Reviewed at Petrona, February 2012.

Reviewed at Petrona, February 2012.

There are many well-established UK detective series whose authors use regional settings: Yorkshire, the Lake District, Sussex, Northumberland, Edinburgh, the Fens, and many more. Here, Ewart Hutton makes the claim for DS Glyn Capaldi of mid-Wales to join this pantheon. Does he succeed? The signs are very good, but I have a few reservations.

Capaldi is the narrator of the book; he has been transferred from big city (in Welsh terms) Cardiff to the black hole of mid-Wales after a botched investigation. Mid-Wales is a large, mountainous area with few roads, so having a detective on the spot to respond to the rare but dispersed crimes will save the police force money compared with having to dispatch officers from the nearest large town. Capaldi is pretty fed up – his wife has left him and he lives in a caravan – so almost out of boredom becomes involved in the strange case of a missing minibus which was taking some rugby supporters home after a Wales-England match. The uniformed police, all locals, are not concerned about the disappearance of the minibus or the occupants, putting it down to a drunken prank. Their view seems to be vindicated next morning, when the vehicle is found carefully left in a car park and the men concerned turn up after spending the night in a shack in the woods. Capaldi is unconvinced, as one of the men is still missing. What’s more, a woman was seen on CCTV getting on the bus at a service station but she, too, has vanished – if she ever existed. The other passengers tell the police that the two of them have gone off together, but because of a past case in Cardiff which ended in tragedy, Capaldi refuses to accept this explanation and against the orders of his bosses and to the annoyance of his local colleagues, pursues his investigation.

The book takes a few chapters to get into its stride. At first, the writing style seems to be a mix of the whimsy of the Aberystwyth novels of Malcolm Price and American hardboiled, which when applied to a missing minibus in farm country is quite amusing, but made me wonder how the author was going to keep it up for a whole book set in rural Wales. Soon, however, substance takes over from style, the narrative grips and the mystery becomes intriguing – I was hooked.

Capaldi follows the time-honoured tradition of tracking down all leads and witnesses, relentless in his search for the truth whatever the humiliation or cost to himself. In the process he encounters the Welsh farming mentality, the care home system for both ends of the age-range (children and old people), prostitution at the perverted end of the scale, and even, possibly, love. The pacing is very good indeed, as layer after layer of information is glimpsed yet each time turns into an almost-dead-end.

Unfortunately the final eighth of the book is a big disappointment. Most people suddenly begin to act out of character or in contradiction to what they stood for previously; the villain(s) seem to construct incredibly complex fallback plans in some ways yet be incredibly careless in others; the subplot of Capaldi’s ex-wife’s new husband starts promisingly but peters out; and the solution to the mystery seems unnecessary – the same end could have been achieved far more simply.

Despite the mess of an ending, I think this series has lots of potential as the character of Capaldi is engaging, the way in which Welsh life and attitudes are conveyed is astute and funny without being sentimental, and there’s an emotional honesty yet toughness to the book that I really liked. I just hope that next time, the resolution of the plot is compatible with the set-up instead of spiralling away from it into baroque incredulity.

Review first published at Euro Crime, February 2012.

THE GLASS ROOM is a solid crime novel, the fifth to feature the engaging Northumberland DI Vera Stanhope. Vera returns to her farmstead from work one night to discover her neighbour Jack in her kitchen, distraught because his partner Joanna has disappeared. He asks Vera to find where she’s gone, which takes her no time at all. Joanna is at a residential course at Writer’s House, a centre for aspiring authors to learn their trade and said to be an inside route to the elusive goal of publication. Vera decides to drive there herself to ask Joanna whether she wants Jack to know her whereabouts. But when she arrives she is plunged straight into a murder scene in the titular glass room, with Joanna the prime suspect.

Vera, present in a personal capacity, calls in the local police and her colleagues from CID. Those present at Writer’s House at the time of the murder are rounded up and all but a handful eliminated from the enquiry for logistical reasons. The remaining suspects or witnesses include Miranda, the owner of the house and business; her son Alex; a retired policeman now hoping to be a published author; a young man who has discovered a writing talent while in prison; an elderly famous crime writer who is teaching on the course; and another teacher, Nina, an academic and aspiring writer. By the process of elimination, one of these people, or Joanna, must have committed the crime – though there is the outside chance that a random stranger could have gained access.

Vera and her sergeant Joe Ashworth interview most of these characters, though oddly leave one out whom I thought they would have wanted to question immediately. Of course, this proves to be an important omission a few chapters later. The police find that the evidence that seemed to incriminate Joanna in fact does not, so she is released and the course uneasily continues while the police examine the background and history of all their suspects (including Joanna of course). Part of the story is told from the point of view of Nina, who in her academic role has reason to dislike the murder victim and who seems to be a target for someone’s malice or worse. Most of the book, however, is filtered through Vera’s, and occasionally Joe’s, perspective, all of which give the author plenty of opportunity for astute comments on the publishing scene.

