Mystery writer #15: Pierre Magnan

Title: The Murdered House
Original French title: La Maison assassinée
Translator: Patricia Clancy
Year of publication: Translation: 1999; Original: 1984 (I think)
Type of mystery: Murder
Type of investigator: Amateur
Setting & time: Rural France, 1910’s
Some themes: Love, hate, murder, revenge

Story: In 1896 three week old Séraphin Monge is the only member of his family left alive after a bloody mass murder takes place in the family house in Upper Provence. In 1919 the angelic-looking Séraphin returns to his birthplace to work as a road mender and lays eyes on his legacy: the murder house, which has, like murder houses often do, stood empty and unsellable because people believe it's haunted. In an attempt to eradicate the dreams and visions that begin to haunt him after he is told the story of what happened there, he begins to tear down the house, making everyone think he is mad. He is befriended by another war veteran, who is as scarred on the outside as Séraphin is on the inside, and three different women begin to show more than a little interest in him. When he finds something in one of the walls it causes him to suspect that three respectable citizens of the town were involved in the murders, and he begins to plot a blood revenge, stalking his intended victims in order to detect their weaknesses. But whenever he thinks he is ready to act, another hand acts for him, killing the people in gruesome and ingenious ways.

Review: Here is a really good, well written and intense mystery of the kind often referred to as literary because of the non-mystery themes it tackles and the high quality of the writing. Although some things about the mystery are obvious to an experienced mystery reader, there are still a couple of twists that really take you by surprise, unless you are a very, very careful analytical reader (the kind who writes down possible clues), because Magnan plays by the basic rule of mystery writing and gives the reader an opportunity to solve the crime through reasoning. He goes even further and gives the readers an edge over the characters by allowing them to see the events leading up to the murder of the Monge family. There are several important clues that don’t look like clues hidden in that chapter.

But this book is not just about a murder investigation. It is just as much about love, family and the lack thereof, revenge and healing, among other things. The translation is very good and the translator has allowed some local flavour to remain, I guess to remind the reader that this is a translation, by letting some French and Provencal dialect words stand untranslated in the text with parenthetical and in a couple of cases, footnote, explanations that don’t detract from the enjoyment of reading. I am already planning to try to get my hands on the sequel, Beyond the Grave and would in fact like to read even more of Magnan’s books. They are being translated into English one by one, but what I would really like to do is upgrade my French so I can read them in the original language (plus of course I could really savour Simenon’s writings).

There is a movie version as well, but I have little hope of seeing it unless I buy it on DVD.

Rating: A juicy literary murder mystery with a touch of the supernatural to sink one’s teeth into. 4+ stars.

Coming up: Boris Akunin (hopefully)

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...

How to make a simple origami bookmark

Here are some instructions on how to make a simple origami (paper folding) bookmark: Take a square of paper. It can be patterned origami paper, gift paper or even office paper, just as long as it’s easy to fold. The square should not be much bigger than 10 cm/4 inches across, unless you intend to use the mark for a big book. The images show what the paper should look like after you follow each step of the instructions. The two sides of the paper are shown in different colours to make things easier, and the edges and fold lines are shown as black lines. Fold the paper in half diagonally (corner to corner), and then unfold. Repeat with the other two corners. This is to find the middle and to make the rest of the folding easier. If the paper is thick or stiff it can help to reverse the folds. Fold three of the corners in so that they meet in the middle. You now have a piece of paper resembling an open envelope. For the next two steps, ignore the flap. Fold the square diagonally in two. Yo...

Bibliophile discusses Van Dine’s rules for writing detective stories

Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...

Reading in Reykjavík

Search This Blog