JUSTICE IS NOT ONLY BLIND. SHE IS DEAF, DUMB, AND OBVIOUSLY HIGH.

by James Lincoln Warren

I was thinking about writing a column about nail-on-the-head writing, why it’s usually a bad thing, and how to avoid it. So I came up with one of the deadliest dull beginnings I could dream up:

My name is John Smith and I work for a celebrity lawyer, E. Laurence Mulkern. It’s not much fun, but it’s a job.

That done, the idea was to dress this up a little, to show how to provide the same information in an entertaining way. So here is v.2.0:

“Who, him?” I heard E. Laurence Mulkern say behind my back. “That’s just Smith, he works here. Ignore him.”

I turned on my heel to see who it was who should be ignoring me. A prospective client, of course, provided her legal complaint was outrageous enough get my boss on the eleven o’clock news, but otherwise, prospective prey—if she was young and pretty enough. And she was.

“Yep,” I said, “John Smith’s the name, and no Pocahontas jokes, if you don’t mind. Not that I’m personally offended by somebody trotting out that old warhorse now and again—after all, some of the nicest people I know have no imagination. But my boss here being an attorney, well, like most shysters he takes everything just a little too literally. So if he got it into his brain that I’m somehow connected to the Native American community, he’d try to lever it into representing the casino. Casinos have money.”

“I don’t know why I don’t fire your ass,” Mulkern said.

“Yes, you do,” I replied. I sipped my coffee and looked innocent.

And suddenly I lost interest in writing a column about dressing up nail-on-the-head writing. I was suddenly more interested in John Smith and E. Laurence Mulkern, whose relationship was drawn from life.

Have you worked for an unjust incompetent self-inflated jerk in love with his own authority?

Yeah, me too.1

I remember my father reading The Peter Principle (“in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence”) in 1969 when it was first published, and his claiming that it explained why his boss was such an . . . well, he used a scatological term meaning an unpleasant person, and Dad wasn’t prone to scatological expressions. I’ve had more than my share of similar experiences since both in and out of the military, the moral of which is there are [insert plural scatological expression here] everywhere.

Such bosses are well represented in detective fiction, especially in police departments, where there is the office-bound bureaucrat doing his level best to interfere with the hard-working detective-on-the-street’s investigation. Perhaps its finest manifestation is Superintendent Mullett in the long-running British detective show A Touch of Frost, but it’s a staple. In science fiction, there are the delightful Retief stories by Keith Laumer. There have been all kinds of comic manifestations on TV and in print: The Office, Spin City, Dilbert, and others.

Until John Smith came along, I’d never written about a bad boss, but I can see E. Laurence Mulkern very clearly in my mind. And now I need to find out exactly what John Smith does for him so I can write a story featuring the two of them. My guess is that Smith is a paralegal who’s supposed to be doing clerical stuff but winds up doing investigative work because he’s the only one in the office with any brains. But I’m not sure. I have to walk a fine line here with Mulkern, because if he’s too incompetent or corrupt, he’ll get disbarred, and that would put Smith out of a job. Likewise, I can’t have Smith committing UPL (Unauthorized Practice of Law) because I don’t want him going to prison.

My guess is that in his eponymous law firm, Mulkern also has a succession of young fire-breathing female lawyers in his employ who do all the actual legal heavy lifting. With every story in the series, this amanuensis would be someone new, since the previous young fire-breathing female lawyer will have quit. Nobody with any self-respect could work for Mulkern for very long, except Smith.

This could work.

Ideas come from everywhere, and frequently when you least expect it. Here’s one that was based on experience. Although unlike Smith, I never had the guts to mouth off to any of my bad bosses.

At least, not twice.

1. Although to be balanced, I should admit that I probably had employees in my retail days who thought that I was an unjust incompetent self-inflated jerk in love with my own authority. I remember one young lady at Barnes & Noble whom I caught giving me a Nazi salute behind my back. I was not amused. [↩]

POLITICAL HACKING

by Leigh Lundin

While much attention has been given to the end of the series Lost and Law & Order, another wildly popular award-winning television show wound down as well.

