective: characterized and guided as much by vengeance and robust moral force as by civic obligation. Bosch’s bonedeep pessimism and tortured disposition – legitimated by the murder of his mother and subsequently wounded adolescence – reflect the principles of an established noir antihero. Brooks’s essay explores the ways in which the principles of noir fiction can co-exist with the traditional police procedural, and how a detective who stands as an avatar of both disciplines can reconcile his benign civic duty with a moral yearning for true justice. The two key female detectives of Scandinavian TV drama are examined in portmanteau fashion by Jacky Collins: Søren Sveistrup’s Sarah Lund (Sofie Gråbøl playing the most significant of modern Nordic Noir police women in three seasons of Forbrydelsen/ The Killing [DR1, 2007–12]); and a Scandinavian detective who would further confound our understanding of the female incarnation of deliverer of justice, Hans Rosenfeldt’s complex Saga Norén (Sofia Helin) from Broen/Bron/The Bridge (SVT1/DR1, 2011–ongoing). Both series are at once located within the establishment and, due to the two women’s distinct personality traits, are also placed at the margins of the conventional. As the series progress, we witness the manner in which Lund and Norén uneasily inhabit

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these dual arenas, via their interactions (or lack of the same) with those around them. Collins explores the notion of dysfunction as a prerequisite for these key female police protagonists of Scandinavian crime drama, and what this implies for the representation of female identity in this context. Erin E. MacDonald examines the work of Ian Rankin, who published Knots and Crosses, the first of his Inspector John Rebus novels in 1987, and has since become known as Scotland’s greatest living crime fiction author. Set in Edinburgh, the bestselling Rebus series defines what James Ellroy labelled the ‘Tartan Noir’ genre, with its roots in both Scottish literary traditions and American crime novels. A cross between the hardboiled loner detective and the urban policeman, Rebus reveals his vulnerability in every performance of the Scottish masculinity that he tries desperately to maintain in the face of a swiftly changing society. The Rebus novels, according to MacDonald, combine Scottish history and questions about Edinburgh’s dark past with clever plotting and careful characterization. Inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous Jekyll and Hyde character, Detective Inspector John Rebus is the epitome of the light/dark duality. Named after a type of puzzle, the man is as enigmatic as the mysteries he uncovers. Psychologically damaged by his army days and by a traumatic stint training for the sadistic SAS, he is unable to commit to any personal relationships, turns to alcohol to erase his nightmares, and lives by a moral code that often conflicts with proper police procedure. David Platten examines the literary career of Chief Inspector Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, the detective now synonymous with the stories of Fred Vargas. He first appears in her 1991 novel, L’homme aux cercles bleus/The Chalk Circle Man, which is considered by aficionados to be her finest work. Here we encounter a method of detection owing little to the application of reason, logic, erudition, psychology or forensic science, though one which has served him and his creator well over the course of seven novels, one graphic novel and three short stories. And it is difficult to imagine quite how Poirot, Maigret, Scarpetta or Montalbano, or even the great Sherlock Holmes, might fare, faced with the prospect of investigating misdeeds involving werewolves, bubonic plagues, Roman gods, vampires and ghosts. Adamsberg operates in the outer realms of human experience. He attempts to connect with the liminal, the barely perceived sensory impression – the glint of a precious stone, perfume, patterns of soil around a tombstone –; flies in the ointment of ordered reality. As one of the most beloved of all fictional detectives, featuring in Colin Dexter’s novels and the long-running ITV television series (1987–2000), Colin Dexter’s dyspeptic Oxford-based Inspector Morse provides the benchmark of an enduring character type: the melancholic loner, steeped in alcohol, high culture and humanism. My chapter considers Morse’s origins and legacy, and explores the quintessential ‘Britishness’ of Dexter’s creation. It also provides close analyses of Dexter’s influences and ethos, and discusses subsequent outgrowths of the franchise. Håkan Nesser has written ten Van Veeteren novels, all translated into English.

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Editor’s Introduction

The order of the translated versions though is out of synch with the original publication order (which takes us from Det grovmaskiga nätet/The Mind’s Eye [1993] to Fallet G/The G File [2003]); the translations, too, follow in every case some considerable period after initial publication. Nesser seems here to be following the pattern laid down by Sjöwall and Wahlöö with a self-contained sequence of ten books written in a ten-year period, and Peter Messent examines how the series develops and to what thematic ends, focusing on the character of Van Veeteren as he moves from active police service into what we might call an equally active retirement. Messent also looks at the particular philosophical bent behind the character which makes him different from his contemporary fictional detective equivalents, and the particular tension between a commitment to the law and a commitment to justice which at times produces unexpected and boundary-breaking fictional results. As Murray Pratt notes, there are an estimated 5 million speakers of Norwegian worldwide. By 2014, 23 million copies of Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole novels (1997–2014) had been sold. Riding on the crest of Nordic Noir, it is the city of Oslo that, with few exceptions, figures prominently as the locus, the atmosphere, of the crimes investigated by Detective Harry Hole. Translation, and the Gothic-exotic, are paramount in understanding Nesbø’s global success. More than this, however, the persona of the frostbitten maverick, the worlds of corruption and delinquency he navigates and brings into ambivalent juxtaposition with the values and ethics to which he struggles to subscribe, are transnational in nature – negotiations across boundaries, histories and politics. The city maps supplied as prologue to many of the adventures contrasts with the international itineraries the narratives follow. Crime fiction is often considered as national allegory; however, Hole’s policing, it can be argued, applies via global circuits as a decoding of transnational connections and how they shape one locality. It is within this ambit that his variance from sociality and regulation, tenuous hyper-masculinity, detachments and attachments, absences and presences, can begin to be understood. Stewart King explores the representation of Seville and Spain in Robert Wilson’s Javier Falcón series. Consisting of four books, The Blind Man of Seville (2003), The Silent and the Damned (2004; US title: The Vanished Hands), The Hidden Assassins (2006) and The Ignorance of Blood (2009), the series centres on the figure of Javier Falcón, ‘Inspector jefe del Grupo de homocidios’ in the Seville police force. As the title of the first book suggests, site and sight (or lack thereof) are closely linked as Wilson seeks to uncover the Seville hidden behind the romantic, tourist images of the Andalusian capital. Focusing on Falcón’s role as a guide, King examines the detective’s developing awareness of his and his country’s troubled past as well as its turbulent present. My own essay on Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander novels (1993–2013) is an examination of the influence of (and the multiple iterations of) the most iconic male character in Scandinavian crime fiction. It is notable, for instance, that following the various original Swedish television adaptations of the Wallander novels from the pro-

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duction company Yellow Bird (also responsible for the films based on the Millennium trilogy of Stieg Larsson [2004–07]), the same production company was involved in the production of the British series starring Kenneth Branagh (BBC, 2011–ongoing). English audiences were massively enthusiastic towards the latter, having no problems with a largely English cast, speaking English but set down in a genuine Swedish milieu. With the concept thus anglicized, British television audiences began to see Swedish locations such as Ystad as slightly more picturesque versions of, say, London or Manchester – it might be argued that the success of the show is down to this piquant synthesis of familiarity and novelty. Mankell’s continuing significance is examined in the context of the material it subsequently influenced. Apart from the studies of individual detectives, a variety of thematic essays follow. Steven Peacock’s The Maverick Detective discusses the enormous international success of Scandinavian crime fiction – Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo/ Millennium series as novels and films, The Killing on television. Noting that the detective genre is experiencing a resurgence of popularity and acclaim, Peacock identifies and explores a recent adaptation within the genre itself: a marked return of the hard-edged maverick detective subgenre, as popularized in 1950s hardboiled PI novels and films, and in the Hollywood action thrillers of the 1970s. It also addresses the fact that in the United States and United Kingdom, rather than creating original protagonists (as was predominantly the case in the 1970s and 1980s), makers of contemporary film and television favour adaptations of novels featuring maverick detectives. Such adaptations are now more popular and numerous than at any time since the heyday of film noir in the 1940s and 1950s. In identifying recently recurrent types of modern mavericks, the chapter first considers why the maverick figure has re-emerged at this time, particularly in the United States and United Kingdom; second, explores sociopolitical currents coinciding with the re-emergence of the form; and third, reappraises the qualities in ‘literary/middlebrow’ texts such as Ian Rankin’s Rebus (1987–2012) and Henning Mankell’s Wallander series. Alison Joseph’s Reason and Redemption: The Detective in the Secular Age explores the crime fiction phenomenon under the notion of ‘detective as priest’, arguing that in a secular age, the detective comes to fulfil a very human yearning to see order imposed upon chaos, to believe that redemption is possible, to get to the end of the story and find that the right thing happened after all. Quite often, too, the detective is in some sense other-worldly – single, an outsider, a ‘voice in the wilderness’. Writers need the detective to be the interface between our story, the truth as we wish to tell it, and the way our reader meets that story head on and imposes their own truth upon it. The detective as priest is therefore positioned mid-way between the reader’s need for life to have a structured, meaningful narrative, and the writer’s need for exactly the same. Jamie Bernthal’s Talent Enough in His Profession: The Maladroit Detective considers a familiar figure in British detective fiction: the highly-ranked police official whose self-confidence is undented by his failure to read a crime scene. He

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Editor’s Introduction

invariably arrests the wrong person on circumstantial evidence, but has a good public reputation. Arthur Conan Doyle created an iconic example in 1887: Inspector Lestrade is less interested in catching criminals than in taking credit in the press. The character reflects a populist paranoia over professional policemen – trained men, not gentlemen, with unfettered access to private space. They were generally depicted as driven by money rather than justice. Throughout the early twentieth-century, the Doylean mould of British detective fiction thrived, but Scotland Yard was taken more seriously. This led to a tension in presentation: the policeman had to be sufficiently simple to require the sleuth’s assistance but also self-aware enough to show Scotland Yard in a positive light, as knowing its limits and consulting the expert. The New Regionalism in Contemporary Television Police Drama by Jean Gregorek examines the fashion in which earlier cross-class detective duos and conflicts have largely been replaced in British detective series by cross-regional detective duos in the period of New Labour and after. Realist TV crime dramas supply the basis for Gregorek’s hypothesis, examining the George Gently series (BBC1, 2007–ongoing), Hinterland (BBC1, Wales/BBC4, 2013), Broadchurch (ITV, 2013–ongoing), Lewis (ITV, 2006–14), Happy Valley (BBC1, 2014) and Scott and Bailey (ITV, 2011); TV series in which class divisions and discourses have become muted in favour of regional differences, corresponding to the whole kindlier, gentler New Labour ‘We are all middle class’ rhetoric, and replaced (in Happy Valley and Hinterland at least) by an emphasis on social issues of rural depopulation, unemployment and austerity, but without representing class conflict or working-class resentment. But the above only hints at the wide range of issues addressed in the following pages. 

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Case Studies 16 In s pe c t or SA LVO MONTALB A NO Barbara Pezzotti 26 I NSPECTOR MORSE Barry Forshaw 34 C h ie f In s pe c t or J U L ES MAI GRET Jon Wilkins 44 D ETECTIV E M ART I N BEC K Katarina Gregersdotter 56 D ETECTIV E HARRY BOSCH Darren Brooks 68 In spe c t or kurt Wallander Barry Forshaw 78 DETECT IVE I NSPECTOR JOHN RE B U S Erin E. MacDonald 90 DETECT IVE HARRY HOL E Murray Pratt 1 00 CHI EF INSPECTOR JAVI ER FALCÓ N Stewart King 110 DETECTIVEs SARAH LUND & SAGA NORÉN Jackie Collins 120 de te c t ive J E A N-BAPTI STE ADAM SB ERG David Platten 1 30 COM M AN DER A DA M DA L GL IESH Lisa Fluet 14 2 D ETECTIV E VA N V EETEREN 15 Peter Messent

I n s p e c t o r S a lvo M o n ta l b a n o Nationality: italian / Author: Andrea Camilleri Barbara Pezzotti

Montalbano: A new detective for a new Sicily The Sicilian Andrea Camilleri (b. 1925) is the most famous contemporary Italian crime writer. His highly entertaining series featuring Commissario (Inspector) Salvo Montalbano has won an enormous readership in Italy.1 Camilleri’s books, set in an invented Sicilian village called Vigàta, and the subsequent TV series produced by the state TV RAI, to the revival of Italian crime fiction or giallo2 in the 1990s and 2000s and the progressive shift from foreign crime fiction to local in the preferences of Italian readers.3 The Montalbano detective series has also enjoyed international recognition with translations in Greek, Norwegian, Turkish, Lithuanian, Japanese, Estonian, Hungarian and Gaelic, as well as in the most commonly used languages. Today Camilleri is considered one of the most popular contemporary writers in the world with an estimated 65 million books sold worldwide. A great part of the international success of Andrea Camilleri’s series is due to Commissario Montalbano, an engaging character and a notably original figure in Italian crime fiction. Contrary to the giallo tradition of having a Northern policeman investigating in Southern regions prey to the Mafia and plagued by the omertà (code of silence), Montalbano and his efficient team are all Sicilians. Equally important, the detective not only successfully investigates deaths ordered by criminal organizations, but also looks into a wide range of bourgeois crimes that often intertwine with political intrigues, or are mistakenly taken for Mafia killings. Finally, the series features a fruitful relation between the police force and the local population with the latter not afraid to help in the investigation. It may be argued that by using a Sicilian detective and presenting a different Sicily, Camilleri confronts and subtly detonates a repository of clichés about Sicily and Sicilians. In so doing he also reacts against the rhetoric of the Northern League, a secessionist political party that rose to power in the 1990s under the aegis of deeply controversial Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.4 The ongoing Montalbano series was inaugurated in 1994 with La forma dell’acqua (translated as The Shape of the Water, 2002); that book was followed by 21 novels and several

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Case Studies: Inspector Salvo Montalbano

collections of short stories. The recurring format represents a synthesis of the standard police procedural and a classic puzzle scenario where all the clues are scattered throughout the story – and the solution often comes as a revelation to the Sicilian detective. Modelled on the figure of Simenon’s Inspector Jules Maigret, Montalbano is also a lover of fine cuisine and shares with his literary forefather a keen analytical mind and a penetrating insight into people’s behaviour. However, unlike Maigret, Montalbano lives alone near the sea, in a small villa at Marinella, a fictional suburb of the fictional village of Vigàta. He has a tempestuous long-distance relationship with his fiancée, Livia Burlando, who lives in the North of Italy. The series makes much play with Montalbano’s complicated private life, following a recurrent trend in recent crime fiction which registers a progressive shift ‘from investigation and case to protagonist and life’ (Molander Danielsson 2002: 148–49). This shift has allowed Priscilla L. Walton and Manina Jones to compare a variety of crime series to the autobiographical style of writing (Walton and Jones 1999: 153–54). Indeed, the series follows an aging Montalbano, who becomes more melancholic and disillusioned about the meaning and the usefulness of his job, and questions his relationship with Livia, his relatives and friends. In this sense he is very different from Maigret, whose relationship with his wife is unproblematic in the Simenon series. Montalbano is also notably different from Leonardo Sciascia’s fictional detectives whose private lives are either non-existent or are never discussed in the novels. The dissimilarities between Sciascia’s and Camilleri’s crime novels are particularly intriguing. Fellow Sicilian Sciascia (1921–1989) was a much-acclaimed master of Italian crime fiction and the first Italian author to provide a lucid and measured analysis of the role of the Mafia within Italian politics and society. He also drew attention to the many flaws in Italian politics in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and meditated upon the meaning of justice and power, and the relationship between the Catholic Church and the state.5 Among his books are some internationally known crime novels, translated into several languages, including English, French, Spanish and German. In his crime novels Il giorno della civetta (1961; translated first as Mafia Vendetta in 1963 and then republished as The Day of the Owl, 1984) and A ciascuno il suo (1966; first translated as A Man’s Blessing in 1968 and then as To Each His Own, 1992) in particular, the two investigators, respectively Captain Bellodi and the amateur detective Professor Laurana, investigate Mafia crimes.6 In both novels, the detective is a disempowered figure who is defeated by the Mafia. The police detective Bellodi is a foreigner combating a hostile social environment, and is ultimately being transferred back to the North of Italy, while the Sicilian Laurana is unable to deal with a gangrene that is infecting his homeland, and is mocked by his fellow villagers before finally being murdered. Since the appearance of Sciascia’s novels, the Manichaean counterpoint of the invincible Mafioso and the defeated investigator have become a constant trait in the giallo. At least, that is, until the publication of Camilleri’s novels that finally featured a Sicilian detective who successfully fights crimes in a Sicily that has become homogeneous with the mainland.7

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Indeed, one of the most original characteristics of the Montalbano series is that it is set in an imaginary town within a real geography, the island of Sicily. Vigàta is a microcosm in which Camilleri describes a Sicilian society in constant evolution (Pezzotti 2012: 129). Camilleri’s Sicily is a place where women are emancipated and locals are not afraid of the Mafia.8 In other words, his Sicily differs from a common perception of the South in Italian literature and culture.9 As Pischedda highlights, Camilleri has ‘inoculated the virus of modernity’ in a land that in crime fiction is traditionally described as backward (Pischedda 2007: 16). In other words, Camilleri acknowledges that Sicily retains some local characteristics, but also shows how it has become open to the influence of broad social, cultural and economic trends as opposed to the traditional image of the island as a place of historical immobility. In this environment, Montalbano moves at ease. He is neither an outsider like Captain Bellodi nor a marginalized figure like Professor Laurana. In the manner of the typical literary detective he can mix with different social classes, and he is always able to take control of a situation. His investigations are often distinctly challenging, and though he may struggle with Italian bureaucracy, he always manages to solve his cases. He can also count on the collaboration of his fellow Sicilians: Barrelling into one another, tripping each other up or holding one another back by an arm or by the coat-tails, all present assailed the inspector, trying to get to him first. And during the struggle, they spoke and shouted so loudly that a deafened Montalbano understood not a word amidst the clamour. ‘What is going on here?’ he asked in a military voice. Relative calm ensued. ‘No favourites, now!’ shouted one, barely taller than a midget, nestling up under the inspector’s nose. ‘We must proceed in strick flabbetical order!’ ‘No sir, no sir! We’ll proceed in order of age!’ another proclaimed angrily. (Camilleri 2002c [2000]: 75–76)10 In this comic scene, at the Vigàta police station, a group of elderly witnesses argue over who has the right to be interrogated by Inspector Montalbano first. This passage demystifies the infamous Sicilian ‘code of silence’ which was a serious obstacle to Captain Bellodi’s investigations in The Day of the Owl. This description is not unrealistic, as forty years later than Sciascia’s novels, the Montalbano series reflects dramatic historical and social changes which have occurred in Sicily. In the last twenty years especially, the fight against the Mafia has made significant progress, thanks to the work of special anti-Mafia judges, crack prosecutors and investigative commissions.11 After decades of inactivity – if not outright collusion – a new governmental attitude towards the Mafia was also spurred by a change in public attitude that transformed from indifference into indignation. Indeed, in the 1990s the Italian public showed an increased awareness of issues involving the Mafia and its links with the political class. Subsequent high-profile arrests dealt other serious blows

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Case Studies: Inspector Salvo Montalbano

to the criminal organization. It is in this new political and social context that the Sicilian crime writer Camilleri set his Montalbano series, a series that finally overcame a traditional representation of the Mafia as an obscure and invincible force. Montalbano’s Sicily is an island where the Mafia still exists and operates, but that can, on occasion, be defeated. The author explains this view: I personally think that Sicily has changed a lot in recent years and that it will keep on changing. For example, the ‘code of silence’ doesn’t exist anymore. I remember that some years ago a policeman was killed in my hometown [Porto Empedocle, near Agrigento]. Well, the police switchboard was flooded with calls from people who saw what had happened and asked for action. (Pezzotti 2009: 46–47) A different Sicily Not only does Camilleri describe a completely different environment from Sciascia’s society muted by omertà, but the choice of using different typologies of crimes as the centre of Montalbano’s investigations is also germane regarding the description of a different Sicily where bourgeois and private crimes can occur. For example, in Il campo del vasaio/The Potter’s Field (2008), Montalbano investigates an apparent Mafia execution, which, at the end of the story, is revealed to be a crime of passion. This is the opposite of what Sciascia did in The Day of the Owl, where a Mafia execution was disguised as a crime of passion. This is also a clear metaphor for the new Sicily, where common crimes occur more and more often. The banality of Mafia crimes is always underlined by Montalbano who (interestingly) hates reading books about criminal organizations. Throughout the series, the Sicilian inspector investigates several private crimes that he finds more intellectually challenging than Mafia crimes. For example, in Il cane di terracotta/The Terracotta Dog (1996) Montalbano leaves to his colleagues the inquiry on a case of arms trafficking as he prefers concentrating on a cold case – the death in the 1940s of a couple of young lovers whose bodies are found five decades later. It may be cogently argued that the recurrence of bourgeois crimes – often described as more interesting than Mafia crimes, and the portrait of a Sicily which is no different from the rest of Italy, is a way of providing reassuring (and therefore more commercially viable) crime fiction. On the contrary, this is a fashion in which Camilleri reflects on the changes that have occurred in Italy since the 1960s. It is also part of a dedicated anti-Northern League strategy pursued by the Sicilian author, who interestingly starts his series in the years when the Northern League reignited among the Northerners an anti-South sentiment (re-energizing dusty stereotypes commonly applied to Southerners which characterized them as being lazy, corrupt and backward) and advocated a Northern secession from the South. In response to the Northern League’s rhetoric, Camilleri chooses a Sicilian investigator and a Sicilian team which moves efficiently in

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a modern Sicily. The fact that Camilleri’s series has an anti-Northern League ‘agenda’ is proven by several references to this political party throughout the series. In The Terracotta Dog, a Sicilian character, Lillo Rizzitano, makes an explicit reference to the secessionist party when he talks about his daughter-in-law, a fervent supporter of the Northern League, whom he defines as an unbearably stupid woman: ‘One of my daughters-in-law is a rabid leghista, an insufferable imbecile. Actually, she’s very fond of me, but she considers me an exception, since she thinks all Southerners are criminals or, in the best of cases, lazy. She never misses an opportunity to say to me, “You know, Papa, down in your parts – for her “my parts” extend from Sicily up to Rome – in your parts so-and-so was murdered, so-and so was kidnapped, so-and-so was arrested, so-and-so planted a bomb.”’ (Camilleri (2002a [1996]: 203)12 Likewise, in Il giro di boa/Rounding the Mark (2003), Mr and Mrs Bausan, forced to move to Vigàta from Treviso to look after a relative’s property, are prejudiced Northerners and bring a gun to protect themselves: ‘No, I don’t own any weapons. I borrowed that pistol from a cousin of mine. Since we were coming to Sicily, you understand…’ ‘So you think one should come to Sicily armed?’ ‘If there’s no rule of law down there, it seems logical, don’t you think?’ (Camilleri 2003: 20)13 Montalbano orders the arrest of Angelo Bausan for unlawful possession of firearms to show him that in Sicily rules do exist (25–26). Finally in La vampa d’agosto/August Heat (2006), Montalbano refuses to wear a hat under the scorching sun, because it is green, the colour of the Northern League. Camilleri uses an engaging detective loved by readers all over Italy to oppose /or contrast the Northern League secessionist agenda. A proud Sicilian, Montalbano is also the quintessential tragediatore (that is, a person who organizes practical jokes and fakes stupidity, sadness or outrage in order to escape embarrassing or difficult situations). His theatricality is imbued with an irresistible comic quality, a sense of humour that functions as a powerful weapon of knowledge and survival. Montalbano is a sublime tragediatore when he wants to have his way with his fiancée Livia. He also exercises his theatrical abilities with his boss, the police superintendent Bonetti-Alderighi, who comes from the North of Italy: ‘“No, of course not! How can you say that?” said Montalbano, play-acting at great astonishment. And over his head, no doubt, appeared one of those bright rings that saints customarily wear’ (Camilleri 2002c [2000]: 138).14 Montalbano’s theatricality is enhanced by his language. The inspector speaks an artificial language, a mix of Italian, Sicilian dialect

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Case Studies: Inspector Salvo Montalbano

and invented words not actually spoken in any part of Sicily. This unusual combination creates a highly entertaining tongue, a versatile tool particularly suitable for the comic register which is a distinctive feature of Montalbano’s adventures. This language is easily comprehensible to all Italians thanks to comments, paraphrases and synonyms spread through the text. If at the beginning of the series, an essential dictionary was provided in the appendix, this disappeared from later novels. Readers have become increasingly familiar with it and in fact have begun using invented words and expressions in their everyday life. As Tomaiuolo puts it: Thanks to such intelligent strategies Camilleri’s novels have succeeded in being understood by different categories of (low, middle or high-brow) readers coming from different areas of Italy and not exclusively of a Southern or Sicilian origin, creating a commonly-shared and easily recognizable code. (Tomaiuolo 2009: 205) In other words, in the era of the Northern League, Camilleri’s new language has become a sort of lingua franca for all lovers of crime fiction and a unifying tool for Italian readers. In conclusion, Inspector Montalbano is a charming and beguiling character who embodies a contemporary Sicily where the Mafioso are not feared and may be defeated, and where women are emancipated and assertive; this set of notions is opposed to a literary tradition that sees the island as a backward place, invidiously prey to criminal organizations. Montalbano also represents Camilleri’s polemical response to the anti-Southern discourse set by the Northern League in the 1990s. With his honesty and determination, his love for food, comic language and sense of humour, the Sicilian inspector cumulatively represents a new, inclusive Italy.  References Camilleri, A. (2002a [1996]), Il cane di terracotta/The Terracotta Dog, in M. Novelli (ed.), Storie di Montalbano, Milan: Mondadori, pp. 155–410. ––––– (2002b [1994]), La forma dell’acqua/The Shape of Water, in M. Novelli (ed.), Storie di Montalbano, Milan: Mondadori, pp. 3–154. ––––– (2002c [2000]), La gita a Tindari/The Excursion to Tindari, in M. Novelli (ed.), Storie di Montalbano, Milan: Mondadori, pp. 833–1066. ––––– (2003), Il giro di boa/Rounding the Mark, Palermo: Sellerio. ––––– (2006), La vampa d’agosto/August Heat, Palermo: Sellerio. ––––– (2008), Il campo del vasaio/The Potter’s Field, Palermo: Sellerio. Clark, M. (2008), Modern Italy: 1871 to the Present, Harlow/London: Pearson Longman. Farrell, J. (1995), Leonardo Sciascia, Edinburgh: EUP. Lupo, S. (1997), ‘The Changing Mezzogiorno: Between Representations and Reality’, in S. Gundle and S. Parker (eds), The New Italian Republic: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to Berlusconi, London/

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New York: Routledge. Moe, N. (2001), ‘“This is Africa”: Ruling and Representing Southern Italy, 1860–1861’, in A. Russell Ascoli and K. von Hennenberg (eds), Making and Remaking Italy: The Cultivation of National Identity around the Risorgimento, Oxford/New York: Berg. Molander Danielsson, K. M. (2002), The Dynamic Detective: Special Interest and Seriality in Contemporary Detective Series, Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Novelli, M. (2002), ‘L’isola delle voci’[The Island of Voices], in M. Novelli (ed.), Storie di Montalbano [Montalbano’s Stories], Milan: Mondadori. Pezzotti, B. (2009), ‘Conversation on a New Sicily: Interview with Andrea Camilleri’, Storytelling: A Critical Journal of Popular Narrative, 9: 1, pp. 37–52. ––––– (2012), The Importance of Place in Contemporary Italian Crime Fiction: A Bloody Journey, Madison/Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ––––– (2014), Politics and Society in Italian Crime Fiction: An Historical Overview, Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Pischedda, B. (2007), ‘Maturità del giallo classico’[Maturity of Classic Detective Fiction], in V. Spinazzola (ed.), Tirature ’07: Le avventure del giallo [Runs ’07: The Adventures of Crime Fiction], Milan: Il Saggiatore, pp. 10–19. Russo, A. (1997), Il luogo e lo sguardo: Letture di storia e teoria della fotografia [Place and Gaze: Readings on History and Theory of Photography], Turin: Paravia/Scriptorium. Signore A. and Trocino, A. (2008), Razza Padana [Race of the Po], Milan: BUR. Tomaiuolo, S. (2009), ‘“I am Montalbano/Montalbano sono”: Fluency and Cultural Differences in Translating Andrea Camilleri’s Fiction’, Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies, 10, pp. 210–19. Walton P. L. and Jones M. (1999), Detective Agency: Women Rewriting the Hardboiled Tradition, Berkeley: University of California Press. G o F ur t h e r Novels The Inspector Montalbano novels Camilleri, A. (2015 [2011]), Il gioco degli specchi/The Game of Mirrors (trans. S. Sartarelli), New York: Penguin. ––––– (2015 [2012]), Una lama di luce/A Blade of Light, London: Mantle. ––––– (2014), La piramide di fango [The Mud Pyramid], Palermo: Sellerio. ––––– (2014 [2010]), Il sorriso di Angelica/Angelica’s Smile (trans. S. Sartarelli), New York: Penguin. ––––– (2013 [2010]), La caccia al Tesoro/The Treasure Hunt (trans. S. Sartarelli), New York: Penguin. ––––– (2013), La rivoluzione della luna [The Revolution of the Moon], Palermo: Sellerio. ––––– (2013 [2009]), La danza del gabbiano/The Dance of the Seagull (trans. S. Sartarelli), New York: Penguin. ––––– (2012 [2008]), L’età del dubbio/The Age of Doubt (trans. S. Sartarelli), New York: Penguin. ––––– (2012), Una voce di notte/A Voice in the Night (trans. S. Sartarelli), New York: Penguin. ––––– (2011 [2008]), Il campo del vasaio/The Potter’s Field (trans. S. Sartarelli), New York: Penguin.

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––––– (2010 [2007]), La pista di sabbia/The Track of Sand (trans. S. Sartarelli), New York: Penguin. ––––– (2009 [2006]), Le ali della sfinge/The Wings of the Sphinx (trans. S. Sartarelli), New York: Penguin. ––––– (2008 [2006]), La vampa d’agosto/August Heat (trans. S. Sartarelli), New York: Penguin. ––––– (2008 [2005]), La luna di carta/The Paper Moon (trans. S. Sartarelli), New York: Penguin. ––––– (2007 [2004]), La pazienza del ragno/The Patience of the Spider (trans. S. Sartarelli), New York: Penguin. ––––– (2006 [2003]), Il giro di boa/Rounding the Mark (trans. S. Sartarelli), New York: Penguin. ––––– (2006 [2000]), La gita a Tindari/The Excursion to Tindari (trans. S. Sartarelli), London: Picador. ––––– (2005 [2001]), L’odore della notte/The Smell of the Night (trans. S. Sartarelli), New York: Penguin. ––––– (2005 [1997]), La voce del violino/The Voice of the Violin (trans. S. Sartarelli), London: Picador. ––––– (2004 [1994]), La forma dell’acqua/The Shape of Water (trans. S. Sartarelli), New York: Viking Penguin. ––––– (2004 [1996]), Il cane di terracotta/The Terracotta Dog (trans. S. Sartarelli), London: Picador. ––––– (2003 [1996]), Il ladro di merendine/The Snack Thief (trans. S. Sartarelli), New York: Viking Penguin. The Leonardo Sciascia novels Sciascia, L. (1992 [1988]), Il cavaliere e la morte/The Knight and Death (trans. J. Farrell), Manchester: Carcanet. ––––– (1992 [1966]), A ciascuno il suo/To Each His Own (trans. A. Foulke), London: Jonathan Cape. ––––– (1987), Todo Modo/One Way or Another (trans. S. Rabinovich), Manchester: Carcanet. ––––– (1984 [1961]), Il giorno della civetta/The Day of the Owl (trans. A. Colquhoun), Manchester: Carcanet. ––––– (1974/1984 [1971]), Il contesto/Equal Danger (trans. A. Foulke), London: Jonathan Cape. Books Rinaldi, L. (2012), Andrea Camilleri: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction, Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Geherin, D. (2008), Scene of the Crime: The Importance of Place in Crime and Mystery Fiction, Jefferson, NC/London: McFarland & Company Publishers. Rushing R. (2007), Resisting Arrest: Detective Fiction and Popular Culture, New York: Other Press. Clausi, M. (2006), I luoghi di Montalbano [Montalbano’s Places], Palermo: Sellerio. Péron, F. (1993), Des îles et des hommes: L’insularité aujourd’hui [Of Islands and Men: Insularity Today], Rennes: Editions de la Cité, Editions Ouest-France. E x t r a c t s / E s s a y s /A r t i c l e s Rinaldi, L. (2005), ‘Has the Screen Killed the Page? I Polizieschi and the Case of Montalbano’, Spunti e Ricerche, 20, pp. 46–58.

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Television Il commissario Montalbano/Inspector Montalbano (1999–2013, Italy: RAI). Il giovane Montalbano/Young Montalbano (2012, Italy: RAI). Websites Camilleri Fans Club, http://www.vigata.org/ Notes 1 2

In 1999, seven out of ten books on the Italian bestseller list were by Camilleri (Novelli 2002). Giallo, gialli in the plural, is the term commonly used to define ‘crime fiction’ in Italy. It means ‘yellow’ from the colour assigned to the covers of one of the first crime fiction series launched in 1929 by publisher Mondadori.

3

The series started in 1998 with an episode based on Il ladro di merendine (1996, translated as The Snack Thief, 2003). The popular actor Luca Zingaretti played the role of Inspector Montalbano. The series director was Alberto Sironi. In 2012 state TV RAI produced a series entitled Il giovane Montalbano/Young Montalbano based on a number of Camilleri’s short stories. The series director was Gianluca Maria Tavarelli. A second series will be screened in late 2015.

4

The Northern League (Lega Nord) is a federalist party which advocates greater regional autonomy for the North of Italy (in the mid-1990s it supported the secession of the North from the rest of Italy) and has a xenophobic agenda. For a history of the Northern League see Signore and Trocino (2008) and Clark (2008: 499–500).

5

For an analysis of Sciascia’s novels sees Pezzotti (2014: 75–93).

6 In The Day of the Owl, Captain Bellodi, who has just arrived from Parma, in the North of Italy, to an unnamed Sicilian location, investigates the murder of Salvatore Colasberna, a local building contractor who was killed in the main square of the village. Captain Bellodi finds that his investigation is not only hampered by a lack of evidence and witnesses, but is being actively impeded by corrupt government influences working in conjunction with the Mafia. Eventually, the case is officially closed as a crime passionel which is the most convenient answer to all the deaths in this book. The conflict between detective and society is taken to the extreme in To Each His Own: the protagonist, Professor Laurana, is completely alone in his investigation on the murder of his friend, pharmacist Manno, because nobody, not even the police, is interested in finding the truth. In this novel in particular, the traditional ‘union of investigator and society in the face of crime is replaced by a union of society and criminal, linked by their hostility to the intrusive investigator’ (Farrell 1995: 64). 7

For example, the TV drama serial La piovra/The Octopus (meaning the Mafia), which ran from 1984 to 2001 and was broadcast by state TV RAI 1, brought organized crime to the attention of vast sectors of the Italian population by telling stories where the police were invariably defeated by criminal organizations.

8

In the 1990s locals increasingly protested against the Mafia through demonstrations and the establishment of anti-Mafia organizations. Among them are the ‘Sheets Committee’, a group

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of people who hang sheets with the writing ‘Basta!’ (Enough), and who have created anti-Mafia commercials for Sicilian local TV stations; and ‘Libera’ (Free) which lobbied for legislative reforms. Thanks to ‘Libera’ a law was passed allowing for Mafia property to be turned into social cooperatives. The political party La Rete, which had a specific anti-Mafia agenda, was also formed in the 1990s. One of its exponents, Leoluca Orlando, was elected mayor of Palermo in 1993 by 70 per cent of the popular vote. 9

Nelson Moe highlights that many post-unification studies show that the Italian intellectual elite from the North considered the South and the islands as ‘Africa’; that is, as exotic others to conquer and exploit rather than understand and respect (2001: 119–53). As Antonella Russo has written, Southern Italy has been considered a place of archaic cultures and customs, of obscure and inaccessible languages, and a land of primitivism and exoticism (1997: 73). Finally, Salvatore Lupo argues that in Italian culture there has traditionally been a false dichotomy between the North and the South, fomented in recent years by the rise of the Northern League and other secessionist parties (1997: 247).

10 ‘A spintoni, a sgambetti, trattenendosi reciprocamente ora per un braccio ora per la giacchetta, tutti i presenti assuragliarono il commissario, tentando d’arrivare per primi. E durante la collutazione, parlavano e vociavano, assordando Montalbano con un vocío totalmente incomprensibile.

“Ma che succede?” spiò, facendo la voce militare.



Subentrò una relativa calma.



“M’arracomando, niente parzialità!” fece uno, un mezzo nano, mettendosigli sotto il naso. “Si proceda nella chiamata per ordine strittissimamenti flabbetico!”



“Nossignori e nossignori! La chiamata va fatta per anzianità!’ proclamò, arraggiato, un secondo”’ (Camilleri 2002c [2000]: 890).

11 The intense investigative work that followed culminated in the 1987 Maxi-trial, with a final verdict which included a total of 2,665 years in prison and nineteen life sentences, thanks to the testimony of some pentiti (people who turned state’s evidence). 12

‘“Ora una delle mie nuore è leghista arrabbiata, una cretina insopportabile, mi vuole molto bene, ma mi considera un’eccezione perché pensa che tutti i meridionali siano dei delinquenti o, nella migliore delle ipotesi, sfaticati. Perciò non manca mai di dirmi: lo sa, papà, dalle parti sue – le parti mie si estendono dalla Sicilia a Roma compresa – hanno ucciso questo, hanno sequestrato quello, arrestato quell’altro, messa una bomba”’ (Camilleri (2002a [1996]: 400).

13 ‘“No, non ho armi. Il revolver me lo sono fatto prestare da un mio cugino. Capirà che dovendo venire in Sicilia...”

“Lei ritiene che si debba venire in Sicilia armati?”



“Se qui la legge non esiste, mi pare logico, no?”’ (Camilleri 2003: 32–33).

14 ‘“Ma no! Che mi dice?’’ disse Montalbano facendo il teatrino della meraviglia. E sicuramente sipra la testa gli spuntò la spera tonda che i santi abitualmente portano’ (Camilleri 2002c [2000]: 937).

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Inspector Morse Nationality: english / creator: Colin Dexter Barry Forshaw

Sullen and difficult he may be, and given to browbeating his subordinates and demonstrating his knowledge of the arts (notably poetry and opera) in a somewhat selfaggrandizing fashion, but Colin Dexter's Oxford copper Inspector Morse is one of the defining figures in British detective fiction – a multifaceted, fascinating protagonist who readers have followed avidly through a series of beautifully turned and ingenious novels. In a line of descent that extends back to Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes (notably via the laser-sharp intellect), Inspector Morse is a character who can stand shoulder to shoulder with the very best in the genre. Interestingly, his creator, Colin Dexter, shares several characteristics and traits with his hero; he is erudite (with a particular love of the Shropshire-set poetry of A. E. Housman – Dexter quotes the latter’s A Shropshire Lad (1887) at the drop of a hat: ‘Blue remembered hills’ is a favourite line) and shrewdly analytical in terms of the varied personalities he encounters. But Dexter is the polar opposite of Morse in terms of his character: extremely affable, immensely charming and humorous – and (most of all) sensitive to the feelings of those around him. An anti-Morse, in fact. One specific area where Dexter signally differed from his literary creation is the writer’s wry attitude to the predilections of those who inhabit the groves of academe, and for whom the arts are a primary concern – even though Dexter’s detective sports a love of (and thorough knowledge of) literature and music. In these interests, Morse is differentiated from such well-bred and artistically cultivated predecessors as Sherlock Holmes; for the latter, Arthur Conan Doyle reminded us that the Great Detective was conspicuously more interested in science than the arts but nevertheless played the violin, and would make reference to attending such things as Mendelssohn concerts in between the sleuthing. In terms of the distinction between science and humanities (which C. P. Snow identified in a 1959 Rede lecture as ‘The Two Cultures’), the Morse books possess a bookish (and certainly donnish) strand which is somewhat bifurcated in its view. Morse is a detective who utilizes scientific methodology as much as he invokes Latin tags to solve crimes (the latter – and all the other accoutrements of academe – are pertinent, given

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Case Studies: Inspector Morse

the high body count among academics that Morse frequently called upon to investigate; dons, it seems, are a murderous bunch). Colin Dexter himself is unable to hide the fact that he loves the eccentricities and cloistered nature of this world and its often arcane concerns even though he clearly enjoys lampooning its self-indulgent excesses via the novels. And Morse himself is of course a notably donnish figure, fussy, imperious, self-regarding and intolerant of those who do not share his knowledge of poetry and the arts (as evinced by his constant short-tempered criticisms of his less well-read associate Lewis, a particular character note in the television series). And speaking of the television adaptations, the popularity of the character of Morse is not entirely due to the exemplary novels which gave birth to him – the long-running Inspector Morse TV series (ITV, 1987–2000) featuring (over the years) a series of cannily underplayed performances by the late John Thaw (as the eponymous Morse) cemented the popularity of Dexter's policeman, moving the sales of the books into ever more stratospheric reaches – and establishing a Morse fan base throughout the world, notably in the United States. Ironically, the actor John Thaw, now so thoroughly identified with the character of Morse, had already made a mark with the creation of another TV police detective, the polar opposite of the Oxford policeman: the hard-drinking, hard-wearing vulgarian Reagan (catchphrase: ‘You’re nicked, my son!’), a cockney copper who used his fists rather than his intellect in the tough TV series The Sweeney (Thames, 1974–1978). Most significantly, the Morse TV series even had an influence on the Colin Dexter books themselves – something of a first – actually bringing about changes in the characters as Dexter wrote about them – not a unique syndrome, but perhaps the most often remarked on (not least by Dexter himself, who was happy to acknowledge these changes, something that many writers might have been reluctant to do, even in the face of the evidence). Death amid the dreaming spires Colin Dexter was educated at Stamford School and served in the Royal Corps of Signals before attending Christ's College Cambridge, where he read Classics. In many ways, Dexter seemed cut out for the life of a tweedy academic in the city of Dreaming Spires, possessing (as he does) a deep enjoyment of cultural life. But such a career was not how he would make his mark upon the world. An incipient problem with deafness in 1966 brought about a premature retirement from teaching. It was necessary to earn a living in some other fashion, so Dexter decided to utilize his love and knowledge of the city of Oxford to create a series of civilized entertainments in the crime fiction genre (a field, as he says, that he had always loved), featuring a taciturn, well-educated policeman by the name of Morse. Dexter relocated to Oxford from Northampton and began to write his first detective novel. The book did not come easily to him, and he struggled to refine it into a form

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that he found pleasing. Last Bus to Woodstock (1975), the first Morse novel, was a highly individual piece, and demonstrated at a stroke that Dexter was an effortless master of the crime novel. But here is a pertinent question: if you consider yourself a Morse fan, when did you last read this initial Morse book? There is a cogent argument for Dexter aficionados who have not read the book in years to pick it up again. In the twenty-first century, it makes for intriguing reading in that with Last Bus to Woodstock, we encounter an Inspector Morse – and his Watson, DS Lewis – who are not the characters with whom we are so familiar. While many of the familiar tropes are here (notably Morse's addiction to crossword puzzles, serious music and real ale), Lewis (more callow in the later books) is, in fact, the more mature copper, while Morse is the more youthful of the two – a striking inversion of the dynamic we are more familiar with. However unsettling this concept might seem to latter-day admirers of Morse and Lewis, other elements in the book already foreshadow things that were subsequently to become familiar; the brilliantly evoked milieu and landscape of Oxford, in both its academic and non-academic guises, while the basic plot (and its subsequent ingenious resolution) arrives fully formed. A woman's body is discovered in a car park, with only a letter full of disguised references and an envelope which may have been stuffed with money as any kind of clue as to how she died. As Morse and Lewis unravel the mystery, we encounter (for the first time) that fascinating, bitchy universe ensconced in the corridors of academe, where ambition, resentment and schadenfreude reign supreme. So vividly evoked, in fact, is this sequestered world that it is hardly surprising that readers were soon clamouring for more, even though Morse and Lewis had yet to be finessed into the richer and more complex characters that they were subsequently to become. Jericho, Oxford With virtually no missteps (among other virtues, Dexter has always been the most reliable and consistent of writers), the author began to develop the characters of his policemen and the series in a succession of highly accomplished novels. Last Bus to Woodstock was followed by (among others) Last Seen Wearing in 1976, sharing a title with a celebrated earlier novel by Hilary Waugh (which was also one of the first police procedurals); The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn (1977), one of the more workaday entries; the excellent Service of All the Dead (1980), The Dead of Jericho (1981), and many others, before drawing the series decisively to a close with The Remorseful Day (1999). The Dead of Jericho is one of the most significant Morse series, offering perhaps the most entertaining contrast between the fiercely analytical Morse and his more bythe-numbers colleague Lewis. The ‘Jericho’ of the title is actually a district of Oxford, in which the two policemen toil. Morse encounters a woman while at a party, and there is a mutual spark between the two. Anne Scott lives in the aforementioned Jericho, and when Morse calls on her, it appears that she is out; he subsequently finds that Anne

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Case Studies: Inspector Morse

was at home, but that she was, in fact, dead. Suicide is recorded as the official verdict, but Morse is not persuaded by this (when do literary sleuths ever accept a verdict of suicide?), and begins to look into the circumstances of her death. The experience is a painful one for him, as his customary bleak view of humanity – the view that is principally responsible for his unremittingly surly manner – is coloured by the fact that he is suffering from guilt; Morse has convinced himself that he might have saved Anne, and that he is responsible for the fact of her death. Needless to say, Morse’s fatalistic view of events is proved right – nothing is ever as it seems in Dexter's novels, and as Morse cuts through the skein of deception, he is able to assuage his own feelings of guilt as well as solving what initially appears to be an open-and-shut case. As with Last Bus to Woodstock, it is instructive to read this particular Dexter novel in the twenty-first century, as it preceded the television adaptation and the changes that the TV series wrought on the books; Morse is a younger man, and the relationship between him and Lewis is markedly different from what it would subsequently metamorphose into. A donnish universe The Secret of Annexe 3 (1986) continued Dexter's canny development of the character and showed a growing assurance in plotting – always a speciality of the author, but now refined into something complex and ingenious. The Wench Is Dead (1989) gleaned a major crime award for Dexter, and deservedly so. The backwards-looking structure of the book seems to be inspired by that of Josephine Tey's celebrated The Daughter of Time (1951), but the author has long been aware of the debt he owes to his illustrious predecessors, and is always more than ready to acknowledge it. Morse finds himself in hospital (a similar scenario was utilized by the Swedish writer Håkan Nesser – addressed elsewhere in this book – with his detective Van Veeteren; it is perhaps no surprise that Dexter is an admirer of his Scandinavian colleague). Morse is suffering from a duodenal ulcer, but although bedridden, he undertakes to look into a murder that took place in 1859 – and here Colin Dexter utilized his own research into a true-life case. Morse is obliged to share a room with an elderly military man, Denniston. When the latter dies, his widow presents Morse with her late husband's writings on a woman who drowned in Oxford, by the name of Joanna Franks. Interestingly, Dexter chooses to present the reader with this fictitious book complete, and it is quite as fascinating as anything in the Morse oeuvre. It appears that there was a canal system (predating the expansion of the railways) which was the lifeline between Oxford and Coventry in the north. Despite all expectations, the minute detailing of the lore of the canals is quite fascinating, although (of course) it is the investigation surrounding the mystery of the death of Joanna Franks conducted by the bedbound Morse that is the fulcrum of the novel. The Riddle of the Third Mile (1983) is one of the more ambitious Morse novels, with an intriguing narrative frame. The novel begins in 1942 at the Battle of Alamein. Lieu-

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tenant Browne-Smith reluctantly orders a soldier not to save the life of a colleague who was trapped in a burning tank. As so often in Dexter novels (and, it has to be admitted, throughout most of the crime fiction genre), a significant action in the past has dangerous ramifications in the future. By the 1980s, Browne-Smith has become an Oxford don (thus entering Morse’s donnish universe), but after a posting of grades, he disappears. Shortly after, Morse is involved in the investigation of a mutilated corpse which has been found in an Oxford canal, the head and hands hacked off. The investigation leads Morse from the leafy confines of Oxford to a seedy part of London's Soho, where it is found that Browne-Smith had visited a flat for some commercially transacted sex. Refreshingly, Colin Dexter (as mentioned earlier) often made fun of several elements in his own much-loved series, notably the fact that if the body count was as ridiculously high in Oxford as it is in the Morse novels, there would be no one left to teach the students; and Dexter was also sardonic about the fact that Morse had an unfeasibly large number of personal relationships with a great many of his cases. That's the case in The Riddle of the Third Mile, as Morse muses on the fact that he did not succeed in Greats at Oxford – and if he had done so, one of his tutors would have been the late Browne-Smith (admittedly, one of Dexter's more tenuous links). With the added distraction of a painful toothache, Morse slowly but surely unravels a particularly labyrinthine plot, and perhaps the author might be accused – on this one occasion – of over-egging the pudding (it’s a massively complicated plot). The Way Through the Woods (1992) – another poetic reference (this time to Rudyard Kipling) – is one of the gems of the Colin Dexter canon, admittedly utilizing familiar tropes from the series, but ringing the changes in a satisfying fashion. A striking young female tourist (dubbed ‘the Swedish Maiden’) disappears at the height of summer while on holiday in Oxford. A year passes, and the police are no nearer to solving the mystery. Morse, holidaying in Lyme Regis (particularly attractive for him with its literary associations to Jane Austen and others), encounters an intriguing piece in The Times about the young woman's disappearance. Energized by this piece, he returns to woods near Oxford and begins a particularly challenging investigation – one that will be quite unlike anything he has undertaken before. By now, the synergy between the Morse novels and the TV adaptations was complete, with extensive cross-referencing par for the course; admirers of Morse familiar with both could enjoy all the nuances of the character, on the page and in the television incarnation by John Thaw. However, by The Remorseful Day, Dexter had (as he had long clandestinely indicated) openly admitted to becoming weary of the character (à la Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes) and killed him off – permanently (revealing, inter alia, Morse’s long-suppressed first name, Endeavour).

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Morse: Offshoots of a franchise Over a series of ever-more impressive novels, Colin Dexter cannily developed his complex and combative central character, revealing deeper aspects of his multifaceted copper. Simultaneously, Dexter conjured a panoramic vision of the city of Oxford in all its aspects (from council estates to the leafy groves of academe) that has few equals in literary backdrops for series characters (not even Ian Rankin’s vividly evoked Edinburgh for DI Rebus matches Dexter's richly drawn settings). For both of these achievements – not to mention plotting of immense ingenuity and symmetry – the Morse legacy stands every chance of living as long as the crime genre itself. Interestingly, the books and the subsequent TV series have spawned at least two spin-offs: one in which Morse’s decidedly non-academic sidekick Lewis, lamenting the death of his short-fused colleague, becomes the eponymous central figure in a new TV series, shot in a lovingly photographed Oxford (exactly as its predecessor was; both series function as adjuncts to the city’s tourist board). The fact that this new iteration of the franchise was obliged to repeat (rather obviously) the dynamic of its predecessor did not appear to worry viewers. Assuming the Morse role, Lewis (still played by a more weathered Kevin Whately) now became the older, more volatile figure, while a new younger colleague (DC James Hathaway, played by Laurence Fox) was introduced as the new younger associate (e.g. a ‘Lewis figure’); neither, apparently, were viewers fazed by another corollary to the earlier series: Lewis’s younger colleague is now the one who knows about poetry and the arts, so that (as before) the older detective can frequently make reference to his lack of interest in these topics. And more was to come: Russell Lewis’s ITV television series Endeavour in 2012 took up the earlier life of the detective – with Shaun Evans bearing not the slightest resemblance to his predecessor, John Thaw – and presented earlier cases for the callow detective, with town and gown elements – so critical to the earlier series – firmly in place once again. A great deal of the show's appeal was in its foreshadowing of elements that had been so crucial to the John Thaw series, such as the protagonist’s interest in opera and real ale. But these more recent accretions aside, there is no question that the most significant element of the entire Morse universe consists of the original Morse novels by Colin Dexter himself; these remain the lodestone for the character.  G o F ur t h e r Novels The Inspector Morse novels Dexter, Colin (1999), The Remorseful Day, London: Macmillan. ––––– (1996), Death Is Now My Neighbour, London: Macmillan. ––––– (1994), The Daughters of Cain, London: Macmillan. ––––– (1992), The Way Through the Woods, London: Macmillan.

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––––– (1991), The Jewel That Was Ours, London: Macmillan. ––––– (1989), The Wench Is Dead, London: Macmillan. ––––– (1983), The Riddle of the Third Mile, London: Macmillan. ––––– (1986), The Secret of Annexe 3, London: Macmillan. ––––– (1981), The Dead of Jericho, London: Macmillan. ––––– (1979), Service of All the Dead, London: Macmillan. ––––– (1977), The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn, London: Macmillan. ––––– (1976), Last Seen Wearing, London: Macmillan. ––––– (1975), Last Bus to Woodstock, London: Macmillan. Books Forshaw, Barry (ed.) (2009), British Crime Writing: An Encyclopaedia, Oxford: Greenwood. ––––– (2007), The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction, London: Penguin. James, Russell (2008), Great British Fictional Detectives A–Z, Barnsley: Pen & Sword. Television Endeavour (2012–ongoing), UK: ITV). Lewis (2006–ongoing), UK: ITV). Inspector Morse (1987–2000, UK: ITV).

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‘I always drink at lunchtime. It helps my imagination.’ Inspector Morse

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Chief Inspector Jules Maigret Nationality: French / creator: Georges Simenon Jon Wilkins

Simenon and Maigret: Moral quandaries Qu’est-ce que vous avez fait pendant la guerre, papa? Yes, exactly what did Jules Maigret do during the war? Maigret was, of course, very happily married, but with his only child dying in infancy, it remains one of the few questions Maigret was never asked. His creator, the Belgian writer Georges Simenon, would not be obliged to face the question either. He customarily avoided the issue, facilitating a contretemps between the ethics and the aesthetics of the writer. Jules Maigret is one of my heroes. Simenon’s saturnine policeman introduced me to Paris, to detective fiction, to a world I never knew existed. Today, I read Cara Black and her depictions of Paris through the eyes of her detective Aimée Leduc, who (one might argue) is related to Simenon spiritually. Black puts her hero in Paris, as much a character in her novels as the city is in Simenon’s novels (though it isn’t the detective’s only bailiwick). Simenon puts Maigret in a world we can all acknowledge as authentic. His sense of place is paramount, and Paris is as much a part of the plot as Maigret is himself. But what most characterizes the detective is his apparent ordinariness. Maigret is one of us – a quiet, pipe-smoking, rather overweight fellow who would make a good neighbour. He is no tough guy in accord with the American pattern, forever punching out or shooting down his adversaries. On the contrary, he is touchingly vulnerable (RBC 1979). We can all relate to him and his wish to get home to his beloved wife, to smoke his pipe, to drink whatever is at hand, to go to the theatre, to walk around town, or just sit with his partner as company in peace and contemplation. His ordinariness is what makes him different. We can understand his dedication, though we sometimes see his wife becoming irritated as he is late home (again), solving yet another crime, but we know that she understands that this is part of his life, it is what makes her husband who he is. Maigret would not be Maigret if he was a bully, a shouter, a tub thumper. Maigret is relatable and mundane, but with a mind as sharp as a knife.

