Library Limelights 201

Philip Kerr. Metropolis. USA: Random House Large Print, 2019.

Kerr's final novel is curtains for Bernie Gunther, the sardonic German detective whose adventures spanned several decades of twentieth century politics and war. Bernie was last seen (Prussian Blue in LL196) wending his weary way home to Berlin in 1956, a journey filled with obstacles. Rather than continue from there, Kerr takes us back to his earliest detective days with Berlin Kripo, late 1920s. The result is a harsh portrait of a postwar city in moral crisis, a place of increasingly divided politics and hate crimes. The police are stymied by a serial killer preying on casual prostitutes and by another who targets injured war veterans. This is not the wisecracking Bernie of later years; his humour only slowly grows to familiar proportions as his professional confidence develops.

Bernie's mentors and associates on the job are mostly real historical figures, a device Kerr has coalesced in the past. They include Bernie's boss Bernhard Weiss, chief of Criminal Police. Going undercover ‒ a brand new concept then ‒ finds our hero tricked out as one of the city's ubiquitous war amputees in a "cripple cart" aka klutz wagon, a sitting duck to attract a killer. The luscious Brigitte is his makeup artist, an opportunity for some great relationship dialogue. From hardline polemics to dispiriting nightclubs to the secret underworld, the desperate mood of Berlin is leavened only by Bernie's observations and the gentler characters he meets. Sadly, Bernie will no longer inform and entertain us. RIP Philip Kerr, one of the best.

One-liners:

▪ Most people were trying to make enough to get by, but it was never enough to get ahead. (29)

▪ Berliners usually wait until they've loosened up with a few drinks and a couple of songs before battering someone to death. (47)

▪ I never yet saw a musical I didn't think could be improved by a deeper pit for the orchestra, and a bottomless chasm for the cast. (289)

▪ "But I still don't understand―why the hell are you sitting here dressed up like a half-eaten war bagel?" (348)

▪ These sex tours were especially popular with the English, since it was certain that there was no sex to see nor any to be had back home. (365)

Multi-liners:

▪ "The last thing we need now unless you're a goddamn Nazi is another election. There's only so much democracy that one country can take before it starts to get tired of the idea." (116)

▪ "Just don't get too independent, Bernie. When a cop gets too independent he's got no friends. And when he's got no friends, his luck runs out." (228)

▪ "It's the difference between two men: One, the man in the mirror with no legs and no future other than selling Swedish matches, and the other, a stupid, able-bodied idiot of a detective who's full of drunken self-pity instead of humble gratitude." (304)

Detecting:

Back outside the courtyard in Wormser Strasse, eating my sausage in the darkness, I barked my shins on some short wooden crutches and a vagrant's trolley, the type a legless or partially paralyzed man might have used in lieu of a proper wheelchair to get around the city. It reminded me of some medieval painting of amusing German beggars wearing cardboard crowns and foxtails on their backs. We always had a cruel sense of humour in Germany. The trolley was homemade and crude, but many men had little choice but to use one. Modern orthopedic wheelchairs of the kind produced by Germany's agency for the disabled were expensive and, immediately after the war, there had been many instances of men being robbed of them. Maybe that's why it struck me as strange that one of these "cripple-carts," as they were commonly known, should have been abandoned in this way. Where was the man who'd been using it? (113)

The mentor:

Gennat nodded and put an avuncular hand on my shoulder. It felt as heavy as a military kit bag. "I don't trust a man who doesn't drink," he said. "It means he doesn't trust himself and I've no use for a man who doesn't trust himself. You can't rely on a man like that. Not in this business. But there's a drink and then there's drinking. One's a cop's good friend and the other's a cop's worst enemy. You know that, of course, otherwise you wouldn't have tried to cover it up with those mints you keep sucking on, not to mention that terrible cologne. And because you know that, you also know it'd be best if you were to try and put the cork back in the bottle, lad." (187)

Colleagues:

"But Weiss―like any ex-lawyer, he reads far too many books. Typical Jew, of course. Always got his nose in a book. He should have been a rabbi, not a cop."
"You're a Jew yourself, Kurt."
"Yes, but he's a clever Jew and people don't like that. I'm not a clever Jew like him. Weiss is the kind of Jew who has a surfeit of new ideas. People don't like new ideas. Especially in Germany. They like the old ones. The old lies best of all. That's what Hitler's all about. Says he's got new ideas but they're just the old ideas, reheated, like yesterday's dinner. New ideas, nobody likes that. People are afraid of the new. Look here, we work for the Berlin police force, not a laboratory of human behavior." (348-9)

Marie-Renée Lavoie. Autopsy of a Boring Wife. 2017. Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc, 2019.

