This was probably the most difficult crime fiction
book I have ever had to read. It is also one I have found almost impossible to
review. I hope I can justify both those verdicts.
If
you deconstruct the 278 pages of this title and the 16 or so additional pages
which appear as an endpiece entitled Dark Death, you end up with a
story which starts with the appearance of a Buddhist monk, one snowy Saturday
morning in a small Black Forest town in Germany. The monk is scarcely dressed
for the snow, clad only in a brown robe and sandals. He has a bruise above his
ear and a barely healed cut on his cheek.
The
local cop commences an investigation of where the monk has come from, how he
got beaten up and where he is going. He calls in the expertise of the Serious
Crime Squad in nearby Freiburg. There the boss, an arrogant, male chauvinist
shit, hives it off to Louse Boni who only agrees to take it up when she is
threatened with disciplinary action. Boni hates snow. Her brother died in the
snow. Her husband left her in the snow, and on a previous case she had killed a
man in the snow. The latter event has left her with a lot of baggage, which
takes up much of the book and the entire endpiece. It includes a drink problem
and a tiresome capacity to ruminate on the partnership suitability of the men
she meets on page after page.
Reluctantly,
and with no real plan in mind, the local cops, their colleagues from the French
police across the border, and the Special Crime section track the monk as he
treks the snowy fields and frozen forests.
The
focus of their investigation falls upon a small Buddhist seminary. It is near
there that two of the local cops are attacked leaving one dead and the other in
hospital with critical gunshot wounds. The monk has also disappeared and is
also thought to have been killed by the same unknown assailants. The monk had
stayed at the seminary earlier and possibly saw or heard something there which
led to the beating and his flight. But what was it? And is it related to the
adoption of children from South East Asia promoted by a charity attached to the
seminary?
In a
nutshell that is the story, devoid of all the baggage which the author dollops
over it with excessive generosity. Now I don’t object at all to complexity in
crime fiction. Handled well it can hugely enhance a book as Stieg Larsson
showed us. But there is complexity that works and complexity that doesn’t.
Sadly, this book typifies the latter. But what is even more unforgiveable is
the promise in the title and the incapacity of the book to justify the
inclusion of Zen in that title. That too needs a bit of unpacking.
We
all know what Zen is. Basically, it’s an esoteric kind of oriental thought and
mediation. Elements of Zen sophistry are ladled out meagrely throughout the
book in little soupcons from the monk, the head of the seminary, and the
Japanese interpreter who is assisting the police. But none of that begins to
justify the inclusion in the title. Is
there any great effort in the narrative to consider how Zen might underpin the
predicament of the monk, contribute to, or conflict with, the police
investigation? That has been a
historical feature of crime fiction since the days of Charlie Chang. A few
years back it featured in Peter May’s Beijing thrillers. John Burdett also
employed the dichotomy between occidental and oriental worldviews to his books
on policing in Bangkok. But I can’t detect any application of this theme in
Bottini’s writing.
Of
course, it doesn’t have to involve a global dimension. Take, for example,
Persig’s 1974 book Zen and the
Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance which I thought
initially might have inspired Bottini. If it did I can’t see how. For the
record Persig detailed two kinds of thinking and personalities: those who are
interested mainly in gestalts, romantic viewpoints like Zen but which can also
be extended beyond Persig to radical political and social thinking like
existentialism and Marxism, and those who just want to know the details,
understand the inner workings, and master the mechanics largely for pragmatic
reasons, a position akin to rational analysis.
It
is very easy to suggest crime fiction series very near to home in which
Persig’s two kind of thinking have enhanced, maybe unwittingly, our reading and
enjoyment. One which instantly springs to mind is the Dalziel and Pascoe series
from the much lamented Reg Hill. In those books Pascoe worked his socks off
following all the correct police procedures while Dalziel went to the pub, sunk
a few pints and smoked a few fags, before divining who had done what and why.
The perfect contrast of Persig two personalities applied to crime fiction with
great humour and not a bit of pain. I
would have loved to see elements of that sense of Zen, as well as some of the
humour, in Zen
and the Art of Murder, but what I felt most was the pain.
Is
there anything that can be salvaged from Bottini’s book? Other critics have
focussed on Boni’s battle against the institutional sexism of the Serious Crime
Section. That is there, but lost in the overwhelming plethora. We could draw on
Boni’s other issues, the stress, the drinking, as well as her difficulties
relating to people. We could, but that too has been handled so much better by
so many other writers.
Very
rarely have I felt so negatively about a book I have read or had to review. But
in this instance I do feel justified. Sorry but that’s how it is. I am sure
others will already be hailing it as a masterpiece.
Translated from the German by
Jamie Bulloch
