The Murder of Harriet Krohn - Karin Fossum

There is a trope in Scandinavian noir in which the protagonist appears rarely.  The later works of Hakan Nesser are almost entirely devoid of Inspector Van Veeteren.  Indridason also manages most of his translated Inspector Erlendur and Sigurdur Oli series with very little Erlendur and no Oli whatsoever.

This, it seemed, was going to be the case with The Murder of Harriet Krohn.  Her series investigator, Inspector Konrad Sejer, doesn't appear in person (he is mentioned in the press early on) until page 187.  He then disappears again for a couple of chapters.  I thought that was it.  But I was wrong.  Fossum is by some distance the finest writer of all the Scandi noir lead players, a Norwegian Barbara Vine if you will.  Her interest is the evil that good men do, not simply the restoration of balance through justice.  Here, her interest is the wretched Charlo, who kills to try and break out of the wretched spiral of his life.  He knows perfectly well that he has done wrong.  He is fully conscious that he has a moral debt to pay.  He tries to put his life back together, to become again the good person he once was.  He re-establishes contact with his estranged teenage daughter.  He finds an interest they can share and love together.  He takes on menial labouring work to try and exorcise his guilt.  He even visits the grave of his victim, not to gloat or weep but to try and understand what happened between them.

Fossum goes to great lengths to make us empathise with Charlo, even giving him a crippling disease.  Thus when Sejer finally gets into his stride and questions Charlo our sympathies are equally divided between two fundamentally good men.  This sequence, lasting thirty pages or so, is a magnificent piece of writing, an object lesson on how these things should be done.  There is no trickery, no slight of hand, just diligent, effective questioning from Sejer and Charlo calculating how close he can stick to the truth without confronting the ultimate truth of what he has done.

I was reminded of Crime and Punishment - so strong were the resonances, I cannot believe Fossum did not seed the prompts deliberately.

I've said it before, but I wish she was better published.  Vintage is a great publisher, I look out for Vintage publications - so why is this cover, like all Fossum covers, so feeble?  And why that pathetic font?  Surely the way the author's name is done would sit more comfortably on a children's book.

The Veiled One - Ruth Rendell

Volume 14 of the Wexford series, The Veiled One was written in 1988, about the time the author became seriously famous with the TV series and the creation of Barbara Vine.  It is thus quintessential Rendell with a strong foretaste of Vine - a murder mystery which turns on warped psychology.  There is also an interesting but unlinked subplot referencing the women's protest at Greenham Common.

It all starts in the run-up to Christmas when a woman's body is found in shopping centre carpark which Wexford himself has just left.  Indeed, the body is found close by where his car was parked.  The gruesome twist is that the woman was garrotted, a almost unique method in British murder.  Wexford is sidelined for a time - to explain why would be to spoil the plot - and in his absence Mike Burden takes up the investigation.  He becomes convinced he knows who the murderer is.  Is he right?  That's the beauty of Rendell's craft.  She keeps you guessing right to the end.  She doesn't cheat, she doesn't bend the rules, but relies solely on depth of character to keep you hooked.

A very, very good example of its genre, and as such highly recommended.

The Chimney Sweeper's Boy - Barbara Vine

Ruth Rendell is the greatest of contemporary female crime writers and is never better than when she writes as Barbara Vine.  This, however, is by no means Vine at her best.  The writing is beautiful, the characterisation and back story deep and immersive.  There is clever play with the levels of storytelling, which I particularly liked.  But the mystery upon which all this is hung is no mystery at all.  I'm afraid I figured it out from the get-go and I am usually hopeless.  So it was an enjoyable read but ultimately failed to satisfy on the key trope of its genre.

One of the blurbs on the back of the paperback describes it as frightening.  A conclusion I find inexplicable.