Martín Solares, The Black Minutes (2006)

In a 2012 interview, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, the dean of Mexican crime fiction, explains why he has not written a novel featuring his famous private eye, Hector Belascoarán Shayne, since the current drug war began in Mexico: "The narco war has changed everything in relations between society, crime, insecurity, law and order…These deep changes in society make you as a writer to rethink the whole thing." This is an interesting comment to keep in mind when trying to make sense of Martín Solares’ complex and fascinating 2006 novel, The Black Minutes, which in some ways can be read as charting a path for the Mexican crime novel in the era of the narco cartel. The first thing to note in this regard is that there is no equivalent to a private eye figure in Solares’ work; instead, the closest we come to having a protagonist is a police officer who is less corrupt than his colleagues (which is not saying much). Even with someone as gifted as Taibo, the effectiveness of a principled individual like Shayne is one of the more speculative, fanciful, some would say unrealistic, aspects of his work, and Solares seems to have abandoned this aspect of the genre all together. Instead, Solares focuses on the multiple and contradictory roles that crime plays in the neoliberal state: at once the focus of moral panics that apparently drive both policy and action, it is simultaneously a way for local, state, and national functionaries to enrich themselves and their associates. Given this context, it should come as no surprise that although the murders that focus The Black Minutes are technically solved, justice is nowhere to be found. One of Taibo’s Shayne novels is titled No Happy Ending, and this title would be perfectly appropriate for Solares’ novel, too. But in another sense, concentrating on the incomplete resolution of this novel severely undersells its richness. Combining familiar noir elements with dashes of magical realism, frequent references to a wide range of literary texts, and even a cameo appearance by Alfred Hitchcock, this is not an easy novel to classify. And, of course, both it and crime fiction as a whole are all the better for this fact.

The House of the Devil (2009)

Ti West is a very dependable and knowledgeable maker of horror films and The House of the Devil (2009) suggests why. If the opening credits themselves were not enough of a clue, the early appearance of famous horror actress Dee Wallace indicates that House is something of an homage to the classic era of 1970s/1980s slasher and haunted house movies. It contains a very effective combination of enough of the formulaic elements of the genre (heightened by the film’s early 80s setting) to satisfy the most discerning horror buff along with enough variations to ring the changes. For example, there’s a lovely moment when Samantha, House’s ‘final girl,’ opens the door to the basement and almost snorts in derision at the thought that she would go down there (she does not hesitate, however, to explore the rest of the house!). But perhaps the most distinctive feature of West’s work (we can also see it in The Innkeepers and The Sacrament) is that he’s a master of the ‘slow burn’ horror film: the pacing of the film, its editing, and the development of the plot are all developed deliberately and slowly, so much so that many viewers might find themselves bored. Those who stick around, though, will find The House of the Devil one of the most loving and effective reworkings of (one of) horror’s golden age(s) in recent years.

The Man Who Loved His Wife (1966/2013)

Now that Patricia Highsmith has at last received the recognition she always deserved, it occurs to me that the next female thriller writer whose greatness needs to be acknowledged is Vera Caspary. Thanks to the Feminist Press’ indispensable Femmes Fatales series, that process is well underway. After having brought both Laura and Bedelia back into print, in 2013 they published Caspary’s lesser-known 1966 novel, The Man Who Loved His Wife (1966) and it’s an absolute gem. The title is both deeply ironic and neutrally descriptive. Fletcher Strode is married to the beautiful Elaine, who is nineteen years younger than him. At first blissfully happy together, after Fletcher has a laryngectomy and loses his voice, his sense of masculinity becomes so compromised psychologically that his relationship with Elaine deteriorates and he becomes morbidly suspicious of her. He starts to keep a diary detailing his suspicions and inevitably, when he dies under mysterious circumstances, that diary becomes the focus of the police’s own suspicions about Elaine. Caspary shows a wonderful ability to understand Fletcher’s psychological torment so that he is both pitiful and aggravating to the reader. Courageously, after investing so much time and attention in her lead character, Caspary kills him off in order to devote the final part of the book to her other characters. This allows us to better understand Elaine’s situation (Caspary is scrupulous about examining this relationship from both their perspectives) and to sharpen our dislike of Fletcher’s despicable daughter and son-in-law, who both have their own reasons for wanting to see Elaine convicted of murder, and who may even be guilty of the crime themselves. The fact that so much is left unresolved at the novel’s conclusion shows that Caspary’s interest is not in guilt and innocence as defined by the legal process by rather in the everyday cruelties ordinary people can inflict on each other out of a tangled combination of all-too-understandable motives.

