domingo, 29 de abril de 2012

Two Refreshing Splashes of Summertime Homicide By Janet Maslin


Two Refreshing Splashes of Summertime Homicide

By Janet Maslin  
 Benjamin Black (photo)

A DEATH IN SUMMER
By Benjamin Black
308 pages. Henry Holt & Company. $25.

TIGERLILY’S ORCHIDS
By Ruth Rendell
257 pages. Scribner. $26.

Both Benjamin Black and Ruth Rendell have written inviting new novels filled with nicely malevolent characters. It hardly seems sporting to relegate these books to the murder-story genre just because some of those characters wind up dead of unnatural causes.
Benjamin Black, whose fifth book is “A Death in Summer,” started out as the escapist alter ego of John Banville, who won the Man Booker Prize for his 2005 novel “The Sea.” But his Black persona has been such a success that he looks increasingly like the Superman to Mr. Banville’s more literary Clark Kent. His books about the dour Irish pathologist named Quirke have effortless flair, with their period-piece cinematic ambience and their sultry romance. The Black books are much more like Alan Furst’s elegant, doom-infused World War II spy books than like standard crime tales.
“Through the satin stuff of her dress he could feel the twin sharp flanges of her shoulder blades,” this new book says of Quirke and his latest flame. (Note the voluptuous satin.) “Her sobs made them twitch like tensely folded wings.” The weeping woman is beautiful, French, aloof and newly widowed. And Quirke would be a lot more comfortable with Françoise d’Aubigny if he were not also dealing with the corpse of her newly murdered husband, an Irish newspaper tycoon named Richard Jewell. He is just guilty enough to feel “a whiff of brimstone” while succumbing to her dangerous allure.
Like Ms. Rendell, the so-called Benjamin Black is astute and particular in capturing such nuances. And for both of them the crime-solving aspect of storytelling is not a book’s top priority. So “A Death in Summer” takes its sweet time figuring out who wanted to get rid of Richard Jewell. While waiting it often allows its characters to shiver and tremble unaccountably in summer weather and succumbs to the occasional fit of verbosity. At one atypically overripe moment the author manages to use “miasmic,” “ether,” “teeming,” “bacilli,” “succumb,” “writhe” and “tender torment” in the same sentence.
The four Black books are very similar in caliber. But they become increasingly complicated as Quirke’s past escapades pile up. In addition to its abundant back story “A Death in Summer” has an unusual interest in the uncertainties that faced Irish Jews (Richard Jewell was one) in the post-World War II era. Some of the book’s characters choose to recall recent history and notice anti-Semitism while others remain willfully oblivious, and the clash can be dramatic.
“Jewishness is a state of mind,” insists Quirke’s daughter Phoebe, who has picked up that idea from her Jewish suitor. “It most certainly is more than a state of mind,” counters Rose, the incongruous American Southerner in this book full of Dubliners. Rose also says, “Some of the most charming and cultivated men I have known were bigots to the bone.”
Yet Rose is a lot more bighearted than the people Ms. Rendell imagines in her latest artful stand-alone, “Tigerlily’s Orchids.” At 81, Ms. Rendell, a k a Barbara Vine, a k a Baroness Rendell of Babergh, a member of the House of Lords, continues to write in impeccable form, dripping both mirth and malice. So she centers this book on Lichfield House, an apartment building that has six flats, and begins by ticking off its motley crew of residents. First up: the nasty Ms. Olwen Curtis, whose all-purpose reply to any remark made to her is “Not really.” Having survived two husbands and become free to do whatever she wants, Olwen has decided to drink herself to death. That’s it. No other plans.
But nothing, not even self-destruction, is easy in this well-built little book. How is Olwen to solve the logistical problem she has created? She’s not very strong; how is she going to haul home all those bottles and get them upstairs to Flat 6?
Now Ms. Rendell introduces the residents of the other five apartments and their interlocking problems. Although the characters in “Tigerlily’s Orchids” ricochet off one another constantly, none of them has any understanding of the others. Each is utterly self-absorbed, none more so than a busybody named Duncan Yeardon who lives in a nearby building. As Duncan nosily watches the residents of Lichfield House come and go, he displays a talent for totally misunderstanding them all.
Duncan is at his most clueless when it comes to the neighborhood’s beautiful, uncommunicative young Asian woman who lives in a building that has a summerhouse in its yard. Duncan thinks of her as Tigerlily and imagines her as the exotic orchid grower of the book’s mischievous title. So we know what she is not. Long before the book reaches its denouement and explains Tigerlily, Ms. Rendell has created multiple reasons for ambulances to visit the neighborhood and a string of half-comical misunderstandings. This book’s tone would be screwball if its story didn’t have a body count.
Among Ms. Rendell’s most enjoyable creations are Michael Constantine, a columnist who is always looking for fodder (a snowfall makes him wonder if he should write “something about the crystals all being of a different pattern”); Stuart Font, a show-off who cannot pass a mirror without being captivated; Freddy Livorno, who uses bugging equipment to find out that Stuart has bewitched not only himself but also Freddy’s wife, Claudia; and at least one character who is conducting a secret life on the Internet, with unfortunate consequences.
For an ordinary author this densely populated story might have too many moving parts. For Ms. Rendell it’s one more merry chance to create seemingly harmless characters and lead them into harm’s way.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 14, 2011
The Books of The Times review on July 4, about “A Death in Summer” by Benjamin Black (a pseudonym of the author John Banville), and “Tigerlily’s Orchids” by Ruth Rendell, misstated the number of books Mr. Banville has published as Benjamin Black. “A Death in Summer” is the fifth, not the fourth.

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