Not a crime book in the accepted sense. It was filler time in the hiatus for my TPL waiting list, and what a great discovery, this author. Her character Diane meets the shock and heartbreak of divorce, i.e. a middle-aged husband who finds happiness with someone else. Diane not only takes rejection badly, she wants the jerk to come back to her ... at first. Yet the genuine humour is priceless; women will recognize and relate. Bouncing off the walls, Diane gives way to impulse and works her manic way through several emotions at any one time.

She decides to take up running. She runs away. She offends her neighbours and attacks a co-worker. She talks to strangers. She gets drunk. A bit of therapy, the support of her friend Claudine ‒ a veteran of the same trauma ‒ and appreciation for her grown children, save her from the most extreme craziness. Somehow she emerges from loss and recriminations with sanity more or less intact. Trying to describe Diane's "journey" here can't possibly do justice to this little GEM. Find it; enjoy.

One-liners:

▪ "Do you think it has anything to do with the fact that Jacques left you for a younger woman?" (48)

▪ He all but blamed her for global warming. (85)

▪ In my worst nightmares, I pictured myself alone at the head of a ridiculously long table, no one else around, staring down at a camel-sized turkey sitting in its juice. (258-9)

Multi-liners:

▪ The gentle doctor, a true professional, patiently handed me a few tissues with aloe. I walked out with a blotchy face, but a well-moisturized nose. (50-1)

▪ A group of girls cut across the grass to avoid me. I'd have done the same thing: a madwoman with bloodshot eyes talking to herself is a scary thing. (112)

▪ Seriously, he could have broken both legs and I wouldn't have batted an eye. I caught myself hoping he'd at least caught the flu, a little pneumonia, or a nasty case of foot fungus. Even better, warts. Hundreds of warts. (152)

Helpful server at the sports store:

I was also forced to swallow my usual pride when choosing workout clothes.
"Does the bra fit, ma'am?"
"Uh...I think so...it's a little tight around my chest..."
"That's normal. It's supposed to squeeze your breasts a little. For support."
Squeezed was an understatement; my breasts had been squished into a single shapeless mass. I could have had three or four breasts and no one would have known. My nipples would never again poke through, even when I was cold, unless they tried to go through my back.
"Can you jump a few times, ma'am? That way we'll know if you have enough support." (75-6)

Observing teenage offspring:

"Well, you're grounded! You hear me? No going out tonight!"
"Like I care! I'm going out anyway!"
"If you put one foot outside, I'm cancelling your cell phone plan!"
"You do that and I'll call dad. He'll stop paying alimony! And he's the one who pays for my cell anyway."
"That little shit! I'm going to skin her alive."
Claudine's younger daughter, Adèle, had just walked into the kitchen looking her usual exhausted, jaded self. She dragged herself over to the nearest chair and let her world-weary body plop down in an almost liquid sploosh. If it hadn't been for her awful paper-thin crop top and blue highlights, she could have passed for someone who'd spent weeks fleeing a war-torn country on foot. She rested her head on her arms.
"There's nothing to do." (86-7)

Metaphors help:

But I'd learned, since, that life's unpredictable nature is one of its best qualities. Nobody gets on a ship thinking it will sink. That said, ships sink. The ocean floor is littered with wreckage slowly being consumed by sea flora and fauna. But with each passing day more ships, more majestic yachts, take to the sea. It's understandable; the ocean is so beautiful. Love, like the sea, is so worth the risk. (266)

Jeffrey Round. Endgame. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2016.