The Descent (2005)

There are several things that make The Descent (2005) an especially effective and interesting horror film. For example, the fact that it has an all-female cast, something very unusual for this genre. This means that motifs that are common in horror film, such as the "final girl," make an appearance here but their meaning changes quite radically. Similarly, although the film is littered with victims, as we might expect, the meaning of the women's deaths is quite different from the standard slasher movie, in that it is neither sexualized nor a result of the women's sexual activity. The other thing that stands out about The Descent is its hybrid nature: as much a thriller as a horror film (although there is plenty of gore), it's a combination of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Deliverance, and even the Alien movies. And then, of course, there's the fact that the vast majority of the film takes place in very confined spaces, i.e., caves. As someone who is mildly claustrophobic, the thought of spelunking has always seemed incomprehensible to me, and director Neil Marshall makes brilliant use of this setting, so that the audience always feel smothered as well as terrified. Interestingly, the original British cut of the film includes a much bleaker ending that was changed for the American release. What is it about Americans that we/they (I speak as a naturalized citizen!) always want to be uplifted?

Children of the Corn (1984)

One night a long time ago, my Dad and I sat down to watch a film called Village of the Damned. From the moment I first saw the creepy kids, I knew this film was going to terrify me and so I got up to leave the room. My dad stopped me and said, “You should stay and watch the film because what you can imagine will be far more frightening than the actual film.” I thought about it for a moment and decided that what he said made sense and so I stayed. Big mistake. It was very sweet of my dad to give me so much credit, but there is NO WAY I could have imagined so much terror! I didn’t sleep for two weeks. This is all by way of explaining why it took me so long to watch Children of the Corn, the 1984 film adaptation of Stephen King’s short story. I had expected it to be filled with frightening children and I had no wish to repeat that viewing experience from my childhood. It turned out that I had nothing to worry about, partly because the film would be more accurately titled The Young Adults of the Corn. As we all know, blond-haired alien kids are exponentially more terrifying than rural Nebraskan juvenile delinquents in pseudo-Amish garb. The acting is sub-par at best and the special effects are, well, not very special. It just goes to show that nothing can substitute for atmosphere and understatement—if only more film directors today would get that message. And just in case you’re wondering, no, I still haven’t watched Village of the Damned again!

Sherlock, The Empty Hearse

I never thought I would miss Moriarty (or to be more precise, the rather annoying actor who played him) but that’s exactly how I felt after watching 'The Empty Hearse,' the first episode in Season 3 of Sherlock. The competition between the great detective and his nemesis gave the earlier episodes a focus and without that, I felt that this episode was entirely too pleased with itself. Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock has always had a high opinion of himself, of course, but in this episode he was positively smug and I couldn’t help but feel that the show itself succumbed to the same smugness, so pleased with its own success that it couldn’t be bothered to come up with a decent plot (a subway car filled with explosives under the Houses of Parliament on Guy Fawkes night? Really?) or to develop the character of Lord Moran AT ALL. Moreover, although on the whole I like the changes that this show makes to the original source material, there’s no getting away from the fact that it gets the relationship between Holmes and Watson all wrong. Anyone who’s read ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’ knows that Watson is delighted when Holmes returns. The hissy fit that Sherlock’s Watson throws may be understandable in some ways but it takes too much attention away from the story (what there is of it) and places too much emphasis on the friendship between Sherlock and John. Please, please, please do not let this show become a bromance!
 

Gary Shteyngart, Little Failure

Can I be perfectly honest? Halfway through Gary Shteyngart's memoir, Little Failure, I realized that I much preferred his novels. The wildness of the comic imagination that defines his fiction was largely missing here, even though this book is often very funny (as we might expect from one of the funniest writers working today). And in case you think comparing fiction and memoir is like comparing apples and oranges (which of course it is, at least to some extent) I should mention that one of the things the reader who is familiar with Shteyngart's novels takes away from Little Failure is something we suspected all along, namely, that he is the ultimate subject of his fiction and he has mined his own life extensively for raw materials that he sometimes transforms and sometimes hardly changes at all. Consequently, a feeling of déjà vu haunts the reader until we get to the parts of Shteyngart's life that are not covered in as much detail in his fiction: his time at Oberlin College, his life after graduation, and how he got started as a writer. He treats these times with the same combination of self-effacing humor and uncomfortable honesty that defines the book as a whole, but he saves the best for last. The book concludes with a description of a trip back to St. Petersburg, the city of his birth, that Shteyngart took with his parents in 2011. It's at this point that one realizes that Little Failure, again like his fiction, has always been as much about his parents and his relationship with them as it is about Shteyngart. That balance between humor and pathos, that wonderful ability to write about emotions, above all love, without sentimentality that appears so often in his fiction works to great effect here. As this interview indicates, Little Failure was a huge success and it will hopefully bring even more readers to his fiction. Will this success spoil the 'little failure' Shteyngart? That's the first question I'll ask him when I meet him later this month.