Hey, guess what? It’s my birthday! And what better way to celebrate than to recommend some stirring new international crime fiction to y’all. This month’s picks include Nazis on the run in South America, a new Swedish-style Sherlock story, an action-packed Japanese thriller, a brooding Lebanese detective story, and a Kafkaesque take on the mid-century Japanese legal system, all beautifully translated and most from small presses.
Olivier Guez, The Disappearance of Joseph Mengele
Translated by Georgia de Chamberet
(Verso)
As Olivier Guez’s brilliant historical novel begins, the despicable doctor Mengele is living in Argentina, where he’s been welcomed by Peròn, who keeps a contingent of Nazis close by and has allowed in many of the worst war criminals of history into his nation. Mengele finds success in his new home and respect from his equally horrible peers, and spends the first 15 years or so sleeping with escorts, selling his father’s farm equipment, and giving the daughters of the elite illegal abortions on the side. After the capture of Eichman, Mengele becomes obsessed with the specter of Israeli pursuit, yet Guez does a wonderful job at capturing the mindset of a hunted Nazi who’s still utterly convinced that he’s done nothing wrong, despite the occasional nightmare in his sleep that says otherwise.
David Lagercrantz, Dark Music
Translated by Ian Giles
(Knopf)
Scandinavian noir meets Sherlock pastiche in this new thriller from David Lagercrantz, known for his continuations of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. An erudite yet fragile professor teams up with a street-smart detective to find the culprit behind an asylum seeker’s murder.
Kotaro Isaka, Three Assassins
Translated by Sam Malissa
(Overlook)
In this follow-up to the immensely entertaining Bullet Train, now an equally fantastic feature film, we encounter another host of petty criminals doing their jobs with little idea of why or what for. Suzuki, a man bent on revenge after the death of his wife, is the moral center of the novel; he joins the criminal organization behind his wife’s murder and finds himself in pursuit of some of Tokyo’s most dangerous underground figures (who all have fantastic names like “the Whale” and “Cicada”).
Jabbour Douaihy, The King of India
Translated by Paula Haydar
(Interlink Press)
The title is misleading, as this one takes place in Lebanon, where a newly returned prodigal son is found murdered. Did his cousins kill him to rob him of a valuable painting, or is the answer more complicated? The investigator assigned to the case is not so sure, and perhaps more interested in solving the riddle of the murdered man’s life than the mystery of his death. Moody, poetic, and intellectual, The King of India is the perfect introspective read for early fall.
Otohiko Kaga, Marshland
Translated by Albert Novick
(Dalkey Archive)
A couple is framed for an attack on a train station and spends decades trying to prove their innocence in this lyrical new novel. Set between the 1940s and the 1960s, Otohiko Kaga’s Marshland is also a brilliant and richly detailed historical novel. The publisher describes it as “Kafkaesque” and “Tolstoyan” so you know what you’re getting into.
