Announcement: The Bughouse Affair (2013) by Pronzini and Muller

"They're coming to take me away, ho, ho, hee, hee, ha, ha

To the funny farm..."

- Napoleon XIV

Pronzini and Muller

Consider this an addendum to the review posted on Sunday, in which I briefly discussed the stories comprising Carpenter and Quincannon: Professional Detective Services (1998). John Quincannon and Sabina Carpenter, a former secret service man and a female ex-Pinkerton operative and widow of a Pinkerton detective, who have gone into business together and run a private detective agency during the dwindling years of the nineteenth century, are Bill Pronzini's secondary characters – both of whom sporadically roam the pages of The Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

However, in a recent exchange of emails, Bill Pronzini divulged that he and his mystery-writing wife, Marcia Muller, are collaborating on a series of full-length Carpenter and Quincannon novels for Tor/Forge – and the first of them has been delivered to them and will be published in January 2013. The book has been titled The Bughouse Affair and I can reveal that part of the plot will revolve around a locked room/impossible disappearance ploy and that a new recurring character, who fancies himself to be Sherlock Holmes, will contribute to the solution of the story.

At the moment, Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller are firing up their word processors to begin working on the second entry, The Spook Light Affair, which will also contain one or two impossible situations. I, for one, can't wait to dig into these affairs!

In other news:

Marco Books, who penned, IMHO, one of the best crime/mystery novels of 2011, De laatste kans (The Last Chance), submitted another prospective masterpiece to his publisher and additional information is expected to be released in December. Now if only a foreign publisher out there would pick him up and introduce his work to an (English-reading) audience he deserves!  

Curt Evans, a mystery scholar who's actually dispelling misconceptions of the genre instead of nurturing them, in order to feed them to a pet theory, has entered the blogosphere like a comet – and you can follow him along over at The Passing Tramp. This erudite scholar is also the author of the upcoming book Masters of the Humdrum Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920 to 1961, in which he champions the cause of the shamefully neglected and often ill treated humdrum writers.

The House in the Woods

"The people who live in places like this think that the rules don't apply to them."

- Inspector Morse

If you've been a regular visitant of this blog, you probably already bumped into Dutch crime-writer M.P.O. Books, who was kind enough to reiterate one of his reviews in English for this blogspot – and I prefaced it with a short, but to the point, introduction. But to safe you the inconvenience of clicking to another page, I will reproduce my prelude here and beef it up with some additional information. Hey, nothing but a five-star service for the customers of this dodgy supplier of red herrings!

Sentenced in Absentia

Marco Books is a struggling author of thriller-cum-detective stories, cut from the same mold as most of the other Euro-style police procedurals, who debuted in 2004 with the novel Bij verstek veroordeeld (Sentenced in Absentia), in which a murderous conspiracy goes awry and the co-conspirators have to dodge not only an unknown murderer, who wants to spear them on the receiving end of a pitchfork, but also have to deal with Books' series detective, Inspector Bram Petersen. The furrowed-faced Petersen is a veteran detectives on the force, approaching his retirement age at a steady pace, usually backed-up by his able, and younger, colleague, Ronald Bloem, both of whom are stationed at the police precinct that resides over the idyllic Utrechtse Heuvelrug – a setting that immediately conjures up images of Midsomer County and not entirely without reason.

Bij verstek veroordeeld was an auspicious first appearance by an enthusiastic and promising writer, but unfortunately the book didn't make much of an impact on the national scene and was unfairly labeled as a regional roman policier. Nevertheless, he labored on two more books, De bloedzuiger (The Bloodsucker, 2005) and Gedragen haat (Hatred Borne, 2006), which maintained a consistent quality of story telling, plotting and characterization – and the latter has a superb scene involving a rehearsal of a funeral, a busted-open casket and a severed head. The theatrical execution of that particular scene would've received the nodding approval of Ngaio Marsh!

The Eye-Catcher

But he really hit his stride last year, when he published his fourth novel, De blikvanger (The Eye-Catcher, 2010). It's a beautiful paradigm of plot complexity, in which Books hit upon a grand opening gambit that guaranteed both readers of modern crime novels, who make up a considerable portion of his readership, and incorrigible classicists, like yours truly, had an equally enjoyable reading experience. This opening move basically consists of loading the first few chapters with mystifying, foreshadowing and seemingly unconnected episodes, like an out-of-focus kaleidoscopic photograph, and he spends the rest of the story turning the lens back into focus to create a complete, coherent picture of the incidents as they went down – which allows him to create elaborate, multi-layered plots in the classic tradition and still be a writer that is marketable to a contemporary reading audience.

This, however, also makes it difficult to describe De laatste kans (The Last Chance, 2011), because where does one begin summarizing such a fractured, variegated plot without giving anything away? The first twenty pages alone contain enough material to pad out a number of books, from the unearthing of a skull, in a place miles away from where the actual story takes place, to a married couple finding a crib with an abandoned child in their drive way, and they all, somehow, tie in with the main problem of the story – a grotesque murder committed in a secluded house in Leersum.

The Last Chance

Jacques Vermin was somewhat of a miser, living mostly by his own and recently separated from his wife, who had few friends and accumulated a pile of money from a very nefarious avocation, for which he eventually has to pay with his life when someone sneaks into his abode and beats him over the head with a stoneware urn, encapsulating the ashes of his departed father, smashing to smithereens on impact – and blackening his body with parental residue.

