Tag Archives: crime novel

Woman of the Dead

2 Replies

I have seen several favourable reviews of Woman of the Dead by Austrian crime fiction writer Bernhard Aichner. Therefore I expected something at least entertaining, maybe even well written. However…

Let me not bother you with the plot and come straight to the point: this is pulp fiction of the lowest class. The writing consists of strangely clipped sentences, and a pseudo-literary style that reads unintentionally funny at times, especially in the German original. The development of the story is entirely predictable, and the author seems to be a big fan of graphic descriptions of completely unmotivated violence. The more disgusting, the better, seems to be the credo of this author.

I didn’t enjoy this book even a little bit, and after I read a truly revolting FB posting of Herr Aichner in which he is inviting his FB friends to describe an “efficient, creative and spectacular torture method”, and which was promptly answered by more than a hundred obviously sexually aroused resident FB perverts who describe with obvious glee and sadistic pleasure in all graphic and sick details the contents of their demented torture fantasies (the most “creative” and disgusting will be used by Herr Aichner in his next book), I realized that this author writes not for me, but for that part of the population with strong anal-sadistic predisposition – people who would torture me or you to death with orgiastic pleasure, if they just had an opportunity. His books are obviously meant as arousal templates and masturbation help for those sick people, pornography for sadists. It seems that he is very successful in servicing to the needs of this lower segment of humanity.

My apologies for the explicit language in this blog post, but I was rarely more disgusted by any book or author and I strongly recommend you not to waste your time with the poorly written shmutz Herr Aichner is producing.

25216299

Bernhard Aichner: Woman of the Dead, translated by Anthea Bell, Orion 2015

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014-6. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 


Happy Birthday, Turk!

11 Replies

glm_iv1

This review is part of the German Literature Month, hosted by Lizzie (Lizzies Literary Life) and Caroline (Beauty is a Sleeping Cat)

 

Kemal Kayankaya – the name is without doubt Turkish. But Kemal doesn’t speak Turkish because he was adopted by a German couple when he was still a toddler. His parents, immigrants from Anatolia in Frankfurt/Main, died young. And so Kemal grew up like any other German child, except for his name.

A very clever choice by the author, I can say. Because it makes the hero of Happy Birthday, Turk! a born outsider – for many Germans he is the Turk who they think cannot speak proper German and should probably work as a garbage collector and for the Turks he is encountering in his work as a private investigator he is the fellow countryman who truly understands them because he has the same background as they do. But both sides are wrong.

In reality this cocky, quick-witted young man in his late twenties with the talent for seeking trouble who after several attempts to find his true vocation somehow acquired a license for his business, and who has an issue with alcohol, is – like many literary heroes of this genre – a romantic to the core. Just scratch a bit on the surface and you will see…

And this is the case with which the Philip Marlowe of Frankfurt has to deal in this book:

Ahmed Hamul, the husband of Ilter, Kayankaya’s client, was found stabbed to death on the streets of Frankfurt’s red light district. Since the police is not very eager to solve the case and because the wife has little trust in them, she is asking her alleged compatriot for help to find out who murdered her husband. Kayankaya accepts and finds himself soon in a case that gets much bigger than he initially thought.

While meeting the family, K. remarks that the brother-in-law has a particularly low opinion of the victim and except for Ahmet’s widow nobody seems really very interested in finding the truth. Also that the family is hiding the youngest daughter under the pretext that she is ill is a hint for the private eye that something is fishy here.

The police proves little willingness to give the needed information to Kemal and his impudent behavior to some of the admittedly racist policemen doesn’t exactly help. Kommissar Futt (a dialect word for vagina by the way), one of the least endearing exemplars in this biotop is leading the investigation and makes it a personal issue to keep Kayankaya, who fooled him once as alleged investigator from the Turkish Embassy, in the dark.

But fortunately, Kayankaya is in friendly terms with the retired police commissioner Löff who is pulling some strings with his former colleagues and is also later of great help. The slightly chaotic Kayankaya and his unofficial assistant who in his very German pedantic way tries to teach his friend some order and discipline and organization are an odd couple and this adds to the humor in the book which is frequently supported by witty dialogues and descriptions.

