The First Twenty Years of the Twenty-First Century

The First Twenty Years of the Twenty-First Century Ten Reading Suggestions and a Farewell by J. Madison Davis CRIME & MYSTERY I n 2004 I was thinking about the way that the very American style of hard-boiled or “noir” detective story has spread around the world, even to languages and literatures that had not previously exhibited much interest in crime fiction. I put some of those thoughts into an article I offered to World Literature Today and soon found myself a columnist in these pages, with too much to say, appearing in almost every issue. A lot of words by me and many more words by others have passed over my desk, so it seems appropriate to bring this marathon to a close by pointing out ten crime books that made the most impression on me since the year 2000. Adequate books are common, but the books that stick with us are the reason we read. Let me start by recommending the remarkable alternative history The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007), by Michael Chabon . Chabon first came to literary prominence with a short-story collection, but he showed no fear in attacking contemporary literary practices, exploring the pleasures and possibilities in pop culture storytelling . He is currently a showrunner for a new television series, Star Trek: Picard, but I hope he gets back to publishing fiction soon. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union combined the tropes of the traditional hard-boiled detective novel with those of science fiction, winning him both Nebula and Hugo awards as well as top mystery award nominations. An actual suggestion made by an FDR cabinet member that the refugee Jews might be settled in Alaska caused Chabon to imagine the various settlements there and a detective trying to solve a murder. It is very unusual for a writer to pull off such a seamless union of genres, but Chabon does it. The powerful thriller Out, by Natsuo Kirino, was published in Japan in 1997 but didn’t reach the US until 2003. A very impressive novel, it does something that I find too little of on our current bookshelves —exploring the lives of “working people.” There are too many architects, caterers, and boutique shoppers in contemporary fiction. Kirino’s main characters are women who work in a bento box factory. 10 WLT AUTUMN 2019 A bento box is rather like a TV dinner that Japanese buy in convenience stores for lunch, put together at odd hours by workers who have few social advantages. The newest employees get the worst job: spooning a blob of rice into each box for hours, until their arms ache with the repetitive motion. One of the women has an abusive husband whom she kills. Her friends, however, band together to help her dispose of the body and conceal the crime. Hitchcock, Poe, and the great story “A Jury of Her Peers,” by Susan Glaspell, all come to mind. It is a vivid portrait of the lives of the mostly forgotten people who make modern society work and of the situation of Japanese women in society. The Secret in Their Eyes (La pregunta de sus ojos, 2005) inspired two movies: a not very good one with Julia Roberts and a Best Foreign Language Oscar one. If you have to watch the movie, watch the Argentine one, but it is better to forget them both and read the book. Written by Eduardo Sacheri, the story is of a retiring investigator who is still obsessed with a cold case he intends to write a book about: that of a young woman murdered in her bedroom. His quest for the solution is complicated by his unrequited love for an intern who has now become an eminent judge, and he soon finds himself drawn into the byzantine history of the Dirty War of the 1970s and 1980s. The military regime, backed by the US, hunted down political dissidents, “disappearing” an estimated thirty thousand victims. As you can imagine, participants in the Dirty War have no desire to have those matters revisited. A page-turner, this novel integrates the elements of a love story, mystery, and dark history in a way few novelists can manage. I

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