Born of the rage and pain and fear of 9/11, 24 burst onto the small screen with innovative visuals and a countdown clock, one testosterone episode per hour in a twenty-four day. While greatly admired in some circles, the show has been criticized for its orgies of torture and mind-numbing body counts. Fan sites actually track deaths with specific rules requiring dying to be on-screen and "confirmed". Enthusiasts dispute the number of ‘diegetic deaths’ (narrative targeted deaths as opposed to mass casualties, well into the thousands), but the total body count reportedly is 13,628 on-air deaths (71 each hour), of which Jack Bauer is personally and solely responsible for at least 266, or 33 corpses per twenty-four hour day.

Fifty years ago, such a story would have been found in the darkest corner of bookstalls in adventuring soldier-of-fortune "man’s fiction". Eight years ago, death and torture became mainstream. These days, even a Justice of the US Supreme Court blurred the lines of 24‘s reality.

As I debated which direction this article should take, I thought of John McCain and a line from the 2008 election that stuck with me. When frothing commentators asked if he would support torture, McCain replied,

"No, we’re better than that."

Honor Killings

Although fans (which included Ted Kennedy) call 24 "the best TV drama on the best network" and the show that "can’t be criticized", we’re better than that. Some conservative commentators who thoughtfully review films and television programs reportedly declined to comment on 24 and, if comments are true, William F. Buckley, Jr. disdained 24 (although he once called Colin Powell’s concerns about torture "maudlin"). I suspect Bill, like his son, Christopher, wouldn’t think much of today’s political climate.

The problem with 24 is this: When we think of past or present enemies, what distinguishes the program’s essence from the worst we believe about our antagonists? When the great statesmen and thinkers like George Orwell warn us against becoming like our enemy, how do we differentiate the fictional CTU from a Soviet, Nazi, or North Korean agency?

We can’t. It’s not enough to say we’re the good guys and that makes it right. I prefer the Tom Clancy model, where people struggle with internal bureaucracy and external terror, but strive to maintain the high ground. Like Professor Owens and the venerable Sun Tzu before them, General John Beishline made the transition from soldier to the classroom, and he emphasized this point:

While some argue victory at any cost, there is no triumph without humanity, no honor without honor itself.

Demonization

Long before I started writing, I came across a novel, probably a thriller set at least partly in Washington, DC. I don’t recall the title, the author, or the plot, but one thing stuck in my mind: it depicted the actual sitting president as being snide and supercilious to the White House servants.

That was peculiar because that same president was probably the most unlikely of men to be unkind. The denigration must have been important to the author because it jarred me out of the novel. Years later, it’s the only thing I remember about the story.

Why would a novelist write such a thing?

The short answer is that authors are people, too, often with strong views, opinions that left unchecked might color what they write and cloud better judgment. In this case, the writer’s disparagement marred my enjoyment of the story and probably put off others.

Is it necessary to gut stories of political belief? Although I distrust extremist positions of any stripe, I don’t think a fictionist has to check his (or her) beliefs at the door, only their prejudices.

Take Jonathan Kellerman and Tom Clancy. I don’t know if Kellerman is liberal or that Clancy is conservative, but when I try to think of examples, they come to mind. They’re good writers and I enjoy both. At least two factors make them acceptable and even likable across political boundaries: respect for differing opinions and a focus upon common values.

Terror as Entertainment

To the degree war threatens the Korean peninsula, the current Korean situation reminded me of Tom Clancy’s Op-Center. It became a television series, reasonably well-received and in many ways what 24 wasn’t, applying intelligence and reason to unravel saboteurs and thwart enemy plans.

Clancy also holds up as a master plotter. The Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising are devised as cleverly as any of their genre. Like Sun Tzu, he doesn’t demonize the enemy, but respects the opponent as a means to defeating him.

Politics as Entertainment

Not a television viewer, I’m at a disadvantage discussing The West Wing. but the program was well viewed by conservatives as well as liberals. National Review‘s Mackubin Thomas Owens wrote:

Although his administration is reliably liberal, President Bartlet possesses virtues even a conservative could admire. He obeys the Constitution and the law. He is devoted to his wife and daughter. Being unfaithful to his wife would never cross his mind. He is no wimp when it comes to foreign policy— no quid pro quo for him.

