The Master Key, by Masako Togawa

014007645X

King Penguin, 1985

Original Japanese Title: Oi Naru Genei, 1962

translated by Simon Grove

An oldie but still a goodie, The Master Key begins with a highly-publicized architectural experiment: engineers are about to move an entire five-story building to make way for widening an existing road. The engineers have assured the women who live there that they can remain in their apartments for the move, and that they won't notice a thing.  They've even convinced the inhabitants of the building that they should all fill a glass with water and watch it ... they won't even see a ripple.  And as the story opens, that is what many of the women are doing. Then -- three flashbacks: an accident involving a man wearing women's clothing, the burial of a child's body in the building's basement, and the tale of the kidnapping of the young son of an American army officer stationed in Japan. 

The K Apartments for Ladies is not only a residence, but is also the world which these women occupy.  It is a place where, according to one woman,  a person can imagine that

 old women pass their days in silence still gazing at the broken fragments of the dreams of their youth, every now and then letting fall a sigh that echoes down the corridor, until they combine on the stairway and roll down to the cavernous hallway, raising one long moan...

Ironically, the original purpose of the building was to serve as a place where "Japanese women could emancipate themselves," where single young ladies could live alone.  Fifty years earlier, when the building was constructed, that was almost unheard of, and people would often look at it with "envious curiosity."  However, now the residents are growing old, living with the "bright days of their pasts," now passing their time largely in a lonely existence of solitude and withdrawal. Rather than being free, women are now stuck there, with nowhere else to go, keeping parts of their past lives away from the prying eyes of others.  And in the face of a changing outside world, many live there in order to continue old traditions.  Now, with the theft of the building's master key,  the safety of their world has been violated.  Someone has access to things the residents would rather keep buried. In the midst of this world of secrets and solitude, there is one person who has no qualms about prying into the proverbial skeletons in the closets.  The looming threat of deadly gossip would be, in some cases, too much to bear. Along with the moving of the building, the theft of the master key threatens to bring about that "one chance in a hundred" of the collapse of the world which these women inhabit, by making public the things they have kept hidden for a good portion of their lives.

The question of who took the key and why is only part of this story. Secrets upon secrets are revealed as the author delves into the lives of  a few of these women to produce a novel that starts out on a high note of tension and stays that way up until the very end. But The Master Key is not only a mystery novel; it also offers a psychological portrait of aging women dealing with their pasts and the loneliness of their present situations.

The story is told from several different points of view so the novel may be a bit confusing at times. The characters and their hidden lives are what drive this book, but I found myself having to go back a few times to remember who was who and pick up the threads of their individual narratives.  While that was a bit distracting, the sleight-of-hand twist at the end made it all worthwhile, as did the sense of place that came alive in the very atmosphere of this stifling and gloomy apartment world in which these ladies live.  And although it was written in 1962 and may seem a bit dated, the suspenseful tone that starts at the beginning does not let up until the end.

fiction from Japan

The Chalk Circle Man, by Fred Vargas

9780143115953

Penguin Books, 2009

Originally published as L'Homme aux Cercles Bleus, 1996

247 pp.
translated by Siàn Reynolds

 While his crew of co-workers are trying to figure him out, the new commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg settles into his job in the Paris police force in the 5th arrondissement. Adamsberg started his police career in the "stony foothills of the Pyrenees," where another inspector told him that he wasn't "cut out" to be a policeman. But that was before he went on to solve several murders in the area, was promoted to inspector and then commissaire. When the job in Paris was offered to him, he grabbed it. Showing up to work with clothes in disarray, doodling all day, working largely on gut reaction and intuition, and moving very slowly, he didn't fit into what Adrien Danglard, one of his inspectors, considered to be the regular policeman mold.

This entire novel, like Adamsberg himself, is rather quirky, but the commissaire is just the tip of the iceberg.  There is an assortment of offbeat and unusual characters that populate this book (more later), as well as a rather peculiar set of crimes that occur, all beginning with someone who draws blue chalk circles throughout the city, leaving different articles in each one: one day it's paper clips, another day it's a lamb-chop bone, and yet another a swimming cap, etc. And around each circle is written the same phrase: "Victor, woe's in store, what are you out here for?"  The chalk circle phenomenon has become so widespread that the newspapers have a field day:

People will soon be jostling for the honour of finding a circle outside their door on the way to work in the morning. Whether the circles are the work of a cynical con artist or a genuine madman, if it's fame he's after the creator of the circles has certainly got what he wanted. Galling, isn't it, for people who've spent a lifetime trying to become famous? ... If he's ever tracked down, they'll have him on a TV chat show in no time (I can see it now: 'The cultural sensation of the fin-de-millenium'.  (23)

But Adamsberg senses that there's more, and orders Danglard to have a police photographer out in the street to photograph the circle that he feels will come that night. And Adamsberg's intuition serves him well, as the harmless chalk circles escalate into murder.

