EQMM, December 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The painter regarded his figures almost lovingly. None of these people would ever humiliate him again. Never! For a long time, he'd pondered who should serve as his model for the arrogant fellow in the front on the left. And then who should appear out of the blue but his neighbor, complaining of extreme financial distress and inquiring with an odd grin what Winfred had been up to in his garden in the middle of the night—and had thereby solved Winfred's problem. Now the only thing missing was the man in the top hat.

  In the future, Kaltendorf decided, he'd continue to stick to familiar paintings. Not that he lacked any ideas of his own, mind you. His works wouldn't really be copies, you see; they'd just make it easy for people to recognize his genius when they compared his paintings to the originals. He'd be the one to truly perfect the original painting's artistic idea! Winfred also realized that he'd been too cautious and petty in the choice of his, ah, circle of models. In the future he'd have to be much bolder. After all, his mission extended beyond mere bourgeois revenge fantasies; it was intended to be worthy of the quality of his art. Art, he realized, is the fusion of genius and life, of death and grace! Grace! He liked the word. He who is graced can also show mercy. Hadn't it been the quintessence of mercy to release these people from the meaninglessness of their material lives, to grant them immortality through his art?

  The telephone rang. It was an Arnaldo somebody-or-other from Spain, asking for Pollack. Arnaldo! Kaltendorf didn't know any Arnaldo, but he knew the voice. Even after all these years he'd recognize it among a thousand voices—the arrogant tones of a former fellow student who had never paid him any notice. Doubtless this “Arnaldo” would soon turn up in person—and he'd be the perfect “man with a top hat"!

  But that was enough for today. Almost. Kaltendorf had given some thought to what, in the end, had caused his predecessors to fail. They were painters who'd never really been pushed beyond their own limits. Van Gogh, vastly overestimated, had cut off his ear. An ear! How ridiculous! Had Van Gogh painted with his ears? He, Kaltendorf, would sacrifice something truly absolute on the altar of art. He positioned the axe carefully and with deliberation. The right or the left? After a moment's hesitation he decided on the right. Naturally, he nearly fainted from the pain. And yet his left hand would learn, virginally and unencumbered by the past, to wield the brush. And through the throbbing and the blood that had spattered in his eyes, he had a vision of his next works: Rembrandt's The Night Watch, for example, or Seurat's Bathers at Asnières. And just as his existence seemed to be composed of nothing but searing, burning pain, his ultimate masterpiece came to him in a flash—Altdorfer's The Battle of Alexander at Issus!

  Copyright (c)2006 by Paul Lascaux, Stefan Slupetzky, Anke Gebert, Richard Lifka, Thomas Przybilka, & Christoph Spielberg.

  Translation (c)2006 by Mary Tannert.

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  THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen

  The recent and most welcome increase of mysteries in translation continues with the first publication in English of eleven books from nine countries and eight languages. While most are contemporary, some are of historical significance.

  **** Gianrico Carofiglio: A Walkin the Dark, translated from the Italian by Howard Curtis, Bitter Lemon, $14.95. An unconventional nun who runs a battered-woman shelter and teaches martial arts convinces attorney Guido Guerrieri to join the civil prosecution of an accused stalker, the son of a powerful judge. Rich in insights into its characters and the Italian legal system, this is even better than last year's Involuntary Witness.

  **** Kjell Westö: Lang, translated from the Swedish by Ebba Segerberg, Carroll & Graf, $13.95. When Finnish novelist and TV talk-show host Christian Lang becomes involved with a young mother, he is menaced by her abusive and jealous ex-husband. Though a violent outcome is clear from the beginning, its exact nature is not. Superb psychological suspense, with observations on contemporary culture and media that are apparently universal.

  **** Leonardo Padura: Havana Black, translated from the Spanish by Peter Bush, Bitter Lemon, $14.95. In 1989 Cuba, aspiring novelist and trying-to-resign Havana cop Lieutenant Mario Conde keeps an eye on the progress of Hurricane Felix while investigating the murder of a former government official whose job was appropriating art works in the name of the revolution. This is another powerful work, rich in themes of friendship and community. But the translator should have run his appalling baseball description by someone who knows the lingo.

