Reading Report

Right now I am on page 100 of one of my library books. Viveca Sten, Stille nu (Silent Now), a Swedish debut.

If I had a dog, I would never dare to walk it, because it seems that no matter where you go, you will find a decomposed body!

The environment is the archipelago, and the style might be compared to Camilla Läckberg´s femikrimi. Interesting and likeable characters who all have problems of their own, and a promising plot.

Academic Crime (Margot Kinberg)

June is a very busy month for me so I am pleased that good blog friends are ready to help me out. Today´s guest post is written by Margot Kinberg, California, an excellent blogger and writer of crime fiction.

Thanks so much, Dorte, for hosting me on your blog. I’m excited and honored.

Dorte’s asked me to do a post on academic crime fiction murders. It’s an interesting topic, too. The traditional view of the college or university atmosphere is of a group of scholars, both students and their mentors, who seek out knowledge and share it. Students choose topics of interest, chart their course of study and, with guidance from their professors, earn their degrees. Faculty members conduct research, teach classes, serve on committees, and supervise student work. It all sounds very peaceful and for many people, it is. But the reality is, the academic atmosphere is often not the peaceful, serene gathering of scholars we’d like to imagine it is. I’ll be blogging next week about the campus setting on Mason Canyon’s terrific blog, Thoughts in Progress. For now, I’m going to focus on the politics of higher education. Academe is too often plagued with pettiness, politics and “turf wars,” not to mention personal and professional jealousy. So it’s no surprise that the academic atmosphere is the background for several crime fiction novels.

There’s a lot at stake among academics. One of the biggest things at stake is one’s rank. That’s what we see in Colin Dexter’s Death is Now My Neighbor. In that novel, Sir Clixby Bream, Master of Lonsdale College, Oxford, is preparing to retire. The two most likely candidates to replace him are Dr. Julian Storrs and Dr. Denis Cornford. Each of them would like to serve as the next Master of Lonsdale. Their wives are no less eager for their husbands to succeed to that position. Both candidates, and their wives, are hiding secrets in their pasts, though, and are not eager for anyone to find them out. Enter Geoffrey Owens, a journalist who has a habit of finding out people’s secrets and, more dangerously, has the habit of blackmail. Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis are already investigating the shooting death of Rachel James, who lives in Owens’ neighborhood, when they learn that Owens has been murdered, too. As they work to figure out who would want both James and Owens shot, Morse and Lewis find out what these academics were hiding. There are, of course, several other of Dexter’s Inspector Morse novels that deal with the politics of academia.

Besides rank, or maybe along with rank, tenure is another factor that can make the academic atmosphere so political and dangerous. Tenure is sought by just about every academic. It means an assured career, a higher rank, and several other benefits. Tenure isn’t easy to get, and the process can be fraught with politics. Most tenure recommendations are made by committees, so the candidate for tenure knows that she or he has to worry about not only the quality of work, but also about relationships. That’s the challenge that Connor Hadley faces in my own Publish or Perish. Hadley is up for tenure at Tilton University, but unfortunately, the Chair of the Promotion and Tenure Committee, Pete Nash, doesn’t like Hadley very much. Because of the resentment Nash bears him, Hadley is very much afraid he won’t get tenure, so he takes a desperate step. Shortly afterwards, his graduate student, Nick Merrill, dies suddenly one night from what looks like an accident, but is later proved to be murder. Former police officer-turned-professor Joel Williams gets involved in the case because Nick had been working with him on a project. He soon finds out that several people had a motive to kill Nick. One of them is Carrie Woods, a member of the department where Nick works. She also happens to be his lover. When she and Nick are found out, Carrie worries about what this could do to her career. It doesn’t help matters that she’s found out that Nick is also seeing someone else. Carrie cares for Nick, but she’s not ready to sacrifice her career for him. She’s among several people who could have been ruthless enough to kill Nick Merrill.

We see ruthlessness in other academic crime fiction as well. For instance, in Amanda Cross’ Death in a Tenured Position, Janet Mandelbaum goes up against some very ruthless people. She’s the first woman hired in Harvard’s English Department, and her male colleagues are, to say the least, not pleased about it. They have to accept her, though. A benefactor has left the school a million dollars to fund a chair for a woman, and the college is eager for the money. When Janet arrives at Harvard, she’s ostracized and made to feel unwelcome. Then, one day, she’s attending a tea when someone drugs her drink. She’s later found, drugged, on the floor of the men’s bathroom. At first, it seems that this is a campaign of protest against Janet Mandelbaum’s presence. Then, things turn lethal when Mandelbaum is poisoned. An acquaintance of Janet’s visits Columbia professor Kate Fansler, Cross’ sleuth, to ask her to get involved. Kate agrees to spend a term at Harvard, trying to find out who killed Janet Mandelbaum. It’s been argued that this book is dated, especially with regard to its portrayal of feminism. Still, it’s an interesting study of academic ruthlessness.