Besides Adamsberg, who while doing his job is always thinking about his lost petite cherie Camille, a woman with a pet marmoset named Richard III, the author has created some other rather off-the-wall characters. Mathilde Forestier is a famous oceanographer whose hobby is following people around the city. Living with Mathilde is Clémence Valmont, her seventy-something year-old assistant, whose teeth remind Mathilde of those of crocidura russula, and to whom she often refers as "shrew mouse." Clémence spends her evenings combing the personals, looking for romance, and going out on pointless dates. There's also Charles Reyer, blinded when he was dissecting a lioness to study its locomotive system, and was squirted in the eye with rotten flesh. (Seriously -- I couldn't make up this stuff if I tried.) And finally, there's Adamsberg's colleague, Danglard, whose wife left him with two sets of twins and a child from a love affair.  He's a good cop, but he also has a sense of compassion that doesn't stop, to the point where he worries about the sun dying in five billion years.  Danglard, who has a bit too much to drink now and then, often holds "case conferences" with his kids, where he discusses police work and allows them their own voices in "theorizing" about the crimes.

Vargas allows her characters to develop their own approaches to understanding Adamsberg's nature, but in the end, it's Reyer, the blind man, who says it best:

He just gets on with his life, letting it all swill about, big ideas and little details, impressions and realities, thoughts and words. He combines the belief of a child with the philosophy of an old man. But he's real and he's dangerous. (103).

And indeed, the commissaire turns out to be both. 

When I read crime fiction or mystery novels, I'm not so much interested in the "who" but rather the "why," as my primary interest is in that well-worn cliché about the evil that lurks in men's souls. I look for motivations and underpinnings in the criminal's psyche in determining the why.   I'm a puzzle solver and this type of fiction (if written well) appeals to that part of me. I also examine how the crime is solved. And then I decide whether or not an author has fulfilled my expectations in those categories. I must say that Vargas sends all of that flying right out of the window -- she has written a very unusual novel with a highly eccentric cast of characters that are so odd that in a rather bizarre sort of way, they become very real. A conventional mystery/crime fiction novel takes you on a path in which certain things are expected to happen, and as a reader, that's what you look for, and then you're mildly surprised with whatever plot twist may happen to get thrown in toward the end.  But Adamsberg and company are anything but conventional.   The author lulls you into thinking along the lines of  "it's this person, no, it's that person, but wait, that's also possible," and eventually it's "who can I trust in all of this?" But as you get into the possibilities of it all, Vargas comes up with an ending that hits you like the proverbial ton of bricks. And I liked it.

  The Chalk Circle Man was well written. There's no real sense of a guiding road map anywhere and the characters are so eccentric that they appealed to my sensitivity to the quirky side of life. While it may be a bit frustrating for most readers of general crime fiction with all of the philosophical outpourings from time to time,  it's good.  There is just nothing conventional about this book, and I think that's part of it its appeal. Most highly recommended.

fiction from France

The Shape of Water, by Andrea Camilleri

9780142004715

Penguin Books, 2005

Originally published as La Forma Dell'acqua, 1994

218 pp.
translated by Stephen Sartarelli


Just past the midway point of this novel, the mother of the victim, local "big-shot" Silvio Lupanello, implores Inspector Salvo Montalbano to uncover what really happened to her son. Lupanello was found dead, pants down around his ankles, in a car in a local area of Vigàta (Sicily) used by prostitutes and drug dealers.  Although the coroner has judged that Silvio died of natural causes, his mother knows that something more sinister lies at the bottom of Silvio's death, even if he truly died of a heart attack. She tells him a story about when she was a little girl, and her friend once put water into things like bowls, teapots, cups, and a square milk carton, trying to establish its shape.  When asked "what shape is water," she replied

Water doesn't have any shape!...It takes the shape you give it.

She asks Montalbano to discover what really was behind Silvio's death -- the alternative, as she noted was to "stop at the shape they've given the water." Because of where her son had been found and because he'd been caught with his pants down, so to speak, Lupanello and his family name had been disgraced and his cronies were assured of never being part of local politics again.   But the inspector had already guessed there was more to the story, and despite pressures from higher-ups, he had prolonged the investigation, refusing to close the case.

Montalbano is an interesting character. He declares himself to be an honest man, but also understands that there's a certain way things work politically in Sicily and he rolls with it. He's funny and cynical, able to mix compassion for others with his duty as a cop. He's involved in a relationship that takes place mostly over the phone, yet doesn't stray with local women. He has a love of good food, which is described throughout the novel.  He also has an incredible sardonic wit and is not afraid to speak his mind. As a character, he definitely stands out in the world of fictional detectives, and he, rather than the crime he is working on, is the focal point of this novel.

Camilleri evokes a strong sense of place here, there are rarely any distractions which get in the way of either the main plot or the characters, and there's a sarcastic sense of humor that floats in the background of this book. He makes his people real and believable, which guarantees that I'll be back for the next book in the series.  Very highly recommended.

fiction from Italy

July: light, relaxing reading

It's time for laying out by the pool with a cold drink and a stack of books.  Nothing too heavy or too thought-provoking, just fun.  The three Rs of summer: rest, relax and read. Yeah.

June Reading Roundup

Let's just get right to it, shall we?

