Blood on the Borders

Clive James rates crime fiction from all over and damns with faint praise.

In the April 9th New Yorker, Clive James thinks that perhaps he should leave the difficulties of Henry James' novels for a walk down some mean streets populated by foreign crime writers. By the end of the article, he’s had second thoughts and cozied back up to Isabelle Archer and Kate Croy.

Clive James is a hard man to please although he seems to like Raymond Chandler well enough, but Chandler is an American. He says nice things about Simenon’s Maigret until he mentions there is not style in the writing. We read one of Simenon’s novels in 2nd year French. I still remember it. The book was short, the writing simple, Maigret was extremely wise and he always came home to smoke his pipe by the side of Mme. Maigret.

James travels to Scotland in his armchair and visits Rankin’s Rebus in Edinburgh. It is true that the modern day detective, like the Henry James heroine, is a conflicted character, although they usually behave much worse than Henry’s heroines. Jeez, this is somewhat complicated to write about Clive James talking about Henry James. Calling them Clive and Henry just doesn't cut it.

Clive James seems to waver about whether the detective novel as travelogue cum guidebook is a bad thing. Maybe not, as he states, “Ideally, an author should turn out a sequence of detective novels that will generate a bus tour in the city where they are set.” Every writer worth his word processor knows that setting can be a character, and indeed Clive James (not Henry) is unimpressed by Hakan Nesser’s “The Return” which takes in a generic Northern European country, “vaguely like Sweden.”

Crime novels set in Italy are never vague, according to James. Donna Leon, an American who has lived in Italy for years and sets her popular series starring Comissario Brunetti there, is in love with Venice. Well, who wouldn’t be? Coming down the Grand Canal for the first time is a life-changing experience. Too much travelogue, whether by Donna Leon, or the late Michael Dibdin is dangerous, because the action may stop, while the character admires the scenery. Dangerous, but not in the sense of moving the action forward. You have to move, move, move in crime fiction. Do not dither.

I have to confess I have committed Clive James’ cardinal sin, which is having the main character stand in front of a mirror, but probably not with “Rembrandt’s ability to depict himself.” In my last book, I did not commit that gaucherie, nor in World of Mirrors, but there is a tiny mirror scene in Promiscuous Mode. Not a full description, mind you, and certainly not worthy of Rembrandt.

Clive James, not Henry, nitpicks over several more crime writers, but he does like Gene Kerrigan, who wrote The Midnight Choir. Kerrigan’s Inspector Synnott is another conflicted character (we miss your ordinariness, Maigret). James likes the writing until he doesn’t like the writing, complaining, “Genre fiction that gets too far into the ambiguous, becomes,” my wording, sort of like literary fiction, and what the hell? Then read Literary Fiction! Henry James wasn’t so bad after all. Ye gods, we’re back where we started.

As a so-called crime writer, I should take umbrage, but the thing is, I’ve started and stopped so many crime novels lately, that I’m seriously wondering why I keep writing crime fiction. In fact the two books that are holding my attention right now are a Cuban writer and good old Marcel Proust. How can this be?

Maybe I’ll get a shot in the arm at the Edgar’s symposium in NYC next week. Maybe I’ll meet an agent. Maybe I’ll hit the lottery. Maybe I-95 will turn into the yellow brick road. Well, you get the drift.

The crime fiction I've liked reading recently is written by two authors: Jacqueline Winspear and Rebecca Pawel. Read them. Reread Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Now that, was a book!

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