From the Editor - Criminal Element

From the Editor

One of the things I love most about mysteries is that they're really social novels, but with a specific bent: someone has been killed. And the someone who has perpetrated the murder has upended the natural order of things. It's up to a detective - a person who might be a bit of a misfit too - to right it by uncovering not only whodunit, but why - and what that says about the social dynamics of the age.

The best crime writers can give us insights into society, bureaucracy, the give-and-take of office and local and national politics, into the way colleagues, friends, men and women relate to each other. And they do it without preaching - they do it through story, setting and character, like social novels of the past.

This month, we have features on two authors who have set their novels in societies where life is a peril, where truth is even more elusive than it is in an open society, and where detectives aim to preserve a bit of their personal dignity while suffering the indignities of a system that doesn't necessarily reward the uncovering of truths.

In his debut novel, The Holy Thief, William Ryan takes us to Soviet Russia in 1936, the mystery surrounding a missing icon (and a gruesome murder in a church), and most tellingly, how the Soviet police state -and the police within that police state - operated. It's an astonishing work of historical recreation that is, at the same time, a surprising mystery that for the life of me I could not figure out.

I spoke with Ryan about his work and his background in mind-numbing bureaucracy - as a lawyer for a large bank - that probably helped him understand the cold heart of a communist state. But now that he's embarked on his writing career, we're luckier for it - and in the detective Alexei Korolev, he's created an original and appealing character who also happens to be happily recognizable as a hardboiled type familiar to lovers of 1930s movie mysteries.

James Church spent most of his life working for the U.S. intelligence service, specializing in Korea. He brings an insider's knowledge to his popular and original series of Inspector O novels, which are set in that land that only the hardy few know: North Korea. Inspector O, like the best detectives in fiction, knows the limits of the system in which he must toil, and his blunt and bitter humor in the face of party hacks and political nemeses are his weapons against the dehumanization of life under an oppressive rule.

Church (a pseudonym) told me about how the character of O came about, and what the nature of the two Koreas is like (they're more similar than not).

These novels are set in politically charged atmosphere - but they're political novels in the sense that Anthony Trollope's political novels are political: they concern the people behind the policy. Because after all, no one really cares about policy (or politicians). But we all care about getting to know great fictional characters, such as Korolev and O.

Finally, I had a chance to chat with the wonderful Nevada Barr, who has given readers a gift for much of the last two decades with her Anna Pigeon novels, which are set in and around our nation's national parks and monuments. In Barr's books, the geography and landscape of a place is a major character (though Anna Pigeon herself is also a memorable personage), and Barr has a way of making us aware of our remarkable legacy in the United States of trying to protect our natural resources - and of how easily such a legacy can slip away through bureaucratic mismanagement or just plain stupidity. In my interview with Barr, she tells about her inspiration, her reason for setting her newest novel in New Orleans, and why she doesn't bother to take notes when she visits our parks for research.

- Bob Hughes

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