I designated June as a month for reading books with "watery" titles in honor of the beginning of the rainy season here. It's also the first month of hurricane season so I threw in a couple of hurricane-related books as well. 

So here's how the reading shakes out for June - a * means it was part of my little mini-challenge:

British mysteries & UK Crime fiction:
 Taken at the Flood, by Agatha Christie*
The Secret of Chimneys, by Agatha Christie
The Thirteen Problems, by Agatha Christie (not yet reviewed)
The False Inspector Dew, by Peter Lovesey (not yet reviewed) *
Deadwater, by Sean Burke*


General Fiction: 

Hard Rain Falling, by Don Carpenter*
Taroko Gorge, by Jacob Ritari (not yet reviewed) 

German Crime Fiction:
Black Ice, by Hans Werner Kettenbach (not yet reviewed)
  
Japanese Fiction:

The Sea and Poison, by Shusaku Endo*
An Artist of the Floating World, by Kazuo Ishiguro (not yet reviewed) *

Nonfiction
Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers
The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, by Douglas Brinkley (not yet reviewed)*

Scandinavian Crime Fiction:
The Ice Princess, by Camilla Lackberg
The Inspector and Silence, by Hakan Nesser

Spanish Crime Fiction:
Water-Blue Eyes, by Domingo Villar*

In other book-related stuff:
1) My book group read and discussed The Painted Veil, by Somerset Maugham; we're taking a break until the end of September and then we'll read Let the Great World Spin.

2) Added to the Amazon Wishlist:

• A Perfect Execution, by Tim Binding
• Dead Before Dying, by Deon Meyer
• Thirteen Hours, by Deon Meyer
• No Curtain Call, by K.T. McCaffrey
• Needle in a Haystack, by Ernesto Mallo
• Beasts of Prey, by Rob Marsh
• Night Bus, by Giampiero Rigosi
• Ghosted, by Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall 

  3) 13 books left the house to people on Swaptree or Paperback Swap; Aths from Books on a Rainy Day won the Zeitoun international giveaway I hosted. I also was honored to be the #1 promoter for Jo's International Aussie Author giveaway at Booklover Book Reviews and won a copy of Wanting, by Richard Flanagan. I received Taroko Gorge, by Jacob Ritari  from LT Early Reviewers, Invisible, by Paul Auster from Goodreads, and a copy of The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi on audio CD from Amazon Vine (which I'm still listening to).  And my thanks to Grove Press - Black Cat for a finished copy of Christopher G. Moore's crime fiction novel Asia Hand. I love his character Vincent Calvino and the Thailand setting of this series of novels.

4) The number of books I bought this month was a record, even for me - we won't go there. Let's just say that Book Depository is my new best friend.

July is for nothing but catching up on reviews and doing easy reading. I need to save my brain in August & September for reading the Booker Prize longlist which will be announced at the end of the month.

time to go read now!

My favorite book of the month international giveaway contest -- Zeitoun -- and the winner is...

drumroll, please.....

Twenty-one people entered to win, and I took the entries in the order in which they came. According to the random number generator, the winner is Aths! Congratulations!

I would like to thank everyone who put their name in the hat for this book. I'll choose another one toward the end of July and we'll play again.

It's Monday! What am I reading?

What? Monday already? Obviously, because it's time for the weekly "what am I reading" segment, hosted by Sheila at her wonderful blog Book Journey. Take a moment and go visit; she's an amazing person.

Extremely slow reading week for me - I managed to finish and review Deadwater
by Sean Burke, a very dark novel of crime fiction from Wales. I also finished Agatha Christie's collection of Jane Marple short stories called The Thirteen Problems.  That particular book has a story in it called "The Blue Geranium," which was the focus of Masterpiece Mystery yesterday evening. I will post a review of the book here shortly.

Currently I'm reading Douglas Brinkley's book The Great Deluge, about Hurricane Katrina. This August will mark the five-year anniversary of that unforgettable storm and its even more unforgettable aftermath.  And speaking of Katrina, you can enter to win a copy of Dave Eggers' most excellent book Zeitoun here.  The Great Deluge is the last of the planned reads for my little "watery titles" mini-challenge this month. This book will probably see me through until the end of the month, since it's huge.

 Next week begins a month of random crime reads, something easy prior to the August and September "she reads the Booker longlist" months, which I do every year. The longlist will be announced at the end of July, so it's just easy reading up until August 1.  On tap for next week: Peter Temple's Truth, Hakan Nesser's new book The Inspector and Silence, and one nonfiction, Murdering Stepmothers: The Execution of Martha Rendell, by Anna Haebich -- a book originally published in Australia. Of course, the verdict is still out as to whether or not I'll finish all of those, but if not, that's okay. I'm not in a hurry.

Time to go grab my coffee and read.

My favorite book of the month international giveaway contest -- Zeitoun -- through June 30th

To win a copy of Dave Eggers' wonderful book Zeitoun, all you have to do is to leave a comment with either your blog URL or an email address.  You do NOT have to become a follower -- just leave a comment.  The winner will be selected at random at the end of the month. The giveaway is open internationally and you can only enter once. June 30th is your last day, so if you've always wanted to read this book, now's your chance, and for free!