IN OTHER WORDS....
TRANSLATED FROM OTHER LANGUAGES
by Doris Cassiday
Death Angels (Penguin Books; $15) Åke Edwardson’s police procedural introduces Chief Inspector Erik Winter a single, tall, blond, natty dresser, jazz enthusiast, young for a Chief as he mourns the death of a friend from complications of AIDS. He is soon challenged by the murder of a British youth in his domain of Gothenburg, Sweden and notified of a murder of a Swedish youth in London, England.
Scenes and MO of both crimes being similar call for collaboration between Inspector Winter and his London counterpart Steve Macdonald.
Both detectives find puzzling marks in the middle of the murder rooms. The circular indents turn out to be from a tripod that leads Inspector Winter to believe the killer photographs his grisly act, or lets the victim view his own demise.
Footprints on the bloodied floor look as if the killer moves rhythmically while he tortures. The scene makes Inspector Winter feel he is on “some kind of stage” and being watched.
Is there a message in the madness? He enlists his barkeep friend to alert him if there are rumors circulating about snuff films, assigns a detective to visit the night spots in Gothenburg, and travels to London to catch up on the facts surrounding his countryman’s killing. During the visit “it happened again.” At the gory site Eric Winter thinks, “We’re in hell. Hell on earth is right here, in this room.”
Surprising revelations and intense interrogations bring closure to the case. Although it takes time to get in step with Edwardson’s style of switching viewpoints, the story is cleverly conceived.
Add Åke Edwardson to the coterie of Swedish crime novelists. Translation from the Swedish is by Ken Schubert.
“A job is a job, and a case is a case” according to Gerhard Self, the private investigator in Self’s Murder by Bernhard Schlink (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard; $15).
However, this case is especially intriguing to the aging detective recovering from a heart attack and needing a kick start: find the silent partner of Weller and Welker “the oldest private bank in the whole Palatinate area.” President Welker explains he is writing a history to celebrate the bank’s two-hundredth anniversary and wants to include an unknown silent partner.
Self thinks a historian should be given the assignment. The reply, “I have chosen you for a reason.”
Self begins his search in the university library and then seeks access to the bank’s archives by contacting Adolf Schuler, a retired teacher seemingly well versed in the history of the bank, silent partner, and Welker’s missing wife. Concern over the fate of Welker’s wife directs Self to the police. And, the Chief Inspector says, “What you want to know is whether I think he murdered her.”
More complications when the archivist suddenly appears, gives Self an attaché case, races off in his car, hits a tree and is pronounced dead at the scene. The attaché case is “chock-full of money.”
Self doesn’t have an easy time in his investigation. His visit to former East Germany results in being thrown in the canal by some “skinheads;” he catches a cold, learns Welker’s children are held hostage by the bank assistant, money is being laundered, Russian Mafia involvement, ad infinitum.
A lively crime novel of human greed, bank corruption, intentional murder, all carefully translated from the German by Peter Constantine.
The prologue of the hard-core novel As God Commands, by Niccolò Ammaniti (Black Cat; $14.95), presents thirteen-year-old Cristiano Zena trudging along a snow covered road gripping a pistol. His father’s orders resound in his ears: “All you have to do is shoot him in the head. You’ll be back in bed in ten minutes.”
The target is a barking dog. The time is three-thirty a.m. Rino Zena, Cristiano’s father, finds it hard to keep a job, boozes and consorts with two buddies: Quattro who is dull-witted and Danilo who agonizes over his ex-wife. The threesome devise a scheme to knock over an ATM believing it is the solution to their pecuniary problems.
Quattro steals a four-by-four vehicle for the job but its voice-over security system scares him away. Stealing isn’t foreign to Cristiano either. However, he admits being a failure because he takes worthless things: “A pair of Adidases that were too small for him.” Since Rino is a single, unemployed parent, a social worker keeps tabs by visiting periodically. That’s the only time the home gets tidied, dishes washed, and take-out food clutter collected.
Rino fears Cristiano will be taken away from him. He assures himself and Cristiano, “You and I are one. So, God will never separate us.”
On the night of the supposed bank heist the heavens open in a vengeance with a blockbuster storm causing such chaos it affects all the characters even the social worker. Confirming the strong bond between father and son, Cristiano tries his best to protect his father from telltale evidence of a tragic event happening that stormy night. Nothing seems to go right.
The in-your-face dialogue and short chapters keep the doings of this dysfunctional family/friends moving at a fast pace.
The translation from the Italian is by Jonathan Hunt. Notably, Ammanti’s poignantly realistic and gritty novel was the winner of the Strega Prize, Italy’s most prestigious literary award.
Reprinted from Border Patrol, IACW/NA newsletter
© 2010, used by permission
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