a time for mystery

I've mentioned before that from time to time I like to read detective novels; I've just read two that I really enjoyed. The first was a Michael Dibdin novel, Vendetta (you can read about his book Ratking here), and the second was The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin.

Vendetta moves between Rome and Sardinia. I love many things about Michael Dibdin's books: the great characterisation, the insight into Italian society and especially Italian politics, and - something you don't really expect in a detective novel - the lovely descriptive passages he seems to casually throw in. Here is an example of that (chosen so as not to spoil the plot in any way):

Once again the thunder growled distantly, reminding Zen of the jet fighter which had startled him at the villa. There had been no hint of a storm then. On the contrary, the sky was free from any suspicion of cloud, a perfect dome of pale bleached blue from which the winter sun shone brilliantly yet without ferocity, a tyrant mellowed by age. The route to the villa lay along the same road by which he had arrived, but in this direction it looked quite different. Instead of a forbidding wall of mountains closing off the view, the land swept down and away, rippling over hillocks and outcrops, reaching down to the sea, a shimmering inconclusive extension of the panorama like the row of dots after an incomplete sentence.

Aurelio Zen is one of my favourite detectives, along with Ian Rankin's John Rebus. I'd recommend any of Michael Dibdin's Zen novels, particularly if you have an interest in Italy (and if you do, this website can recommend other English-language mystery novels set in Italy). Dibdin's work has been translated into eighteen languages - including Italian, which has to be a recommendation.

The Winter Queen (translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield) is the first book I've read by Boris Akunin (Grigory Chkhartishvili) and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Apparently the Erast Fandorin series of books are huge in Russia, as big as Harry Potter - and a film version of one of the books set a box office record there, beating Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. (The books seem to be popular in other countries, too, having been translated into more than thirty languages - and Paul Verhoeven, a little bizarrely, is set to make an English-language film version of The Winter Queen with Dan Stevens and Milla Jovovich.)

I liked the historical detail in The Winter Queen, which is set at the end of the nineteenth century, and its humour (for example, Russian roulette is called "American roulette"). The chapters have titles such as "In which serious unpleasantness lies in wait for our hero" and "In which the narrative takes a sharp change of direction".

Here's an atmospheric passage (again chosen so as not to give away the story):

September in Moscow is sated and indolent, trimmed with gold brocade and ruddy cheeked with the maple’s crimson blush, like a merchant’s wife from the Zamoskvorechie district decked out in her finest. If one marries on the final Sunday of the month the sky is certain to be a translucent azure and the sun will shine with a sedate delicacy, so that the groom will not perspire in his tight starched collar and close-fitting black tailcoat, nor will the bride freeze in that gauzy, ethereal, enchanting concoction for which no appropriate name even exists.

Incidentally, the name of the original Russian novel is Azazel (you can find it in full, alongside other novels, on Akunin's official website) - which is the same as another book recently recommended to me, by Egyptian author Youssef Ziedan.

For some wonderful suggestions of translated crime fiction, by someone who has read far more widely than I have, check out Jost A Mon, where Fëanor has been doing some very dedicated research:

First Month - Second Month - Third Month - Fourth Month - Fifth Month

While I am still in the mood for mystery, I am going back to a classic - Murder on the Orient Express (even though I know exactly 'whodunit'). At the suggestion of Eyad, I am going to try it in Arabic (perhaps alongside the English), as it is apparently fun to read. (And who knows, I might write about it in Arabic afterwards.)