November 23rd, 2009 / 2:10 pm
Random
Good Mysteries
This weekend on a trip to the New College of Florida, the most excellent Alexis Orgera and I got into a mini-discussion of our love for a good well-written mystery novel, one that asks more questions than it answers, and that doesn’t necessarily open and shut doors as much as it does fund eerie intricate descriptions and aura with a subtle pull that keeps you running along inside it. It seemed hard to think of a lot of books that fall into this category, though I recommended two I’ve loved in the past few years, Freidrich Dürrenmatt’s The Assignment (which I copped from a recommended list by the also mystery-making master Brian Evenson), and Jose Saramago’s The Double.
The Assignment is particularly interesting for its form, in that it is a set of chapters that are all one sentence, written to correspond with the movements of a piece of music that he composed the book to, I believe in a very short time, and yet the intricate form and wonderful sentences never falter from being a page turner. Saramago’s work as a whole, even when not based on premises so mysterious as the one in The Double (a man becomes obsessed with a minor character in a series of films who looks exactly like him, who he then begins to trace).
There is also Robbe-Grillet, and some of Paul Auster (I particularly love the mapmaking and patterns in the New York Trilogy and Oracle Night) and Dennis Cooper’s books have a distinguished mysterious pull. I am trying to think of more, here without my books.
What are some great mystery-style novels, pulp or literary, or ones that use that constantly updating confusion/terror/detective narrative drive to fuel their heart?
Tags: Freidrich Dürrenmatt, jose saramago
Bernhard’s The Lime Works. (Which was an influence on one of Evenson’s most obviously detective-y pieces, “The Sanza Affair.”)
Didion’s novels, in particular Book of Common Prayer, Democracy and The Last Thing He Wanted, have a mystery thing going on, as the narrator circles around the elusive central facts of the narrative.
And there’s Dostoevsky’s The Double. (Haven’t read the Saramango; is that where to start if you’ve never read him before?)
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November 23rd, 2009 / 2:35 pmBlake Butler—
nice, haven’t read Lime Works yet, will get thank you.
Didion, that’s interesting, I would not have guessed that from what I’ve read of hers. Also will get.
I wouldn’t start Saramago with The Double necessarily. Blindness is most well known, but is also worth the hype. All the Names also has mystery of the Double but feels more “full” on its face. I imagine The Double would get called a lesser work in general, though it is my favorite for how it moves.
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November 23rd, 2009 / 2:50 pmmark—
I was hoping you’d say “Seeing,” as it’s on the remainder table of my local. Will check out one of those guys you suggest.
Also, forgot: the graphic novel Low Moon by Jason is one of my favorite things I’ve read this year, and the first section is a very elliptical story set in a hard-boiled-mystery world. Really beautiful and strange. Also short enough that you can read it in the book store and decide if the whole book is worth yr $.
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November 23rd, 2009 / 3:15 pmWalser & Company—
Word to Lime Works which is stupidly oop and expensive. Looks like it’s gonna be reissued ala Witt’s Nephew in March, but let Walser & Co know if you can’t wait and want to borrow a copy from the sub-sub library. And have a look at the first cover, perhaps the best Bernhard, at A Journey Round My Skull:
http://ajourneyroundmyskull.blogspot.com/2008/12/thomas-bernhard-lime-works-first-us.html
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November 23rd, 2009 / 3:34 pmLincoln—
The Lime Works is probably my favorite Bernhard novel (of the ones I’ve read)… dont’ really see it as a mystery at all though.
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I’d recommend ‘The Invention of Morel’ by Bioy-Cesares. It might technically be more sci-fi than mystery, but the elements of detection, confusion, and terror are all there.
Almost anything by Leonardo Sciascia, whose Sicilian mafia mysteries of the 60s and 70s are cut more from the cloth of Kakfa and Borges than Puzo. They pile on more questions than answers. They’re also ingeniously structured and condense lots of plot into slim novella form. ‘Day of the Owl’ and ‘To Each His Own’ are excellent, but any of his reissued by NYRB should be solid.
Will definitely check out The Assignment.
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November 23rd, 2009 / 2:35 pmBlake Butler—
Love the Invention of Morel. a great example, thank you.
nice on Day of the Owl, I have that on my to read pile from last year, will move it to top now. thanks Jeff.
