CRIME
Revenge in the snow
S. RAMACHANDER
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An attempt to follow the police novel tradition featuring an entertaining and lively two-man act.
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Snow Blind: Now You See Me, Now You Die; P.J. Tracy, Michael Joseph, £ 12.99.
THE detective novel, or whodunnit, is a peculiarly British creation and has long been a special preserve of British writers, such as P.D. James, Ruth Rendall and Colin Dexter who have created memorable characters, such as Commander Adam Dalgleish, Inspector Wexford and Inspector Morse, who have become as well known for their sleuthing as for their very human quirks and foibles and wit. The American murder mystery, on the other hand, has tended to follow a somewhat less cerebral way and gorier manner of story telling, full of gunshots and car chases, especially when it is a detective who is part of the regular force.
Action-packed thrillers
The cousins across the Atlantic in fact seem more at home in the action-packed thrillers where the traditional skulduggery of the CIA-FBI combine full of dark deeds and violence. They are also able to pull them off as if to the manner born.
Snow Blind is, however, an attempt to follow the police novel tradition featuring an entertaining and lively two-man act, Detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth: one more straight and sober, and the other full of black humour and sardonic one-liners and wisecracks, with the occasional earthy analogy or swear-word thrown in.
The story is set in Minnesota in a year when winter comes late but tries to make up for it by dumping yards of snow relentlessly on the countryside, shutting down practically everything — except ex-cons looking for revenge, a new one-day old lady Sheriff and the two blues from the MPD. Children and parents enthusiastically brave the sub-zero weather to build snowmen in a popular seasonal festival, which is an annual event.
All hell breaks loose when two of the snowmen begin to melt a little and expose the bodies of two men, obviously shot dead at close range before someone wrapped them up carefully in snow. When they turn out to be much respected policemen from the local force, this bizarre setting sets off a flurry of activity that races along with crisp action, page turning suspense and a couple of weird twists and turns that are certainly not worth revealing in a review!
Well observed
The descriptive pieces are of really good quality and well observed. One can sense, for example, the eerie calm of a silent, snow bound countryside on a dark moonless night, as heavy feet of a fugitive from justice squelch through knee-high slushy snow, frozen to the marrow of the bones, and desperately searching for a lonely barn to rest his head in.
Equally touching is the delineation of character in the thawing of the difficult, prickly temper of the tough-talking policeman Gino, who hates the never ending white stuff pouring down but feels a sense of moral outrage at the harm done to defenceless women by some of the men involved and wants to carry on regardless of any danger. In the end, however, there is a snag; one is left wondering whether the authors (a mother and daughter team who jointly share the pseudonym made out of their names) chickened out and did not know how to end the tale.
Twist in the tail
It is not your conventional mystery, which is unravelled and put together again in the drawing room to an appreciative audience by the master detective in the final scene — as the guilty are brought to book, and the good vindicated.
There is a strange twist in the tail end of the narrative, which to some might be pleasurable and leave others, accustomed to the genre, somewhat unsatisfied.
In any event the ending is the weakest element in an otherwise very professionally put together, workmanlike saga of wrongdoing.
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