This by-effect of the murder will turn out to be very symbolic and is merely one of the many fascinating patterns that emerge as the story progresses to the inevitable solution. It's not entirely unlike watching someone emanating perfect circles of smoke that seem to playfully interact with one another, but more importantly, he got the concept of fair play down to a T – which tightened the knottiness of the plot even more. The first couple of books had the tendency to withhold crucial information from the reader, but lately he's been making one of his literary heroes, Agatha Christie, very proud and it's a shame that the ethics of reviewing detective stories forbids me to point out a gem of a clue. The unabashed homage to Conan Doyle, concerning a collection of motley colored busts of Napoleon in the study of the victim, should also be mentioned in passing.

I know I have been summary in my description of the book, but its difficult, if not impossible, to discuss the plot without spoiling anything that was set-up in the opening chapters. But suffice to say that this is a lavishly plotted detective story, which looks respectfully over its shoulder to what came before it while marching proudly alongside its peers. Because Petersen and his colleagues become more than just instruments of justice as we learn to know them through a series short intermezzos that barely intrude on the actual story. In short, De laatste kans is a book that nips at heels of such modern grandmasters as William DeAndrea and Bill Pronzini and I, for one, can't wait for the next installment.

"Beware the Jabberwock Books, my son!"

If this was a perfect world, Books would've been recognized as the logical successor to the immense popular Appie Baantjer and this book would've adorned the top-spot of today's bestseller lists. But, alas, that's not the case and I hope that an American or British publisher, questing for a new Eurocrime writer, read this rambling review and decide to give him a shot. De blikvanger and De laatste kans have been the model for the marriage between the modern police procedure and the neo-classic detective novel, and just for that he deserves a broader, more appreciative, audience. 

Yes, Simon, I know... you're generally considered as Baantjer's literary heir, but really, what have you produced over the past few years that comes even close to competing with these staggering pieces of contemporary crime fiction? I haven't been impressed with the Bureau Raampoort series at all, and if you want to reclaim your spot I suggest you start penning another historical mystery with C.J. van Ledden-Hulsebosch at the helm... who solves an impossible crime. Hey, don't blame me for trying! ;-)

Guest Blog: Booked for Murder

Note: this is the second installment in a semi-regular series of guest posts, which kicked-off last month with an article on the Japanese detective story, hosted on this blog spot – and this time I will temporarily hand my blog over to M.P.O. Books who transcribed one of his reviews into English. Books is a struggling author of thriller-cum-detective stories, inspired by Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Appie Baantjer, Ellis Peters and Henning Mankell, who debuted in 2004 with Bij verstek veroordeeld (Sentenced in Absentia) and deserving of a more appreciative reading audience. So, if you're an American publisher questing for a new Eurocrime writer, don't look any further than M.P.O. Books!

The Black-Box Murder by Maarten Maartens  

The Black-Box Murder is probably the first detective story for adults written by a Dutchman. The novel appeared only two years after Arthur Conan Doyle introduced the world to his sleuth Sherlock Holmes. The writer was Jozua Marius Willem van der Poorten Schwarz, better known under his pseudonym Maarten Maartens (1858-1915). Strikingly enough he wrote The Black-Box Murder in English, and as far as I know it never appeared in the Dutch language. Though his through-and-through Dutch sounding pseudonym and his real name suggest something else, this writer of literary work spent a part of his youth in England. This is evident in The Black-Box Murder. This detective story takes place partly in England, partly in France.

The Black-Box Murder was released in 1889 anonymously. This wasn't due to Maarten Maartens, as a literary writer, not wanting to be associated with a detective novel. It suited the contents of the book better. Because The Black-Box Murder is written from the perspective of Spence, the "I" person in the story, who considers his book a report of his murder investigation. By hiding his own identity, the writer suggests that we are dealing with a story that truly happened. Hence the reference on the title page, that the story was written by the man who discovered the murderer. Spence is a private detective who happens to witness the discovery of a body in a box two British ladies are travelling with. With the few clues the box is offering him, he starts his investigation, until he has unmasked the murderer.

The story is varied and contains twists which keep the reader captivated effortlessly. It reminds a bit of the atmosphere of the first novels about the master sleuth Sherlock Holmes. Spence isn't a very smart detective though. Anyone paying attention will soon suspect that the perpetrator Spence is tracing, isn't the right one. The question who did commit the murder, is relevant far beyond halfway of the story. But then there are not many suspects. A surprising twist at the end never comes up. This atmospheric detective, that also contains humour and short action scenes, shows how Spence arrives at the truth step by step. By that time the reader might have guessed it. Then the question remains how he will prove he is right.

The English of Maarten Maartens is so pure that it is evident that his British roots do not betray themselves. Most of the novels he wrote, he wrote in English, even those stories that take place in The Netherlands. The anonymous The Black-Box Murder remained quite unknown compared to the rest. Maartens was better known for The sin of Joost Avelingh and God's fool, also English titles that did get a Dutch translation. The last few years of his life he lived in the same town where I come from, Doorn, where the castle-like Maarten Maartenshuis still reminds us of his life. His books are, particularly in The Netherlands, long forgotten. The Black-Box Murder ought, however, to be rescued from oblivion.

M.P.O. Books' Bibliography:

Bij verstek veroordeeld (Sentenced in Absentia, 2004)

De bloodzuiger (The Bloodsucker, 2005)

Gedragen haat (Hatred Borne, 2006)

De blikvanger (The Eye-Catcher, 2010)

De laatste kans (The Last Chance, 2011)