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November 23rd, 2009 / 3:22 pmWalser & Company—
100% Morel, truly, per Borges, perfect, what of his other favorite (also loved by Kafka) The Man Who Was Thursday (and thanks for the reminder to read Sciascia)
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November 23rd, 2009 / 4:08 pmWill @ A Journey Round My Skull—
Borges rated Bioy Casares’ “Dream of Heroes” as highly as “Invention.” I think it’s oop:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/b/adolfo-bioy-casares/dream-of-heroes.htm
Has anyone read the detective novels which Borges & Bioy Casares wrote together (under pseudonyms Suarez Lynch and Bustos Domecq)?
I can highly recommend Dürrenmatt’s The Pledge.
Robbe-Grillet is probably one of the best at this. And, even though I don’t know if it really qualifies, Ellis’s “Glamorama” really did that for me. I still ponder the ending of that book. And Nabokov, of course.
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Perec’s “La Disparation” translated into English by Adair as “A Void”, and by Monk as “A Vanishing”
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That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana, by Carlo Emilio Gadda.
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The Assignment, above all, yes, but Evenson is right to also single out The Pledge.
Robert Coates’ The Eater of Darkness will bend left for those who want a Fourth Policeman.
And one carve a large mystery from Diane Williams’ sentences, from her first book (The wrong door, for all time, has been opened) onward.
Of the classical, have you read Simenon? Esp. his so-called hard, i.e. mind, novels (romans durs), some of which NYRB Classics has reissued (Dirty Snow is the best, and Vollmann’s afterword, not to be read beforeº, apt) but I know his Maigret is dear to some Atlantis poets you know (and Celan translated two of these as “bread work”) so ask around.
ºbut here’s the first graph which spoils no snow:
A couple of centuries from now (assuming that there will still be human beings to stain the snows of this earth), Simenon’s protagonist Frank Friedmaier may be considered more or less repellent than he now appears, depending on the sensibilities of that age, but he’s hardly likely to suffer Marlowe’s fate. In fact, he is almost inhumanly horrific. Chandler’s novels are noir shot through with wistful luminescence; Simenon has concentrated noir into a darkness as solid and heavy as the interior of a dwarf star.
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November 23rd, 2009 / 3:07 pmFor Friedmaier—
For “one carve” read “one could carve”::for Saramago read also: Tavares’ Jerusalem (new Dalkey Archive)::and for fun / third archive, Jedediah Berry’s The Manual of Detection
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John Banville’s detective books as “Benjamin Black” are supposed to be really good, though I haven’t read them personally. Evenson’s Last Days is fantastic, but I’m sure you’ve read that.
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November 23rd, 2009 / 3:42 pmmarco—
Oh no, they aren’t
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Happy to see Saramago get some space. I recently decided that he may have topped Evenson as my current favorite writer (though I’ll have to read more of his books to make that definitive). Blindness and All The Names were enough to assure me that his other work will tip the scales. Sorry, Evenson. I still love your work more than most others.
House of Leaves is winding mystery, though probably more literal than you are looking for. Murakami’s After Dark relies on concept over plot to pull the reader.
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M John Harrison – The Course of the Heart (third recommendation for three different genres – it could be seen as a metaphysical mystery)
Agota Kristof – The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels
both are highly recommended.
Umberto Eco – The Name of the Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum
Iain Pears – The Dream of Scipio, An instance of the Fingerpost
Ronan Bennett – Havoc in its Third Year
Josephine Tey – The Daughter of Time
(historical mysteries, unreliability, shifting viewpoints, philosophical ideas etc etc liked all, how good ymmv)
Elizabeth Hand – Generation Loss
Many people liked Donna Tartt – The Secret History more than I did.
Second Simenon, Gadda, Sciascia, and I would add Friedrich Glauser.
And if you trespass into noir territory there are of course many more.
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I don’t think you can do better than the original Raymond Chandler books. They can get to be a bit much, of course, but Trouble is My Business is especially interesting, since it’s all long stories/novellas that he was publishing in Thrilling Detective and little magazines like that.
The Elizabeth Hand book, Generation Loss, is all aura and subtle pull. I’m still not quite sure what the fuck happened in that book, but I can’t get the feel of the thing out of my head.
Any of Daniel Woodrell’s books are great, but especially Winter’s Bone.
If you’re up for some older noir, Tapping the Source and The Last Good Kiss are both fairly straightforward mystery/noir books, but also do a nice job with a kind of post-60s hangover vibe. Like Generation Loss, I’m not quite sure what happened there, but the aura is hard to forget.