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Case Studies: Chief Inspector Jules Maigret

In the war years, while Maigret’s fellow French detective Nestor Burma was bumbling along as a World War II private eye, flitting between Vichy and Paris, where was Maigret? The silence is significant. And what was his creator up to, besides – allegedly – profiteering from the war? A man of principle The writer made his escape in 1945 to America until the heat had died down so perhaps we can guess. But it is possible to discover by reading Simenon’s non-Maigret work to see how he viewed the war; such an understanding may illuminate how Maigret coped with serving under the Nazis. The detective is old school, hardworking, monogamous. A man of principle, both private and public. Ethically he resists being read as consonant with the conflicted personality of his creator. We must judge Maigret on what is on the page, assessing Simenon’s suggestion that his stories are timeless and can fit into any period thus precluding the use of war as a backcloth. There are no books identifying any political involvement for Maigret during the war years. In the six Maigret novels written between 1939 and 1945 there is silence, with the war not even acknowledged. Then in 1945 Simenon moved to America, perhaps to escape claims of collaboration and a possible trial. Certainly, the author profited from the war. He sold the film rights for the Maigret books to Continental, the official German film-makers, and made a great deal of money, eschewing the resistance to the regime of Albert Camus or the high-minded stances of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. If his character Maigret had continued to serve in the Paris police during the war, he would have been in a difficult – not to say compromised – position. Police were often accompanied by German troops, and official French support was given to the rounding up of Jews in the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup of 1942 (Davoust 2012), when almost 5,000 were sent directly to the camp at Drancy before their deportation to Auschwitz. Indeed, the Paris Police controlled the camp until 1943, so very few of their officers could have escaped taint during this time, no matter how heroic they (abruptly) became during the Liberation of 1944. In his biography of the author, Assouline comments that Simenon is ‘not a man of commitment, but an opportunist’ (1997: 197). This may have led to the widespread perception that Simenon was only too prepared to compromise and benefit from opportunities offered to him. The author is perceived today as a womanizer, according to his interview with Federico Fellini (Vandy 2006), far removed from the steadfast Maigret, whose only vice was his pipe and the more than occasional tipple. In Les Scrupules de Maigret (1958) (first translated as Maigret Has Scruples in 1959), Simenon writes almost dismissively of the concentration camp experiences of a character, Doctor Steiner. This is one of only three references to the war in his Maigret

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series. (The others: Maigret and the Minister (1954), which includes a short description of the minister Auguste Point's wartime background; and in The Patience of Maigret (1965), in which two of the characters are caught up in the bombing of Douai in 1940.): ‘During the war, he refused to wear the yellow star, claiming that he hadn’t a drop of Jewish blood in him. The Germans proved him wrong and sent him off to a concentration camp. He came back thoroughly embittered’ (Simenon 1958: 142). No other thoughts or considerations are mooted; the whole malign experience dispensed with as if it counted for nothing. It was almost as if this had been a holiday with unaccommodating hosts. Was this how Simenon regarded the period? An article online from the Jewish Chronicle in January 2013 states categorically that Simenon was an anti-Semite, as evidenced by the fact that too many of his stories contain slurs on the Jewish people (Lebrecht 2013). The author Norman Lebrecht does not tell us his sources, but writes of researchers asserting that in thirteen of his novels Jews are the aggressors. It is perhaps true that there is often evidence of the casual racism of Simenon. How his language reflects the time is often used as an excuse, but if this is true, is it possible to surmise what Maigret would have done during the war years? In Le Train written in 1961 (The Train [1964]), we observe Simenon at his darkest and also perhaps get a hint of where the true feelings of Maigret could lie. His hero, Marcel, has a passionate relationship with Anna, a Jewish girl, as the war opens in France. Later in the novel further combat ensues and she comes to him one night asking for protection for herself and an RAF pilot that she is helping to escape. He refuses. Later that month he discovers that the airman and the young woman have been shot (Simenon 2011b [1958]). There is no remorse, no regret. He appears to have no feelings either way. Did he once love her? Is there nothing that he remembers of the relationship? Did he side with the invaders? The tragedy has no effect on him; that he slept with the girl whilst his heavily pregnant wife was separated from him when he fled his home town, seems a mere distraction. He owes the girl nothing and will give her nothing. At best Simenon appears indifferent to the victims, ambivalent to the war, at worst a collaborator. Is this reflected in Maigret? The answer would appear to be in the negative; there is no mention of the war in any of his ‘timeless’ novels, so we might conclude that such ethical considerations do not influence the aesthetic of the writer. I feel that this reflects the character of Simenon more than of his protagonist Marcel. Indeed Marcel is Simenon to the extent that Meursault is his creator Albert Camus in L’Etranger (1942). The World War II record of Camus and his history afterwards shows the ethical differences between the two authors. Indeed, Camus was quoted as saying in January 1955, I summarized The Outsider a long time ago, with a remark I admit was highly

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Case Studies: Chief Inspector Jules Maigret

paradoxical: ‘In our society any man who does not weep at his mother's funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death.’ I only meant that the hero of my book is condemned because he does not play the game. (Carroll 2008 [1955]: 27) Simenon played his own personal game, profited, and left France to let things die down. Camus stayed, fought in the resistance, established the newspaper Combat and was a hero. Simenon enjoyed no such reputational enhancement. The author’s actions were to have political ramifications. He was to some degree ignorant of politics, and his sundry right-wing affiliations in the 1930s had more to do with social insecurity than with any actual convictions. When war broke out, Simenon briefly extended himself to assist Belgian refugees; after the Germans invaded France, he was, ironically, suspected of being Jewish (on the grounds that his real last name would have been Simon) and subjected to a lengthy police investigation. Even before this occurred, however, he had with some alacrity become a collaborator, (as in the aforementioned signing up with the German-controlled film company Continental). His motives were simple: the Continental contract assured him a comfortable income, as well as a permit to travel between Paris and his country house in the south. Self-preservation appeared to be his modus operandi (Sante 2007). The authentic Simenon Despite the rather caustic view articulated above, I believe that we can see the true, authentic George Simenon in Jules Maigret. The Chief Inspector is the man his creator wished to be. Simenon may have believed his non-Maigret novels were to be his principal life’s work, but after failing to win the Nobel Prize, he retreated into the world of his policeman, who personifies that which Simenon himself could never be. The author lived in the world of his romans durs (or ‘hard novels’), and while we see his dark and calculating side, in Maigret we see the man. As Eskin writes in his biography: Rarely does Maigret express any views about himself or his methods of detection. Only in one novel, Maigret in Society, is there a glimpse when Simenon writes of his character, ‘He did not take himself for a superman, did not consider himself infallible. On the contrary, it was with a certain humility that he began his investigations, including the simplest of them. He mistrusted evidence, hasty judgements. Patiently, he strove to understand, aware that the most apparent motives are not always the deepest ones. (Eskin 1987: 223) It is not often that we gaze into the soul of Maigret, and when we are permitted to do

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so it is both intriguing and enlightening. He is a rare sort of man, a hero who does not recognize himself as such. A quotidian figure at one with the victim, but also with the perpetrator. He sympathizes with both. We believe in Maigret, as he is one of us. He believes in us; he is on our side. In the comforting, tobacco-scented presence of Inspector Maigret, we are reassured that all will be well. Who would not want to believe in a man like that, serene and reassuring? Critics have discerned two key aspects of Simenon's work: tragedy and wisdom. The wisdom shines forth in the Maigret stories, where the stark motifs of tragedy, subjected to the uncompromising glare of Simenon's artistry, come under the softening influence of the detective’s humanity (RBC 1979). Hilary Mantel talks of writing with ‘maximum ambiguity’ (Channel 4 News 2012) and we can see this in the two shades of Simenon. It is apparent in La neige était sale of 1948 (Dirty Snow [1951]), another of his self-proclaimed romans durs; often thought to be based in an unnamed city in France or in Brussels, Simenon insisted the book was set in an Eastern European state. The ambiguity is typical of the author in the avoidance of any political reference to France, his adopted nation, though we can extrapolate. The novel was written in 1948, and is another of the books Simenon hoped might win him the Nobel Prize for Literature. The story is set in a town under occupation, though Simenon was insistent that the setting was not occupied France. Why did he want to disguise the setting? The author – by not identifying the country – is perhaps attempting to universalize the narrative, which centres on the amoral and cynical 19-year-old Frank Friedmaier in a winter of endless snow that serves a symbolic function throughout the novel. In the opening scene Frank stabs an enemy soldier as he walks home through the snow at night. The murder is nothing to do with any act of rebellion against the occupier or of patriotism. It is a pointlessly evil act that Frank describes as 'losing his virginity'. Friedmaier is a young man bereft of a moral compass. A manipulator, proxy rapist, abuser – a thoroughly unlovable individual. But at the end of the novel Friedmaier tells his captor, ‘I am not a fanatic, an agitator, or a patriot. I am a piece of shit […] I want to die, as soon as possible, in whatever fashion you choose’ (Simenon 2011c [1948]: 242). The novel is revealing concerning Simenon and his perhaps nihilistic world-view, radically different here from his Maigret novels, suggesting the work of two different writers: the self-styled ‘typewriter’ who rushes out his detective stories with such speed and the aspiring Nobel Prize winner. His attitude to literary acclaim and popular success was complex: Simenon proclaimed that he would write a novel in a glass box as a publicity stunt, and was ridiculed by the elitist writers of the day. He never felt that he was given his due, and perhaps he was right. But he was partly responsible for such attitudes. ‘I’ll manufacture Fords for a while,’ he said of Maigret early in his career, ‘until enough money comes in. Then I’ll make Rolls-Royces for pleasure’ (McIntyre n.d.). There is great debate whether his detective novels are so very different from his romans

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durs. Thomas Narcejac in The Art of Simenon (1952) states that novels without the policeman ‘are constructed in exactly the same lines as the novels with Maigret’ (cited in Hutton, 2013: 13). Whilst Boileau-Narcejac in Le Roman policier (1999) argues that if you remove Maigret from the narrative; ‘It is just a novel. The material is the same in both cases’ (cited in Hutton, 2013: 13). The romans durs, however, delve much deeper into the psyche of the protagonists. There is a huge difference between the two novelistic forms. The writer Larry McMurtry notes that Simenon is as meticulous as Jane Austen when it comes to excluding world events. In the case of Dirty Snow, he revelled in the leaps made by readers in assigning physical locations to the novel’s setting and identities to the characters. ‘Germans are never mentioned in my book,’ he pointed out after its publication. ‘Indeed, I wanted the occupier to be as neutral as possible, in order to lend the work more generality.’ He conceded that he had a location in mind – Central Europe, an Austrian or Czech city – and an occupier as well, the Russians, but his decision to leave these identities murky no doubt gives the book broader appeal.’ (quoted in McIntyre n.d.) One might argue about the ‘broader appeal’ and the notion that readers can supply their own location, especially if the writer is reticent to name one. It seems relevant to think of this as Paris, perhaps Brussels or even Liège. The premise is the same: a rare look at an occupied city during World War II. A city that Simenon knows very well, especially the seedy underbelly. Paris. Maigret’s qualities After the war, according to the Mark Lawson article in The Guardian: Simenon later claimed protection under a popular post-war formula in France – that he worked ‘under’ the Nazis rather than for them – and the liberation government, despite investigation, found insufficient evidence to deport or execute him. Yet guilt and fear about his war-time record made him a voluntary exile from France. He had written anti-Semitic articles as a young reporter in Belgium but one might conclude that he was (in the final analysis) more pro-Simenon than pro-Nazi. With the egotism and political naivety of many artists, he simply could not accept that something as trivial as a world war could interrupt his career. (Lawson 2002) Simenon finesses the distance between himself and Maigret almost obsessively. They

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are not the same man, and do not share the same ethical views, but I venture to suggest that Simenon wished he were that man, with Maigret’s particular qualities. Did Simenon accept that his own views were perhaps unpalatable and not to be reflected in his detective, as this would disturb the relationship with the reader? This is, of course, supposition, and less than generous to his writing. Simenon was a superlative writer of detective fiction, and Maigret is one of the key fictional detectives. After the German invasion, and as time went on, despite the antipathy towards Jewishness that we can discern over several novels, he would become more and more aware of the true Nazi agenda and would attempt to distance himself from them. It’s conceivable that the final straw for him would have been the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup of the Jews and the support that this gleaned from many of his colleagues, which he regarded as untenable. He had two choices, one of which was that he could leave France and align himself with the Free French in England. With his gifts he would have been ideal as an organizer and as a man who saw through the fog of war, and could have made decisions that could influence its outcome. The more dangerous option would be to work in Paris as a clandestine supporter of the Free French. He could use his position to help those threatened by the occupying forces – though how much he could have achieved is of course debatable. But if Simenon comes out of the arena of wartime behaviour in compromised fashion, in Maigret he created an imperishable character. A champion for the ordinary man or woman. A fighter for truth. Indeed, in ‘A Salute to Georges Simenon’ (2014), Patrick Marnham writes: Simenon did not write Maigret stories just to keep the pot warm; the policeman who solved his cases by understanding and frequently sympathising with his quarry was presented as the model for the way in which a good man should live his life. Maigret’s motto was comprendre et ne pas juger (‘Understand, don’t condemn’). The romans durs, on the other hand, depict a very different world – one in which justice plays little part and men and women have to learn how to survive without it. It is also a world that to some extent reflected the way in which the novelist actually lived his life. (Marnham 2014) One would like to think that if Jules Maigret believed in something, then surely Simenon did too.  References Assouline, Pierre (1997), Simenon: A Biography, Chatto & Windus, London. Carroll, David, (2008), Albert Camus the Algerian: Colonialism, Terrorism, Justice, Columbia University Press, New York.

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Channel 4 News (2012), ‘Booker Winner Hilary Mantel on 'Opening up the Past' [YouTube], 17 October, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1-wBRsQAVo. Accessed 17 November 2014. Davoust, Andrea (2012), ‘Police Files Shed Light on Wartime Jewish Roundup’, France 24, 16 July, http://www.france24.com/en/20120714-france-police-history-archives-world-war-twodeportation-jews-vel-dhiv-holocaust/. Accessed 17 November 2014. Eskin, Stanley G. (1987), Simenon: A Critical Biography, McFarland & Company, Jefferson, North Carolina . Hutton, Margaret-Anne (2013), French Crime Fiction, 1945–2005: Investigating World War II, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd, Surrey. Lawson, Mark, (2002), ‘Would you believe it?’ The Guardian Online, http://www.theguardian.com/ books/2002/nov/23/crime.georgessimenon. Accessed 24 October 2014. Lebrecht, Norman (2013), ‘Detecting a Nasty Side to Maigret’, The Jewish Chronicle Online, http://www. thejc.com/comment-and-debate/comment/113650/detecting-a-nasty-side-maigret. Accessed 24 October 2014. Malet, Leo (1991 [1943]), 120 Rue de la Gare, Pan Books, London. Marnham, Patrick (2014), ‘A Salute to Georges Simenon’, 20 September, http://www.spectator.co.uk/ books/books-secondary-feature/9315032/homage-to-simenon-by-patrick-marnham-essay/. Accessed 23 November 2014. McIntyre, John (n.d.), ‘A Measure of the Master: Georges Simenon’s romans durs’, Open Letters Monthly L: An Arts and Literature Review, http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/a-measure-of-themaster-georges-simenons-romans-durs. Accessed 3 December 2014. Narcejac, Thomas (1952), The Art of Simenon, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) (1979), ‘The Great Detectives’, RBC Monthly Letter, 60: 11, http://www.rbc. com/aboutus/letter/november1979.html. Accessed 24 November 2014. Sante, Luc (2007), ‘Soul Inspector’, Book Forum, June/July/Aug, http://www.bookforum.com/ inprint/014_02/241. Accessed 17 November 2014. Simenon, George (1963 [1958]), Les Scrupules de Maigret/Maigret Has Scruples (trans. Robert Eglesfield), Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. ––––– (2011 [1948]), La neige était sale/Dirty Snow (trans. Louise Varese), New York: NYRB Classics. ––––– (2011 [1958]), Le Train/The Train (trans. Robert Baldick), New York: The Neversink Library. Vandy, Josiane (2006), ‘Is Communication Closer Between Those Who Couple?’ (trans. Steve Trussel), Trussel.com, January, http://www.trussel.com/maig/ls-commune.htm?zoom_ highlight=fellini+10000+women. Accessed 30 October, 2014. G o F ur t h e r Novels Selected Inspector Maigret novels Simenon, George (1989 [1944]), Signé Picpus/Maigret and the Fortuneteller (trans. Geoffrey Sainsbury), San Diego: Harcourt Brace. ––––– (1985 [1944]), L’Inspecteur Cadavre/Maigret's Rival (trans. Helen Thomson), Harmondsworth:

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Penguin Books. ––––– (1983 [1942]), La Maison du juge/Maigret in Exile (trans. Eileen Ellenbogen), Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. ––––– (1982 [1942]), Les Caves du Majestic/Maigret and the Hotel Majestic (trans. Caroline Hillier), Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. ––––– (1979 [1942]), Cécile est morte/Maigret and the Spinster (trans. Eileen Ellenbogen), Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. ––––– (1970 [1965]), La Patience de Maigret/The Patience of Maigret (trans. Alastair Hamilton), Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. ––––– (1969 [1954]), Maigret chez le ministre/Maigret and the Minister (trans. Moura Budberg), London: Hamish Hamilton. ––––– (1963 [1958]), Les Scrupules de Maigret/Maigret Has Scruples (trans. Robert Eglesfield), Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. ––––– (1963 [1944]), Félicie est là/Maigret and the Toy Village (trans. Eileen Ellenbogen), Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.  Online Wilson, AN (2013), ‘Crime Writer with a Slab of Ice in His Heart’, The Telegraph, 14 December, http:// www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10517143/Crime-writer-with-a-slab-of-ice-in-his-heart.html. Marnham, Patrick (2010), ‘The Mastery of Georges Simenon’, The Wall Street Journal, 23 October, http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304510704575562080516157648. Banville, John (2008), ‘The Escape Artist: John Banville on Georges Simenon’, LA Weekly, 28 May, http://www.laweekly.com/2008-05-29/art-books/the-escape-artist/. Websites The Chronology of Maigret's Life and Career, http://www.trussel.com/maig/ddchron1.htm www.noircon.info

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‘Our job is to study men. We take note of some of the facts. We try to establish others.’ Chief Inspector Jules Maigret

detective Martin Beck Nationality: swedish / creators: Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö Katarina Gregersdotter

Criminal society And they were the bulwarks of the society. Some bulwarks. – Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö, The Man on the Balcony The sentence above refers to two essential ideas in Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s highly influential ten-novel sequence (1965–75) focusing on Detective Martin Beck. The word ‘bulwark’ in itself has positive connotations: something strong and protective. However, the short and ironic sentence ‘Some bulwarks’ complicates the term. The police force in Sweden during the 1960s and early 1970s was in no way unique; the idea behind many police forces all over the world is to protect and serve the citizens and uphold the law. However, the policeman (and it is almost always a man) in these novels is prone to a certain quota of self-criticism, and – at times – the criticism borders on self-loathing. This is because he is unable to separate himself from the crime and the criminal, and for one major reason: society itself is also perceived as criminal. As the policemen are representatives of this (criminal) society, and protectors of this society, a troublesome paradox is created which affects many, if not all of the characters in the novels. The epigraph is from the duo’s Mannen på Balkongen/The Man on the Balcony, first published in 1967, in which the protagonists are involved in an intense manhunt for a child molester and murderer. The policemen are tired, sick and, evidently, frightened. Martin Beck looks around the room where his colleagues are gathered. He disliked Gunvald Larsson and had no high opinion of Rönn. He had no high opinion of himself either for that matter. Kollberg made out he was scared and Hammar seemed irritated. They were all tired, added to which Rönn had a cold. (Sjöwall and Wahlöö 2007c [1967]: 89) These are the ‘bulwarks of society’, and the group of men that Sjöwall and Wahlöö creat-

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Case Studies: Detective Martin Beck

ed are members of what Bo Lundin has appropriately characterized as the ‘Ulcer School’ (1981: 10). Similarly, Michael Tapper (2011) has stressed the poor health of the main characters. Furthermore, the important Swedish crime fiction author Henning Mankell writes in an introduction to Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s first novel, Roseanna (2006 [1965]): I haven’t counted how many times Martin Beck feels sick in Roseanna, but it happens a lot. He can’t eat breakfast because he doesn’t feel good. Cigarettes and train rides make him sick. His personal life also makes him ill. In Roseanna the homicide investigators emerge as ordinary human beings; there is nothing at all heroic about them. They do their job, and they get sick. (Mankell 2006: viii) This is what belonging to the ‘Ulcer School’ entails: they do their job and they become sick, or rather, they do their job and therefore they become sick. Team-playing Martin Beck is unmistakably the principal protagonist in the sequence of novels, but he is at the same time depicted as on a par with the rest of the investigative team, even after he has risen in rank in the course of a few novels. In the final book, Beck can find and acknowledge positive sides to all of his remaining colleagues. He perceives that both Rönn and Gunvald Larsson have grown as policemen – and as human beings. Lundin maintains that this was part of the authors’ project: to let the police officers grow older, mature and develop (1998: 51). Thus it seems likely to assume that Beck himself has also developed, though he does not reflect upon this himself. Henning Mankell explains: ‘Sjöwall and Wahlöö broke with the hopelessly stereotyped character descriptions that were so prevalent. They showed people evolving right before the reader’s eyes’ (Mankell 2006: vii). What is more, however, they also presented a society, the authors’ contemporary Sweden (and in particular the capital Stockholm), evolving before the reader’s eyes. In addition, their ten novels also in themselves evolved. The first two or three books are not as overtly political as the remaining seven. Bo Lundin has pointed out a few inconsistencies (1998: 49–51) that point to the fact that their literary project was not perhaps completely thought through from their inauguration. Furthermore, the final paragraph that concludes their first novel, Roseanna, describes a Martin Beck the reader will never really meet again. When he and his colleagues have finally captured Roseanna’s murderer, Sjöwall and Wahlöö write: Round-shouldered and whistling Martin Beck walked through the pulsing white mist to the subway station. People looking at him would probably have been sur-

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prised if they had known what he was thinking. Here comes Martin Beck and it’s snowing on his hat. He walks with a song; he walks with a sway! Hello, friends and brothers; it squeaks underfoot. It is a winter night. Hello to you all; just give a call and we'll go home to southern Stockholm! By subway. To my part of town. He was on the way home. (2006 [1965]: 244–45) Martin Beck is here described as content – more than content, in fact, possibly even happy. He seems delighted to be living in Stockholm, pleased to be going home, and he is certainly willing to socialize with people. It becomes evident in the remaining novels in the series, however, that he in fact has a very problematic relationship with the city of Stockholm, and Sweden per se. He cannot stand being at home with his wife and two children, and he only very occasionally socializes with people besides his partner Kollberg – and sometimes with his daughter Ingrid, and later, after his divorce, his girlfriend Rhea. American crime fiction author Dennis Lehane writes in the introduction to Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s last novel Terroristerna/The Terrorists (2006 [1975]) that Beck is a ‘dogged working bee’ and ‘not gloom-laden to the point of masochistic self-pity that so often masquerades as a hardboiled hero’s tragic worldview’ (2006 [1975]: ix). This should be seen in comparison to many other – if not most – fictional policemen, particularly in noir and hardboiled police procedurals. I would argue that what really makes Martin Beck continue to be influential in the world of crime fiction is that he – together with many of his colleagues – is not a hero. He is, in fact, far from being one. In Roseanna, Beck becomes visibly upset when his American colleague mistakenly believes that he has shot Roseanna’s murderer: ‘Martin Beck put down the receiver. He had been standing up during the entire conversation. He was panting and perspiration had broken out all over his face’. Kollberg replies humorously, well aware of Beck’s opinion about killing and firearms, ‘Shoot-em-up Martin, the avenger from south Stockholm.’ (2006 [1965]: 56) In addition, in Polismördaren/Cop Killer (2011 [1974]), he reads about himself in the local newspaper: There was also a special box about Martin Beck, ‘the well-known detective and Chief of the National Murder Squad,’ but when Martin Beck reached the words ‘Sweden’s Maigret,’ he threw down the newspaper in the empty chair beside him. (Sjöwall and Wahlöö 2011a [1974]: 81) In fact, the novels are rather uneventful from the perspective of generating suspense.

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The police are all ‘dogged working bees’, there are no exhilarating car chases and, apart from perhaps Den Vedervärdige Mannen från Säffle/The Abominable Man (2012 [1971]), few episodes that are action-orientated. Even in The Terrorists, when the Swedish Prime Minister is shot (eleven years before Olof Palme was assassinated), it is an event described en passant. Indeed, there are many occasions on which the authors discuss the police profession and stress the un-heroic, uneventful and even sedate aspects of the job. Instead, in several novels Sjöwall and Wahlöö emphasize the boredom and endemic dull routines: to be a policeman ‘[is] not a dangerous job, not physically. In fact, a man’s greatest risk [is] of ruining his back with too much riding around in cars’ (2011a [1974]: 188.) In reality, real blue-collar workers, such as ‘[c]onstruction workers and lumberjacks [live] considerably more hazardous lives, not to mention dockers or taxi drivers or housewives’ (2012 [1971]: 50). Yet, many police officers in the ten novels – and especially Martin Beck and Lennart Kollberg – admit that they are, at intervals, scared. At such times, however, the fear they feel is emblematic of their concern for society as a whole. It will be useful to examine Beck as professional policeman and Beck as private family man, at home. He responds to and is affected by both environments, but in varying ways. These multiple and often contradictory roles make him a unique character in modern crime fiction even after the end of the sequence. Beck: The husband and father The Martin Beck novels are police procedurals. It is well known that Sjöwall and Wahlöö were conspicuously influenced by American writer Ed McBain’s groundbreaking contributions to the genre, and Martin Beck may be seen as a Swedish version of McBain’s Steve Carella in the 87th Precinct novels. However, whereas Carella has a more or less happy personal life, and the place of the home functions as a sanctum, Beck is notably more miserable at home than at work. Perhaps this is because (as Bill Ott points out) the authors ‘are more interested in the inner lives of their characters than McBain, and Beck is a far more vulnerable figure than McBain’s Steve Carella or any of the other hardboiled heroes of that era’ (Ott 2007: 112). Beck’s home is not a refuge (except for when he builds his model ships), and he spends much of his time at home, trying especially to avoid his wife Inga, but also his son Rolf. The only person he has a working relationship with is his daughter, Ingrid. Beck’s wife Inga is described as a woman with no redeeming qualities. She is not a fully rounded character in this sense, and it is not until the second novel that the reader even learns her name. Her function is predominantly to describe Beck’s emotions, or lack of emotions, in the home environment. The couple hardly have any open conflicts. Martin Beck deflects such things by hiding his emotions or simply leaving for work, but underneath the surface they loathe each other. Before they eventually divorce – be-

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cause it is clear that she is similarly unhappy – their life together is almost unbearable; her mere presence makes Beck disgusted at times: His wife had evidently just woken up. At any rate she was awake and still lay in bed. She looked critically at him and said: ‘What a sight you look.’ ‘Why aren't you wearing a nightie?’ ‘It's so hot. Does it offend you?’ ‘No, I don't mind.’ He felt unshaven and frowzy but was too tired to do anything about it. Got undressed and put on his pyjamas. Got into bed. Thought: damn stupid idea this double bed, next pay day I'll buy a divan and put it in the other room. ‘Does it get you all excited perhaps?' she said sarcastically. But he was already asleep. (Sjöwall and Wahlöö 2007c [1967]: 137) In the descriptions of the Beck ménage, there is a perfectly mutual lack of understanding of the other. As is evident from the quote above, the bare idea of intimacy is ludicrous to both of them, and Martin Beck does indeed move out of their bedroom eventually. Furthermore, Inga Beck does not understand his line of work, and says: ‘Are you going to take that awful pistol with you?’ (2006 [1965]: 11)?’ The reader senses Beck’s constant irritation, but he is unable to acknowledge the fact that he actually feels the same way; both about the pistol and about his work. However, when his colleague (and possibly only real friend) Lennart Kollberg expresses similar thoughts about their work, Beck is immediately receptive. His marriage with Inga is contrasted to Kollberg’s relationship to his wife, and at times Beck chooses their home life before his own. In Brandbilen som Försvann/The Fire Engine that Disappeared (2007 [1969]), a massive explosion has caused death and destruction, and Beck, as usual, feels troubled. Kollberg perceives this immediately and says: ‘To hell with that fire. I’ve forgotten it already. What about coming back with me tonight? Gun’s going to some class or other and we could have a drink together and have a game of chess.’ ‘Yes, why not?’ said Martin Beck. Then at least he could escape going home for a few hours. (Sjöwall and Wahlöö 2007a [1969]: 67–68) Only occasionally does Beck realize that at least half of the blame for his moribund marriage is his responsibility. These revelations often occur at work and not in the context of dialogue with Inga. In Cop Killer he becomes acquainted with Allwright, another po-

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liceman. Allwright is often seen laughing and joking, and is presented as a contrast to Beck and his colleagues who seldom find the time to laugh, or have the will to joke. During one of their conversations, the subject of marriage and children comes up, and Martin Beck was silent. His own contribution to child-rearing had consisted mostly of keeping his mouth shut and letting his children grow up more or less naturally. The result had been only a partial success. He had a daughter who had become a fine, independent human being, and who seemed to like him. On the other hand, he had a son he had never understood. To be perfectly frank, he didn’t like him much, and the boy, who was just eighteen, had never treated him with anything but mistrust, deception, and in recent years, open contempt. (Sjöwall and Wahlöö 2011a [1974]: 44) These feelings are taboo, and Beck only admits this to himself and not to his colleague. Similarly, in The Abominable Man (2012 [1971]: 110) he admits to himself – and to the reader – that he has failed as a parent, at least with his son Rolf. As stated earlier, and as may be seen from the above quote, Beck’s relationship to Ingrid, his daughter, is described as healthy and honest, and it is because of her that he can end his marriage. This process starts when she decides to move in with a friend, and Beck experiences feelings of anxiety and dizziness (2007a [1969]: 148), a mental state usually reserved for when he is working a case. It is perhaps no coincidence that when the person who is able to communicate most openly in his family leaves it does not take long for the marriage to end. His daughter had even encouraged their separation (2012 [1971]: 11–12). However, it is with Lennart Kollberg that Martin Beck has the most intimate relationship. It is via Kollberg alone that Beck can cope with his line of work. Beck: The policeman and bulwark In all ten novels, including the final one, The Terrorists (when Kollberg has retired from the police force), Beck and Kollberg understand each other emotionally, psychologically and intuitively. Lennart Kollberg is the one who notices when Beck is depressed or morose. Kollberg even knows that Beck is unable to share his state of mind with his wife: ‘“Look here,” Kollberg said. “You might get your wife to swallow that, but you can’t kid me”’ (2007c [1976]: 14). Kollberg leaves the police force because, as he has naturally admitted to Beck, he hates being a policeman (2011a [1974]: 154), and when Beck in the final novel is ‘alone’ at work he is deeply affected by Kollberg’s absence: ‘Sometimes he just sat and stared into space, wishing Kollberg were back; to be perfectly honest – and he found that easy nowadays – he mourned for him the way you mourn a child or a lost love’ (2010 [1976]: 26).

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Generally speaking, Martin Beck, as a policeman, is a sympathetically painted character. He has a quality which is conventionally reserved for female characters: intuition. He can, despite his ‘lurking sensation of incompetence’ (2012 [1971]: 30), sense that something terrible is about to take place. This is before Åke Eriksson has started shooting policemen from the roof of a building in central Stockholm in The Abominable Man, a tragic event that also leads to Beck himself becoming a victim, and almost dying in the process. Moreover, he has the ability to feel empathy for most people, excluding his superiors, his wife and his son. More than any other individuals, Beck’s commanding officers are those who deserve contempt: ‘Each time Martin Beck stopped to think that this man [Stig Malm] was actually his boss, he felt the same mixture of distaste and amazement’ (2011a [1974]: 189). His bosses represent, to him, a sum of incompetence and unnecessary bureaucracy that both endangers and complicates the day-today work for the policemen. Dennis Lehane states: ‘All the while, their greatest enemy is not bullets or bombs, it’s the bureaucratic apparatus that exalts and rewards its own haplessness’ (2010 [1976]: ix). Beck himself eventually becomes Chief of the National Murder Squad, but in line with his personality, he is more interested in doing a good job than achieving a prestigious, successful career. He prefers sitting in cars bored with Kollberg, than sitting in meetings bored and also upset with other chiefs. Since he became chief of the National Murder Squad, Martin Beck did not actually need to do much training and surveillance – he had a staff to attend to that. But he often did it anyway, even though that kind of assignment was usually deadly dull. He didn’t want to lose touch with this side of the job simply because he’d been made chief and had to spend more and more of his time dealing with all the troublesome demands made by growing bureaucracy. (Sjöwall and Wahlöö 2011a [1974]: 13). That Beck does not want to lose contact with ‘reality’ can be connected to his constant dialectic with his own self-criticism, trying to improve and be the type of policeman he would like others to be. Lennart Kollberg had once told him that ‘[i]t would be better if there were more good guys who were cops’ (2007a [1969]: 7). Swedish critic Bo Lundin maintains that – with a few exceptions – most of the police officers, apart from Martin Beck and his colleagues, are depicted as either less than intelligent, or reactionary, or both (1998: 52). This further explicates Beck’s attitude to his superiors. In Cop Killer, the penultimate novel, they encounter a man, Folke Bengtsson, who was convicted for the murder of the eponymous Roseanna in the first novel. During an interview with him, Beck carries out an inner dialogue, trying to rid himself of preconceived notions of this man. ‘Martin Beck was disgusted with himself. Why couldn’t he make himself say “Folke”? Kollberg had said it, and for Allwright it was apparently the easiest thing in the world’ (2011a [1974]: 101). Even though Folke once committed a murder, it does

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Case Studies: Detective Martin Beck

not mean he has done so again. ‘Martin Beck turned back to the murderer. Damn. He actually thought that word. Murderer’ (2011a [1974]: 102). On another occasion, Beck has a similar discussion with himself, but this time to give himself moral guidelines and to remind himself that he is supposed to show respect to others: Martin Beck straightened up. ‘Remember that you have three of the most important virtues a policeman can have,’ he thought. ‘You are stubborn and logical, and completely calm. You don't allow yourself to lose your composure and you act only professionally on a case, whatever it is. Words like repulsive, horrible, and bestial belong in the newspapers, not in your thinking. A murderer is a regular human being, only more unfortunate and maladjusted.’ (Sjöwall and Wahlöö: 2006 [1965]: 44) In Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s novels the duo find a congruence between police and society, yet demonstrate through Beck and his colleagues – even though they are far from flawless, as exemplified by Beck’s musings above – that it is possible to maintain respect for the citizens they are supposed to protect and serve. In other words, Beck and his colleagues indeed try their best to be the bulwarks of society. Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s most distinct example of a malign, reactionary policeman is Stig Nyman, the murder victim in The Abominable Man. He is retired when he is brutally slaughtered at a nursing home, but during his career he destroyed many people’s lives, and seemed to have enjoyed it. Kollberg says that Nyman was ‘one hell of a bad policeman […] [e]ven today he’d be a disgrace to the force. For my part I’m ashamed to have been a policeman in the same city with him. And at the same time’ (2012 [1971]: 67, original emphasis). The abominable man of the title is thus not Åke Eriksson – who, with nothing left to lose, ends up a mass murderer – but a prominent member of the law enforcement, and therefore an official representative of society. Beck’s society (and character): The welfare state The following dialogue encapsulates a few of the themes discussed in this article. As on many other occasions, the dialogue takes place between Martin Beck and Lennart Kollberg: ‘Just what's wrong with you?’ ‘The same as what's wrong with you.’ ‘And that is?’ ‘I'm scared.’ Martin Beck made no reply to this. Partly because Kollberg was right, partly because

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they had known each other for so long that words were not always necessary. (Sjöwall and Wahlöö 2007c [1967]: 68) The two policemen’s almost symbiotic relationship is the reason why they can admit that they are affected by the crime they are supposed to solve. Sjöwall and Wahlöö continue: ‘Without a word they went down in the lift. Without a word they drove northwards through the city; aware of their powerlessness and of their ambivalent attitude to the society they were there to protect’ (2007c [1967]: 69–70). Many commentators have written about Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s political commitment and agenda (for example, Nestingen 2008; Nestingen and Arvas 2011; Brodén 2008; Forshaw 2012; Peacock 2014). They were Marxists – the final novel even ends with the word ‘Marx’ – and their work was a means by which they might critique the Social Democratic welfare state (the ‘People’s Home’ in translation) for, as Andrew Nestingen and Paula Arvas state, its constant compromises and betrayals (2011: 3). The authors emphasize the outcasts, the people with no hope, and by doing that emphasize the fact that society is to blame for creating such victims to begin with (Gregersdotter 2013: 90). Beck’s colleague Rönn is on one occasion depicted to be close to tears, ‘because he felt sorrier for the criminal than for the victim’ (2012 [1971]: 16). In particular, Åke Eriksson, the killer in The Abominable Man, and the young woman Rebecka Lind in The Terrorists, who eventually shoots the prime minister, represent victims of the structures of society. Rebecka Lind even says: ‘Your society isn’t mine’ (2010 [1976]: 38). Furthermore, in their eighth novel, Det Slutna Rummet/The Locked Room (2007 [1972]), social stratification is shown to be cemented during an investigation of a crime scene. A man, in what seems to be a locked room, is found murdered and, opposed to Beck’s idea of showing respect to both criminals and victims, the investigating police officer displays a cynical or perhaps just pragmatic view: ‘What you did immediately notice was that the deceased had been a poor and lonely person. Not what you would call an eminent member of society.’ ‘Of course. When you’ve seen as many alcoholics and welfare cases as I have…’ […] ‘Yes, well, then you know who’s who and what’s what.’ […] ‘Supposing the deceased had been better adapted socially, perhaps you might have been more conscientious?’ (Sjöwall and Wahlöö 2007b [1972]: 40) The answer to this question is – unsurprisingly – yes. Moreover, social criticism is also voiced in the descriptions of the physical (geographical), architectural and what comes across as practical changes and renovations.

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Case Studies: Detective Martin Beck

They all affect Martin Beck. His own mother is in a home for the elderly, and the authors unsparingly describe them as places that, despite euphemisms such as ‘pensioner’s hotels’, are used because the ‘so-called welfare state’ no longer cares about them: ‘It was a cruel sentence, and the crime was being too old. As a worn-out cog in the social machine, one was dumped on the garbage heap’ (2007b [1972]: 68). The physical and geographical changes all concern Stockholm, even though Beck ultimately leaves his hometown (e.g. in Polis, Polis Potatismos!/Murder at the Savoy (2009 [1970]) and Mannen som Gick upp i Rök/The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (2011 (1966]). Stockholm Arlanda Airport becomes a metaphor for the entire welfare state, and its renovations are devastating, extensive and irreparable: ‘typical of anti-humanitarian cynicism that had become increasingly characteristic of what the government called A More Compassionate Society. This expression, in turn, represented a cynicism so boundless that the common man had difficulty grasping it’ (2011b [1966]: 17). The city of Stockholm does not escape the changes either. The inner city became a clamorous, all but impassable construction site from which the new city slowly and relentlessly arose with its broad noisy traffic arteries, its shining facades of glass and light metal, its dead surface of flat concrete, its bleakness and desolation. (Sjöwall and Wahlöö 2012 [1971]: 4) This is where Martin Beck works and lives, this is Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. The authors’ description of what was perceived as the heart of welfare politics, and welfare visions, is harsh: it is lifeless, bleak and desolate, no longer (if it ever were) created for its inhabitants. Its citizens are described as ‘powerless’ and therefore must passively stand on the sidelines, watching the transformation ‘with sorrow and bitterness’ (2012 [1971]: 44). However, Martin Beck thinks that ‘[i]n spite of everything, he loved this city, and right at this place and at this time of day [the morning hours] it was perhaps the most beautiful’ (53). Yet, it is during that time of the day that ‘the terrible pollution’ is not noticeable (53). The ambivalent attitude mentioned earlier is obvious, and Beck is sometimes longing to be somewhere else, to get on a ship and simply leave, ‘westward’ bound (2011a [1974]: 27). However, nothing in the ten novels indicates that Beck will either quit the force or move somewhere else. Only Kollberg manages to get out. Yet, the ending of the final novel sees Beck and Kollberg together, playing a game, and with, as stated above, an invocation of the name Marx. Thus, with all the novels considered in toto, as well as the expressed goal of the authors, perhaps they do after all, in some small way, communicate hope for society. 

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References Brodén, Daniel (2008), Folkhemmets skuggbilder/Shadow Images of the People’s Home, Stockholm: Ekholm & Tegebjer. Forshaw, Barry (2012), Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Gregersdotter, Katarina (2013), ‘The Body, Hopelessness and Nostalgia: Representations of Rape and the Welfare State in Swedish Crime Fiction’, in Tanya Horeck Gregersdotter and Berit Åström (eds), Rape in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy and Beyond: Contemporary Scandinavian and Anglophone Crime Fiction, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 81–96. Lehane, Dennis (2010), ‘Introduction to The Terrorists’, in Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, The Terrorists, New York: Vintage Books, pp ix –xii. Lundin, Bo (1981), The Swedish Crime Story (trans. A-L. Ringarp), Sundbyberg: Tidskriften Jury. ––––– (1998), Studier om mord: Trenter till Mankell/Studies of Murder: From Trenter to Mankell, Stockholm: Utbildningförlaget Brevskolan. Mankell, Henning (2006), ‘Introduction to Roseanna’, in Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, Roseanna, London: Harper Perennial, pp v –ix. Nestingen, Andrew (2008), Crime and Fantasy in Scandinavia, Seattle/London: University of Washington Press. Nestingen, Andrew and Arvas, Paula (eds) (2011), Scandinavian Crime Fiction, Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Ott, Bill (2007), ‘It Began with Beck’, Booklist, 103: 17, p 112 Peacock, Steven (2014), Swedish Crime Fiction: Novel, Film, Television, Manchester: MUP. Sjöwall, Maj and Wahlöö, Per (2006 [1965]), Roseanna (trans. L. Roth), London: Harper Perennial. ––––– (2007a [1969]), Brandbilen som Försvann/The Fire Engine that Disappeared (trans. J. Tate), New York: Vintage Books. ––––– (2007b [1972]), Det Slutna Rummet/The Locked Room (trans. J. Tate), New York: Vintage Books. ––––– (2007c [1967]), Mannen på Balkongen/The Man on the Balcony (trans. A. Blair), London: Harper Perennial. ––––– (2010 [1975]), Terroristerna/The Terrorists (trans. J. Tate), New York: Vintage Books. ––––– (2011a [1974]), Polismördaren/Cop Killer (trans. T. Teal), London: Forth Estate. ––––– (2011b [1966]), Mannen som Gick upp i Rök/The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (trans. J. Tate), London: Forth Estate. ––––– (2012 [1971]), Den Vedervärdige Mannen från Säffle/The Abominable Man (trans. T. Teal), London: Forth Estate. Tapper, Michael (2011), ‘Dirty Harry in the Swedish Welfare State’, in A. Nestingen and P. Arvas (eds), Scandinavian Crime Fiction, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, pp. 21–33.

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G o F ur t h e r Novels The Martin Beck novels Sjöwall, Maj and Wahlöö, Per (2012 [1971]), Den Vedervärdige Mannen från Säffle/The Abominable Man (trans. T. Teal), London: Forth Estate. ––––– (2011 [1974]), Polismördaren/Cop Killer (trans. T. Teal), London: Forth Estate. ––––– (2011 [1966]), Mannen som Gick upp i Rök/The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (trans. J. Tate), London: Forth Estate. ––––– (2010 [1975]), Terroristerna/The Terrorists (trans. J. Tate), New York: Vintage Books. ––––– (2009 [1970]), Polis, Polis, Potatismos!/Murder at the Savoy (trans. A. Knoespel), New York: Vintage Books. ––––– (2009 [1968]), Den Skrattande Polisen/The Laughing Policeman (trans. A. Blair), New York: Vintage Books. ––––– (2007 [1972]), Det Slutna Rummet/The Locked Room (trans. J. Tate), New York: Vintage Books. ––––– (2007 [1969]), Brandbilen som Försvann/The Fire Engine that Disappeared (trans. J. Tate), New York: Vintage Books. ––––– (2007 [1967]), Mannen på Balkongen/The Man on the Balcony (trans. A. Blair), London: Harper Perennial. ––––– (2006 [1965]), Roseanna (trans. L. Roth), London: Harper Perennial. Books Tapper, Michael (2011), Snuten i skymningslandet: Svenska polisberättelser i roman och film 1965–2010/ Cop in Twilight Country: Swedish Police Narratives in Novels and on Film, Lund: Nordic Academic Press.

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detective Harry Bosch Nationality: american / creator: Michael Connelly Darren Brooks

The colour in the darkness: Hieronymus ‘Harry’ Bosch and the Noir Cop Detective Hieronymus ‘Harry’ Bosch, where art thou? I’ve pursued you blindly through the (mean and meaner) streets of Hollywood, but there was nothing to see. Ironic, huh? Your world is too dark, too impenetrable to navigate. I should have been sufficiently prepared for this perilous journey, for just a mere glance at the titles of the novels in which you feature point to danger ahead: The Black Echo (1992), The Black Ice (1993), A Darkness More Than Night (2001), Lost Light (2003), The Black Box (2012)… Yours is not a world one enters into with the swaggering disposition of the assertive outsider, but rather with caution, self-preservation and an exit strategy. So, Bosch, where are you? More to the point: who are you? I’ve gleaned the basics from your file: only son of Marjorie Phillips Lowe, your paternity remains unknown until (too) late in the day. You are given the name of a fifteenth-century Dutch Renaissance painter to whose work your mother felt a great attachment. That a guiding principle of your namesake’s work was the exploration of moral concepts – visions of hell on earth – was surely decent grounding for the singular life-changing event in your pre-teens: the murder of your prostitute mother in downtown Hollywood. Your world smashed to pieces, the vagaries of what passed for the social welfare system – foster parents, the uncertainties of youth homes – was charged with the responsibility of repairing it. Did it succeed? An unsurprisingly thorny adolescence later, the United States army intervened to provide you with the possibilities of a renewed future based on the sound principles of service to your country. Hell on earth was soon revisited: two tours of Vietnam followed, in which you were co-opted to perform underground search-and-destroy missions: a ‘tunnel rat’. With those earlier prospects now reeking of cordite and pock-marked with the bomb damage of wartime experience, you return home to Hollywood, joining the Los Angeles Police Department to clip the wings of the city’s bad guys and to fashion for yourself a sense of identity that had, to date, eluded you. Perhaps it was meant to be: the complexities of your youth had

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Case Studies: Detective Harry Bosch

constructed a robust character defined if not by personal identity then by an equally robust moral force. There’s no sugar-coated narrative here, no celebratory life story. There’s no big red book with which to garland your life achievements, no gathering of former colleagues keen to expound on your qualities as a man and talents as an LAPD homicide detective. Welcome to the world of Harry Bosch. This introduction is designed to bring one up to speed with the fundamentals of Bosch, but in a manner that highlights characteristics more fitting to the darker aspects of the noir novel than straight-up crime fiction. As this chapter is intended to show, though, Bosch crosses the divide: he’s a civic cop in a noir world. As crime readers, we are surely familiar with the established mould from which Detective Harry Bosch has emerged: damaged man of troubled background with an abiding commitment to the end means of moral justice, if not always the finer arts of detection. Throw these characteristics into a pan with the expectations of noir fiction, however, and the broth thickens: his world appears darker, his disposition darker still; his background is not so much troubled as tortured; his future perhaps even more so, should he have a future at all. In numerous ways, then, the fictional world of Harry Bosch – created by former LA crime reporter and now bestselling novelist, Michael Connelly – is akin to the world one might encounter in a work of traditional noir fiction. What, though, are these characteristics? I’ll explore the specifics in a moment – with the help of some great thinkers about detective fiction – but suffice to note here that several such principles form the backbone to a work of literary noir. In a police procedural, however – of which subgenre the Bosch novels are self-evidently a part – only a select few survive the transition. Not least the material fact that Bosch has lived to inhabit more than twenty volumes, when a traditional noir antihero would have long since drowned in a putrid world of his own making. But the resilience of Bosch has helped to refashion those principles for the benefit of the modern cop story: in a continuing series of contemporary crime novels, Bosch lives to carry his LAPD badge into yet more stories. He’s even completed a tortuous journey to the TV screen: Amazon Prime has developed – in the wake of a successful pilot in 2014, and more than two decades into the character’s literary existence – a ten-part series, entitled simply Bosch, with the promise of more episodes to follow. But whilst his survival is at odds with this particular gloomy principle of noir fiction, the repurposing of its key tenets for serial crime writing has permitted Bosch to become a Noir Cop: a contemporary urban policeman – with all the responsibilities such a position entails – yet characterized by the internal darkness that inhabits the traditional noir antihero. The palette of noir Yet the broader palette of noir is a little harder to discern across the entirety of the cop novel. One such barrier to interpretation is Paul Duncan’s shrewd assessment – in his

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readable overview, Noir Fiction: Dark Highways (2000) – that the term ‘noir’ is often ‘stuck onto the cover blurbs of many novels, although nobody seems to know what it means’ (13). He clarifies, though, that noir is congenial to a kind of crime fiction which is ‘dark, brooding, cynical, complex, and pessimistic’ (13). It is not an easy task to accurately define the hybrid produced when these noir principles are transplanted directly into crime or detective fiction – and into a serial fiction, too, which relies upon a deathless combination of resolution and plausible continuance – though the acknowledgement by Duncan that it will likely result in books exploring dark or existentialist territory is surely accurate. It is this observation which supplies us with the space to explore the constituent parts that make up an understanding of literary noir, especially in the ways these are compatible with detective fiction. Early writings upon the subject arguably peaked with the arresting concept – posited by the noir author, Charles Willeford, and revisited by Duncan in his book – of the ‘Immobilized Man’. This character is essential to a noir novel, and is described thus: Antiscientific and antimaterialistic; he searches his own mind instead of going to the outside world for answers to his questions; he lives alone, counting and listing a small stock of possessions; he is a single man; he is likely to be an artist of sorts; his sense of humour is mordant, ironic, and often private; and he either loves or hates himself to the point of mental and physical pain. (Duncan 2000: 13) We can discern here several characteristics of Bosch: he lives alone and is single, though he experiences several dalliances with a surfeit of women who generally enter his world via his work. And the numerous ghosts that litter his past combine with the demons of his present, the emotional impact of his cases, his few possessions (he spends his money almost exclusively on booze, coffee and jazz music) and his professional semi-isolation to produce an increasingly immobilized man. He is thus infused with several aspects of the traditional noir antihero. But what other narrative devices central to noir fiction are applicable to Connelly’s Bosch? Beyond this broad understanding of Bosch as (potentially) Noir Cop, there are specifics within the character – and in several generic narrative elements which pepper the series – that plausibly pitch the Bosch sequence of novels as an example of contemporary noir fiction as articulated by the police procedural. First, there’s the fundamental idea of the ‘double-cross’: the act of deception or betrayal. A stock theme inherent to traditional noir fiction, it is superbly exemplified by the work of James M. Cain; and, in particular, his 1943 novel, Double Indemnity. A humble insurance salesman, Walter Huff, is seduced by the wife of one of his customers, Phyllis Nordlinger, and thus drawn into a plot to kill her husband for financial gain. Within the context of a standalone novel the double-cross is highly effective: its execution usually leads to the ultimate consequence of a man – for it is usually a man

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– brought to his knees by actions precipitated by infatuation and seduction. This facilitates a powerful conclusion to a work of imaginative noir fiction: in this instance, Cain certainly delivers. However, when transplanted into the police procedural – and into Connelly’s Bosch books – the double-cross must be folded into the broader world of the series in such a way as to permit its plausible continuance. As in Double Indemnity, the introduction of the femme fatale – dangerous women tempting notionally weak men – is such a way of implanting the double-cross into serial cop fiction: Bosch encounters one such possibility in his very first outing, The Black Echo. Also, the double-cross in the cop novel is often represented by enemies within: the key detective experiencing fractious relationships with his or her superiors, or the underhand motives – often fuelled by resentment, jealousy or distrust – of fellow officers. Bosch is often the subject of such hostility, and he is confronted continually with evident threats. And from the outset, too: in The Black Echo, he is already under suspicion following his return to the force – albeit in a notionally demoted position from the Robbery-Homicide Department at LAPD headquarters to the down-at-heel murder table in Hollywood – following a period of suspension for his having shot and killed a supposedly unarmed man at the conclusion of the high-profile ‘Dollmaker’ case: so called for the killer’s predilection for painting the faces of his victims. Yet it is a demotion that supplies Bosch, the burgeoning Noir Cop, with a deal of freedom: as he notes in The Black Ice, the second novel, he cannot possibly be demoted any further than Hollywood Homicide; an acknowledgement which permits him to pursue investigations guided by his own instinct and preferences. Hollywood detritus Bosch’s return to the fold, though, deepens an already simmering animosity amongst some for the status conferred upon Bosch as a result of the Dollmaker case: the Hollywood TV industry paid handsomely for use of his name and technical advice in a TV movie and spin-off series. Crucially, the proceeds from his flirtation with the glamour of Hollywood allowed him to invest in a house typical of the traditional noir hero: a small one-bedroom affair, furnished with few possessions, and which is both architecturally precarious and geographically remote. Constructed on stilts and (partially) hidden in the Hollywood Hills, it is exposed to the whims of extreme weather and, thereby, at perpetual risk of destruction. Moreover, his home conveniently looks down upon the studios whose financial largesse facilitated his purchase and into the streets he must police. Symbolically, Bosch glowers from his imperilled home not into the glamour of Hollywood but into its detritus; a city teeming with drug gangs, corrupt cops, pervasive poverty and the constant threat of social unrest. In noir terms, Bosch is standing on the edge of the abyss. The abyss: in traditional noir fiction, the antihero would be standing less on its edge as in its grip, ‘forever writhing, aware of the pain, aware of the future pain to come’

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(Duncan 2000: 8). In its repurposing for application to detective fiction, however, the abyss is represented by the emotional turmoil in the cop’s past, as well as the flotsam and jetsam routinely presented by the day job: these combine to produce a constant threat of jeopardy. This is central to understanding Bosch and the world he occupies. An insight into this idea is supplied by Ernest Mandel, whose examination of the social origins of the crime story – Delightful Murder (1984) – observes that, in the nineteenth century, corruption and crime were influential in the very centre and not just the margins of American society. Therefore, the American crime story ‘presented crime as far more completely integrated into society as a whole than the British did’ (Mandel 1984: 46). Connelly has created in this very image a social environment for Bosch to explore and interrogate: it situates crime and corruption as equally endemic in contemporary American society, thereby establishing a clear strand of crime writing that – whilst evidently dependent upon the noir principles explored elsewhere – is contingent upon the perpetuation of disorder in its chosen location rather than the resolution (and the re-establishment of order) that was germane to the classical detective stories at the heart of the British nineteenth-century tradition. What Connelly has thus done with his contemporary Bosch series, then, is similar to that for which Raymond Chandler praised Dashiell Hammett nearly a century earlier: he gave murder back to those who commit it for very real reasons, rather than to merely provide a corpse for a lightweight mystery story. Like the view from his Hollywood home into its tangle of streets beneath, Bosch cuts through the superficiality of his town and sees the reality – those very real reasons – hidden at the centre of its glittering exterior. Hollywood is a location interpreted by most as a city of allure and enchantment, its streets paved with golden globes. But as Bosch knowingly observes as he drives home on the Hollywood Freeway, ‘behind every pretty picture there could be an ugly story’ (Connelly 1992: 66). Only when Hollywood’s illustrious lights are extinguished can the ugly truth beneath perhaps the most (outwardly) artificial city on earth be revealed. Out of the darkness and into the light: or, in the parlance of the tunnel rat, out of the black and into the blue. And charged with such revelation (and perhaps some revelations of his own) is Bosch, operating at his isolated – and increasingly noir-ish – best. The traditional noir antihero works, lives – and just is – alone. Bosch’s own sense of isolation, too, is integrated into his world; his preference for working alone is outlined early in the series. Despite the occasional transient partnership (one such temporary partner is even later jailed for her part in a crime she and Bosch had been actively investigating), he is at his most effective when granted a degree of personal autonomy, and this preferred seclusion permits Bosch the space to explore his noir instincts. Also, this lack of encumbrance ensures Bosch can freely pursue his own internal logic during investigations rather than be subject to the organic handbrake of a moralizing or cautious partner. This aspect of Bosch – the isolated antihero – is more ideally suited to private-eye

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fiction. The self-employed gumshoe has little responsibility beyond the case at hand, whilst the city cop has greater civic responsibilities: to the case, to his department and to the general (LA) public. The hybrid Noir Cop is thereby offered greater opportunities to survive – this is essential, in fact, to a continuing serial – whereas the traditional noir character should expect to be swallowed up by the abyss into which he has descended. This is an important element of noir fiction, and is pertinent – in a necessarily repurposed fashion – to the noir world of Harry Bosch: he must teeter on the brink of an abyss, for sure, but never be consumed by it: he must, somehow, survive it. To the Noir Cop, it is the threat of the abyss – the jeopardy, to his career and even his life – that is of true importance. In this way, the Noir Cop is, essentially, a private eye inside the police force; an outsider on the inside. That Bosch already has an established reputation – intractable, single-minded – burnishes his outsider status, as well as his capacity to withstand such constant threat. In The Black Echo, Bosch is already marked out as a dangerous survivor. It is clear in its early pages, in which a young cop challenges the seasoned homicide detective in an exchange that threatens to tip over into violence: Bosch knew he had his reputation going for him now. Harry Bosch: a loner, a fighter, a killer. C’mon kid, he was saying, do something. But the young detective just stared at Bosch, his anger and humiliation in check. He was a cop who could pull the gun but maybe not the trigger. And once Bosch knew that, he knew the kid would walk away. (Connelly 1992: 52) A ceaseless uncertainty Whilst Bosch might be able to deflect the grenades thrown frequently into his path, the omnipresent danger he encounters throughout the series strengthens an essential noir principle as reinterpreted by the police procedural: that each novel could plausibly be the last. These points are illuminated ideally by The Black Echo. The book opens with Bosch’s professional re-emergence having served a suspension for the killing of an unarmed man suspected to be the Dollmaker: an incident which could have conceivably led to his dismissal. But it is dismissal of another kind – his likely death – that haunts the final pages of the book: he is fading into death following an explosive encounter in the tunnels beneath Hollywood, a bullet in his shoulder and the prospect of another in his head. The Black Echo, in this context, might have made for the perfect standalone police-procedural noir novel. Bosch, though, ultimately survives to die another day – and live into another novel. This essential uncertainty is situated deep in the bones of Connelly’s entire Harry Bosch series and, in its later stages, deploys a singular aspect that positions it as a qualified noir fiction. Duncan states that in ‘Noir fiction, you have no control over your

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life, your future’ (Duncan 2000: 15). At the heart of this assessment is a ceaseless uncertainty, which is fundamental to our understanding of Bosch – and, it must be observed, Bosch’s own understanding of himself, of his world. He is both spiritually and professionally uncertain of his future and this insecurity feeds into the reader’s experience, as one begins to wonder if Bosch will survive into yet another novel. Connelly thus embeds into his Bosch series a constant sense of an ending; a layer of uncertainty that beset the books, the reader’s experience, and, of course, Hieronymus ‘Harry’ Bosch. Connelly’s characterization of Bosch – the combustible mix of his history, his personal attributes and predilections, and the town in which he is situated – allows for a near-perfect amalgam of noir fiction and traditional crime writing. And given the Americans were able to utilize and help popularize the term ‘noir’ – borrowing it from the French in doing so – it is perhaps no surprise that American writings on detective fiction allow us to make the conclusive connections between crime writing and noir literature. Dennis Porter, for example, in The Pursuit of Crime: Art and Ideology in Detective Fiction (1981), married the role of the hardboiled private eye with the noir-inflected cop. We can read Bosch into Porter’s assessment of the detective that ‘his job is done once guilt has been established. Punishment is assumed to follow, but it is left to the slow-moving, impersonal forces of the law to carry it out. The American private eye, on the other hand, often acts as his own judge and jury’ (Porter 1981: 167). Despite his civic status, the pursuit of justice by traditional means is not always sufficient to satisfy the robust morality by which Bosch is guided. Impatient, distrustful and occasionally disrespectful of the formal legal system to which he is expected to contribute, he seeks to ensure that justice – street justice – is enacted rather than formally pursued. His disrespect for the formalities of the justice system are apparent as early as The Black Ice, in which he has come to see Parker Center – the then-Headquarters of the LAPD – as a ‘bureaucratic labyrinth that hindered rather than eased the job of the cop on the street’ (Connelly 1993: 78). To this end, he knows he must work alone inside the system in order to make sense of the evidently suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of a troubled cop, Calexico Moore, whose apparent suicide is later revised as murder. However, Bosch’s superior, Assistant Chief Irvin Irving, is reluctant to investigate in order to avoid the likelihood of a protracted internal (and media) inquiry that can only reflect badly on his department. Much to Bosch’s chagrin: Whatever Moore was into, Irving must believe it either led him to kill himself or got him killed. And either way Irving didn’t want to open that box without knowing first what was in it. Maybe he never wanted to know. That told Bosch one thing. He was on his own. No matter what he came up with, turning it over to Irving and RHD would get it buried. So if Bosch went on with it, he was freelancing. (Connelly 1993: 204)

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This scene is folded into Bosch’s self-discovery that he will pursue a related case for the benefit of Moore – and another cop, Lucius Porter, broken by his apparent involvement in whatever Moore was into – rather than to improve his Chief’s beloved crime statistics or prevent suspicion on the wider department. It is the pursuit of truth – however ugly, however unwelcome – which drives Bosch. This idea is explored by the critic John Cawelti, whose insights into the detective story enable us to situate Bosch in the context of hardboiled fiction, describing such detectives as motivated ‘not by ambition but by the desire to help or avenge other persons’ (Cawelti 1976: 61). This is discernible, for example, in Bosch’s general lack of career progression: his chequered past means he is never likely to be elevated beyond the role of Detective. This likelihood is strengthened by his personal distaste for authority, and the desk-bound and statistical realities of a promoted position. Bosch is not, by any stretch, a careerist policeman. He is motivated not by media image or public opinion, but by his palpable desire to avenge victims of crime and particularly those who are now unable to help themselves: the dead. This is most acutely – and personally – articulated in the fourth novel of the sequence, The Last Coyote (1995), in which Bosch seeks to (privately) investigate the murder of his mother 30 years earlier. However, it is an exploration of such powerful emotional turbulence that it threatens to consume him – his own personal abyss careering into full view. He is thereby in danger of becoming the truer archetype of noir fiction by submitting to the demons within. Instead – and in keeping with the noir police procedural – he risks being overexposed to that which affects every traditional noir antihero: dehumanization. And when Bosch later emerges as a very real suspect in the commission of a series of ritualized murders – in A Darkness More Than Night, the seventh novel in the series – the truest noir instincts of Hieronymus ‘Harry’ Bosch might well be realized… Hammett and Connelly It is the earlier connection between Hammett and Connelly, though, which defines Bosch as a true Noir Cop: there is a similar prevailing disorder in the world constructed by Hammett for his private eye – the otherwise nameless Continental Op – as that created by Connelly for Bosch. In Red Harvest (1929), the Op is seen at book’s end to have tidied up the city only for it to be handed back to the social forces that perpetuate crime; that, in the end, ‘all the murder and destruction accomplish very little’ (Cawelti 1976: 172). As such, Bosch and Hammett’s Continental Op, despite their strenuous efforts, are ultimately powerless; they can make only insubstantial contributions to true change and thus order cannot be properly established. Disorder reigns. And in being robbed of power – the civic authority with which he is invested rendered merely emblematic – Bosch is left teetering ever more precariously upon the edge of his private abyss. Bosch’s noir credentials, as outlined by their role in the contemporary police procedural, are ultimately validated.

