Celia Fremlin: Hours Before Dawn

I remember Sarah Weinman mentioning Celia Fremlin as one of the domestic suspense writers who she needed to pay more attention to. When I found one of Fremlin's books in Finnish translation, I picked it up. It was one of those books I'd always known existed, but hadn't paid any attention to them.

But boy, what a good book Hours Before Dawn is! I read it almost in one sitting. I had to take care of some business during the reading, but I really wouldn't've liked to. I heard later that The Times Magazine had included the novel in their list of hundred best thrillers, and I couldn't agree more.

Hours Before Dawn was first published in 1959, and it is a perfect embodiment of domestic suspense: the lead character is a still youngish woman with three kids and an impatient husband, and the mystery concentrates almost entirely on what happens inside their little house. Her smallest kid clearly has colic, and he shouts and screams all the time when he should be sleeping. This bugs the husband and the neighbour and keeps the mother awake. I don't know of any other crime novel that deals with colic - and actually makes the colic baby the center of the mystery.

There's indeed a mystery, but Hours Before Dawn is still a crimeless novel. There are no murders, stabbings, thefts, frauds, shakedowns or what have you. Yet this is one of the most powerful crime novels I've read in a long time.

I read the Finnish translation (see the picture; the Polish-style cover is by Finnish graphic artist Heikki Ahtiala), but the book seems to be readily available in affordable reprint.

John Connolly: Dark Hollow

Dark Hollow was the first book I've ever read by John Connolly, even though I've known about him for quite some time now. I remember Kevin Wignall being very surprised about the fact that Connolly hasn't been translated in Finnish, he's pretty big in the UK.

Though he's an UK author, his books - at least some of them - are set in the US. Dark Hollow stars his private eye anti-hero Charlie "Bird" Parker, who encounters serial killers in the books. Maybe that's why I haven't been very interested in Connolly's work, as serial killers are pretty much a bore to me. (Especially in a series. How could that possibly happen?)

But Dark Hollow was strong enough to warrant more reading from him. The book was too long, though, especially in the beginning where it took over 50 pages to get the story even started and almost 100 pages to get the backstory out of the way. I don't really care for that kind of thing, even though Connolly clearly thinks Charlie Parker's own traumatic story needs to be told and retold. There was some padding also after the story got going (and I'm not sure whether Connolly got all his sideplots going and whether they were necessary, then again I'm not very good at analysing plots), but the story still kept my interest going. And it was epic, like with Ross Macdonald or James Ellroy, with the hidden crimes being committed decades ago and still reflecting their dark nature into the present day. Some of the scenes are very suspenseful, almost out of a horror novel. Connolly can create a monster that feels human. 

I'll intend to read more John Connolly. 

Simon Lelic's Rupture

I read the Finnish translation of Simon Lelic's Rupture (A Thousand Cuts seems to be the US title) book and wrote a review of it for the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper. I liked it quite a bit, but not enough to keep it on my shelves. It's a frightening tale of a teacher who kills four pupils, one teacher and then himself. Lelic, whose debut novel this is, writes the first half of the book mostly through fragments and witness testimonies which makes for a compelling read, but the second half is marred by a didactic tone and an ending that's way too upbeat. It's simplistic and makes one hope Lelic wouldn't have pulled his punches this way.

Recommended, though, if you're into serious British crime writing or the topic of school shootings. It's interesting to me, since I've been having these dreams of... writing something about school shootings (a publisher actually once proposed I'd write a novel of a school shooting, but nothing came of it).