I’ll have to take his word for it, but the point is the writers’ success stems from mutual respect and common ground. As any political science course will tell you (or any libertarian, for that matter), left and liberal, and right and conservative are not synonymous– and that’s not entering into economics or social issues. If a writer can avoid the pitfalls on the left and right (the "wingnuts" as pundits call them), plenty of territory remains.

In Contrast

In 24, the (presumably liberal) opposition is portrayed as weak and even whimpering, aimed for cheap effect, pleasing the network’s audience. Jack Bauer must have been the topic for interesting family conversations in the Sutherland household. Kiefer Sutherland– not at all an American– is the liberal son of liberals and the grandson of a Baptist minister, the first socialist to lead a government in North America. It makes one’s head hurt wondering who is playing whom.

Perhaps the primary positive of 24 is the debate itself.

Sidestepping the argument the war on terror should be called a war, the advice of Sun Tzu nevertheless rings true– we need understanding and respect to prevail. Like Mackubin Thomas Owens said about fiction, we admire virtues and values. As writers, we need to embrace them.

Lost

Not having seen a single episode of Lost, in researching this article, I stumbled upon what strikes me as a huge clue:

SOUP-FROM-THE-CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

by John M. Floyd

I love movies. Movies, like books, have always been one of my obsessions. For the past eight weeks, though, my film addiction has had a chance to flourish: my wife has been away and assisting her elderly parents in Oklahoma, and I’ve been left at home to my own devices, the two most important of which are our microwave oven and our DVD player. I mean, I would prefer that she be here at home, but since she’s not, is it my fault that there are great movies out there that I’ve not yet seen, and a Netflix envelope in my mailbox almost every day, and a video store only a mile away? Besides, older rentals are 99 cents apiece at Blockbuster, and on Sundays and Wednesdays they’re two for the price of one. Jeez Louise.

Just for the record, I select movies the same way most folks do: from publicity in the media, from friends’ recommendations, from online info, etc. Sometimes I’ll find an old favorite I want to watch again, or pick a new one just because of its title, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Shanghai Noon or Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. Or Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, which was one I should’ve left on the shelf.

Now and then I’ll choose a movie after viewing its trailer, or what we used to call its “preview.” That happened to me the other day — I was piddling around on YouTube and found the trailer for a film called Cadillac Ranch. Here’s what the narrator (one of those dead-serious, Sam-Elliott-voiced announcers) said about the three lead characters in the movie: “This is Frances. She doesn’t have any sense of humor. This is CJ. She doesn’t have any sense of shame. And this is Mary Catherine. She doesn’t have any sense at all.”

I liked that. I plugged the movie into my Netflix queue and watched it two nights later, after heating a can of Campbell’s soup and a Teriyaki Chicken TV dinner (such is the extent of my culinary skills). And, thankfully, it turned out to be a good story. That doesn’t always happen. I have discovered that maybe one out of every ten or twelve films, regardless of how the choice was made, live up to my expectations.

Anyhow, in case it matters, the following is a list of some pretty-good-to-very-good crime/suspense movies that I either discovered or rewatched during my recent period of temporary bachelorhood. I’ve “ranked” them such that the ones I consider the best are at the top of the list, but I enjoyed them all. (I mercifully did not include the dozens of rentals that made me want to throw up my frozen dinner du jour and run screaming through the neighborhood.)

