Megan Abbott on why women love crime

This nice essay by Megan Abbott is related to the wonderful-looking collection The Women Crime Writers, edited by Sarah Weinman, that just came out. And Abbott's essay is worth reading as well.

Sarah Weinman was wondering in one of her Crime Lady e-mails whether there have been substantial female domestic suspense writers outside the US and UK. I got to thinking about this (lazily, I must admit), and I haven't come up with any contenders. Many female Finnish crime writers of the time period of Weinman's book dabbled mostly in puzzle mysteries, but there must be some. Anyone?

Megan Abbott interviewing Patti Abbott

I really loved this small item: Megan Abbott interviewing her mother, Patricia Abbott, on their family reading habits, her (Megan's) tuition into crime fiction and lots of other matters. I still have Patricia's first novel, Concrete Angel, to read, but I will in the near future.

Megan Abbott: The End of Everything, pt. 2

The End of Everything is a very beautiful book, hauntingly written - it was actually pretty hard to get into the rhythm of Megan Abbott's writing, its clipped sentences, repetitions and allusions. I found the book demanded some quiet around it, you couldn't read it in passing, just a few pages at a time, you had to concentrate.

As Megan has herself pointed out, there's a strong link to Twin Peaks in The End of Everything. There's the friendship of two young girls in a small town, and suddenly another one disappears, for apparently no reason.

This is a quiet crime novel, almost not a crime novel at all (the Picador edition I read seems to make that quite clear what with the cover). There's only one person killed in the course of the book (I'm not sure if this is a spoiler or not). Up to the middle, the reader hasn't a clue of what's been going on. The secrets stay hidden until the very last pages - and linger on even after the book is over. The sexual tension in the book is almost overwhelming, but there's no actual erotic content in the book. You can't make a mistake this is a book written by a feminist, but Abbott doesn't shy away from showing how awful women and girls can be.

Strongly recommended. I'll be interviewing Megan shortly (after I've read Dare Me, that is) for a Finnish magazine, I'll post the results here as well.

Megan Abbott: The End of Everything

I'm on page 90 and it seems nothing but excellent so far. Might be her best, but I haven't as yet read Dare Me.

My earlier Megan Abbott reviews here, here and here.

Megan Abbott's Bury Me Deep

I've written about Megan Abbott's earlier novels here and here. I found some extra time to read her latest, Bury Me Deep, that's been praised quite a lot in different media. It's worthy of the praise, but it's more literary and slow-paced than many of the new noir novels that have been getting attention lately. I think it's the most literary novel of Megan Abbott's works, even though Queenpin came very close to being a good example of postmodern historical novel.

Bury Me Deep is a story about a young woman who gets mixed up in foul play, usually conducted by men, just like in other novels by Megan Abbott. There are also other women, who are not what they first seem to be. Bury Me Deep takes place in 1931 and it is full of historical details, but they are quite nicely worked into the narrative flow. Especially tuberculosis plays a pretty big part in the novel.

I had some trouble getting into the rhythm of the narrative and the seemingly very accurate early thirties' vocabulary and slang, but after the things get rough, I noticed I was able to read faster. There's lots of irony and ambiguity in the ending. Abbott also has a good afterword in which she tells about the true story behind the book - which is interesting in its own right.

The cover illustration by Richie Fahey is very nice, but I don't think I'm the only one wishing there wouldn't be so much text: it hides the gun in the girl's hand totally! Someone might mistake this for a romantic novel. Couldn't be farther from that.

Round-Up: Megan Abbott, Ken Bruen, The Hurt Locker

Okay, seems like I'm not very much into blogging these days. Been busy, will be busy, will hopefully take a break, a day or two.. one of these days. Been editing the book with Finnish war-time stories, and it's proven to be a bit of a pain in the ass. Will hopefully get it out of my hands next week.

Some mini-reviews of books I've read recently and one film:

Megan Abbott: Die a Little, her first novel from some years back. I was mesmerized by the voice and the first 50-60 pages, but then the plot got a bit too ordinary, but I'm not complaining with her skills as a narrator and writer. A bit reminiscent of Elizabeth Sanxay Holding - which is a compliment of a highest kind.

Ken Bruen: London Boulevard. I got this out-of-print book as a text file from Ken Bruen's agent and I read it from print-outs. I'm not sure how much the simulation of Sunset Boulevard really holds, but Bruen's voice, very staccato, very terse, more Hemingway than Hemingway himself, is enough to maintain interest.

Now, a question: what do these books have in common?

And just at a cinema club screening I saw Kathryn Bigelow's ultra-realistic Iraq film, The Hurt Locker. This is not your typical war film and there's very little of action, even though some of the scenes are very suspenseful, but the main point is the utter frustration of these young guys who are dropped in middle of the desert nowhere to fight the war they don't understand against the people they don't understand. It's frustrating to see, though, that the film isn't going to make it to cinemas here in Finland. The copy I saw had Italian subtitles and I really had trouble understanding what the guys were saying, since they mostly mumble and shout, so I'd really like to see this with Finnish subtitles.

Megan Abbott's Queenpin

Again a short review on a piece of new American noir and hardboiled: Megan Abbott's Queenpin (with thanks to Patti Abbott, in ways more than one!). I finished the book last night and enjoyed it very much, with some reservations.

The book is a stylistic exercise: how to write a book that's set in the late fourties or early fifties and not to mention anything that could give the setting away? Abbott uses mainly only language to convey the feeling of the era. She uses the slang known from film noirs and hardboiled novels of the era, but she doesn't mention any films or books or celebrities from the era which would've been the easy way out. She succeeds marvellously, but at the same time I have hard time imagining a reader who'd be able to get into this, had he or she no knowledge of the usual expression of film noir or the vintage hardboiled literature. But being who I am, I had no trouble. The book is terse, tense and brutal, which are equivalent of "good" in my vocabulary.

There's one thing more that gives Queenpin an unusual edge and makes it rise from usual pastiche-like quality: the two leads are two women, the men are somewhere around, on the fringes, but not very important (except when a love story comes along). And these women are no ordinary housewives: they are big operators in a Mob-related business. The way Abbott writes about them makes that seem totally plausible.

I could've wished there was more plot to the book, though. It's actually a pretty straight-forward story. But maybe it might've been too tough to follow, if there'd been a more difficult plot.

I haven't read Abbott's previous novels, The Song Is You and Die Me a Little, but she certainly is someone to watch.