So is James Yaffe’s A Nice Murder for Mom. In that novel, English professor Stuart Bellamy is murdered by a blow to the head on the night of an important cocktail party being given by the Chair of the English Department at Mesa Grande College in Mesa Grande, Colorado. Mike Russo, another member of the department, seems to be the obvious suspect. He was passed up for tenure in favor of Bellamy, and Russo can’t account for his time during the period when the murder was committed. Russo claims that he’s innocent, though, and Ann Swenson, Mesa Grande’s Public Defender, decides to have the case investigated. For that, she chooses Dave, a former Bronx police officer who’s moved out to Mesa Grande to start over after the death of his wife, Shirley. Dave soon finds that Mike Russo wasn’t the only one with a grudge against Stuart Bellamy. Dave has to untangle the web of departmental politics, petty jealousy and resentment to find out who really killed Stuart Bellamy. Along the way, he gets help from his mother, who’s been visiting from New York, and whose common sense and intuition give him valuable clues to the case.

It’s not just faculty and staff members who get caught up in the politics and bad feeling that can sometimes be engendered by the university atmosphere. Competitiveness, bitterness, jealousy, and pettiness also happen among students at universities. For instance, in Yrsa Sigurdardóttir’s Last Rituals, attorney Thóra Gudmundsdóttir is offered a large sum of money to find out the truth behind the death of Harald Guntlieb, a German student living and studying in Iceland. Guntlieb was brutally murdered, and the police think they have the guilty party in custody – a fellow student and former friend of the dead man. But the Guntliebs don’t believe that this student is guilty, so they send their family’s representative, Matthew Reich, to Iceland to work with Thóra to uncover the truth about their son’s death. Along the way, Thóra and Matthew uncover some secrets that Harald’s friends have been keeping, and we get to see the pettiness and jealousy, as well as the interesting interactions among them.

In my own B-Very Flat, Serena Brinkman, a gifted violinist, dies suddenly on the night of an important music competition. Her partner, Patricia Stanley, is convinced that Serena didn’t die naturally, so she asks her advisor, Joel Williams, for help. Williams somewhat reluctantly agrees. He and the Tilton police begin to investigate the death, and in the process, get to meet several of Serena’s friends and fellow students, as well as her cousin. Practically all of them, as it turns out, had a motive to want Serena dead. For all of them, Serena stood between them and something they wanted or needed.

And of course, no discussion of crime in the academic atmosphere would be complete without a discussion of Dorothy Sayers’ Gaudy Night, the story of Harriet Vane’s visit to her alma mater. She’s invited to Shrewsbury College, Oxford, to participate in the Gaudy Night festivities. A few months later, the Warden of the college writes to Harriet, asking her to return and help find out who’s responsible for some unsettling events at the college. Harriet reluctantly agrees and uses the cover that she’s doing some research. The acts of vandalism, threatening letters and other occurrences get worse, and in fact, almost cost Harriet her life. Lord Peter Wimsey comes to the college to help find out who is behind these frightening acts. He and Harriet find that it all has to do with academic politics and a grudge that someone is holding.

Academia isn’t always the safe, serene atmosphere we might wish it were. But that makes it especially effective for crime fiction. It’s one reason that I’ve used that atmosphere in my own novels.

Thank you again, Dorte, for your hospitality!

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Remember to visit Margot´s fantastic blog Confessions of a Mystery Novelist if you are not already one of her faithful readers.

And do you like academic crime fiction? Then you MUST read Publish or Perish and B-Very Flat, Margot´s delightful novels about professor Joel Williams.

Sudoku Weekend

This weekend did not go quite as planned, but perhaps Sudoku was just what my scatterbrain needed.

Tomorrow: great guest post about Academic Crime - just for you!

Tuesday + Wednesday: exams - don´t expect to see me much.

Joanne Harris, Gentlemen & Players (2005)

This novel should have been a real treat for me. A British whodunit which takes place in an old boys´ school, and a plot involving a fifteen-year-old grudge.

And I liked the environment, the plot idea and to some extent the ending. I have some reservations, however.

First, in my opinion it is confusing (and quite unnecessary) to have two first-person narrators: the Latin teacher Roy Straitley, and the murderer who felt excluded from the posh school as a child and now wants to take revenge because of this old grudge.

Second, the only character who really made an impression on me was the old Latin teacher. The others, teachers as well as school boys - including the murderer - seemed more like chess pieces in the game Ms Harris has set up than real people.

Third, the book reminded me too much of a riddle of the kind: a school employs five new teachers, Light, Meek, Easy, Dare and Keane [sic]. Who is the French teacher, the English teacher, the geography teacher, the murderer etc. So all the way through, the writer spends her energy on scattering clues rather than making the most of the interesting environment or giving us a really exciting drama. A puzzle mystery, but not as engaging as it could have been, and the final twist was not such a great surprise to me.

And as the drama unfolds and one teacher after the other is suspected and accused of various derelictions of duty and even crime, why does no one suspect that they have a Trojan horse in their midst? Well, if you love guessing at who did it, this might be something for you.

It will be very easy to find enthusiastic reviews of this library book, but there are people who share my view: see Bernadette´s review.


Joanne Harris, Dobbeltspil (2007)

Denne britiske krimi, som udspiller sig i en drengeskole fuld af gamle traditioner, burde have været en stor nydelse for mig, især pga plottet: hævn over en femten år gammel uret.

