Book Reviews by Serena Nanda and Joan Gregg: Crime and Culture, Past is Present

Autumn: All The Cats Return. By Philippe Georget. 2012. World Noir, Europa Edition. Translated from the French by Steven Rendell and Lisa Neal. In contrast to The Unquiet Dead, this mystery opens with a methodical murder by someone who has a personal reason for killing this particular victim, an elderly man, who appears to be a social isolate, living alone in an apartment in Perpignan, in southern France. The murder clearly does not involve a robbery as neither the victim nor his apartment indicate any signs of wealth and nothing has been disturbed as it would be in a search for money or other valuables. The only suggestion of a motive is the letters OAS, painted on the apartment's living room door.

The lead Investigating Officer, Lieutenant Gilles Sebag of the local police, immediately sees a possible connection between the murder and the French-Algerian war that took place over 60 years ago. This historic connection seems confirmed by some old photos of a white city, clearly Algiers, that hang on the apartment walls. Despite the ambivalence of his police team, and the contemptuous criticism of his senior commander, Lieutenant Sebag is determined to investigate the possible role of a local community of Pieds-Noir in this murder.

The Pieds-Noir are French citizens born in Algeria who reluctantly and only after much violence, returned to France, leaving behind them a country they loved and felt to be their own. In Perpignan, as in other parts of France, Pieds-Noir were stigmatized and attacked for trying to build monuments to their dying community. Their violent underground and ultimately unsuccessful role in the Algerian war is brought to life by personal flashbacks throughout the novel. A female police officer and Sebag’s wife make important instrumental and emotional contributions to the investigation, but the most important female in the narrative is Sebag's teenage daughter, who asks her father to find the hit and run driver who killed a school friend on the day of the murder. He is determined not to let her down.

While it hardly seems likely that the two events are related, and despite his police team's skepticism, Sebag is eventually rewarded for his persistence. As a murder mystery, an historical novel, and a police procedural Autumn:All The Cats Return, will leave the reader looking forward to hearing more from this new author.

Marked for Life. Emelie Schepp. 2016. Mira Books. This Swedish murder mystery is both a well crafted police procedural and a scary thriller. The past emerges in flashbacks that appear in nightmares and personal stories brought into the present, though we are uncertain almost to the end about who are the main actors, where the events are taking place, or what the narratives reveal. Children play a central role, both in revealing the past and in their present connections to the crimes that are being investigated. Like the other two books reviewed here, competition between two female police officers, one a police investigator and the other a public prosecutor, plays an important role in investigating the crimes.

As in The Unquiet Dead and in Autumn these conflicts both lead to false trails and provoke insights that help solve the case. In the first murder both the how and the why appear murky: the victim is a seemingly ordinary bureaucrat killed in his home and no one can suggest any reason or enemies that may be involved. Finding some threatening letters in the victim's closet and a child's fingerprints on the living room window are both suggestive but also confusing. Neither the victim's work nor his restricted social life nor his wife can shed any light on his murder.

Down the road in the narrative drug sales appear to be involved and more startling still, is the almost coincidental discovery of shipping containers with a gruesome cargo that are found underwater adjacent to a remote and now uninhabited island. This discovery brings the past into the present, thanks to the determined and capable efforts of a female forensics officer. At the same time more murders occur and through flashbacks and contemporary clues the reader is brought slowly but surely toward the source of the criminal activity that is the centerpiece of the story. And the ending – well we won't give it away, but it is a finishing touch in line with the chilling action that brings us there.

Although Schepp is not a well known mystery writer in the United States, she is an international best-selling author and it is easy to see why.

Serena Nanda is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York.

Joan Gregg is Professor Emeritus of English Literature and English as a Second Language at New York City Technical College, City University of New York. They are co-authors of two culturally-based murder mysteries, Gift of a Bride: A Tale of Anthropology, Matrimony and Murder and Assisted Dying: An Ethnographic Murder Mystery on Florida's Gold Coast.

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Book Reviews by Serena Nanda and Joan Gregg: Crime and Culture, Past is Present

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