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Bosch is our Noir Cop for the ages. It is fitting closure that we consider the words of Dennis Lehane – Connelly’s contemporary, and author of several similarly noir-like fictions such as Mystic River (2001) and Live by Night (2012) – whose 2009 essay on Bosch for the Italian press explored Connelly’s cop through the prism of noir fiction. Crucially, he believes the character to be at his most fully realized in books four and seven in the sequence, The Last Coyote and A Darkness More Than Night. Not coincidentally, these two novels feature some of the darkest material of the series: we see Bosch pitched into his most personal investigation yet and then later – in the latter novel – pegged as a plausible killer. Lehane goes on to describe Bosch as ‘deeply incomplete’, setting him in direct opposition to the archetypal American private eye, Philip Marlowe, for it was Raymond Chandler, Marlowe’s creator, who suggested the urban detective should be a man who is common and unusual as well as – significantly – complete. We might appropriately categorize Bosch as both common and unusual, but complete he is not. The job is the only power he has, and even that – as we have seen – is all too often tokenistic. So he works alone, seeking the kind of justice usually denied him by virtue of his professional obligations. It is this very incompleteness, and the perpetuation of disorder at the heart of his professional and literary existence, which ensures that Bosch will keep returning to the murder table. His search for completeness is unending. More Bosch: for that we should all be thankful, right? But this is Bosch’s world. There are no thanks.  References Cawelti, J. G. (1976), Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture, Chicago/London: UCP. Connelly, M. (1992), The Black Echo, London: Orion. ––––– (1993), The Black Ice, London: Orion. Duncan, P. (2000), Noir Fiction: Dark Highways, Herts: Pocket Essentials. Lehane, D. (2009), ‘The Lost Coyote: Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch Novels’, 30 April, http://www. michaelconnelly.com/novels/ninedragons/dennislehaneessay/. Accessed 16 December 2014. Mandel, E. (1984), Delightful Murder: A Social History of the Crime Story, London: Pluto Press. Porter, D. (1981), The Pursuit of Crime: Art and Ideology in Detective Fiction, New Haven/London: Yale University Press. G o F ur t h e r Novels The Harry ‘Hieronymus’ Bosch novels Connelly, M. (2014), The Burning Room, London: Orion. ––––– (2012), The Black Box, London: Orion. ––––– (2011), The Drop, London: Orion. ––––– (2010), The Reversal, London: Orion.

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––––– (2009), Nine Dragons, London: Orion. ––––– (2008), The Brass Verdict, London: Orion. ––––– (2007), The Overlook, London: Orion. ––––– (2006), Echo Park, London: Orion. ––––– (2005), The Closers, London: Orion. ––––– (2004), The Narrows, London: Orion. ––––– (2003), Lost Light, London: Orion. ––––– (2002), City of Bones, London: Orion. ––––– (2001), A Darkness More Than Night, London: Orion. ––––– (1999), Angels Flight, London: Orion. ––––– (1997), Trunk Music, London: Orion. ––––– (1995), The Last Coyote, London: Orion. ––––– (1994), The Concrete Blonde, London: Orion. ––––– (1993), The Black Ice, London: Orion. ––––– (1992), The Black Echo, London: Orion. Further novels featuring Harry Bosch (brief appearance) Connelly, M. (2013), The Gods of Guilt, London: Orion. ––––– (2011), The Fifth Witness, London: Orion. The Mickey Haller series Connelly, M. (2013), The Gods of Guilt, London: Orion. ––––– (2011), The Fifth Witness, London: Orion. ––––– (2010), The Reversal, London: Orion. ––––– (2009), Nine Dragons, London: Orion. [Small role.] ––––– (2008), The Brass Verdict, London: Orion. ––––– (2005), The Lincoln Lawyer, London: Orion. Novels by others Cain, J. M. (2002 [1943]), Double Indemnity, London: Orion. Chandler, R. (1988 [1944]), The Simple Art of Murder, New York: Vintage. Books By Michael Connelly Short story collections (e-books) Connelly, M. (2012), Mulholland Drive: Three Harry Bosch Stories, London: Orion. ––––– (2011), Angle of Investigation: Three Harry Bosch Stories, London: Orion. ––––– (2011), Suicide Run: Three Harry Bosch Stories, London: Orion.

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Non-fiction Connelly, M. (ed.) (2009), In the Shadow of the Master: Classic Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, New York: William Morrow. ––––– (ed.) (2008), The Blue Religion: New Stories About Cops, Criminals, and the Chase, New York: Back Bay Books. ––––– (ed.) (2007), Murder in Vegas: New Tales of Gambling and Desperation, New York: Forge. ––––– (2006), Crime Beat: A Decade Covering Cops and Killers, New York: Little, Brown. ––––– (ed.) (2003), The Best American Mystery Stories 2003, New York: Mariner. Films Furman, Brad (2011), The Lincoln Lawyer, USA: Lionsgate. Television Bosch, Season 1 (February 2014–February 2015, USA: Amazon Studios). Websites The Official Website of Michael Connelly, http://www.michaelconnelly.com/ Michael Connelly (Orion), https://www.orionbooks.co.uk/Authors/Michael+Connelly.page Michael Connelly Books [Facebook], https://www.facebook.com/MichaelConnellyBooks

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‘Everybody counts or nobody counts.’ Harry Bosch

i n s p e c t o r K u rt Wa l l a n d e r Nationality: swedish / creator: Henning Mankell Barry Forshaw

Crime with a social conscience Scandinavian society as refracted through the crime fiction of Henning Mankell is hardly the idealized place that non-Nordic types imagined it to be – until disabused of the notion by angry writers such as Mankell, Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö and Stieg Larsson. The fissures in the consensus regarding the Swedish welfare state are paralleled by the psychological traumas experienced by the characters in Mankell’s Kurt Wallander novels – not least those warring within the dysfunctional detective himself, as seen in his fractious relationship with his daughter Linda, also a police detective. Mankell may hail from Sweden, a country noted for Nordic seriousness (and the author in fact married the daughter of the most celebrated of serious Scandinavian film-makers, the late Ingmar Bergman), but his fierce and authoritative books contain a whole universe of emotion and experience, ranging from the phlegmatic to the cautiously optimistic. His protagonist, Inspector Kurt Wallander (frequently worried about his drink problem, ill health and failure to lose weight), is one of the great modern literary coppers; Mannen som log/The Man Who Smiled (1994), Villospår/Sidetracked (1995) and Brandvägg/Firewall (1998) developed the measured, expressive style that incorporates Mankell’s sometimes bleak vision of the modern world (in which notions of social inclusivity and individual responsibility are in decay), with Sweden ably standing in for the whole of western society. After several books, Mankell was showing signs of wanting to try something new, and Innan Frosten/Before the Frost (2002) delivered just that (with limited success) in the bloody-minded Linda Wallander – Kurt’s daughter – who is cut from the same cloth as her resourceful father. She, however, was not to stay the course. And neither, ultimately, was Wallander himself. The work of the detective’s often abrasive (but always civilized) creator Mankell (including his numerous non-crime novels) bristles with the acute, 1960s-bred social conscience that runs through the Wallander novels, and was consonant with his own personal dedication to improving the lives of those less advantaged than himself – with

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added astringency afforded by his impassioned and ruthless excoriation of nationalism and intolerance, which he felt his country was placidly accepting in the teeth of its celebrated, much-vaunted tolerance. I am not Kurt Wallander! Of non-English-speaking crime writers, Mankell was a crucial modern progenitor for the post-Simenon field of foreign crime in translation, spreading an acceptance of the genre. And the author was lucky enough to number among his talented translators the doyen of the profession, Laurie Thompson. In the latter’s expert rendering into English, Mankell’s short-tempered, blunt detective (who often, inter alia, expressed the author’s personal views on a variety of issues, despite Mankell’s talking down of such personal resonances: ‘I am not Kurt Wallander!’ he said to this writer) is one of the key figures in contemporary genre fiction: not in the best of condition, totally unbiddable and nursing a strong anti-authority streak. The novels are located in vividly realized Scandinavian settings, notably the small picturesque coastal town of Ystad (the detective’s stamping ground), now familiar to many from the various TV adaptations. European crime aficionados were long aware that some of the most challenging modern crime novels were being written by this Swedish master, sometimes echoing (in different form) the existential concerns of his celebrated father-in-law, not least the total seriousness and rigour of the latter’s work (within the context, in Mankell’s case, of a popular genre). Among these acerbic novels, Firewall is one of the writer’s most challenging (and unvarnished) portraits of modern life, in which society and all its institutions (not least the family) are put under the microscope. In this book, Mankell’s long-term protagonist finds himself propelled into a new area of crime: cyberspace. Several deaths have occurred: the victims include the user of a cash dispenser, and a taxi driver murdered by two young girls. The country is plunged into blackout by an electricity failure, and a grim find is made at a power station. What is the connection? Wallander finds himself tracking down cyber terrorists, with shady anarchic aims. But can his own malfunctioning team of coppers pull together to help catch them – or is there a fifth columnist in the police? Nevertheless, the forensically acute exploration of diverse influences on modern society is impressive (notably the more sinister – and ever-more pertinent – capacities of the Internet and political movements devoted to the destruction of what they perceive to be corrupt institutions; Sweden, as usual, standing in for the whole of western society). Perhaps some boxes are merely ticked, while others are ransacked for significance, but Mankell never spoon-feeds the reader a ready-made set of the correct attitudes.

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Corrupt influences The issues addressed in the various books – from the corrupt influence of Big Pharma and the ruthless prerogatives of multinationals, to people trafficking, to his country’s barely disguised racism – are clearly powered by the author’s own social engagement (he is known for his theatre work in the country in which he spent so much time, Africa, attempting to ameliorate the lot of ordinary Africans). Surprisingly under-reported (in the area of the author’s own activism) was the fact that he was present on the ships that attempted to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip (see the separate interview which touches on this incident). Quite simply, there is no gainsaying Mankell’s dedication to changing people’s lives for the better; as important to him as his literary activities. Readers, however, can be forgiven for preferring the time he spent on the latter discipline. Mankell may not have welcomed it, but there are those who have drawn parallels (as mentioned above) between the saturnine Wallander and his serious, somewhat dour creator. That, however, is a congruence that he himself has always fought shy of in his novels, as the reach of his work extends beyond the memorable protagonist, dealing cogently with many of the key issues that affect Scandinavian society. Of course, one of the reasons that the books have had such resonance beyond the Nordic countries is that (despite their scene-specific qualities), Mankell – more than most writers of crime fiction – was well aware that we all live in what Marshall McLuhan once identified as the ‘Global Village’ – many of the issues that transform (for better and worse) society are common to us all, such as the dangers inherent in cyberspace, one of the key issues in Firewall. In the latter novel, Wallander is actually used (leaving aside his disputed qualities as a surrogate for the author) as a conduit into a world which for many of us (technophiles aside) is terra incognita: we learn, along with the detective, just how our lives will be changed – for better or worse – by the Internet. In the manner of Conan Doyle’s impatience with Sherlock Holmes, Mankell ultimately gave signs of wishing to move on from his signature character, and looked for ways in which he might usefully extend his fictional canvas. One of these involved the relatively brief use of Wallander’s alienated daughter, Linda, now a policewoman herself as protagonist in Before the Frost, making it clear that the detective’s daughter was an example of the apple that did not fall far from the tree – Linda, unsurprisingly, turns out to be quite as bolshie and difficult as her father. Needless to say, Before the Frost was not received with quite the enthusiasm that had greeted the Wallander novels, but the reason for Linda being sidelined as a character was not a result of this. For a while, it looked as if the post-Kurt Wallander trajectory sought for by his creator might involve Linda – until the suicide of the actress Johanna Sällström (who played Linda in the Swedish TV series (DR, 2005­–2013) with Krister Henriksson, and who suffered from depression). Her death affected the author so profoundly that he found himself unable to continue writing about the character. Before the Frost (as mentioned

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above) was the book in which Mankell opted to put Wallander’s daughter centre stage, perhaps an indicator of the author’s desire to freshen the literary brew for himself. It soon appeared that (after a certain amount of adjustment on the reader’s part) a utilitarian solution had been found to the author’s desire to move on with a new character – though it was, sadly, not to be. Before the Frost begins in the shadowy forest near Wallander’s stamping ground of Ystad, where a grim discovery is made: severed human hands and a head, disposed in a macabre parody of the act of prayer. A bible, apparently annotated by the murderer, is also found. But this is not the only grotesque incident plaguing Kurt Wallander: there have been cruel attacks on domestic animals. A fraught time, in fact, for the detective’s daughter Linda to begin working as another detective on the force – which she does. But (it goes without saying) Linda is quickly demonstrating her father’s crime-solving acumen in nailing the criminals – a malign group with a penchant for biblical punishments on their unflinching agenda. Linda’s moment in the sun, however, was to be short-lived, as Mankell found it too painful to continue writing about the character. Wallander redux Those dismayed by Kurt Wallander himself being put on the shelf by his creator were pleased by the appearance of The Man Who Smiled in 1994 (UK: 2005), something of a comeback novel. Crime aficionados had long taken the Scandinavian investigator to their hearts. In this book, Wallander is having a tough time. He has been responsible for the death of a man, and has decided to quit the force. Drink doesn’t help relieve his depression – the reverse, in fact – and when a solicitor friend asks for Wallander’s aid to look into the death of the former’s father, he declines – and then the solicitor himself is murdered. With deep reluctance, Wallander returns to work, and finds that on this double-murder case he’s obliged to shepherd a novice female detective. The investigation points in the direction of a mysterious captain of industry – and Wallander is soon in immediate danger. Plotting here is as impeccable as ever, though this isn’t quite Mankell with all the cylinders firing. Still, those fearing that regular doses of Wallander had been abruptly curtailed were grateful for this surprise reappearance of the reliable protagonist. The ongoing analysis of society (in terms of the strictures – both personal and political – imposed on its complaisant citizens) had long been an integral aspect of Mankell’s novels, but the exposé of endemic corruption (the author’s principal concern for some considerable time) was perhaps becoming over-familiar, as were the problems and foibles of the troubled character. So the time was propitious for the fresh approach of Pyramiden/ The Pyramid (1999), a foray (or series of forays) into the personal and professional past of the character. Wallander had first appeared in Mördare utan ansikte/Faceless Killers in 1991 (UK: 1997), when he was a senior police officer just out of his thirties and with

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his private life in chaos. The stories in The Pyramid chronicle his early years: the events, the people and the crimes that forged the man we first met in that debut appearance. The analysis of the milieu in which the detective moved is here, but (inevitably) in more fragmented – and less rigorous – form, but there are aperçus aplenty. We encounter Wallander as a young beat cop attempting to crack a murder in his spare time; we follow him in his tentative first steps with Mona, the woman he has decided to marry (his wife, of course, had left him by the time of the events in that first book); and we are shown why his relationship with his father is quite so fractious. The elements that make the full-length Wallander novels so successful are all here in microcosm: a cool, dispassionate treatment of crime and its deleterious effects; the understated evocation of the Scandinavian locales and insights into the mores of the society; and (best of all) the puzzling, fascinating character of the complex man at the centre of the narrative. Mankell admirers may prefer the full-length novels (and not every story here has fully engaged the author’s creative juices), but the insights provided by these striking stories are intriguing and variegated. Mankell’s agenda came more clearly into play in such non-Wallander books as Tea-Bag/The Shadow Girls (2012), initially presenting itself as thriller material, but the novel – though relatively involving – is a strange melange of elements. The abandoning of a ship (with its black passengers left to their fate) is straight out of Conrad's Lord Jim (1900), and the picture of the hopeless life of refugees suggests that we are in for a sinewy drama channelling the author's own charity work in Africa. Here, surely, is Mankell, the socially-committed writer, addressing issues that really count for him as we meet a young black woman refugee, ‘Tea-bag’, who is convinced that Sweden is where she can start a new life. But like so many Africans smuggled into Europe, she is to find herself undervalued and despised. The book's (and Mankell’s) real concern is to give a voice to those who do not possess one. Writing finis In the final Kurt Wallander book, its creator’s equivalent of a Reichenbach Falls-style ending for his character was to bring about a sapping of his mental faculties (in much the same way that disease had affected the mind of the policeman’s father), and the last book, Den orolige mannen/The Troubled Man in 2009 (UK: 2011) had a genuinely valedictory air. But Henning Mankell had already demonstrated that he had many more fish to fry – books in which Kurt Wallander was not to be involved. To say that readers had been impatient for the (sadly) final outing for Mankell’s gloomy Swedish copper is something of an understatement – not least because the Kurt Wallander franchise has been kept in rude health by the appearance of not one but three TV incarnations of the detective: two Swedish series and the more recent Kenneth Branagh version (BBC, 2011–ongoing). But Mankell fans know that what really counts is what Wallander’s creator put on the page – everything else is a gloss. And here was that final book. Did it write a suitable ‘finis’ to the series?

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With The Troubled Man, Mankell must have known that he had to deliver something really special – and that is what he has done; this is a satisfyingly valedictory novel (if, that is, we believed that Mankell wouldn’t find some way to reactivate his hero). The Ystad copper has, as usual, personal problems, not least trying to come to terms with his daughter Linda's pregnancy by a man he finds unsympathetic. (Linda's new lover, Hans, is a highly paid banker, and Mankell fans will know precisely what to make of that – though, against the odds, Hans turns out to be a likeable man.) The detective’s professional life is as fraught as ever. A body is found (suicide or murder?), and Wallander learns of several enigmatic disappearances, somehow connected with a series of incidents in the 1980s when Russian submarines were found in Swedish territorial waters. There are also rumours of a high-level spy infiltrated by the Soviets in a position of power in the Swedish military. What is the involvement of the parents of Linda’s new lover? (Hans’s father is a retired submarine officer.) None of this skulduggery is really Wallander’s territory, but he bludgeons his way in, behaving in customary cavalier fashion. Standard procedure is jettisoned, and his health ignored, even as he frets about encroaching age. Adapting Mankell A careful examination of the various (and distinctly different) television adaptations of the Kurt Wallander books makes for fascinating contrasts: apart from the fact that multiple TV versions of the same protagonists (from 1995 to the present) is an indicator of the detective’s indelible image as the definitive male Nordic copper, bristling with appropriate angst. And in the two Swedish adaptations (considerably less so in the British take on the character), there are also provocative points made about everything from the societal to the geopolitical aspects of Scandinavian society – but never at the expense of the paradigms of mainstream television drama. The authoritative actor Rolf Lassgård was the inaugural performer to characterize Mankell’s dogged copper for a Swedish television series, but it was somewhat unfortunate for Lassgård that on British TV his appearances were shown out of sequence with those of other actors. By the time this first stab at the character was shown in Britain (The Man Who Smiled, filmed in 2003, and efficiently directed by Leif Lindblom), audiences in the United Kingdom had been able to choose between the later episodes in the authentic-seeming, low-key series starring Krister Henriksson (2005 and 2008), and the glossier, more cinema-style British adaptations with Kenneth Branagh (BBC, 2008 and 2010), shot in high-definition and filmed on location in Ystad. In the first episode, the heavy-set Lassgård suffered in comparison with the two very different versions that British audiences had already seen, and there was some resistance (since overcome with subsequent showings) to the actor, despite the undoubted persuasiveness of his performance. However, few would deny that the rival Krister Henriksson and Kenneth Branagh versions, for all the disputes over their respective merits, quickly assumed the status

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of yardsticks when it came to physical embodiments of Mankell’s detective (the Branagh in particular has been notably controversial, the Swedish version used as a stick with which to beat this UK interloper, and the show has as many passionate critics as it does devoted followers). Krister Henriksson opted for an understated, subtle approach to the character’s variety of crises de conscience and the various traumas of his private life, while Branagh (as befitting his image as a highly capable stage performer) opted for a more dramatically ‘projected’ performance: febrile, and full of psychological veracity, but nevertheless a performance in which the mechanics of the actor’s art might clearly be discerned. The tighter knit ensemble of the Swedish police team is here somewhat subsumed in Branagh’s central turn, though the British supporting players are very capable. Also notable was Branagh’s concentration on the more neurotic elements of the character’s persona; as opposed to the reined-in, tightly-wound (but still outwardly in control) Henriksson, Branagh’s Wallander seemed frequently on the verge of meltdown, sometimes barely able to articulate a response to the comments of his worried colleagues. Britain vs Sweden But it was not just the central character that provided an index of the difference between the British and Swedish series. The presentation of Sweden itself (and, more specifically, the detective’s designated territory of Ystad) was conceived very differently by the British and Swedish film-makers, leaving aside the problems caused by placing British actors (speaking English) in authentic Swedish settings, while the Swedish series, of course, automatically avoided any inconsistencies in this area. The intersection of the British actors and crew with the Ystad locale threw up some intriguing dislocations, probably noticeable only to inhabitants of the town: the swimming bath, for instance, becomes the TV programme’s police station, while (according to the local film council) at least 20 per cent of the local population may be seen in various episodes as extras. The most notable difference between the two shows was, in some ways, the presentation of the country itself. In the Swedish series, we are shown flat, characterless cities in which the anonymous factories and unwelcoming housing estates present a picture of a country in which the dream of comfortable working-class environments has disappeared. While the endemic corruption of business and politics is imported from the novels in a fashion which (largely speaking) pleased Mankell, there was much critical acclaim for the fashion in which the film-makers had resisted the urge to offer a tourists’ view of Sweden. We are shown, unvarnished, the quotidian workings of the current version of the social democratic ideal, but never in any tendentious fashion. The Kenneth Branagh BBC series, by contrast, unfolds (as perhaps befits its status as an outsider’s view) an often ravishing, somewhat romanticized picture of the countryside: waving fields of rapeseed, exquisite glowing sunsets straight out of J. M. W. Turner. There is also an acute attention to the aesthetics of Swedish contemporary architecture;

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in this respect the cinematography of the Swedish show is more direct and functional. However, the closest parallels between the two series, these elements apart, is the direction given to the actors: both the British and the Swedish performances render the characters economically with an almost complete absence of larger-than-life ‘indicating’ mannerisms (even Branagh’s central turn, though more indulgent); and the audience is (largely speaking) allowed to make up its own mind about the motivations and inner lives of the characters. At a Nordic Noir book-club evening in London organized by University College London, the producer Francis Hopkinson of Left Bank Productions talked about the choice of locations. Hopkinson noted intriguingly that it was a deliberate choice to go for the programme’s 1960s and 1970s look because that was when (it was considered) the Swedish welfare-state dream entered British consciousness. Regarding language, there had been a conscious decision that everyone would speak in received pronunciation so as not to draw attention to accents. Interestingly, there has been a recent readjustment (on the part of British audiences at least) of judgements regarding the two series. After British audiences had seen both the Swedish and British shows (both achieved – respectively – impressive viewing figures, though the Branagh, shown on a more popular mainstream BBC channel than its rival, was the winner in this area), received wisdom quickly became that the Krister Henriksson series had, with its understated approach and nuanced psychology, captured more of the feel of Mankell’s novels (perhaps the ‘dumbing down’ of the pronunciation of the hero’s surname in the BBC series was emblematic here). But then a curious thing happened; by the time of the second series of the British show, commentators were being conspicuously more generous towards it than previously, rightly recognizing that its virtues (including the subtle and allusive narrative approach) were considerable when not judged in a beauty contest against the original Swedish series. There is, however, one element which remains more persuasive in the Swedish series, and that is the political agenda. Without ever labouring any points or freighting in a conspicuous ‘seriousness’, the social critique of Mankell’s novels is refracted more consistently through the SVT shows, while the British series places little emphasis on such factors. A demonstration of this may be illuminated by a comparison of the Swedish and British adaptations of Mankell’s novel The Man Who Smiled, dealing with illegal organ sales. The corrupt industrialist in the former series is contextualized in terms of his meetings with foreign colleagues and his importance to the Swedish economy (however suspect his activities), while the British adaptation renders him as something of a maverick figure, with less political clout. The suggestion, somehow, is that the makers of the British show (which was directed by Andy Wilson) have opted not to be too critical of the host country that has allowed them to film there, and this different, softer emphasis is made even more marked by a character who appears in the Swedish adaptation but

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not at all in the British one: the sinister (and adopted) daughter of the industrialist, up to her elbows in his crooked dealings and even inseminated by him in a gesture designed to underline his malign character. But this is not to say that the British series sidelines the author’s social critique; it is, if anything, more a matter of emphasis, with Kenneth Branagh’s existential crises and difficulties with colleagues and lovers moved centre stage in order to play to the actor’s strengths; these elements are, of course, to be found in the Swedish series, but there, a subtle graduation of tonality is a key element: at times, the twitchy, alienated Branagh seemed barely able to function within the context of a busy station (his colleagues are constantly gazing at him in horror or pity), while Krister Henriksson’s Wallander conceals his turmoil somewhat more adroitly. In the final analysis, aficionados of the best crime fiction adaptations should perhaps be grateful that two admirable series were made, and that there is absolutely no necessity to choose between them – the differences of approach are so marked that both are equally rewarding after their own fashion.  G o F ur t h e r Novels The Kurt Wallander novels (Translators include Laurie Thompson and Steven T.Murray) Mankell, Henning (2014 [2004]), An Event in Autumn, London: Vintage. ––––– (2011 [2009]), Den orolige mannen/The Troubled Man, London: Vintage. ––––– (2008 [1999]), Pyramiden/The Pyramid, London: Vintage. ––––– (2005 [1994]), Mannen som log/The Man Who Smiled, London: Vintage. ––––– (2004 [2002]), Innan frosten/Before the Frost, London: Vintage. ––––– (2002 [1998]), Brandvägg/Firewall, London: Vintage. ––––– (2002 [1997]), Steget efter/One Step Behind, London: Vintage. ––––– (2001 [1992]), Hundarna i Riga/The Dogs of Riga, London: Vintage. ––––– (2000 [1996]), Den femte kvinnan/The Fifth Woman, London: Vintage. ––––– (1998 [1993]), Den vita lejoninnan/The White Lioness, London: Vintage. ––––– (1997 [1991]), Mördare utan ansikte/Faceless Killers, London: Vintage. ––––– (1996 [1995]), Villospår/Sidetracked, London: Vintage. Books Peacock, Steven (2014), Swedish Crime Fiction: Novel, Film, Television, Manchester: MUP. Forshaw, Barry (2013), Nordic Noir, London: Pocket Essentials. ––––– (2012), Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Nestingen, Andrew and Arvas, Paula (eds) (2011), Scandinavian Crime Fiction, Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

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Television The Kurt Wallander TV shows Wallander (2008–ongoing, UK: BBC). Wallander (2005–13, Sweden: Yellow Bird, Canal+). Wallander (1994–2007, Sweden: SVT).

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Detective Inspector John Rebus Nationality: scottish / creator: Ian Rankin Erin E. MacDonald

An investigation into contradiction Ian Rankin published Knots and Crosses, the first of his twenty highly successful Detective Inspector Rebus novels, in 1987, and has since become known as Scotland’s greatest living crime fiction author. The Rebus books have won several awards, including a 1997 CWA Macallan Gold Dagger for Fiction for Black and Blue (1997) (which was also shortlisted for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for best novel) and the Edgar Award for Resurrection Men (2002) in 2004. In 2005, Rankin was awarded the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement. The novels were developed into fourteen episodes of a TV series, Rebus (ITV, 2000–07). Beginning with Black and Blue, John Hannah starred in four noirish episodes of the ITV program between 2000 and 2004; the more physically suitable Ken Stott played Rebus in the remaining ten episodes, filmed between 2006 and 2007. After temporarily retiring Rebus in 2007 with the supposed final novel of the series, Exit Music, Rankin resurrected his beloved character in a crossover novel, Standing in Another Man’s Grave (2012), in which Rebus, now a civilian, tries to solve a cold case while Malcolm Fox, a ‘Complaints’ detective and essentially the opposite side of the Rebus coin, tries to prevent him from successfully reapplying to the force now that the mandatory retirement age has been raised. In the next Rebus installment, Saints of the Shadow Bible (2013), the detective is back on the force but as a sergeant, not an inspector. The novels are, as Gill Plain writes, ‘hybrid fictions, melding the conventional elements of the police procedural with history, politics, and contemporary anxieties’ (2002: 12). Similarly, Stephen Knight points out their ‘mix of the public and the private’ and suggests that Rebus ‘is both public and private eye’ (2014: n.p.). Most analysts of the Rebus books recognize that their defining feature is their embrace of contradictions: Rebus is full of them, as are his home city and country.

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Defining Tartan Noir Set in Edinburgh, the bestselling Rebus series defines what James Ellroy labelled the ‘Tartan Noir’ genre, with its roots in both Scottish literary traditions and American hardboiled crime novels. A cross between the lone-wolf style of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and the police team-worker style of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct/Steve Carella series, Rebus struggles to maintain his stubborn masculinity as Scottish society, and the police force with it, rapidly changes. The Rebus novels channel Scottish history and questions about Edinburgh’s dark past, aligning such themes with clever plotting and careful characterization. Inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous Jekyll and Hyde dichotomy, Rebus, though essentially the ‘good guy’ fighting the ‘evil’ in the world, is the epitome of the same light/dark duality that encompasses his home city. Named after a type of puzzle, the man is as enigmatic as the mysteries he uncovers. Psychologically damaged by his army days and by a traumatic stint training for the sadistic SAS, he is unable to commit to any personal relationships, turns to alcohol and classic rock to erase his nightmares, and lives by a moral code that often conflicts with proper police procedure. His flawed antihero persona, combined with his no-nonsense attitude and unbending principles, appeals to a wide range of readers who can’t seem to get enough of him. According to Rankin himself, Rebus began as the author’s ‘mouthpiece’ for everything he wanted to say about Scotland (2000a: i), a character who could ‘lead [both] the reader [and the author] into an investigation of Scotland itself’ (Rankin 2005: 18). The late 1980s and 1990s were a time of economic hardship caused by the death of the nation’s traditional industries (shipbuilding, coal mining and steel working), ripple effects from the Irish Troubles, Thatcherism, and devolution of the Scottish parliament, all of which are reflected in the series. Despite the exploitation of North Sea oil in the 1970s, ‘the so-called “black gold” was to prove more of a bonanza for Texans than it was for Scots’, as Neil Oliver writes (2009: 426). Unemployment, alcoholism and scores of angry youth ‘on the dole’ take their places in the Rebus series alongside the minority of rich and cultured Scots who managed to personally benefit from American investment in new manufacturing and technology ventures. In 1999 a Scottish parliament finally became a reality. When, in Rankin’s novels, construction begins across from Holyrood Palace, Rebus and his fellow officers, although proud of their country’s political progress, take the opportunity to mock the odd-looking parliament building. Rankin is a patriot who will support Scotland to his dying day while ceaselessly exposing and lamenting its flaws. References to great works of Scottish art and literature, from architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh and painters Jacob More and David Allan to authors Sir Walter Scott and Muriel Spark, are consciously sprinkled throughout gritty tales of crime and violence. In Strip Jack (1992), Rebus admires the sublime beauty of the landscape:

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It was very pleasing the way Scotland changed every thirty miles or so – changed in landscape, in character, and in dialect. Mind you, stick in a car and you’d hardly guess. The roads all seemed much the same. So did the roadside petrol stations. Even the towns, long, straight, main streets with their supermarkets and shoe shops and wool shops and chip shops […] even these seemed to blur one into the other. But it was possible to look beyond them; possible, too, to look further into them. A small country, thought Rebus, yet so various. (Rankin 1992a: 113, original emphasis) Driving north into the Highlands, Rebus thinks, ‘Bleak? Yes, he’d call it bleak. But it was impressive, too. It just went on and on and on. Deep valleys hewn by glaciers, collections of scree’ (1992a: 114). The ‘louring and forbidding’ land itself reminds its occupants that ‘[t]errible things had happened here in the past, massacres and forced migrations, blood feuds as vicious as any’ (143). This history, inseparable from its geography, forged the identity of the Scots. Class and the Scottish character The Scottish mindset also features prominently in the series. As Rankin writes in Black and Blue, ‘The Scots never forgot. It was a burden and a gift’ (1997: 89). In Mortal Causes (1994), he makes note of English DC Siobhan Clarke’s lack of understanding of ‘the finer points of Scottish bigotry’ (Rankin 1994: 42) when fellow officers tell her she should support Hearts football club, not Hibs, because she’s Protestant. She isn’t sure if they’re joking or not, because ‘[t]he Scots ten[d] to crack jokes with a straight face and be deadly serious when they smil[e]’ (42). These are a people who ‘store up [their] true feelings like fuel for long winter nights of whisky and recrimination’ (193). Rebus recognizes these characteristics in himself, but seems powerless to change. The policeman’s love/hate relationship with his native country, and with Edinburgh in particular, helps Rankin expose the underbelly of the country while fondly lingering over its flavour. Rankin writes in Rebus’s Scotland (2005), ‘A contradictory city makes a good capital for a country of contradictions’ (Rankin 2005: 18). The setting of Edinburgh perfectly promotes one of Rankin’s favourite themes: class. He often compares the city to a small town, offering descriptions, via Rebus, that make Edinburgh folk seem simultaneously like the best, most loyal and most desperately corrupt people in Britain. The Cowgate, the road on which the morgue is located, was ‘named for the route cattle would take when being brought into the city to be sold. It was a narrow canyon of a street with few businesses and only passing traffic’ and ‘Rebus wasn’t sure the area had ever been more than a desperate meeting place for Edinburgh’s poorest denizens, who often seemed like cattle themselves, dull-witted from lack of sunlight and grazing on begged handouts from passers-by’ (Rankin 1993: 206). Rebus’s own flat,

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which he and his ex-wife bought when prices were low, is in an area called Marchmont, near the university. Flats there are expensive, full of high ceilings and ‘huge rooms with splendid windows and original shutters’ (1993: 177). From the rich Georgian houses of the New Town to the crime-filled housing estates of Pilmuir, Rebus’s Edinburgh embodies the same polarities of good and evil that the detective contains within himself. It also contains the same economic extremes that made for great material in the American crime stories that Rankin loved as a youngster. From the first story, Knots and Crosses, the author draws attention to the gap between social classes in Edinburgh. Rebus sees a city full of pushers and junkies, the deft-handed corruption of the city’s gents, the petty thefts of a society pushed so far into materialism that stealing [i]s the only answer to what they th[ink] of as their needs. […] He pitie[s] the city, right down to its crooks and bandits, its whores and gamblers, its perpetual losers and winners. (Rankin 2000c [1987]: 69) Homeless people use the main public library to warm up and to sleep, while the moneyed classes pull the politicians’ strings without seeming to get their hands dirty. As a doctor in Hide and Seek (1990) mentions, Edinburgh is the ‘AIDS capital of Britain’ because of its high number of intravenous heroin users (Rankin 2000b [1990]: 197). The ‘Gar-B’, the worst housing estate in Pilmuir, is also the site of a gang war in Mortal Causes. Meanwhile, the rich dine in expensive restaurants, to which Rebus is invited only because of his connection to his boss, ‘Farmer’ Watson, who moves in political circles above his employees’ heads. With its layers of buried streets and secret passageways, the cultured Edinburgh that most people see contrasts sharply with an underside that is inhabited by cops and criminals. Rebus himself is almost obsessed with his city’s duality. Rankin writes: He knew that Edinburgh was all appearances, which made the crime less easy to spot, but no less evident. Edinburgh was a schizophrenic city, the place of Jekyll & Hyde sure enough, the city of Deacon Brodie, of fur coats and no knickers. (Rankin 2000c [1987]: 157) Rebus thinks he is ‘living in the most beautiful, most civilised city in northern Europe, yet every day ha[s] to deal with its flipside, with the minor matter of its animus’ (Rankin 2000b [1990]: 291). Tourists, fascinated by the beauty of the Castle and by stories of the city’s ghosts, fail to see the real Edinburgh. The Jekyll and Hyde nature of the city is also reflected in its weather: in Knots and Crosses, Rankin writes that ‘Edinburgh rain [i]s like a judgement’, and blames it for everything from crime to bad marriages. Scots language, he reminds us, ‘is especially rich in words to do with the weather: “dreich” and “smirr”

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are only two of them’ (2000c [1987]: 67). Sunny one minute and drenching the next, life in Edinburgh symbolizes the extremes of the Scottish people. Rebus’s spiritual quest Rebus, who considers himself of the working class despite his spacious flat in Marchmont, is most familiar with the lowest extremes. Readers learn about Rebus through mostly third-person narration, with the occasional interjection of first-person narration from the criminal’s or Rebus’s point of view. The third-person narrator, however, seems more often than not to be voicing Rebus’s own thoughts, or a conflation of Rankin’s and Rebus’s. Because the detective does not share much about his philosophies, religious beliefs or love of the arts with other characters, the narration supplies these details as Rebus goes about his working day. Although Rebus deeply distrusts organized religion, he is consumed by ideas of conscience, guilt and resurrection. As Brian Diemert points out, the unending spiritual quest that pervades the novels is ‘largely irrelevant’ to ‘the actual murder case[s]’ but incredibly important to Rebus (2005: 168). Rankin describes him as rumpled, with dark hair and green eyes, beginning the series as a 41-year-old. Of Polish ancestry, John Rebus was born and raised in a small mining community in Fife, where Rankin himself was raised. Knots and Crosses describes John’s origin and explains, to some extent, why Rebus is such a jaded, bitter man. Rebus’s father (who died five years prior to the beginning of the series) favoured John’s younger brother, Michael, who followed in his father’s footsteps as a performing hypnotist. Their father was not an affectionate man, at least not to John, whom he taught how to fight by kneeing him in the crotch (Rankin 2000b [1990]: 301). With most of the mines closed and not wanting to work on the docks, John joined the army at 18 and served in the Parachute Regiment for eight years. He did well and saw some action in Ulster, but most of his years in the army are not described in detail. At 26, he joined the SAS and experienced a brutal training that gave him nightmares and interfered with his sex life. The physical and psychological torture he experienced in the SAS, combined with his abandonment of good friend Gordon Reeve and his lack of the cold-heartedness necessary to be a good assassin, caused him to crack. Haunted by this traumatic past, which prompted his fears of heights and of flying, Rebus doesn’t like to talk to anyone about his time in the army. His ex-wife, Rhona, sometimes heard him crying at night (Rankin 2000c [1987]). He was unable to commit himself to the marriage emotionally, admitting that ‘[h]is work gave his life what meaning it had’ (Rankin 1992b: 463). Because his army connections had helped him to his job on the force, other police resented him. Denied much promotion, he developed a tough attitude, bending rules and striking suspects when necessary for a result. Rankin describes Rebus as a ‘troglodyte’ (1993: 31). He is abrupt, superstitious and, unlike his creator, is not university educated, although he loves books – he collects

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them and means to read them but never seems to have the time. He is also not very adept at socializing. Rebus’s romantic history is comprised of a string of failed relationships, from adolescent girlfriend Janice Mee to ex-wife Rhona to boss Gill Templer. Rebus knows that his vulnerability makes him attractive to a certain type of woman. His longest-lasting relationship in the series is with Dr Patience Aitken, introduced in Strip Jack, but even her heroic attempts to improve his lifestyle fail to catch hold. He has not bothered to redecorate since Rhona left him, and rarely cleans the flat. He is physically unhealthy despite Patience’s efforts to get him to go to a gym and to cut down on his drinking and smoking. He lives on chips and crisps, beer and bacon rolls, and often falls asleep drunk in his favourite chair, listening to the Rolling Stones. He is highly cynical, mainly a loner (Aitken eventually loses her patience and disappears from the series), and would fit most people’s definition of a functioning alcoholic. These facts, when added to the occasional tendency to give in to his violent streak and use more force than necessary on the job, place Rebus firmly in the hardboiled camp, but he is, after all, a cop. Ignoring police procedure As a Detective Inspector with Lothian and Borders CID (a rank which he makes after fifteen years on the force), he reports to a bureaucratic, politicized organization, doesn’t carry a gun, and spends much of his time doing legwork and paperwork, like any police procedural character. He doesn’t always follow proper police procedure, however, and frequently investigates without permission and asks others of lower rank to complete tasks for him without their superiors knowing. Rebus is a rogue detective who works by experience and instinct as well as by stubborn hard work. A prideful man, he prefers to work alone and to do things his own way, regardless of how many toes he steps on in the process. No Sherlock Holmes, he has ‘more ambition than ability’ (Rankin 1992b: 563). In Black and Blue, his friend Jack Morton recalls that Rebus is praised by other officers – for his tenacity, the way he worrie[s] at a case terrier-style, more often than not tearing it open, spilling out secret motives and hidden bodies. But that same tenacity c[an] also be a weakness, blinding him to danger, making him impatient and reckless. (Rankin 1997: 372) He may be praised for his tenacity on the job, but most of his colleagues would not praise his other personal characteristics. Rebus is undiplomatic, frequently putting his foot in his mouth, showing up to work when he feels like it, and acting generally curmudgeonly to everyone there, especially in the morning. In Resurrection Men he is sent back to the police college for retraining, and in Saints of the Shadow Bible he is only allowed to

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return to the police after being demoted to the rank of sergeant. By the detective’s own admission, Rebus does not fit well into the police hierarchy. In Mortal Causes, Rankin writes of Rebus, He was reminded again just why he didn’t fit, why he was so unsuited to the career life had chosen for him. The Murder Room was like a production line. You had your own little task, and you did it. Maybe someone else would follow up any lead you found, and then someone else after that might do the questioning of a suspect or potential witness. You were a small part of a very large team. It wasn’t Rebus’s way. He wanted to follow up every lead personally, cross referencing them all, taking them through from first principle to final reckoning. […] not letting go. (Rankin 1994: 117) Rebus is a perfect antihero, combining as he does aspects of the traditional, official hero and the hardboiled, outlaw hero. He has his own moral code and doesn’t care if the laws or procedures of the police match it. Moral ambiguities Interested from the beginning of his writing career in the meeting points between the light and dark sides of human beings, Ian Rankin has used DI Rebus to explore this basic duality and to investigate the sins, choices and moral ambiguities that conflict with Scotland’s religious heritage. A bit of police brutality is not beneath Rebus, but he considers himself a man of principle. He is proud of being a straight, incorruptible cop, although in Knots and Crosses, he steals rolls and milk from outside a shop in the early morning: ‘Nothing tasted better than a venial sin’ (Rankin 2000c [1987]: 35). In Hide and Seek he drinks and drives, seeks out a rent boy at Calton Hill and hits him, and in Dead Souls (1999), he sleeps with another man’s wife. He is drawn to dark corners of the city, enjoying smoke-filled pubs on the wrong side of Edinburgh more than he likes rubbing shoulders with the yuppies. Although he never accepts a bribe or hides a crime for political or personal advantage, he drinks on the job, accepts free drinks, and blackmails people to extort favours from them. Brian Holmes (then a detective constable) accuses him (though not to his face) of ‘playing at being Philip Marlowe’ (Rankin 2000b [1990]: 262), wasting others’ time with his personal pursuits of hunches when he should really just be doing his job. He has a ‘need to push his way into the centre of things, to become involved, to find out for himself rather than accepting somebody’s word, no matter who that somebody [is]’ (Rankin 1993: 33). By Standing in Another Man’s Grave, he has reduced himself to drinking in pubs with known gangsters like Cafferty and Frank Hammell, possibly because he is more like them than he is like his fellow officers. Saints of the Shadow Bible, however, suggests that even Rebus has had enough of his wayward

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ways and might just feel guilty enough about his trespasses to consider becoming more like Malcolm Fox, who tries very hard not to take the law into his own hands. His relationships with others tell us much about John Rebus. His ongoing rivalry with his own Moriarty, Morris Gerald ‘Big Ger’ Cafferty, is first mentioned in Tooth and Nail (1992). Cafferty is described as the ‘boss of a thuggish protection and gaming racket’ (Rankin 1992b: 479). He also has his hands dirty from money laundering and prostitution. In The Black Book, Rankin writes that ‘nobody wanted to nail Morris Gerald Cafferty as badly as John Rebus did. He wanted a full-scale crucifixion. He wanted to be holding the spear, giving one last poke just to make sure the bastard really was dead’ (1993: 28). Cafferty threatens Rebus’s family, including his brother Michael and daughter Sammy, whenever he wants something from Rebus. ‘Big Ger’ is a brutish, terrifying, hard-drinking sociopath who ‘gets what he wants by any means necessary’ (Rankin 1993: 302). In Black and Blue, Cafferty is reincarcerated after escaping from Barlinnie prison, but manages to keep running his ‘business’ while under lock and key. In Mortal Causes, he buys off guards and threatens Rebus into finding the killer of Cafferty’s son, Billy. Like Cafferty, Rebus doesn’t care whether the police or some of Cafferty’s thugs get justice first, as long as the killer is caught, but he resents Cafferty’s implication that Rebus is his ‘man’. In The Black Book, Cafferty tells Rebus, [W]e’re a cruel people, Strawman. […] And we’re ghouls. […] When they killed the grave-robber Burke, they made souvenirs from his skin. […] We like to watch, and that’s the truth. I bet even you’ve got a taste for pain, Strawman. […] you like the pain. It’s what makes you a Calvinist. (Rankin 1993: 191, original emphasis) The two men, cop and villain, exchange both insults and favours over the course of the series, becoming ‘bonded in a complicated, symbiotic dynamic of “f(r)iendship” that […] develop[s] through the series as the two men age’ (Alegre 2011: 74). The detective even saves the villain’s life, being unwilling to give up his obsessive quest to bring the man to justice. Despite the similarities and symbiosis between them, Rebus, at the end of the day, considers Cafferty’s brand of immorality a part of the dark side that the policeman will never fully embrace. Detective Constable (later Sergeant and then Inspector) Siobhan Clarke, whom Rebus mentors, is introduced in The Black Book, working out of St Leonard’s CID along with now-Detective Sergeant Brian Holmes and helping in the surveillance of Morris Gerald Cafferty. Clarke is English, a university graduate and the daughter of wealthy professors. She is also female and young: in every sense but one, the complete opposite of Rebus. They share a passion for work and, because she begins her career with the handicap of being a woman in a man’s world, Siobhan eagerly follows Rebus in whatever unofficial mischief he gets up to. She believes he is ‘narrow-minded’ and ‘secretive’

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and doesn’t get along well with people, but she admires his tenacity, his confidence in his own instincts, and his ability to ‘draw you into a case’ (Rankin 1993: 110). She begins to imitate his maverick style, making Rebus afraid that his protégée may find herself as ostracized as he is. After her mentor retires, however, Clarke establishes herself as a highly competent, independent woman, having fully earned her new rank of Detective Inspector. According to Laura Severin, Clarke’s evolution from lowly DS to important DI is a feminist gesture: Like Rankin’s earlier novels, Exit Music is still bleak, but its end, where Clarke is finally released from her mentor Rebus, represents a more hopeful future for Scotland. While Rankin can hardly be called an optimist, Clarke’s apparent accession into leadership as Rebus’s replacement suggests that patriarchal structures can change through slow evolution. (Severin 2010: 87) Although in the early novels Siobhan offers a nearly complete contrast to Rebus, by Saints of the Shadow Bible the two have moved closer together, Clarke even abandoning her former vegetarianism in favour of a huge cheeseburger. They are now alike in many ways: she has chosen, like Rebus has, to devote herself to work almost entirely, and she has come to trust and anticipate his methods and he, hers, to the point where it no longer matters which of them is the boss. Vocational penance Every aspect of the Rebus series, from its setting to its minor characters, furthers Rankin’s theme of duality, from the light/dark struggle embodied by his famous detective to the disturbing gap between rich and poor that is played out on the streets of his home. Class issues appear in every novel. Rebus is an average man, a working-class Fifer who is as disgusted by the slums and as awed by luxury as most readers would be. Visiting his brother Michael’s fancy house in Knots and Crosses and cop Tony McCall’s trinket-filled upper-middle-class dream home in Hide and Seek, Rebus notices all the expensive gear but cares for none of it. Rebus and McCall share a laugh about Tony’s wife and his rich brother Tommy wanting things like ‘marble-topped kitchen units’ (Rankin 2000b [1990]: 219). Rebus, whose most prized possessions are a few records and a handful of books, could never be corrupted by the lure of easy money the way his brother (a one-time drug dealer) was. Like most cops, he is more comfortable talking to prostitutes on the street than he is hobnobbing with the ‘aristos’ at political or social functions. Rebus is class-conscious and feels awkward in situations unsuited to his own income, such as when dining with several of the city’s most well-connected men at the Eyrie, a posh New Town restaurant. Rankin’s description of Rebus ‘stud[ying] the hallmark on

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his fork’ (2000b [1990]: 254) and taking an immediate dislike to the snobbish customers is reminiscent of many typical encounters between literary police detectives and those of the upper class, such as Detective Steve Carella’s uncomfortable dinner with wealthy lawyer Gerald Fletcher in the famous Ed McBain novel, Sadie When She Died (1972). This working-class ethos, honed by both police procedural writers and hardboiled writers like Hammett and Chandler, contributes to Rebus’s ability to bridge the two genres. Rankin’s DI Rebus is never fully procedural and never completely hardboiled. His daily interactions with other police and the gritty or glamorous atmosphere of class-conscious Edinburgh provide the series ‘with a fantastic yet modern gothic setting and a complex protagonist, cynical yet spiritual, at the same time as they help to highlight the dark past of [the detective’s] city’ (MacDonald 2012: 72). Despite his cynicism and self-imposed isolation, the detective clings to a shred of hope, which readers can see in his dedication to bringing justice to the criminals he encounters throughout the series. Rebus sees his work more as a vocation (if one of penance) than a paycheque, unlike his colleagues who are more interested in politics and promotion or in money and security than in seeking justice for the wronged. Despite having serious character deficits, he is a man of principle, strong will and integrity, whose soul – though tormented – remains untouched. A Calvinist at heart, he is, as Rankin admits, a masochist (1994: 4) who likes to be punished for his misdeeds. He gets beat up, burned, run over by a car, and emotionally tortured by his own sins and by threats and acts made against those he loves. He is not only flawed, with his personal defects of alcoholism, narrow-mindedness and a self-centred focus on work – he is also tortured, physically, psychologically, and morally, throughout the entire series. Rebus fits within a tradition of antihero detectives from Sherlock Holmes (whose possible opium addiction and obsessive concentration on cases has turned recent television adaptations of the character into little more than a sociopath) to Gregory House, the disabled TV detective whose limp belies his biting, quick wit. Like these other detectives, Rebus draws the interest of readers specifically because of his chronically injured state. Like all hardboiled detectives, Rebus’s ‘personal code of ethics’ and ‘hunches’ substitute for religion (Diemert 2005: 172), and it is because of these that he suffers spiritually. Rankin’s novels are not simple tales of hero-versus-villain, but investigate the complexities of our modern desire for (or admission of) ambiguity. Rebus (like Edinburgh) is neither Jekyll nor Hyde, procedural nor hardboiled, but, more interestingly and realistically, a combination of both.  References Alegre, S. M. (2011), ‘Aging in F(r)iendship: “Big Ger” Cafferty and John Rebus’, Clues: A Journal of Detection, 29: 2, pp. 73–82. Diemert, B. (2005), ‘Ian Rankin and the God of the Scots’, in J. H. Kim (ed.), Race and Religion in the Postcolonial Detective Story, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, pp. 164–86. Knight, S. (2014), Secrets of Crime Fiction Classics: Detecting the Delights of 21 Enduring Stories,

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Jefferson, NC: McFarland. MacDonald, E. E. (2012), ‘Ghosts and Skeletons: Metaphors of Guilty History in Ian Rankin’s Rebus Series’, Clues: A Journal of Detection, 30: 2, pp. 67–75. Oliver, N. (2009), A History of Scotland, London: Phoenix. Plain, G. (2002), Ian Rankin’s Black and Blue: A Reader’s Guide, New York: Continuum. Rankin, I. (1992a), Strip Jack, London: Orion. ––––– (1992b), ‘Tooth and Nail’, Rebus: The Early Years, London: Orion, pp. 391–597. ––––– (1993), The Black Book, London: Orion. ––––– (1994), Mortal Causes, London: Orion. ––––– (1997), Black and Blue, London: Orion. ––––– (2000a), ‘Exile on Princes Street’, Rebus: The Early Years, London: Orion, pp. i–ii. ––––– (2000b [1990]), ‘Hide and Seek’, Rebus: The Early Years, London: Orion, pp. 185–390. ––––– (2000c [1987]), ‘Knots and Crosses’, Rebus: The Early Years, London: Orion, pp. 1–182. ––––– (2002), Resurrection Men, London: Orion. ––––– (2005), Rebus’s Scotland: A Personal Journey, London: Orion. Severin, L. (2010), ‘“Out from the Mentor’s Shadow”: Siobhan Clarke and the Feminism of Ian Rankin’s Exit Music (2007)’, Clues: A Journal of Detection, 28: 2, pp. 87–94. G o F ur t h e r Novels The Detective Inspector Rebus novels Rankin, I. (2015), Even Dogs in the Wild, London: Orion. ––––– (2013), Saints of the Shadow Bible, London: Orion. ––––– (2012), Standing in Another Man’s Grave, London: Orion. ––––– (2007), Exit Music, London: Orion. ––––– (2006), The Naming of the Dead, London: Orion. ––––– (2005), Rebus’s Scotland: A Personal Journey, London: Orion. ––––– (2004), Fleshmarket Close, London: Orion. ––––– (2003), A Question of Blood, London: Orion. ––––– (2002), Resurrection Men, London: Orion. ––––– (2001), The Falls, London: Orion. –––––(2000), Set in Darkness, London: Orion. ––––– (1999), Dead Souls, London: Orion. ––––– (1998), Death is Not the End, London: Orion. ––––– (1998), The Hanging Garden, London: Orion. ––––– (1997), Black and Blue, London: Orion. ––––– (1995), Let it Bleed, London: Orion. ––––– (1994), Mortal Causes, London: Orion. ––––– (1993), The Black Book, London: Orion. ––––– (1992), Strip Jack, London: Orion.