Jeg satte også pris på miljøet, plotideen og til en vis grad slutningen, men jeg har visse forbehold.

For det første er det efter min mening forvirrende (og fuldstændig unødvendigt) at have to jeg-fortællere: latinlæreren Roy Straitley, og morderen, som følte sig holdt uden for den fornemme skole som barn, og nu vil tage hævn.

For det andet var latinlæreren den eneste person, som gjorde indtryk på mig. De andre, lærere såvel som skoleelever – inklusiv morderen – mindede mere om skakbrikker end virkelige personer.

For det tredje mindede bogen mig alt for meget om en gåde af typen: en skole ansætter fem nye lærere, Light, Meek, Easy, Dare og Keane. Hvem er fransklærer, engelsklærer, geografilærer, morder osv. Så hele vejen gennem bogen bruger forfatteren sin energi på at strø små hints ud, i stedet for at få mest muligt ud af et spændende miljø, eller skabe et rigtig spændende drama. En puslespilskrimi, men ikke nær så fængslende, som den kunne have været, og den overraskende slutning kom ikke rigtigt bag på mig.

Og mens dramaet udvikler sig, og den ene lærer efter den anden bliver mistænkt for pligtforsømmelser og endda grove forbrydelser, hvorfor er der så ingen, som fatter mistanke om, at der er en trojansk hest på spil? Men hvis du går meget op i at gætte, hvem morderen er, så er bogen måske noget for dig.

Det er let at finde begejstrede anmeldelser af denne biblioteksbog, men der er dog læsere, som er enige med mig: se Bernadettes anmeldelse.

Thy´s Day # 18

The area around our cottage is near the dunes of the North Sea,
and there are strict rules as to what we may plant.
Can you spot the ´illegal immigrant´?

Well spotted!
Fruit trees are certainly not indigenous
- but some may think they are prettier than the local stock.

Jógvan Isaksen, Korsmesse (2009)

Denne færøske krimi er den tredje i serien om Hannis Martinsson, journalist og konsulent i Torshavn. Jeg lånte den på biblioteket.

Historien begynder med et grindedrab. Alle færinger i nærheden smider, hvad de har i hænderne, og styrter ned til bugten, mens både driver hvalerne ind mod stranden.

”Grindedrabet var overstået på ti minutter. Selvom hvalflokken ikke var stor, var det alligevel gået langsomt med at drive den ind imod vigen i Sandárgerdi. Men da den først var på rette kurs, svømmede flokken uden videre op på stranden. Et stort antal grindemænd vadede ud og skar halsen over på hvalerne. Lidt efter lidt farvedes havet rødt.”

To engelske miljøaktivister, Jenny McEwan og Stewart Peters, er travlt optaget af at fotografere, men samme aften bliver de fundet myrdet og efterladt til parade sammen med de slagtede hvaler.

Miljøaktivister og dyreværnsorganisationer kaster sig ud i kampen for at forbyde grindedrab på Færøerne, og før bølgerne har lagt sig, bliver Hannis Martinsson hyret af et britisk medlem af organisationen Guardians of the Sea til at opklare mordet på de to. Den filosofiske, ensomme ulv kaster sig ud i sagen, og selvfølgelig klarer han sig bedre end det lokale politi.

Udmærket krimi om kultursammenstødet mellem dyreaktivister og lokale færinger, som kæmper for at overleve i det lille øsamfund, og man mærker, at forfatteren kender sit miljø indefra, men også er i stand til at se det udefra.

Jógvan Isaksen, Cross Mass.
This Faroese crime novel (a library book) has not been translated into English. It is the third in the series about Hannis Martinsson, journalist and consultant in Torshavn, the capital of the islands.

The story begins with a ´grindadráp´ (pilot whale killing). All Faroese drop what they have in their hands and run down to the bay while boats drive the whales ashore.

“The pilot whale killing was over in ten minutes. Even though the school of whales wasn´t large, it had taken a long time to drive them towards the bay in Sandárgerdi. But when it was on the right course, the school swam up on the beach without further ado. A large number of whalers waded out to cut the throats of the whales. Little by little the sea was coloured red.”

Two English environmentalists, Jenny McEwan and Stewart Peters, are busy photographing the scene, but later the same evening they are found murdered, left on parade together with the slaughtered whales.

Environmentalists and animals rights groups engage in the fight to forbid pilot whale killings in the Faroe Islands, and soon Martinsson is hired by a British member of the organization Guardians of the Sea to solve the murder of the two. The philosophical lone wolf engages in the case, and of course he gets better results than the local police.

A fine crime novel about the culture clash between environmentalists and local Faroese who fight for survival in the small island community, and it is clear that the writer knows the environment from the inside but is also able to look at it from without.

Faroese Crime

As I have promised, I will read my new batch of library books in the order suggested by my readers.

So I have begun reading Jógvan Isaksen´s Korsmesse (The Cross Mass), my first crime novel from the remote Faroe Islands. We visited them in 1994 and can testify to their beauty.

Before anyone asks: no, I cannot read Faroese so I have to read a Danish translation.

Review coming up soon.