Next filler ... another Canadian author unfamiliar to me. Here's a variation of the locked room murder mystery, constructed around the reunion of a once wildly successful punk rock band, a really gross punk band called Ladykillers. They fell apart over financial and other problems. Invited to an isolated island (off the coast of Washington state) by their former manager Harvey, time to kiss-and-make-up appeals to each member for different reasons. Along with some hangers-on and hired staff, they number eleven people. No one knows who owns this mysterious island, but the company eagerly await the arrival of Harvey, excited about the potential of new recording contracts.

As a storm engulfs the area, a serious incident in their past comes to the fore; a young groupie had died at one of their concerts, overdosed on a drug, and someone went to prison for supplying her. Besides the three remaining band members ‒ Max Hardcore, Spike Anthrax, Pete Doghouse – the others learn that they all have some association with that incident. Then people begin to die, inducing fear and paranoia. The tie of each death to an ugly, puerile Ladykillers' song is unclear unless you're into punk slang; a chess set manoeuvred by an invisible player is not exactly the foreboding device it was meant to be. However, just go with it if you can find any empathy at all — and guess if one person, or which one, might be left after the carnage.

One-liners:

▪ As far as Spike was concerned, he'd never been thoroughly compensated for all that music. (14)

▪ No one paid much attention to the trio of rock 'n' roll misfits passing by as if they were looking for a costume party that had ended twenty years earlier. (34)

▪ "The question is," Crispin broke in, "is Harvey that crazy?" (111)

▪ It was like a meal shared by religious postulants who have vowed to speak as little as possible. (144)

Multi-liners:

▪ Die young and keep a pretty corpse. Piss in the face of life. That was what they'd all agreed on back then. (16)

▪ What you didn't like or couldn't live with, you could reinvent. That was her credo. (20)

▪ "I went to jail for you fuckers, and don't you forget it. I pleaded no contest so the rest of you could get off." (117)

▪ "I always thought the Clash was overrated, though. But you couldn't really imitate the Pistols. It was just impossible." (138)

▪ "It was the fucking heroin. I didn't know what I was doing." (160)

▪ An ominous silence came from the rest of the house in answer to her call. There was also a terrible odour coming from downstairs, as though something had died and been set on fire. (180)

Chess master:

Pete had been sitting silently on the edge of the group. He started blubbering. "He won't be back," he said in a childish whimper.
"Why do you say that, Pete?" Max asked.
"Because," Pete said, "the chess game keeps changing."
"What are you talking about?" Max demanded.
Pete pointed in the direction of the drawing room. "Go check it. I was just in there. There are four pieces down."
The others looked at one another in bewilderment.
"What do you mean?" Verna asked.
"Let's go have a look," Spike said, with a glance at Pete.
They all wandered into the drawing room, Crispin following slowly behind. They stood staring down at the chessboard, which most of them hadn't noticed till now.
"When we got here, there were twelve pieces on it," Pete told them. "Eleven upright, one down. Now there are four down." (105)

Speculating:

"I'd say it's really Harvey behind all of this."
"But why?" Spike asked.
"Think about it. If we've hated him all these years for mismanaging the group, maybe he's hated us all these years for dumping him. Worse, we tried to turn him in when we found out he defrauded us of our earnings. But by then he had us all fighting one another. We never really talked about it privately."
"But we dropped the charges," Spike exclaimed. "Harvey kept all that money. We were the losers, not him."
Max shook his head. "Not entirely true. We lost our earnings, but Harvey lost his reputation. He hasn't worked with a hit group in more than a decade. All of his other bands dropped him like a hot turd when they found out what he'd done to us. As soon as they could get out of their contracts, they left him. He may have made loads of money on us, but his career was toast once it was all over." (110-11)

Peter Robinson. Abbatoir Blues. 2014. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2015.

Oh no, did it again. In desperate search for another filler, I glommed onto this Inspector Banks adventure, wondering how could I have missed it years ago. I didn't. And I didn't check previous indexes. Red-faced. Vague prods from my memory didn't spoil the re-read so I'll simply leave it at my original assessment: https://anotherfamdamily.blogspot.com/2015/02/library-limelights-76.html. And vow to catch up properly with Robinson since 2014.