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––––– (1992), Tooth and Nail, London: Orion. ––––– (1990), Hide and Seek, London: Orion. ––––– (1987), Knots and Crosses, London: Orion. Novels by others McBain, E. (1972), Sadie When She Died, New York: Warner. Television Rebus (2000–07, UK: ITV). Reichenbach Falls (TV movie, 1 March 2007, BBC).

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detective Harry Hole Nationality: norwegian / creator: Jo Nesbø Murray Pratt

The vantage points of international allegory Whether measured by sales figures, reach, celebrity standing, cultural influence or departure-lounge sightings, it is beyond contestation that Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole Thriller series (1997–ongoing) has joined detective fiction’s big league. And while both author and character are firmly rooted in Norwegian society and culture (the former played football for Molde FK and is a member of the band Di Derre; the latter is drawn back to Oslo and its underworlds despite his globe-trotting tendencies), their respective successes have been enjoyed on an international scale. Since the first English-language translation of a Hole Thriller was released (Marekors/The Devil’s Star in 2005 [2003]), the series has gone on to sell over 23 million copies worldwide. Surfing the wave of ‘Nordic Noir’, or ‘Scandicrime’ with a profile to rival Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series (2004–07) or television’s Forbrydelsen/The Killing (DR1, 2007–12) and Broen/Bron/The Bridge (SVT1/DR1, 2011–ongoing), Hole’s adventures are increasingly branded and marketed as emblematic of this now established genre—witness the sepia-tinted, Stieg Larsson-inspired city maps that lead readers into Oslo’s cityscape in Vintage’s 2013 release of Politi/Police, together with the back-page testimony from the Sunday Mirror’s Deirdre O’Brien: ‘Scandinavian crime thrillers don’t come much darker or more tense than the bestselling Harry Hole series’. In this chapter, the aim is to consider what this connection between a local or regional identity on the one hand, and an international profile on the other, means for the ways we respond to Harry Hole, Nesbø’s troubled detective and the hero of the series. To do so, the focus will be less on the tenseness of the action, the thrill of the chase, important elements though these may be in building the fictional worlds that Hole inhabits, but rather, the narrative dynamics of those cultural tensions that he negotiates, as the narratives move between the local Norwegian context and international references. For, if Nordic Noir is to be understood as a multi-valenced niche with global appeal that includes tourism marketing as much as literary value, then the novels can be seen as anticipating, perhaps producing, this dichotomy as they themselves extend, from

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Oslo’s ports, airports, politics, histories and trade routes, throughout a globalized and networked international crime scene. National identities Hole’s persona, and the readings that can be made of his investigations (it will be argued), can best be understood by situating them as international allegory. That is to say that while the figure of the police detective, often reduced to a caricature of a socially isolated and violent alcoholic, speaks both to the characteristics of the genre and at the same time to a precarious masculinity that is rooted in Scandinavian society, the readings that are brought to bear on the novels operate in more complex ways. As Kerstin Bergman (2014), drawing on the work of Frederic Jameson, points out in her reading of Arne Dahl’s Chinese Whispers, ‘the lion’s share’ of the messages and meanings gleaned during the reading of detective novels translates into a web of commentary about national identities, values and concerns. Bergman goes on to point out that ‘in line with the societal trend of globalization’, we have witnessed an ‘increasing number of Swedish crime novels set in Europe, which discuss European identities’ (Bergman 2014: 20). The same dynamic, it could be argued, applies to the Hole Thrillers, albeit on an even broader scale. Fictional detectives are the fulcrum between our engagement with a plot and desire for fiction and the societies that they police. Often characterized by persistence, grit, a sense of righteousness and a bitter, caustic, even damaged outlook; theirs is the typical pathology of the driven avenger out to right the wrongs of aggrieved communities at no matter what cost to themselves, and in so doing, re-weave the fractured social fabric. The term ‘hardboiled’, initially associated with darker, ‘noir’ narratives and used to describe a particular breed of North American male detective, working through his personal demons, isolated from society and alienated from his own emotions, forms the prototype, and Hole owes much to this model. Here, the sense of isolation already stands as a comment on social atomization, and the alienation of the detective as a logical, if exaggerated and impractical response to this. Noir has, in recent times, been deployed more widely, drawing in contemporary crime formulae and central characters including female detectives such as Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski, described as a heroine who ‘oscillates between manifestations of extreme independence and autonomy and yearning for collections and relationships’ (Porsdam 1998: 132). Bloody Social Democrats In the case of Hole, his desire to belong, whether through his repeatedly foiled attempts to build a family with Rakel and Oleg, or the ways in which his reliance on colleagues features in the resolution of narratives, is, like that of Warshawski, just as strong as his self-destructive and isolationist drive. Indeed, towards the end of Police, he even con-

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cedes that his concern with the escalating cost of an operation positions him as embodying the national good citizenship associated with Scandinavian values: Harry almost had to laugh at himself […] In the end he was a product of his upbringing as well, a brainwashed, herd-following, bloody Social Democrat who suffered physical pain at the thought of leaving a light on all night or discarding plastic in the countryside. (Nesbø 2013: 617) In the same way as Helle Porsdam’s reading of Paretsky is one where ‘the personal is discussed against the background of the law and the conventions of the detective novel, and thereby made political or public’ (1998: 132), Nesbø’s novels can be considered as exercises in positioning and interrogating ethical and political concerns via a set of human dilemmas, as played out by the detective himself. However, rather than the questions at stake being limited to Norwegian society, the tendency within the Hole Thriller series is to set up a broader set of debates about how local and national values intersect with international perspectives. Snowmen and leopards Perspective, or more accurately, vantage point, is important for Hole. At crucial moments in the investigations he often retreats to the hills above Oslo, sometimes in the company of his childhood companion, to reflect, from on high, on the city and the case. Establishing ‘shots’ from hillsides, at the start and end of chapters, framing the action within the natural and human elements of weather, light and cityscape, are also commonplace in the novels, and a fascination with heights, falling or climbing (the mountains of Snømannen/The Snowman [2007] and Panserhjerte/The Leopard [2009]; the walkway above the aquarium in Flaggermusmannen/The Bat [1997]; the diving board of Frogner Park; or the many tall buildings in which action is set) provide a thematic framework for many of the narratives, perhaps reflecting their author’s involvement in rock climbing. It is from an elevated vantage point, both physically and metaphorically, that Hole is often shown to be achieving the overview required for him to comprehend the totality of a mystery, and gain the advantages he needs to work out how to solve the crimes and dilemmas he confronts. Hole’s ultimate perspective however, on both Oslo and the crimes that take place both within and beyond its city boundary, is international. Scenes set in planes and airports are commonplace, and, as his character develops, his recourse to Hong Kong, whether actual (as in The Leopard when he is fetched back from there to Oslo) or in his mind, provides him with the perspective of an alternative milieu, characterized by anonymity, descent into the darker worlds of his demons, and cultural otherness. When he

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is first introduced to readers, Hole has been dispatched to Sydney where he is to assist the local police force in investigating the disappearance of a Norwegian. The action in this first novel, The Bat, takes place exclusively in Australia and the early Hole mysteries (all but the first two chapters of Kakerlakkene/The Cockroaches [1998], published the following year, are set in Thailand) set the tone for the series by bringing Norway (through Hole’s persona, but equally the heavily bureaucratic national institutions back home with which he is at odds) into contact with places positioned as its exotic others. In part, the juxtapositioning of Scandinavia with Asia and Australia reflects the region’s growing tourist mobility and subsequent global interconnectedness. In fact, Hole comments in The Leopard that ‘the number of Norwegians who realised their dream of a white Christmas on Thailand’s white beaches had doubled in just three years’ (Nesbø 2011 [2009]: 11), and Nesbø’s success has to be understood within the context of providing reading matter, and dark if never too demanding fantasies, to entertain a generation of western holidaymakers on those very beaches. Later in the series, Hole’s subsequent investigations will also take him to Congo, Rwanda, South Africa, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Brazil and Egypt, and the issues he confronts will embroil him in post-Soviet social ills (Gjenferd/ Phantom [2011]) and the Europe-wide legacies of World War II (Rødstrupe/The Redbreast [2000]). In the same way as the detective seeks the detachment and panoramic vista of a vantage point, he brings a necessarily international perspective to bear on the crimes he investigates. Indeed, the narrative impacts of many of the novels can best be understood through a lens that focuses on the vivid portrayal of Norwegian society through Hole’s, and, indeed, the majority of the readers of the series’, global outlook. Innocents abroad Turning to Hole’s initial appearance in The Bat, the criminal underworld that Hole uncovers as he investigates the murder of Inger Holger, leads him to encounter certainly the rapes, murders, drug trafficking and corruption that constitute the social disequilibrium of the novel, but at the same time a set of stereotypical Aussie staples that a Norwegian readership would expect to find: boxing, Aboriginal culture, transvestism and the gay scene, and the icons of Sydney’s tourist circuit. In broad terms, Hole’s foreignness equips him well to play the innocent abroad and navigate across these strata as he pieces together the evidence. More than this though, it is from an outsider’s perspective that the narrative construction pitting two forms of Aboriginal experience (the cop and victim Andrew Kensington’s struggle to overcome adversity and the derailed abreaction of the boxer Toowomba, revealed as the villain) is brought to its resolution. The focus on indigeneity and gay Sydney as defining Australia, themselves characteristic of a European exoticism of Australia and heightened pre-Olympic interest, are observed from the vantage point of Hole’s limited grasp of Australian culture, enabling him to ask questions where his Sydney sidekicks make assumptions.

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Hole’s trajectory through New South Wales often replicates that of tourists themselves, visiting the various sites that constitute a backpacker’s itinerary, and replicating many of the discoveries they make about the differences in climate, fauna and language use. It is his arrival, though, both as he queues for immigration control at the airport and into the series, that reveals most about how Hole will establish his credentials as a globalized detective. In the opening few pages of The Bat, Hole is assessed by the border guard, while at the same time he appraises the guard’s own modus operandi (is it normal for her not to call him ‘sir’?). This is a liminal moment, one where the non-resident is admitted into the nation, where the detective is introduced to his readership, and it is noteworthy that the situation is already reversed, with Hole (the Norwegian) framed as the outsider requiring admission (to another country, Australia). For a home readership, the effect is to position ‘self’ as always already ‘other’, or otherable, understandable and recuperable within other cultural contexts. Moreover, his opening gambit is, blatantly and by his own admission, a lie. Something was wrong. At first the female passport officer had beamed: ‘How are ya, mate?’ ‘I’m fine,’ Harry Hole had lied. It was more than thirty hours since he had taken off from Oslo via London, and after the change of planes in Bahrain he had sat in the same bloody seat by the emergency exit. For security reasons it could only be tipped back a little, and his lumbar region had almost crumbled by the time they reached Singapore. (Nesbø 2012 [1997]: 1) To arrive, Hole’s journey has taken him literally halfway round the globe, and Nesbø notes the main cultural nodes he has traversed to get there. The journey has impacted on his body, to the point that Hole feels his spine may have been eroded. This relatively anodyne example of physical destruction, which could be dismissed as the routine discomfort of globalized displacement, will become a leitmotif as the novels accumulate, with subsequent encounters leaving his body scarred and damaged. Situated within the international space of border control at the outset of the series, the trope of crossing the frontier takes on a more metaphorical or allegorical import. It is the ‘something that is wrong’. Global displacement is the foundational lie that Hole tells, to authority, to women, to society. He is not fine. The world, the whole world, is not as it should be, and his body bears the (first of many) assaults and scars on its integrity while his foundational lie sets the parameters for the many instances in the novels where he refuses to answer to, or confine himself within, the cultural norms of any given authority.

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Between crimes and between countries The Leopard, originally published in Norway in 2009 as the eighth Hole Thriller, was released in its English translation in 2011, actually a year prior to The Bat which had been written over a decade previously. The random mismatch of the series in its English publication with both the chronological order of events and the Norwegian publishing sequence, ought not to be overlooked. It suggests, for instance, that for Nesbø’s international readership, Hole is always encountered in medias res, between crimes and between countries. The most internationalized of the novels in terms of its settings (Hong Kong, Australia, Congo and Norway), The Leopard is perhaps also the most cinematic and typical of the goriness with which the series has come to be associated: Hole’s improbably snowbound mountainside encounters with his arch-nemesis Mikael Bellman, could easily lend themselves to Hollywood treatment, while the murderous ‘Leopold’s apple’ device by which victims’ fates are sealed is at the extreme end of the physical violence in the texts. As the story unfolds, African weapons’ suppliers become implicated in a plot that links them, and the politics of the region, to more local and personal narratives originating in a Norwegian ski lodge. Hole’s interventions, at the same time, point to his broader global citizenship with key clues being uncovered through his linking of Bristol Cream sherry with a suburb of Bristol which Nesbø situates in Sydney, and the Hotel Bristol in Oslo. In addition to the ways in which the plotline and its resolution are globally situated, and perhaps again with a future eye to cinema, The Leopard also ups the ante in terms of the field of references which both Harry and the other characters in the novel engage. Whether as the international brands and products placed throughout the narrative (the cars in particular are often identified by make and originate from around the world) or Harry’s own cultural reference points, the impact is to construct an environment within which international connections are normalized. Mimicking both the high espionage ambience of Bond movies, but also the ways in which our own international travel, or, indeed, consumerized day-to-day high street journeys, are negotiated via corridors of global brands, destinations and suggestions, Hole’s persona and the import of the crime are co-constructed within a recognizably broader social arena than the city of Oslo and its political concerns. A passage involving a couple of minor characters in the novel, albeit a crucial one in that it is the first firm indication that Bellman is not all he seems, shows just how far Nesbø goes in addressing his international readership: The man beneath the shelf was Bent Nordbø. He had John Gielgud’s superior appearance, John Major’s panoramic glasses and Larry King’s braces. Roger had heard that Nordbø read only the New York Times, Financial Times, Guardian, China Daily, Süddeutsche Zeitung, El Pais and Le Monde, although he did read them every day. He might take it into his head to flick through Pravda and the Slovenian Dnevnik,

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but he insisted that ‘East European languages are so heavy on the eye’. (Nesbø 2011 [2009]: 473) As if to underline the series’ growing local/global dichotomy which will marble the later novels, Hole is positioned at the novel’s conclusion, with a foot in each camp. The formal ending of the novel sees him, as is often the case, high on a hillside taking refuge in the company of his childhood friend, Øystein, as he takes stock of the physical and emotional damage he has sustained. Within the remit of his links to the community, Hole, the (impossible) detective who fixes society, is left counting the cost to himself and wishing for ‘an armoured heart’ (a direct translation of the novel’s Norwegian title, Panserhjerte). However, as hinted in the previous chapter when he is served glass noodles flown directly from his favourite Hong Kong cafe in an Oslo restaurant, the epilogue sees him back where he began, maintaining the distance and anonymity of the Happy Valley racecourse where ‘those without hope, those without, the lucky and the unlucky […] went to have their dreams fulfilled [or] purely to dream’ (Nesbø 2011 [2009]: 739). Oslo blues But of course, as the saying goes, ‘he’ll be back’, and towards the start of Phantom, the next in the series (and now both original and English translation publications are in track), Hole is found checking in to Oslo’s Hotel Leon, in his suit bought from a Punjabi tailor on Hong Kong’s international thoroughfare Nathan Road. Once more, or even more so than in the opening to The Bat, his identity is not easily ascertainable: indeed now he struggles to contextualize himself within the expected rubrics of the guest registration form. The global and the local collide once more though, as the intricate plotting of the novel has already commenced prior to his arrival in its pages, and the juxtaposition of the rat’s-eye view from Oslo’s sewers with the shadowy dealings of the international airline pilot Tord Schultz, who will drift through the interstices of its storylines, has begun. Hole’s first perspective is one that brings these dimensions together, as he hangs up his suit and looks down from his second-floor window: ‘[He] looked straight down onto an open skip and recognised the sweet smell of rubbish rising forth. He spat and heard it hit the paper in the bin’ (Nesbø 2012 [2011]: 23–24). And, if the action in Phantom unravels within the city confines of Oslo, its origins and ramifications are as globalized as in novels which see Hole travel abroad. In particular, the drug barons peddling ‘violin’, with tentacles spreading across Norwegian society, bring with them the legacies and back stories of the collapsing Soviet empire, and these, together with the hands-on control exercised by the top echelons of Oslo’s political establishment in how their enterprise is managed and protected, result in another intensely globalized set of dilemmas for the detective to unpick. Whether in dealing with the street-level violence that delimits the lives of the lowest-level runners or describing

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the opulence and corruption of the oligarchs, the ‘sweet smell of rubbish’ throughout this novel is positioned as both local and global, to the extent that the bounds and boundaries of each are blurred. Indeed, the central plot device, whereby the dealers are locatable by the Arsenal football shirts they wear, comments ironically on the interconnectedness of Premier League ownership, club fan bases and consumer demand. Again, it is through his ability to piece together this global jigsaw that Hole makes progress as he sifts through the clues. Importantly too though, the network also draws in his surrogate son, Oleg, both within the evolving plot and culturally, as it threatens to unravel the tenuous familial resolutions that Hole is attempting to bring together. The personal and the public are one, once more, and both are global. In his comparison of how detective narratives in France and Australia make sense of the worlds in which they are set, Alistair Rolls (2009) points out that both deploy a sense of ‘otherness’ as a way of situating and contextualizing the dynamics of national ordering and re-ordering that the stories and their resolutions undertake. He proposes a model whereby ‘nations construct their own identities in relation to the world not in isolation from it’ (Rolls, 2009: 43, original emphasis.). For a Norwegian readership, but equally for the global market that Nesbø has gone on to address, Hole’s persona operates within this dynamic, as a radical other, at the same time deeply embedded within the local cultural context. However the meanings and messages that those readers glean from the series, rather than static stereotypes, are always evolving. As Rolls goes on to explain: This is a (national and textual) difference based on movement (transnational and intertextual), in which otherness is always already built into the notion of self, and interconnectedness is presupposed […] The logistics of the crime itself, after all, becomes one with the narrative development of the detective story. (Rolls 2009: 43) Larded with violence The ‘fluid models of exchange’ which Rolls sees as typifying the transactional allegories of the detective genre can be applied to the ways that readers navigate Hole’s international perspective, and, in particular, provide a way of contextualizing those elements of the series which could otherwise be dismissed as uninformed, crass or unsavoury. In particular, this approach provides an alternative way of approaching the series to Nesbø’s much criticized use of graphic violence, misogyny and caricatural plots. See, for example, fellow crime writer Val McDermid’s account of the Nesbø novel, not in the Harry Hole series, Sønnen/The Son (2014), where she dismisses its literary merit, not only for the fact that it remains ‘larded with violence’ but for its lack of ‘understanding of what motivates people’, resulting in a narrative that comes across as ‘overblown and preachy with the kind of faux-nobility with which Hollywood loves to invest its villains’ (McDermid 2014).

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McDermid’s comments, however justified in the general terms of literary critique, seem in other ways to miss one of the key points of the hardboiled or the noir, in that rather than aiming for psychological accuracy or verisimilitude, the characters (not least the figure of the detective) wear the stock characteristics of the genre on their sleeves. As self-conscious constructs, Hole and the villains he encounters deliberately exaggerate certain traits, but also trends, threats and evolving social fact, and it is the plot, or rather the plotting and our engagement with it, as Rolls indicates, that enacts a narrative transaction with the text (and its intertexts) that gives collective shape to how we situate ourselves and our values within that shifting context. Peter Brooks’s definition of narratology, as ‘how we understand the initiation and completion of an action; […] standard narrative sequences (stock stories, one might say); and […] the movement of a narrative through a state of disequilibrium to a final outcome that re-establishes order’ (Brooks 2006: 1), perhaps finds the epitome of its expression in the detective drama, in that there is a double imperative towards resolution, both of the plot itself and of the case to be solved. Within this ambit, extreme violence, together with misogyny and other forms of discrimination and hatred, while featured within detective stories, do so, in exaggerated forms, as part of the plot’s bid to represent the social disorder that must be eliminated, as well as to model the approaches, perspectives and contradictions that readers bring to bear on their communities. In Nesbø’s Harry Hole Thrillers, social change, and the communities it threatens, is international in nature; the scale and severity of the disorder that risks the Social Democratic dream at the same time all-pervasive and unpredictable. Always already at its core, Oslo is a city, as are all our cities, poised on the edges of the corruption and capitalism that corrode our social heart, and the terrors that rip apart our dreams. It takes a hero with an armoured heart and a global vantage point who, as if it were his superpower, transcends the ordinariness of our human engagements, to do all that one damaged soul, howsoever exaggerated, no matter how far beyond belief, can do; to put up the vestigial resistances in which we want to believe, if only for the duration of our holiday reading.  References Bergman, Kerstin (2014), ‘Beyond National Allegory: Europeanization in Swedish Crime Writer Arne Dahl’s Viskleken’, Clues, 32: 2, pp. 20–29. Brooks, Peter (2006), ‘Narrative Transactions – Does the Law Need a Narratology?’, Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, 18: 1, pp. 1–28. McDermid, Val (2014), ‘Review’, The Guardian, 15 May, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/ may/15/the-son-jo-nesbo-review. Accessed 15 January 2015. Nesbø, Jo (2011 [2009]), Panserhjerte/The Leopard (trans. Don Bartlett), London: Vintage. ––––– (2012 [1997]), Flaggermusmannen/The Bat (trans. Don Bartlett), London: Vintage. ––––– (2013), Politi/Police (trans. Don Bartlett), London: Vintage. Porsdam, Helle (1998), ‘“Embedding Rights within Relationships” – Gender, Law and Sara Paretsky’,

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American Studies, 29: 3, pp. 131–51. Rolls, Alistair (ed.) (2009), Mostly French: French (in) Detective Fiction, Oxford/Bern/Berlin/Brussels, Frankfurt am Main/New York/Wien: Peter Lang. G o F ur t h e r Novels The Harry Hole novels Nesbø, Jo (2013), Politi/Police (trans. Don Bartlett), London: Vintage. ––––– (2013 [1998]), Kakerlakkene/Cockroaches (trans. Don Bartlett), London: Vintage. ––––– (2012 [2011]), Gjenferd/Phantom (trans. Don Bartlett), London: Vintage. ––––– (2012 [1997]), Flaggermusmannen/The Bat (trans. Don Bartlett), London: Vintage. ––––– (2011 [2009]), Panserhjerte/The Leopard (trans. Don Bartlett), London: Vintage. ––––– (2010 [2007]), Snømannen/The Snowman (trans. Don Bartlett), London: Vintage. ––––– (2009 [2005]), Frelseren/The Redeemer (trans. Don Bartlett), London: Vintage. ––––– (2008 [2002]), Sorgenfri/Nemesis (trans. Don Bartlett), New York: HarperCollins. ––––– (2006 [2000]), Rødstrupe/The Redbreast (trans. Don Bartlett), New York: HarperCollins. ––––– (2005 [2003]), Marekors/The Devil’s Star (trans. Don Bartlett), New York: HarperCollins. Other novels Nesbø, Jo (2014), Sønnen/The Son (trans. Charlotte Barslund), London: Vintage. Dahl, Arne (2011) Viskleken [Chinese Whispers], Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Førlag. Books Forshaw, Barry (2012), Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, Basingstoke/ New York: Palgrave Macmillan. E x t r a c t s / E s s a y s /A r t i c l e s ‘Global Crime Fiction’ (2014), Clues, 32: 2. A special issue of the journal Clues devoted to global crime fiction. Websites Jo Nesbø: The Official Website, http://jonesbo.com/ Jo Nesbø [Wikipedia], http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Nesb%C3%B8

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c h i e f i n s p e c t o r Jav i e r Fa l c ó n Nationality: spanish / creator: Robert Wilson Stewart King

‘Do you want to know what’s under there?’ asked El Zurdo. ‘I think so.’ ‘You don’t sound so sure.’ ‘You think you want to know until you find out what it is.’ – Robert Wilson, The Blind Man of Seville Seeing Seville Chief Inspector Javier Falcón of the Seville Grupo de Homicidios is different from the other non-Anglo American detectives in this collection. Unlike Maigret, Beck, Montalbano, Lund, Wallander and others, the Spanish police officer is the creation of a British author, Robert Wilson, who has made a career out of writing about crimes that occur far from his native shores. Indeed, ten of his twelve novels published to date are located abroad: the Bruce Medway series (1995–1998) is set in West Africa; Portugal is the site of two novels, including A Small Death in Lisbon (1999), winner of the CWA Gold Dagger and the International Deutsche Krimi Prize, and The Company of Strangers (2001); and Seville provides the setting for the Javier Falcón quartet, consisting of The Blind Man of Seville (2003), The Silent and the Damned (2004; US title: The Vanished Hands), The Hidden Assassins (2006) and The Ignorance of Blood (2009). It was only in 2013 with Capital Punishment, the first of a new series featuring Charles Boxer, that Wilson situated a novel in the United Kingdom. Since Edgar Allan Poe located his mysteries in Paris with a French investigator, there has long been a fascination with the foreign in anglophone crime fiction. Indeed, foreign settings and characters have become so prevalent that from Italy to India, Botswana to Belize, Tangier to Thailand, there are few parts of the world that have escaped anglophone crime writers. This internationalization is to some degree the result of commercial pressures, as writers seek to create protagonists who stand out in the very crowded crime fiction marketplace. Readers, however, may have motivations that are

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less commercial and perhaps more cultural, as crime fiction from around the world has become ‘a new form of travel writing’ (Anderson, Miranda and Pezzotti 2012: 1), the aim of which is to reveal the culture and the society of the place in which the crime is committed. Like travel writing, crime fiction set in foreign locales promises to satisfy the traveller’s desire to step off the well-beaten tourist path by providing readers an authentic cultural experience via the revelation of aspects that are not immediately obvious to, or necessarily understood by, outsiders. As the title of the first novel in the Falcón quartet – The Blind Man of Seville – suggests, site and sight (or lack thereof) are closely linked, as Wilson seeks to open his readers’ eyes to the Seville hidden behind the romantic, tourist images of the Andalusian capital. With this in mind, this chapter analyses the representation of foreign spaces in the novels. Here, my aim is not to criticize Wilson for any misrepresentations, clichés, stereotypes or cultural ‘howlers’ that may appear. Instead, the chapter is interested in examining the possible significance for an anglophone readership of setting a crime novel in a foreign locale, in this case Seville. In her reflections on crime fiction, the late P. D. James advises ‘British writers who look to a foreign country for their setting’ to do their homework: they ‘need not only a sensitive response to the country’s topography, speech and people, but a knowledge of its social structure including the criminal justice system’ (2009: 116–17). The sort of research that James expects is essential to establishing the author’s credibility as a cultural mediator between readers and the society represented in the text. The need to gain the reader’s trust marks the difference between novels ‘written by natives of the region’ where they are set and the viewpoint of outsiders, like Wilson, who writes directly in English (King and Winks 1997: 2). There is no doubting the authenticity of the local writer. The foreign name of the author and the words ‘translated from…’ grant automatic cultural legitimacy to the text. In the case of authors like Wilson who write about crimes in foreign climes, the reader has to be won over, convinced that the culture, society and the place represented in the novel is accurate. Claiming authenticity Readers who do not skip over the acknowledgements that appear at the beginning of The Blind Man of Seville will encounter Wilson’s first attempt to claim authenticity. Here he acknowledges ‘Magistrado Juez Decano de Sevilla Andrés Palacios, los fiscales de Sevilla and the Inspector Jefe del Grupo de Homicidios Simon Bernard Espinosa’ who helped him ‘to find out how the police and the judiciary worked’ as well as friends who ‘have decanted, consciously and inadvertently, massive amounts of information about Spain, Andalucía and Seville’ (Wilson 2003: vii). The same applies to the acknowledgements in the subsequent novels. In The Hidden Assassins (2007), for example, when Moroccan characters come to prominence, Wilson acknowledges that the ‘book would

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have been impossible without extensive research in Morocco, especially to see how all levels of Moroccan society are reacting to the friction between Islam and the West’ and he again thanks locals, in this case Moroccans, for giving him insight into ‘the Arab world’s point of view’ (2007b). Wilson’s acknowledgements, then, do more than just thank his sources; they are also a first step towards establishing the cultural legitimacy that is often reserved exclusively for local writers. Crime fiction set in foreign countries, especially those novels that feature a local investigator, offer an implicit promise of discovering a concealed, but crucial aspect of the society represented. In the Falcón quartet, this promise is implied on the book covers, each of which follows a similar pattern. In addition to the author’s name, the book title, and the obligatory critical endorsement from reviewers, the quartet’s covers show a slightly out-of-focus figure, either walking or running, near recognizable Seville landmarks: the ancient Moorish palace, the Alcázar, in The Blind Man of Seville; and the cathedral in The Hidden Assassins and The Ignorance of Blood. The Silent and the Damned is the only cover that omits an obvious landmark, instead offering readers a street of whitewashed walls common to many towns, villages and cities of southern Spain. In each image, moreover, part of the cityscape is shrouded in darkness or shadow, suggestive of the sol y sombra, sun and shade, light and darkness, that are often seen as the two sides of Spain and the so-called Spanish character, and which also point to the crime genre’s fascination with good and evil, obfuscation and revelation. Furthermore, the images feature either a doorway or an archway through which the reader will presumably be taken. This cover art is important because, as Philippe Lejeune argues, ‘the fringe of the printed text in reality controls one’s whole reading of the text’ (quoted in Genette 1997: 2). In addition to branding them as ‘Robert Wilson’ novels, the repetition of images on the quartet’s covers creates an expectation that the unknown figure(s) will lead readers out from the darkness into the light of the foreign setting. Our guide to Seville is Inspector Jefe del Grupo de Homicidios, Javier Falcón. Born in Tangier, Falcón is 45 years old at the beginning of the quartet and 50 at its conclusion. He’s been a policeman for over twenty years, having worked in Barcelona, Zaragoza and Madrid, before returning to Seville to care for his ill, now deceased, father, a famous painter in whose ramshackle and run-down mansion in Seville’s central Calle Bailén Falcón lives. He is divorced and in the first novel at least he obsesses about his ex-wife, Inés, a successful lawyer, who he stalks on occasion. In later novels, however, he develops a complicated relationship with Consuelo Jiménez, the widow of the quartet’s first victim. Falcón has few friends, but for those he does have, like Yacoub Diouri, a Spanish/Moroccan fashion designer, he would do anything – perhaps even kill. Initially, the Inspector Jefe appears to be a stereotype of the Holmesian rationalist detective, for whom policing is ‘unemotional work’ (Wilson 2003: 12). He keeps his distance from those around him and this influences his detective practice, which in his own words should be ‘Cold. Objective. Dispassionate’ (2003: 12), each single-word

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sentence emphasizing its importance to him. It’s no surprise that his colleagues call him ‘El Legarto [sic]. The Lizard’ behind his back (2003: 13). Falcón’s emotional distance carries over to everyday social interactions with his fellow sevillanos, whose warmth, gaiety and superficiality he does not share. Indeed, he recognizes on several occasions the truth to his ex-wife’s accusation that he’s cold and has no heart (2003: 13). Falcón’s self-image and the image others have of him hide a more complex characterization, however. He was attracted to police work through the highly romanticized image ‘of the individual struggle against the ranged forces of evil’ peddled in American crime films (Wilson 2003: 260). Like his cinematographic heroes, Falcón refuses to abandon politically sensitive lines of inquiry and he often makes decisions that are unpopular with his superiors and their political masters. His interviewing style in particular is more intuitive than scientific. One suspect compares him to the American television detective, Columbo, played by Peter Falk, as Falcón too raises questions that are wide-ranging and often apparently unrelated to the cases, but which provide a great deal of insight into the crimes investigated (Wilson 2007a: 189). Furthermore, as the quartet develops Falcón sheds his cold, dispassionate skin: he replaces his ‘trademark suit’ and tie for chinos and open-necked shirts (2007a: 9), and becomes impassioned and emotional, such as when he promises the Seville public in a TV interview that he will bring the perpetrators of a terrorist attack to justice, ‘even if it takes the rest of my career’ (2007b: 615). Assisting him in his investigations is the Seville homicide team: José Luis Ramírez, who, jealous that Falcón had been given the job that he felt belonged to him, initially undermines his boss; Cristina Ferrera, an ex-nun and first female police homicide officer; the largely unimaginative Emilio Pérez; and other police characters of lesser importance. Unlike many fictional police detectives, Falcón has a very supportive and politically astute boss, Comisario Lobo. Also playing a major role in many of the investigations is the egotistical and highly competitive Esteban Calderón, a ‘very young Juez de Guardia, the duty judge’ (Wilson 2003: 6), who is in a relationship with Falcón’s ex-wife. As the quartet progresses, he also relies on the – occasionally unwelcome – aid of the Spanish secret service and a Seville-based CIA operative, Mark Flowers. Critics have noted that for readers in search of an explanation behind the crime, the detective mediates the physical, social and cultural world represented in the text, acting as a guide ‘through uncharted areas of modern society’ (McCracken 1998: 63). If the detective helps readers to understand the world in which they live, then it is worth asking what does Seville – a city of approximately 700,000 inhabitants – offer anglophone readers, for many of whom the city is little more than a holiday destination? In some ways, the quartet satisfies a desire to show readers that there is ‘more to Spain than the Costa del Sol’ (Wilson 2003: 35). It does this by representing a more complex society than the fun-loving, sun-drenched image of the picture postcard. It’s more than that, however. If one of the motivations for travel is that it allows tourists to temporarily

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escape their lives at home, the Falcón quartet does not provide a relaxing holiday away from home. As will be discussed below, particularly in the later novels, Wilson reveals the ties that connect Spain, criminality and the anglophone reader. As P. D. James identifies, sensitivity to place is a crucial skill for crime writers who set their novels abroad. In the quartet, Seville is introduced from the first scene in which Falcón appears, thus linking the detective directly to the urban space. Having been alerted to the discovery of Jiménez’s body, the Spanish detective eased his car out of the massive house that belonged to his father on Calle Bailén […,] entered the square in front of the Museo de Bellas Artes […] and drove down to the Guadalquivir River and the avenue of trees along the Paseo de Cristóbal Colón. He thought he might be approaching contentment as he passed by the red doors of the Puerta del Príncipe in the baroque façade of the Plaza de Toros, La Maestranza, which was about to see the first bullfights in the week leading up to the Feria de Abril. (Wilson 2003: 5) Falcón’s route can be easily charted on a map, but the description of the avenue of trees, the red door and the baroque facade of the bullring provides the specificity that crime fiction readers expect of investigations that take place in foreign locations. Wilson’s claim to street-level knowledge is reinforced in a short YouTube video made to coincide with the release of Sky Atlantic’s adaptations of the first two novels. In the video, Wilson takes the audience on a tour of the major sites where the action occurs, explaining their significance for those unfamiliar with Seville (Wilson 2012). The quartet, however, offers more than just an intimate knowledge of the city’s topography. It also promises to uncover the ‘real’ Seville, the one hidden by touristic stereotypes of Andalusian festivities. Vision as metaphor Seeing and its opposite, blindness, are major metaphors of the quartet. The opening passage of The Blind Man of Seville sets up the conflict between the two. The novel begins with the encounter between the criminal and his first victim: ‘“You have to look,” said the voice. But he couldn’t look’ (Wilson 2003: 1). The voice belongs to the criminal and the third-person pronoun is that of the victim, Raúl Jiménez, a successful restaurateur and businessman, who is tied to a chair in front of a television which projects the very images he does not want to confront. The criminal pushes him: ‘I’m going to ask you to try again […] to try to see. But you must look first. There’s no seeing without looking’ (Wilson 2003: 1, original emphasis). When Jiménez refuses to look, the criminal removes his eyelids with a scalpel, leaving him no choice but to confront the disturbing images. This scene sets the tone for the rest of

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the book and, indeed, the quartet. Readers realize that characters will be forced to see things that they would rather avoid. What they do not necessarily know at this stage is that Wilson is like the criminal and the readers are his victims; he too will force them to confront unpleasant realities. To understand Seville is to see it. It is to look past the stereotypes. Falcón’s father, Francisco, described the city as having two smells – orange blossom and horse shit (Wilson 2003: 119) – and he attributed his later financial success to being able to capture the former in a number of clichéd streetscapes which the rich and famous purchased to hang in their houses and businesses. The ‘orange blossom’ Seville that readers perhaps expect is present in the quartet in the city’s famous Semana Santa festivities with its weeping Virgins carried aloft by hooded penitents, toreros and bullfights, tapas and celebrations at all hours of the night, and so forth. Nevertheless, to Wilson’s credit the stereotype is only ever a part of a broader, more complex reality. Like his father, Falcón knows there is another side to Seville, one ‘with its whores and grunt-driven clients, its junkies chasing spear-tailed oblivion’ and, of course, its violent crimes which he must solve (Wilson 2003: 141). As part of the investigations, and at times alongside them, Wilson reveals many aspects of Spanish society, culture and history. In The Blind Man of Seville, for example, he educates readers about contemporary Spanish history when Falcón discovers the frank diaries kept by his father who, before establishing himself as an artist, was a Spanish legionnaire who fought for Franco during the Civil War and for the Nazis on the Russian Front. He also worked as a smuggler and violent stand-over merchant in Tangier, where Falcón was born. The other three novels reveal aspects of the country’s history of tourism, its sex industry with ‘four hundred thousand prostitutes’ who ‘generate eighteen billion euros’ worth of business’ annually (Wilson 2009: 29), and the entrenched corruption of the construction industry on the Costa del Sol and in Seville itself. Although centred on Seville, with Seville-based crimes and detectives, the quartet is not an example of what in Spanish literature is known as costumbrismo, that is, novels which seek to represent the customs, traditions, values and way of life of particular regions of the country. Indeed, Wilson resists limiting the action, motives and consequences of crime to purely local, Spanish conditions. Although small, Seville is not isolated or all that different from the rest of the world. As Comisario Lobo, Falcón’s boss, tells him, crime, corruption and the need to preserve political institutions are ‘not something peculiar to Spain […]. It’s happening all over the world’ (2007a: 469). In the quartet, Wilson represents Seville as firmly connected to the increasingly international, globalized world. In this representation, Wilson draws on Seville’s historical role as a crucible of cultures, a place where Christians, Muslims and Jews came into contact and, often, conflict. It was also a major world centre, the port from which Spanish galleons set out for and returned from the New World. As the novels progress, the local elements give way

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to increasing international themes. For example, The Silent and the Damned, with an ex-Chilean torturer and CIA agents, makes connections between the overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende on 11 September 1973 and the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme in 1986, while also charting the increasing influence of the Russian Mafia throughout Europe. In The Hidden Assassins the bombing of a mosque and apartment building uncovers a complex web of Islamic terrorism, shady right-wing Catholic organizations, political chicanery, international capitalism, and a plot to blow up London’s Gherkin tower. Finally, The Ignorance of Blood ties all these themes together, as Falcón and his team attempt to bring the perpetrators of the bomb attack on the Seville mosque and apartment building to justice. Crises of conscience In his characterization of Falcón, Wilson states he ‘had always been frustrated by series characters who never seemed to change and I determined that Javier would be a different man by the end of Book Four’ (Pierce 2013). The greatest change, however, occurs between the first and second instalments of the quartet. In The Blind Man of Seville Falcón undergoes a profound crisis when the criminal forces him to see things he would rather not face. Indeed, the search for the criminal raises unexpected emotions and repressed memories, becoming personal when Falcón realizes that there is a connection between the murdered businessman and the detective’s artist father. The discoveries undermine Falcón’s sense of himself and he is forced to seek help from Alicia Aguado, a blind psychologist who, like an ancient seer, teaches him to see himself and the world more clearly. Falcón is not the only person who is transformed by what he sees. So too, potentially, are readers. Wilson does not allow his readers to remain distant, safe in the knowledge that their lives are far removed from the Spain represented in the quartet. Indeed, the novels collapse the distance between anglophone readers and Falcón’s world through the exposé into the Russian Mafia from the Costa del Sol to Seville and beyond. At different times, the novels reveal different aspects of their activities, from human trafficking to paedophile rings to money laundering via the construction industry and, of course, to drugs. However, it is only towards the end of the final novel that Wilson combines these scattered elements into a coherent, depressing picture of the reality behind the modern tourist industry. In this passage, Consuelo makes a promise never to visit the Costa del Sol again because Falcón has shown her that

almost every apartment building, every development, every golf course, marina, fun park, casino – every source of recreation for visiting tourists is built on the profit from human misery. Hundreds of thousands of girls being forced to work

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in the puti clubs. Hundreds of thousands of addicts sticking themselves with needles. Hundreds of thousands of brainless, decadent fools snorting white powder up their noses so that they can dance and fuck all night long. […] It makes me sick and I’m not going to do it anymore. (Wilson 2009: 316) To see is to know and throughout the quartet knowledge is confronting. Just as the criminal in The Blind Man of Seville toys with Falcón, giving him various ‘sight lessons’, so too does Wilson play with his readers. As Falcón’s investigations progress, Wilson gradually reveals unpleasant truths to the point that, like in the epigraph with which this chapter begins, readers are unsure whether they really want to know what lies hidden behind their image of the country. When Wilson leads his readers to see the sordid reality that the tourism industry conceals, he presents them with a moral dilemma. Do they close their eyes to an industry predicated on human suffering and the exploitation of others so that they can enjoy several weeks of sun, sand and sangría? Or do they, like Consuelo, take a stand? As readers discover, the choice between seeing or ignoring a problem is not one for the characters alone. As a form of world literature (King 2014), whether in translation – like the novels of Camilleri, Mankell and Simenon – or written in English – like the works of Michael Dibdin, H. R. F. Keating and Wilson – the crime genre offers readers a window onto the world. In the Falcón quartet, the foreign culture and society that readers encounter is not a distant one which they can view from afar. Instead, Seville acts as a ‘transcultural contact zone’ in which readers negotiate notions of self and other (Pratt 1992: 4). The quartet takes readers on a journey beyond the stereotypes, showing them a side to the city that is often unseen by tourists. When Seville is stripped of its exoticness, the perceived differences between anglophone readers and the Spanish subject matter of the novels collapses. Indeed, readers discover that the issues that sevillanos have to deal with are all too familiar, such as the insidious influence of the Russian Mafia, the threat of Islamist terrorism, and moral panics manipulated by right-wing political parties. While readers do learn to see Seville and Spain in a new light, it is to Wilson’s credit as a writer that the novels resist the localizing tendency of many crime novels set in foreign locales written by outsiders. While Seville is the scene where the multiple murders and other assorted crimes take place, these crimes only make sense when the lens pans back to reveal a much larger and more complex world. To see Seville is to see the world and one’s place within it.  References Anderson, Jean, Miranda, Carolina and Pezzotti, Barbara (2012), ‘Introduction: The Foreign in International Crime Fiction: Transcultural Representations’, in Jean Anderson, Carolina Miranda and Barbara Pezzotti (eds), The Foreign in International Crime Fiction: Transcultural

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Representations, London: Continuum, pp. 1–6. Genette, Gérard (1997), Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (trans. Jane E. Lewin), Cambridge: CUP. James, P. D. (2009), Talking about Detective Fiction, London: Faber & Faber. King, Nina and Winks, Robin (1997), Crimes of the Scene: A Mystery Novel Guide for the International Traveler, New York: St Martin’s Press. King, Stewart (2014), ‘Crime Fiction as World Literature’, Clues: A Journal of Detection, 32: 2, pp. 8–19. McCracken, Scott (1998), Pulp: Reading Popular Fiction, Manchester: MUP. Pierce, J. Kingston (2013), ‘The Rap Sheet: From Travel Writing to Torment Making’, http:// therapsheet.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/from-travel-writing-to-torment-making.html. Accessed 31 October 2014. Pratt, Mary Louise (1992), Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London/New York: Routledge. Wilson, Robert (2003), The Blind Man of Seville, London: Harper Collins. ––––– (2007 [2004]), The Silent and the Damned, London: Harper Collins. ––––– (2007 [2006]), The Hidden Assassins, London: Harper Collins. ––––– (2009), The Ignorance of Blood, London: Harper Collins. ––––– (2012), ‘Robert Wilson’s Falcon Tour of Seville’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoDTZIduTE. Accessed 28 December 2014. G o F ur t h e r Novels The Javier Falcón novels Wilson, Robert (2009), The Ignorance of Blood, London: Harper Collins. ––––– (2007 [2006]), The Hidden Assassins, London: Harper Collins. ––––– (2007 [2004]), The Silent and the Damned, London: Harper Collins. ––––– (2003), The Blind Man of Seville, London: Harper Collins. Non-series novels Wilson, Robert, (2001), The Company of Strangers, London: Harper. ––––– (1999), A Small Death in Lisbon, London: Harper.

The Bruce Medway novels ––––– (1998), A Darkening Stain, London: Harper. ––––– (1997), Blood is Dirt, London: Harper. ––––– (1996), The Big Killing, London: Harper. ––––– (1995), Instruments of Darkness, London: Harper. The Charlie Boxer novels ––––– (2015), Stealing People, London: Orion.

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––––– (2014), You Will Never Find Me, London: Orion. ––––– (2013), Capital Punishment, London: Orion. Television Falcón (2012, UK: Mammoth Screen). Websites The Official Website of Gold Dagger Winning Author Robert Wilson, http://www.robert-wilson.eu/ index.htm

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detectives Sarah Lund & Saga Norén Nationality: Danish/Swedish creators: Søren Sveistrup & Hans Rosenfeldt Jacky Collins

Through a glass darkly In her ‘Gender and Geography in Contemporary Scandinavian Television Crime Fiction’ (2011), Karen Klitgaard Polvsen observes that ‘Scandinavian crime fiction on television has become popular inside and outside the region’, explaining that ‘[i]n most Scandinavian countries, the nationally produced crime series have more viewers than any other fiction’ (2011: 89). Within this context, and coinciding with the release of the highly acclaimed film adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Nils Arden Oplev, 2009) and its sequels, featuring the striking Lisbeth Salander, two further intriguing female deliverers of justice emerged from the popular Scandinavian crime drama (or Nordic Noir) genre. TV audiences were introduced first to the brooding, determined Danish detective Sarah Lund (Sofie Gråbøl) in Forbrydelsen/The Killing (Søren Sveistrup, DR1, 2007–12), followed by her complex Swedish counterpart Saga Norén (Sofia Helin) in Broen/Bron/The Bridge (Hans Rosenfeldt, SVT1/DR1, 2011–ongoing). From the outset, Søren Sveistrup, writer and producer of Dansk Radio’s The Killing, decided that little would be known or subsequently revealed about the main protagonist’s background (Novrup Redvall 2013: 175). This dearth of information operates to prevent the audience gaining insight or signposting as to why Lund appears incapable of functioning as a responsible mother to her son, or as a loving and considerate daughter to her long-suffering mother. In contrast to this element of mystery and her taciturn nature (inspired apparently by the classic Clint Eastwood filmic personae), there is no doubt about the detective’s single-mindedness and devotion to pursue the criminal investigation, or her commitment to the victim and the victim’s family. Displaying the same level of dedication to duty, Hans Rosenfeldt’s compelling and complicated Saga Norén from the Swedish/Danish co-production hit TV series The Bridge is at once located within the establishment and, due to her distinct personality traits, is placed firmly at the margins of the conventional. As the series progresses, we witness the manner in which she inhabits these dual sites. On the one hand she strug-

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gles to interact with and relate to those around her. On the other, however, despite a complete absence of traditional social skills, Saga is portrayed as an instinctive, incisive and highly skilled detective. Indeed, it could be argued that this character serves as revelation to the fact that difference need be no impediment to professional effectiveness and investigative success. With this in mind, this chapter will explore the notion of dysfunction as a prerequisite for the female police protagonist of Scandinavian crime drama and what this implies for the representation of female identity in this context. Further, a detailed examination of Sarah and Saga’s interactions with colleagues, victims and suspects, as well as with those closest to them, will be offered with a view to demonstrating how these disruptive characters, as with all dysfunctional detectives, serve as a conduit to tell us about the world and ourselves. Finally the discussion will consider the extent to which the relationship between Sarah Lund and her Swedish boyfriend, and Saga’s interaction with her Copenhagen counterpart, Martin Rhode (Kim Bodnia), can be seen to embody respective national stereotypes and the cultural differences that exist between Denmark and Sweden, despite or perhaps because of shared historical and close geographical links. Points of departure The professional setting provides a fitting point of departure, since it is here that the viewer gains perhaps the most insight into the character of the detective. To date much has been written on the ever-increasing number of lead female characters in TV crime dramas and their prevailing struggle to succeed and progress in a typical misogynistic professional context. However, analysis of Lund and Norén’s interaction with both colleagues and superiors, as well as with victims and perpetrators, will demonstrate how they may be said to embody a shift in the conceptualization of the female detective. Throughout the course of the investigation Lund is frequently shown at odds with her male colleagues, who question her instinctual judgement. These negative experiences are inevitably reminiscent of those to which many earlier fictional female police officers have been subject, as they endeavour to carve a career in what could still be understood as an enduring patriarchal institution, regardless of the geographical setting of the TV series or film. However, contrary to this line of thought, no derogatory comments are made regarding her gender; indeed, as Sue Turnbull emphasizes ‘Lund’s status as a female detective is never questioned’ (2014: 180, original emphasis). Where the portrayal of this female police detective does patently differ from many of her film and TV predecessors from the outset is in her appearance – no make-up, no power dressing, no high heels. First impressions of Sarah Lund would therefore suggest that she has no desire to fit in with or seek the approval of those around her. This is played out in her subversive approach to her work; her maverick attitude is a constant as she wilfully

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flouts procedure in her pursuance of the killer, an attitude that ultimately results in demotion at the end of the first series. It would appear incongruous, then, that at the start of the final third series, this fractious outsider appears to have reached a state of acquiescence, her career on a more stable and conventional footing. Previous errors and risk-taking that have had serious consequences are put behind her and, having completed 25 years in the police force, Lund conveys an air of detachment. She appears more than ready to leave behind the absorbing detective work that has been her raison d’être, for an altogether more anodyne desk job in Operative Planning and Analysis. Nevertheless, at the very moment she is about to make this career move, given her nature she is inevitably drawn back into the world of active investigation; for at the core of this law enforcement officer is the need to tackle crime and grapple with the forces of evil, even when that means professional sacrifice. Across the Øresund Bridge Although she is also an outsider, the experience of Saga Norén (in The Bridge) is distinct from that of Lund’s, since it is her unique psychological make-up that gives rise to tensions and even discrimination within the professional setting. On numerous occasions Saga’s inability to empathize with others and her lack of social skills means she finds herself in situations where a sense of humour or irony – attributes she lacks – would doubtless facilitate more effective working relations with colleagues. This sense of difference is evidenced during a coffee break with her fellow officers when, unable to make small talk, she inappropriately tells them, ‘I got my period today’ (‘Episode 8’ 2011). Likewise, over the course of an investigation, there are times when a sympathetic approach would be more appropriate and indeed useful; Saga struggles with this aspect, constantly pushing victims for information about the perpetrator, even when they are distraught or hospitalized in critical condition – the detective here disrupting the notion of the female officer having ‘the gentle touch’. Nevertheless it is important to note that these social shortcomings in no way hinder Saga from carrying out her investigative duties. In fact, the opposite appears to be true since, unencumbered by social niceties and for the most part free from any form of personal life, she is able to focus more intensely on the case than her colleagues. She possesses a dogged determination that makes it impossible for her to abandon a line of inquiry or ignore a hunch once an investigation is underway. Saga’s devotion to duty is perfectly demonstrated in her stubborn refusal to remain in hospital after receiving treatment for gunshot wounds, and despite doctor’s orders, preferring to return to police duty as the team strives to locate Martin’s son, August, who has been kidnapped. This intensity and inability to operate outside the rules conversely means that Saga is compelled to follow procedure to the letter, even when stepping beyond these

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boundaries would expedite an investigation. As she carefully points out to her Danish colleague when he asks if there are any unwritten laws she is willing to break, unwavering in her response she declares, ‘I’m unaware of any such laws’ (‘Episode 5’ 2011). Indeed, the manner in which she always introduces herself – Saga Norén, ‘Länskrim, Malmö’ (Saga Norén, Malmö County Police) – would suggest an inability to function or even exist beyond this professional identity. With all her strengths and weaknesses, it is Martin who perhaps best sums up his Swedish partner’s idiosyncrasy to his wife when he remarks, ‘[s]he’s different […] [s]he drives me mad sometimes, but there’s something about her. We work well together’ (‘Episode 5’ 2011). Flaws and failings found in fictional female detectives have often been ascribed to their femaleness, and although Turnbull maintains that ‘gender continues to matter in the case of crime’ (2014: 84), I would argue that the success these detectives achieve in solving crimes and thwarting lawbreakers serves to remove any negativity linked to gender. Thus the audience begins to glimpse at how it might be possible to portray the dysfunctional detective free from previous derogatory stereotyping. Personal dysfunction If, as suggested above, these female protagonists prove themselves successful in the fight against crime – and therefore any inadequacy cannot be said to undermine their ability to carry out their duties – then perhaps an examination of the personal side of their lives is invited in order to consider more closely the nature of their dysfunction. Although employed as part of a diverse police force, often missing from the life of the female Scandinavian film and TV sleuth (such as Irene Huss, Katrine Ries Jensen, Jasmina El-Murad) is a close, supportive female colleague or friend with whom she shares her problems, difficulties and foibles; and in this regard, Lund and Norén are no exception. Consequently to analyse how these law-enforcement officers interact on a personal level, it is necessary to observe their dealings with family members – or, in Norén’s case, with her male work partner with whom she often discusses private matters, as well as interaction with sometime sexual partners. It is the proposed move to Sweden that first serves to illustrate Lund’s inability to function successfully with those who are supposedly closest to her. In the first scene between her and her son, where they discuss travel details, it is evident that in making the arrangements she has failed to take into account his social commitments, having forgotten that he has a birthday party coming up. In the same conversation, she also uses the wrong name for the ice hockey team he plays for in Copenhagen. Instances of this seeming disinterest or even neglect recur throughout the series, Lund’s selfless mother frequently being expected to perform the role of Mark’s primary caregiver. Lund’s son is not the only one who feels abandoned; her boyfriend Bengt’s frequent phone calls and constant pleading for her to follow him to Sweden appear to have little if any effect.

