Reading for pleasure: December 2023

Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini (trans. Gregory Dowling) (Bitter Lemon Press: £9.99; e-book £7.99)

Well, here’s one for those of you who specialise in trading standards and consumer rights to get your teeth into. According to their website, those very nice people at Bitter Lemon Press, good friends to this column, specialise in translated literary crime novels and romans noirs from abroad.

So as you make your way through the pages of The Lover of No Fixed Abode, what are you supposed to think? You may find it odd that two authors together can create a novel. Me too, but I discover that Signori Fruttero and Lucentini collaborated regularly for 40 years until the suicide of the latter in 2002. You will marvel at the subtlety, elegance and quality of the writing. And you will certainly marvel at one of the finest evocations of Venice and her mysteries.

But return to your lawyer hat. It is no spoiler alert to tell you that there is no whodunnit here. Written in 1986, this features a heroine (we never learn her name) from Rome, a lady of substance and discernment. Working for an English auction house, she is on one of her regular trips to La Serenissima searching for art to sell. Before meeting her, we make the acquaintance of Mr Silvera, a tour guide accompanying passengers on a cruise ship. On the surface he appears dowdy, not to say down at heel, but the man clearly has something. Not least an encyclopaedic knowledge of Venice, but also an extraordinary command of multitudinous languages. How has this been acquired in just over 40 years on earth?

The title will give an obvious clue as to the unravelling of the plot. Commentators will tell you that the two authors leave a trail of clues for the principal mystery. Not the usual crime novel of, who? Here, the question is, who the hell?

I picked up on none of them, and was blown away by the ending, as well as by the writing. Certainly the best book I’ve read this year, and one of the finest I’ve read in any other.

Simon Mason (Riverrun: £9.99; e-book 99p)

In Simon Mason’s first novel for adults, Oxford-based detectives DI Ray Wilkins and DI Ryan Wilkins, brought together to investigate the murder of a young Syrian woman in one of the city’s most august colleges, share a surname and an occupation, but little else. Ray is Black, educated, well off, and meticulous; single parent Ryan, brought up on a trailer park, is white, combative, and works on instinct. 

The mismatched detective duo is a well worn trope in fiction, whether in a book or on the screen, as is the notion of a campus sprinkled with the lecherous, eccentric, and rapacious. And Oxford has had more than its fair share of literary sleuths over the years. It’s very much to the author’s credit, therefore, that he manages to create something fresh and compelling from these ingredients. The plotting is sharp, features both the more and less affluent areas of Oxford, and in passing manages to pose one or two pertinent questions about the extent to which educational establishments require to compromise to attract external funding. The book’s real strength, though, is the relationship between Ray and Ryan, which avoids cliché by developing into, at best, grudging tolerance rather than affection. And the really good news is that this is the first of a series: Ryan, in particular, is a unique character I will be very happy to see again.

John Kampfner (Atlantic Books: £22; e-book £7.47)

John Kampfner brought us Why the Germans Do It Better. In his latest book, he puts the capital under the spotlight and shines that light into many areas, aspects and life of the city. As someone who has visited the city on numerous occasions and who thought he knew much about it, this book adds manifold to that knowledge. The author has a clear understanding of the city and its people. It takes a long time to get to know the Germans, and even longer in Berlin, particularly natives to the city. 

As the author points out, the city has been a melting pot of peoples since its inception. Each new wave of immigrants is met with suspicion until they themselves become part of the fabric and life of the city. Of course, this was accentuated with the fall of the wall, when the Ossi/Wessi debate began and to a large extent remains today. There are two trains of thought on unification: either it was by agreement or it was a takeover (Anschluss). And being Germany, both are mired in legal debate. The author takes us to little-visited museums where relics which some would rather forget, are put on display. To walk around Berlin, and to be accompanied by Kampfner, is to experience a city like no other. 

As Kampfner points out, there are memorials to so many events in German history in Berlin, whether the Stolpersteiner (stumbling stones) set into the pavement recording the names, date of deportation and murder of Jewish inhabitants, the remains of the Nazi government quarter, or the rebuilding of the Palace (Humboldt Forum) on Unter den Linden, itself replacing the Palace of the Republic, the seat of the East German government. The author also reminds us of the geopolitical role Germany and, being the seat of government, Berlin plays, primarily in its relationship with Russia under Chancellor Merkel. This book is outstanding.