  **** Paul Halter: The Night ofthe Wolf, translated from the French by John Pugmire and Robert Adey, Wildside, $45 limited hardcover, $12.95 trade paper. The first collection in English by a contemporary French master will delight those who long for the locked rooms and impossible crimes of John Dickson Carr, Clayton Rawson, and G.K. Chesterton. Of the nine, the title story and two others have appeared in EQMM's Passport to Crime department.

  *** Deon Meyer: Dead Before Dying, translated from the Afrikaans by Madeleine van Biljon, Little, Brown, $24.95. Cape Town police Captain Mat Joubert seeks two challenging adversaries—a Mauser-weilding killer of seemingly unconnected men and a bank robber who asks after the tellers’ perfume selections—along with a demanding new boss and a full panoply of personal demons. The procedural elements, the whodunit shock, and the way female characters throw themselves at the tortured hero are all very familiar, but expert writing and character drawing hold the reader.

  *** Anne Holt: What is Mine, translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson, Warner, $24.99. In his investigation of a serial abductor (and killer) of children, Oslo cop Adam Stubo asks reluctant academic Johanne Vik for help. This is a twisty thriller, more American than European in structure and length, and it includes a novel murder method. (Why, I wonder, is Dickson the only translator of a book under review not credited on the title page?)

  *** Massimo Carlotto: TheGoodbye Kiss, translated from the Italian by Lawrence Venuti, Europa, $14.95. Even the darkest fiction noir rarely has a completely unsympathetic protagonist, but the story of Giorgio Pellegrini, whose caper plan includes killing his accomplices, proves it can be done. The narrative increases in interest after the crime, as he becomes a restaurateur and tests the Italian process of legal rehabilitation.

  *** Andrea Camilleri: Rounding the Mark, translated from the Italian by Stephen Sartarelli, Penguin, $13. Disgusted with police misconduct, likable Sicilian Inspector Salvo Montalbano is on the verge of retirement when he discovers a floating corpse during his morning ocean swim. The slight plot involves traffic in illegal immigrants, and the mood is balanced between comedy and tragedy. Some of the humor presumably works better in Italian, but the meticulous translator provides his usual explanatory notes.

  *** Friedrich Glauser: In Matto's Realm, translated from the German by Mike Mitchell, Bitter Lemon, $13.95. In his second of five cases, originally published in 1936, Swiss detective Sergeant Jakob Studer investigates murder in an insane asylum, a background the author knew as a patient. Humor, complex plotting, quirky characters, an endearingly human sleuth, and an insider's knowledge of mental illness and its treatment provide fascinating reading, though the final summing up (often my favorite part of a traditional mystery) is a little tedious.

  *** Edogawa Rampo: The Black Lizard and Beast in the Shadows, translated from the Japanese by Ian Hughes, Kurodahan, $15. Lizard (1934), about the battle between a master sleuth and a beautiful female Moriarty, reads like an unusually sexy dime novel or old movie serial. It's kind of fun, but the incessant “Ha, ha, ha"s in the dialogue are, well, laughable. The shorter Beast (1928), in which a detective novelist tries to help a young wife apparently being stalked by an old boyfriend, is infinitely better, combining a noirish mood and situation with Golden Age-style detection and a dazzling series of alternate solutions.

  The two 1870 short novels by Swedish trailblazer Aurora Ljungstedt in The HastfordianEscutcheon (The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, $18) owe their creakiness to more than the awkward English of translator Bertil Falk, but the plots confronting judge-
detective Uncle Benjamin are exceedingly clever and advanced for their time.

  Three of Georges Simenon's early Maigret novels, first published in French in 1931, have been reissued in paperback (Penguin, $12 each). A Man'sHead (also published as A Battleof Nerves, translated by Geoffrey Sainsbury) begins with a unique and darkly comic situation: Maigret conspires to allow a man condemned for murder to escape from prison. Also worth the reader's attention are Lock 14 (aka Maigret Meets a Milord; translated by Robert Baldick); and The Yellow Dog (aka Maigret and the Yellow Dog; translated by Linda Asher).

