Foreign detective writing
We tend to assume that only English-speaking writers can write detective novels.
In Britain the genre is dominated by women – Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Marjoriec Allingham and recently Val McDiamid.
In fact some interesting detective novels have been written by French writers and Guillaume Musso has sold 30 mullion copies of his.
I recently read Angélique.
Here a seventeen year-old Louise asks a retired cop Mathias Taillefer to investigate the death of her ballerina mother Stella Petrenko whom Louise believes did not die naturally after falling from her balcony. Stella’s neighbour – a painter called Marvo Sabatini – comes from a rich Italian family and his visiting nurse Angelique assumed the identity of his fiancé to inveigle herself into his family.
If the plot rested there it might have made for a better novel, but in the final 50 pages there are numerous twists. Some of them are not that explicable and I wonder if the author had one eye on a film. Still it’s a page-turner and Musso – who sets the novel in a seamy Paris riven by Covid – has both a fine sense of location and characterisation.
Tokyo Express by Seicho Matsumoto would be of interest to train spotters as it’s built around railway time tables.
A couple commit suicide on a Japanese beach but a certain assumption that they were in fact a couple is wrongly presumed.
If they were indeed a couple why did one eat alone on the train?
This leads to a full investigation into a suspect that together with witnesses has constructed a fool proof alibi. Again the novel has a fine sense of location and in this case a more coherent plot.
Also important in any detective novel is the relationship between the writer and the reader. How much information does the writer give? There is a clue in Tokyo Express of the schemer but it’s more difficult to identify the various twists and turns in Angélique.
Musso varies the narrator. At one stage it is Angélique herself, then Louise, and – on occasion – news paper articles.
In Tokyo Express, the detective switches from a local veteran in Fukuoda to one in Tokyo but they remain in contact.
Both are well-translated and – if you are a fan of detective writing – make for an enjoyable read.