April’s new releases include quite a few translated works, so many that I’ve had to pick and choose more than usual to make sure that we get a solidly crime-oriented list (sorry, horror fans!). Thanks, as always, for reading this little column. And thanks to all the readers, writers, translators, and publishers who make this list possible.
- Miguel Ángel Hernández, The Pain of Others
Translated by Adrian Nathan West
(Other Press)
This book joins a rare group of works to fully interrogate the exploitation of our relationships with others in the context of true crime. I first came to Miguel Ángel Hernández through Anoxia, a moody, gothic masterpiece about death photography and the horrors of grief. In The Pain of Others, Hernández delves into his own past with a blend of thriller and memoir, investigating a decades-old-crime committed by his childhood best friend. Gorgeous, painful, and brilliant.
Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini, An Enigma By the Sea
Translated by Gregory Dowling
(Bitter Lemon)
In this well-plotted thriller by Italian duo Fruttero and Lucentini, translated into English for the first time, a private seaside idyll for the wealthy and reclusive becomes the scene of a shocking crime. As baffled local police bumble around the beach community, it’s up to one of the glamorous villa-dwellers to take up the mantle of detective and uncover all his neighbors’ many secrets. Featuring a quirky ensemble cast and an erudite amateur detective, this charming tale is sure to please a wide variety of readers.
Wolf Haas, Short Circuit
Translated by Jamie Bulloch
(HarperVia)
This book is so weird! And so cool. Here’s the set-up: a German man named Escher waits for an electrician to arrive. He picks up a book about an Italian mafia informer, on the run in witness protection. The reformed mafioso is waiting in his cell, desperate for freedom, and convinced he will be assassinated by his former colleagues immediately after release. To pass the time in prison, he’s been reading a strange novel, one in which a German waits for an electrician to arrive. The slim size of the volume belies the complexity of the plot, but those who stick with it and pay close attention will find themselves rewarded with a mind-bending ending.
Miye Lee, Break Room
Translated by Sandy Joosun Lee
(Bloomsbury)
What if your coworkers hated you so much that they nominated you for a reality television show in which the nation’s most hated colleagues engage in heated competition. A perfect distillation of how reality tv intensifies the prejudices and irritations of the quotidian (and a great way to channel your frustration at whoever keeps microwaving fish in the break room).
Karsten Dusse, Murder Mindfully
Translated by Florian Duijsens
(Soho Crime)
In this delightful satire, a lawyer goes to a mindfulness consultant who specializes in keeping high-stress corporate types from burnout. When the lawyer ends up murdering his best/worst client, he finds his own meditation practices dramatically improved. All he needs to do to stay “in the moment” is continue killing. I’m a big fan of the French novel Smoking Kills (even better in the cigarette-package warning language of the original, Fumer tue), in which the novel’s charming psychopath, having left his nicotine habit behind at the behest of his wife and the machinations of a hypnotist, finds himself only able to enjoy cigarettes in the moments after committing murder. Relatable.
Indrek Hargla, The Secret of Saint Olaf’s Church
Translated by Adam Cullen
(Pushkin Press)
Indrek Hargla’s tale of a crime-solving apothecary is based in obscure, and very real, history; the mystery unraveled by the amateur sleuth takes its jumping off point from a mysterious note in Latvian historical records, for a richly detailed and vividly imagined take on a high-water mark in Latvia’s regional influence. In The Secret of Saint Olaf’s Church, the murder of an aging knight leads a city luminary towards a horrifying secret with deep implications for the city’s fragile economic status and unstable power structure.