Blood Simple (1984) — The Coen Brothers’ first film, and possibly my favorite.
The Lookout (2007) — Good premise, great acting by everybody involved.
The Hurt Locker (2008) — War is crime, right? Intense, edge-of-your-seat scenes.
Two Days in the Valley (1996) — Many different plotlines converge at the end.
House of Sand and Fog (2003) — Fine performances by Kingsley and Connelly.
Staten Island (2009) — Violent and dark, but a satisfying and unexpected ending.
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007) — Non-linear plot, well done.
The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) — The Coens plus Billy Bob; enough said.
Hard Eight (1996) — A tough, emotional movie about good luck and bad.
The Trouble with Harry (1955) — An extremely unHitchlike Hitch film.
Unknown (2006) — A brilliant premise, one I’d never seen before.
21 (2008) — Enjoyable mostly because of Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne.
Suicide Kings (1997) — Dark comedy; Christopher Walken is outstanding.
Cadillac Ranch (1996) — Lighthearted, quirky, a lot of fun.
Sherlock Holmes (2009) — Interesting but a little disappointing. Great music.
Lord of War (2005) — I haven’t completely made up my mind, about this one.
Mission Impossible III (2006) — The title says it all: impossible. Fun, though.
The Informant! (2009) — Unusual movie, unusual role for Matt Damon
Public Enemies (2009) — So-so. I thought Depp made a pretty good Dillinger.
Limbo (1999) — Short on crime, long on angst. Left me in . . . well, you know.
Run, Lola, Run (1998) — And boy does she run. Not bad, but sort of tiring.
Smokin’ Aces (2006) — Action-packed and entertaining, but not much else.

The good thing about a personal at-home film fest is that you can (1) indulge while your feet are elevated to the level of your head, (2) slurp a homemade chocolate sundae at the same time, and (3) take restroom breaks without missing the best scenes. The bad thing is that you can’t hear or enjoy the reactions of the rest of the audience, since, well, you’re the only audience. (Sometimes that’s not such a bad thing; my fellow moviegoers tend to laugh too loudly during parts that aren’t really funny and chat with each other during the shootouts.)

A final note. I’m sure you’re thinking, at this point, that all I do is watch movies. Actually, during my period of isolation I’ve read two novels, written three short stories and sold two more, taught fourteen writing classes, traveled to two book signings, been to the supermarket at least twenty times, and mowed a total of four acres of bermuda grass. And yes, I know, any serious writer should read more than two novels in two months — but what can I say? Too many movies, too little time.

Especially at two for 99 cents.

BONEY PETE

by Steven Steinbock

This Bandersnatch dispatch is coming to you from downtown Toronto, Ontario, where your humble servant is attending Bloody Words . Saturday afternoon I’ll be moderating a panel entitled “Short & Sweet, Fast & Deadly.” My co-panelists will be Jane Burfield, Melodie Campbell, Michael McPherson, and Sue Pike. All are accomplished Canadian short story writers, including some who have appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, as well as several past winners of the Boney Pete award (given each year at Bloody Words for best short story).

Saturday evening at the Bloody Words Banquet, I’ll be announcing the winner of this year’s Dashiell Hammett Prize. The nominees are Bury Me Deep by Megan E. Abbott, Devil’s Garden by Ace Atkins, The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry, The Long Fall by Walter Mosley, and The Way Home by George P. Pelecanos. I don’t know the winner yet. I’ve made it a point not to find out, even though I’m one of only five people (other than the person engraving the plaque) permitted to know who won. I like surprises.

Feeling Copacetic

Other than a sore index finger from too many mouse-clicks, everything is copacetic here. Copacetic is one of those strange words that has an evasive etymology. The first time I remember hearing it, I thought it was a bad pronunciation of the Hebrew expression Kol B’Seder (literally, “everything is in order”). In fact, that is one of the possible origins suggested by amateur etymologists. The word sprang out fully formed in the African American south in 1919. Linguists are still unsure of its origin, but I’m putting my money on the Louisiana French nonsense phrase coupe-setique.

Tantamount, by contrast, has a very easy history to trace. It comes from the early French tant amunter and/or the Italian tanto montare, both meaning “to amount to as much.” It’s a much more powerful way to say “equal to” or “the same as” and makes you sound smart.

Speaking of smart (real smart, not just smart sounding). . .

Martin Gardner, 1914-2010

Last weekend the world lost a truly unique man. Martin Gardner was a mathematician, magician, puzzle-master, annotator, novelist, and renowned skeptic. For twenty-five years Gardner ran a “Mathematical Games” column in Scientific American. More recently he was a regular columnist for Skeptical Inquirer. He wrote dozens of books of math puzzles, magic tricks, and logic. While he declared himself a theist, he was often critical of organized religion, and was a master at exposing hoaxes and flim-flam. Among his works is a book debunking the Book of Urantia (believed by some to be an alien record of the history of the universe).