  Copyright (c) 2006 Jon L. Breen

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  Jon L. Breen: Eye of God, Perseverance Press, $13.95. High on the conclusion of a remunerative case, P.I. Al Hasp returns to his luxurious suite of offices to find that his partner, Norm Carpenter, the touted brains of the agency, is resigning following a conversion to Christianity. The kind of work a gumshoe does is inconsistent, Norm insists, with his “walk with the Lord.” Al is only able to buy time to change his partner's mind by appealing for help on a case involving televangelist Vincent Majors, whose organization is suffering from damaging leaks to the press. While Norm infiltrates the Majors camp undercover in search of the source of the leaks, Al meets with the televangelist's daughter Helga on a separate matter involving her basketball-player spouse, an attempt to extort sexual favors, and sports betting. Skillful plotting brings the two cases together after Helga's husband is murdered and Norm is taken formally into Majors's inner circle.

  Mr. Breen's forte, especially in this novel, is characterization. Though the depictions of some members of Majors's entourage are sketchy, the portraits of others are full of interesting shadings, particularly when the question of relations between evangelicals and non-evangelicals is touched. If ever a P.I. novel cried out for a sequel it's this one. By case's end, Norm is less certain that gumshoeing is incompatible with his newfound Christianity than he was at the beginning, and another element has come strongly into play: the attraction between Norm and his determinedly non-Christian associate, Chris. It's in these private dilemmas that the great interest of the book's religious theme lies, rather than in the glimpses of the public face of evangelical Christianity, which is treated less penetratingly.

  A recommended read, made all the more enjoyable by the concise writing typical of Mr. Breen's monthly Jury Box column.—Janet Hutchings

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  DEVIL'S BREW by Bill Pronzini

  Bill Pronzini's stellar reputation in the mystery field is based mainly on his fiction writing, but his name is also seen frequently as the editor of mystery anthologies. His most recent editorial project is a book of Erle Stanley Gardner stories entitled The Casebook of Sidney Zoom (Crippen & Landru/July ‘06). He also had a new novel out this past summer. See The Crimes of Jordan Wise (Walker/June ‘06).

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  Art by Allen Davis

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  There were few more undesirable places for a detective and temperance man to be plying his trade, Quincannon reflected sourly, not for the first time in the past week, than the bowels of a blasted brewery.

  The fine, rich perfume of malt, hops, yeast, and brewing and fermenting beer permeated every nook and cranny of the two-story, block-square brick building that housed Golden Gate Steam Beer. Whenever he prowled its multitude of rooms and passages, he was enveloped in a pungent miasma that tightened and dried his throat, created a thirst that plain water couldn't quite slake. In his drinking days he had been mightily fond of the type of lager, invented during the Gold Rush and unique to San Francisco, known as “steam beer.” John Wieland's Philadelphia Brewery, the National Brewery, and others operating in the city in this year of 1896 specialized in porter and pilsner; if one of their owners had sought his services, he would not be suffering such pangs as this place instilled in him. But it had been Golden Gate's James Carreaux who had come calling, and the fee-plus-bonus he'd offered for an investigation into the bizarre death of his head brewmaster was a sum no Scot in his right mind could afford to turn down.

  In the five years since Quincannon had taken the pledge, he had seldom been even mildly tempted to return to his bibulous ways. Even on those occasions when he visited his old watering hole, Hoolihan's Saloon, to spend an evening with cronies or clients, he hadn't once considered imbibing anything stronger than his usual mug of clam juice. But after one full week of undercover work in the Golden Gate's rarefied atmosphere, his craving for a tankard of San Francisco's best lager had grown to the barely manageable level. Another week here and he might well be seduced.

  Well, it was a moot point. He wouldn't be here in the guise of a city sanitation inspector for a second week, or even for one more day. There was no longer any doubt that Otto Ackermann's death had been a deliberate homicide, not the freak accident the authorities had ruled it to be. He knew who had manufactured what Carreaux referred to as a “devil's brew” by coshing Ackermann and pitching him into a vat of fermenting beer to drown, and he was tolerably certain he knew the reason behind the deed. All that was needed now was additional proof.

  Instead of entering the brewery with the arriving employees, as he had on previous mornings, he loitered outside the main entrance. The cold, fog-laden March wind was much preferable to the brewery perfume. He smoked his pipe, feigning interest in the big dray wagons laden with both full and empty kegs that passed by on Fremont Street.