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Indeed, as if to highlight Lund’s inability to take into account the feelings of others, when Bengt confronts her while on duty with an ultimatum of job or relationship, her response is a blank stare – for her there is no choice, the professional always usurping the personal. In the final series Lund’s problematic relationship with her son is turned on its head when, in response to her attempt to reach out to him, Mark cancels on his mother at the last minute, explaining that he and his girlfriend are unable to come over for supper due to ill health. Lund repeatedly tries to reschedule, but her son is either unable or unwilling to find time. Nevertheless, any disappointment she may experience at this rejection is quickly set aside, the crime scene photographs she has taken home with her proving too great a distraction, and the professional once more subsuming the personal. In fact by the end of the trilogy, despite various attempts on Lund’s part to redress her shortcomings as partner, mother and daughter, the final (unethical) action she takes in the name of justice – spoiler alert – executing the perpetrator, instead of arresting him – means she must ultimately renounce family ties and flee Denmark to a life of anonymity. The bleak conclusion to The Killing could thus be read as a warning to those women who prioritize the pull of professional duty over familial responsibility. When considering female characters in action films, Yvonne Tasker suggests that ‘[t]he foregrounding of romantic/sexual possibilities may be a “problem” since it potentially halts the action and generates vulnerability’ (1998: 75). It is notable therefore how the creators of The Bridge avoid falling into this trap by devising a lead character whose emotional and psychological make-up sits outside stereotypical female representations. Thus, Saga Norén is not distracted by falling for a colleague, nor does she lose herself in romance. On the contrary, interactions with Martin and her tentative, yet sincere attempts to engage in a stable, intimate relationship, serve to bring this detective’s personal dysfunction to the fore, whilst at the same time simply serving as backdrop to the constancy of her preoccupation with the job at hand. Further, while this profound incapacity to relate easily to others defines Norén as an outsider, it also allows for an exploration of issues often avoided by society as taboo or problematic. Although, given their apposite personal traits and value systems, their initial contact generates considerable tensions – Martin ignoring correct procedure, for instance, by allowing an ambulance through the police cordon, much to Norén’s consternation – as the series progresses he is shown as capable of understanding this ‘special’ colleague. Unlike others, he is not offended by her blunt and brusque manner; instead, a particular and, to an extent, intimate bond slowly develops between them, a connection that enables Norén to gain understanding and insight into a world from which she otherwise stands apart. An example of this didactic relationship can be appreciated in their discussions about how telling lies – whether by omission or commission – can save the feelings of others. Where similar screen partnerships would probably have led to a romantic liaison, a rather different dynamic develops here. Even when Martin needs

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to stay the night at Norén’s place, there is no question of physical intimacy, rather the two converse about personal matters – his son August, Saga having a boyfriend and her dead sister. Sally Munt remarks in her study of the crime novel that it is very rare for a female investigator to actually have a mother (1994: 167). Although Sara Lund’s character clearly contradicts this trope, her Swedish counterpart’s experience confirms it. Moreover, since Norén is estranged from her parents and we learn that her sister has committed suicide, very little is shown of her private life or of any relation to others outside the professional sphere. In Episode 6 of Series 1 the audience is afforded a rare glimpse of a familial connection when, after the death of Anja, a homeless young woman who was one of the killer’s many victims, Norén is shown visiting her sister’s grave in the snow, her face devoid of emotion as she contemplates the gravestone. Believing Anja’s death to have stirred painful memories, Martin later questions Norén about her sister’s suicide and the ensuing sense of loss. Even here, she shows no emotion, giving only the briefest of answers: ‘[s]ometimes I miss her, but now she’s gone.’ Martin’s attempt to prolong the discussion, asking whether Saga had known her sister was unhappy, similarly fails to provoke any emotional response, Norén simply admitting, ‘I’m no good at picking up signals’ (‘Episode 6’ 2011). Similar conversations, reminiscent of those between parent and child, recur throughout Series 1 and 2, Martin ultimately functioning in the role, if not of ‘mother’, then effectively as ‘family’ to this isolated detective. Danish/Swedish culture shock This notion of ‘family’ can also be understood in the link between Scandinavian neighbours Denmark and Sweden. In a working paper produced for the Danish Institute of International Studies, Pertti Joenniemi notes that ‘the Danish–Swedish relationship is far from harmonious’ (2011: 15), observing that strains between these adjacent liberal democratic states have become increasingly aggravated in recent years. Likewise, Ulla Bondeson’s earlier examination of the moral climate in the Nordic countries, from the Danish viewpoint, explains that ‘the current enemy images appear primarily to be constructed around Danish deference, its “big brother complex” toward Sweden’ (2001: 14). In The Killing and The Bridge these geographical tensions can be seen to be played out on the screen in the interactions that Sarah and Saga have at both personal and professional levels. In the opening of the first episode of The Killing, after seven years’ working with the same squad, Lund is about to leave Copenhagen, preparing to relocate with her Swedish boyfriend, a respected criminologist, and transfer to the Stockholm police force. As the squad gather to wish her all the best, her superior officer speaks disparagingly of Sweden as the land of ‘light beer and decomposed herring’. Further, acknowledging that she will undoubtedly be an asset to her new employer, he wishes her well ‘in

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the hands of the enemy’ (‘Episode 1’ 2007). This negative attitude towards the big-brother Swedish state conveyed in the boss’s light-hearted banter is further reinforced in the exchange between Lund and her supposed replacement, Jan Meyer (Søren Malling). As he moves into her former office, he warns her of the dangers associated with relationships with Swedes, recounting the story of his sister-in-law’s failed relationship with a Swede after the couple moved to Bornholm (a Danish island located in the Baltic Sea which lies closer to Sweden than Denmark). It is not clear if this conversation makes any lasting impression on Lund, but, despite her original intentions, she misses the flight to Stockholm and remains in Copenhagen, fully engaged in the search for the killer of a missing teenager, Nanna Birk Larssen. As a result of this all-consuming devotion to duty, Lund is ultimately unable to make a commitment and provide her son with a stable, nurturing home life and a positive male role model. Lund’s failure to transfer to the Swedish police force, where she would be unable to make an arrest or carry a weapon unless she took on Swedish citizenship, could be interpreted as symbolic of Denmark’s refusal to bow to their neighbour’s notional superiority. In this context it may also be of note that our Danish detective’s surname Lund is in fact the name of a Swedish university town, found across the Øresund Strait from Denmark. Lund is located in the province of Skåne, a region that was fiercely contested between Denmark and Sweden in the latter half of the seventeenth century, with Sweden emerging victorious after one of the bloodiest battles in Scandinavian history. The tension between Denmark and Sweden hinted at in The Killing is more significantly in evidence in The Bridge in the partnership between Saga and Martin, and through them, the interaction between the Danish and Swedish authorities. Danish academic and historian Hanne Sanders speaks of a pattern of Danish–Swedish mutual ‘othering’ (2006: 13). Within this dynamic she explains that Sweden, where the dominant discourse is one of democracy functioning at all levels of society, often levels criticism at the Danes for ‘treating people in a morally questionable and undemocratic fashion’ (Sanders 2006: 13). This attitude is reflected in Saga’s remarks about the treatment of a Muslim suspect whilst under police custody when she says that ‘the Danish police work like that’, inferring that her counterparts across the Øresund Bridge do not operate with the same rigour and integrity she (read the Swedish police force) employs. In contrast, when Saga is reluctant to enter a suspect’s apartment without the required search warrant, Martin responds, ‘be a law-abiding Swede and get one then’ (‘Episode 6’ 2011). His attitude sums up one of the key criticisms often levelled by the Danes at their Swedish neighbours that they are stricter than their easygoing Danish counterparts and always follow the rule book. In a recent study carried out by Anna Schüppert and Charlotte Gooskens (2012) on the link between language attitudes and spoken word recognition, they explain how since the mid-twentieth century the Nordic countries have cooperated politically and economically, promoting a strong Nordic interconnectivity. As part of this collaboration

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the Språkkonvention (‘language convention’) was adopted, formally entitling Nordic citizens to use their native language in written communications with the authorities. Further, drawing on Einar Haugen’s (1966) notion of semi-communication, Schüppert and Gooskens (2012) provide the example of a Dane speaking Danish to a Norwegian who would then respond in Norwegian. Extensive research later undertaken by LarsOlof Delsing and Katarina Lundin Åkesson (2005) on mutual comprehension between young Danes, Swedes and Norwegians found that geographical proximity played a crucial role in the level of intelligibility between Denmark and Sweden. Given the effect of these various contextual factors, it is not surprising then that Danish Martin, based in Copenhagen, and Swedish Saga, based only 40 kilometres away in Malmö, communicate with one another in their respective languages. However, as the aforementioned studies also reveal, Danes are more positive towards Swedish than Swedes are towards Danish, a trend that can be explained by the fact that for the most part Danes find it easier to understand spoken Swedish than vice versa. This trend is evident when Martin arrives at police headquarters in Malmö and attempts to explain to the Swedish team about the half of the body discovered on the Danish side of the Øresund Bridge. Initially, the Swedish police officers look puzzled, unable to decipher what he is saying, and are only able to grasp the meaning of his words once he speaks more slowly. The personal and the professional In conclusion, to return to Klitgaard Polvsen’s analysis, she argues that Sarah Lund ‘has no empathy, and is incapable of bonding or identifying with other women’ (2011: 97). Indeed, she might even be described as mirroring the conventional male detective, the archetypal hardboiled loner, in a feminine disguise. Like many of the idiosyncratic fictional male detectives, both Lund and Norén provide the audience with someone to root for. Perhaps it is in the way that neither are depicted as ambitious police detectives seeking to work their way to the top, but rather they are seen to be individuals who are committed above all else to solving the crime and ensuring that the perpetrators are brought to justice. Indeed their limitations within the sphere of human interaction are more than compensated by – or even enable – the particular focus and insight they bring to their professional roles, proving themselves to be the right woman for the job. Further, these fictional female sleuths serve as a reflection of the problems that many women face in western society in the twenty-first century, endeavouring to combine the personal and the professional. Moreover, if a stable and fulfilling home life is the price to be paid for being a successful female investigator, as the protagonists’ experience here would suggest, then, as Turnbull explains, ‘gender continues to matter in the case of crime’ (2014: 84). Likewise, given the social ills that are addressed in The Killing and The Bridge, perhaps as Michael Tapper suggests in his analysis of Henning Mankell’s Wallander novels (1991–2009), ‘society is insane and the lone cop is the only

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one with sufficient backbone to prevent the downfall of civilization’ (2014: 176). I would argue therefore that Sarah Lund and Saga Norén demonstrate that this ‘backbone’ need no longer be determined solely as male, nor belong to an officer working in isolation. Indeed, having captured the public imagination, perhaps we are witnessing the emergence of a different kind of fictional female detective fit for the twenty-first century.  References Bondeson, Ulla (2001), Nordic Moral Climates: Value Continuities and Discontinuities in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. Delsing, Lars-Olof and Lundin Åkesson, Katarina (2005), Håller språket ihop i Norden?: En forskningsrapport om ungdomars förståelse av danska, svenska och norska [Keeping Language Together in Scandinavia?: A Research Report on Young People’s Understanding of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian], Nordic Council of Ministers, Copenhagen. ‘Episode 5’ (2011), Lisa Siwe, dir., Broen/Bron/The Bridge, Season 1, 19 October, Denmark/Sweden: SVT. ‘Episode 6’ (2011), Lisa Siwe, dir., Broen/Bron/The Bridge, Season 1, 26 October, Denmark/Sweden: VT. ‘Episode 8’ (2011), Henrik Georgsson, dir., Broen/Bron/The Bridge, Season 1, 9 November, Denmark/ Sweden: SVT. ‘Episode 1’, (2007), Birger Larsen, dir., Forbrydelsen/The Killing, Season 1, 17 January, Denmark: DR1. Haugen, E. (1966), ‘Dialect, Language, Nation1’, American Anthropologist, 68: 4, pp. 922–935. Joenniemi, Pertti (2011), Liberal or Illiberal? Discord within the Danish-Swedish Pacific Community, DIIS Working Paper, 2011: 23, Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen, Denmark. Klitgaard Polvsen, Karen (2011), ‘Gender and Geography in Contemporary Scandinavian Television Crime Fiction’, in Andrew K. Nestingen and Paula Arvas (eds), Scandinavian Crime Fiction, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, pp. 89–99. Munt, Sally (1994), ‘Murder by the Book?: Feminism and the Crime Novel’, Abingdon: Routledge. Novrup Redvall, Eva (2013), Writing and Producing Television Drama in Denmark: From The Kingdom to The Killing, Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Sanders, Hanne (2006), Nyfiken på Danmark–Klokare på Sverige [Curious About Denmark - Wiser in Sweden], vol. 13, Gothenburg: Makadam Förlag. Schüppert, Anja and Gooskens, Charlotte (2012), ‘The Role of Extra-linguistic Factors in Receptive Bilingualism: Evidence from Danish and Swedish Pre-schoolers’, International Journal of Bilingualism, 16: 3, pp. 332–47. Tapper, Michael (2014), Swedish Cops: From Sjöwall and Wahlöö to Stieg Larsson, Bristol: Intellect. Tasker, Yvonne (1998), Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema, Abingdon: Routledge. G o F ur t h e r Television Broen/Bron/The Bridge (2011–ongoing), Sweden/Denmark: SVT1/DR1). Forbrydelsen/The Killing (2007–12, Denmark: DR1). Den som dræber/Those Who Kill (2011–12, Denmark: TV2).

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Irene Huss (2007–11, Denmark: Nordisk Film AB). Livvagterne/The Protectors (2009–10, Denmark: DR1). Rejseholdet/Unit One (2000–04, Denmark: DR1).

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detective Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg Nationality: french / creator: Fred Vargas David Platten

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win. – Stephen King, The Shining Crimes of the spirit world The new commander of the brigade domiciled in the fifth arrondissement of Paris is short, stocky and dark. Striking aspects of his person are few, but they include two wristwatches worn on the left forearm, a pebble from the stream that flows through his native Pyrenean village stored in his jacket pocket, and a habit of drawing in a sketchpad during meetings or in conversation. The latter activity, though to all intents and purposes rude and antisocial, is, it later transpires, also a sign of an exceptional visual cognition. One of his team of inspectors, Danglard, is fascinated by the slightly off-beam quality to his new boss’s face, an unusual combination of features that, he muses, would elude caricature. He perceives this visage as a work of divine bricolage, composed entirely of the bits and pieces left over in God’s workshop. This mobile expressivity is attractive, especially to women for whom the aphrodisiac of authority is enhanced by a preternatural calmness of manner and a gentle voice, which is described as ‘like a caress’ (Vargas 2009 [1991]: 18). Since he first took centre stage in L’homme aux cercles bleus/The Chalk Circle Man, published in 1991 (UK: 2009), the otherworldly demeanour of le Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg has continued to perplex his colleagues. Not that they should be surprised at the strangeness of the professional lives that they (and he) lead, given that the cases they are required to investigate entertain the existence of familiar fantastical creatures, notably the werewolf (in L’homme à l’envers/Seeking Whom He May Devour [2004 (1999)]), the vampire (Un lieu incertain/An Uncertain Place [2011 (2008)]) and a smattering of ghosts (Dans les bois éternels/This Night’s Foul Work [2008 (2006)] and L’armée furieuse/The Ghost Riders of Ordebec [2013 (2011)]). Other horrors of bygone

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ages surface through the symptoms and iconography of the bubonic plague (Pars vite et reviens tard/Have Mercy on Us All [2003 (2001)]) and in the wrath of the ancient gods personified in the terrifying figure of a retired judge, a living being so old that he seems beyond death (Sous les vents de Neptune/Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand [2007 (2004)]). Adamsberg’s response to such incongruities is invariably cryptic; oblivious to the others’ disgruntlement he will say little and consult his wristwatches. We are never told why he wears two; perhaps one runs on Greenwich Mean Time while the other is adjusted to a different scale that suits Adamsberg. The creator of this most enigmatic of detectives is the bestselling French crime novelist, Fred Vargas. In her professional life as Frédérique Audouin-Rouzeau, an eminent archaeologist and medieval historian, Vargas has immersed herself in the mysteries of the past, and in her ‘rompols’ – as she has called her crime novels, punning badly on ‘Rumpole (of the Old Bailey)’ – the past haunts the present. Apparitions normally confined to folklore, mythology and dreams glide through nondescript Parisian streets and bucolic Normandy villages, scratching away at the certainties of rooted existence. Vargas targets what Freud described as the Uncanny, ‘that species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and had long been familiar’ (Freud 2003 [1919]: 124). Her literary phantasmagoria may be interpreted in a negative light as external manifestations of a human tendency to revisit obsessively those aspects of our past that continue to bear upon our present lives: traumas, mistakes, betrayals, regrets, wrongs that we failed to right. Or alternatively they may point to an enduring, secret desire on the part of her adult readers not to relinquish permanently the colourful world of myths, spirits and otherworldly imaginings that once brightened their childhoods. The late Jacques Derrida, himself a figure of dread for straight-thinking Anglo-American philosophers, defines this restless sense of being, of a present existence suffused with the past, as a ‘hauntology’ (Davis 2007: 8); the English translation of Derrida’s neologism loses some of the resonance of the original ‘hantologie’, which is a near homonym of the philosophical term ‘ontologie’. Literary fiction may offer welcome consolation in that it can facilitate a vicarious coming-to-terms, or reconciliation, with such demons. So readers of Vargas may observe something of themselves in the reactions and occasional incredulity in the face of extraordinary happenstance of her team of police investigators, flawed characters in their own right whose backstories are filled out and personalities fattened over the course of the series. Conversely, inscrutability seems to define the ‘impossible Adamsberg’, who is entrusted, in the face of prevailing wisdom, with restoring harmony and coherence. Literary landscaping In a recent interview Vargas reveals that, although the plot and first draft of her novels tend to spill out quite rapidly, she is a Flaubertian sculptor of words who spends many

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months remorselessly chiselling her text (Kerridge 2013). The charm of her novels, and doubtless part of their appeal to her legions of readers, stems from this literary landscaping. A significant proportion of text consists of dialogue, suggesting that, though the evocation of place is important, character development is her overriding concern. The encounters between members of the investigating team, and especially those between Adamsberg and his loyal lieutenant Danglard, frequently generate moments of understated humour, which suction the bleakness of the criminal scenarios. Vargas’s ‘rompols’ seem thus to resist categorization: they are too picturesque to be noir, too contemplative to be thrillers, and lack the economy of the classical whodunit. Yet they also foreground investigations of crimes, which are ingeniously prosecuted. A striking feature of the series is a type of pervasive mind-mapping, a preoccupation with how the characters think, as they are drawn as if in a magnetic field towards the polar attraction of Adamsberg. These metaphysical meanderings coil around an inquiry into the nature of detection, or more precisely the question aired in the opening pages of The Chalk Circle Man, of how on earth the Commissaire acquired the reputation of an ace detective. Vargas has pulled off the feat of creating a memorable literary character lacking the traits that would normally define memorable characters, found, for example, in the kind of dramatic physiologies associated with the realism of a Dickens or a Balzac. Throughout the series Adamsberg remains a person of imprecise visual contours. The impression he creates of short, dark stockiness is compounded by a uniform dress code of dark jacket and trousers, which is impervious to seasonal change. Interestingly, in the early pages of The Chalk Circle Man, reference is made to a childhood nickname that he resented; the word is ‘sylvestre’ (Vargas 2009 [1991]: 11) or ‘sylvan’ in English, a literary term referring to someone imbued with the spirit of the woods, an ethereal, unearthly being. The image he presents in adulthood confirms this impression that he may have access to another dimension of being that is not quite human. After eleven days the officers under his charge are left wondering ‘what kind of species’ has landed in their midst (Vargas 2009 [1991]: 14). The antithesis of conventional detection Just as Adamsberg defies the norms of literary characterization, so he eschews the generic template of the literary detective. Throughout the series there is a persistent meditation on the nature of detection which follows the course of a dialectical progression from one adventure to the next. Adamsberg, at one pole, represents a lateral, sense-oriented approach, which implicitly sanctions the importance of instinctual, subconscious drives. So, in The Chalk Circle Man it is the perfect forms of the urban crop circles that materialize by night on the pavements of Paris, rather than the objects left within the circles, that trouble him. He reads these anonymous signatures as marks of cruelty and is thus unsurprised when, eventually, a corpse is found within a chalk cir-

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cle. If Adamsberg is the antithesis of conventional detection, his deputy Danglard is its absolute fulfilment. The flabby, melancholic single father of five possesses an encyclopaedic intellect and ferocious powers of analysis that only function of a morning, before an excessive daily consumption of white wine takes its toll. He is frequently appalled at his boss’s inaptitude for concentrated thinking and regards any kind of subjective presumption as a recipe for judicial error. From the outset the relationship between Adamsberg and Danglard is one of a positive duality in which the two poles attract rather than repel each other. Danglard acknowledges Adamsberg’s past exploits, noting especially his flair for bringing cases to successful conclusions, his ‘genius for the dénouement’; for the uninitiated, Vargas specializes in explosive endings, often with multiple twists! For his part Adamsberg soon comes to regard Danglard as an indispensable intellectual resource. As their successes mount up over the course of the series, the value of dialectical detection is established. Their brigade divides into the ‘pelleteux de nuages’, meaning literally the ‘cloud diggers’, those sympathetic to Adamsberg’s eccentric, though undeniably fruitful, methods, and, in the other camp, Danglard’s ‘positivists’. Only Adamsberg and Danglard remain entrenched in their positions; their colleagues may wax and wane in the light of changing circumstances. Each world-view has negative repercussions for its proponent. Danglard is tormented by the big riddles of life, so becomes depressed whenever he falls into the trap of thinking about the cosmos, the beginning of the universe and other unanswerable questions relating to astrophysics. On the other hand Adamsberg’s self-imposed exile from human society – he eats lunch alone on one side of the street while the rest of his team eat together in the cafe opposite – entails an aversion to the counsel of others which, in Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand, almost brings about his downfall. However, these twin modes of cognition do not exist on an equal footing. Whereas the miseries of Danglard’s personal life are laid bare, Adamsberg remains aloof. Vargas supplies us with titbits relating to his childhood, his romantic attachment to the scarcely present Camille, and latterly revelations about his paternity, yet his enigmatic serenity is largely undisturbed. Moreover, it is always Adamsberg, not Danglard, who arrives first at the solution to the crime. Perhaps the former’s psychology informs an approach to detective work analogous to that of the archaeologist, who, over the course of a long excavation, will train his or her eyes on soil and rock for years, forgoing human contact with all but his or her colleagues. In Have Mercy on Us All he is described as ‘an exceptionally gifted visual artist able to capture the essence of life’s spectacle’ (Vargas 2003 [2001]: 132). The archaeologist proceeds by sight and touch. Adamsberg, an inveterate, talented sketcher, perceives the world in images, but he also has a heightened sense of smell. In This Night’s Foul Work the reader learns how his sensitivity to the faintest of scents at the scene of an apparently natural death led to the conviction of a geriatric serial killer with 33 victims under her belt. Just as the taste of the madeleine in the fa-

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mous first section of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu/In Search of Lost Time (1913) conjures up the entirety of the narrator’s childhood, so the smell of a particular brand of moisturizer points to a hitherto undisclosed trail of murder and deception. His method is disarmingly simple: he follows the bread crumbs. The plot of The Ghost Riders of Ordebec foregrounds a medieval legend according to which the passage of a ghostly cavalcade, which will include the tormented faces and twisted limbs of local villains or suspected wrongdoers, presages the imminent demise of these individuals. In the Middle Ages the superstition prevailed across Northern Europe, with repeated sightings at the same locations so that the ghost riders were deemed only to follow certain ancient trails. Adamsberg’s response to the report of a sighting on the bluff overlooking the Normandy village of Ordebec is simply to go and see for himself. Having arrived, he identifies the trail in the woods, picks some blackberries, rests for a while and leaves… only to return to the spot at intervals over the course of the investigation. Like readers of fiction, Adamsberg suspends disbelief in ghosts, vampires and werewolves. Yet most readers, like other characters in the novels, will initially consider his behaviour to be erratic, if not perverse. Monstrous intelligences Vargas uses her particular brand of detective fiction to explore questions of consciousness. She often forages in the recesses of Adamsberg’s mind in (not entirely successful) attempts to expose the mechanics of his brain, describing his emergent thoughts as pictures, most of which slip into oblivion while a few are arrested and retained. These mental imprints will often prove crucial to the dénouement. The overarching trajectory of her narratives involves the building of a succession of bridges that span the gulf separating her detective-protagonists from the alien world of the other, the arch-criminal who, particularly in the later novels, is of a monstrous intelligence. The investigation of the crime is therefore at the same time an investigation into the nature of human consciousness, and although this equation is germane to the genre, given that all crime literature is fundamentally hermeneutic, rarely has a crime writer examined the relationship as intently as Vargas does in her fiction. Her gamble is that the example of Adamsberg, in his very incompleteness, will have implications for the ways in which we decode the world in which we live, a world which may not always be as it seems. Vargas plays down the notion that her ‘rompols’ belong to a hybrid genre in which a literature of the fantastic and the detective novel merge (Kerridge 2013). Rather she alludes to the power of myth, to the process by which subliminal fears and desires are illustrated by the myths of the past. In general she draws on the deep well of medieval folklore. By applying her academic expertise and formidable research skills she bypasses the accretions of popular culture and attempts to regenerate some of the potency of the original myths. Both the medieval text in Vulgar Latin outlining a recipe for immor-

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tality that is crucial to the investigation in This Night’s Foul Work, and the story of the ghost riders of Ordebec in The Ghost Riders of Ordebec, derive from the chronicles. More powerful still are those myths that are reactivated by a development in modern or contemporary society, such as the decision to reintroduce wolves to the southern Alps in the 1990s which serves as a backcloth to her rampaging ‘werewolf’ in Seeking Whom He May Devour. Her exemplary novel in this regard is Have Mercy on Us All, which features a virtual outbreak of bubonic plague. In this 2001 novel, which catapulted Vargas to the top of bestseller lists in France for the first time, the function of the medieval scenario is to illuminate a condition of the postmodern society, whereby the notion of an objective, consensual reality is challenged by the prospect that human identity is increasingly determined by the contact of the subject with multiple, and in many cases, virtual realities. Technological advances have provided us with the means to generate instant reproductions of reality. Rather than inhabiting a singular, objective world, we now live in a potentially infinite plurality of worlds and it has become increasingly difficult to determine whether what we see, hear or read is true or simply purports to be true. In such a scenario the authority of institutions, especially governments, has also been eroded. In Have Mercy on Us All the plague is a simulacrum. Live rat fleas are discovered in the vicinity of the victims’ bodies, but laboratory tests later confirm that the fleas are not infected with the bacteria. More tellingly, the corpses blackened with charcoal reflect the mythology rather than the anatomical reality of the ‘Black Death’: in the Middle Ages it was mistakenly believed that the disease caused a blackening of the body. Forensic tests prove conclusively that the victims have all been strangled, yet Adamsberg and his team find themselves confronting an increasingly sceptical population, more inclined to act on superstitious instructions given in the press on how to daub the talismanic inverted figures of 4 on their front doors – icons which, in medieval times, were believed to offer protection against the plague – than to listen to police press conferences. The public has now come to expect a degree of media manipulation and of officially sanctioned misrepresentations of the truth, which might occur for a myriad of reasons. In Have Mercy on Us All we learn that in 1920 the authorities contained an outbreak of the bubonic plague in the working-class district of Clichy and moreover imposed a news blackout, in order to avoid stirring public hysteria. Adamsberg understands that the virtual plague he is fighting may, in its own way, be as devastating as a real or literal epidemic, because in this age of the simulacrum the existence of an objective, unmediated reality, the bulwark of the detective’s world, is precarious. The real and the imaginary Such blurring between the real and the imaginary is traditionally a staple of the fantastic. Tzvetan Todorov separates the Gothic novel into narratives of ‘the uncanny’, in

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which the supernatural is resolved, and narratives of ‘the marvellous’ in which the supernatural is accepted (Todorov 1975 [1970]: 41–42). One of the great exponents of the fantastic, Edgar Allan Poe, wrote stories such as The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) and Thou Art the Man (1844), in which the supernatural is (spectacularly) resolved. But this is hardly surprising, as Poe originated the detective story, the genre in which a superior mode of ratiocination bears down on apparently insoluble mysteries; in 1856 the Goncourt brothers acclaimed Poe as the progenitor of a new kind of ‘mathematical’ literature (Eisenzweig 1983: 59). In the novels of Fred Vargas the supernatural is also always resolved, but unlike Poe’s Dupin, Adamsberg is no agent of ratiocination; he belongs to a different order of knowledge. In This Night’s Foul Work Danglard compares Adamsberg with the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant. Like Adamsberg, Kant was of diminutive stature, the difference being, Danglard remarks mischievously, that the latter consisted of 1.5 metres of ‘rigorously structured’ thought (Vargas 2008 [2006]: 104). The Age of the Enlightenment was supposed to have swept away the old beliefs and superstitions, yet ever since the supernatural has flourished in the collective consciousness. The American literary critic Terry Castle argues that the aggressive rationalism of the eighteenth century displaced the old spirit world into the realm of psychology. Ghosts, she contends, were ushered into the ‘closed space of the imagination’ (Castle 1995: 161), where they waited for the coming of Freud. In her magisterial work, Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-first Century (2006), Marina Warner catalogues the forms – wax, air, shadow and light – used to evoke the world of spirits, amounting to a ‘logic of the imaginary’ (Warner 2006: 13), which she sees as closely linked to our thoughts about the nature of the soul. Through effigies, ectoplasms and ghosts on photographs and in film, the spirits have retained contact with human sensibility. Colin Davis argues that in a world where dead people can appear on screens as living beings we can no longer easily extricate ourselves from the world of spirits (Davis 2007: 20). Rather, we are subjects haunted by those we have lost: family members, friends and the mass of innocents slaughtered through industrial warfare and genocide. No wonder then that the undead – zombies, vampires and especially ghosts – throng the world of popular fiction. As Slavoj Žižek states, the return of the living dead is ‘the fundamental fantasy of contemporary mass culture’ (Žižek 1991: 22). In this epistemology, the fin de siècle detective appears as the last bastion of rationalism in a world about to pitch into the chaos of the twentieth century, justifying Eric S. Rabkin’s description of Sherlock Holmes as ‘the figure of the curative, all-powerful, rationalist’ (Rabkin 1976: 155). It is inevitable that we should end up by talking about detectives as philosophers, because to become a detective one has only to think differently, and think better. Through his various guises, from Victorian eccentric to the unencumbered bachelor of the recent BBC series (2010–ongoing), Sherlock Holmes has not ceased to demonstrate the unreliability of our senses; they will always deceive us because truth and reality are

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concepts, framed by the principles of logic, mathematics and science. However, when, in This Night’s Foul Work, Adamsberg and his team conduct an exegesis of a sacred medieval text containing a recipe for eternal life, progress is only made when approaches based on numerological encoding and complex rhetorical patterning are jettisoned in favour of a literal reading. If Sherlock embodies a complete system of detection, Adamsberg’s thinking is, by way of contrast, tangential. He is not capable of performing the kind of grandiose set pieces of astonishing reasoning that were to become the trademark of Sherlock Holmes. But then again, why should he? Trust in human reason could be misplaced; Nietzsche argues that it is precisely ‘Reason’ that causes us to ‘falsify the evidence of the senses’ (Nietzsche 2006 [1888]: 462). If Adamsberg is to arrive at the solution to a crime, he must sift through his own memory in the hope of identifying an impression or a sensation that he is able to recall because there was something odd about it. It might have been the glint of sunlight on water, the way that the young lace their trainers, a joke about a surname or, as in the case of The Ghost Riders of Ordebec, the sugar wrappings in the pockets of a character who doesn’t take sugar in his coffee. Adamsberg is able to perceive the glitch in the matrix, because he himself stands apart from the conventions of society and from the metaphysical edifice that supports them. As such, he arguably emerges as the more radical thinker. In his extraordinary one-page renunciation of western metaphysics, ‘How the “Real World” Finally Became a Fable’, contained in Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche sought to dissolve what he saw as the artificial distinction between appearance (our sensory experience of the world) and reality (our conceptual understanding of it), thereby rectifying the ‘longest error’ (Nietzsche 2006 [1888]: 465). Henceforth the Nietzschean Superman will embrace the unknowable earth, as he finds it. Adamsberg evinces nothing of the bombast, nor indeed of the proto-fascistic rhetoric, of one of the more notorious modern philosophers, yet his world is one in which there seems to be some sort of elision between reality and illusion. Through her detective fiction Vargas presents the reality of appearances. Thus, This Night’s Foul Work begins with the story of Lucio and the bite of the spider. Adamsberg’s neighbour Lucio recounts how, as a 9-year-old boy at the time of the Spanish Civil War, he lost his arm in a bombardment. At the precise moment of the explosion he had been scratching a spider’s bite and, though the arm is no more, the urge to scratch the bite has remained with him. Later in the same novel the killer known as the ‘Ombre’ is visualized by one of her victims – a police protection officer who had fatefully nodded off in situ – seconds before his demise, as a ‘long, quivering, grey shadow gliding towards him’ (Vargas 2008 [2006]: 379). The ghostly itch and the spectral assassin elicit very different responses, but in neither case is the existence of the phenomenon called into question. Since a literature of the fantastic maintains what Nietzsche saw as a false dichotomy between appearances and reality, the label would not suit Vargas’s fiction. Her novels depict human existence from in to out, as forms redolent of dreams, visions and

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frightful imaginings, and through the agency of her singular investigator she captures the zeitgeist. It is a world like ours, albeit a defamiliarized one; rich, strange and interesting, a world without ghosts, though with much ghostliness.  References Castle, T. (1995), The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davis, C. (2007), Haunted Subjects: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis and the Return of the Dead, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Eisenzweig, U. (1983), Autopsies du roman policier, Paris: UGE. Freud, S. (2003 [1919]), The Uncanny (trans. D. McLintock), London: Penguin. Kerridge, J. (2013), ‘Fred Vargas: “I Write My Novels in Three Weeks Flat”’, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ culture/books/bookreviews/9900139/Fred-Vargas-I-write-my-novels-in-three-weeks-flat.html. Accessed 12 January 2015. King, S. (2001), ‘Introduction’, The Shining, UK: Pocket Books. Nietzsche, F. (2006 [1888]), ‘Twilight of the Idols; or How to Philosophize with a Hammer’, in K. Ansell Pearson and D. Large (eds), The Nietzsche Reader, Oxford: Blackwell. Poe, E. A. (1989), Selected Tales (ed. J. Symons), New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rabkin, E. S. (1976), The Fantastic in Literature, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Todorov, T. (1975 [1970]), The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (trans. R. Howard), Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Vargas, F. (2003 [2001]), Pars vite et reviens tard/Have Mercy on Us All (trans. David Bellos), London: Harvill Secker. ––––– (2008 [2006]), Dans les bois éternels/This Night’s Foul Work (trans. Sian Reynolds), London: Harvill Secker. ––––– (2009 [1991]), L’homme aux cercles bleus/The Chalk Circle Man (trans. Sian Reynolds), London: Harvill Secker. Warner, M. (2006), Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-first Century, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Žižek, S. (1991), Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture, Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press. G o F ur t h e r Novels The Adamsberg novels *All original titles are published by Viviane Hamy, based in Paris. Vargas, F. (2013 [2011]), L’armée furieuse/The Ghost Riders of Ordebec (trans. Sian Reynolds), London: Harvill Secker. ––––– (2011 [2008]), Un lieu incertain/An Uncertain Place (trans. Sian Reynolds), London: Harvill Secker.

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––––– (2009 [1991]), L’homme aux cercles bleus/The Chalk Circle Man (trans. Sian Reynolds), London: Harvill Secker. ––––– (2008 [2006]), Dans les bois éternels/This Night’s Foul Work (trans. Sian Reynolds), London: Harvill Secker. ––––– (2007 [2004]), Sous les vents de Neptune/Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand (trans. Sian Reynolds), London: Harvill Secker. ––––– (2004 [1999]), L’homme à l’envers/Seeking Whom He May Devour (trans. David Bellos), London: Harvill Secker. ––––– (2003 [2001]), Pars vite et reviens tard/Have Mercy on Us All (trans. David Bellos), London: Harvill Secker. –––––, with Edmond Baudoin (2000), Les quatre fleuves [graphic novel], Paris: Viviane Hamy.

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C o mm a n d e r ADA M DALG l I ESH N ati o nalit y : e nglish / cr e at o r : P . D . J A M E S Lisa Fluet

Adam Dalgliesh, diminished man But most of the books were poetry. Looking at them, he thought, we shared the same tastes. If we had met we should at least have had something to say to each other. ‘Everyman’s death diminishes me.’ But, of course, Doctor Donne. The overexploited dictum had become a fashionable catch phrase in a crowded world where non-involvement was practically a social necessity. But some deaths still held their power to diminish more than others. For the first time in years he was conscious of a sense of waste, of a personal irrational loss. – P. D. James, Shroud for a Nightingale When P. D. James’s detective and poet Adam Dalgliesh contemplates the bookshelves of recently (and suspiciously) deceased nursing student Josephine Fallon in 1971’s Shroud for a Nightingale, he considers her collected volumes of modern poetry (which include his own published work), and, briefly, thinks of John Donne. He subsequently notes the dead woman’s reading choices – modern poetry, a complete set of Jane Austen novels, modern paperbacks, some philosophical works. Presumably, Donne would actually have been absent from her shelves, given her modern preferences. The detective curiously misquotes Donne, in his musings – the ‘overexploited dictum’ has endured, as a ‘fashionable catch phrase’ (James 1971: 67) but at least in this case with a slight change evident in his own recollection. In Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1623), Donne’s ‘Meditation XVII’ famously articulates feelings upon personal diminishment in this way: No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. (Donne 1992: 344, emphasis added)

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Dalgliesh’s apparently unintended replacement of ‘any man’ with ‘Everyman’ supplants Donne’s emphasis upon the anonymous, non-specific death of any stranger, any man for whom the bell tolls, with the alternative, heavily symbolic category of ‘Everyman’ – at once, a literary reference to the anonymous, late-fifteenth-century medieval morality play Everyman, and humanity represented in its entirety via a singular personification. Dalgliesh’s inexact recollection of Donne recalls other mistaken literary references in Shroud for a Nightingale that go uncorrected – for example, Sister Gearing’s paraphrased misattribution of ‘When one explanation is impossible, the improbable must be true’ to G. K. Chesterton, rather than Arthur Conan Doyle (James 1971: 201). Telling instances of forgetfulness about literary history, and indifference to the correction of mistakes, meet evidence of narrowly restricted reading choices – and books that appear, on the whole, for display rather than for reading – when Dalgliesh later contemplates the bookshelves of Heather Pearce, the first murdered nurse at Nightingale House. In a subtle return to Dalgliesh’s earlier contemplation of Donne at another murdered nurse’s bookshelves, Pearce’s shelf holds an apparently unread school prize-copy of Francis Turner Palgrave’s 1861 poetry anthology The Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics – a popular Victorian anthology of English poetry known for, among other things, omitting John Donne from an otherwise fairly comprehensive historical selection of English verse. It would, of course, take representative modern poet and critic T. S. Eliot’s twentieth-century reclamation of the ‘minor’ poetic tradition of metaphysical poets to return Donne to canonical attention. Dalgliesh, as both late-modern and minor poet in his own right, thus emerges in this early novel as a detective whom we might associate with the inheritance of the British modernist tradition’s reclamations of the minor and the metaphysical. He merges these concerns with his policing role in ways that set him apart from both the ‘Golden Age’ tradition of detective stories and the American hardboiled school. Conversations with the dead The detective-poet Dalgliesh’s misquoting of Donne, however, also occurs within the context of his brief contemplation of the missed possibility of potential conversation with the deceased woman. Whereas his ‘Everyman’ slip tacitly suggests the diminishing effects, upon him, not of the death of any stranger, but rather the death of the concept of the questing, perpetually-tested, radically-solitary faithful subject, Dalgliesh himself routinely seeks out the temporary, and even banal, respite of conversational, gossipy company. As James’s readers learn early in the series in Cover Her Face (1962), Dalgliesh lost both his wife and infant son shortly after childbirth, and subsequently lives a fairly isolated life, forming few lasting romantic attachments over the course of the novels – until his last appearance in The Private Patient (2008), which concludes with his marriage to Cambridge don Emma Lavenham. As a detective, he demonstrates his most

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convincing capacity for long-term attachment not in romance, but in his professional commitment to the company of women, and characteristically damaged men – living or dead – made chronically vulnerable, typically as a consequence of work and/or social situations beyond their control. As James describes in Talking About Detective Fiction (2009), Dalgliesh was named after her Cambridge High School English teacher, and reflected her desire to avoid creating a serial character identifiable in terms of distinguishing eccentricities – apart from his unusual status as a poet, although we see so little of Dalgliesh’s poetry that his published writing, which seems to have a small but appreciative audience, paradoxically proves the most private thing about him. Unlike Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot or Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey, Dalgliesh proves ‘a less egregiously bizarre character’, and, further, James ‘ruthlessly killed off wife and newborn son in order to avoid involving [her]self in his emotional life’ (James 2009: 152). Dalgliesh’s lack of identifying eccentricities, and tendency towards emotional restraint, have contributed to critical perceptions of him as somewhat indistinct and less-than-memorable – in comparison not only to memorable eccentrics of the British detective fiction tradition, but also alongside emotionally restrained, similarly isolated influential precursors like Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade and Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. Martin Priestman argues that the ‘distinguished thing’ about P. D. James’s detective fiction would be the startlingly violent, distinct forms that murder and death take in her novels (Priestman 2002: 235). And indeed, for all James’s indebtedness to Christie for her choices of setting, her depictions of violent death reflect a formal-ethical investment in accurately capturing murder as ‘an act of infinite cruelty’ in Chandler’s terms (Chandler 1953: 192), committed within her novels by people who do it for plausible, if often uniquely cruel, reasons. Murder also, frequently manifests itself as part of the buried, violent past of isolated, ostensibly peaceful communities – a hidden historical reality that Dalgliesh typically works to bring to light during the course of his investigation. Yet murder as James’s ‘distinguished thing’ also underscores a critical sense, as Priestman suggests, of Adam Dalgliesh as James’s ‘undistinguished thing’, so to speak. In Cover Her Face, Eleanor Maxie, who eventually confesses to the novel’s central murder, initially ponders Dalgliesh’s appearance in a way that establishes a recurrent motif for many of James’s novels: murderers who can accurately and even sympathetically ‘read’ Dalgliesh, who know what he wants to hear and seem to seek him out as an interlocutor as well, and with whom he develops a temporary, needed conversational relationship, within the time for talk allotted to the course of an investigation. Looking at Dalgliesh, ‘Eleanor Maxie thought, “Where have I seen that head before? Of course. That Durer. In Munich was it? Portrait of an Unknown Man”’ (James 1962: 72–73). Even as a paradoxically recognizable embodiment of any man’s capacity to readily slide into anonymity, however, I would argue that what actually distinguishes Dalgliesh from each novel’s casts of suspects and fellow detectives, and also from the

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tradition of fictional detectives who precede him, is precisely this ability to perceive and reflect his own personal diminishment. He stands out, as a detective, poet and public servant, for his status as a representative diminished man. Detections involving homicides thereby serve as the means to conceiving the professionalization of feeling less distinct, as an individual man, with each new case. Dalgliesh’s misquoting of Donne proves especially helpful here: he occupies the position of the speaker who can feel diminished by the knowledge of another’s death, as a consequence of his identification both with Donne’s anonymous, interchangeable, indistinct ‘any man’, and with the deceased ‘Everyman’ of his misquote – the symbolic figure whose testing, via diminishment and isolation, occurred within a way of comprehending the universe that, formerly, conferred meaning upon that state of solitary trial. Dalgliesh, in a sense, presents us with the situation of a man who can feel the chronic diminishment brought on through connectedness to such knowledge, while he still remains perpetually set apart from ‘the main’, as an island. The sought-after potential of conversation with the dead, and the frequently required conversations with witnesses and suspects within the context of an investigation, thus often suggest purposes beyond their ostensible fact-finding goals: conversation, for Dalgliesh and for James’s novels, emerges as what we could term a consolation for the chronically diminished. Scenes of the crime Conversing with a variety of other, living women eventually proves a necessity to Dalgliesh’s investigation in Shroud for a Nightingale (as it will in other novels), as the crime scene for both suspicious deaths – a nurses’ training institution – conforms fairly readily to the generic expectations of the locked-room and country-house, closed-off community traditions that James tends to evoke in her novels. However, beyond the investigative, obligatory seeking-out of information, Dalgliesh needs conversation, as a detached figure who occasionally needs respite from the perpetual test that solitude inflicts. Dalgliesh is both ‘less egregiously bizarre’ than his generic predecessors, and less securely detached than they are from the felt need for conversational company with his suspects: What he wanted after the formal interrogation of the morning was to sit in comfort and listen to a flow of artless, candid and slightly malicious gossip; to listen with the surface of his mind smoothed, uninvolved, even a little cynically amused, but with the sharp claws of the intelligence sharpened for their pickings. (James 1971: 196) Dalgliesh’s acknowledgment of the therapeutic effects of listening to gossip indicates one way we might distinguish him from another great representative of the British fic-

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tional detective’s utilization of gossip in aid of crime-solving: Agatha Christie’s Jane Marple. As Patricia Meyer Spacks observed in her study Gossip (1985), Miss Marple’s age and significantly limited mobility in The Mirror Crack’d (1962) compel her to turn to the accumulation of suggestive data and likely clues via invited guests, servants and at-home conversation; according to Spacks, she ‘can figure out what has happened because people operate by immutable laws. The same assumption governs gossip, generating interpretations out of shared belief in the comprehensibility of motive and action’ (Spacks 1985: 230). In this reading, gossip manifests its own self-regulating order to the attentive, participating listener, who recognizes the rules and can thus piece together a successful interpretation of motive and crime: Gossip constitutes information; it becomes truth. The power to convert it into a pattern acceptable as truth belongs to the listener, the accumulator of fact and interpretation, who takes command of experience and finally of other people by virtue of her ability to understand and to verbalize: as the writer does. (Spacks 1985: 230, original emphasis) In Shroud for a Nightingale, the expectation that one will take the time to talk privately, informally and conversationally, as a consequence of the proximities between people created through the professional labours of nurse and detective, actually preoccupies both Dalgliesh and the Matron for this nurses’ training institution – a woman with a significantly dark secret in her past, whom Dalgliesh eventually reveals as the motivating force behind the nurses’ murders, and ultimately a murderer herself. The acknowledgment of a desire to ‘listen to a flow of artless, candid and slightly malicious gossip’ suggests one crucial way to distinguish Dalgliesh from Miss Marple and her utilization of gossip; while both ultimately seek intelligence regarding the solution of a crime, Dalgliesh also needs to repeatedly discover, through gossip, the paradoxical reassurance of his own non-involvement in, and fundamental detachment from, the lives of those he listens to. The intellectual conversion of gossip into useful information forms a necessary part of the detective’s function for Dalgliesh, but the commanding, writerly interpretive control over gossip that Spacks accords to Miss Marple suggests a measure of invulnerability and privilege accruing to the position of detecting listener that Dalgliesh’s feelings undercut, somewhat. Beyond control over information, listening to gossip affords a measure of consolation to those, like Dalgliesh, who need to reaffirm that they can listen to the expression of accumulated longings, resentments, fears and frustrations of other, similarly diminished people, and yet retain and preserve an intact, detached vulnerability, precisely because gossip both confirms, and offers support to, the diminished status of all involved in it. Shroud for a Nightingale’s Matron offers a perspective on listening to other people talk, within the context of nursing and the training of nurses, that indicates one

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way we could read the larger ethical implications of Dalgliesh’s conversational quest for confirmed non-involvement. For the Matron, the ‘comfortable words’ she has to provide regularly for student nurses and patients make ‘her whole working life’ seem, to her, ‘a blasphemous liturgy of reassurance and absolution’. Her private, unarticulated thoughts about her role in the lives of people in need of her help offer little in the way of reassurance or absolution: ‘I haven’t anything to offer. There isn’t any help. We are all alone, all of us, from the moment of birth until we die. Our past is our present and our future. We have to live with ourselves until there isn’t any more time left.’ (James 1971: 101) In the Matron’s subsequent private conversation with Dalgliesh – in this instance, not gossip but a more sophisticated ‘verbal pavane’ that Dalgliesh finds comparably enjoyable – he observes that she owns a telescope, and she explains her attraction to ‘“absorption in an impersonal universe which I can’t do anything to influence or control and, better still, which no one expects me to. It’s an abdication of responsibility”’ (James 1971: 106). To Dalgliesh’s preference for the contemplation of the primrose over the night skies, in his own meditations upon humility and incomprehensibility, the Matron aptly replies that meditation upon the primrose safely confines his ‘dangerous philosophical speculations’ about the characteristically diminished effects of human effort in a vast, impersonal and poorly-comprehended universe to ‘a few short weeks in the spring’ (James 1971: 106). Paradigms of murder As with so many of Adam Dalgliesh’s interactions in these novels with women who prove, ultimately, to be in some way guilty and ‘responsible’, at least within the paradigm of a murder investigation, the Matron’s comments gesture towards the considerable shared philosophical ground between her perspective, and that of Dalgliesh’s diminished professional man. Both intuit the profound limits upon their capacities to help others, even given the proficiencies of their working efforts, and in spite of the fact that such service comprises part of how they define their work, and how others understand it. Both uphold a sense of isolated responsibility that comes, as this novel’s re-visitation of Donne suggests, from feeling like an island; they maintain a self-sufficient containment that gives nothing away, one particular to those, like Dalgliesh and the Matron, beyond the capacities of others to help them in any way. The distinction between them, as the Matron suggests, involves the percentage of a lifetime that each must commit to the contemplation of personal humbling diminishment, and the unregulated incomprehensibility of the universe that houses their efforts: Dalgliesh’s speculations can

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confine themselves to certain designated, limited spans of time – the blooming of the primrose, the demarcated time devoted to an investigation – whereas the Matron’s life is, as she indicates, completely taken up in these speculations. In his essay ‘The Metaphysical Poets’ (1921), T. S. Eliot notably pauses to speculate upon an alternate history for Donne and his contemporaries: ‘what would have been the fate of the “metaphysical” had the current of poetry descended in a direct line from them, as it descended in a direct line to them?’ (Eliot 1975 [1921]: 65). In other words, if the metaphysical poets had been granted the status of ‘major’ poets by the subsequent current of literary historicism since their heyday, rather than relegated to a ‘minor’, ignored, omitted or misremembered situation that both Eliot and P. D. James address – albeit in very different generic modes – how would we trace the consequences of their formal influence and perspectival legacy upon twentieth-century poetry? Who would their ‘heirs’ be, in short? In James’s conceptualization of Dalgliesh, I would suggest that we have an answer posed to a variation upon Eliot’s question: that is, in Dalgliesh we have, not a poet descended from the metaphysical tradition that he periodically muses upon, during the course of his investigations, but a detective who manifests, in his investigative work, a version of the ‘mechanism of sensibility which could devour any kind of experience’ that Eliot associates with the metaphysical poets, and that he perceived as lost to the modern, twentieth-century moment (Eliot 1975 [1921]: 64). For Dalgliesh, sensibility and thought can – and should, in fact – resist the dissociation that Eliot diagnosed as a defining condition of modernity; he frequently defends an elevated consideration of affective, sensory responses to ethical dilemmas as a window to more thoughtful consideration of such dilemmas. For example, in James’s post-Thatcher, anti-nuclear agitation-era novel Devices and Desires (1989), the former schoolteacher Meg Dennison – another of James’s female characters exhibiting the nervous, gossip-prone after-effects of an unjust professional diminishment – expresses, in a conversation about the hypothetical utilization of human tissue from aborted foetuses for the diagnosis and treatment of genetic diseases, her sense that ‘[t]o conceive a child deliberately in order to kill it to make use of its tissue, the idea is absolutely repugnant’ (James 1989: 79). Alex Mair, the novel’s representative of advanced nuclear research, replies, quite reasonably, that ‘repugnance at an act isn’t evidence of its immorality’ – to which Dalgliesh counters, ‘Doesn’t Mrs Dennison’s natural repugnance tell us something about the morality of the act?’ (James 1989: 79). The question of whether a response to an act that emerges from sensibility – that is, from a spontaneous feeling of repugnance – can convey knowledge to us about the innate morality of that act remains, characteristically, unanswered in Devices and Desires. Dalgliesh’s strange articulation of this question – as a detective who habitually chastises his colleagues for expressing spontaneous repugnance at murder scenes – positions him curiously in relation to the metaphysical legacies I’ve outlined. On the one hand, he defends the merging of expressions of sensibility and thought where moral questions

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are concerned; on the other hand, he resists and prohibits the expression of sensations of disgust and repugnance in professional proximity to murder scenes – as such expressions fail to serve as a conduit to thought about the morality of the act under investigation, and instead confine themselves to a dissociating diminishment of the dead. Some of the tacit conservatism evident in Dalgliesh’s inheritance of certain strains in Eliot’s thinking thus meets an intriguing check in his professional efforts, which strive to quell and channel sensory responses to situations that he and others find repugnant – particularly if that feeling allows one to detach oneself from thoughtful experience of the crime scene, or to limit that experience to a confirmation of the victim’s diminishment. If, as Dalgliesh contends, in its best instantiations ‘the process of detection dignified the individual death, even the death of the least attractive, the most unworthy’ (James 1989: 161), it can only do so as a mechanism of sensibility that devours the experience of the crime scene and leaves the investigating professional diminished. Proximity to death What, in the end, does metaphysical ‘diminishment’ consist of, and how should we construe the formal, historical significance of the post-war to early-twenty-first-century character development of P. D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh as ‘diminished’ professional? In identifying the contours of diminishment, we might look, finally, upon those who habitually emerge at the conclusions of James’s novels as the most ethically suspect: not the murderers, necessarily, but those surviving characters who prove diametrically opposed and ultimately oblivious to the humbling effects of Dalgliesh’s forms of sensibility: that is, the undiminished, those who have actually managed to thrive and benefit – accidentally or otherwise – as a consequence of their circumstantial, proximate involvement in the murder and its investigation. Towards the conclusion of Cover Her Face, the surprise arrival of James Ritchie, the absent, secret husband of the murder victim Sally Jupp – who up until this point in the novel had been known as an unwed mother, and who in life had utilized this public perception of her status to some advantage – proves notable for the contrasting ‘animal health and virility’ (James 1962: 211) that Ritchie manifests, which brings out the weaker, ‘commonplace elegance’ of Stephen Maxie, and Felix Hearne’s fifteen years of wartime ‘weariness and futility’ which now, suddenly, appear ‘graven on his face’ (James 1962: 212). The comparative obtuseness of the undiminished Ritchie proves notable – of these three men, he emerges from the novel the least damaged by Sally Jupp’s actions in life, and her subsequent murder. Yet thriving, as an accidental consequence of one’s proximity to manipulation and violence, comes in for greater criticism at the end of the novel than, arguably, actually murdering someone does. In a somewhat darker depiction of the undiminished, the conclusion of Shroud for a Nightingale lingers on the ‘confident’ figure of Nurse Dakers, formerly the timidly terrified nursing student who has, seemingly, been transformed

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into a figure of calm authority by her proximity to the deaths of two fellow nurses, and the change in command heralded by the departure and suicide of the Matron (James 1971: 362). We view this transformed Dakers through Miss Beale, the visiting inspecting nurse who opens the novel and unintentionally witnesses the murder of the first nurse; she incorrectly observes, not knowing about the Matron’s suicide, that women like the Matron prove ‘natural survivors’, but James’s irony seems clear: the ‘natural survivors’ in her novels are men like Ritchie and women like Dakers, who survive and actually prosper via their natural propensity towards remaining distinct from, and thus undiminished by, others’ suffering. The results of Dalgliesh’s investigations, and the objectives attained via his professional life, thus consist in bringing to light, by novels’ end, both responsible murderers, and the irresponsibly insensible, undiminished natural survivors whose guilt consists in their immunity to the transformative, diminishing effects of any man’s death. To the extent that Dalgliesh’s labours bring to light an essential social interdependence between the living and the dead, one that James’s natural survivors have the luxury of evading and ignoring, we could, in the end, consider the trajectory of his long career as a kind of detective’s ode to the British welfare state, an entity whose career parallels his own, and one similarly founded upon a sensibility of the necessity of some concession to personal, individual diminishment, in the larger endeavour to bring some measure of dignity to those other lives briefly involved in collective human effort.  References Chandler, R. (1953), ‘The Simple Art of Murder’, in The Simple Art of Murder, New York: Pocket Books. Donne, J. (1992 [1623]), ‘Meditation XVII’, in John Carey (ed.), The Oxford Authors: John Donne, New York: Oxford University Press. Eliot, T. S. (1975 [1921]), ‘The Metaphysical Poets’, in Frank Kermode (ed.), Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot, New York: Harvest Books. James, P. D. (1962), Cover Her Face, London: Faber and Faber. ––––– (1971), Shroud for a Nightingale, London: Faber and Faber. ––––– (1989), Devices and Desires, New York: Knopf. ––––– (2009), Talking About Detective Fiction, New York: Vintage Books. Spacks, P. M. (1985), Gossip, New York: Knopf. G o F ur t h e r Novels The Adam Dalgliesh novels James, P. D. (2008), The Private Patient, London: Faber and Faber. ––––– (2005), The Lighthouse, New York: Knopf. ––––– (2003), The Murder Room, New York: Knopf. ––––– (2001), Death in Holy Orders, New York: Knopf.

