I’m fascinated by long stories where things aren’t exactly as they seem. Most crime fiction is secrets and lies and their eventual uncovering but most ‘literary’ fiction is too. For what it’s worth, I was a book reviewer for all the posh UK papers for about 15 years, including crime fiction critic for The Observer for twelve (so I’ve read far more crime novels than is healthy for anyone!). I’m a voracious reader and writer and I love making things more complicated for myself (and the reader) by coming up with stuff that I’ve then somehow got to fit together.
City is the first of my Brighton Trilogy (the others are The Last King of Brighton and The Thing Itself). It brings together a (real life) unsolved 1930 murder – the Brighton Trunk Murder – with the modern-day disgrace of Brighton’s young, thrusting Chief Constable, Bob Watts, when an armed police operation goes horribly wrong and a seemingly innocent man is killed.
The connection between the two events is the father of Bob Watts – a Brighton policeman at the time of the trunk murder, who kept a not altogether reliable diary of the investigation. Many things about the two crimes are resolved in City but further resolutions and twists come in the other two books – which is how I like my trilogies and quartets!
Not crime although there are crimes in it. The narrative structure of the quartet was a major influence on structuring my trilogy. The first three present different versions of the same events and characters in Alexandria, Egypt before and during the Second World War. In Book 1, a self-absorbed, pretentious narrator, Darley, presents an account of an intense love affair. In book 2, Balthazar shows how ignorant he was about what was really going on about him. Mountolive widens the political context and shows both earlier narrators were looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Book 4 manages to tease out yet more solutions to mysteries thought resolved.
Rediscover one of the twentieth century's greatest romances in Lawrence Durrell's seductive tale of four tangled lovers in wartime Egypt that is 'stunning' (Andre Aciman) and 'wonderful' (Elif Shafak)
'A masterpiece.' Guardian
'A formidable, glittering achievement.' TLS
'One of the great works of English fiction.' Times
'Dazzlingly exuberant ... Superb.' Observer
'Brave and brazen ... Lush and grandiose.' Independent
'Legendary ... Casts a spell ... Reader, watch out!' Guardian
'Lushly beautiful ... One of the most important works of our time.' NYTBR
Alexandria, Egypt. Trams, palm trees and watermelon stalls lie honey-bathed in sunlight; in darkened bedrooms, sweaty lovers unfurl.…
William Golding surpassed his Lord of the Flies with these novels about a sea voyage to Australia in the early 19th century on a former man-of-war crammed with passengers and crew. In it he explores his usual theme—all that is good and (mostly) bad in human nature and how savagery can so easily erupt.
Something dark happens in the cramped confines below deck, linked to Reverend Colley, an unhappy on-ship acquaintance of the young aristocrat, Edmund Talbot, who narrates the story via his diaries.
Talbot sorts the dark secret to his own satisfaction but that’s an unreliable narrator for you! A dark cloud still hangs over the ship, despite some lightness, especially as the old vessel may flounder before it reaches Australia. Stunning—and stunning evocation of shipboard life.
Sailing to Australia in the early years of the nineteenth century, Edmund Talbot keeps a journal to amuse his godfather back in England. Full of wit and disdain, he records the mounting tensions on the ancient, stinking warship, where officers, sailors, soldiers and emigrants jostle in the crammed spaces below decks.Then a single passenger, the obsequious Reverend Colley, attracts the animosity of the sailors, and in the seclusion of the fo'castle something happens to bring him into a 'hell of self-degradation', where shame is a force deadlier than the sea itself.
This is post-modern crime fiction thematically linked and all with increasingly unreliable characters—because they’re each going insane.
In City of Glass private investigator, Daniel Quinn, goes mad sinking deeper into an investigation about identity. Who is telling his story and can they be relied on? Is it any of these characters who appear: ‘the author,’ ‘Paul Auster the writer,’ ‘Paul Auster the detective’? Whoosh.
I love this stuff but understand it’s an acquired taste!
Paul Auster's signature work, "The New York Trilogy," consists of three interlocking novels: "City of Glass," "Ghosts," and "The Locked Room" - haunting and mysterious tales that move at the breathless pace of a thriller."City of Glass" - As a result of a strange phone call in the middle of the night, Quinn, a writer of detective stories, becomes enmeshed in a case more puzzling than any he might hace written"Ghosts"Blue, a student of Brown, has been hired to spy on Black. From a window of a rented house on Orange street, Blue stalks his subject, who is staring out…
More insane narrators (or are they?) but you can’t get more unreliable than that. Discovered these thematically linked novels decades ago and came back to them when I was trying to work out the voice of the Trunk Murderer in my Trilogy and what mental state that person might have been in.
In The Deadly Percheron a psychiatrist has a patient, otherwise seeming perfectly sane, claiming delusions that aren’t necessarily believable. (Except, of course, in fiction the best delusions are. The psychiatrist is drawn in and you know that’s not going to end well.)
Between 1946 and 1948 john franklin bardin produced 3 quite extraordinary novels, all distinguished by a hallucinatory intensity of feeling and an absorption in morbid psychology remarkable for the period. "the deadly percheron", "the last of philip banter" and "devil take the blue-tail fly" are unlike anything else in modern crime literature. 10/6/87 UK PRIORITY REISSUE
Fifth Business is the first of the Deptford Trilogy as the very first line. Deptford is a small village in Canada, by the way. Canadian author, Robertson Davis, wrote this trilogy in the 1970s. It has several things that have influenced me, not least different narrative perspectives.
A young lad throws a snowball and by mistake hits a pregnant woman, who goes into early labour. That has consequences for various Deptford characters. They all have secrets that affect other and are revealed in increments via the different narratives.
Although there is a main narrator—Dunstan Ramsey, a schoolmaster—for Fifth Business and The World of Wonders. He doesn’t appear as a character in the latter but he’s a character in The Manticore, whose narrator, undergoing Jungian analysis, thinks he might be his father. This narrator seems reliable but there are always secrets…
The first book in Robertson Davies's acclaimed The Deptford Trilogy, with a new foreword by Kelly Link
Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball…
In 1662, a man is wrongly executed for signing the death warrant of Charles I. Awaiting execution, he asks to speak with a priest, to whom he declares a curse on the village that betrayed him. The priest responds with a counter-curse, leaving just one option to nullify it.
Over four centuries later, Faith and James move to the country to start a new life and a family. They discover their village lives under the curse uttered by the hanged man. Could their arrival be connected? They fear their choice of new home is no coincidence. Unexplained events hint at threats or warnings to leave. They become convinced the village remains cursed despite their friends’ denials. Who can they trust, and who are potential enemies?
In 1660, a man is wrongly executed for signing the death warrant of Charles I. While awaiting execution, he asks to speak with a priest, to whom he declares a curse on the village that betrayed him. The priest responds with a counter-curse, leaving just one option to nullify it. Over four centuries later, Faith and James move to the country to start a new life and a family. They learn that their village lives under the curse uttered by the hanged man. Could their arrival be connected? Faith and James fear that their choice of a new home is…
