Tokyo, football, crime novel for intellectuals and an absent father

By Tony Montesinos

Around the black novel there has always been some controversy, even though today it is an absolutely successful commercial reality. It is narrative of pure entertainment, to which even those who enjoy it dedicate words of certain disdain and that has been ignored by literary historians or literary critics. Because, although it received the applause of great writers such as Faulkner, Yeats or TS Eliot, many were also those who wondered “Why do people read detective novels?”, as an essay by Edmund Wilson says.

He admitted to having read an Agatha Christie novel set in Egypt –we suppose “Death on the Nile”– that had him trapped, although he would end up despising it to the point of not wanting to open any other of his narratives. “You can’t read such a book, you go through it to see the problem solved,” he said. And his friend Nabokov considered the detective novel to be the negation of style, poorly written and boring conventional literature.

But the reader is not looking for stylistic excellence in these books, but rather a gripping plot, a case to unravel and a charismatic detective, even though many authors have given outstanding examples of dealing with the genre, such as Pierre Lamaitre, winner of the Goncourt 2013 and who in short works like “Rosy & John” he achieved round texts that conveyed suspense and were perfect to be brought to the screen. In fact, in this «Dictionary…» (translation by José Antonio Soriano Marco) appears «The Wire». And it is that «the series were a gift from heaven for novelists and screenwriters. They were the missing link between the cinema and the novel.

Lemaitre has achieved a juicy book, which obeys his tastes and embraces concepts (violence, verisimilitude, reality, technique…), writers (Yves Ravey, Dennis Lehane, Petros Márkaris, Elmore Leonard, Joseph Incardona…), classics (Hammett, Chandler …) and works: «In cold blood», «The name of the rose»… At a time when the internet and Wikipedia have almost completely removed the publication of dictionaries or encyclopedic books, it provides a look to give or not the reason for the accusation that crime novels abuse stereotypes.

• «Passionate dictionary of the black novel» (Salamandra), by Pierre Lamaitre, 512 pages, 24 euros.

▲ The best

The number of authors that for the Spanish reader will be little known and that are worthwhile.

▼ worst

There are absences of weight, but it is logical, since the terrain is incomprehensible.

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