Greydoll's Criminal Reading: "The Catalyst Killing" by Hans Olav Lahlum

Back in 1970, I was a student. It was a time of revolution, rebellion and sitting-in. This didn't happen much in my own college... which was a great source of disappointment to some of our tutors who, I think, fancied themselves as being at the heart of change. But then teaching (yeah, right) at an art college in a West Country town more conformist than my own native suburbia was perhaps not the anarchist hub they might have tried for if their hearts were in it. (OK - I didn't enjoy my stay there.) I do remember that some student union meetings where quite vocal... but these never really resulted in any kind of decision because the various student factions were challenging Each Other more than The Authorities.... usually about agenda structure and points of order.

So it is that my ancient bones remember the political flavour of the late 1960s and early 1970s setting for "The Catalyst Killing" by Hans Olav Lahlum. (Translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson. Paperback, Pan Macmillan, 2016) and another find from my local bookshop.

The story begins one evening when Inspector Kolbjorn Kristiansen is mesmerised by the expression of fear on the face of a young woman desperately running to catch his train. The doors close on her. And later her murdered body is found on the train tracks. It is Kristiansen (known as K2) who must find her killer and who soon discovers that her boyfriend, the charismatic leader of a small, radically left-wing, political group, had disappeared two years before. Political rivalry? Or was his death linked to his research into possible current links between a group of Norwegian Nazis from the war years. And was his girlfriend's death connected to his disappearance?

Set in Norway in 1970 this murder mystery conjures the era of Mao's Little Red Book and its effect upon world politics and the fashionably radical young. Starting from the base of the student political group, K2 is presented with a tight list of possible witness interviews. We follow the progress of his interviews and crime-scene visits, punctuated by his lunches and suppers with his gifted and mysteriously accurate detection-muse, the young Patricia. Meanwhile the crimes themselves escalate.

I will own up that I am not a particular fan of Agatha Christie-style whodunits. So, when I realised how much I was in classic "whodunit land" with this book - the third in Lahlum's series featuring K2 and his young helper - I didn't think I would enjoy it. But I did.
It reads smoothly and coolly in this English translation by Kari Dickson. Instead of a boring traipse through clues, I found a calm narrative pace which surprised me with a great buildup of suspense as it ran to its conclusion. And Lahlum's writing gives us individualised characters, irony, humanity... and a slightly surreal world conjured by a combination of investigation, coincidence and the truly prodigious gifts of Patricia.

If you are a little tired of the relentless grit of much Nordic Noir .... and if the notion of 1960s Nordic retro-whodunits whets your appetite ... try this series of books by Hans Olav Lahlum.

Happy International Women's Day....

...for I am of that age and generation of women who do remember having to have our consciousness raised.
Well.... I did not have to... as such... but as I recalled things what made me feel gloomy and stuck... I found that attending workshops and reading certain magazines and books do help me move my depression into plain old satisfying stroppiness.
Magazines such as Spare Rib and Women's Review (about which I can find nothing on Google except ebay ads!... and I do still have some issues lying around because I am that kind of girl.)
The workshops invariable involved sitting in circles, celebrating the moon and spelling WOMEN in as many interesting ways as possible...Womin, Wombin, Wymin, Womyn... you name it, bless us, anything to reinvent. Sorry. That's a patronising thing to say (wash my mouth out with soap). It is understandable. It is valuable. Some of this stuff was like water to a woman dying of thirst.
I mean, you try sitting in a student seminar while some idiot male fellow student tells you that you should not be here... being educated... cos there be no point... cos you is only capable of having babies and looking after babies and MEN (what be big babies).
In my case, being a nicely brought up, polite girl, I didn't say anything. Nor did I say anything when a table full of lechers... sorry "lecturers"... do tell me that I am really "quite intelligent". No dear, I smiled on... until I fell down, struck all of a heap. And after some time I did have my consciousness raised and got very, very, angry... as did a lot of other ladies.
One time... in the 1980s, The Old Man do recall, ... he went into a Women's Bookshop to buy me a present and got told that this was not the place for him! He be wounded by this.

A lot of people get angry about discovering who they are... or who they think they are. It happens now... as lost young people find their "identity" and their "anger" and "who is to blame for it all".

Anyway.... for those of you who are women... or would like to be... may I wish us a very happy day... all of our own.

