From the comfort of one’s armchair, and from one remove, here are three novels that deal with violence and murder in different ways - but are united in affording us countless hours of guilty reading pleasure.
Going to the Dogs by Pierre Lemaitre
A Prix Goncourt awardee in 2013 for The Great Swindle, and a three-time winner of the CWA International Dagger, Lemaitre is renowned for his moody, ‘very French’ Crime Fiction. Set in Paris in 1985; this novel alternates chapters between Mathilde Perrin, a partly 63-year-old widow, and the gangly Inspector Rene Vasiliev. Set in 1985 Paris, we first encounter Mathilde as she drives towards Avenue Foch one evening with Ludo, her Dalmatian. A mother and decorated hero of the Resistance, Mathilde cooly executes a businessman walking his dachshund, shooting him in the groin and throat. Turns out she’s a contract killer, and it would be his tough luck that Rene Vasiliev is assigned the case. Vasiliev is of Russian extraction, his father was the driver of a minor Minister who upon the death of the father, made Rene his ward.
The problem with Mathilde is that she’s become forgetful, impulsive, and easily agitated. The plot thickens when she spies a slip of paper with the name of a cleaning woman being recommended to help her; and in a case of mistaken identity, she presumes it’s her new assignment, a fresh contract killing. While most would start thinking of retiring, Mathilde has other things on her mind, starting with her nosy neighbor and the memories that flood her mind as she tries to keep control of her thoughts and emotions. What Lemaitre wonderfully achieves is a character study of a mind slowly unraveling and yet capable of the most decisive actions, and blending this was stark, visceral action sequences that leave us stunned and yet clapping in glee - while knowing we shouldn’t really be smiling while all the dead bodies pile up. It’s easy to understand why Lemaitre has his sterling reputation and awards.
The Enigma Girl by Henry Porter
As you begin reading this latest from Porter, you can speculate on how if this was ever adapted for TV, you would need someone like a young Kate Winslett, Florence Pugh, or Jodie Comer, to take on the title character, Slim Parsons. She’s an undercover MI5 operative and she’s a layered, complex character. Bordering on being delinquent and deemed unsuitable for her job, she’s now asked to infiltrate a local news website in the middle of England, as higher-ups have categorized it and the people behind it as a threat to national security. Her previous assignment and the incident that happened between her and her then-boss on a private jet trip is what has derailed the career path of Slim. Taking on the new assignment has her imposing the condition of the agency finding out what happened to her missing brother.
Forced to make very human choices, what this novel provides is a detailed examination of the life of Slim. Her mother is dying from terminal cancer, her friends have deserted her, and life undercover has its toll on one’s mental stability and power of perception. To make things even more complicated, the stories she works on for the Middle Kingdom website involve brothers who have disappeared, enslaving Asian women who have been raped, and the legacy of Bletchley Park and the Enigma Code. To a ‘t’, they all relate to something in Slim’s personal life, and so one of the stronger elements of this novel is Slim’s motivation, and her having to balance between the personal and the professional. Operation Linesman is the code name given to her news website assignment, and it quickly becomes a case of blurred lines, intersecting with her checkered past. The last half of the novel is action-packed and effectively paced!
Curtain Call to Murder by Julian Clary
Campy, has a lot of fun while being catty and on the right side of bitchy/vicious; this murder mystery from Clary declares its intentions from the very start. Clary doesn’t think all that much of the cozy mystery sub-genre and wants to explore the genre while raising up the quotient of bitchiness. The best place to achieve this would be in the milieu he calls home - the theater. So it’s the tour of the Edinburgh Festival hit Leopard Spots, and they’re heading to the London Palladium, after opening the tour in genteel Bath. Jayne is the company’s dresser and our protagonist/heroine. The cast of Thespians on the stage is a promising mix: there’s the aging Lothario who lives in denial, the youngish, successful stand-up comedian turned actor, the American actress who’s psychic and an empath, and the stage actress who never became more than a shadow of her national treasure mother.
All these characters crave their own spotlight, and it’s funny to watch them preen, negotiate, and play their game of one-upmanship. A fatal on-stage accident comes into play about halfway into the story so some may be impatient or feel it’s been withheld for too long. Clary even inserts himself as an omniscient narrator; but at the core of all that transpires is Jayne, the highly observant dresser who nobody notices or simply takes for granted. In this, there’s a sense of Clary turning the mystery story into a tribute to dressers everywhere - how it’s their fate to be so essential for making the show happen, and yet often forgotten. Campy, gay, and fun; there’s really much to like and enjoy in this novel; and the nagging question one will inevitably ask is how true to life these characters all are - who in Clary’s life in the theater they are based on? That would be a fun conversation with the author.