Walter Mosley’s Socrates Fortlow books — Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, and Walkin’ the Dog — are really good collected story collections (especially Always Outnumbered) from a very different point of view than most. Worth a read.
Those are like the least literary suggestions on here. I’m simple. I like the noir.
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November 23rd, 2009 / 5:19 pmmarco—
Yeah, Generation Loss and The Last Good Kiss are really good , though it’s the journey not the destination (=the mystery) their selling point.
noir : Derek Raymond’s Factory novels (especially He died with his eyes open) David Goodis, Jim Thompson, Hammett, Horace McCoy, McIlvanney’s Laidlaw, Willeford, Jean-Claude Izzo…
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By Night in Chile
Roberto Bolano
Borderliners
Peter Hoeg
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I kind of like Hans Artmann’s The Quest For Dr. U
Love the picture of the Winchester Mansion. I want to go there now.
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November 24th, 2009 / 6:58 amdan—
from what i’ve heard the winchester mystery house isn’t worth the trip; long boring “spooky” tour w/ roped off rooms. probably would be good if you could rent it out for a party or something though. “Spooky” party.
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I’ve not read By Night in Chile by Bolano, but the first thing that came to my mind was The Savage Detectives
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November 24th, 2009 / 12:30 pmE.E.—
Love that one, too! It is very mysterious in the middle. By Night in Chile hinges an incredibly strange and compelling backdrop onto Pinochet.
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Kiss Me, Judas; Penny Dreadful and Hell’s Half Acre by Will Christopher Baer are all pretty amazing neo noirs that have mystery elements.
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, but the mystery’s the least interesting part of the novel.
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house of leaves
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November 24th, 2009 / 6:56 amdan—
+1
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These are off the top of my head, without my books in front of me.
The Lew Griffin books and The John Turner books both by James Sallis
The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno
The Death of the Detective by Mark Smith
Kiss Me Judas, Penny Dreadful both by Will Christopher Baer
Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand
Box Nine, The Skin Palace, Wireless, Word Made Flesh, The Resurrectionist all by Jack O’Connell
Raveling, Los Angeles both by Peter Moore Smith
The Insult, Death of a Murderer both by Rupert Thomson
Game by Conrad Williams
After Silence by Jonathan Carroll
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall
The God File by Frank Turner Hollon
The Factory novels by Derek Raymond
Senseless by Stona Fitch
The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville
Shadow Season by Tom Piccirilli
There are a lot more suggestions to be made but a few dozen is probably a good start.
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[...] Butler at HTMLGIANT wants to know: “What are some great mystery-style novels, pulp or literary, or ones that use that [...]
Oh, and I forgot Hard Man by Allan Guthrie (really most of his stuff)
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I have a hard time with mysteries, but I do like reading Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe books. Also, currently picking at a copy of the Complete Father Brown Stories.
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“Savage Night” by Jim Thompson is one of the strangest and artsiest pulp mystery novels I have ever read, with all it’s talk of people growing female body parts in their back yards, and meta-appearances by Thompson himself in the middle of the narrative. Plus cripple sex, a toothless hit man suffering from TB, and a couple of throat slashings thrown in for good measure.
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glad to see will christopher baer listed here, i LOVED his trilogy of KMJ, PD and HHA – GODSPELL is supposed to be out soon if MacAdam/Cage can right the ship
i’ll add in craig clevenger’s books THE CONTORTIONIST’S HANDBOOK and DERMAPHORIA
also, try out a really great book, ALL THE BEAUTIFUL SINNERS by stephen graham jones
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November 24th, 2009 / 4:42 pmdavid erlewine—
stephen graham jones’ book is on my list. that man is a master.
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Yes…All The Beautiful Sinners! It throws the serial killer genre on its head.
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One more before I leave:
The Deadly Percheron by John Franklin Bardin
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November 25th, 2009 / 5:09 pmWill @ A Journey Round My Skull—
Just picked this edition:
http://www.centipedepress.com/deadlypercheron.html
In his intro, Lethem mentions two other JFB novels written at the same time are just as good. Anyone read those? (All 3 were collected in an old omnibus edition.)
Any suggestions for Leo Perutz? I keep starting and stopping The Master of the Day of Judgement. I’m interviewing Austrian genre expert Franz Rottensteiner and he named The Marquis of Bolibar as one of his fave books.
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