The Second Murderer by Denise Mina

 For the first time since Poodle Springs, Philip Marlowe shows up in a Philip Marlowe novel and manages to stay well past Chapter 4. If it sounds like I'm giving damning faint praise to author Denise Mina, I'm not. Mina has written the latest authorized Philip Marlowe novel, and for once, we have an author who understands how to place Marlowe in context and not belabor the similes.

Like Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, Philip Marlowe is one of those characters who won't die with his author. You have to go to science fiction to get anything else American like it. Star Wars is a Marvel-like franchise now instead of the story of a farm boy becoming Siegfried. Star Trek just avoids that fate by becoming a setting more than a story about set characters. Marlowe is...

Well, he's Marlowe. And he has dozens upon dozens of imitators: Lew Archer (more a means for Ross MacDonald to tell a story), Nameless, Spenser, Elvis Cole, Kinsey Milhonne, VI Warshawski. Even a certain Sleuthsayers contributor originally from Cleveland invented his own not-Marlowe. Which reminds me, there was another not-Marlowe from Cleveland by a much older writer from Cleveland. Seems like everyone wants in on the action.

But Bond and Holmes are larger than life, to the point where Holmes is recognizable the moment he appears, and Bond is now two Bonds: literary and cinematic. Marlowe is a working stiff, a guy in a corner office. If you reinvent him, you almost have to create a new character. Many have tried. The result has been not-Spenser, a book full of wisecracks and similes, or some guy named Philip Marlowe who happens to be or was a private detective. The closest anyone came to the original was Lawrence Osborne's Only to Sleep, featuring an elderly Marlowe in Mexico, though the story had an almost Miami Vice vibe to it. Denise Mina writes a story about the character Raymond Chandler created.

The similes and an odd metaphor or ten are there, but they need to be. That's how Marlowe talks. And he's in period. The Second Murderer begins with Marlowe wrapping up a case but wondering if he got it wrong: The death of a Western character actor on the eve of World War II. He has no time to think about it as an elderly man, in shades of The Big Sleep, summons Marlowe to Stately Montgomery Manor to hire him. He doesn't want the job, but Montgomery wants his daughter found. Because Montgomery is a Very Important Man(TM) from a Very Important Family(TM). And unlike The Big Sleep's General Sternwood, Marlowe doesn't like this guy. He's a shriveled monster who beats his family Yet Marlowe takes the gig. He finds the daughter, Chrissie, soon enough. But he also runs into Anne Riordan, a character so strong she could probably carry her own series. And Mina has made her a PI in her own right. Something's not right.

Marlowe and Riordan soon realize they're working at cross purposes here, and even the police are being played. Despite being at odds in their missions, the pair are soon walking a fine line between what they're tasked with and protecting Chrissie, who has a few secrets of their own.

Mina writes this in period. There's no overlay of modern sensibilities, although she does avoid some language Chandler might not have blinked at. But she's writing in 1938 and focused on the rhythms and the consequences of Hollywood trying very hard to pretend Hitler is someone else's problem. The dialog is in-period. However, the book comes from a Scottish writer, so the spelling, grammar, and punctuation are all UK. That takes about a chapter to get used to. As an editor, I've seen the challenge and once had to leave Australian rules in place. But there were occasional lapses. One particular instance has Marlowe describing the rain on his car's "bonnet" (hood to us yanks.) Fortunately, the Britishisms are few and far between, and Marlowe even makes fun of one characters' faux British accent.

Much is made of Denise Mina being the first female author to tackle Marlowe. But I find it interesting a a Gen X woman from Scotland did a far superior job resurrecting Marlowe than Robert Parker or some of the other writers who attempted to carry on the legacy. First off, she focuses on telling a good story. She organically adds in Anne Riordan as a callback to Farewell, My Lovely without being gratuitous about it. And the Marlowe in her book is the Marlowe Chandler wrote. Considering she's been doing this for over twenty-five years, she was a good choice to add a chapter to Marlowe's story. I'd read another by her.

Bloody Scotland

 My dad's reaction to genealogy ranged between dismissal and fantasy. When I was quite small, I remember asking him about our more distant relatives. "Horse and cattle thieves," he said promptly. That, with the addition of the detail that three of his four grandparents had lived into their nineties, was the sum total of his genealogical information until, years later, assisting our son with a school project, he invented Don Alonzo Law, surviver of the Spanish Armada, to account for the "Iberian Influence" in Scotland and for our dark hair and eyes.

Well, a grain of truth in both cases, as there was a prehistoric connection with the Iberian peninsula, and the Laws were lowland people originally and probably engaged in one way or the other with the long unrest between Scotland and England. 

Whether or not Dad's throwaway remark was a sign of my future career in literary crime, I was certainly not surprised when Scandinavian Noir was followed a few years later with the recognition of what wags called " Tartan Noir." Far from being a late comer to the mystery game, Scotland had long played an important role in the development of our favorite genre.

Consider that the world's most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, was not only written by Edinburgh-born and bred Arthur Conan Doyle, but was inspired by one of Doyle's medical school professors, Joseph Bell. Add Robert Louis Stevenson, who, besides historical thrillers, wrote the greatest of all supernatural mysteries, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. His slightly later countryman, John Buchan, helped create the modern thriller with The thirty-nine Steps, while working in government service, including a stint as Governor General of Canada.

All three have had important successors. Ian Rankin and Val McDermid are probably best known to Tartan Noir fans, but they are not alone on the evidence of Bloody Scotland, a recent anthology edited by James Crawford, publisher at Historic Environment Scotland, a heritage organization in charge of some 300 sites and buildings. The anthology presents an interesting group of mystery writers, Scots and a few of what my Aberdonian relatives would call Sassanachs: English who write about or in Scotland. 

Most of the usual suspects are included with the exceptions of Rankin, Kate Atkinson and Alexander McCall Smith. Each writer has taken one of the organization's properties, ranging from pre-historic Mousa Broch in the Shetlands (Anne Cleeves naturally) to The Forth Bridge (Doug Johnstone) and Edinburgh Castle (Denise Mina – a truly terrifying story). 

Because the structuring device of the anthology is architectural and archeological rather than thematic, Bloody Scotland gives an unusual range of styles and types of stories.

We do have a revenge tale and a rather unusual serial killer, but we also get a glimpse of Viking life, a contemporary fellow coming undone, a frighteningly feral child, a murder at an early textile plant, and what is probably the closest one can come to a comic hostage taking.

As a result the mood ranges from gruesome to understated with plenty of stylistic variety. Historic Environment Scotland probably conceived this volume as a fundraiser, and there is certainly a story for just about every taste. Including the frankly antiquarian. 

It will not spoil Craig Robertson's "The Twa Corbies of Cardross" to say it references a work in one of Scotland's earlier claims to literature: the famous border ballads. Sir Walter Scott collected many of these and published them in The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, first edition 1802. That puts "Twa Corbies" (Two Ravens), an account of a murder in a handful of stanzas, a few centuries ahead of Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"

Robertson updates this stark little ditty and recasts it in prose but he keeps the two ravens, big carrion-feeding corvids for the non-birder, showing that in our genre, at least, there's always a place for a good plot and good detectives.

My Madame Selina mystery stories about a post Civil War spiritualist medium in New York City have been issued as an ebook on Kindle. Ten mysteries and a novella featuring Madame Selina and her useful young assistant Nip Thompkins are available on Amazon.