Guilty Pleasures: Film Music - The Old Man Speaks

The Old Man do remonstrate with me that he DO like film music.
I say "Huh!" to that.
"Yes," he say " I like that man what wrote the music for Truffaut's "Day for Night".
"Who's that?"
"Can't remember.... But I also like the one who wrote for Cocteau... Er.... Begins with a A..."
"Auric." say I, forever the reference librarian.
"Yes. That's it."
So there we are. We both like a spot of film music. But he likes French and I like Italian.

And here's a trail for Cocteau's "Orpheus" including some of Auric's music from the Criterion Collection over at YouTube.

Guilty Pleasures: Film Music

I do admit that sometimes I like to listen to film music.
I have the odd CD of such....(Ennio Morricone)
Why is this a guilty pleasure? Because The Old Man do not approve of such a thing. Despite his own passion for  Badalamenti's "Twin Peaks" music. Well...like many, including myself, our own passions are the exceptions that prove the rule... He do sneer at the genre as a whole.... 'cos it is not proper stuff.
But if I like it. I love it.

So there I be on Saturday afternoon.... minding my own business... when Radio 3's "Sound of Cinema" pops up. This episode is not a mixed one, but a programme dedicated to the music of Nino Rota... (Zeffirelli, Visconti, Coppola's "The Godfather"...) I'd already missed Part One last week... but I be able to listen to this one - dedicated to his work with Fellini.
I be transported to the world of Italian film. Sunglasses on, I bop around a bit. Oh, I enjoyed it, me.

Brit-based listeners can catch this episode over the next few days til about 23rd August - here.

Re-Reading a Favourite Book: "Borderliners" by Peter Hoeg

Remember I posted about Library Thing and the book groups you can join there?


As part of one group's subject challenge... to read around the theme of "education".... I've just finished re-reading a favourite of mine from the 1990s: Borderliners by Danish writer Peter Hoeg.


Set in Denmark in the early 1970s, the story is narrated from the viewpoint of one of the "borderline" children of the title: three damaged adolescents placed in an elite boarding school as part of a secret experiment in social integration by the Danish Education department. Peter and Katarina, the elder pair, try to look after the third and youngest - August - who is deeply damaged from a life of abuse at the hands of his own parents. Not knowing that they are the subjects of a social experiment, they observe their teachers and those in authority with feral detail in their efforts to interpret a survival pattern for themselves as individuals and as some kind of distorted family group. Their paranoia (if you like) also drives them deep into esoteric theories concerning time. It is a concern that stays with the narrator into adulthood and life in the "laboratory".... his term for everyday life and domesticity. These aspects make the book difficult to read. Some reviews love this complexity and originality... some see it as affectation. Whatever... I found reading Borderliners still to be an intense and moving experience. The book remains a favourite of mine and its denouement is both tragic and triumphant.

I also loved Hoeg's previous novel - Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow which is the book that brought Heog to the attention of the popular reading public. And which I now realise heralded my passion for Scandi-Noir as it falls more easily into the category of crime fiction. But each book Hoeg writes is different. In Borderliners he seems perhaps to have been at the forefront in writing about the damage wrought by institutional abuse (a subject now all too familiar to the contemporary reader) and in writing from the point of view of the psychological outsider. (If you enjoyed Stieg Larsson's Girl With The Dragon Tattoo you may realise how it's anti-hero Lisbeth Salander became who she was... after Hoeg's account of childrens homes, schools and psychological and physical abuse.)

Borderliners is currently "out of print" as I write this. But it is available - either secondhand or as a "print on demand" item - from various sellers via AbeBooks.

Woody Allen - Annie Hall Trailer

 After which every girl rushed into trousers, waistcoats and ties by way of tribute to Diane Keaton's style.

Mrs D Ponders Crime: "The Woman Who Wouldn't Die" by Colin Cotterill"

Mrs D is very fond of Colin Cotterill's crime books featuring Dr Siri Paiboun.
Set in 1970s Laos, they feature the elderly Dr Siri who is both National Coroner and a late-onset shaman. As well as crime and resolution the books are witty, satirical and ... dare she say it ... have a supernatural element.

It do make Mrs D remember her librarian days in the "halls of academe" when her first humble post was as an assistant in the South East Asia Department.... long, long ago... This was not a supernatural experience in the main but ... come to think of it ... was prob'ly about the same time the admirable Dr Siri be operating.

You will find a review link to the latest in the series, "The Woman Who Wouldn't Die", over on the Euro Crime Blog.

