Bloody Blog

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

Borgen thoughts.

Perhaps I shouldn’t admit this, being a crime writer. But I think I am actually enjoying Borgen even more than The Killing. And I loved The Killing. (Just to be clear, it’s the Danish The Killing I’m talking about here, not the American; I didn’t watch that, so I can’t comment.)

The real heresy for me, as a crime writer, is that what I admire about Borgen is that it doesn’t rely on an ever-increasing body count to keep the viewer’s interest. In fact, so far, there have been no murders in it all. Just one death by natural causes.

Now such an admission may end up getting me thrown out of the CWA. And it’s not to say that I don’t still enjoy a good, twisty, grisly serial killer thriller. But it is interesting to see how the writers have managed to maintain the drama and tension without recourse to gore. The political shenanigans are of course fascinating. But more than anything it’s the fantastically well-written and superbly performed characters that keep us hooked.

My wife and I were watching it the other night and we were engrossed by the domestic tensions in the Danish prime minister’s house. Birgitte Nyborg (played by Sidse Babett Knudsen) is working flat out to keep her coalition together, her husband (played by Mikael Birkkjærs) is bearing the brunt of the household duties. I think we both identified with it a little, especially as from the beginning of this year my wife started working fulltime, with me stuck at home making the kids’ teas, nagging them to do their homework and practice, picking them up when they have after school activities, etc.. The whole thing was very close to home. Except, of course, that they are better looking than us, and have a fancier coffee pot. Funny the things you pick up on.

Anyhow, I think we were both seeing the parallels in our own relationship and perhaps feeling a little inadequate compared to our screen counterparts. And maybe also musing on the inadequacies of our other halves next to the paragons in the drama.

During one bedroom scene my wife commented of the husband: “He doesn’t snore.”

To which I could only reply: “You’re not the Prime Minister of Denmark.”

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Friday, January 13th, 2012

New (Gentle) readers start here.

It’s possible that every now and then someone stumbles on this blog entirely by accident. Looking for something else – I can’t begin to guess what – you find this. Me. I can only apologise.

In all likelihood, you will speed-click back to google. Get the hell out of there! It’s some writer’s blog! If that’s the case,  you won’t be reading this now. So if you are reading this, the chances are you decided to spend a moment or two exploring. Trying to find out who the hell this R.N. Morris guy is.

So maybe, every now and then, I should take a little time to say a bit about myself and what I’m doing here. On the internet. With a website and blog. And everything.

So yes. I’m a writer. Of fiction. Crime. Mostly. Murder stories. Set in the past. In Russia. Sorry, I tend to come over all inarticulate when I try to talk about myself and my writing. Awkward. Especially when every writer these days has to be his or her own publicist.

I’ve written a series of four novels set in St Petersburg the the 1860s and 1870s. The central character of the series is Porfiry Petrovich, a character I took from Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment.

I’m told the books are at the literary end of the crime fiction genre. I don’t know anything about that myself. I just try to tell the stories as best I can.

If the series piques your interest, A Gentle Axe is probably the place to start. It’s the first book in the series. That’s not to say you have to read the books in order. Each one is designed to stand alone, but there is a progression in the relationships between the central characters. So. Up to you. The other books are A Vengeful Longing, A Razor Wrapped in Silk and The Cleansing Flames, the last of which was published in 2011. In April 2012, I’m publishing the first book in a new series, called Summon Up The Blood.

If you’ve got a kindle, you can download A Gentle Axe now for just £1.42. I know the prices change on amazon, so by the time you read this – if you get this far – the price may have changed.