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––––– (1997), A Certain Justice, London: Faber and Faber. ––––– (1995), Original Sin, New York: Knopf. ––––– (1989), Devices and Desires, New York: Knopf. ––––– (1986), A Taste for Death, London: Faber and Faber. ––––– (1977), Death of an Expert Witness, New York: Scribner’s. ––––– (1975), The Black Tower, New York: Scribner’s. ––––– (1971), Shroud for a Nightingale, London: Faber and Faber. ––––– (1967), Unnatural Causes, New York: Scribner’s. ––––– (1963), A Mind to Murder, New York: Scribner’s. ––––– (1962), Cover Her Face, London: Faber and Faber. Books James, P. D. (2000), Time To Be In Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography, New York: Knopf. Gidez, R. (1986), P.D. James, Boston: Twayne Publishers. Siebenheller, N. (1981), P.D. James, New York: Ungar. E x t r a c t s / E s s a y s /A r t i c l e s Shaw, J. (2014), ‘The Poet Dalgliesh and Kate from the Block: P. D. James’s Partners in Crime, Class and Culture’, in J. Kim (ed.), Crime Fiction: Essays on Works in English since the 1970s, Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Vanacker, S. (2011), ‘“A Visitor for the Dead”: Adam Dalgliesh as a Serial Detective’, in M. Effron (ed.), The Millennial Detective: Essays on Trends in Crime Fiction, Film and Television, 1990–2010, Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press. Priestman, M. (2002), ‘P. D. James and the Distinguished Thing’, On Modern British Fiction, Oxford: OUP. Kresge-Cingal, D. (2001), ‘Intertextuality in the Detective Fiction of P. D. James: Literary Game or Strategic Choice?’, Clues: A Journal Of Detection, 22: 2, pp. 141–52. Nelson, E. (2000), ‘P. D. James and the Dissociation of Sensibility’, in A Werlock (ed.), British Women Writing Fiction, Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. Coale, S. (1999), ‘Carnage and Conversion: The Art of P. D. James’, Clues: A Journal of Detection, 20: 1, pp. 1–14. Campbell, S. (1995), ‘The Detective Heroine and Death of Her Hero: Dorothy Sayers to P. D. James’, in G. Irons (ed.), Feminism in Women’s Detective Fiction, Toronto: UTP. Kotker, J. G. (1995), ‘P. D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh Series’, in M. J. Demarr (ed.), In the Beginning: First Novels in Mystery Series, Bowling Green, OH: Popular Press. Leonard, J. (1995), ‘Conservative Fiction(s): P. D. James’ The Black Tower’, AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association, 83, pp. 31–41. Majeske, P. K. (1994), ‘P. D. James’ Dark Interiors’, Clues: A Journal of Detection, 15: 2, pp. 119–32. Heilbrun, C. G. (1990), ‘The Detective Novel of Manners’, in B. Bowers and B. Brothers (eds), Reading and Writing Women’s Lives: A Study of the Novel of Manners, Rochester: URP.

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Sizemore, C. W. (1989), A Female Vision of the City: London in the Novels of Five British Women, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Benstock, B. (1989), ‘P. D. James (Phyllis Dorothy James White)’, British Mystery and Thriller Writers Since 1940: First Series, Detroit, MI: Gale. Porter, D. (1988), ‘Detection and Ethics: The Case of P. D. James’, in D. Rader and H. Zettler (eds), The Sleuth and the Scholar: Origins, Evolution, and Current Trends in Detective Fiction, Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Richardson, B. (1988), ‘“Sweet Thames, Run Softly”: P. D. James’s Waste Land in A Taste for Death’, Clues: A Journal of Detection, 9: 2, pp. 105–18. Maxfield, J. F. (1987), ‘The Unfinished Detective: The Work of P. D. James’, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 28: 4, pp. 211–23. Herbert, R. (1986), ‘A Mind to Write’, Armchair Detective: A Quarterly Journal Devoted to the Appreciation of Mystery, Detective, and Suspense Fiction, 19: 4, pp. 341–48. Salwak, D. (1985), ‘An Interview with P. D. James’, Clues: A Journal of Detection, 6: 1, pp. 31–50. Harkness, B. (1983), ‘P. D. James’, Art in Crime Writing: Essays on Detective Fiction, New York: St Martin’s Press. Hubly, E. (1983), ‘The Formula Challenged: The Novels of P. D. James’, MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, 29: 3, pp. 511–52. Hubly, E. (1982), ‘Adam Dalgliesh: Byronic Hero’, Clues: A Journal of Detection, 3: 2, pp. 40–46. Smyer, R. I. (1982), ‘P. D. James: Crime and the Human Condition’, Clues: A Journal of Detection, 3: 1, pp. 49–61. Bakerman, J. S. (1977), ‘“From the Time I Could Read, I Always Wanted to Be a Writer”: Interview with P. D. James’, Armchair Detective: A Quarterly Journal Devoted to the Appreciation Of Mystery, Detective, and Suspense Fiction, 10: 1, pp. 55–57, 92. Television P. D. James: The Murder Room (January 2005, UK: BBC Drama Group). P. D. James: Death in Holy Orders (August 2003, UK: BBC). P. D. James: Original Sin (March 1997–April 1997, UK: Anglia Television and WGBH). P. D. James: Devices and Desires (January 1991–February 1991, UK: Anglia Television). P. D. James: A Taste for Death (October 1988–November 1988, UK: Anglia Television). P. D. James: Cover Her Face (February 1985–March 1985, UK: Anglia Television). P. D. James: The Black Tower (November 1985–December 1985, UK: Anglia Television). P. D. James: Shroud for a Nightingale (March 1984–April 1984, UK: Anglia Television). P. D. James: Death of an Expert Witness (April 1983–May 1983, UK: Anglia Television). Websites The Official Website for P. D. James (Random House), http://www.randomhouse.com/features/ pdjames/

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‘...don’t say that pain would be good for my verse. I know that. I see enough of it in my job.’ Adam Dalgliesh

d e t e c t i v e Va n V e e t e r e n Nationality: swedish / creator: Håkan Nesser Peter Messent

The retired detective Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren features in the series of ten novels (1993–2003) written by Swedish author Håkan Nesser. Unusually, the earliest case in which we see Van Veeteren at work is when he is already 50 years old (Fallet G/The G File [2003]). Unusually, too, he retires from the police force (in his late fifties), to become an antiquarian book dealer, after only five books in the series, though Chief of Police Hiller initially insists that his retirement be treated merely as a leave of absence. From this point on, Van Veeteren acts as an advisor to his former colleagues – who continue to think of him as the Chief Inspector, and to address him by that title. But he also joins them on their cases, sometimes in an official capacity, sometimes – when a case involves him personally or where his interest is aroused – acting as a type of private detective in close alliance with them. Van Veeteren’s role in the series is often unexpectedly limited. Indeed, in the eighth book in the sequence, Ewa Morenos fall/The Weeping Girl (2000), he scarcely appears at all, first featuring on page 461 of the 470-page book. Here the main protagonist is DI Ewa Moreno, the sole female member of his former team, and one of the two officers most deeply influenced by his methods and ways of thinking. In his series, Nesser loosely follows the pattern introduced by fellow Swedes Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, and the ten novels in their brilliant Martin Beck series (1965– 75). For the ten Van Veeteren books were also written over a ten-year period (1993 to 2003) and the final one, The G File, makes it clear that the series is complete. But Laurie Thompson’s English translations of the novels – and I am working here from the translated versions – do not start coming out until 2006 and are not published in their original order of publication (see the end of this essay for a list of titles and dates). In this chapter, I discuss the novels in the order that they originally appear. Some readers may already have noticed an apparent discrepancy in the fact that my reference to Van Veeteren’s earliest case (The G File) matches the name of the final novel in the series. In fact, this points to the cleverly planned and circular structure of the series as a whole;

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from early in the sequence, there are repeated references to ‘The G File’ as ‘the only case Van Veeteren had failed to solve’ (Nesser 2012 [1999]: 392). And the final book in the series has a bipartite structure. It starts with a murder case involving G (Jaan G. Hennan) in 1987, when Van Veeteren has already been a police officer for 24 years (Nesser 2014 [2003]: 64). Hennan, whom Van Veeteren judges as ‘downright evil: a person with no redeeming factors’ (235), is put on trial for the murder of his wife. Despite the fact that Van Veeteren is 100 per cent certain that Hennan is implicated in the crime, the lack of tangible proof and a cast-iron alibi mean the inevitable failure of the prosecution case. The second half of the book is set in 2002, fifteen years later, with Van Veeteren now 65 years old (327), as the case is re-opened – its eventual solution coming only after his near-death in the process. This final novel, then, chronologically contains the other nine, and ends the series by tying up Van Veeteren’s one unsolved case. In doing so, though, it emphasizes his vulnerability, both as a man and a detective. For only at the last moment does he realize the real story behind the crime and the identity of its main perpetrator – G’s wife rather than G himself. And his mistake in acting alone in a final confrontation with the wife, ends with him in her power, a captive, digging his own grave in a local forest: ‘After fifteen years of pondering, he now had the solution to the G File. He had received it from the murderer herself, and the price was going to be his own life’ (576). Van Veeteren does finally escape, but the ironic edge of the ending remains nicely judged. Good food and Mahler As a protagonist, Van Veeteren shares familiar characteristics with other fictional detectives. If he has a number of distinctive individual traits, such a way of building up a detective’s individuality is common in the genre. So there is a focus on his personal tics (the fiddling with toothpicks, the rolling of his own cigarettes) and his keenness for badminton and chess. He plays the latter mainly with his poet friend Mahler, and with Bausen – Chief of Police but also murderer in Borkmanns punkt/Borkmann’s Point (1994). (In his deep ‘affinity’ [Nesser 2014 (2003): 353] for Bausen we get a clear hint here of Van Veeteren’s unconventional code of morality.) Van Veeteren is also characterized by his liking for good food and alcohol – ‘[r]ed wine or beer. The darker the better’ (Nesser 2013b [2001]: 505) and no ‘wishy-washy Yankee piss’ (2013b [2001]: 475). He is also a film enthusiast, with a particular penchant for the Eastern European directors Tarkovsky and Kieślowski and for the (Italian) Taviani brothers. Music is an even greater passion: in the second part of The G File alone, he listens to Preisner, Schnittke, Kieslowski, Pergolesi, Bruckner, Penderecki and Mahler. In the case both of film and music, his admiration is not just aesthetic but connects with his vision of life. So when he sees Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia (1983) ‘for the fourth, possibly the fifth, time’, he is reminded of the balance between evil and good deeds in the universe (Nesser 2009 [1996]: 347).

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While music is measured against the violence of his professional life: when he listens to Penderecki’s ‘pain-filled Polish requiem’, for instance, he feels a ‘sort of acupuncture of the soul’ (Nesser 2010 [1997]: 389). Nesser also highlights the particular skills of his principal detective protagonist. This in itself is not unusual but goes hand in glove with his depiction of Van Veeteren’s distinctive philosophical and moral vision – something that lies at the core of the series. Van Veeteren is something of a grumpy old man, even in the earlier books, ‘the most unsympathetic person he had ever come across’, according to Janek Mitter, wrongly accused of his wife’s murder in Det grovmaskiga nätet/The Mind’s Eye (1993), and with an expression ‘reminiscent of a petrified bloodhound’ (Nesser 2008 [1993]: 40). He is uncommunicative with his own team and enigmatic. His other detective mentee, Münster, ‘sometimes had the feeling that the closer to [him] you got, the more unfathomable he became’ (Nesser 2007 [1995]: 332). Somewhat peevish, even inconsiderate, his general demeanour is sour. When, in The Mind’s Eye, he catches his reflection in a mirrored surface and realizes he is smiling, it is with a start of initial non-recognition (Nesser 2008 [1993]): 89–90). Right from the first, we see Van Veeteren ‘blunted’ by ‘the daily confrontation’ (Nesser 2008 [1993]): 202) with the criminal world in which he moves. Depressed, ‘old and tired’, he is already thinking of resigning from the force (272–73). By the fourth novel, Kvinna med födelsemärke/Woman with a Birthmark (1996), the idea of retirement has become more insistent, with Van Veeteren, after ‘stomping around in tragedies […] for more than thirty years’ (Nesser 2009 [1996]: 256), describing himself as ‘an old, tired detective who’s seen too much and doesn’t want to see much more’ (348), and with real concerns over his ‘strength to last out much longer’ (349). The fifth case (Kommissarien och tystnaden/The Inspector and Silence [1997]), turning on child molestation and incest, finishes him off. ‘I can’t take any more of this’ (Nesser 2010 [1997]: 450), he thinks towards the end of the investigation, and the novel ends with him walking into Krantze’s antiquarian bookshop, to respond to its posted sign: ‘Assistant required. Partnership a possibility’ (22). Once retired, Van Veeteren’s state of mind generally improves and his appetite for criminal cases periodically returns. He even starts looking younger (Nesser 2013b [2001]: 244). There are reasons for this physical and mental recovery, which will become evident as I proceed. However jaded Van Veeteren is in his job, he is brilliant at it – in his own words, ‘the best interrogating officer in the district, possibly in the country’ (Nesser 2008 [1993]): 37). His sometime ‘introversion’, ‘irritation’ and ‘secretiveness’ are, as Münster notes, signs of his engagement, ‘clear pointers that something was brewing and that DCI Van Veeteren was in top gear mentally’ (Nesser 2006 [1994]: 271). He has, too, the ability, as Reinhart comments, to ‘usually manag[e] to stumble into something crucial when he’s out and about’ (Nesser 2010 [1997]: 313). That word ‘stumble’ is worth a pause – and we start here to enter the metaphysical landscape of Nesser’s novels – for Van Veeteren

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is a firm believer in instinct in the solving of crime: ‘The brain functions best when you leave it in peace […] Keep tucked away the questions and information you have, and think about something else. If there’s an answer, it will come tumbling out sooner or later’ (Nesser 2011 [1998]: 211). Instinct trumps reason in Van Veeteren’s police work: the realization that he ‘knew more than he understood’ (Nesser 2008 [1993]: 202). So he recognizes guilt instinctively: has the ‘gift’ of ‘generally [being] able to decide if he was looking the culprit in the eye’ (2008 [1993]: 36–37). (This gift lets him down in The Inspector and Silence and helps lead to his decision to retire – see Nesser 2010 [1997]: 432.) Repeatedly, Van Veeteren picks up tiny signs that others miss, signs which often speak of a ‘psychological insight […] which could cut like a scalpel through a ton of warm butter’ (Nesser 2012 [1999]: 280). So, in The Inspector and Silence, he is scanning names in a telephone directory when ‘it came to him. Nothing more than a tiny nudge […] A brief little twitch in some lugubrious corner of his old, tired brain: but enough to tell him that something was falling into place at last’ (Nesser 2010 [1997]: 351). While, in Återkomsten/ The Return (1995) (and instinct is allied here to other skills) Jung, another colleague, judges it ‘damned amazing’ that while four or five officers can ‘g[o] through that village [Kaustin] with a fine toothcomb’ for ‘several weeks’ with no results, Van Veeteren ‘drives out there and picks up the trail inside an hour. Astonishing’ (Nesser 2007 [1995]: 331). Finding a meaning Van Veeteren’s intuitive flair runs alongside, however, a career of over thirty years with its own lessons and knowledge. The title of Borkmann’s Point refers to Van Veeteren’s own early mentor and his rule that there is a point in every investigation when no more information is needed; when just ‘decent thinking’ will solve the case. ‘A good investigator should try to establish when that point has been reached, or rather, when it has been passed’ (Nesser 2006 [1994]: 232). This rule gives Van Veeteren ‘a firm foothold or lifeboat to cling to’ (232) and proves apposite in this case. He himself is the composer of similar guidelines and sayings to aid detective work. His mentee, Ewa, refers to some of these in The Weeping Girl: Van Veeteren’s insistence that ‘there’s no point in trying to find a meaning in everything’ (Nesser 2013a [2000]: 32); his belief that ‘everything that happens is an unholy brew made up of the expected and the unexpected. The hard part is deciding the proportion in a given case’ (112); and his characterization of crime-solving in terms of the challenge of ‘[l]ots of straggling strands leading out higgledy-piggledy into the darkness’ (167). Such reflective activity ties in with the focus on Van Veeteren’s philosophical positioning – another unusual element for the genre. So, within the series, there is ongoing speculation on his part about the ‘laws and patterns’ which govern life: a belief that ‘[w]e are swimming around inside those patterns, […] we live in accordance with those rules’ (Nesser 2008 [1993]): 331). This belief in what Van Veeteren calls ‘the determinant’

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(2008 [1993]): 332) – ‘hidden connections, orchestrated incidents and similar phenomena’ (Nesser 2006 [1994]: 240) which ‘point out the path we have to follow’ (Nesser 2008 [1993]): 332) – is countered by the possibility that such patterns are merely illusory, that life is just ‘[o]ne big goddam lottery’ (Nesser 2007 [1995]: 299), ‘arbitrary’ rather than ‘well-planned’ (Nesser 2010 [1997]: 23). His belief in the determinant ties in with his belief in the intuitive, that of ‘an infinite number of connections and correspondences in the world’, the 1 per cent that we get to comprehend ‘com[ing] to us in ways different from what the so-called western way of thinking is prepared to accept’ (Nesser 2011 [1998]: 309–10). This last explanation comes when Van Veeteren has had a dream in which the lives of both his son Erich and of Inspector Münster are threatened by violence. Van Veeteren acts on this intuitive knowledge and, in doing so, saves Münster’s life. He cannot, however, save his son Erich, murdered in the next novel, Carambole/The Hour of the Wolf (1999). In Svalan, katten, rosen, döden/The Strangler’s Honeymoon (2001), Van Veeteren’s idea of ‘The Determinant’ (now capitalized) is endorsed by the existence of two books with that same title brought into his bookshop – the one whose author is named written in Swedish by Leon Rappaport. (Published in Warsaw in 1961, this book exists. Rappaport was a Polish, later Swedish, mathematician and writer.) Van Veeteren’s quest for ‘[t]he tiny driving force that governs everything that happens’ (Nesser 2013b [2001]: 250) is thus validated, even if further knowledge of it is then denied – for, in what amounts to a final joke, we find out that Van Veeteren has no knowledge of Swedish, and the book goes unread. But this notion of some kind of a pattern to life which can be intuitively grasped is given some kind of final (if still tentative) reinforcement in the last book in the series. Toward its end, a question comes to Van Veeteren ‘out of the blue’ while he is walking along a beach: ‘How many years have I left to live?’ He decides to walk for another 30 minutes, and that ‘[t]he number of people I pass in that time will be the number of years I have left’ (Nesser 2014 [2003]: 442). He passes no one. This sets up the tense finale to the case where Van Veeteren appears indeed about to be killed, and is seriously injured. As his colleagues tend him, however, he manages to speak, though his words about walking on a beach make no apparent sense to them: ‘If I heard him rightly, he says he met fifteen people on the way back.’ There is an element of trickery involved here, of throwing the same dice more than once, but it nonetheless does tend to corroborate the possible existence of a ‘director’ at work (328) – though not God, for Van Veeteren is a non-believer – of life being, in some hidden way, orchestrated. This loosely connects with another important ongoing philosophical strand in the novels concerning the nature of evil and its countervailing principle. Van Veeteren’s job, as we have seen, fills him with ‘feelings of loathing and disgust’. His digging into the ‘dire reality’ of criminal action reveals ‘[t]he maggot-ridden roots of warped society […] [T]he darkness underneath […] [t]he veneer of civilization’. Such knowledge comes close to overwhelming him: ‘For how much longer would the moral imperative have

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the strength to continue screeching in the darkness of his soul?’ (Nesser 2009 [1996]: 110–12). The sight of ‘all the marbled corpses of young girls’ in The Inspector and Silence tells him that it is ‘only a question of time [before] I simply won’t be able to stand it in this world any more’ (Nesser 2010 [1997]: 238). This sense of weariness and desperation comes from what Münster calls ‘that accursed, pointless evil […] Which kept on asserting itself, over and over again’, (Nesser 2011 [1998]: 416). Despite having retired, Van Veeteren’s state of mind reaches something of a nadir with the murder of his own son, Erich, in The Hour of the Wolf – and the inability of either words or music to ease the heartache he consequently feels (Nesser 2012 [1999]: 101). This is very much his dark night of the soul, when he cannot sleep at night, closes in on himself, feels ‘the ice-cold stab of despair’ (146). Van Veeteren, though, survives such feelings. The image of Gortiakov carrying a candle as he walks through a pond in Tarkovsky’s film, Nostalgia, provides a countering vision, ‘[s]omething positive among all the negatives. A faint light in the eternal darkness’ (Nesser 2012 [1999]: 145). Münster’s earlier thoughts about the importance of ‘hope and positivism. A sort of refusal to surrender to the powers of darkness’ (69) find an echo in Van Veeteren, too, who battles his feeling of ‘totally black resignation’ via his ‘chastened […] belief that there was something logical behind all the darkness. Certain patterns. Positive resignation’ (183–84). Finally, an awareness of mutual human care and companionship allows Van Veeteren to ‘[k]eep buggering on’ (as he puts it to Mahler [395]): recognizing that ‘[t]he living must look after each other’ (284) and that – and he is referring to his baby granddaughter here – ‘the important thing is the bigger perspective’ (Nesser 2013b [2001]: 338). What is crucial here is the role of Van Veeteren’s partner, Ulrike Fremdli. It is she who prevents him turning in on himself in silence, and who provides the love that triggers the recognition of mutual support and care (above). Here, too, Nesser cuts against the conventions governing the representation of the detective in most crime fiction. At the start of the series, Van Veeteren fits the generic norm exactly, something of a loner, living with (and then separating from) a wife he no longer loves, alienated from his troubled son, Erich. He then, though, moves on to woo Ulrike, the wife of a man murdered in Woman with a Birthmark. Once they become a couple and finally live together, however, her presence triggers a fundamental change in Van Veeteren’s life (see Nesser 2014 [2003]: 374). She eases his relationship with Erich’s partner, Marlene, and thus with the granddaughter who becomes the (other) light of his life. She helps him come to terms with Erich’s death, restores both love and sexuality to his life, and rescues him from incipient despair: ‘he loved her like a shipwrecked sailor must love a raft that comes floating towards him just when all his strength has been used up’ (Nesser 2013b [2001]: 518). Fittingly, she saves Van Veeteren’s life in The G File by raising the alarm when he fails to return home as planned. This trajectory toward domestic contentment is an important structuring element to the series as Van Veeteren finds a final way through ‘the swamp

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that was life’. The word he tentatively uses to describe Ulrike’s ‘vital role’ to him is as a .

bringer of ‘grace’ (Nesser 2014 [2003]: 376–770) and the series ends with their contented life together stretching forward into the future. Subverting the conventions A much more crucial way in which Nesser subverts the conventions of detective fiction lies in the fashion in which Van Veeteren’s own code of morality and justice comes into dramatic conflict with the law that it is his business to uphold. Generally speaking, the law in these novels is a very blunt tool in the attaining of justice. So, for instance, in Münsters fall/The Unlucky Lottery (1998), the judge at Marie-Louise Leverkuhn’s trial suspects that she did not murder her husband but, nonetheless, she is found guilty of first degree murder. Whereas, in The Weeping Girl, key evidence is suppressed in Arnold Maager’s trial due to the personal interests of police-chief Vrommel, leaving an innocent man convicted of murder. In The Unlucky Lottery, the killer Ruth Leverkuhn – her actions motivated by her father’s sexual abuse in her childhood – goes free and unpunished at the novel’s end, the police totally unaware of her criminal identity. (There is huge emphasis in the series on what Nesser metaphorically calls birthmarks, past childhood circumstances which inevitably condition and partly condone later action.) Throughout the series, indeed, justice seems served better outside the law than by its workings and deliberations. In Borkmann’s Point, the burned-out life and early death of Chief of Police Bausen’s daughter is no crime, but is the result of the pernicious influence of three men who, each in his turn, introduced her to drugs and/or sexually used and abused her. Such behaviour Bausen associates with the principle of evil itself (Nesser 2006 [1994]: 280) and then, acting as judge, jury and executioner to these men, uses a broad-bladed butcher’s chopper to near-sever their heads from their bodies. Bausen is arrested and sentenced but it is clear that Van Veeteren (and Nesser) have every sympathy for him. And Van Veeteren is more than happy to renew their friendship in The G File once Bausen has served his prison term. A similar concept of justice occurs in The Strangler’s Honeymoon. Here, Ester Peerenkaas is victim of attempted murder by Maarten deFraan, and is badly scarred by hydrofluoric acid during his attack (ironically, from a phial Ester carried for her own protection). Ester has previously been emotionally damaged when her ex-husband illegally took her 5-year-old daughter from her, to disappear without trace in Egypt, his home country. In taking her revenge on deFraan, Ester, it seems, ‘sees herself as a tool – a representative of all the women who have been tormented by men’ (Nesser 2013b [2001]: 592). And just prior to her maiming of deFraan – his eyes ‘dug out’, penis and testicles severed, body doused with petrol and set on fire – Ester reflects on her coming act: ‘There isn’t a God: That’s why we have to make sure justice is done ourselves’ (610). If such a chain of thought is represented as violently extreme, the product of acute psychological

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distress, nonetheless when Ester disappears after her crime, Van Veeteren will still say to Münster that: ‘I don’t think you lot should put too much effort into trying to find her if you don’t mind my saying so’ (624). Such endings, where ‘justice’ occurs outside the realm of due legal and socially approved process, recur in other texts in the series. Van Veeteren himself reflects on exactly this relationship between legal process and what we might call a more existential form of justice in The Return. ‘Am I prepared to take things into my own hands,’ he asks himself, ‘when the law and the institutions fail?’ Certain of an individual’s guilt but lacking incriminating proof, he asks whether he should ensure ‘justice’ or if ‘it [would] be morally more correct to let him go’ (Nesser 2007 [1995]: 338). He answers his own question later in the novel when, absolutely sure of the identity of the novel’s serial killer – the unrepentant Arnold Jahrens – and knowing no legal conviction can possibly be made, he pushes him to his death from a hotel balcony in a carefully pre-planned act. Van Veeteren is aware that the ‘brief seconds’ this took ‘would haunt him through all the dark nights of the rest of his life. Perhaps even longer’ (393). But he knows, too, that justice has been served. This is the first and last time that Van Veeteren oversteps this ‘borderline’ (Nesser 2007 [1995]: 408) and takes the law into his own hands in such a way. Indeed, when he reflects on this ‘moral escape door which involved stepping outside the law in order to ensure that justice is done’ in The G File, it is to realize that ‘one should only allow oneself to use [it] […] once, one single time […] once in a lifetime. If at all’ (Nesser 2014 [2003]: 441). Even if it is a one-time act only, however, and even if Nesser represents it in terms of an existential morality – Van Veeteren’s ‘absolutely clear and incorruptible spirit’ (Nesser 2011 [1998]: 207) acting for higher ends – his murderous act is a shocking and highly disturbing moment and one that violently shatters the conventions of the genre where law and the detective hero are generally synonymous. It is a moment, too, that raises more questions than it answers about the type of personal morality engaged. For if everyone put their (very different) sense of personal morality above the law and acted on such a principle, society and the principle of justice as we know them would collapse. If Nesser asks penetrating questions about crime, what causes it, how we should judge it, and the way the justice system deals with it, the direction in which he takes us in The Return is one that (as he seems in The G File almost to realize) cannot finally be countenanced.  References (All translations by Laurie Thompson) Nesser, H. (2006 [1994]), Borkmanns punkt/Borkmann’s Point, London: Pan Macmillan. ––––– (2007 [1995]), Återkomsten/The Return, London: Pan Macmillan. ––––– (2008 [1993]), Det Grovmaskiga nätet/The Mind’s Eye, London: PanMacmillan. ––––– (2009 [1996]), Kvinna med födelsemärke/Woman with a Birthmark, London: Pan Macmillan. ––––– (2010 [1997]), Kommissarien och tystnaden/The Inspector and Silence, London: Pan Macmillan.

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––––– (2011 [1998]), Münsters fall/The Unlucky Lottery, London: Pan Macmillan. ––––– (2012 [1999]), Carambole/Hour of the Wolf, London: Pan Macmillan. ––––– (2013a [2000]), Ewa Morenos fall/The Weeping Girl, London: Pan Macmillan. ––––– (2013b [2001]), Svalan, katten, rosen, döden/The Strangler's Honeymoon, London: Pan Macmillan. ––––– (2014 [2003]), Fallet G/The G File, London: Mantle. G o F ur t h e r Novels The Van Veeteren novels Nesser, H. (2014 [2003]), Fallet G/The G File, London: Mantle. ––––– (2013 [2001]), Svalan, katten, rosen, döden/The Strangler’s Honeymoon, London: Pan Macmillan. ––––– (2013 [2000]), Ewa Morenos fall/The Weeping Girl, London: Pan Macmillan. ––––– (2012 [1999]), Carambole/Hour of the Wolf, London: Pan Macmillan. ––––– (2011 [1998]), Münsters fall/The Unlucky Lottery, London: Mantle. ––––– (2010 [1997]), Kommissarien och tystnaden/The Inspector and Silence, London: Pan Macmillan. ––––– (2009 [1996]), Kvinna med födelsemärke/Woman with a Birthmark, London: Pan Macmillan. ––––– (2008 [1993]), Det grovmaskiga nätet/The Mind’s Eye, London: Pan Macmillan. ––––– (2007 [1995]), Återkomsten/The Return, London: Pan Macmillan. ––––– (2006 [1994]), Borkmanns punkt/Borkmann’s Point, London: Pan Macmillan. Books Tapper, M. (2014), Swedish Cops: From Sjöwall and Wahlöö to Stieg Larsson, Bristol: Intellect. Forshaw, B. (2013), Nordic Noir, Harpenden: Oldcastle. ––––– (2012), Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Åström, B, Gregersdotter, K. and Horeck, T. (eds) (2012), Rape in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy and Beyond: Contemporary Scandinavian and Anglophone Crime Fiction, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Söderlind, Sylvia (2011), ‘Håkan Nesser and the Third Way: Of Loneliness, Alibis, and Collateral Guilt’, in  Nestingen, A. and Arvas, P. (eds), Scandinavian Crime Fiction, Chicago: UCP, pp. 159–70. Jenkins, J. (2011), ‘Out of Place: Geographical Fiction(s) in Håkan Nesser’s Inspector Van Veeteren Series’, Cartographical Journal, 48: 4, pp. 285–92. Films The Van Veeteren books are also available in DVD adaptations from Arrow Films. For further information see: http://www.hakannesser.com/van-veeteren-on-dvd/.

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Online Diaz, A. (2012), ‘Interview with Swedish Writer Håkan Nesser’, 15 September, http://www. freemagazine.fi/interview-with-swedish-writer-hakan-nesser/. Pan Macmillan (2012), ‘An Interview with Swedish Crime Writer Håkan Nesser’ [YouTube], 17 January, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1E7hStBL5c. Websites Nesser’s own website, now discontinued, is well worth a look; the website is in Swedish but an English translation is available: http://www.nesser.se/ A c know l e dg e m e n t s Grateful thanks to Charlotte Fallenius for help with the occasional Swedish translations needed.

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I N TE R R O G ATI O N S co nducted by Barr y Fo r sh aw

0 1 504 surn am me e s, First ja , P. D.name 0 1 508 sm ur name an na km e le l, First , henning 0 1 604 su rR na an mke i, n First , Ianname 0 1 608 suW rn name i lasmoen, ,First Robert 00 s u r n a m e , First name

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j a m e s , P. D. creat or o f Commander Ad a m D a lg li e sh

The woman most people would regard as this country's premier crime writer, the late P. D. James, was always perfectly ready to admit her age, which was in her late eighties at the time of this interview (she died in 2014 at the age of 94). As well she might: most of us would give our eye teeth to be as fit and alert as she was at an age when many are starting to take it easy. The author of such books as The Murder Room (2003) and Innocent Blood (1980) had a busy lifestyle that would give pause to women half her age – and it was clear that she thrived on it. Sitting in her elegant Notting Hill home, Baroness James was happy to talk about the dizzying variety of activities that kept her diary full: her commitments in the House of Lords, her foreign travel (she took transatlantic voyages to meet her legions of American admirers), her role as a wry TV pundit on the BBC (she was, of course, a BBC governor), and her enthusiastic embracing of her family duties. And that little matter of writing the most elegant and ingenious crime novels around, featuring her saturnine and cultivated copper, Commander Adam Dalgliesh. As James leant back in her drawing room, clad in a smart/casual blue trouser suit, it was easy to see that family was one of the key elements of her life: the clustered photos of various generations of children and grandchildren embracing the author positively radiated affection. But this is just one of the many ways in which Phyllis James lived life to the full. Her personality had a generosity of spirit that is sometimes missing in her crime-writing confrères. Musing on the increasing success of such foreign crime writers as Henning Mankell, she made it clear that she didn’t subscribe to the school that believes every sale for a foreign crime writer is one less sale for a Brit. ‘Surely there's room for all – I can't imagine there are readers who only read foreign crime or only read British crime. I suspect that those who really resent authors in translation may be those whose sales are a little precarious, perhaps?’ Fears over falling sales are not something which was likely to trouble James or her publisher, Faber. Such novels as The Lighthouse (2005) always gleaned impressive sales. That book returned to one of James's favourite themes: the murder in a cloistered com-

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munity; here, an island retreat for the rich and influential. Dalgliesh and co. were on hand to probe the dangerous internecine battles among the island guests. But there was, perhaps, a new element in that book. James had never been afraid to deal with grisly violence in her novels – but surely there was a new sexual frankness married to the more traditional mystery narrative? ‘I don't think so’, she replied. ‘Sexual situations arise, and one deals with them appropriately. Frankly, I think that most descriptions of the sexual act are so desperately unerotic. The best sex in literature is in the head. There is a scene where a key character encounters a post-coital couple on a cliffside, and that's pretty specific. It has to be, as the effect of the scene is crucial to something irrevocable that follows. I also needed to convey that this was a key moment: two frustrated people experiencing sexual fulfilment for the first time. But The Lighthouse also deals with a much more comfortable sexuality between a well-adjusted couple. And I try not to shy away from expressing these crucial aspects of my characters' personalities.’ Ask P. D. James if any editor has had the hubris to try to up the ante in her treatment of sex and violence, and you received a very decisive reply. ‘If any editor ever tried to do that, I would change my publisher. I've never ever been asked to do that, right from the beginning. I stick to my publisher precisely because I'm not asked to do such things. I’ve been with Faber since 1962; I suppose I'm lucky in that such a thing has never happened to me – although some people have suggested that I might include an American character in my books, as the novels are popular in the States. But I'd never do that unless it was a logical element of the book that I was writing.’ Outside the window, London buses moved along the leafy avenue. Having lived in a Southwold cottage, why did she choose to return to the Metropolis? ‘I like London. And although I don't get to the House of Lords as often as I would wish, that's still important to me. Also, I have easy access to my family. And most of my friends are here.’ One might assume that those friends of Baroness James in the arts and publishing fields would have (generally speaking) left-of-centre views. ‘That’s probably true’, James concurred. ‘And in my days as a BBC governor, the general ethos was of the left. That’s fine with me – I'm not really a political person. Although I sit on the Tory side in the Lords, I’m not a party animal in the sense of “my party right or wrong”. I dislike the extremes of both parties – hard left and hard right are both rather frightening. On the other hand, to be able to see both sides of the argument might lead to accusations of sitting on the fence. I quickly realized that the Tories were going to lose the recent election rather bad-

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ly, which was something I could deal with. I think I rather prefer to be on the losing side. But I’m also on the Tory side, because I'm a passionate believer in personal freedom, though I don't say my bit in the House on such things as often as my fellow peers – as I spend more of my time of writing, I feel constrained to say rather less than more regular attendees in the House of Lords. Perhaps my real platform is in my books.’  Photograph ©Ulla Montan

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M a n k e l l , Henning creat o r o f Kur t Walla n d er

Sitting in the lounge of an upscale West End hotel, surrounded by well-dressed couples sipping cocktails, the world’s most influential living writer of Scandinavian crime fiction demonstrates the powers of observation of his saturnine detective Kurt Wallander: he has spotted that mice are scampering around the feet of the other guests in the lounge (a fact, fortunately, of which they appear to be unaware), and my conversation with him is interrupted several times by his bemused rodent spotting. Frankly, though, I don’t care. As ever, speaking to Sweden’s most distinguished crime novelist is always a bracing and salutary experience, with so much more on board for discussion than the adventures of a much-loved (if dour) copper. We are speaking (as mentioned above) a few days after Kenneth Branagh’s pending knighthood has been announced, after a showing of the first episode of the new series featuring Branagh as Wallander ( following Rolf Lassgård and Krister Henriksson). But, as ever with Mankell, the conversation ranges much further than the subject of his signature character. I ask about his recently translated novel, a standalone called The Shadow Girls­ (2012 [2001]), Mankell aficionados know, sadly, that Wallander’s police career – on the printed page at least – is no more). But writing something other than crime fiction is hardly a new initiative for Mankell, is it? What is the ratio of crime compared with other work on his writing CV? Mankell smiles. ‘Of all the novels that I have written in my lifetime – that’s some 43 or 44 – in fact, only 25 per cent could actually be called crime novels. For readers in certain countries, it comes as a surprise that I have written crime fiction. For readers in other countries, it comes as a surprise that I’ve actually written anything else! I have no complaints – it might be said that the crime fiction I’ve written has acted as a kind of locomotive, dragging the wagons of my other writing along behind. Such books as Italian Shoes [2009].’ Kenneth Branagh’s English-speaking incarnation of Wallander (BBC, 2011–ongoing), while enjoying extremely healthy viewing figures (and a deal of critical acclaim) has not necessarily won over the aficionados of Krister Henriksson’s Swedish take on the role.

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Ironically, though, when Rolf Lassgård’s earlier performances in the role he actually created were finally shown out of sequence in this country, they similarly were found to be wanting alongside Henriksson. Mankell, when asked in earlier interviews about which of the three actors he prefers, has always been studiously diplomatic. Can I finally draw him out, I wonder? I decide to give the contentious question another try – Mankell seems to be in a frank mood, and appears relaxed today (scurrying mice not withstanding), signing autographs and pleased by the success of the new Wallander series (the episode we’ve seen, ‘An Event in Autumn’, is based on a short story by Mankell). Here goes: which actor came closest to his vision of Wallander? Branagh, Henriksson or Lassgård? He frowns and muses for a second. ‘Contrary to what you might think,’ he replies, ‘I don’t actually find it a difficult question when I’m asked who I prefer playing my detective. You have to remember that I am a theatre director myself.’ (Mankell famously does much theatre work in Africa, as part of his celebrated social commitment.) ‘I’m also a playwright, and I spend a lot of time working with actors. So looking at the three actors you mentioned – Kenneth Branagh, Krister Henriksson and Rolf Lassgård – I’m not really in the position of having to pick a favourite. In fact, I don’t actually think in those terms. I see the particular virtues – very different virtues – that each actor brings to the part, and find myself enjoying them individually, which makes the notion of choosing the best performer a touch redundant. All three actors – being very different kinds of men – bring something both individual and specific to each performance, so it’s really not fence-sitting on my part to say that I’m impressed by things I find in all three.’ He grins. ‘I suppose that doesn’t really answer your question, though, does it?’ It doesn’t, but I know when I’m beaten. Nevertheless, I try one more salvo. Hadn’t Mankell once said in an interview that his favourite Kurt Wallander was the first actor to play the role, Rolf Lassgård? ‘Well, he was excellent in the role – in fact, I chose him. But when – for various reasons – his participation in the series ended, it was obviously crucial that someone equally accomplished take over the role, and it was at this point that I made it clear that I would like Krister Henriksson to be the new Wallander. In fact, what I actually said was this: unless we can have Krister playing the role, I’m not interested in any more episodes of the series being made. And – fortunately – I got my wish. Actually, I have the power that I need to have – I can choose directors, and so forth.’ I decide to try to probe Mankell concerning the controversy surrounding the Kenneth Branagh Wallander series – that despite a good degree of critical acclaim, there had been a groundswell of reaction against the show. British viewers were very much in favour of Krister Henriksson’s performance and the qualities of the latter’s series – most-

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ly to do with the fact that the Swedish version was considered to be more authentic and closer to the novels. A judicious pause. ‘Well, I don’t really know what to say about that’, replies Mankell. ‘The response has been different in a variety of countries. In Mozambique, where I have a home, the reaction was the exact reverse to the one you’ve just described in Britain – they consider the Kenneth Branagh series to be absolutely definitive, and preferred it to the Krister Henriksson. Frankly, as long as people are responding to one or other of the series, I’m not complaining. I’m very proud of all three series, and I’m always excited by the fact that they are strikingly different from each other.’ I ask about the films that Mankell would watch in Ingmar Bergman’s private cinema. What did he enjoy with his late father-in-law? ‘Well Ingmar lived on a small private island to the north of Gotland. He had built himself a small cinema with seventeen seats. This was a fully equipped cinema, and he could show the most ambitious films – in fact, he had his own projectionist. We watched over 100 films together – just the two of us – in that cinema. And what was as enjoyable for me as the experience of watching the films were the discussions I had with him afterwards.’ So, I ask, would these be the kind of arthouse films for which Bergman himself was famous? Or popular mass-market films? ‘Everything. Absolutely everything’, Mankell replies. ‘For example, one day we might see a classic silent film, the next it might be the George Clooney version of Ocean’s 11, before it opened in the cinema. It was a wonderful variety!’ Discussions on film between Sweden’s greatest director and its greatest writer of crime fiction – surely, I suggest, that would make an interesting book? Mankell smiles. ‘It’s interesting that you should say that – in fact, I took notes of all those showings and discussions, and perhaps someday I will write it all up as a book. Certainly, it might change people’s perceptions of Ingmar Bergman.’ Journalists are streaming though the foyer, en route to a mass interview upstairs with Kenneth Branagh. But I think I’ve got the better deal – as Mankell imparts to me an observation which suggests the sombre approach to life of his father-in-law (and of course of the writer himself): ‘You know, Ingmar said to me that when Fellini died this made him lonely, feeling that another of the great directors of his generation had died. But it was worse when Kurosawa died – Ingmar said to me that was the time he felt most keenly his own mortality.’

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Can you confirm that your husband is dead? Of course, along with his skills as a crime writer, Mankell is well known for his keen social engagement, and somehow we get into a discussion of the year he was born: 1948. Talking about this date, he makes the kind of comment which suggests the provocative political beliefs that have informed both his crime fiction and his other work. ‘Regarding the year of my birth, I’m acutely conscious of the fact that the nation of Israel was also born in 1948. Which means that one could say the problems of Palestine have existed as long as my own life. And I would like to feel that I will not die with those problems unresolved.’ This comment, of course, leads me to ask about Mankell’s capture by Israeli troops when he took part in the flotilla attempting to break the Gaza blockade. Mankell wryly notes that when the news of his capture reached Sweden, a journalist phoned up his wife. ‘At about 5 a.m., Eva received a phone call from a journalist who said to her “Can you confirm that your husband is dead?” He smiles again. ‘She was… well, just a little upset!’ I noticed that although Mankell later wrote a piece about his contretemps with Israeli soldiers for The Guardian, his participation (and arrest) had initially been curiously underreported – at least in Great Britain. ‘It’s a curious thing,’ he replies, ‘but I’ve noticed that some things are not actually reported in Britain. There is going to be a new flotilla, by the way.’ Will Mankell himself be taking part this time? ‘No, it would be useless. And I am now forbidden to enter Israel. I would not do the flotilla any favours by being present – it might be said that I would give the Israelis one reason to attack.’ Did the Israeli soldiers know that they had among their captives one of the world’s most celebrated writers? Mankell’s expression is sardonic. ‘Oh yes, you can be damn sure they knew. There were people there from army security to make sure that nothing happened to me.’ Such direct political action, of course, leads on to a discussion of Mankell’s more political books – such as the controversial Kinesen/The Man from Beijing (2010 [2008]). Does he see himself writing more books in that vein, which tackle edgy world situations more directly? ‘All I can say is that I will continue to write the kind of books that I myself want to read. And right now the stories that I want to read are those which have something significant to say about the times we’re living in. But I don’t think that makes me any dif-

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ferent from some of my writing colleagues – take John le Carré, for instance. Look at the things he told us about the Cold War – and look at the fact that he is still writing these highly relevant, politically informed books today. In fact, we tackled some of the same issues – such as the influence of pharmaceutical companies, which was the subject of my book Kennedys hjärna/Kennedy’s Brain [2007 (2005)].’ The mice are back, dashing past our feet – and, as before, Mankell is the only one to spot them. He is bemused, pointing out that this is the sort of thing he expects when he is in Africa, but not at an expensive London hotel. This prompts me to ask how much time he spends in that country. ‘It depends on what I’m doing, sometimes 60 per cent of the year, sometimes 40 per cent. I still do a lot of my theatre work – and I try to be ambitious. Recently I did a production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, and I made a specifically African version of it. In the text, Ibsen makes it clear that Hedda is the daughter of a general – so I made her the daughter of a general who took part in the liberation war against the Portuguese.’ I spot Mankell’s publicist hovering expectantly in the doorway; it’s time for a final question. According to Henning Mankell, what are the reasons for the current British obsession with all things Scandinavian – not least his own novels? ‘Well, I suppose one reason might be that writers like myself brought something new to the genre. Agatha Christie, for instance, wrote a great many novels in which people simply kill for money – and I’m not underestimating her; she had a phenomenal skill at plotting, which one can only admire. But let’s face it; character was not really her strong suit. Writers like me have tried to show that you can do something ambitious with the characterization, as well as making your books be about something – and have something pertinent to say about the societies we live in. Actually, you can find something of the latter quality in Conan Doyle, who is still a big favourite of mine – I’m not sure that you English esteem him as highly as you should. For a writer, he is a godsend – you can steal quite a lot from him. Which I have done over the years. But back to your question: I think Scandinavian writers are as concerned with a provocative discussion of the problems of society as they are with the details of a crime investigation; that’s perhaps what we most contributed to the genre. A pretty good contribution, don’t you think?’  Photograph ©Lina Ikse

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R a n k i n , Ian cre at o r o f D etect ive Inspec to r Jo h n Reb us

It was the end of DI John Rebus. Or was it? Ian Rankin had it clear in his mind that he was not going to make the same mistake that fellow Scot Conan Doyle made when he attempted to write finis to the career of his detective Sherlock Holmes by plunging him and his arch-enemy Moriarty to their deaths over the Reichenbach Falls. In Exit Music (2007), Rankin ended the much-acclaimed series of crime novels featuring his bolshie Edinburgh copper – and the book finished with a confrontation between Rebus and his long-term adversary, the gangster Big ‘Ger’ Cafferty. But (without giving too much away), this confrontation was far less conclusive than Conan Doyle’s – and was less likely to have readers baying for blood over Rankin’s termination of his protagonist. Is the villainous Cafferty dead? ‘Well, he's more alive now than he was in an earlier draft’, Rankin says. ‘When I’m writing the last pages of a book, it’s rather like squeezing the last bit of juice from a lemon. I get slower and slower – and I'm sure it’s because I don’t want to let go of a book. After all, when I hand a book to someone else – whether it’s my publisher, my agent or my wife – it’s no longer mine. As soon as anybody but me reads it, it ceases to be the perfect novel. At least, I usually can’t see anything wrong with it – but then other people start to read it…’ In the luxurious darkness of the bar of the Covent Garden Hotel – a stone’s throw from his publishers – Rankin (casually dressed in his customary black) is sipping a Bloody Mary and trying to readjust his mind to a much-condensed publicity schedule (the train that brought him from his home in Edinburgh was several hours late – ‘it was like travelling on a fucking stagecoach!’ – and he has arrived in a London brought to a snail’s pace by a tube strike). But, as ever, Rankin remains the perfect interview subject. Surely, on a day like today when everything goes wrong, he must want to renounce the publicity hoopla that inevitably surrounds each book? Even if he is contracted to do it… ‘Oh, I’m not contracted to do this! I’m always happy to do interviews – it’s certainly better than being ignored. For the first four or five Rebus novels, hardly anyone took any notice. I would have died for attention. An interview in The Independent? Some-

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thing you just dreamt about – and the memories are vivid enough not to take anything for granted.’ However, Rankin could afford to take certain things for granted these days. His ‘collectable’ status, for instance – early editions of his books fetch considerable amounts. ‘I’ve been accused of driving up the prices of early books by not sanctioning reprints,’ he says, slightly defensively, ‘but they’re not my best work – inevitably. Ironically, the first Rebus, Knots and Crosses [1987], was a very odd book compared with those that came after it. I was actually writing what I thought was a dark Gothic thriller, in which the detective might even be a suspect. The fact that this first Rebus book metamorphosed into a series came as a surprise to me. And, unfortunately, I provided a backstory for Rebus which I couldn't then disinvent for subsequent books.’ Ian Rankin’s Scottishness is, of course, one of his defining characteristics. Was he consciously following in the tradition of crime writing established by Edinburgh-born Conan Doyle? ‘Not at all! When I was young, I didn't even know that Conan Doyle was Scottish! He appeared to be an English gentleman who wrote about an English consulting detective. We know that Scottish burr in his voice so well these days – you can go to the British Library and hear recordings of him – but back then, I didn’t even know what he sounded like. So I can’t honestly say he was an inspiration in terms of his Scottishness.’ Rankin gazes out of the hotel window at the depressed-looking Londoners making their way down Monmouth Street, in search of the few remaining buses. ‘London… even though I spent so much time in France, I lived in London. But Edinburgh is my locus classicus. Even Edinburgh City Council now regards me – finally – as an asset. I may have populated the city (in my books) with criminals, prostitutes and bent politicians, but I don’t think that people these days consider that such things give the city a bad name.’ But does an ending for Rebus augur a new beginning for Rankin? He’s collected all the glittering prizes (including an OBE) – is he tempted to rest on his laurels? Such a prospect is swiftly shot down. ‘Oh no – that's not in my character at all. I enjoy what I’ve done, and enjoy what I’m doing. After all, in an alternative universe, I’m probably pursuing my first career – teaching creative writing at some university or other and being vaguely unhappy. I suppose in some ways I’m an academic manqué. Or I could be publishing books on Muriel Spark, Thomas Pynchon… or Anthony Powell. If you’re writing a series about a character who ages in real time (as I do), he’s a wonderful model to follow. But within the guise of crime writing, I’m able to take the occasional sideways glance at society or

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politics – never, of course, at the expense of telling the tale.’ Ah yes, Ian Rankin, the social commentator. From the mouth of his dyspeptic copper, we’ve had a perceptive (and scabrous) analysis of Scottish society and politics spread out across twenty books. And Rankin is famously rigorous when it comes to the foibles of his countrymen. So was the final chapter for Rebus coinciding with the beginnings of a move towards Scottish independence – a trajectory halted by a decisive ‘No’ vote? Exit Music freighted in a pretty unsparing vision of the Scottish National Party via a fictitious woman MP. What’s Rankin’s view these days of the SNP? ‘Hmm… I always used to answer that I was yet to be persuaded. I have to admit that they had a good hundred days before the vote. But this is the sort of question I try to deal with in my books – Exit Music is, to some extent, about what might happen if we’d decided to have an independent Scotland. I think it’s right to be wary of such a proposition. I want politicians – English and Scottish – to know that we are watching them – and not letting them get away with anything. But I suppose I became more sanguine about the SNP than I used to be. But if we had voted yes, just think of the daunting logistics and the bureaucracy that would have been involved – carving up North Sea oil rights, for instance.’ But surely Rankin and Gordon Brown were themselves the greatest refutation of the SNP ethos – two Scots not content to simply succeed in their own fiefdom, but becoming the United Kingdom's bestselling crime writer – and its prime minister? Neither man has been content to court a narrow Scottish audience. ‘Well, I can’t speak for Gordon Brown, but I certainly made a decision not to make my books too parochial, even though, of course, they’re set in Edinburgh – I make sure that there aren’t too many Celtic words, and it’s clear that non-Scottish readers respond to the books. I wrote a graphic novel – a standalone based on the DC comics character Hellblazer – and – wait for it – an opera libretto! In fact, it was only fifteen minutes long. It was a project for Scottish Opera, and the composer is Craig Armstrong.’ It’s time for the next event in Rankin’s punishing schedule. ‘We talked earlier about beginnings and endings,’ he says, rising, ‘but despite putting Rebus into cold storage, my life is still full of new initiatives. It’ll be quite some time before I retire to an idyllic life in France.’ But where will Rankin be living when he’s 80? Edinburgh or the Isle de Noirmoutier? ‘At 80? Oh, I’ll be dead. Genetically, I don’t think I’m disposed to longevity. And between the booze and the chocolates and the fried food…’  Photograph ©Hamish Brown 167

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W i l s o n , Robert creat or o f Javier Fa lcón

I’ve spoken to Robert Wilson about his work on many occasions. This is the most comprehensive discussion I’ve had with him, presented in his own words: ‘One of my books, The Blind Man of Seville [2003], is a key novel for me. It begins with a leading restaurateur found bound, gagged and dead in front of his TV. The self-inflicted wounds tell of the man's struggle to avoid the unendurable images he's been forced to watch. It was a huge and complicated novel which, on the surface, is a police investigation into multiple murders, but it turned out to be as much about how to become a writer as anything else. Something that always bothered me about crime series heroes is how little they change. There's a reason: most senior detectives are middle-aged men. They have to be to run such serious investigations. But middle-aged men never change. How would I get one to change? The only way was to create a profound mental disturbance caused by an investigation that turns horribly inward and reveals to the hero his most deeply concealed fears. Out of the vast collection of scenes of Seville in my head walked Javier Falcón. I suppose his character came from my growing awareness of how enclosed sevillano society is, how steeped in tradition and inward-looking its people are, which was why I decided to make him the sevillano who was an outsider in his own city. He hasn't lived there for many years, having done his training outside and then worked in Barcelona, Zaragoza and Madrid. Then his father, a famous artist, died and Javier returned to the city. But Javier was unable to move on. He was stalled. Something was preventing him from clearing out his father's studio, obstacles appeared in his career and emotionally he was so blocked his wife had divorced him. He'd gone cold. He was locked in. Unable to communicate with his fellow officers, even his clothes showed his temperament: dark suit buttoned up, tie always at its zenith, shoes laced up tight. Then came the trauma that tipped him over the edge. I didn't just want to write a book that was an introduction to my new hero, I also

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wanted to show where modern Spain had come from. Did this vibrant, artistic, animated, sociable people have something to hide? Living next door in Portugal I'd become fascinated by the differences in the two populations. How could two countries whose histories were so similar, even at some stages entwined, have peoples that appeared to be polar opposites? The one and only crucial difference was that Spain had had a very bloody civil war in the 1930s, which Portugal had avoided. So the novel was going to be about Javier, but the important figure in his life was his father, Francisco Falcón, who was born in Tangier and had run away from home to join the Spanish Legion. It was at this point that I developed the idea of the triple investigation: the first into the murder, the second into Javier's mind and the third into Francisco Falcón's journals. I didn't want to get into the dual-storyline bind again in this novel so I decided to develop the historical story through the brutally frank journals of Francisco Falcón. I didn't write them until I reached the point in the story where Javier discovers them in his father's studio. At that point I broke off from the narrative and threw myself into the mind of a monster. I had no idea how much I would need. All I knew was that this was one of the most creative rides of my writing life. I wrote the journals in the towering heat of the summer of 2001, which somehow suited the demanding nature of the character. Every day I would sit down for four or five hours and try to become this half-mad, demonic, charismatic, crafty, weak, vulnerable, brutal, sensual, chilling, amusing maniac. The journals burgeoned to 100,000 words of which I used only a third in the book, but what had started out as the development of a new technique for me turned into something that I felt gave the book wings. Regarding The Silent and the Damned [2004], this was a novel I’d always wanted to call The Vanished Hands from a line I’d written in a poem. The story is about ghosts. Not real ones. Just those fabrications of the mind, which are even more powerful and frightening. Being the perverse writer that I am I decided that, rather than do what all series set out to do: give more of the same but slightly different each time, I would make each book in the quartet different in style. Part of the intention of this book was to rehabilitate Javier Falcón after the horrors of The Blind Man of Seville. Because the Spanish use self-expression as a kind of 24/7 psychotherapy and one of Falcón's problems had been his inability to communicate, I decided that most of the story of this novel would be told in dialogue. This means as the reader you have to be on your toes. Vital clues can flit past in a brief exchange. The Russian Mafia also plays a role in this book. At the time of writing there were a lot of Ukrainians arriving in the Iberian Peninsula and more especially in the area where we were living in Portugal. I met quite a few of them. Some did building work on my house. They told me how, as they'd arrived at the Portuguese embassy in Poland to get visas, their entry would be barred by Russian Mafia men. These heavies would “tell” them

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that visas and transport could be organized for a fee of €1,000. They had no option but to hand over their passports and the money. They were then put on buses to Portugal. A lot of them had learnt from the rumour machine that it was best to get off the bus before it arrived in the capital because the Mafia would meet them again. They would force the men to work for no pay on construction sites, while the women and children ended up in brothels. Certainly my wife and I had seen increased evidence of large-scale prostitution on the roadside in Spain, especially on the outskirts of holiday resorts, where there would be as many as 30 girls of Eastern European appearance waving as we drove by. The Spanish are the largest consumers of cocaine and prostitutes in Europe. As many now know, the whole of the Spanish economy is “built” on the construction industry. Wherever you go in this vast country, on the outskirts of every town, there is a massive development underway. The Costa del Sol is especially vulnerable to overdevelopment and has been home to criminal gangs who use the industry to launder their money. It is well-documented how town councillors from Marbella accumulated helicopters, fast cars and luxurious homes. The Russian Mafia were making more money from people trafficking than the drug barons were from cocaine. What were they going to do with the cash? Put it into buildings. I imagined how the Mafia would begin to move in on another target, the city of Seville, and how they would corrupt people to get what they wanted. I have always been fascinated by people who have had previous, and possibly greater, lives. The idea of an ex-Nazi SS officer who ends up running a newsagent in a one-horse town in Idaho and is recognized by a tourist who comes in to buy a map, has always appealed. This was to be part of the rehabilitation process for Javier that, while he had faced up to his own family horrors, he would find himself investigating a number of people who were either running from their pasts or, in the case of Rafael Vega, suddenly being haunted by all those vanished hands. But whose hands were they? In The Hidden Assassins [2006], Inspector Jefe Javier Falcón investigates a mutilated, faceless corpse unearthed on the municipal dump, a massive explosion rocks the beautiful, peaceful city of Seville. An apartment building collapses and a nearby pre-school is devastated, killing and wounding men, women and children. When it's discovered that there was a mosque in the basement of the apartment building, the media is quick to assume it's the work of Islamist terrorists. The novel reflected real events. On 11 March 2004 ten bombs exploded on four commuter trains at the height of the Madrid rush hour, killing 191 people and injuring many more. Spain was suddenly, dramatically and irrevocably changed. It was an event that could not be ignored, especially as I was writing about the capital of Andalusia, which has a long history with the Arab world and today has a Moroccan population of more than 6,000. This is the largest single body of immigrants and, at the time of writing the book, they were seeking to build a mosque for 700 worshippers on a site at Los Bermejales, to which there was considerable local opposition.