In Which The Old Man Takes Comfort In A Ken Loach Documentary

What with "The Funeral" and the upcoming local elections at which we have no candidate we can vote for .... The Old Man do grow increasing apoplectic.

Last night he do take comfort in his Ken Loach documentary - "The Spirit of '45" ... and do nearly weep he be so moved about it all.

Tis our generation that basked in the welfare state, I know. And what a fine thing it was. What a shame it is being buried as we speak ... and without benefit of a ceremonial "do" like the woman what broke it. There. Colours to the mast. Nailed.
For myself I shall be following columnist Owen Jones with close attention.

The Secret In Their Eyes | UK trailer

UK TV screening tonight Saturday 30 Mar 2013 on BBC4 at 21.50

Great performances in a layered, subtle thriller set in flashback between 2000 and 1974 Argentina with an unresolved killing.
Watch it if you can.

Animated Discussions: Les Maitres du Temps

I did say in the previous post that I would say more about Moebius aka Jean Girard.

Because you know that I do like a bit of animation. And Moebius did work with French animator Rene Laloux on this film here.... "Les Maitres Du Temp" (Time Masters).

For modern animation fans it may look a bit dated cos it's made in 1982 before the "benefits" of CGI and so on. Don't get me wrong I don't mind a bit of CGI... but sometimes it do get in the way I think... a bit of a stylistic... "Oh No... Here we go again..."

I do have on my DVD shelf - a copy of Laloux's 1973 film "La Planete Sauvage" (Fantastic Planet). Cos I'se that kind of girl. This is perhaps even harder to view in terms of modern techniques but that ain't what it's all about.

Anyway. I just be reading the wiki stuff on Rene Laloux and love the idea that he got started animating by working with patients in a psychiatric institution. I wonder if any got over-excited doing the animating and had to be sedated? I'm sure I would. But then... if you cain't control the world out there.... get yourself a little world on your tabletop and animate it. That's what I say.

World Music Heroes No. 2: Ry Cooder

Thinking and talking about World Music Hero No 1: Charlie Gillett (see first post); and discussing these things with The Old Man. He, rightly, reminded me of the huge importance of Ry Cooder in what is now known as World Music.

Now Ry Cooder himself was first brought to my ears and attention by John Peel; and possibly by writings in "Rolling Stone". (My reading matter of choice during the late 1960s and early 1970s.) And as such I thought of him as some kind of guitar hero - which he is - and a great musician in his own right. (Including film music with the score of "Paris, Texas" directed by Wim Wenders.)

But he also worked and continues to work with musicians from other music cultures big time, long time. Not just by recording and performing with them; V.M Bhatt, Ali Farka Toure - but by the straightforward recording and promoting of the artists themselves. The aforementioned Hawaiian artist Gaby Pahinui was recorded by Ry Cooder in 1975. And then there are those Cuban "all time star hits", the Buena Vista Social Club.

Back at the old homestead, I have to admit that The Old Man shows good taste in the content of his record collection. Though I personally found the "hand bells" album a bridge too far. I find plenty, plenty Ry Cooder on his music shelves, including: "Chicken Skin Music", "Meeting by the River", "Paris Texas", "Chavez Ravine", "My name is Buddy", and "I, Flathead".

Listen up people. Pay due respect. Investigate and enjoy.

Charlie Gillett

So this is my first post.

And I am bereft.
I've lost my music man with the death of Charlie Gillett last week.

I bought and read his books, "Sound of the City" and "Making Tracks", in the early 1970s. Then I changed my postgraduate bibliography topic from Art History to the Literature of Rock & Blues.

I was listening to his show on Radio London, "Honky Tonk", every week. On Saturdays, the Old Man and I (more of him later) - would visit Hot Wax records in Kentish Town and spend our money on 1950s-60s Doo-Wop and Acapella recordings. The Old Man would jump around to Gabby Pahinui's Hawaiian songs. I jumped around to Cajun. We both jumped around to Doo-Wop.

Everything was brought to us by Charlie Gillett. Right up to his last broadcasts of World Music on Radio 3 and World Service. We listened to these and searched out recordings from Mali, Congo, Argentine, Ethiopia and Lebanon.

Over the years Charlie Gillett opened up so much music. He laid it out, talked about it, and shared it around. John Peel has gone. Now Charlie Gillett has gone.

I am bereft.