While some facts are hinting at a conflict in the red light district – Ahmet had obviously a girl friend among the prostitutes there – it is soon obvious that the issue is bigger than Kayankaya thought. It turns out that Ahmet was close with his father-in-law, who got killed in a car accident just months before. Unless the car accident wasn’t exactly an accident as one of the children that witnessed the event, claimed. But Kayankaya cannot ask the child, because it too fell victim to an accident…

I don’t want to give the whole story away, that would spoil the fun for possible future readers of the book. Honestly speaking, the plot was rather conventional and I saw it more or less coming from an early stage of the book.

But when this sounds a bit derogative, I don’t really mean it. Arjouni was 23 when the book was published first and it is quite an accomplishment for such a young author to deliver such a fast-paced classical hard-boiled crime novel with an interesting main character.

And there is more to the book. As someone who has lived in Frankfurt for several years in the 1990s I can say that the book gives an authentic impression of the place to its readers. Starting from the Frankfurt dialect that is used in the German version (yes, Kayankaya “babbelt” frequently in Frankfurterish – how funny is that?) to the description of the locations (“Wasserhäuschen” inclusive – a kind of kiosk open 24/7, literally “little water house”, the typical place for an alcoholic to buy and drink his booze), it all fits. And there are plenty of hilarious situations that give Kayankaya not only opportunity for acerbic or ironic remarks but also for a playful inventiveness on his (and the author’s) side.

Was Frankfurt, the city with the highest percentage of migrants (and the highest crime rate in Germany) really that racist in the 1980s? I cannot really say from my own experience – but I am not a migrant and my living conditions and the milieu in which I lived and worked there a few years later were very different from Kayankaya’s. Since the whole book is so well written and researched, probably it was.

A good decision by the author was also to choose Frankfurt and not Berlin as the location for this novel. In no other place in Germany is the connection between big money and crime so tangible as here, no other city in Germany looks like a miniature version of Metropolis, no other city has this mixture of backwater mentality and delusions of grandeur.

The only bad thing about the book is that it is such a fast read. I finished it in one sitting during a flight from Istanbul to Almaty. But there are four more Kayankaya novels and I am quite sure you will like all of them. (The whole set is translated and available in the Melville International Crime series)

Jakob Arjouni died last year after a long battle with cancer. A real loss for German literature and especially for crime fiction aficionados. I can also strongly recommend his Magic Hoffmann, a crime novel too (but without Kayankaya).

Arjouni

Jakob Arjouni: Happy Birthday, Turk!, transl. by Anselm Hollo, Melville House, New York 2011

 
© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

When Pera Trees Whisper

Leave a reply

He had many enemies, and so it seems not surprising that mobster Engin got stabbed on New Year’s Eve on the streets of Istanbul’s dodgy Tarlabaşı neighbourhood in the Beyoğlu (formerly known as Pera) district.

A street war seems to be going on between two local gangsters, ‘Dice’ Ihsan and Black Nizam, whose right-hand man Engin was. But it is not only a fight about the predominance in the (illegal) gambling business – to which some corrupt local policemen turn a blind eye for reasons we can easily guess – there is a much wider area of possible motives and suspects, as Chief Inspector Nevzat and his two assistants Ali and Zeynep find out soon.

Ihsan and Nizam were in love with the same woman, Cilem, and there are rumors that also Engin, who had the reputation of a womanizer, had a relationship with Cilem. Jealousy might be a very strong motif for the murder, but it turns out that Engin also secretly bought some houses in Tarlabaşı with the aim to demolish them and turn the locations in profitable big housing projects (which would have interfered with the intentions of his employer).

The deeper the Chief Inspector and his constantly bickering assistants dig into the case, the more questions come up: what did the street kids that were present on the crime scene really see? Has the giant Suleyman, a once powerful pimp, something to do with the murder (since he has great skills when it comes to using a knife in a fight)? Is Swank Cemal, the inspector’s old friend (and a former mobster himself) trying to mislead the police intentionally? What exactly is the role of Nazli, a lady from a wealthy family who is running a cultural center in the area and who is very strongly opposed to the plans of the local mafia? Are some radical members of the Gezi Park Resistance groups that were fighting against the plans to turn the last remaining park in Beyoğlu into a shopping mall, behind the murder? And why is this rather annoying crime novelist turning up every time when the Chief Inspector is least expecting it? What about the Italian mafia that was also after Engin? And what about the Bulgarian connection that seems to become more important as the story advances? Things are heating up more and more, and Engin will not be the only victim…

Ahmet Ümit, the author of When Pera Trees Whisper, is one of the most successful contemporary Turkish writers. This crime novel is a good example for his skillful handling of this genre. An interesting story, fast dialogues, characters that are described in a way that seems to be taken directly from reality, plenty of local flair for Istanbul connaisseurs, and all is set against the backdrop of contemporary Turkey, with its fast development but also its social and political problems that from time to time explode, as the Gezi Park Resistance has reminded us recently.