Here are some of the things reviewers said about the book (which was called The Gentle Axe in America) when it came out:

“Lush, and exceptionally compelling, but take your time – R.N. Morris’s The Gentle Axe has a vast depth of Russian soul; mysterious, compassionate, and utterly irresistible. Alan Furst

“Morris’ recreation of the seamy side of 19th-century St Petersburg is vivid and convincing … As to who did it, Morris keeps the reader guessing until the end.” The Independent

“R. N. Morris has produced perhaps the most audacious police-inspector novel of the season with “The Gentle Axe.”….The tale hums along with controlled excitement, as if written by a Russian minimalist and rendered by a fine translator. The psychological and spiritual themes seem worthy of Dostoyevsky; there are traces of Gogol and Gorky, too. Such an accomplished book transcends pastiche.” The Wall Street Journal

“It’s a satisfyingly grisly yarn… “CSI: St. Petersburg.”” The New York Times Book Review

“[A] smart, hypnotizing tale of crime and duplicity.” The New York Sun

“The story is told ably in the classic whodunit twisty-arc style, reminiscent of the sleuthing of Nick Charles, Sherlock Holmes and Columbo, the mussed-up character based partly on Dostoevsky’s trench-coat-clad Petrovich. Dirty Harry could easily be referenced, too…” The San Francisco Chronicle

“Morris has created an atmospheric St Petersburg, and a stylish set of intellectual problems, but what makes A Gentle Axe such an effective debut is its fascination with good and evil. It has earned its author the right to make use of the work of a greater writer.” Times Literary Supplement

“A Gentle Axe is tense, atmospheric and bristles with the kind of intelligence you’d read, well, Dostoevsky for… a piece of literary fun.” The Independent on Sunday

 

“Morris has dug deep into the Russian soul in this book, and his dark, dank, dangerous St Petersburg, with its snowbound, windswept streets and stinking slums, is brilliantly recreated. The hunt for the murderer is tense and atmospheric: the denouement brutally shocking and moving. A worthy sequel to one of the greatest novels ever written: and a cracking thriller in its own right.” The York Press

 

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Monday, January 9th, 2012

The Bloody Meadow by William Ryan

The Bloody Meadow by William Ryan is the second of his Stalinist-era crime novels featuring Captain Alexei Korolev of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Division. The first, The Holy Thief, was my choice for Auntie Marjorie’s Christmas present on the It’s A Crime… blog. The Bloody Meadow was the book I read myself over the Christmas break.

The novel is steeped in an atmosphere of paranoia, right from the outset. The fall-out from Korolev’s last case has left him fearful of a visit from the dreaded NKVD security service. He knows that it won’t just be his own life that’s affected if he is arrested, but the lives of everyone he cares about.

But when the dreaded knock on the door in the dead of night finally comes, it is not the beginning of the end for him, but the beginning of a new case.  But why should a Moscow detective be required to investigate the apparent suicide of a young woman working as a production assistant on a film being shot in the Ukraine? Because the young woman in question was a “personal friend” of Ezhov, the powerful Commissar of State Security. Naturally, Ezhov wants the best available detective working the case. Unfortunately for Korolev, that just happens to be him.

The set-up is perfectly judged to express the precarious tension in Korolev’s position as a detective in Stalinist Russia. He’s called upon to uncover the truth, but he knows that if the truth he uncovers is not one his masters want to hear, then things will go very badly for him indeed. As ever, the detective finds himself between a rock and hard place. To add to the unease, he boards an aeroplane to Odessa, to begin a journey into an ever deeper anxiety, cast adrift from the familiar streets of Moscow.

The sense of alienation and fear comes to a dramatic climax in a shoot-out beneath the catacombs of Odessa. To solve the crime, Korolev has had to seek the help of “The King of Thieves”, a notorious criminal gang leader. Order is restored by recourse to lawlessness, perhaps a fitting metaphor for the topsy-turvy logic of the Stalinist state.

William Ryan has constructed an absorbing crime story, with overtones of a classic “closed community” mystery. His command of the historical, political, psychological and emotional texture of the time is incredibly impressive. He has moved himself and his protagonist effortlessly to the Ukraine, and manages to convey the relevant history of that region with an enviable deftness of touch. In fact, as a writer who has tackled a Russian setting myself, I found much to envy in this book! In short, The Bloody Meadow is bloody marvellous. (Sorry, couldn’t resist!)

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