  Caleb Lansing, the assistant brewmaster, was among the last to arrive, heavily bundled in cap, bandanna, and peacoat. He barely glanced at Quincannon as he passed and entered the building. Quincannon essayed a small satisfied smile around the stem of his briar. Lansing had no idea that he was about to be yaffled for his crime; if he had, he would have taken it on the lammas by now.

  When Quincannon finished his pipe he strolled briskly to Market Street, where he boarded a westbound streetcar. He rode it as far as Duboce, walked the two blocks south to Fourteenth Street—a workingman's neighborhood of beer halls, oyster dealers, Chinese laundries, grocers, and other small merchants.

  The front door of the boardinghouse where Lansing hung his hat was unlocked; he sauntered in as if he belonged there, climbed creaking stairs to the second floor. The hallway there was deserted. He paused before the door bearing a pot-metal numeral 8 and tested the latch. Locked, of course. Not that this presented much of a problem. Quincannon had developed certain skills during his years with the United States Secret Service and subsequent time as a private investigator, some of which rivaled those of the most accomplished yeggs and cracksmen. The set of burglar tools he had liberated from a scruff named Wandering Ned several years ago gave him swift access to Lansing's two small rooms.

  Both sitting room and bedroom were cluttered with personal items, as well as several bottles of rye whiskey. But no steam beer; Lansing evidently had little taste for what he helped brew. In the fireplace grate Quincannon found a partially charred note penned in a sprawling backhand. Much of its content was unburned and legible, including an injunction from the writer to Lansing to destroy it after reading. Also present and damning was the writer's signature, X.J. Very few men in San Francisco could lay claim to those initials. The only one Quincannon knew of was Xavier Jameson, the head brewmaster at one of Golden Gate's rivals, West Star Steam Beer.

  His second discovery took longer, but was equally rewarding. In a small strongbox cleverly concealed behind a loose board in the bedroom closet he found two thousand dollars in greenbacks and a handful of gold double eagles. As much as he enjoyed the look and feel of spendable currency, he hesitated only a few seconds before returning the money to the strongbox and the strongbox to its hiding place.

  Criminals—faugh! The lot of them were arrogant and careless dolts. Lansing's failure to completely burn the note and his hiding of the payoff money here in his rooms, coupled with the testimony of the witness who had seen him entering the brewery late on the night of Ackermann's death, Lansing's denial of the fact, and a slip he'd
made that revealed his dealings with Xavier Jameson and West Star Steam Beer, was more than sufficient evidence to hang him.

  Quincannon whistled an old temperance tune, “The Brewers’ Big Horses Can't Run Over Me,” as he left the boardinghouse. Naught was left but to confront Lansing, urge a confession out of him through one means or another, and hand him over to those inept, blue-coated denizens of the Hall of Justice who had the audacity to call themselves San Francisco's finest. Then he could return to the relative peace and clean air of the offices of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, where his only temptation—one he yearned to succumb to—was the charms of his partner and unrequited love, Sabina Carpenter.

  Golden Gate's business offices were clustered at the east end of the second floor, all of them small and cramped except for James Carreaux's. This was Quincannon's first stop upon his return, but Caleb Lansing was not in his office. Waiting there for the assistant brewmaster was not an option; he was anything but a patient man when he was about to yaffle a miscreant. He went down the hall to the nearest occupied office, that of the company bookeeper, Adam Corby, and poked his head inside.

  "Would you know where I can find Lansing, Mr. Corby?"

  Corby, a bantam of a man in striped galluses and rough twill trousers, paused in his writing in an open ledger book. “Lansing? Why no, I don't."

  "When did you see him last?"

  "Just after I arrived this morning. Have you tried the brewhouse?"

  "My next stop."

  The brewhouse was at the opposite end of the building. Lansing was nowhere to be found in the rooms containing the malt storage tanks and mash tun. Jacob Drew, the mash boss, a red-haired, red-bearded giant, reported that he'd seen Lansing in the fermenting room a few minutes earlier.

  "What d'ye want with him, mister?” Drew asked. “Something to do with your inspection?"