A founding member of the International Wizard of Oz Club (an organization that I belonged to for a number of years), he once wrote a novel, Visitors from Oz, involving characters from Oz and Alice’s Wonderland. (It wasn’t, in my opinion, one of Gardner’s better works, being a mish-mash of a story that is too scary for children and too silly for adults).

More importantly were his various “Annotated” works, which include The Annotated Alice, More Annotated Alice, The Annotated Wizard of Oz, The Annotated Snark, The Annotated Ancient Mariner, The Annotated Night Before Christmas, The Annotated Casey at the Bat,and two works annotating G.K. Chesterton: The Annotated Innocence of Father Brown and The Annotated (Man who was) Thursday.

My interests crossed with Gardner’s in several ways: our mutual love of the children’s books of Lewis Carroll and L. Frank Baum, magic tricks, conspiracy theories, and puzzles. Alas, our paths never crossed. He’s puzzling on a higher geometric plane now.

PLAYING AROUND

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

When we were kids, it seemed the whole neighborhood played together – outside. I remember running fast. Nobody jogged or trotted. Any one of us could be seen running as if our life depended on it, often until we couldn’t take one more step and breathe at the same time. Fortunately, we were blessed with a vacant lot where no one cared if we trampled wild Johnson grass, created lean-to structures or even dug in the dirt to make mud pies. We played hide and seek, army (lots of boys on our block then) and my favorite, cops and robbers.

I think most of my childhood friends don’t really run much these days, but I wonder how many would like to play cops again.

Who would want to be the bad guy now? Back then, we all fought to be the hero, but in our maturity I believe most of us realize the best roles are given to the antagonists.

My grandma told me, “The bad guys are just plain more fun to watch.” Grandmother liked her soap operas almost better than anything. She would get angry at the villainous goings-on, but admitted her favorite characters were the bad guys because they made the story more interesting. She even named one of her daughters after the fictional town’s hussy. She never missed one of her “stories.” Neither did I. We spent quality time watching them together and discussing what would surely happen next. I’m sure this was breeding ground for my love of storytelling.

In the glorious past, soap opera writers didn’t hurry the stories along so quickly. A murder would be set up months in advance of the actual killing and leaving the audience with many possible suspects. I remember learning early that practically everyone would have a reason to want the victim dead, but it really depended on who the audience was willing to accept as a murderer in the long run as to who the writers chose to be the perpetrator. The other angle was, the most dispensable character was often the culprit. Time changes everything. Today’s storylines move quickly and a murderer is caught and tried often within a month. CBS is not-so-slowly ridding itself of soap operas and putting on less expensive game shows. I doubt this will change America’s love of serial soap operas. Audience loyalty to Army Wives, Desperate Housewives, and Brothers and Sisters prove there is interest in continuing “stories.”

Think serials are all about female audiences or just concern “women’s issues”? Think again. My very macho father-in-law knows as much about soap opera plots as my grandmother. As a firefighter he said his crew always watched the soaps during their lunch and other break times. Entertainment Weekly’s May 28, 2010 issue referred to “24” as “a male soap opera.”

Primetime television has come a long way, baby. “CSI” showed the world Hollywood’s version of crime scene investigations. “Law and Order” (and all of its clones) have taught us what goes on behind the scenes of the crime, arrest, trial and eventual sentencing. We’re far beyond Perry Mason getting a confession from someone other than his client — the defendant — on the stand.

Soap operas taught me the basic mechanics of law within the court system. I personally didn’t know anyone who’d been arrested of murder or if they did, no one spoke to me about it. I think it may have been around the time of the infamous Luke and Laura coupling on “General Hospital” when I first heard the word “vindicated” and yes, it was directly related to a murder charge. I also learned the term “legal separation” although I’m not sure if that’s ever been undertaken in my hometown. Here people are either together or not. Nothing is separate under the law until the divorce is granted, which means all those: Joe Jones is not responsible for any debts incurred other than his own statements printed in the classified section are really nothing more than wishful thinking.