When Pera Trees Whisper is a real page turner and especially recommended for all readers that know (or want to get to know) the fascinating city of Istanbul.

Pera

Ahmet Ümit: When Pera Trees Whisper, transl. Elke Dixon, Everest Publications, Istanbul 2014

 

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Hell Hath No Fury

3 Replies

When old barns burn…

Rosemarie Hirte is an average woman with an average life – so it seems. She never married, lives alone, is working in an insurance company. She is diligent but not openly ambitious, a very respected colleague. Her social contacts outside work are very few: Beate, an old friend (but not particularly close) and Frau Römer, an elderly colleague whose dog she is walking from time to time.

There is no man in Rosemarie’s life, and the very few occasions when a man had shown a serious interest in her during her younger years ended with deep disappointments for her: either she was deserted for a more attractive (or more interesting) woman, or the married man returned finally to his wife. Also the fact that she couldn’t finish her studies has had an impact on her. Rosemarie Hirte, who is also the narrator of the story, is an embittered spinster in her early fifties who has the feeling that her life was one of missed opportunities, there can be no doubt about it.

But then everything seems to change. Against her usual habit, she is giving in to Beate to visit a reading evening together. The author Rainer Witold Engstern is talking about German romanticism and its poets. Rosemarie is not a particular poetic person, but Witold, as she calls him soon secretly, is a handsome man, some years younger than Rosemarie and he has a voice for which she falls immediately. Unfortunately, he is married, but the good news (good for Rosemarie) is that something is wrong with the marriage and Witold’s wife left him some time ago.

Although it seems most unlikely – men in Witold’s age are rarely attracted to women like Rosemarie – Rosemarie is determined to use this last chance and all obstacles need to be set aside to be cleared, at no matter what costs. Witold will not escape her, that’s a promise she makes to herself. He is the man of her dreams, the man who has to make up for all the disappointments in her previous life.

I don’t want to give the story away, but we see a total transformation going on with Rosemarie. She develops an enormous and ruthless energy that is really remarkable. People that are in her way – well, they are just obstacles which need to get out of her way. If not…

One remark about the names of some of the protagonists. Engstern, the name of Rosemarie’s love interest means literally “narrow star”, but it is just one letter away from Engstirn (=narrow mind). I think this is called an aptronym (Thomas Mann was master in this art). As it turns out later, Witold is not exactly the bright star that Rosemarie saw in him first.

The name Rosemarie is a bit old-fashioned and the reader might think of a woman doing crocheted blankets in her free time. A Hirte is a shepherd in German, but Rosemarie is quite the opposite of the good shepherd – so in this case the author is intentionally misleading the reader. The contrast between the name and the real character adds to the black humor that is present in many situations. The peaceful and almost Mediterranean Bergstrasse region where most of the story takes place (and where Noll is living), is another stark contrast that is remarkable. (Since I also lived for a long time in this region, this added even a bit more to my pleasure reading this book.)

Rosemarie’s crude energy and industriousness made me laugh on many occasions when I read the book. But sometimes I also shivered. The book gives us an opportunity to have a look into a truly dark soul. In my opinion an excellent crime novel – with an unexpected end.

This is a novel in the tradition of Patricia Highsmith and it was the first book of Ingrid Noll, now considered Germany’s leading female crime author. Noll, born in Shanghai in 1935, is the wife of a pharmacist. She started to write after her children had grown up and had left the house. Hell Hath No Fury was published in 1991 in Germany. Until today she has published twelve crime novels, several books with stories and a children’s book. The original title Der Hahn ist tot refers to the old French kanon Le coq est mort (The rooster is dead).

Noll Hell

Noll Hahn

Ingrid Noll: Hell Hath No Fury, HarperCollins 1997; Der Hahn ist tot, Diogenes 1991

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.