Review: "Remote"

It's been a while since I've been able to post anything here--primarily because my education gets in the way of my thriller-related reading. I should have a review of John le Carre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold at some point in the next week. In the mean time, here's a review that might be of interest:

Remote: 05: Story by Seimaru Amagi; Art by Tetsuya Koshiba.

My favorite used book store--Deb's Bookstore in Cullman, Alabama--has a little room in the back where they have a sale going on, including a token bit of Manga--discounted from $5 to $1. Since I've been interested in trying out Manga, I picked up this book. Since I'm not conversant with the genre, this review will be very much an outsider's perspective on an insider's artform, and so will focus on those elements I am familiar with--detective plots.

Since Remotestarts in the middle of an ongoing story, I had to do a little research. The basic premise is intriguing--a genius detective, Inspector Kozaburo cut off from human emotions and unable to leave his headquarters, works with a young woman, Detective Kurumi Ayaki--via cell 'phone--to solve crimes. That's the premise, and that's really all one needs to know to enjoy this volume.

Volume 5 contains two stories--or, rather, one and a half, since the first three chapters are the conclusion of a case presumably begun in the first volume. The first is pretty standard detective stuff--Detective Kurumi Ayaki investigates a closed circle of suspects in order to prove that her fiance is innocent of murder. The trick, too, is pure Agatha Christie, though only having half the story--and being unfamiliar with conventions of the genre--made it difficult to guess.

The second story in the volume is "Assassin Bob." Again, Kurumi Ayaki is trying to clear a friend of suspicion--this time, that he is an assassin known as the Coyote. This story is much more in the thriller line than the previous, with a couple of really nail-biting sequences--especially the climax. However, the central trick is fairly easy to spot, even if you miss the specific clue that leads Kozaburo Himuro to the real villain.

I liked this book. In general, I find the artwork in Manga more exciting and generally interesting to look at than standard comic books. In addition, the stories are well-done--especially "Assassin Bob," which works well even if the reader has no idea who Bob actually is in the context of the series.

There are a couple of problems: Kurumi Ayaki is meant to be sweet and innocent--she's an ex-meter maid--but she comes across as simply dumb too much of the time. I know, it's a trope that's as old as detective fiction--even if Watson wasn't particularly dumb himself--but it gets tiresome. Then, too, it may be part of my unfamiliarity with Manga--overwrought, even hilarious, emotion in a purportedly dark thriller series may be par for the course. I'm just not used to it.

I might check out more in this series. It's all pretty disposable, but it has some promise, and being able to read from the first volume would probably make this volume more comprehensible to me.

The Hardy Boys in India

I grew up buying the Hardy Boys novels in packs of five at "Sam's Club" and inhaling them in short order. They were the bread and butter of my reading life until I discovered Agatha Christie at about the age of thirteen--after that, they fell into disfavor. But I still have a soft spot for the two teen sleuths and their chums, and it's nice to see they're still going strong:

For 80 years, The Hardy Boys has been an essential part of every detective-fiction lover’s childhood. Now the Hardy bros appear in graphic novels — in candy colours, toting mobile phones and guns. Nancy Drew too is keeping up with the times, in a similar series.

Candy colours?!

At any rate, the comics will be updates of novelized adventures, with the boys being "tech savvy." Huh. When I was a child, a personal boat was tech-savvy enough for me, but there you go. Apparently this series is only being released in India--where they also seem to be issuing comic-books of Agatha Christie's novels.

Hmm. This is the second story I've linked to that has to do with India. I'm beginning to wonder if there is a sociological reason that "classical" detective fiction seems to be--at least, until recently--going so strong over there while it labors in obscurity in America.

It's Official---Only Halfwit Authors Write Mysteries.

...or so the British legal system has decided:

This week, Joan Brady - a talented American novelist living in Devon, who won the Whitbread prize in 1993 - received £115,000 in an out-of-court settlement from a cobbler close to her Totnes home. The novelist alleged that fumes from solvents used at the plant had caused her physical distress and mental distraction.

One example given of her problems [...]was that she had become so confused by the fumes that she was forced to abandon a serious novel, Cool Wind from the Future, and turn instead to mystery fiction, with Bleedout.

More at the link. This kind of stuff maddens me; there is no reason why a well-written mystery novel should be considered inferior to a well-written "serious" novel. Indeed, one could argue that the pretensions of "serious" fiction are inferior-making properties in themselves. "Plot-driven fiction" is, at any rate, directed outward, to the reader--it invites the reader into a mutual experience. In that way, it's essentially democratic and egalitarian.

Furthermore, we should note--as this commentator does--that many authors of "serious" fiction are now using tropes from mystery novels. In fact, they're using tropes from all kinds of genre fiction. The classes are melting together--just a bit--and a decision like this only shows how out-of-touch many "highbrow" people are.

What's in a Name?

The California Literary Review has a brief-but-interesting discussion by Jem Bloomfeld of the names of various detectives in the history of the genre. Interesting; I had never considered the tension between the over-the-top names of detectives and the "realistic" emphasis in the stories themselves.

The Death of the Indian Detective Novel?

Interesting article about the slow death of detective fiction in India. I find it interesting that it's been sixteen years since the last super-detective hung up his magnifying glass--while in America it's been more like thirty.

The interesting experiments with the adventurer-detective figure —- from the intent Byomkesh, the suave Feluda, to the spirited quartet Gondalu (Nalini Das’ adolescent girl-gang with names ending with -lu), Samaresh Basu’s streetsmart Gogol, and the maverick old butterfly lover Colonel Niladrishekhar (Syed Mustafa Siraj’s nature lover who ends up trailing no-gooders) —— arguably had shown the way. Critics, writers and fiction lovers thus find no reason why few tread the path. Though not quite expected, there seems to be a socio-economic jinx to the Bengali detective. Aveek Majumder, lecturer at the department of comparative literature, Jadavpur University, finds the changing tastes of the Bengali middle class a possible culprit. “In their better days, the Bengali sleuth and his exploits found readers in Bengali children from the middle class. The same middle class which can now afford an English-medium school for its children, a school which reprimands a child found speaking in Bengali.”

A major theme in the article is the slow phasing-out of the Bengali language--so I wonder if it would be impertinent to wonder if any of these are available in translation?

....

Reuters has an article about how the internet assists authors of crime fiction in their work; an interesting contrast to this piece, which claims that technology kills suspense, in movies particularly. So is what's good for the author bad for the art itself? One wonders.