Detective Story by Nobel laureate Imre Kertész (Knopf; $21.00) is set somewhere in Latin America but could easily be anywhere. Antonio Rojas Martens is the flatfoot narrator, “presently arraigned before the judges of the new regime: the people’s judges,” as a result of the handling of the Salinas case.

Kertész blends excerpts from the diary of Enrique Salinas and Martens’ remembrances to vividly portray the events in this non-standard police procedural translated from the Hungarian by Tim Wilkinson.

Martens transfers from the police force to the Corps, a state enforcing unit. As a new member of the Corps, he attempts to understand its purpose and procedures: “I actually thought we were serving the law here.” In response his boss says, “Those in power, sonny boy. Only you shouldn’t lose sight of the order. Those in power first, then the law.”

The Corps senses the threat of an atrocity, and begins accumulating files on individuals through surveillance, informers and other privacy invasion techniques. Having an extant file, Enrique Salinas, university student – “shaggy-haired weirdo” – becomes a suspect.

Suspicion is heightened after an incident with an officer at a checkpoint regarding a slow speed zone. Enrique’s father is also brought into the fray.

A sense of doom overshadows this short existential novel with its allusions of coercive forces ensnaring and overpowering the innocent. A grim reminder of power run amok!

“A pale, anorexic young woman who has hair short as a fuse, and a pierced nose and eyebrows” is the presumptive heroine in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Steig Larsson (Knopf; $24.95).

She is Lisbeth Salander, par excellence hacker for Milton Security. Her reports are precise and potentially explosive for the individual being investigated. Yet colleagues consider her “’the girl with two brain cells’– one for breathing and one for standing up.” And, her body art -- a dragon on her left shoulder; a wasp on her neck – commands attention.

Salander completed a thorough research job on the protagonist Mikael Blomquist, investigative journalist, part owner of a magazine who has just been found guilty of libel, fined and sentenced to three months in jail. Incidentally, he can choose the time that he wants to be incarcerated.

The story is about to begin.

The client who ordered the background check now persuades Blomquist to take on a special assignment – to write a family history but in truth to find the niece of the aging industrialist Henrik Vanger. The teenage girl went missing thirty-six years ago and although there was an inquiry, Vanger is not satisfied. He fears she was murdered and if so, by whom.

Blomquist takes up residence at the Vanger island compound; Salander soon joins the investigation. Her research skills are sorely needed.

Larsson has fashioned many well-defined characters to interact in the complicated, ugly happenings that keep the story moving with the harsh Scandinavian winter as background.

An element of danger and mystery surrounds Lisbeth Salander quite unrelated to the shenanigans of the Vanger clan. The tattooed girl is unforgettable. She will be back. You can count on it.

This is the first of a trilogy written by Steig Larsson before his death and is translated from the Swedish by Reg Keeland.

Interrogation and torture prevails as a focus in Yalo, by Elias Khoury (Archipelago Books; $25.00) translated from the Arabic by Peter Theroux.

Yalo in handcuffs stands in the Jounieh police station facing an interrogator with no memory as to why he is there.

Rape is the charge against him. A girl wearing a very short skirt is present to accuse. Yalo denies his involvement. The interrogator shouts: “You confessed, you dog! You know what happens to liars!”

There are other charges added – robbery, something about a flashlight and other misdeeds. After many interrogation sessions Yalo admits to everything.

Then he is ordered to write his life story. His dilemma: “his story, which he did not know how to tell, his language, which he did not know how to write, and his memory, which he did not know how to provide with a voice.”

There are also complications concerning his identity. Is he Lebanese or Syrian? He writes his story again and again. The interrogator compares Yalo’s written account with testimonies of those whom he “attacked, raped, and robbed.”

A rewrite is again required. Each time the story is rejected he endures tortures such as the time he stands naked from the waist down in a burlap sack in which there is an angry cat. Chilling!

Khoury uses flashbacks illustrating Yalo’s family background, youthful exploits and sexual encounters for narrative structure. The novel’s impact is the lucid exposure of the destructive effects of mind manipulation.

 

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Reprinted from Border Patrol, IACW/NA newsletter
© 2008, used by permission