SINGAPORE – In this week’s Book Box, The Straits Times explores novels that contain murder and violence. Buy the books at Amazon. These articles include affiliate links. When you buy through them, we may earn a small commission.
Book review: Francis Spufford hits high notes with hard-boiled mystery Cahokia Jazz
A dead body, disembowelled on a rooftop. Two detectives, studying the scene of the crime in the cold hours before dawn. Across the water, a possible witness: a beautiful, enigmatic femme fatale who may be their downfall.
So far, so noir. But this murder has occurred in a city that does not exist, in the Roaring Twenties of an America that never was. In Cahokia, Native Americans call the shots.
Many have tried to reprise the style of American hard-boiled detective fiction immortalised by writers Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler from the 1920s to the 1950s.
Some have succeeded over the years. One thinks of James Ellroy’s seamy L.A. Confidential (1990); Richard K. Morgan’s cyberpunk thriller Altered Carbon (2002); or China Mieville’s speculative urban mystery The City & The City (2009).
In the past decade, however, no one has come close to touching the legacy of Hammett and Chandler – till now.
Book review: Well-intentioned but flat unpacking of Asian fetishisation in The Fetishist
Violinist Daniel Karmody has a fetish for Asian women, particularly those who remind him of his first love, the talented Korean cellist Alma Soon Ja Lee. Since their relationship ended 20 years ago, all of his sexual partners have been Asian women, save for his Swedish ex-wife.
Kyoko, the daughter of a married woman he had an affair with 20 years prior, is furious at him for breaking her mother’s heart and driving her to suicide. She believes the only fitting answer is death. Together with her boyfriend, she kidnaps Daniel to make him pay.
Intended as a darkly humorous book tackling the problem of the fetishisation of Asian women, the novel sets up an overly ambitious goal without delivering the necessary critiques and unpacking the real problem, save for a single hard-hitting scene where Kyoko berates Daniel for treating Asian women as ‘‘little dolls’’ to play with.
Book review: On knife-edge at the end of the world
Humanity teeters on the brink of extinction. Unless a murder is solved within the next 92 hours, a fog will devour an island, wiping out its last survivors.
In this ticking time bomb, we meet Stuart Turton’s third and latest cast of characters – a group of 122 villagers and three scientists, living together in uneasy harmony. The British author, best known for his award-winning debut, The Seven Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle (2018), is back with another inventive mystery novel, The Last Murder At The End Of The World.
After a relatively slow start, things get off to a steady sprint when a key figure dies under mysterious circumstances. There is thrilling urgency to the brisk narrative, reinforced by an ominous countdown that punctuates the novel and reminds the reader of what is at stake.
Book review: Drawn-out and overly academic feel to sleepwalking murder mystery Anna O
Four years ago, Anna Ogilvy murdered her two best friends and then fell into a deep sleep from which she has never woken.
The media dubs her Anna O, the Sleeping Beauty who committed one of the worst crimes of the decade. Obsessed fanatics argue over her guilt. Internet sleuths hypothesise about a motive for the gruesome deaths.
None of that matters, only that Dr Ben Prince has been tasked with waking her so the legal system can finally decide if Anna was awake or sleepwalking when she stabbed two people to death.
The Straits Times’ Weekly Bestsellers April 6
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu hits No. 1 spot.