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During research I came across a text from Abdullah Azzam, a renowned preacher and leader of the Afghan resistance against the Russian invasion, which read as follows: This duty will not end with victory in Afghanistan; jihad will remain an individual obligation until all other lands that were Muslim are returned to us, so that Islam will reign again: before us lie Palestine, Bokhara, Lebanon, Chad, Eritrea, Somalia, the Philippines, Burma, Southern Yemen, Tashkent, and Andalusia. That last word was like a bolt from the blue to my creative brain. Given that the theme of my Seville books was appearance and reality, I thought about making an incident look like an Islamist terrorist attack, but which would have far more serious and sinister implications. It was a colossal undertaking just to bring myself up to speed on international terrorism and al-Qaeda and then add into that explosives, counter-terrorism, Spanish intelligence, and perhaps most important – the Arab point of view. The latter task was made easier by a friend who had a contact in a clothing factory near Rabat, in Morocco, who allowed my wife and I to interview a dozen members of her staff, from the directors to the men and women on the factory floor. In three days we heard a range of personal and political views from the extreme to the moderate. And because we were there only to listen and not to judge, nor to argue any point of view, it was utterly fascinating. It became apparent that there was a very deep communication rift between the Muslim world and the West, emanating from the profound humiliation felt at the plight of the Palestinians. The whole of the Arab world feels their pain. I found it shocking, rather than absurd, to hear the firmly-held belief that 9/11 was an Israeli Mossad operation and that Ariel Sharon was commander-in-chief of the US forces in Iraq. I realized that there were two things at work here: the first was that Moroccans were so appalled by 9/11 that they couldn't and wouldn't believe that it was the work of Arabs. The second was that their humiliation was so complete that it had induced a collective tunnel vision: all things evil came from Israel. Never had I felt that the straits of Gibraltar were so wide. I had already done a lot of research before I carried out these vox pops so, when one of my interviewees mentioned the Balfour Agreement as if it had happened yesterday… (I knew that this was a letter from the British Foreign Secretary to the leading British Jew, Lord Rothschild, dated 2 November 1917). In it he wrote: His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done that may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. At the time of the Balfour Agreement there was no political entity called Palestine. There

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were 700,000 Arabs and 56,000 Jews living in those lands at that point. So the Arabs resented their description as 'non-Jewish communities'. As far as they were concerned they were descendants of people who had lived there for at least 1,000 years, whereas this phrase implied that they were intruders. For this presumed slight still to be felt like a recent welt 90 years later is indicative of the intractability of the problem in the Middle East. Two women supervisors in their twenties gave us another insight into the Arab world. They were funny, vivacious, intelligent and had jobs but were unmarried. We asked them why. It was because the men they knew didn't have jobs and without a job you cannot marry and if you're not married you can't have children and if you have no children you have not fulfilled your fundamental task as a Muslim man. Not only was it sad, but you could see how that could work on a young man's mind. After these interviews I decided that I would have to have a chapter in the book that would give the reader an idea of the differences in thinking between Islam and the West. Although I realized that this was not the stuff of thriller writing, shedding light on the central problem became important to me. There is a fundamental difficulty with writing a book about terrorism and that is the present level of repugnance in the reader at the cold-blooded ruthlessness of the fanatics who carry out these horrific acts. How does a writer deal with that? We can respond to the tragic death of a few but find ourselves floored by the enormity of too many victims. I needed to bring a human scale to the incomprehensibly grotesque. I could do this through the developed characters I already had at my disposal, whose lives would be tragically altered or extraordinarily transformed by a terrorist act – or an act of terror, like a sickening episode of domestic violence. The psychological effects of terrorism affect us all, whether we have shuddered in the blast of an explosion and survived or just seen footage of an attack on the news and been left feeling nervous. I wanted to emphasize this in Consuelo's story. Her psychological turmoil mirrors that of the population's reaction to the terrorists, who are like neuroses in society, they can surface at any moment and have the capacity to destroy. The Ignorance of Blood [2009] is the last book in the Javier Falcón quartet set in Seville in which all outstanding questions are finally answered, with Falcón making a promise to the people of Seville that he would find the real perpetrators of the bombing that brought down an apartment building and destroyed part of a pre-school killing many, including children. The initial inspiration for The Ignorance of Blood came from the other side of Europe, on a trip to Prague in 2002. We left our hotel in Wenceslas Square to wander the heart of this beautiful old city and saw that every other shop front was a casino. As we walked locals came over to tell us to be very careful of money changers: it was all a scam. In a bar we watched, stunned, as two toughs came in, rapped on the counter and were given a wad of banknotes from the till. That night the city thronged with hundreds of prostitutes. In the morning at our hotel, big, heavy guys with gold watches and chains

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accompanied by pneumatic young blondes in spray-on mini dresses sat down to breakfast. It was clear that the whole of the centre of Prague was in the hands of the Mafia. There are some similarities between Prague and Seville in that they are both big tourist destinations with vibrant centres. Both cities have become favourites with young Brits for stag nights and hen parties. What’s more, Seville, with its high-speed train link to Madrid, is very popular with Madrileños for long weekends and they are great consumers of prostitutes and drugs. Seville also has a huge number of construction projects underway, ideal for laundering money. Given that the Russian Mafia were already on the Costa del Sol, in my imagination Seville seemed ripe for criminal development. The motive for writing the book though, wasn’t just that the Russian Mafia has become a powerful criminal force on the Iberian peninsula, nor that Islamic terrorism is still a potent threat to the western world, but also because I was fascinated by their victims. How do ordinary people respond to the sudden intrusion of this dark world? There are two types of victim: the one who allows himself to be corrupted by accepting money, drugs and/or sex and thereby becomes the creature of his corruptors, and the other whose vulnerability is discovered and exploited. This latter type of victim is the more interesting. They are the ones who are forced to behave, not by direct threats, but by the consequences for those closest to them. It was interesting for me to observe how my characters performed under duress. Those who had been corrupted had lost something of themselves in the process: they found the core of their being, built up through years of family relationships and education, was flawed and disintegrated. In taking the bribe they’d given up any hope of self-determination. They were, under threat of exposure, permanently in the hands of others with no possibility of redemption. On the other hand, the apparently less powerful victims seemed able to hold on to what they considered to be truly valuable. They might start to come apart at the seams but, because they stuck to what they believed in and cherished the lives of those close to them more than their own, they maintained their dignity even in their direst moments. Although it might appear that we only have our moral centre to resist the horror, I was determined to show that love and trust can be impressively powerful weapons against total ruthlessness.’  Photograph ©Gabriel Pecot

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Crime Uncovered: Detective

R e p or t s 178 The Modern Maverick Detective Steven Peacock 190 Reason and Redemption: The Detective in the Secular Age Alison Joseph 200 Talent Enough in his Profession: The Maladroit Detective Jamie Bernthal 210 The New Regionalism in Contemporary Television Police Drama Jean Gregorek

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The Modern Maverick Detective Steven Peacock

This chapter explores the resurgence of hard-edged maverick detective dramas in post-millennial UK and US film, television and popular fiction. The influential appearance of Forbrydelsen/The Killing (DR1, 2007–12) on British television and its US remake (AMC, 2011–14), and screen adaptations of crime novels by Mark Billingham, James Patterson and Lee Child illustrate a prevalent new brutalism in modern detective fiction. As a result, the recurrence of the maverick detective in Anglo-American crime fiction as a gruff, eccentric loner has developed a freshly assertive stance. This is exemplified in the popularity and dominance of rogue operatives like Jack Bauer in 24, (FOX, 2001–14), and the eponymous antihero policemen of Luther (BBC, 2010–ongoing) and Rebus (ITV, 2000–07). These modern maverick dramas combine traits from the hardboiled mysteries and darkly cynical noir subgenres of the 1930s–50s, with the grit of 1970s Hollywood police and vigilante thrillers like Dirty Harry (Don Siegel, 1971), The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971) and Death Wish (Michael Winner, 1974), and from tough TV cop dramas from the same period in the United Kingdom, such as The Sweeney (ITV, 1975– 78). The hybrid exhibits a state of principled but pathological hardness, punishing and violent, without any attempt to disguise unpleasantness. This chapter investigates the politics of representation in the texts’ depiction of crime and justice, and how this relates to the way we live now. It also sets out to point the interested reader in the direction of other associated writing on the maverick detective, hence the number of referenced books and articles in brackets across the piece. The lone (or loner) detective has been a staple dramatic persona ever since the development of crime fiction as a popular genre, in written and visual form (Knight 1980: 8; Binyon 2009: 1–9). Myriad versions of the eccentric individualist crime-fighter have emerged, in dramatic scenarios seeing them thrown out of the police force, working on the fringe or outside the law for the greater good, clashing with authority figures, and balancing personal problems such as alcoholism, compulsive behaviour and rocky marriages with their innate gift for deduction and belief in justice. But it is the screen adaptations of work by American hardboiled writers Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain that are most instrumental to the generic shape and tone of more

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modern incarnations of maverick detective dramas. Hammett's sleuth Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon: 1930 novel; 1941 film directed by John Huston), and Chandler's serial detective Philip Marlowe (The Big Sleep: 1939 novel; 1946 film directed by Howard Hawks) are both lone outsiders, ‘independent, incorruptible, intelligent, cultured and sensitive, but also tough, hard-drinking and good with his fists’ (Spicer 2002: 7). The characters in James M. Cain's 1943 novel Double Indemnity (and Billy Wilder's 1944 film) embody the kind of violent desire, moral ambiguity and cynical views that would colour much later hard-edged texts. Dystopian visions Yet at first, the tough and dystopian visions would give way, on UK and US television of the 1960s and 1970s, to original creations (not adapted from novels) of a very different kind. Spy thrillers set the tone (a genre related to though distinct from the maverick detective drama – see Snyder 2011; Chapman 2002; Cawelti and Rosenberg 1987): in the United Kingdom, with the camp escapades of The Avengers (ITV, 1961–69); and on American television, in the increasingly fantastical and tongue-in-cheek The Man from U.N.C.L.E (NBC, 1964–68) and openly satirical Get Smart (CBS, 1965–70). Throughout the 1970s on US TV, an array of eccentric maverick detectives emerged, immediately identifiable by pronounced physical attributes and behavioural tics: the obese detective (Cannon [CBS, 1971–76]); the wheelchair-bound Chief of Detectives (Ironside [NBC, 1967–75]); the shabby hobo detective (Columbo [NBC, 1971–78]); and the cowboy detective (McCloud [NBC, 1970–77]). As Lez Cooke notes, 'What all of these 1970s police detectives had in common was a self-righteous belief in the validity of their own methods, even if those methods involved a degree of violence and a bending of the rules' (Cooke, quoted in Creeber 2001: 22). While the small screen of this time offers a collection of outsiders and oddballs, the harder-edged, fatalistic aspects of 1950s noir are recast, in film form, as extreme vigilantism and gritty urbanity in the thrillers of 1970s Hollywood such as Dirty Harry, The French Connection and Death Wish, and on UK TV as Z-Cars (BBC, 1962–78) and The Sweeney. Both series introduce influential aesthetic traits including a faster-paced narrative, and a social realist style. The central character in The Sweeney – Detective Inspector Jack Regan (John Thaw) – epitomizes the hard-edged maverick. He pursues villains by methods which are underhand, often illegal themselves, frequently violent and more often than not successful, ‘inhabiting the same sleazy world as the criminals’ (Millington 1997: 1603). Moral ambiguities Such aggressive, morally ambiguous impulses are once again moderated in the 1980s, in the larger-than-life escapades of the ‘cartoon’ vigilantes Knight Rider (NBC, 1982–

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86), Street Hawk (ABC, 1985) and The Equalizer (CBS, 1985–89) on the US small screen, and in maverick cop blockbuster movies like Beverly Hills Cop (John Landis, 1984) and Die Hard (John McTiernan, 1988). British television of the time continues the trend of showcasing original creations, and also files down the hard edges of the detective's maverick nature, as a pattern of softer, smoother everyman figures emerge, in Shoestring (BBC, 1979–80) and Bergerac (BBC, 1981–91). The schematic remodelling of the maverick as either an overblown action hero or a toothless team-player dilutes the form from the 1980s to the 1990s, and leads to the growth of ensemble and buddy cop ventures on US TV including Hill Street Blues (NBC, 1981–87), Miami Vice (NBC, 1984–89) and Cagney and Lacey (CBS, 1981–88) – all of which favour a team-led approach and cynical tone over individualist fantasies of revenge or retribution. Crucially, they also all adopt a heightened form of realism that enabled them to explore and examine social issues in a more authentic manner (Nelson 1997: 100–14): a manner to be appropriated by the later, revitalized maverick dramas. Following the events of September 11, 2001, and referring to the James Bond film series, Jim Leach (2003) questioned whether single-hero action thrillers would become obsolete. Similarly, Jeremy Black sees Bond as an outmoded anarchist (2001: 99). Yet rather than dying out, the maverick agent is reborn: the tone of the films radically alters with the cultural climate as ‘a wearier, more pessimistic Bond articulates the angst, grief and suspicion on the part of Britain and the US in the global aftermath of the 9/11 attacks’ (Scheibel 2009: 31). In this way, the post 9/11 Bond, and his maverick detective contemporaries, share resemblances with another British secret-agent: the Saint. More precisely, and crucially for this project, they, as indicators of the post-millennial, post 9/11 world order, most closely resemble the 1930s version of this outlaw figure. The most pervasive sociopolitical concerns are strikingly similar. As Chapman notes, The Saint's era of greatest popularity was during the 1930s: a decade marked by an increasing instability in international politics and by the effects of the Great Depression. The Saint's enemies represented both threats from abroad, in the form of foreign anarchists and spies who sought to undermine and destabilise British society, and threats at home, including not only the usual gangsters and racketeers but also corrupt City financiers and greedy business tycoons who exploit their workers and represent the worst excesses of capitalism. (Chapman 2002: 103) The latest Bond, like the tough, pulp-era, Saint, ‘is physically strong and takes pleasure in roughing up and even killing the most despicable of his enemies’ (Chapman 2002: 102). Violence in the Bond series is no longer ‘played for laughs, but appears brutal and unsettling’ (Scheibel 2009: 31). Shifting the attention from secret agents back to detectives, we can note the ad-

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jacent, marked return of the maverick of the contemporary period, and the restoration of a more brutal and unsettling dramatic tone, beginning in 1990 and hitting a high point in the 2010s. The 1990s saw the emergence of many such figures in written forms of crime fiction, including Inspectors Rebus and Wallander, who would both later reappear on-screen into the 2000s. Both of these texts illustrate an attitudinal revitalization and return to viewpoints favoured by writers like Hammett, seeing ‘contemporary disorder from the position of a disgusted and disengaged persona, whose own values are defined by his rejection of a social world viewed as a hostile and corrupt unit’ (Knight 1980: 138). Senses of alienation and anger carry through into the most recent period. The global success and brutal realism of (the ‘World’s Greatest Detective’) The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008) – a maverick figure – marks the apogee of a current pattern of crime dramas presenting unblinking acts of nonconformist rebellion. As well as a restoration of hardboiled sensibilities from the 1930s and 1940s, and vigilante maverick impulses most active in the 1970s, the recent landscape of big- and small-screen adaptations also reveals an interest in reincarnations of previous keystone figures from other traditions. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, the ultimate embodiment of clue-puzzle fiction and the mores of Victorian England becomes an action-hero in Guy Ritchie's blockbuster films (2009; 2011), and a modern-day sleuth in Elementary (CBS, 2012–ongoing) and Sherlock (BBC, 2010–ongoing). The latter two texts emphasize aspects shared with hardboiled antiheroes, presenting an ‘isolated, intelligent person, implicitly hostile to others and basically uninterested in them, [who] can verify his own superiority by intellectual means and create a defensive withdrawal’ (Knight 1980: 138). Different modes in the police procedural This is not to say that all other forms of crime fiction on the page and screen have disappeared. Using television as indicative, there are many contemporary examples of the ensemble police procedural and buddy cop drama, including the various CSI franchises (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation [2000–ongoing]; CSI: Miami [CBS, 2002–ongoing]; CSI: New York [CBS, 2004–ongoing]; Bones [FOX, 2005–ongoing]; NCIS: LA [CBS, 2009–ongoing]; and Scott and Bailey [ITV, 2011–ongoing]). Yet these texts operate in a different mode, are rarely drawn from novels, and do not exhibit the extreme vigour or political bite of the revitalized maverick drama. Equally, perhaps as an antidote to the prevailing brutal tone, both the United Kingdom and United States still produce some gentler ‘soft-centred’ (James 2010) detective dramas drawn directly from the literature of the ‘Golden Age’, especially the works of Agatha Christie. Yet these are much fewer in number, and both of the most recent incarnations Agatha Christie’s Marple (ITV, 2004–13) and Agatha Christie’s Poirot (ITV, 1989–2013) have now drawn to a close. One of the more modern influential British examples of elegiac, genteel detective drama – Inspector

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Morse (ITV, 1987–2000), expert at revealing the corruption at the heart of middle-class society and academic life – has ended, following the death of character and lead actor, and been replaced by flintier stories of murder in Lewis (ITV, 2006–14) and a darker origin story in Endeavour (ITV, 2012–ongoing). All of these texts are considered as important counterpoints and influences in the contemporary resurgence and reshaping of the maverick detective in original screen stories and adaptations from page to screen: once widely pilloried, now back in a big way, with renewed dramatic force. The fictions populate the individual worlds of their maverick protagonists – alienated, combative, hero or antihero – with select generic characters and characteristics. They draw from the hardboiled tradition, filtering heightened states of fear and horror through the detached cynicism of a world-weary detective (Horsley 2005: 5–6). Bursts of sex and violence from pulp fiction (O’Brien 1997; Stanfield 2011) explode with brutal force amidst intricate exposés of corrupt legal, political and social systems from noir on page and screen (Naremore 1998; Spicer 2002). Acts of vigilantism become increasingly commonplace, as the mavericks diverge from the law to execute justice. There is also an increasingly fluid hybridization of traditionally British and American subgenres. The modern maverick form complicates the more historically rooted division between text types, as delineated by Delameter and Prigozy: The classic British detective story is based primarily on ratiocination. Its American counterpart, however, has from the outset been described as ‘hardboiled’ [with] less emphasis on the puzzle so characteristic of the British detective than on the sleuth and the criminal world […] Hardboiled is a distinctively American sub-genre, its roots traceable to nineteenth-century American isolated heroes like Natty Bumppo and other figures associated with the development of the American West. (Delameter and Prigozy 1998: 1) What do we expect to see in a contemporary maverick drama, and what does that say about us, the state of the genre, modern film/television and the world in which we live? Genre theorists concerned with sociocultural analysis argue for the maverick detective as either representing a desire to restore a social status quo (Knight 1980) or as morally ambiguous (Collins 1989; Willet 1996; Pepper 2000). Sean McCann's Gumshoe America (2001) sees the hardboiled detective drama as essentially concerned with principles of liberal theory, the rule of law. For Horsley, whereas Golden Age-style texts place the detective as a restorative agent, returning a community to the rule of law, ‘This consolatory, potentially redemptive myth no longer seems viable within a complex urban, industrialised society, and hardboiled fiction reflects this by structuring its narratives in ways that avoid neatly optimistic closure’ (2005: 690). The contemporary generic variations of hard-edged detective drama are particularly well-suited to the tasks of so-

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cial critique and protest, dealing explicitly with violence, subordination, corrupt power structures and the relationship between the individual and community in the modern Anglo-American world order. The connection between post-millennial texts and particular violent, realist police thrillers and revenge films of the 1970s can also be seen as similarly revelatory in terms of ideological implications. For Robert B. Ray in A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema: 1930–1980 (1985), Hollywood cinema of that time provided two distinctly schematic choices for the viewer: liberal or conservative films (or ‘Left and Right Cycles’). Left films included Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969) and Little Big Man (Arthur Penn, 1970), and centred on outlaws and outsiders, representing a counterculture in flight from a repressive society. Right films included, crucially, Dirty Harry, The French Connection and Death Wish and centred on cops or vigilantes engaged in war against criminals. Audience responses of the time are seen to echo this polarization, with those of the latter group wildly applauding aggressive enforcement in the name of law and order (Kael 1976). Ray observes how, ultimately, both cycles of films share the same mythology, ‘with its predisposition to regard events in terms of the reconciliatory pattern's advocacy of individualism’ (1985: 300). The new brutalism In turn, the modern maverick detectives are also representative of a wider artistic trend with ideological implications: the new brutalism. The term is first used to describe architecture, in Reyner Banham’s The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic? (1966). Decades later, it is then applied to theatre, by Aleks Sierz (2011). In film studies, the term gains currency in works by Annette Hill (1997) and Julia Hallam and Margaret Marshment (2000). Via the approach of reception studies, Hill looks at viewer's responses to the 1990s films of Quentin Tarantino, Tony Scott and John McNaughton. The films are seen as emblematic of a cultural trend or ‘new wave’ in 1990s Hollywood, as ‘extreme, and uncompromising in their depictions of violence on screen’ (Hill 1997: 10). The recorded reception data is seen as ‘exemplifying societal/cultural consensus of extremely violent films’ (9). Referencing articles by Jim Shelley, Hill uses the term ‘new brutalism’ to distinguish and collectivize this group of films as one that shares a ‘preoccupation of violence towards the individual, as opposed to the state, and in terms of style, the use of realism when representing violence’ (11). Concentrating on the latter constituent element in Realism and Popular Cinema, Hallam and Marshment see the same films as a ‘cycle now termed “the new brutalism” […] in the popular press’ and as ‘characterised by graphic depictions of violence that many journalists and critics consider more “realistic” than that of their Hollywood action thriller counterparts’ (2000: 224). Like Hill, they note the repeated focus of violence by individuals against individuals and identify a recurring

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stylistic trait of 'camera and audio techniques frequently employed by documentary filmmakers' (225). They link these aspects to a ‘neutral moral coding’, seeing the ‘new brutalism’ as affording the film-makers the ability to question the nature of violence in society in ways unavailable to more conventional Hollywood fare (225). Developing the use and understanding of the term by applying it to a work of contemporary US television, Creeber (2002), after Hallam and Marshment (2000), sees The Sopranos’s (HBO, 1999–2007) handling of violence as symptomatic of formal synthesis: fusing senses of realism with high-concept aesthetics that foreground stylistic excess (Creeber 2002: 129). Further, he sees The Sopranos as in dialogue with the 1990s films of the ‘new brutalism’ in terms of their shared appropriation and reshaping of tropes and motifs from 1970s television crime series (129). Yet, for Creeber, The Sopranos operates in a much more sophisticated register of expression than the earlier cinematic works. He sees the series’ self-reflexive handling of prior forms (1990s film and 1970s TV) as achieving a ‘complexity of characterization seldom witnessed in movies such as Reservoir Dogs’ (131). Similarly, Thorpe (2000) interprets the serial-killer film Chopper (Andrew Dominik, 2000) as taking ‘the fashionably flip approach to brutalism into fresh territory’ through its combination of violence and an amoral perspective. Coming on the cusp of the millennium, The Sopranos and Chopper exemplify the latest strain of ‘new brutalism’ running through many of the modern maverick detective texts: showcasing a hyperreal aesthetic, conveying psychological and emotional dynamics of violence, and using moral ambiguity to encourage open debates about law and order. From the array of maverick detectives on display in contemporary fiction on page and screen, three types or categories can be identified: the embedded rebel, the reluctant leader and the old-school practitioner. The embedded rebel is Janus-faced, comprising maverick law-enforcers-as-criminals, and, in opposition, criminals-as-law-enforcers. This variation of maverick detective goes undercover to hide or authorize their extra-legal forms of justice, infiltrating, overturning and (more often than not) ultimately ‘correcting’ the structures of organized team units. Put simply, we can further divide these maverick law-enforcers-as-criminals into two areas: undercover agents and bad cops. Key texts featuring undercover agents include contemporary US films Spartan (2004) – David Mamet’s thriller about a detective infiltrating a kidnapping ring; The Departed (2006) – Martin Scorsese’s remake of Korean undercover cop drama Infernal Affairs (Andrew Lan, 2002); and recent US television series Rogue (DirecTV, 2013) – psychological studies of the effects of going undercover on a police officer. ‘Bad cops’ come to the fore in Training Day (Antoine Fuqua, 2001), Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans (Werner Herzog, 2009) and the American serial drama The Shield (FX Network, 2002–08). Particularly noteworthy characters include the undercover agents Crockett and Tubbs in Miami Vice (1984–90 TV; 2006 film, directed by Michael Mann) – detectives working undercover in Miami to infiltrate drug-trafficking operations; and Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen) in David Cronenberg's film Eastern Promises (2007) – an undercover

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agent working with the Russian Mafia, in a forensic study of the criminal underworld in contemporary London. For exemplary bad cops, we can turn to Gene Hunt in Life on Mars – the archetypal rogue police detective in this popular postmodern take on 1970s police dramas, portrayed by Philip Glenister in the UK series (BBC, 2006–07) and Harvey Keitel in the ill-fated US remake (ABC, 2008–09); and Jack Bauer in the serial drama 24. Maverick detective extraordinaire, LA-based Counter Terrorist Unit Agent Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) uses torture and murder to uncover terrorist threats against the US government and its citizens. Willing to undergo heroin addiction and recovery ‘for the greater good’, Bauer and 24 test the boundaries of morality and law enforcement in a post-9/11 world. Both Hunt and Bauer walk the fine line between law enforcer and criminal. Though less prevalent, criminals-as-law-enforcers appear in the US TV series Dexter (Showtime, 2006–13), with the eponymous antihero (played by Michael C. Hall) a serial killer who works and hides (in plain sight) as a blood analyst for the Miami police department while secretly carrying out his own deadly acts of justice. A less celebrated example is that of Lucas Hood (played by Antony Starr) in the US TV series Banshee (Cinemax, 2013–ongoing) – a master-thief hidden as a rule-breaking ultraviolent small-town Sheriff. While the series is not a direct adaptation of a particular novel it draws explicitly on key traits of US pulp fiction such as Jim Thompson's 1952 novel The Killer Inside Me, itself adapted as films, most recently in 2010, directed by Michael Winterbottom. Extra-legal justice The reluctant leader is a maverick who, while alienated, operates within the collective workforce of a local police department. These fictions share resemblances to ensemble-led police procedurals but emphasize the role and alienation of the team leader. Such figures favour extreme and often extra-legal forms of justice, going up against criminal groups and their own organizations’ rules and hierarchy. We can refer here to DCI Banks (in which a fish-out-of-water police detective moves from London to Yorkshire and is alienated as a result) from the novels by Peter Robinson (1987–2013), played in the UK TV series DCI Banks (ITV, 2000–ongoing) by Stephen Tompkinson. Likewise, Jane Tennyson (UK) and Jane Timoney (US) are two versions of a detective with the Metropolitan Police in the UK TV series Prime Suspect (BBC, 1991–2006) with tele-plays written by crime novelist Lynda La Plante, and in the NYPD Homicide department in the US version (PBS, 2011–12). Both incarnations of the central protagonist are outsider figures clashing with their teams and juggling reckless working practices with alcoholism. In the US serial drama The Wire (HBO, 2002–08), Jimmy McNulty (played by Dominic West) is a police detective whose insubordinate tendencies and personal problems play counterpoint to his ability as a criminal investigator. John Luther (Idris Elba) in the UK police series Luther is a dedicated but obsessive Detective Chief Inspector, consumed by the darkness of the crimes with which he deals; and John Rebus – the alcoholic, loner

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Detective Inspector in novels by Scottish writer Ian Rankin (1987–2013), portrayed on UK television by John Hannah and Ken Stott – constantly attempts, and fails, to become a more affable team-player. The old-school practitioner is a maverick with a particularly abrasive relationship to their colleagues and to history: standing by outmoded methods and principles while lamenting the present (being often close to death or retirement, or retired). This strand is manifold and includes texts as distinct as No Country for Old Men (Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel and a 2008 US film directed by the Coen Brothers, with Tommy Lee Jones as the world-weary detective), and the quintessentially British Inspector Frost cycle as novels (R. D. Wingfield 1984–2008) and television series (ITV, 1992–2010). Kurt Wallander – Chief Inspector of Police in the Wallander novels by Henning Mankell (1993–2013), as portrayed on Swedish television by Rolf Lassgård (SVT, 1995–2007) and Krister Henriksson (SVT, 2005–13) and, as the focal point here, in the BBC version starring Kenneth Branagh (BBC, 2011–ongoing) – encapsulate much of this sub-category. Mankell, Wallander and Wallander are thoughtful about the striving of a person, region and nation to preserve particular aspects of selfhood in an environment of constant, often violent flux and exchange. In Mankell’s mysteries, from a forensic concentration on one place, Skåne, Sweden's hidden secrets are unearthed, its schisms magnified. As Wallander ponders in Pyramiden/The Pyramid (1999), ‘An underground fissure had suddenly surfaced in Swedish society. Radical seismographers had registered it. But where had it come from?’ (Mankell 2008 [1999]: 115). The crimes and murders in the Wallander mysteries are analogous of a collective anxiety about change. More precisely, the characters often balk at the shift from a (traditional) model of emigration (in Sweden) to one of immigration and globalization. This act of clinging to the old ways extends to Wallander himself. As its title ironically suggests, Mankell’s 1991 Wallander novel Mördare utan ansikte/Faceless Killers explores tensions emerging once the ethnic origins of suspects in a murder case are placed under scrutiny. Fear of ‘the foreigner’ threatens to infect the community of Ystad, just as some of the townsfolk react against the growing appearance of migrant workers. Shane McCorristine chronicles Wallander’s broader, patterned preoccupation with xenophobia as resulting not only from the breaching of geo-political borders, but also a collapse of national solidarity: Mankell’s novels offer a veritable taxonomy of threats to notions of a secure Swedish identity: sometimes the evil to be combatted originates outside the community, sometimes it comes from within, but it is always linked to spectres of the Other (the Other of Swedish injustice towards the subaltern and neglect of the Third World, for example) […] The Other occupies a dominant place in virtually every novel of the Wallander series: the African and Eastern European refugees of Faceless Killers (1991); the interaction with Latvia in The Dogs of Riga (1992); the presence of South African and post-Soviet killers in Sweden in The White Lioness

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(1993); Swedish-run organ theft in the Third World in The Man Who Smiled (1994); the sexual abuse of Third World teenagers in Sidetracked (1995); the murder of a Swedish citizen in Algeria and the issue of Swedish mercenaries in the Congo in The Fifth Woman (1996); an Angola-based conspiracy to destroy the international financial system in Firewall (1998). (McCorristine, quoted in Nestigen and Arvas 2011: 77) Retreat and sanctity For the old-school practitioner, retreat often appears the only route to succour and sanctity: retreat from colleagues, family and modern living. Wallander is again emblematic in this respect. No matter how hard the maverick detectives try to disappear, to find solitude in the countryside and at the ocean’s edge, their commitments to the community keep pulling them back. Across Mankell’s novels, Wallander dreams of escape to the countryside and even to far-off lands. He achieves a trip to Egypt with his father in The Pyramid, but is unimpressed and quickly returns to the police station. Similarly, in Mannen som log/The Man Who Smiled (1994), during a year of sick leave that only sends him further into spiralling depression and bouts of heavy drinking, he repeatedly tries to head away from home and himself, but to no avail. Closer to home he fares no better. He takes an isolated guesthouse by the sea. Walking along the barren beach, he is stopped and found by an old friend, Sten Torstensson, asking for his help in a family matter. The primitive need to avoid the company of others is again overturned as intimates suddenly pop up out of nowhere to draw Wallander towards personal and professional duty. Rebels and reluctant leaders Just as the Wallander mysteries offer a refraction of social anxiety to the contemporary reader, the conduct and attitude of the maverick detective – as embedded rebel, reluctant leader or old-school practitioner – comprise fantasies of enacted justice, just this side of vigilantism. The modern resurgence of the subgenre coincides, and engages, with post 9/11 shifts to right-wing radicalism on many sides of world conflict. Concurrently, we are witnessing a rise in private policing, ever more angry debates around gun crime and the right to bear arms, and uprisings in former Soviet blocs. Looking back on the events of 2014, at the mid-point through a decade rife with modern maverick detectives on page and screen, John Simpson notes how, ‘In Britain, policemen and politicians alike worry that terrorist attacks are inevitable. In the US, trust in the police has been severely shaken by a series of deaths of black people at the hands of individual policemen’ (2014). For Simpson, this was a year of unprecedented events that challenged the established view of the world, a year of nervousness and instability. If the watch-

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word of the zeitgeist is self-doubt, then for better or worse, the modern maverick offers a crucial, imaginary corrective.  References Banham, Reyner (1996), The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic?, Princeton, NJ: Architectural Press. Binyon, T. J (2009), ‘Murder Will Out’: The Detective in Fiction from Poe to the Present, London: Faber and Faber. Black, Jeremy (2001), The Politics of James Bond: From Fleming's Novels to the Big Screen, Nebraska: University of Nebraska. Cawelti, John G. and Rosenberg, Bruce A. (eds) (1987), The Spy Story, Chicago: UCP. Chapman, James (2002), Saints and Avengers: British Adventure Series of the 1960s, London: I.B. Tauris. Collins, Jim (1989), Uncommon Cultures: Popular Culture and Postmodernism, London: Routledge. Collins, Max (2012), Mickey Spillane on Screen: A Complete Study of the Film and Television Adaptations, Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Creeber, Glen (ed.) (2001), The Television Genre Book, London: BFI. ––––– (2002), ‘“TV Ruined the Movies”: Television, Tarantino and the Intimate World of The Sopranos’, in David Lavery (ed.), This Thing of Ours: Investigating the Sopranos, London: Wallflower. ––––– (2004a), Serial Television: Big Drama on the Small Screen, London: BFI. ––––– (ed.) (2004b), Fifty Key Television Programmes, London and New York: Bloomsbury. Delameter, Jerome H. and Ruth Prigozy (1998), The Detective in American Fiction, Film and Television, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. Hallam, Julia and Marshment, Margaret (2000), Realism and Popular Cinema, Manchester: MUP. Hill, Annette (1997), Shocking Entertainment: Viewer Response to Violent Movies, Luton: University of Luton Press. Horsley, Lee (2005), Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction, Oxford: OUP. James, P. D (2010), Talking about Detective Fiction, London: Faber and Faber. Kael, Pauline (1976), Reeling, London: Little Brown. Knight, Stephen (1980), Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction, London: Palgrave Macmillan. ––––– (2004), Crime Fiction 1800–2000: Detection, Death, Diversity, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Leach, Jim (2003), ‘“The World Has Changed”: Bond in the 1990s and Beyond?’, in Christoph Lindner (ed.), The James Bond Phenomenon: A Critical Reader, Manchester: MUP, pp. 248–58. Mankell, Henning (2008 [1999]), Pyramiden/The Pyramid: The Kurt Wallander Stories (trans. E. Segerberg and L. Thompson), London: Harvill Secker. Millington, Bob (1997), ‘The Sweeney’, in Horace Newcomb (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of Television, London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn. Naremore, James (1998), More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts, Oakland, CA: University of California Press. ––––– (ed.) (2000), Film Adaptation, London: Athlone.

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Nelson, Robin (1997), TV Drama in Transition: Forms, Values and Cultural Change, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Nestingen, Andrew and Arvas, Paula (eds) (2011), Scandinavian Crime Fiction, Bangor: University of Wales Press. O' Brien, Geoffrey (1997), Hardboiled America: Lurid Paperbacks and the Masters of Noir, Boston, MA: Da Capo. Pepper, Andrew (2000), The Contemporary American Crime Novel: Race, Ethnicity, Class, Gender, Edinburgh: EUP. Ray, Robert B. (1985), A Certain Tendency of Hollywood Cinema: 1930–1980, Princeton, MA: Princeton University Press. Scheibel, Will (2009), ‘The History of Casino Royale On (and Off) Screen’, in Christoph Lindner (ed.), Revisioning 007: James Bond and Casino Royale, London: Wallflower. Sierz, Aleks (2011), In-yer-face Theatre: British Drama Today, London: Faber. Simpson, John (2014), ‘John Simpson: 2014 Was the Year of Self-doubt’, BBC News, 23 December, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-30573988. Accessed 23 December 2014. Snyder, Robert Lance (2011), The Art of Indirection in British Espionage Fiction, Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Spicer, Andrew (2002), Film Noir, Toronto: Toronto Pearson Education Limited. ––––– (2010), Historical Dictionary of Film Noir, Lanham, MA: Scarecrow Press. Stanfield, Peter (2011), Maximum Movies, Pulp Fictions: Film Culture and the Worlds of Samuel Fuller, Mickey Spillane and Jim Thompson, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Thorpe, Vanessa (2000), ‘Welcome to the new brutalism’, The Observer, 20 August, www.theguardian. com/theobserver/2000/aug/20/features.review37. Accessed 30 April 2015. Willett, Ralph (1996), The Naked City: Urban Crime Fiction in the USA, Manchester: MUP.

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Reason and Redemption: The Detective in the Secular Age Alison Joseph

‘My ignorance, the loneliness’: Reason and redemption in the detective novel… The titans parted and I limped through, feeling like Odysseus at the end of his trials. – Walter Mosley, The Long Fall ‘The house is not so large,’ he thought. ‘It is made large by the dim light, the symmetry, the mirrors, the many years, my ignorance, the loneliness…’ – Jorge Luis Borges, ‘Death and the Compass’ It is a familiar and comforting delight, to finger a brand new detective novel in anticipation of being told a story: a story that will be an account of the worst that one human being can do to another, that will involve us gazing upon at least one twisted corpse, brooding on lives cruelly cut short, following the blood-drenched trail through a series of clues to the final unmasking of the villain. It is understandable then that we might ask the question: why? Why are we so drawn to the genre of crime? At its most extreme it dwells on psychopathic evil and the terrors of being a victim; in its more polite forms, it can still be tawdry, melancholy or life-denying. Often, it is not even that well written, as Raymond Chandler has said: ‘The good detective story and the bad detective story are about exactly the same things, and they are about them in very much the same way’ (Chandler 1950). So what is the appeal? Why is it the case that large numbers of people wish to dwell in a world of second-rate writing about very bad behaviour? This chapter will argue that the answer to this question is two words: the detective. The detective is not just a character in a story. He or she is the person without whom the mystery writer could not write their story, and the reader could not read it. In a genre of storytelling that depends on clues, on facts, on tell-tale signs, the detective is the epistemological lynch-pin. The classic detective story is one that asks something unusual of the reader. We do not simply read the story, but we accompany the detective on his or

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her journey, and in return, the detective holds us, supports us, allows us to suspend our disbelief, to inhabit the truth of the tale. This chapter will argue that the detective allows us to find order within chaos, redemption in the face of evil. The detective enables us to stare death in the face, and, when we reach the end of the story, to close the book and find that after all, we are still here. Ratiocination The predominant claim that is made for the work of the detective is that it is about rationality. ‘As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles.’ Thus does Edgar Allan Poe begin to define his hero, Auguste Dupin. It is by these deviations from the plane of the ordinary, that reason feels its way […] in its search for the true. In investigations such as we are now pursuing, it should not be so much asked ‘what has occurred?’ as ‘what has occurred that has never occurred before?’ (Poe 1841) These are the words of Dupin himself, the mysterious and hyper-rational detective created by Edgar Allan Poe, spoken whilst awaiting the revelation of the true cause of the ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’. This story, often described as the first detective story, although owing a certain amount to Voltaire’s Zadig (1747), put in place the building blocks of what we consider a crime story: a tale told backwards, a heroic and brilliant detective, and, importantly, an ‘I’ of the storytelling, a narrator, whose very ordinariness allows us to marvel at the extraordinary nature of our hero; a trope picked up by Arthur Conan Doyle and made so successful within the Holmes/Watson relationship. Poe’s idea of reason, of ‘ratiocination’, is at the heart of his Dupin stories, and has been echoed ever since. Here is the first Father Brown story by G. K. Chesterton: The detective was on his feet, hat settled and stick in hand. He had already decided that in the universal darkness of his mind he could only follow the first odd finger that pointed; and this finger was odd enough. (Chesterton 1911) This is the moment when Valentin, famous detective, begins to follow the trail which will lead to the arrest of Flambeau, famous arch-criminal – a trail set by Father Brown. ‘The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen’, Chesterton tells us, going on to describe Valentin’s method in reckoning on the unforeseen. ‘Exactly because Valentin understood reason, he understood the limits of reason.’

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In this story, Chesterton embarks on a meditation on Poe’s ‘ratiocination’, an examination of how we ‘read’ the clues of the story. For the trail left by Father Brown is deliberately unreasonable: salt swapped with sugar, an unassuming priest throwing coffee, breaking windows; and Valentin has the sense to follow this trail, and thereby make a successful arrest. Chesterton deliberately exploits the tension between reason and faith; and yet, at the end, he gives reason the last word when Father Brown reveals the moment when he became sure that the priest with whom he was walking really was Flambeau the arch-criminal. ‘“You attacked reason,” said Father Brown. “It’s bad theology.”’ It is, perhaps, no coincidence that it takes a clerical detective to make this point. In an article for The Guardian, the writer and priest Giles Fraser explores the current popularity of detective fiction, with reference to ‘Rust’ Cohle in HBO’s True Detective. The detective, he says, has become ‘like an otherworldly monk’: a violent, drug-taking monk, to be sure, but simply, with disdain for material possessions, sleeping on a mattress on the floor, dishevelled, existentially intense, not that interested in sex, obsessed with getting to the truth. Not unlike Sherlock Holmes, in fact. (Fraser 2014) Fraser makes the point that the genre of crime writing took off around the same time that Darwin had published On the Origin of Species (1859) and Nietzsche was proclaiming the death of God. He says that it could be argued that the detective took over the role of the priest – ‘seeking justice, trying to make sense of the mysterious, struggling to bring order out of chaos, facing evil’. He concludes, ‘our continued obsession with detective fiction suggests something remarkably adjacent to traditional theological concerns, and its lonely, world-weary hard-drinking advocates […] have become the priests and theologians of our day’ (Fraser 2014). A story told backwards It is becoming clear that the appeal of the detective story is about more than mere rationality. Sabine Gross, in her essay ‘Narrative Fiction: Writing Towards the Origin’ (2013), examines this very particular way of reading. She says that mystery stories lift into consciousness readers’ familiarity with genre conventions by generating repeated mental rewrites, of the type ‘the butler is always the murderer – so he can’t be the murderer. It’s too obvious – but then again, the author will assume that the reader will rule the butler as too obvious, so he may be the murderer after all’ (Gross 2013). She adds, mysteries add specific moves to the dance of analytical discovery […] even while reading the text for the first time, our experience is one of reading backwards, as we

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proceed through the text […] pursuing the way the author is weaving her or his web. (Gross 2013) It has been said (see Bloch 1998) that the first crime narrative was the Oedipus story, formed as it is by the archetypal structure of one man’s quest for the truth. It is a story told backwards, a search to uncover the cause of terrible harm, a cause rooted in the past. Importantly, Oedipus, by taking on the burden of the story, allows it to become redemptive. When we say that Oedipus is the hero of the story, we are referring to his strength, his virtue, the sacrificial nature of his quest. The idea of the heroic is in the DNA of storytelling. In the third century ad, a wealthy sophist known as Philostratus wrote a book called Heroikos – On Heroes (c. 213). It tells of a lowly ‘vinedresser’ who looks after his vines in a beautiful garden, and asks very little of life other than to serve the hero whose tomb lies at the heart of the garden, the Greek hero Protesilaos, who was the first to die at Troy. Our vinedresser communes with Protesilaos, in the dialogue form familiar to his times. In the story, a Phoenician merchant stops by the garden, waiting for the wind to change so that he can set sail. He asks about the tomb, and the vinedresser answers him, conveying much of the kind of conversation he has with Protesilaos. The deceased hero has views. He has views on the nature of the true hero. He has views on the flaws in Homer’s account of the war of Troy, as he, Protesilaos was there, and therefore knows all about the beauty of Helen and the afterlife of Achilles. The relationship portrayed in Philostratus’ Heroikos between the pious vinedresser and the charismatic cult hero Protesilaos illustrates most vividly the practice of hero cult as a personal experience, thereby offering an insight into what was for the ancient Greeks the everyday, life-sustaining practice of worshipping heroes (Aitken and Maclean 2003). The editors of this edition go on to describe how the author of the Heroikos is doing something new with the mystery cult, ‘where the mystery is closely connected with doubt and the need for persuasion and conversation’ (Aitken and Maclean 2003). The doubts of the visiting Phoenician are dispelled after he participates in dialogue with the hero, via the interpretation of the humble vinedresser. Now, it is a very big step from the mystery cults of an ancient shrine to the mean streets down which a man must go. But, to return to Sabine Gross, ‘Detective stories, then, are a genre in which the productive tension between origin and ending, cause and effect, motivation and behaviour, complication and resolution, crime and solution, mystery and explanation, is particularly charged’ (Gross 2013). Something is taking shape. A relationship between the writer and the reader, with, at its heart, the detective; a detective whom we are beginning to recognize as an archetype of a Hero. More could be said on the ancient trope of the narrator, the masked storyteller who channels voices beyond his or her own, the humble interlocutor or the holy fool, but that is beyond the scope of this chapter (see Bakhtin 1929).

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The paradox of reason In ‘Death and the Compass’ (1964), Borges too, meditates on the crime story. (See also Otras Inquisiciones [1952] for discussions on Chesterton and Poe.) He creates a detective, Lönnrot, who ‘believed himself a pure reasoner, an Auguste Dupin, but there was something of the adventurer in him, and even a little of gambler’ (Borges 1964). And sure enough, when Doctor Yarmolinksy is found murdered, Lönnrot looks beyond the simple explanation of the Police Inspector, Treviranus, to something far more complex, saying to him that he will assert ‘that reality hasn’t the least obligation to be interesting’: And I’ll answer you that reality may avoid that obligation but that hypotheses may not. In the hypothesis that you propose, chance intervenes copiously. Here we have a dead rabbi; I would prefer a purely rabbinical explanation, not the imaginary mischances of an imaginary robber. (Borges 1964) Borges wrote on Chesterton and also on Poe. In ‘Death and the Compass’ he pushes the form to its limits, and our relationship to the detective form too, as his detective would prefer not to have anything imaginary – despite himself, of course, being imaginary. David Gallagher writes, ‘By presenting the Father Brown pattern in inverted form, Borges is therefore implying a criticism of Chesterton’s faith in reason’ (Gallagher 1973). This is because in ‘Death and the Compass’, it is the plodding policeman who turns out to be right, and by creating a fantastical version of the killings, Lönnrot is not only wrong, but brings about his own death. Gallagher says, ‘Death and the Compass can be read as a cautionary tale about the vanity of the intellect. Treviranus, simple-minded, is much nearer the solution’ (1973). A detective who works only with reason is like the deceased hero with no vinedresser to speak for him, or a Sherlock Holmes with no Dr Watson. There has to be an invitation made to the reader; made with warmth, from the heart. The tension with Poe is between reason and imagination; with Borges, the tension is between the real and the fictional. As Gallagher writes, ‘Borges’ stories are comedies of the intellect, of an intellect doomed to trip over a banana skin […] We can laugh at ourselves reading Borges, because Borges laughs so readily at himself’ (Gallagher 1973). It is becoming clear, then, that the enterprise of the detective story is about far more than whether the Butler did it, or whether the writer wants the reader to believe the Butler did it, or the downbeat tales of Chandler’s descriptions, ‘as durable as the statues in public parks and just about that dull’(1950). The writer of a detective story is in fact doing something of enormous cultural importance. By placing his or her detective between writer and reader, the crime writer is allowing something moral, dramatic and truthful to take

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place. When Lönnrot faces his own death due to his own over-arching cleverness, we are with him. We can be nowhere else. He is the detective, and the detective is always right. Even Borges’s detective, paradoxically, is right; it’s just that his theory brings about the detective plot rather than only solving it. In that respect, Borges expands the detective’s space in between reader and writer, and makes Lönnrot the author of his own story. The detective, whoever he or she is, invites us into the game, a game that has its roots in something ancient and that we the reader implicitly understand. By being an intermediary between writer and reader, the detective allows a communion between us, and in the end, the promise of salvation for us both; a resolution of the chaos, a chance to laugh in the face of death. Raymond Chandler says, In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony; and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything […] He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. (Chandler 1950) Edgar Allan Poe might have felt that Dupin with his ratiocination was just such a man; but without his narrator, his humble vinedresser, he is nothing. The cult of reason is all very well, until we stop and think about our participation as a reader, our faith that we will not just trace the path of a story from its beginning via its middle to its end, but that it will be a satisfactory ending, that the right thing will happen; and the hero must be worthy of that trust. Whatever games the author wants to play with his detective, whatever tricks to do with ratiocination or whether the butler did it after all, the author in the end has to trust his or her detective to have his or her own relationship with the reader. When we read a story, something happens beyond the words. We want to believe. We laugh at a joke, we shiver with fear in the dark empty streets, we are moved to tears by a mourner’s grief. It may be fiction – but it is true. The detective in this fallen age It can be argued that the modern detective is very far from the virtuous heroism described above. Today’s police detective can be an alcoholic, or terrible at relationships, or, worst of all, someone who really doesn’t have the answers. He or she has become, instead, like us, someone who doesn’t know. Someone who sits in the fog of unknowing, waiting for illumination. Walter Mosley writes:

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One thing I’ve learned in fifty-three hard years of living is that there’s a different kind of death waiting for each and every one of us – each and every day of our lives. There’s drunk drivers behind the wheels of cars, subways, trains, planes and boats; there’s banana peels, diseases and the cockeyed medicines that supposedly cure them; you got airborne viruses, indestructible microbes in the food you eat, jealous husbands and wives, and just plain bad luck […] I had forgotten that Death was watching from all sides; that it comes at you from the place you least expect. And so even though a gangster had me in his crosshairs, I still had a life to live just like every other doomed soul walking this earth, wondering if he could make it across the street. (Mosley 2009) This is Leonid McGill in The Long Fall, whose stumbling path aspires to virtue whilst so often being drawn back to the criminal past he has left behind. I would argue that this archetypal flawed hero, trapped in a state of unknowing, is our ideal companion in our post-Enlightenment, post-Freudian, post-religious world. Here is the archetypal police detective Chief Inspector Maigret, in On ne tue pas les pauvres types/Death of a Nobody (1947): Something was worrying him, but he could not decide what it was. What had he been told, that morning, or the night before, which had struck him, which must be important and which he had forgotten? An insignificant little remark. And yet he had noted it, he was sure of that. He had even reflected that it might hold the key to the mystery […] It was in the rue des Dames […] the door had been open on to the kitchen […] it was Juliette speaking […] what could she have said that for one moment had given him the impression that he was on the verge of understanding everything? […] A tiny effort. It needed only a tiny effort, but the flash did not come. (Simenon 1947) I have argued elsewhere (Joseph 2008) that Maigret is to Holmes what Catholic is to Protestant, what our psychoanalytic internal self-awareness is to the pre-Freudian, Enlightenment certainties of the late nineteenth century. In Maigret we have a hero who needs no interlocutor, who is simply doing his job; a police inspector, who, when he is not pounding his Paris beat, lives quietly in the Boulevard Richard Lenoir with his lovely wife; and, who is often in doubt. Except, this is fiction. And so, a page or two later, Simenon writes: At six o’clock the same evening, Maigret and Lucas got out of a taxi on the Quai de la Gare […] and it was then, suddenly that Maigret had an illumination, and the

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little sentence he had hunted for in vain recurred to his memory. ‘He had a horror of noise…’ (Simenon 1947) At once, Maigret has slotted himself into our heroic lineage. He has become, as all detectives, the bearer of truth, the person who can bring order out of chaos, the fictional character who justifies our belief in following his adventure. Maigret himself might disagree. Not for him the language of Poe’s ratiocination. He resides in a mist of doubt, and illumination dawns on him not from reason but from something else; something beyond him, something for which he sits in silence and waits. In Maigret s’amuse/Maigret’s Little Joke (1957) Maigret is on holiday in Paris, absent from police HQ having promised his wife he wouldn’t work. His colleagues are dealing with a case in which a woman has been found murdered, the only two possible suspects being her husband and her lover. Maigret is puzzling about the case from a distance: Of the two men, one was guilty, the other innocent. Sometimes his lips half opened, as if to pronounce a name, and then, after a hesitation, he would forgo it. There was not just, as in the majority of cases, a single possible solution. There were at least two of them. Yet only one was the right one, only one was the human truth. He had not to discover it by a piece of fierce reasoning, by a logical reconstruction of the facts, but to feel it […] It suddenly seemed to him that a slight gleam was beginning to pierce the fog, but it was still so uncertain that he couldn’t grasp it. (Simenon 1961 [1957]) And we sit with him. We, the reader, meet Maigret in our own doubt, our own, non-narrated state. That moment of illumination is precisely why we turn to fiction – a few hours’ holiday from our existential pointlessness. At the end of the story, an arrest is about to be made. Both suspects are taken in for questioning. Maigret finds himself outside police HQ, at night, with the girlfriend of one of the suspects, the wife’s lover. They are sitting on a bench by the Seine, staring up at two illuminated windows of police HQ. Maigret has finally reached a hesitant conclusion regarding the true murderer, not because of hard evidence, but because of something that the girlfriend has said about her man, about his attitude towards women. No clever clues, no fingerprints – just human nature. He has a sense of the right answer emerging from the mist, but still knows it could go either way. It was past midnight. The quayside was deserted […] they could hear distant sounds and Maigret recognized the sound of numerous footsteps in the Headquarters yard. Martine […] grasped his arm. ‘What is it?’

