Crime books

Reading K.C. Constantine can make you wonder why you’d bother to write crime stories. Maybe musicians feel that way when they listen to Beethoven or Prince, artists when they look at Rembrandt or Kiefer.

Artists can inspire you to become creative yourself, or remove the incentive by being totally intimidating.

Joni Mitchell made this point obliquely in an interview, talking about short story writers Raymond Carver and Alice Munro. “I’ve been a frustrated short story writer, but whereas Carver makes me think I can write short stories, Munro makes me think I can’t.”

Mitchell’s quote came to mind as I was reading K.C. Constantine’s Upon Some Midnights Clear. Published in 1985, it’s the seventh book in the series featuring Mario Balzic, police chief in the fictitious town of Rocksburg, Pennsylvania.

It’s not necessarily any better than the other books in the series, at least not the 12 I’ve read so far. (Apart from Bottom Liner Blues, which was an uncharacteristic misstep.) However, I hadn’t read one for a while, so I was struck afresh by what a great writer Carl Constantine Kosak really is.

After years of keeping his identity secret, K.C. Constantine has now seemingly been identified beyond doubt. Mr Kosak he may be to his wife and accountant, but to me and a legion of readers he’s Mr Constantine and will remain so.

While his books are nominally police procedurals, plot never comes first in a K.C. Constantine novel. They’re firstly about character, then about social issues. These are the valuable beads threaded together by workmanlike plotlines.

The most impressive single aspect of Constantine’s writing is his supreme mastery of dialogue. K.C. Constantine can have a page or two of dialogue, three people talking, without a single “he said” or anything outside the dialogue to identify the characters. You can tell who’s speaking by what they say and, most impressively, by how they say it. Speech patterns are all Constantine needs to paint a character.

It’s when reading a scene like this that one can despair and threaten to break your quill and overturn your inkwell.

Reading what must be my tenth Andrea Camilleri mystery featuring Inspector Montalbano, I was struck by a few mysteries of my own: Why, when there are so many authors and books to read, do I choose to read what pretty much amounts to the same book over and over? Secondly, why among all the series in the world, do I choose this one?

Here’s how the typical Inspector Montalbano book goes:

Our hero wakes up, thinks of dreams, food and his faraway girlfriend, Livia. The phone rings to alert him to or he witnesses something odd that leads to a can of worms. At his office, Catarella mangles the language and bursts through doors for comic relief. Other running gags involve Salvo Montalbano’s relationships with his superiors and colleagues in other departments.

Montalbano meets a woman who seems to fall in love with him. There is also the constant sexual tension between him and his friend Ingrid. Livia calls on the phone, gets mad, but they always seem to make up. The activities of small-time crooks may have Mafia connections. After many wrong turnings, Inspector Montalbano solves the case and sets up a trap for the criminals. In between, he eats a lot and makes acerbic remarks about Italian politics.

That more or less covers it. Yet, there I am, taking yet another one from the shelf.

Perhaps this has to do with having had a pleasant experience and wanting to relive it. Maybe it’s laziness, not wanting to be challenged. Maybe it’s comforting to know exactly what you’re getting into.

Which is strange. Because, if you ask, I’ll tell you what I want in a book is to be surprised, to have a unique experience. And yet what I read tells a different story, being the same story over and over… So I have to put up my hands and admit I’m intellectually lazy, more of a comfort seeker than I’d like to think.

As has been suggested, readers want to be surprised moment by moment, but not by the overall experience. That would explain why the most successful authors become brands, repeating the same formula until they’re rich and worn out enough not to care any more.

This still wouldn’t explain why, in choosing an Andrea Camilleri book, I bypass all the other new mystery series books on display. What is it about Camilleri’s books that’s so appealing?

The plots are clever, hang together and move quickly, but that probably goes for nine out ten other mystery novels. The writing is full of local colour and snappy dialogue, but that probably goes for eight out of ten other mystery novels. The character of Montalbano is mildly interesting, but certainly not inspired, which – just to bedevil the numerical sequence – probably goes for ten out of ten other mystery novels.

So why am I a repeat offender when it comes to these books and no other? … A case for Inspector Montalbano, I suppose.

It wasn’t a bit like the time I ran full-tilt into singer José Feliciano. There he was, a blind man trying to cross a foreign airport terminal and some kid comes crashing into him. I still feel bad about that. No, I’ve never encountered Paco Ignacio Taibo II in the flesh. Nor, for that matter, had I met any other Paco Ignacio Taibo – number one, three or whatever.

I didn’t even know PIT II, as he apparently refers to himself, existed until I sort of bumped into him by accident.

What happened is this: I wandered into a library over lunchtime and saw they had some old books for sale – three books for two dollars. Almost straightaway, I spotted two books I wanted. But taking only two seemed like a waste, so what to do about a third?

I looked through the names, but nothing rang a bell. I was running out of time. Never one to say no to a cheap crime novel, I ended up taking one marked with the library’s gun-sticker, the icon they use for crime stories – No Happy Ending by Paco Ignacio Taibo II. I could always throw it away if it’s useless, I thought.

When I finally started reading the book, I was completely unsuspecting. I was just going to read a bit to see if it grabbed me.

Many books, I must confess, don’t pass the first sentence test for me. Others I stay with for a paragraph or a page or a chapter and if I still haven’t felt that frisson of excitement – either because of style or content – that’s it. Some I return to later, when a different mood or mindset might make me more susceptible to whatever the book has to offer. Others never see me again.

This one started with direct speech: “There’s a dead Roman in the bathroom.” Turned out to be a Roman centurion in full regalia. This in Mexico in what is presumably the late 1970s.

Okay, so now I’m interested. On top of that, the writing has a certain nonchalance, an authentic style, which in itself is a rare enough thing.

About 170 odd pages later (and yes, they are odd), I want to fling the book down. The hero just died…

This is upsetting in the extreme. Heroes don’t die, not in entertaining crime novels. But then, this one is called… No Happy Ending. A bit of a clue, that.

Apart from the fact that this is one awesome little book, the incomparable Paco Ignacio Taibo II then wrote a sequel. Yup, a sequel. Not a prequel, a sequel. As in set after the events of No Happy Ending. Featuring the same detective who died in the first book…

How he does it? Sheer genius. I bow down, overawed.