translated by Caroline Waight
“What do I do? I liberate people who don’t know they’re stuck.... That’s one definition. Another? I sow chaos. I clean house.”
This sounds more like our president-elect than an octogenarian tourist from Wisconsin, but there’s nothing predictable about Maggie Burkhardt, the narrator and very anti-heroine of Christopher Bollen’s new psychological thriller, Havoc. She’s a variation on the character of the nosy older woman who uses her age as cover for her detecting skills, though Maggie’s way of solving problems isn’t exactly Miss Marple’s.
Following the death of her husband, the grieving widow traveled around Europe, where she began to meddle in her fellow travelers’ lives when she judged something wrong with the family dynamics. You could call her a relationship vigilante.
A disastrous episode in Switzerland sends her to the Royal Karnak Palace, in Luxor, a faded grand hotel where she settles in to ride out the pandemic. When we first encounter Maggie, she has already become the hotel’s unofficial doyenne by getting chummy with the manager, palling around with a gay couple also in long-term residence, and setting up nightly sunset watches for the other guests.
Despite her years, she’s a sharp, if not always reliable, observer of human nature and a quick study of her surroundings. This attracts her to a new guest and her eight-year-old son, Otto, potential candidates for her little project. She soon realizes she has met her match in Otto, a bad seed who has her number. It takes one to know one. The game of cat and mouse that begins on an outing to the Valley of the Kings escalates over the course of the book to an alarming level. And as Maggie and Otto scheme to destroy each other, they rack up some tragic collateral damage.
Bollen digs into Maggie’s psyche, inhabiting her like a monstrous second skin. Lurking in the shadows with her dyed black hair and cheap caftans, Maggie’s like the love child of Ryan Murphy and Patricia Highsmith. As for Otto, Damien’s got nothing on him.
Bollen is a clever, propulsive writer who can really get the reader eating out of his hand. He looks at Egypt through an entirely different lens here than in his last book, The Lost Americans; that he can do both so convincingly is testament to his versatility. To fully appreciate Havoc, it helps to have a Hitchcockian sense of humor and a taste for the macabre.
Lurking in the shadows, Christopher Bollen’s latest protagonist is like the love child of Ryan Murphy and Patricia Highsmith.
Two long-standing, consistently fine police-procedural series draw to a close this month, and if you don’t already know them, this might be a good time to get acquainted.
Peter Lovesey’s award-winning 22-book series began in 1991 and is set in Bath, England. Featuring the gruff, old-school detective superintendent Peter Diamond, this series is a model of the genre, with flawless plotting; fresh, inventive subjects backgrounded by a city that goes back to the ancient Romans; and an appealing team led by the irascible but kind Diamond, whose life has had a difficult arc.
The 88-year-old Lovesey sends his man off with Against the Grain, a diverting and graceful resolution to the detective’s career. I can’t imagine reading the first Diamond book, The Last Detective, and not wanting more.
Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen’s “Department Q” series, which were international best-sellers and award winners as well, ends with its 11th entry, Locked In. Department Q is a small collection of misfit cops from the Copenhagen Police Department, consigned to work on unsolved cases under the direction of Carl Mørck, who was demoted after a disastrous bust in which his partner, Hardy Henningsen, was shot and paralyzed. Locked In finds Mørck imprisoned after some incriminating evidence is found in his apartment. It’s up to his team to prove his innocence, aided by Hardy, who manages, miraculously, to work a case with his former penetrating intelligence.
Adler-Olsen brought energy, suspense, and heart to this series, along with a welcome dose of humor about Mørck’s bumpy personal life to offset the grimness of some of the issues the Qs face. Six of the books were made into popular Danish movies that capture them as well as possible at movie length. Now Scott Frank has created an eight-episode Netflix series based on Department Q that moves the action to Edinburgh. The cast is impressive—Matthew Goode, Kelly Macdonald, and Mark Bonnar and Jamie Sives from Guilt—and it’s set to be released “sometime in 2025,” according to Netflix. Meanwhile, the books await you.
Two long-standing, consistently fine police-procedural series draw to a close this month.
While shows such as Bad Sisters, Say Nothing, and the disappointing and odd Day of the Jackal reboot have basked in the spotlight recently, let’s redirect it to the second season of Sherwood, which had as great a first season as any British crime show in streaming memory, including Happy Valley and Broadchurch. So great that I was apprehensive about its return. Why tamper with perfection?
With the original story line about two shocking murders in depressed Nottinghamshire County put to rest, series creator James Graham found a different angle with two local crime families: the Sparrows, who figured in the first season and have refocused on their legitimate business, and the more ruthless Bransons, a new addition. The de-industrialization of the area created an economic vacuum filled by criminal enterprises like these, with violence as the unfortunate by-product.
The families’ enmity is revived when young Nicky Branson is shot point-blank while helping Ronan Sparrow out of a club. It’s a senseless murder, and the killer, a drug dealer named Ryan Bottomley, admits to having been “off his nut” on drugs. This situation sets the table for an emotionally devastating incident in the second episode; the 20 minutes or so that it takes to unfold is a master class in directing by Clio Bernard.
The way this circles back to the Sparrows, even though Ronan has helped the Bransons by identifying Ryan in a lineup, is the stuff of Greek tragedy. Graham has devised several points of almost unbearable tension—the Branson mole in the police department, the unstable police detective with PTSD, Ryan’s odd way of helping his sister with Down syndrome from prison. There’s a sickening inevitability to the way these elements play out that feels like the workings of fate.
The acting is uniformly excellent. David Morrisey is back as the conflicted detective chief superintendent Ian St. Clair, as is Lorraine Ashbourne, who brings a tough-minded stoicism to the burdens borne by Daphne Sparrow. The terrifying Ann Branson is played by Monica Dolan, chillingly blasé and chatty as she commits the most heinous acts; she’s lost a child and a nephew and really doesn’t care anymore. Stephen Dillane is impeccable as her hard-as-nails husband. The only “big” performance comes from Robert Lindsay, appropriately charismatic as a businessman who wants to reopen the mining pits and “make things grow again” in Nottinghamshire. The BBC has signed up Sherwood for a third season, and I have a feeling we’ll be seeing him again.
Lisa Henricksson reviews mysteries for Air Mail. She lives in New York City
