March Violets

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

March Violets by Philip Kerr is a Nazi noir novel I read this week.

The story: In 1936 the daughter of a rich and powerful German industrialist is murdered, and her cache of jewels is stolen. Daddy compels an ex Kripo (criminal police) detective to find the jewels and the killer. He finds both. But not until after he's beaten by the Gestapo on numerous occasions, personally interrogated by Goering, Himmler, and Heydrich, and spends some quality time inside Dachau concentration camp where he's whipped and housed with terminally ill inmates with contagious diseases. And he's on the Gestapo payroll! HimmlerCare sux.

Its the most spell-binding book I've read in a long time. What a nightmare those times were! Its a powerful read.

I guessed the identity of the killer before the end, and failed at another guess.

But what ruins the book is how the ending falls together so perfectly, like God choreographed the action, and the Bolshoi Ballet performed it.

 

[allamagione]

I'm a noir virgin! I've only recently gotten into it (though I've been a fan of Joyce Carol Oates for years, and I'd call her neo-noir). And I know what you mean about perfect endings. I just finished a collection of stories, and it was kind of a let down how contrived some of the endings were.

I'm thinking in particular of "Double" by Bruno Fischer, which I suppose is more hardboiled than strictly noir, anyway. It was kind of like the author started out writing one thing — in this case, a morally dubious and rather mentally unsound detective — and then remembered that his audience wanted a crime story tied up in a nice, neat little bow, and just kind of tacked that on the end. Disappointing!

Now I'm reading The Maltese Falcon. (I've never even seen the movie.) Enjoying the story so far, but man, Hammett's style is clunky. I have to reread some of his descriptions several times to make sense of them. And some of them are just totally WTF: Her boyish face was pale under its sunburn.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I'm a noir virgin! I've only recently gotten into it (though I've been a fan of Joyce Carol Oates for years, and I'd call her neo-noir). And I know what you mean about perfect endings. I just finished a collection of stories, and it was kind of a let down how contrived some of the endings were.

I'm thinking in particular of "Double" by Bruno Fischer, which I suppose is more hardboiled than strictly noir, anyway. It was kind of like the author started out writing one thing — in this case, a morally dubious and rather mentally unsound detective — and then remembered that his audience wanted a crime story tied up in a nice, neat little bow, and just kind of tacked that on the end. Disappointing!

Now I'm reading The Maltese Falcon. (I've never even seen the movie.) Enjoying the story so far, but man, Hammett's style is clunky. I have to reread some of his descriptions several times to make sense of them. And some of them are just totally WTF: Her boyish face was pale under its sunburn.

I'm not impressed with Hammett.

 

[allamagione]

What is it about his work you don't like?

I haven't gotten far into it, but so far, for me, it's the awkward descriptions and the way the protagonist is so... perfectly, flawlessly cool. Especially in contrast to the other characters. But perhaps that changes as the story goes on.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

What is it about his work you don't like?

I haven't gotten far into it, but so far, for me, it's the awkward descriptions and the way the protagonist is so... perfectly, flawlessly cool. Especially in contrast to the other characters. But perhaps that changes as the story goes on.

My problem with Hammett are his digressions. I want the whole crew pulling oars to move the story along, I don't want any tour guides aboard. Most writers luv to drag tour guides along.