MY DARTMOOR DOZEN PART TWO

A very lengthy meeting and a hundred  miles of driving yesterday and yet another Steering Group [rearranging the chairs on the Titanic] meeting next Thursday so I am a bit shredded at the moment. Many of the characters at these meetings could easily feature in a Jo Nesbo or Andrea Camilleri novel. 

I thought I had finished with committee meetings where people [who could sell Talmuds in Teheran] talk for two hours and nothing is decided years ago when I retired. But it was a good interlude to get me thinking again about the next two categories in my Dartmoor Dozen. 

4] HARDBOILED:

I read The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler many years ago but dipping into the book again I think it was ahead of its time [1955] because it seems to me to be  more about the characters and society than about the plot. Chandler's writing is masterly as he mixes violence and humour with a subtle touch. 

Here he describes the lot of a P.I.:

'Sometimes you get beaten up or shot or tossed into the jailhouse. Once in a while you get dead. Every other month you decide to give it up and find some sensible occupation while you can still walk without shaking your head. Then the door buzzer rings and you open the inner door to the waiting room and there stands a new face with a new problem, a new load of grief, and a small piece of money.'

What clinched this choice for me is Chandler's classification of blondes ending with this passage:

'And lastly there is the gorgeous show piece who will outlast three kingpin racketeers and then marry a couple of millionaires at a million a head and end up with a pale rose villa at Cap d'Antibes, an Alfa Romeo town car complete with pilot and co-pilot, and a stable of shop worn aristocrats, all of whom she will treat with the affectionate absent -mindedness of an elderly duke saying good night to his butler.'

5] THE POLICE PROCEDURAL:

My choice is The Locked Room by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo and I have written previously about this brilliant book here.

This is a police procedural, a locked room mystery and with the antics of Bulldozer Olsson and his robbery squad almost a comic and crime caper novel all in one.

There was an abundance of both men's fingerprints and traces of Mauritzon's right thumb and forefinger had even been found on one of the jam jars. 

"You realize what that means?" Bulldozer Olsson said inquisitorially.

"Yes," said Gunvald Larsson. "That he's circumstantially linked to a jar of whortleberry jam." 

[to be continued] 

A STABLE AND A CORPSE

Last week in the UK a small child was savaged to death by a pit bull terrier, and by some accounts the owner had convictions for drug offences.

A writer in the Telegraph, I forget who, pointed it out as an example of the casual brutality and criminality of "our feral underclass".

In Andrea Camilleri's books we frequently read about the underclass, but it is the indifference and ruthless brutality of many of the "overclass" that is the crux of his stories. He certainly feels that Montalbano, Augello, Catarella and the rest of the team are in that middle ground trying to protect us the "silent majority".

In Excursion to Tindari Camilleri does not pull any punches, and it is the stark contrast between all the humour, and the heartless "real world" that makes this such a good novel.

Salvo Montalbano is investigating the murder of Nene Sanfillippo, a twenty year old "with too much money in his pockets, and who brought a different woman home every other night".

The Griffos a grumpy elderly couple have disappeared, while they were on an excursion to the shrine at Tindari, and because they lived in the same building as Nene Montalbano suspects some connection.

Meanwhile Don Balduccio Sinagra, the old style local Mafia don, is concerned about his grandson who is on the run from both the police and rival new style Mafia gangs.

Montalbano has to work out a scheme to prevent Mimi Augello leaving his team to live with his new fiance who works in Pavia, while also trying to work out who is the beautiful older lover of young Nene featured in some pornographic videotapes.

The cocktail is stirred and shaken with accounts of Montalbano's relationships with his superiors, his team, his lover Livia in Genoa, his friend Ingrid and most importantly his stomach.

When Salvo solves all the interlocking puzzles it comes as a minor shock to find out that beneath the glitz, caponata, seafood, and shine his world like ours is a very sad place.

Caponata- a zesty traditional southern-Italian dish often served as an appetizer or side dish, made up of sauteed aubergine, tomato, green pepper, garlic, onion, celery, black olives, vinegar, olive oil and anchovies.