You know I like crime fiction and you know I like German literature, so of course I couldn’t resist sneaking in a few crime novels for German Literature Month. This time I look at two novels which purport to bring crime and comedy together, even though English speakers like to pretend that the Germans lack a sense of humour.
Jakob Arjouni: Ein Mann, ein Mord (One Man, One Murder)
The archetypical hard-boiled yet compassionate German detective with a Turkish name (and looks) is back in this third outing by the wonderful Arjouni. Arjouni really hits his stride in this one: Kayankaya has become much more thoughtful, mature and empathetic in this book, whilst also retaining his rebellious streak, sheer bloody-mindedness and vicious sense of humour.
Weidenbusch is a bright round ball of a middle-aged man who ‘probably irons his underwear and thinks that pink glasses and colourful watches would give him a personality’. He hires Kayankaya to find the love of his life, Sri Dao, a young Thai woman he has been trying to rescue from a strip joint. She was promised false papers which would enable her to settle in Germany, but has now disappeared, and her boyfriend thinks she might have been kidnapped. Kayankaya starts combing first the bars and brothels of Frankfurt, then the asylum seekers’ detention centres, the deportation unit at the airport and other government offices. Along the way, he encounters squalor, desperation, corruption, party politics and entrepreneurial criminals who do not shy away from making money out of the most vulnerable in society.
Unsavoury characters abound in this (oddly timely) look at immigrants and refugees falling off the radar in the underbelly of Frankfurt. Kayankaya meets each racist aside with his trademark sarcasm and turning of tables. Arjouni is not afraid of handling big themes with clear-eyed, unsentimental storytelling, wit, but above all understanding.
They’d fled. They’d gone halfway round the world with just two cases. They’d written applications, been turned down, renewed their applications, been turned down again, were housed in stables or ten to a room. They’d hidden and lived without papers and now they wanted to get some false ones. They’d managed to find 3000 Marks out of nowhere, had tried everything, just to be able to say: tomorrow I can sleep as long as I like… But they don’t have a chance. Refused means refused. The refugee “in whose culture torture is a common method for questioning”. The refugee ‘who would not have to fear any repercussions upon his return to his home country, if only he had not been politically active – and he was fully aware of the risks he was taking’. And of course the ‘economic migrant’, regarded as a vagrant when he stands in front of our German supermarkets, as if hunger and poverty for three quarters of the world’s population is a basic human right… Sooner or later, they’ll find them all and put them on the nearest plane. [my translation]
Jutta Profijt: Morgue Drawer Four (transl. Erik Macki)
I have a faint suspicion that Profijt may have modelled herself on Arjouni in this mad caper of a crime novel (shortlisted for the Glauser Prize). I rather liked the set-up, although I struggle to see how it could win any literary prizes.
Sascha (who prefers to be called Pascha) is a car thief who believes he is too cool for school, but is in fact just a small-time, foul-mouthed criminal. After being pushed off a bridge, he refuses to accept the verdict of accidental death and haunts gentle, hesitant pathologist, Martin Gänsewein, a stickler for detail, whose life is turned upside-down through his ability to communicate with the dead spirit.
The humour was inconsistent, fine at times and a bit forced at others, and I can see how the story might wear thin for a series. A perfectly fun read for a first attempt and a bit different from the usual crime fare, but nothing like Arjouni’s deep humanism and precise style here. Entertainment rather than enlightenment is the purpose here.
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