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He was straining his ears, following the direction of the footsteps. ‘Come this way.’ He led her off to a darker patch of shadow, and sure enough, a few seconds later, he saw Santoni, Lapointe and Bonfils emerge. ‘See you tomorrow.’ ‘Good night.’ ‘It’s all over,’ Maigret murmured. […] She was crying, all of a sudden, without knowing why. A light was still on in Maigret’s office, and finally it went out in its turn. He was moving slightly further away, seeking the thickest shadows. An engine was starting up in the yard, and one of the little black squad cars appeared. ‘That’s all right, he’s alone,’ the Chief Inspector said, quietly. ‘There you are young lady. It’s over.’ ‘Thank you Inspector.’ ‘For what?’ ‘For everything.’

The right man has been arrested. Justice has been done. The young woman is

free to be with her lover. Maigret goes back to his devoted wife.

The story is over. There are no more words. In silence, I, the writer put down

my pen. You, the reader, put down the book. Only the detective remains, a shadow between the two of us. And we are grateful.

‘And I felt once more that I was falling, but I didn’t mind at all.’ (Mosley 2009)

References Aitken, E. B. and Berenson Maclean, J. K. (eds) (2003), Philostratus’s Heroikos: Religion and Cultural Identity in the Third Century C.E., Leiden/Boston: Brill. Bakhtin, M.M. (1968), Rabelais and his World (trans. Helene Iswolsky), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ––––– (1973 [1929]), Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics (trans. R. W. Rotsel), Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis. ––––– (1981), ‘Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity’ in Michael Holquist (ed.), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist), Austin: University of Texas Press. Bloch, E. (1998), Philosophische Ansicht des Detektivromans, Paderborn, Germany: Wilhelm Fink. Borges, J. L. (1964), ‘Death and the Compass’, Labyrinths, Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics. Chandler, R. (1950), The Simple Art of Murder, London: Hamish Hamilton. Chesterton, G. K. (1994 [1911]), ‘The Blue Cross’, The Innocence of Father Brown, Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics. Eco, U. (1983), The Name of the Rose, London: Secker and Warburg. Fraser, G. (2014), ‘Loose Canon’, The Guardian, 11 July. Gallagher, D. (1973), Modern Latin American Literature, Oxford: OUP.

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Gross, S. (2013), ‘Narrative Fiction: Writing Towards the Origin’, in Steineck and Clausius (eds), Origins and Futures: Time Inflected and Reflected, Leiden/Boston: Brill. Joseph, A. (2008), ‘Maigret Versus Holmes’, Crime Time, 54, pp. 16–20. Mosley, W. (2009), The Long Fall, Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Philostratus, F. (2003), Heroikos/On Heroes (trans. E. B. Aitken and J. K. Berenson Maclean), Brill, Leiden: Society of Biblical Literature. Poe, E. A. (2009 [1841]), ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’, in The Pit and the Pendulum, Penguin Classics. Simenon, G. (1961 [1957]), Maigret s’amuse/Maigret’s Little Joke (trans. Richard Brain), London: Arrow Books. ––––– (1995 [1947]), On ne tue pas les pauvres types/Death of a Nobody (trans. Jean Stewart), Harmondsworth: Penguin. A c know l e dg e m e n t s This author would like to thank Professor Fiona Macintosh, Fellow of St Hilda's College, Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, University of Oxford; and Dr Rowan Williams, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge.

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Talent Enough in His Profession: The Maladroit Detective Jamie Bernthal

Three key figures A policeman’s lot, Gilbert and Sullivan informed us, is not a happy one. This chapter considers a rarely-discussed stock-figure typical of British detective fiction: the incompetent senior police officer. As a rule, this character will possess a good reputation in the world of the novel, but will be a fraud. He (and it is nearly always a man because we live in a world run by men and this figure satirizes authority) takes credit for others’ work. He is rarely the hero of the piece, who is more often an amateur or a specialist in detection. Crime fiction has changed since the nineteenth century, when Sherlock Holmes captured the imagination of Strand Magazine readers, making the naive Inspector Lestrade look maladroit. The moulds have adapted to suit changes in readership, in policing and in the face of crime. Now, the incompetent police official is less a figure of satire than of sorrow – not a joke but something suitable to inspire anger or pity. Furthermore, whatever language he speaks, the benevolent maladroit is (in essence) a distinctively British character. This chapter is far from exhaustive. It considers three figures from traditional British detective fiction: Arthur Conan Doyle’s Inspector Lestrade (first appearance: 1887; last appearance: 1924), Agatha Christie’s Inspector Slack (first appearance: 1930; last appearance: 1942) and Colin Dexter’s Sergeant, later Inspector, Lewis (first appearance: 1987). These characters all appear in book series that have topped bestseller charts. With the exception of Lewis, who has been developed through television projects, these are apparently secondary characters. If we are to consider crime fiction as a vehicle for social commentary, then the satiric figure of the inept official is worth examination. Origins There have long been individuals who functioned as professional detectives; that is, people who are paid to detect. However, there has been an established police force in

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Britain for less than two centuries. In 1829, Robert Peel established the Metropolitan Police Force (the Met) in London; this is the origin of the slang term ‘bobbies’ for police officers. ‘Peelers’, as they were then known, were the first paid constables and officers in Britain, and their job was to patrol the streets, apprehending miscreants. Only tall young men who were deemed physically, morally and intellectually fit were accepted for the job, and their social lives, sleep patterns and even church attendance were strictly controlled. These officers were routinely mocked in the media, and were compared to performing monkeys, lacking autonomy and being paid meagre wages (Sopenhoff 1978). By 1842, ambitious networks and hierarchies had been established in the Met’s headquarters, known as Scotland Yard, to deal with increased organized crime and the low public view of law enforcement. Scotland Yard appointed eight detectives, who became ‘figures of mystery and glamour, the surreptitious, all-seeing little gods of London’ (Summerscale 2009: xxii). Kate Summerscale has identified these eight detectives as the prototypes for heroic sleuths in popular fiction throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Into a rapidly modernizing world, such figures trailblazed ‘science, conviction, [and] stories that could organise chaos’ (xii). They were allowed to enter middle-class homes – once sacredly private domains – and to question people of all classes to discover the truth. The Scotland Yard detective, with a high office and multiple skills, was immortalized in fiction when Charles Dickens created the omnipresent, sharp and benevolent Inspector Bucket in Bleak House (1852–53). However, the Scotland Yarders were not universally adored. For one thing, they were tradesmen with access to the intimate lives of their social betters; could they be trusted, and what would they learn or expose (Miller 1988: 15–16)? For another thing, the detectives were polyglots: ‘A policeman may be a good hand at discovering a criminal,’ wrote a prominent barrister, ‘but it requires intellect and a mind enlarged by observation to detect a crime and unravel a mystery’ (quoted in Summerscale 2009: 165, original emphasis). Moreover, many people viewed them as professionals, driven by career ambitions rather than moral conviction. His finger on the public pulse, Wilkie Collins wrote in his novel Armadale (1863): ‘There he sat – the necessary Detective […]; a man professionally ready on the merest suspicion (if the merest suspicion paid him) to get under our beds, and to look through the gimlet-holes in our doors’ (Collins 1995: 516–17). Amateurs and careerists A public suspicious of tradesmen may have gained more satisfaction reading about the amateur – or the private professional with an enthusiasm for his topic and sufficient manners and money to choose his labours for love. When Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet (1887), he set the mould for British detective fiction for at least the next six decades. Holmes, eccentric and aloof, is fiction’s most

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iconic ‘consulting detective’. As Holmes himself explains: When [Scotland Yarders] are at fault they come to me, and I manage to put them on the right scent. They lay all the evidence before me, and I am generally able, by the help of my knowledge of the history of crime, to set them straight. (Doyle 2001 [1887]: 21) Holmes has long been considered the embodiment of everything nineteenth-century progress aspired to: ascetic, intellectual and utterly focused on his skill. A Study in Scarlet, however, also introduced a supporting cast of characters, including Holmes’s faithful amanuensis, Dr Watson, their landlady Mrs Hudson, and the inept Scotland Yard official, Inspector G. Lestrade. Like everything in the Sherlockian universe, the inspector’s full name has been a matter of some dispute (Dorothy L. Sayers favoured ‘Giles’). In truth, nobody knows. Lestrade went on to appear in a further twelve novels and stories featuring Holmes. Lestrade generally turns up in the first few pages, having ‘got himself into a fog’ (Doyle 2001 [1887]: 21), not that he would admit to this. He will usually hint, as in ‘The Six Napoleons’ (1904), that the case is impossible to solve, or, as in ‘The Second Stain’ (1904), that he has already solved it. He will, he says, be visiting Holmes on account of ‘a mere trifle – but the sort of thing you take an interest in – queer, you know, and what you might call freakish’ (Doyle 2008 [1905]: 65, 381). Thereby, Lestrade distances himself from ‘queer’ unorthodoxy while benefiting from the consulting detective’s insights. Physically, he is ‘ferret-like’ but with ‘bulldog features’ (Doyle 2001 [1887]: 30; Doyle 2008 [1905]: 380). Like his arch-rival, Inspector Gregson, Lestrade is ‘quick and energetic, but conventional – shockingly so’. The two inspectors ‘have their knives into one another’, with the jealous zeal of ‘a pair of professional beauties’, but they are not after the truth so much as the glory of having solved a case. ‘Supposing I unravel the whole matter,’ Holmes remarks, ‘you may be sure that Gregson, Lestrade, and Co. will pocket all the credit. That comes of being an unofficial personage’ (Doyle 2001 [1887]: 26). Newspapers sing their praises – at the end of Scarlet, Holmes is amused to read that the credit of this smart capture belongs entirely to the well-known Scotland Yard officials, Messrs. Lestrade and Gregson. The man was apprehended, it appears, in the rooms of a certain Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who has himself, as an amateur, shown some talent in the detective line, and who, with such instructors, may hope in time to attain to some degree of their skill. (Doyle 2001 [1887]: 127) The reader would be hard-pressed to reconcile this description with the police official who was ‘mystified’ by a crime scene that ‘simplified’ things for Holmes (Doyle

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2001 [1887]: 31), and who tidied up another crime scene before anyone else could see it because he could find nothing of interest (Doyle 2008 [1905]: 381). Lestrade is, then, a figure of fun; a satire on media sensationalism, drawing on popular prejudices surrounding money-driven professionals at the Met. ‘That's the result of all our study in scarlet,’ Holmes jokes to Watson: ‘to get them a testimonial!’ (Doyle 2001 [1887]: 127). It is difficult to underestimate the impact of Sherlock Holmes. Subsequent detectives, both fictional and real, all respond in some way to his image. It is well-known that Doyle’s books have been used as training manuals in police forces around the world, and they have certainly influenced Scotland Yard. The Yard incorporated the 20-year-old science of fingerprinting in 1901, some years after Doyle brought it to popular attention in The Sign of Four (1890) and ‘The Engineer’s Thumb’ (1892). Handwriting analysis, the use of sniffer dogs and other advances in forensic science that the police adopted, are all pre-empted in Holmes’s methodology (O’Brien 2015). More overtly, data relating to crime in Britain is stored on software known as the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System, or H.O.L.M.E.S., a nod to the father of modern police-work. Animated algebra The influence on British fiction is obvious in texts from detection’s ‘Golden Age’. That is a contested term, but it spans roughly from the publication of Agatha Christie’s first crime novel in 1920 to the publication of Dorothy L. Sayers’s last in 1937. In this period, the detective novel developed its reputation for being a stylized puzzle; akin to a cryptic crossword. The clichés are well known: a cloistered setting, a motley collection of uppermiddle-class stock characters, and an amateur detective who stumbles across a corpse and, over the course of the novel, pieces together clues to identify the killer. As Christie herself put it, ‘Spot the least likely person to have committed the crime and nine times out of ten our task is finished’ (Christie 1969: 5). Howard Haycraft, an early scholar of the genre, noted in 1941 that, ‘[b]ut for the tales in which [Holmes] appeared, the detective story as we know it to-day might never have developed – or only in a vastly different […] form’ (Haycraft 1967 [1941]: 61). Doyle’s character dynamic, rather than his approach to plot, is what survived. All the most prominent writers of the Golden Age – Christie, Sayers, Margery Allingham, John Dickson Carr and Gladys Mitchell, among others – wrote about eccentric detectives, often with sidekicks and/or a benevolent servant, and they all created some network of law enforcers hovering uncertainly in the wings. Christie summarized this neatly in her autobiography: ‘I was well-steeped in the Sherlock Holmes tradition’ (Christie 2011 [1977]: 251). She created her first and most famous detective, the petite refugee Hercule Poirot, as a contrast to Holmes (‘I should never be able to imitate him’ [256, original emphasis]) but began experimenting within ‘the Sherlock Holmes tradition’ to which she felt ‘tied’: ‘eccentric detective, stooge assistant, [and] Lestrade-type Scotland Yard detective’ (282).

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Most critics emphasize Golden Age writers’ development of the puzzle aspect, and stress that detectives became more diverse, implying that the authors copied Doyle exhaustively in all other particulars. Indeed, Haycraft at the time commented that Poirot stood out as an unscientific hero, ‘the champion of theory over matter’, amidst Christie’s deployment of ‘Canonical devices ad nauseum’ (Haycraft 1967 [1941]: 132). However, the ‘Lestrade-type’ inspector in the Golden Age is not entirely Lestrade-like. These stories provided an escape from the horrors of two world wars, their domestic settings and homely heroes contrasting presentations of incompetence at an official level. As times change, so do zeitgeist-reflecting characters, and with Scotland Yard following in Holmes’s forensic footprints, the clumsy official became more science-minded. Enter Inspector Slack To illustrate this development, we will consider a character who appears in two Christie novels, but is once again part of a string of similar types. Inspector Slack appears in The Murder at the Vicarage (1930) and The Body in the Library (1942). Like the faux cosiness those titles conjure up, Slack’s name is ironically suggestive: ‘never’, the narrator of Vicarage announces, ‘did a man more determinedly strive to contradict his name’ (Christie 1990 [1930]: 39). He is introduced as ‘restless and energetic’, with a ‘rude and overbearing’ manner (39). Within paragraphs of appearing he has already examined the crime scene, the narrator’s study, with vigour, but looking only at what physical details he needs to record. A stopped clock seems to give the time of death, but the inspector does not know that it is ten minutes fast: ‘Ah!’ he said in a tone of triumph. ‘Here’s what we want. Clock overturned when he fell forward. That’ll give us the time of the crime. […]’ I had been trying to get a word in. ‘About the clock–’ ‘If you’ll excuse me, sir, I’ll ask you any questions I want to know. Time’s short. What I want is absolute silence.’ (Christie 1990 [1930]: 39) Like Lestrade, Slack has a high opinion of himself and follows his job to the letter; but also like Lestrade, he lacks the skill of lateral thinking, and unlike his predecessor he refuses to allow other types of knowledge to interfere with what he has learnt. His clipped, almost telegraphic sentences suggest a modern, fast-paced attitude, and despite his meticulousness this means that he whizzes past key facts. Despite professing time’s shortness, he prefers ‘silence’ to new information. Perhaps his name is appropriate. In this, he contrasts with the text’s main detective, Miss Marple. An elderly spinster who has lived all her life in a village, Marple gathers information by gossiping with locals in a ‘gentle, appealing manner’ (Christie 1990 [1930]: 14). A character less like

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Inspector Slack cannot be imagined. Marple solves the murder at the vicarage, while Slack plans to arrest the wrong man, by remembering the strange ways in which people referred to a gunshot. Such nuances are lost on the policemen, and at the end of the book, they cannot arrest the guilty party: ‘there’s no proof’, says an officer, referring to physical evidence. ‘Not an atom’ (215). To get ‘proof’, Marple sets a psychological trap for the killer based on a suggestive turn of phrase. Her ‘old maid’ style of detection contrasts with the physical, scientific thinking of men, whom she frequently refers to as another species. Gendered dynamics Gendered dynamics are more overt in The Body in the Library, a playful postscript to the Golden Age. Marple returns, along with her friend Mrs Bantry – in whose library a dead blonde is discovered – and the Scotland Yard team. The plot revolves around identifying the corpse. Slack is part of a complex hierarchy at the Yard and his limited thinking skills are clearly down to discipline. He begins by reading the details of every missing young woman in the county, but is stopped by his superior when he reaches a dark-haired 16-year-old Girl Guide: ‘Don’t go on reading idiotic details, Slack. This wasn’t a schoolgirl’ (Christie 1973 [1942]: 32). The body is later identified as that of a professional dancer, whose cousin confirms this at a glance. Several chapters later, Marple reveals that it was the girl after all; that she had been dressed-up and made-over by the dancer’s cousin as part of a complex scheme. With the body, the male authorities see a young blonde in a shiny dress, and with it the glamour of the performing arts. Marple, however, sees a girl who bit rather than cut her fingernails, and whose shiny dress is old, whereas the dancer ‘belonged to the class that wear their best clothes however unsuitable the occasion’ (143). By the end of the book, the commissioner for Scotland Yard himself considers Marple a fine criminologist and declares himself ‘Watson’ to her Holmes (183). A junior officer notes that ‘the only real proof […] was a school-girl’s bitten nails’, but this time Marple insists that listening to people also counts as ‘proof’ (189). Forensics were more advanced in 1942 than Library suggests. The late crime writer P. D. James has noted the novel’s ‘incredibility’: The pathologist would know just by looking at the other hair on her body that this is not a natural blonde! But of course there isn’t a pathologist […] We’re not dealing with reality. We’re dealing with a different form of reality. (James, quoted in Thompson 2008: 384–85) Characters like Inspector Slack have nothing to do with New Scotland Yard. Less still do they have a connection with real forensic science; theirs is a pantomime of the limited

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grasp of the scientific mind. Such figures build a mockery of masculinity that was important in detective fiction’s success, domestically, between the wars. The Golden Age was more diverse than two Christie village mysteries suggest. Sometimes the Scotland Yarder was ‘othered’ along class lines; for instance, Margery Allingham’s cockney Charlie Luke. On the other hand, Frank King’s Chief Inspector Gloom, who ‘looked as much like a corpse as any man could do while alive’ (King 1941: 62) provides a witty inversion of received wisdom about the Yard. His ‘gloom’ is strategic, so that people will not take him seriously, and his appeal to science and fingerprints ground the amateur detective’s flights of fancy throughout their adventures. Freeman Wills Crofts created the unintentionally dull protagonist Inspector French, making a virtue of by-the-book workmanship. Other leading lights employed policeman heroes, including J. J. Connington (The Case With Nine Solutions [1928]), Georgette Heyer (A Blunt Instrument [1938]) and – stretching geography – Ngaio Marsh (A Man Lay Dead [1934]). However, the heroes of these narratives face rival Inspectors and have to assert their less orthodox models of detection over their traditional colleagues (in Heyer’s case, the Yard struggles to identify a murder weapon, when the average reader has long-since grasped that it is a policeman’s truncheon). The dynamic was much the same. There, perhaps, is a dim forerunner to that late-twentieth-century standard, the police procedural. Changing formats P. D. James and Ruth Rendell introduced their very different senior police heroes in the 1960s. Rendell’s Inspector Wexford is a humane character, often deploring the social conditions he investigates, while James’s Commissioner Dalgliesh is a sensitive poet and his creator’s idea of a perfect man. These post-Golden Age texts reflect a changing genre, as well as shifting attitudes to the police. The buffoonish senior officer now belonged mainly to slapstick films: Inspector Clouseau, created by Blake Edwards and played by Peter Sellers, was a recurring character in 1960s cinema. Notably, however, Clouseau is distanced from the British (and American) police. He has an ill-defined senior role in the French Sûreté, and his clumsy ineptitude, especially around female suspects, is tied up with his inability to understand the law he enforces. Much of Clouseau’s comedy comes from his pompous failure to grasp simple etiquette, whether this is reading a crime scene, interviewing suspects or playing a game of billiards. He summarizes his method nonsensically: ‘I believe everything, and I believe nothing. I suspect everyone and I suspect no-one […] and before you know it, the crime is solved’ (Edwards 1964). As P. D. James noted in 2009, ‘policing itself has changed dramatically’. As power has become more centralized in the twentieth century, and counties have ceased to be independently policed, policing has become ‘fundamentally different from the job in, for example, the twenties and thirties’ (James 2009: 147). With these changes, the

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format of detective fiction has changed too, and the ‘Watson’ and ‘Lestrade’ figures are anything from dated to obsolete. According to James, while the ‘less intelligent’ ‘sidekick’ ‘has long since bowed out’, the detective still requires ‘some character in whom he can rationally confide’ (147–48): For a professional detective, it is usually the detective-sergeant, whose background and personality provide a contrast to that of the hero and an ongoing relationship which is not always easy. The reader becomes involved in the sergeant’s different domestic background and different view of the job itself. [Such characters] are subordinate to their boss in rank but not in importance. (James 2009: 148) Perhaps James’s reading can be adapted. The detective sergeant, in conservative police procedurals at any rate, may be understood as a combination of the Watson and Lestrade tropes, offering both a springboard for ideas and an informed alternative perspective. Since they are usually younger than their superior, they often represent the latter’s naive former self. Often the sergeant will have, not simply a different background, but also an opposite approach to the rules of police work. Donnish detection Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse is cynical and misanthropic, with only grudging belief in his vocation, but his partner Sergeant Lewis is an upbeat family man. Morse and Lewis are with the Thames Valley Police, based in Oxford. The characters are introduced in The Last Bus to Woodstock (1975) in binary ways: Lewis impresses the others with his ‘level-headed competence’, while Morse first appears drinking whiskey in his office and communicating with Lewis via a crossword clue (Dexter 2007 [1976]: 15). ‘Do you think I'm wasting your time, Lewis?’ Lewis was nobody’s fool and was a man of some honesty and integrity. ‘Yes, sir.’ An engaging smile crept across Morse's mouth. He thought they would get on well together. ‘Lewis, I want you to work with me on this case.’ (Dexter 2007 [1976]: 17) It is Lewis’s absorption in his job that makes him attractive to Morse, the hero. The working-class background is part of an ‘everyman’ kind of thinking: he will do everything by the book. Indeed, he makes no effort to add basic social etiquette to the mix of a professional relationship. Morse, on the other hand, frequently gets entangled with female suspects. As Douglas Green has noted, the tension between Lewis’s orthodox sexuality and Morse’s,

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which is messy and uncontrolled, reflects ‘the search for human connectedness’ that lies behind each crime (Green 1998: 310). Still, Morse is not afraid of hard work, and it is he who solves cases. This frustrates Lewis, who regrets early on that his boss stayed up all night while he himself had a solid night’s sleep, leaving the case at the door. In the most received literary tradition, Lewis treats his police work as a job, detecting by the book but nothing more, while Morse, disillusioned and unmotivated by professional targets, seeks only solutions. He sees that his colleague can grasp the truth, but that he needs to think laterally: ‘You did a sharp job, Lewis. But cut the trimmings’ (Dexter 2007 [1976]: 53). Although Lewis started life much older than Morse, he later became younger, reflecting the television series Inspector Morse (ITV, 1987–2000), which is the basis for Dexter’s later books. Indeed, the literary and television franchises have become inextricable, with Dexter stating on multiple occasions that there is only one Morse: that of the screen. What evolved in these rather conservative police procedurals, then, was a sense of adherence to rules and unorthodox methodology combining to tackle a problem successfully, but also an apprenticeship dynamic: Morse trains Lewis up to apply imagination to his professional ethos. Notably, since the television series ended in 2001, Lewis has returned as an inspector, bringing earthy broadmindedness to a sergeant of his own, in a similar programme (Lewis [ITV, 2006–14]). There is no lack of flawed police inspectors in British crime fiction today. However, they tend to be bitter heroes rather than comedy sidekicks, although the success of the BBC’s Sherlock (2010–ongoing) may signify a return to classical forms. However, Scotland Yard’s contemporary struggles with terrorism and government corruption mean that such tropes will never be the same. Nonetheless, the comically inept policeman still evokes Britain further afield; for example, in Japanese video games. In Shu Takumi’s Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (Tokyo: Capcom, 2001–10), the police force is represented by ‘Detective Gumshoe’ who combines clichés about the British tradition discussed here and the American ‘hardboiled’ school to evoke western bureaucracy as tragicomic. The popular Professor Layton series (Kyoto: Nintendo, 2007–14), set in Victorian London, also features a clumsy cockney Scotland Yard inspector, nostalgically evoking an imagined correlation of class, education and intelligence in imperial Britain. In Europe, detective fiction has evolved, providing overt political commentary. Police incompetence in the so-called ‘Nordic Noir’ genre is not a laughing matter, nor a question of character development. The police in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy (2004–07) meet violence with organized violence. There is darkness in the hard-hitting satire of Leif G. W. Persson, whose novels (published since 1978) draw on his experience with the Swedish National Police Force and Ministry for Justice. Well-intentioned, overly professional incompetence belongs in a tradition of mythical benevolence; it belongs to a nostalgic vision of the past, and of Britain. 

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References Christie, A. (1969 [1936]), Cards on the Table, Glasgow: Fontana. ––––– (1973 [1942]), The Body in the Library, London/Glasgow: Fontana. ––––– (1990 [1930]), The Murder at the Vicarage, Glasgow: Fontana. ––––– (2011 [1977]), An Autobiography, London: Harper. Collins, W. (1995), Armadale (ed. J. Sutherland), London/New York: Penguin. Dexter, C. (2007 [1976]), Last Seen Wearing, London: Pan Macmillan. Doyle, A. C. (2001 [1887]), A Study in Scarlet, London/New York: Penguin. ––––– (2008 [1905]), The Return of Sherlock Holmes, London/New York: Penguin. Edwards, B. (1964), A Shot in the Dark, UK: Mirisch Company. Green, D. (1998), ‘Colin Dexter’, in R. Winks (ed.), Mystery and Suspense Writers, New York: Scribner’s, pp. 291–330. Haycraft, H. (1967 [1945]), Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story, New York: Biblio. Hino, A. (2007–14), Professor Layton, Kyoto: Nintendo. James, P. D. (2009), Talking About Detective Fiction, Oxford: Bodleian Library. King, F. (1941), The Case of the Painted Girl, London: Ditto. Miller, D. A. (1988), The Novel and the Police, Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press. O’Brien, J. (2015), ‘Sherlock Holmes: Pioneer in Forensic Science’, Encyclopædia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1976713/Sherlock-Holmes-Pioneer-in-Forensic-Science. Accessed 5 January 2015. Sopenhoff, R. C. (1978), ‘The Victorian Policeman’s Lot’, Police Studies, 1: 4, pp. 46–62. Summerscale, K. (2009), The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, or, Murder at Road Hill House, London/Berlin: Bloomsbury. Takumi, S. (2001–10), Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Tokyo: Capcom. Thomas, R. R. (2004), ‘Detection in the Victorian Novel’, in D. David (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel, Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 169–91. Thompson, L. (2008), Agatha Christie: An English Mystery, London: Headline. A c know l e dg e m e n t s The author wishes to thank Douglas Green for sharing his research.

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The New Regionalism in Contemporary Television Police Drama Jean Gregorek

The police drama has been a staple of British television since the 1970s, and its enormous popularity shows no signs of slowing down. This genre has periodically lent itself to socially-aware dramas such as Troy Kennedy Martin’s Edge of Darkness (BBC2, 1985); Prime Suspect (ITV, 1991–2006) Tony Grisoni's adaptation of David Peace’s The Red Riding Quartet (Channel Four, 2008); and Peter Moffatt’s Criminal Justice (BBC1, 2008–09), each of which used the police procedural as a vehicle to call attention to contemporary social issues. This genre has multiplied over the years into forensic shows, profiler shows, courtroom dramas and detective parodies, as well as combining with other genres such as science fiction (Life on Mars [BBC1, 2006–07], Mayday, [BBC1, 2013]) and heritage and period drama (Ripper Street [BBC1, 2012–15], Foyle's War [ITV, 2002–15], George Gently [BBC1 2007–2015], [ITV, 2012–ongoing], Grantchester [ITV, 2014–ongoing]). However, the past decade has seen the rise of complex long-form quality crime dramas in addition to the host of episodic police shows. The Guardian cites the success of Line of Duty (BBC2, 2012–14), Broadchurch (ITV, 2013–ongoing), The Fall (BBC1/BBC2, 2013–ongoing) and Happy Valley (BBC1, 2014), as recent examples, all of which feature psychologically-astute characterization and intricate subplots which unfold over six or more instalments (Frost 2014). Also notable in many of these recent dramas is the concrete sense of place as both carefully specific and at the same time typical – a socio-economic precision more characteristic of nineteenth-century literary realism than of genre fiction (several of the writers of these long-form dramas, both American and British, have noted the influence of the serialized nineteenth-century novel on their work). As media critic Charlotte Brunson discusses in her example of Davis Simon’s influential American drama The Wire (HBO, 2002–08), sophisticated television crime drama has the potential to speak to local, national and international audiences; it examines the corruption specific to its setting in a way recognizable to the inhabitants of that locale – in this case the city of Baltimore – but this setting also stands for other impoverished, racially-torn American urban centres, as well as working as a microcosm for the contemporary United States as a whole. Similarly, television crime shows like the Welsh Hinterland (BBC1, BBC4/Wales, 2013) or the Irish

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Single-handed (RTE1, 2007–11) deliberately highlight the cultural and social specificity of these regions in ways that are legible to those nationalities and that also translate into more general evocations of depopulated rural areas struggling to survive. The power of place – real and imaginary The more complex recent engagement with place and regionalism in contemporary television crime drama has been spurred by regional media production initiatives and local arts councils. Writers and showrunners have cited a greater openness to long-form drama and willingness to invest in these shows on the part of the BBC and ITV, in the wake of the success of Scandinavian and American shows. This has granted television drama more freedom to scrutinize the social conditions of particular places. The emphasis on stunning rural landscapes and picturesque skylines obviously takes advantage of the more cinematic possibilities of location shooting, and provides a distinctive atmosphere, whether gothic (Hinterland’s Wales), noirish (Rebus’s [ITV, 2000–07] Edinburgh), hardboiled (Murphy’s Law’s [BBC1, 2001–07] Belfast), superficially cheerful (Broadchurch’s Dorset) or social realist (Happy Valley’s West Yorkshire, 55 Degrees North’s [BBC1, 2004– 05] Newcastle). It also allows for the exploration of ‘ethnic’ particularisms, local traditions and mores, therefore featuring the ethnic and cultural diversity of the British Isles. However, in this chapter I will focus mainly on contextualizing this regionalist trend in terms of the longer history of British crime fiction and its symbolic uses of place. While recent manifestations of regionalism are not entirely new, I argue that they take on new implications in the post-1997 era of political devolution in Britain: regional identities have become one arena in which national anxieties around the potential break-up of Britain are currently being played out. An authentic setting has long been central to the realism of crime fiction; however, as critic Stephen Knight discusses, relations between the symbolic and plot functions of place in the English mystery have changed over time. Knight notes the ways in which the popular crime story arose in conjunction with political centralization in Great Britain, and demonstrates how fictional detectives of the nineteenth century emerge from the metropolis to reform the dispensation of justice in the provinces. This meant that nineteenth-century crime narratives tended to stress the extension of a unifying metropolitan influence and the subsequent weakening of the regions as self-sufficient, self-policing zones. In the twentieth century this dynamic is reversed; ‘Golden Age’ mysteries look back nostalgically to a more predictable social order, and the detective figure becomes the ally of Toryism and the landed gentry against undesirable social mixing and a chaotic modernity. The Golden Age or classic mystery relies on a quaint regional setting, often a village or market town, which is highlighted at the beginning of the novel, but then portrayed as invaded by the modern world or characters who have internalized problematic modern values. Knight names this trend ‘imaginary regionalism’: in this classic Agatha

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Christie pattern, the nouveau riche, the social upstart, the foreigner, the sexual woman and the film star are often marked as particularly villainous; by far the most common crime is murder for gain, often by some kind of imposter or interloper. Significantly, the crime is solved by a detective figure – Miss Marple of St Mary Mead, Inspector Wexford of Kingsmarkham, Inspector Morse of Oxford – who, bound by an old-fashioned sense of duty, resists this ‘sadly changing world’ and restores the stability of the community. In texts using imaginary regionalism, the specifics of the setting fade into the background as the solution of the crime, the quelling of the disruption, takes centre stage, and the locale is reduced to a generic cliché. Needless to say, this tendency is far from the complex interconnectedness of classic literary realism. Calling in the professionals While popular examples of what Stephen Knight describes as imaginary regionalism (Midsomer Murders [ITV, 1995–ongoing]), linger on as TV staples, in the twenty-first century we find the region serving a different role, a role which could perhaps be termed ‘ambivalent regionalism’: the regional setting becomes the criminogenic site upon which the need for outside detective intervention is demonstrated. Detection has largely been given over to the professional police force, who mobilize a team of trained experts against the anonymous – or seemingly anonymous – crimes of the big city, but who nowadays operate in provincial capitals and sleepy backwaters as well, and, in particular, places which also suffer from chronic unemployment, poverty and neglect. The paternal George Gently moves from London to confront the backward prejudices of Northumberland and County Durham in George Gently; the affable Londoner Nicky Cole tackles the overt racism of Newcastle in 55 Degrees North; Stella Gibson takes on the masculine blinkers of the Belfast police in The Fall; Alec Hardy the naïveté of the close-knit family-oriented Dorset community of Broadchurch; Dublin detective Jack Driscoll, the endemic local corruption of his native County Donegal in Single-handed. The conflict between the more urbanized detective character and the quaintness of the backwater offers time-tested dramatic and comic possibilities, and also gives the audience plenty of tourist’s-eye views of a unique spot and its particular mores. But in all of these dramas it is the more sophisticated metropolitan who acts as a corrective to the outdated practices and prejudices of the provinces. These are communities that have lost their sense of community and need professional help from outside in order to regain it. Thus in these examples the regional backdrop provides not only ‘eye candy’ and atmosphere, but also serves as the crime-ridden space that requires intervention by the determined representative of the metropolis, who stands, not so much for scientific expertise as for a kind of liberal consensus or contemporary common sense. His (or her) specialized knowledge is more often portrayed as psychological insight or the ways of the human heart. At times it appears to be simply the greater degree of objectivity available

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to the outsider. Unlike Knight’s imaginary regionalism, the setting in these ambivalent dramas retains its distinctive socio-economic characteristics, which continue to feature centrally in the plot; yet far from a sanctuary of traditional values in retreat, this setting is a temporal outlier that must be integrated into a broader national consensus. Crime among the middle classes Another noteworthy feature of ambivalent regionalism, and another sharp contrast to Golden Age detective fiction and its television adaptations, is the consistently middle-class orientation of settings and characters. Class differences rooted in the forces of production and history have been subsumed into the larger structural contrast between metropolis and periphery. The police force itself is always portrayed as a respectable middle-class profession, and the majority of the criminals come from the middle classes as well. Crimes are not primarily committed for financial gain but more typically out of passion or pathology or both, and these crimes are often, as we will see, connected to the particularities of the place. Inter-class tensions and working-class envy, common themes in Golden Age texts, have almost disappeared as motivations for criminal behaviour. What were once heavily weighted signifiers of class become loveable regionalisms which at most reveal a greater or lesser accumulation of cultural capital. There remain a few vestigial cross-class detective pairings: Detective Superintendent Dalziel and Detective Inspector Pascoe in Dalziel and Pascoe [BBC1, 1996–2006]; Lynley and Havers in The Inspector Lynley Mysteries (BBC1, 2001–08); Lewis and Hathaway in Lewis (ITV, 2006– 14); and to some extent, Scott and Bailey in Scott and Bailey (ITV, 2011–14), but mostly cross-class banter is used for comic effect rather than as a source of dramatic conflict. Also, Lynley and Lewis investigate murders in privileged upper-class settings, and their pairings with partners of a different socio-economic status offer the audience entry to an exclusive world, but enable them to gauge upper-class crime with the skeptical eye of the detective team. It’s instructive to turn to four examples of quality police procedurals, all long-form crime dramas in which each episode contributes to a larger story focused around the figure of the detective or detective team. All are shot on location in 'peripheral' locales and use regional dialects and idioms. In each case the setting works both symbolically and, to varying degrees, as a representation of actual social conditions and local concerns. All of these but one follow the pattern of ambivalent regionalism, in which the metropolitan detective figure struggles to correct the criminal tendencies that emerge from this marginal space. And all but one could be said to highlight a culturally distinctive provincial Britain while simultaneously disciplining it and reintegrating it into a broader national British sensibility. The Fall: ‘This is Belfast.’ In these early lines (‘Dark Descent’ 2013), Assistant Chief Constable Jim Burns warns Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson to always carry a

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gun now that she is working in Northern Ireland. Stella has just arrived from the Met in order to review the murder investigations of the Police Service, and this serial killer suspense drama at first appears to rely on the recent violent history of the Troubles or police collusion with corrupt Irish politicians. However, despite its Northern Irish setting and co-production by BBC Northern Ireland, regional issues prove to be red herrings in this drama. The main conflict clearly hinges on gender and Stella’s investigation turns out not to be limited to Northern Ireland but to expand outward, encompassing the widespread problem of male violence against women. The implication of the drama is that women are endangered everywhere, not just in Belfast (at one point the serial killer, who is Irish, blames Stella for her haughty Englishness, but in his next sentence, he obsesses about her unbuttoned blouse). Stella, a slightly younger and more seductive version of Prime Suspect’s Jane Tennison, remains solitary, self-contained, an outsider – frequent shots in which she looks down on the city emphasize her deliberate detachment from place, whereas in other respects she is potentially linked to the attractive professional women stalked by the misogynist killer. Broadchurch: ‘Love Thy Neighbour.’ The drama’s first episode (‘Episode 1’ 2013) illuminates this Christian homily briefly, but its ultimate irony is not revealed until the end of the series. Broadchurch is a sustained portrait of a small community dealing with the tragic and mysterious murder of a young boy. Set in an idyllic resort town in Dorset, the show’s cinematography emphasizes sunshine, blue skies, bright colours and tourist appeal. This strategy deliberately heightens the contrast between the seeming normality of the town and the perversion that lurks there. The inhabitants of Broadchurch are ‘too close’, too trusting, and mostly unable to imagine the perverse desires that trigger the murder. The entire community functions like an extended family, and the fact that the killer turns out, shockingly, to be the local detective’s devoted husband only solidifies this point. Blinded by affection, habit and perhaps sheer denial, Ellie, the local detective, cannot see that her husband has become sexually obsessed with the neighbour’s child. Her new supervisor Alec Hardy is doing penance for his earlier sin of failing to solve a similar child-murder case. He brings a jaded worldliness, an utter indifference to the opinions of others, and a dogged determination to pursue the investigation at any cost to himself and his health (point-of-view shots from his perspective at times slow down or distort to emulate the effect of his failing physical condition – these provide a striking contrast to the visual aesthetic of the more tourist-oriented scenes). But mostly Alec appears to crack the case by virtue of having no domestic ties and by not being from Broadchurch. Ellie’s blind spots and the town’s insularity are finally broken through. Once the killer – turns out to have killed accidentally – is caught and suspicion is lifted from the innocent, the community conducts a cathartic healing ritual on the beach and seems well on its way back to its former Christian neighbourliness. Hinterland: ‘It's Like Stepping Back in Time.’ An excellent example of the new regionalism, Hinterland brings a haunted rural Wales, specifically the dramatic landscape

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around Aberystwyth, to British television. Funded in part by the Welsh government, the show was made in two versions, one in Welsh and one in English. Regional concerns such as poverty, joblessness, abandoned farms, and hostility toward outsiders loom large in the series. As in the examples of Stella Gibson and Alec Hardy, we know little about the former life of the taciturn DCI Mathias. He is Welsh, but new to this particular posting, which appears to be not of his choosing. Local superstitions and folklore must be explained to Mathias by his more communicative police colleague Mared Rhys, who acts as his guide (and ours) to the area. While different episodes focus on different incidents, the crimes are rooted in emotional excess, love or hate, the desire to protect or avenge. Killers generally emerge as pathetic rather than evil or sadistic. Like Hardy, Mathias displays no special detective skills other than an outsider's more objective perspective, in his case combined with a particular sensitivity to the place and its inhabitants. In the first episode, ‘Devil's Bridge’ (2013), we learn that the sway of fundamentalist Protestantism has led to harsh conditions in the local children’s home in the charge of a religious fanatic. Now converted into a not-very-successful hotel, the grim events that transpired at this orphanage become the direct cause of several murders. Mathias’s detection eventually turns up two separate killers, both severely damaged from their loveless and abusive childhood in the home. A decade or so earlier, an orphaned teenage girl smothered the illegitimate baby of her beloved friend out of jealousy, and more recently, the friend, now an adult, snaps and goes on a murderous rampage attacking those she (wrongly) blames for taking away her baby. The Welsh landscape itself serves as a repository of secrets – at the end of the episode, a mysterious Celtic spiral is revealed to be the site where the missing baby’s body is buried. The detective’s mission here becomes one of decoding the secrets of the landscape – secrets which its inhabitants have not probed. Happy Valley: ‘I'm Not Your Mother.’ Sally Wainwright’s 2014 series is the least ambivalent about its regionalism and the closest to the tradition of social realism. Set in post-industrial West Yorkshire, the drama centres around the plucky middle-aged policewoman Catherine Cawood. Unlike all the other detectives discussed, Cawood is not an outsider; from the first episode (‘Episode 1’ 2014), she is shown as thoroughly integrated into her family and community. Despite her insistence to the contrary; in fact, she sees herself as everybody’s mother, going out of her way to fight for the local population. Her own broken marriage is a casualty of her perhaps excessive maternal protectiveness and love. Yet she and her former husband still sleep together, and are still clearly fond confidants. (Her relationship with her son is strained, although this is patched up in the last episode of the first season.) The plot features numerous contemporary social problems, namely redundancy – her ex-husband has just lost his job at the local newspaper – underemployment, domestic violence, drug trafficking and drug addiction. The central conflict pits Catherine against the sociopathic rapist and murderer Tommy Lee Royce, who Catherine blames for her daughter’s suicide. Within a month of getting out of prison, Royce has become involved in a kidnapping plot, raped the woman

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he abducted, killed a policewoman, beaten his mother and murdered two of his partners in crime. In the dramatic (but of course quite generic to the police procedural) ending, Cawood rescues her grandson Ryan from Tommy Lee’s demented clutches and subdues this dangerous criminal. The heroic mother ultimately triumphs against the multiple threats to her extended family posed by Tommy Lee. The final scene shows this tough, resilient detective looking down on her home, the picturesque Yorkshire valley, smiling to herself. Her investigations have also led to the interception of a major source of drug trafficking into northern England and the valley is at least temporarily made a safer place as a result of her efforts. Happy Valley serves as a notable exception to the kind of ambivalent regionalism in which the scenic but criminogenic zone requires correction from a representative of the metropole; in this drama, West Yorkshire and its people are not trapped in the past, nor are they unable to analyse their own situations clearly. Rather, we are here presented with a strong community which faces serious challenges but proves largely able to police itself. The break-up of Britain With recent devolutions of political power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the future of the United Kingdom in its present configuration has become increasingly uncertain. Whether the currently devolved parliaments and national independence movements herald the actual ‘break-up’ of Great Britain, or a confederation of sovereign or semi-sovereign states, the regions on the traditional Celtic fringe have been asserting themselves and actively rediscovering ethnic and local identities. It is no surprise that this trend and the tensions produced have made their way into popular television genres. What is more intriguing is the current linkage of the shifting dynamics of regional vs national belonging to the familiar pattern of crime fiction in which a source of cultural anxiety is quelled by an official representative of law and order. In the new ‘ambivalent regionalism’, the figure allied with national centralization encounters the more lawless backwater in order to instruct the provincials, solve the mystery and re-establish the rule of law. While in these dramas the detective representatives of the nation generally accomplish their goals, interestingly, they appear to have less and less guidance to offer the increasingly self-sufficient hinterlands.  References Brunsdon, Charlotte (2010), ‘Bingeing on Box-Sets: The National and the Digital in Television Crime Drama’, in Jostein Gripsrud (ed.), Relocating Television: Television in the Digital Context, London: Routledge, pp. 63–75. Byers, Michele and Johnson, Val Marie (eds) (2009), The CSI Effect: Television, Crime, and Governance, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Caughie, John (2000), Television Drama: Realism, Modernism, and British Culture, Oxford: OUP.

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Cooke, Lez (2003), British Television Drama: A History, London: BFI. Creeber, Glen (2004), Serial Television: Big Drama on the Small Screen, London: BFI. ‘Dark Descent’ (2013), Jakob Verbruggen, dir., The Fall, Series 1, Episode 1, 13 May, UK: BBC1/BBC2. ‘Devil’s Bridge’ (2013), Marc Evans, dir., Hinterland, Series 1, Episode 1, 29 October, Channel 4 Wales. Edgar, David (2000), ‘Playing Shops, Shopping Plays: The Effect of the Internal Market on Television Drama’, in Jonathan Bignell, Stephen Lacey and Madeleine Macmurragh-Kavanaugh (eds), British Television Drama: Past, Present, and Future, New York: Palgrave, p. 77. ‘Episode 1’ (2013), James Strong, dir., Broadchurch, Series 1, Episode 1, 4 March, UK: ITV. ‘Episode 1’ (2014), Euros Lyn, dir., Happy Valley, Series 1, Episode 1, 29 April, UK: BBC 1. Frost, Vicky (2014), ‘Happy Valley latest in British Crime TV's Division to Capture Large Audiences’, The Guardian, 30 May, http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/may/30/happy-valleybritish-crime-drama-large-audience. Accessed 11 May 2015. Gripsrud, Jostein (ed.) (2010), Relocating Television: Television in the Digital Context, London: Routledge. Hallam, Julia (2000), ‘Film, Class, and National Identity: Re-imagining Communities in the Age of Devolution’, in Justine Ashby and Andrew Higson (eds), British Cinema, Past and Present, London: Routledge. Hilmes, Michele and Huber, Christoph, et al. (2014), ‘Rethinking Television: A Critical Symposium on the New Age of Episodic Narrative Storytelling (Featuring Commentary by Michele Hilmes, Christoph Huber, et al.)’, Cineaste, 39: 4, pp. 26–34. Knight, Stephen (1995), ‘Regional Crime Squads: Location and Dislocation in the British Mystery’, in Ian A. Bell (ed.), Peripheral Visions: Images of Nationhood in Contemporary British Fiction, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, pp. 27–43.

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Contributors

Barry Forshaw (editor), Author, The

Darren Brooks, Ph.D., Scottish Crime Fic-

Rough Guide to Crime Fiction (Penguin,

tion, University of Sunderland; Co-found-

2007), Euro Noir (Oldcastle, 2014), Death

er, Crime Studies Network in the North.

in a Cold Climate: Scandinavian Crime Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), British

Jacky Collins, Senior Lecturer in Spanish

Crime Film (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Ed-

Studies, Northumbria University; Director,

itor, British Crime Writing: An Encyclope-

Newcastle Noir; Chair, Crime Studies Net-

dia (Greenwood, 2009; HRF Keating Award

work.

Winner, 2013). Barry Forshaw writes for Lisa Fluet is Assistant Professor of English

various national newspapers (including the Independent and the Financial Times)

at the College of the Holy Cross, special-

and broadcasts in the UK and Europe on

izing in twentieth and twenty-first cen-

crime fiction and film. He teaches MA

tury literatures in English, modernism,

courses in both subjects. Other published

post-war and contemporary fiction, class

work includes Nordic Noir (Oldcastle,

and gender theory. She has previously

2013), Sex and Film (Palgrave Macmillan,

published essays in these fields in Twen-

2015) and British Gothic Cinema (Palgrave

tieth-Century Literature, Eire-Ireland, Af-

Macmillan, 2012), along with books on Ital-

rican-American Review, The Chronicle of

ian cinema, film noir and the first biogra-

Higher Education, NOVEL: A Forum on Fic-

phy of Stieg Larsson, The Man Who Left Too

tion, the minnesota review, and the Duke

Soon (Blake, 2010). He edits Crime Time

UP collection Bad Modernisms (edited by

(www.crimetime.co.uk).

Douglas Mao and Rebecca Walkowitz). She is presently revising a manuscript on mod-

Jamie Bernthal, Ph.D. candidate (AHRC)

ernism, class, and career-thinking in the

and Graduate Teaching Assistant, Depart-

twentieth century.

ment of English, University of Exeter. He is the editor of Agatha Christie: Mystery and

Katarina Gregersdotter, Senior Lecturer

Legacy (McFarland, US, 2016).

Umeå University, Sweden; Co-editor, Rape in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy and

218

Contributors

Beyond: Contemporary Scandinavian and

and Catalan Studies; Convenor, Interna-

Anglophone Crime Fiction (Palgrave McMil-

tional Literatures, School of Languages,

lan, 2012).

Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University.

Jean Gregorek is an Associate Professor at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York,

Erin E. MacDonald received her Ph.D. in

where she teaches courses in British litera-

English from the University of Waterloo in

ture and cultural studies. Her publications

2005. She teaches literature, pop culture

include ‘Fables of Foreclosure:  The Police

and writing courses. In addition to Ed Mc-

Procedural in Recessionary Ireland’ in

Bain/Evan Hunter: A Literary Companion

the collection Class and Culture in Crime

(McFarland, 2012), she also published Rob-

Fiction:  Essays on Works in English Since

ert Downey Jr. from Brat to Icon: Essays on

the 1970’s, a chapter on American Depres-

the Film Career (McFarland, 2014). Her arti-

sion-era pulp fiction in the collection De-

cles on McBain and Rankin have appeared

lights, Desires, and Dilemmas:  Essays on

in The Journal of American and Compar-

Women and the Media, the catalogue for

ative Cultures and Clues. She is currently

the exhibit Made in Prison: Contemporary

writing a companion book on the complete

Art by Incarcerated Men and Women, and a

works of Ian Rankin.

study of George Gissing’s Born in Exile for the journal Nineteenth-Century Studies. An

Peter Messent is now retired after almost

essay on Scandinavian noir is forthcoming

40 years teaching in the field of American

in the journal Genre (2015). 

literature and culture at the University of Nottingham, UK. He has written widely on

Alison Joseph is a London-based crime

modern American literature, especially on

writer and radio dramatist. She started

Twain and Hemingway, but he also writes

her career in broadcasting, and began

on crime fiction. He is at present working

writing full-time with the crime series of

on an edition of Mark Twain’s letters to

novels featuring Sister Agnes. Agnes is a

Joseph Twichell. He is the author of The

contemporary detective nun working in

Crime Fiction Handbook (Wiley-Blackwell,

a homeless hostel in South London. The

2013) and editor of Criminal Proceedings:

most recent, A Violent Act, is about fathers,

The Contemporary American Crime Novel

daughters and creationism. Alison’s new

(Pluto Press, 1997).

series features Detective Inspector BerenSteven Peacock, reader in Film and Tele-

ice Killick. The first, called Dying to Know, is all about particle physics. Her latest nov-

vision Aesthetics at the University of Hert-

el, Murder Will Out, has Agatha Christie as

fordshire; Author, Swedish Crime Fiction:

its detective. She was Chair of the British

Novel, Film, Television (Manchester Uni-

Crime Writers Association (2013–2015).

versity Press, 2014), Hollywood and Intimacy (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011), and Colour

Stewart King, Senior Lecturer in Spanish

(Manchester University Press, 2010); Edi-

219

Crime Uncovered: Detective

tor/author, Television Aesthetics and Style

ham Trent University. Professor Pratt has

(Bloomsbury, 2013), Stieg Larsson’s Millen-

previously worked at the University of

nium Trilogy (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012)

Warwick and the University of Technology,

and Reading 24: TV Against the Clock (I B

Sydney. At NTU he has established inno-

Tauris, 2007); Co-editor, ‘The Television

vative teaching and learning programmes

Series’ for Manchester University Press.

that champion international mobility,

He co-ordinates the MA in Global Film and

digital humanities and civic engagement,

Television (online) and the MA in Film and

winning the Guardian prize for Teaching

Television Aesthetics at the University of

Excellence 2015. His research includes a fo-

Hertfordshire.

cus on representations of (trans-)national identities and gender, and his publications

Barbara Pezzotti (Ph.D.) is an Honorary

include articles, chapters and edited vol-

Research Fellow of the Australasian Cen-

umes on autobiography, graphic novels,

tre for Italian Studies (ACIS). Her research

contemporary literature and film in French

interests include: genre fiction, literary ge-

and International contexts. He edited (with

ographies, and historical writing. She has

Jo McCormack and Alistair Rolls) Hexag-

published journal articles and book chap-

onal Variations: Diversity, Plurality and

ters on Italian crime fiction and the figure of

Reinvention in Contemporary France (Ro-

the detective and the serial killer in Italian

dopi, 2011).

and New Zealand crime fiction. She is the author of The Importance of Place in Con-

Jon Wilkins, MA, second year, Creative

temporary Italian Crime Fiction: A Bloody

Writing, De Montfort University; Author,

Journey (2012), Politics and Society in Ital-

Utrecht trilogy: Utrecht Snow; Utrecht Bab-

ian Crime Fiction: An Historical Overview

ylon; Utrecht Noir.

(2014), and I luoghi del delitto. Una mappa del giallo italiano contemporaneo (2014). She is also co-editor (with Jean Anderson and Carolina Miranda) of The Foreign in International Crime Fiction: Transcultural Representations (2012) and Serial Crime Fiction: Dying for More (2015).  David Platten is a Professor of French at the University of Leeds, and the author of Pleasures of Crime: Reading Modern French Crime Fiction (Rodopi, 2011). Murray Pratt is Professor of French and International Studies, and Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities, Notting-

220

Forshaw

crime uncovered series detective

detective

Crime Uncovered: Detective is an examination – and celebration – of the most iconic police detectives in crime fiction, film and television, identifying the individual characteristics that define these much-loved protagonists and discussing how they relate to their surroundings, country and class – and the criminals they relentlessly pursue. Focusing on a number of international figures from across the genre – from Kurt Wallander, Adam Dalgliesh and Jules Maigret, to more recent examples such as Sarah Lund, Saga Norén and Harry Bosch – Detective investigates the changing role of the authority figure in crime fiction, and analyses how the most imaginative creators cleverly subvert expectations of both police procedure and the crime genre itself. Including character case studies, interviews with P. D. James, Ian Rankin and Henning Mankell, and general essays, Barry Forshaw offers an exploration of some of the most influential and popular fictional police detectives in the long and bloody history of the genre. Barry Forshaw is one of the UK’s leading experts on crime fiction and film. His books include Euro Noir, The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction, Death in a Cold Climate and the Keating Award-winning British Crime Writing encyclopedia. He has written on crime fiction for various newspapers and teaches an MA course on the subject.

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crime uncovered series

Editor Barry Forshaw

crime uncovered series

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detective detective detective detective detective