THE GLASS ROOM is a traditional, Agatha Christie-style book, relying on gradual unearthing of untold relationships and past actions among a small group, rather than on modern technology or details of police procedure. There are a couple of early clues that the police don’t follow up, but once the detectives gather momentum it is clear that Vera is getting to grips with all the complexities and will work it out eventually – without recourse to the “messages” the criminal is leaving, which in the end turn out to have gone over everyone’s heads (will readers spot the references, I wonder?).

Those who have read the author’s Shetland series will recognise some initial similarity with BLUE LIGHTNING, about a murder at a bird-watching centre, but the author treats this theme very differently in THE GLASS ROOM, which despite some tragic moments is not as dark as the earlier novel. THE GLASS ROOM is a chatty, relaxing read rather than a cutting-edge slice of noir, with a well-constructed crime plot that will please the many fans of Vera.

Review first published at Euro Crime, February 2012.

Reviewed at Petrona, February 2012.

Reviewed at Petrona, February 2012.

Reviewed at Petrona, February 2011.

Reviewed at Petrona, February 2012.

Paulus Hochgatterer has followed THE SWEETNESS OF LIFE, which won the European Literature Prize in 2009, with another novel set in the same Austrian Alpine town of Furth am See. It’s about human nature, rather than a ‘crime novel’ in the conventional sense. Nothing is described in a straightforward fashion, so the reader has to interpret events that are described indirectly, or that are filtered through the subjective view of a character, or that are simply fragments that may or may not be relevant to the whole. Although this approach can occasionally be a little frustrating, such as when one reads a segment about people but does not know who they are because they are not named, this short book about small-town secrets is, overall, very rewarding.

The two main characters (as in the previous book) are the police commissioner Kovacs and the psychiatrist Raffael Horn, though the book is certainly not “a Kovacs & Horn investigation” as the cover words state, as I don’t think the two men even meet. Both are depicted as worrying and insecure about their roles as fathers and partners, in Horn’s case this means his tense relationships with his wife Irene, a cellist, and younger son Tobias. Kovacs finds himself in love despite himself, as well as apprehensive about the impending visit of his 16-year-old daughter whom he has not seen since his divorce; the story of the daughter’s visit is one of the most touching aspects of the book. As well as musing on their personal lives, both men’s feelings about the groups of people they work with are a main theme. Kovacs runs the police department, speculating at length on its individual members; because of an absent colleague he has to pick up the case of a worker who fell from some scaffolding – was it an accident or not? Then, reports are received about children being attacked (but not seriously) by a “black owl”. The parents are outraged and involve the media as well as Kovacs’ superiors. None of the children will provide any details of their ordeal as they are sworn to secrecy.

Horn, a psychiatrist at the hospital, interacts both with his colleagues in various team and medical settings (he has an alarming tendency to speak his thoughts without realising it), and with a relatives’ support group for people with family members in treatment. These settings are used by the author to explore psychological and neurological illness of various kinds. The police refer the children who were attacked to the unit, so Horn attempts gentle therapy sessions to try to see if he can learn more than the children tell the police, teachers or their parents. While this is going on, several of the other patients are depicted in detail, with past and present abuse of children coming more to the fore as the book continues. Both Horn and Kovacs separately worry about whether they have beaten their own children (they can’t seem to remember!).

Other subjects are explored – the mad (?) priest with the iPod from the earlier book is around, here befriended by a woman who at first keeps him grounded but in fact may not be the stable person she seems. In a more disturbing plot, a story is told from the point of view of a young teenage girl who, with her much younger “sister”, lives in a house from which she has escape routes marked out, and so on. It is not too much of a stretch of the imagination to work out in general what is going on here (particularly because of a prologue, surely an over-used device in modern fiction); but how the girls relate to the rest of the story is not revealed until the (rather abrupt) ending. At this time, other aspects shift into sudden focus, such as the scaffolding case – which again turns out to hinge on the alienation between parents and children – and of course the identity of the “black owl”.

This is a hard book to sum up. In terms of language, it veers jarringly between present and past tense, sometimes between sections or chapters, sometimes within them. In terms of substance, the author likes to obscure clarity throughout, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so. For example one spends most of the book sharing Horn’s frustration with Irene, his wife, seen entirely through his eyes – yet towards the end the reader’s perception shifts and she is revealed in a sympathetic light. On the other hand, I was left somewhat clueless by the priest/woman story – is this my fault for not being clever enough to detect the author’s subtlety, or was I supposed not to understand? I think the balance is wrong between the large amount of pages about Kovacs’ and Horn’s angst on the minutiae of their comfortable lives, and the small amount given to some of Horn’s patients (especially the younger ones) who have or have had to deal with pretty extreme problems.
Although written in an oblique, blurred and episodic way, there is much to gain from reading THE MATTRESS HOUSE, in its depiction of how people make assumptions about others, and of how societies and institutions hide the injustices done to those, mainly children, who have no outside source of help. I found the book sad and haunting, and highly recommend it if you don’t mind a bit of work.

Review first published at Euro Crime, January 2012.

Reviewed at Petrona, January 2012.