Prepared by osmosis to be “American Idol” judges and deem when a singer is “pitchy,” it seems many of us also believe we could handle a detective’s job fairly easily because we watch Criminal Minds. Receiving my legal training from television is not exactly like it is in real life either, but it created an interest in the justice system. I learned what a bailiff does, that a court reporter has to read back exactly what was said and court courtesies like everyone standing when a judge enters the courtroom is expected. But “knowing” this information is a bit like going into a Bible study of Moses and feeling ahead of the game because I had already seen the movie.

I suppose the same could be said of armchair quarterbacks, Military channel warriors and whodunit readers.

So, we don’t know it all and some of it is implausible information, yet we believe we just might be able to solve a crime in real life because we’ve done it mentally.

Who cares? We’re being entertained, engaging our minds and having fun. Oh yeah, we are having fun. As readers of a John Grisham novel or watching “The Bourne Identity,” we’re mentally playing cop. It’s like getting to be a kid all over again – without having to do the actual running.

THE ENDs

by Rob Lopresti

We who blabber regularly about writing often talk about how to start a book, or a story. And so we often give examples of great beginnings. Endings are important, too, but we are less likely to discuss endings – especially of mysteries. You know why. There’s a great taboo against revealing how a mystery ends.

But we at Criminal Brief are fearless and bow to no so-called rules and taboos. So brace yourself, because I’m about to bust the rules wide open. Ready? Here goes.

The endings of twenty great mysteries

• The statue was a fake.
• The doctor killed his patient.
• The head of the FBI comes to visit, but isn’t allowed in.
• The child is returned to her mother.
• The older cop asks the younger cop for spiritual advice.
• The hero reluctantly agrees to play golf with his sidekick.
• The hero leaves New York for Los Angeles.
• The hero prevents time travel from being invented. (Yes, it is a mystery.)
• The villain drowns in the mire.
• The villain is shot by the police and dies crawling forward, as if to attack his enemy one last time.
• The swindled thieves make a deal with their client’s enemy.
• The client’s wife comes home.
• The spies tried to squash the rumor that there was a mole in their midst to protect the enemy spy who was working for them, but there really was a mole in their midst.
• The femme fatale shoots a cop and the police shoot her dead.
• A policeman shoots the narrator dead.
• The detective frames the killer for what was actually a suicide.
• The judge did it.
• The detective did it.
• The client’s evil twin did it.
• All the suspects did it.
• Raskolnikov did it.

Answers

… are here!

This week, William Minter concludes his thought-provoking two-part essay on the proliferation of the mystery novel in other cultures with this geographical survey of authors and works. (In case you missed it, here’s a link to Part One.)

IS THE MYSTERY NOVEL GOING GLOBAL?
Part Two

by William Minter

Nordic countries

If you haven’t yet read Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, even though all three books are regularly showing up among the ten best-selling books on Amazon, do read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. You won’t be disappointed. Among Nordic mystery writers (the “Nordic” countries include Iceland and Finland as well as the “Scandinavian” countries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), my two other favorites are, like Larsson, Swedish. Henning Mankell, whose Inspector Wallander is based in Ystad in the far south of Sweden, is perhaps even better known than Larsson. Åke Edwardsson, whose Inspector Winter is based in Gothenburg on Sweden’s west coast, echoes Mankell in writing police procedurals with sharply etched characters and frequent mentions of the Nordic weather.

Mystery novelists from small Iceland are also gaining international attention. The most prominent is Arnaldur Indridason, but Yrsa Sigurdardottir is not far behind, and in my opinion a better writer.

Europe

In addition to novels set in almost every European country, I find particularly interesting those authors who feature a wider landscape and historical perspective, as Eric Ambler did with Europe between the two World Wars. Among the outstanding practitioners of this sub-genre is, of course, John le Carré, who has also ventured to Latin America and Africa. But he has been joined by a distinguished set of younger authors, including Americans Alan Furst and Olen Stenhauer, Spain’s Arturo Perez-Reverte, and Denmark’s Leif Davidsen.

