CRIME BEAT:Claustrophobic narratives, cowardly heros and compelling mysteries: there's much on offer in the latest crime novels, writes DECLAN BURKE
ANDREA MARIA SCHENKEL'S Bunker(Quercus, £12.99) is this German author's chilling, claustrophobic tale of a woman's abduction and incarceration. What makes the novel so compelling is that Schenkel is not content to simply ratchet up the tension with a conventional will-she-escape tale. Instead Schenkel offers parallel narratives, from captor and abductor, both delivered for the most part in internal monologues, interspersing both with a third-person account of a nameless victim arriving at an emergency ward on the point of death. It's a clever and wholly believable strategy, as Schenkel delves into both characters' memories to excavate a complex and interlocking labyrinth of motive and guilt.
Henning Mankell's Daniel(Harvill Secker, £12.99) is another unusual crime novel. Set in 1875, it follows Hans Bengler, an entomologist, to the Kalahari Desert, where he adopts a young native, the sole survivor of a massacre. Naming the boy Daniel, Bengler takes him back to Sweden, where the child's inability to adjust to his new surroundings eventually results in tragedy. A psychological study of alienation and its consequences, Mankell's tale lacks the pace, punch and body count of his more conventional crime tales, and may disappoint fans of the traditional mystery-thriller genre. And the character of Daniel never fully rings true: a sullen naif when the plot suits, he is nonetheless phenomenally successful at mastering Swedish and gives voice to implausibly profound yearnings in one so young.
Val McDermid also ploughs something of a new furrow with her latest novel, Trick of the Dark(Little, Brown, £18.99). Renowned for her gory murders, McDermid offers a more genteel story than usual when a disgraced clinical psychologist, Charlie Flint, is asked by her former Oxford tutor to discreetly investigate the suspicious circumstances of the death of her son-in-law on the day of his wedding. McDermid, too, uses a neat narrative conceit in allowing the chief suspect for the man's death to offer a first-person account of events by way of a memoir she is writing, although aficionados of the genre, expecting twists and turns, might deduce that too much is being pinned on one suspect. That said, McDermid writes a fluid, compelling novel of manners underpinned by a believable mystery plot, and Charlie Flint is a fascinating addition to the canon of intrepid female investigators.
The rather-less-than-intrepid Mystery Man returns in the third of Colin Bateman's new series of novels, Dr Yes(Headline, £14.99). The nameless hero, who owns the Belfast crime-fiction bookstore No Alibis, is reluctantly dragged into yet another caffeine-fuelled adventure when a legendary Northern Irish crime novelist, Augustine Wogan, kills himself after alleging that a famous plastic surgeon – the eponymous villain – has murdered his wife. Bateman delights in undermining crime tropes, making his "hero" a cowardly neurotic who detects his way through mostly self-inspired mayhem by taking his cues from the classics of the genre. Here Mystery Man meets – but fails to recognise – his first bona-fide femme fatale in Pearl Knecklass, crime-fiction fan and receptionist to Dr Yes, who may or may not be party to the real-or-imagined murder. Written with obvious affection for the genre, yet always ready to pounce on its cliches ( Dr Yesfillets the craze for serial murderers), the Mystery Man novels are page-turning whodunnits with the bonus of a slyly subversive commentary on the contemporary crime novel.
Declan Burke is a freelance writer and novelist. He hosts Crime Always Pays, an online resource for Irish crime writing