Latin America

Among Latin American mystery novelists, Mexico’s Paco Ignacio Taibo is popular and fascinating, but also hard to read even in English translation without familiarity with the local context and Latin American literary traditions. Particularly intriguing is his recent book The Uncomfortable Dead, co-authored with Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatista movement. More conventional in his style, and now writing in English and living in Canada, is Cuba’s José Latour, who features nuanced mysteries sensitive to both Cuban and exile Cuban milieus. Leighton Gage, who lives in Brazil, the Netherlands, and the United States, has now published three novels featuring federal Chief Inspector Mario Silva in Brazil. I haven’t yet read Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza’s novels with Inspector Espinosa of Rio de Janeiro, but they get good reviews, and I’m looking forward to reading them.

Asia

Japanese mystery novelists in English translation have long had significant international exposure. Among the classic writers is Seicho Matsumoto, who began writing in the 1950s. And there are many more current authors worth attention, with both historical and present-day Japanese settings. I must confess that, on purely subjective grounds, I find China a more interesting setting. Chinese novelist Qiu Xiaolong, who now lives in St. Louis, and Canadian David Rotenberg both have series set in Shanghai, which ranks ahead of Beijing as the largest city in China. Shanghai is also the setting, away from her usual Chinatown base in New York, of S. J. Rozan’s The Shanghai Moon, which skilfully interweaves the present day with a story of World War II Jewish refugees who found a home in that city.

Elsewhere in Asia, Colin Cotterill’s series set in Laos, featuring an elderly revolutionary veteran who has become national coroner, is a delight to read. I have never been in Laos, or anywhere in Asia east of Lebanon, for that matter (my time living outside the United States has been in Africa). But the atmosphere in these novels set in a post-revolutionary society in a poor country for me evokes, despite the distance, the parallel context of Mozambique in the 1980s. And at the opposite end of the giant continent known as Asia, Wales-born Matt Beynon Rees, who served as Time bureau chief in Jerusalem from 2000 to 2006, has created an intriguing series featuring Palestinian teacher and amateur sleuth Omar Yousef.

Africa

I initially hesitated to read the super-popular Ladies Detective Agency series set in Botswana, in part from apprehension about stereotypes about Africa by European writers. I changed my mind after Batswana friends told me that McCall Smith, a Scot born in Zimbabwe, had the Batswana social context “just right” even though he had lived in Botswana for only three years.

White stereotypes of Africans are still well-represented in popular fiction (witness the bestsellers by Wilbur Smith, whose mindset is firmly encased in the colonial era). But there are also a growing number of works, by both white and black Africans, which break that mold with nuanced portrayals of diverse settings on that vast continent. Algerian author Yasmina Khadra, a former military officer now living in exile, writes gritty police procedurals set in Algiers. On the other end of the continent, Afrikaans-speaking South African writer Deon Meyer features Afrikaner detective Benny Griessel in the complex milieu of post-apartheid (but not “post-racial”) South Africa). And Michael Stanley (a team of two white South Africa writers) has started a promising new series also set in Botswana, featuring the somewhat more conventional police detective David “Kubu” Bengu.

Elsewhere in Africa, the most promising new mystery writers that have come to my attention are Kwei Quartey of Ghana and Mukoma wa Ngugi of Kenya, from countries with a distinguished multi-generation literary tradition of African writing in English. Quartey, a medical doctor in Pasadena, California and the son of a Ghanaian father and African-American mother, features Accra-based detective Darko Dawson in his first novel, entitled Wife of the Gods. Mukoma wa Ngugi, born in Cleveland, Ohio and growing up in Kenya, is a poet, political commentator, and son of Kenya’s most famous novelist, Ngugi wa Thiong’o. His Nairobi Heat, set in Madison, Wisconsin and Nairobi, Kenya, features the collaboration of an African American and a Kenyan detective in a case related to the Rwandan genocide.

“International” mystery novels that make it in the international marketplace, it seems, are written by writers, like Quartey and Ngugi, who are themselves steeped in multiple transnational as well as national milieu. The Nordic countries feature distinct cultures, but have a long history of active participation in global cultural and political institutions. Alexander McCall Smith, born in Zimbabwe, lives in Scotland, and writes novels set in Botswana and Scotland. In earlier periods, the most common international context was the British Empire or the World Wars. Today’s rich cultural transnational interchange, we can hope, promises a rich harvest of mystery novels to match.