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A review by fictionfan
Foreign Bodies by Martin Edwards
5.0
Crime in translation...
Another collection of vintage short stories from the great partnership of the British Library and Martin Edwards, this one is different in that these are all translated. Many are from European countries but there are some that range further afield – Russia, India, Mexico, Japan. As always the book begins with a highly informative and entertaining foreword from Edwards who always manages to get the tricky balance between not enough and too much information just about perfect. Each story also has its own little introduction, where Edwards gives some information about the author and in this collection also about the translation. Some of the stories were translated earlier and have appeared in magazines or other collections, but some have been translated specifically for this collection and are appearing in English for the first time.
There are fifteen stories in all, and as always the quality is variable. There are “impossible” crimes, Holmes pastiches with a foreign slant, little stories that are just a bit of fun, dark stories that linger in the mind, stories that verge on gothic horror. For me, the collection got off to a pretty poor start – I wasn't impressed by the first two or three and began to think I'd made a mistake with this one. But as it goes on, the stories get better and better, and some of the later stories are very good indeed. One of them in particular rates as one of the best crime short stories I've ever read. In the end, I rated 6 of the stories as 5 stars and another 5 as 4 stars, and there were only two that I thought were complete duds that didn't really deserve inclusion on the basis of their quality, although I could see why Edwards had picked them – one for the author's name (Chekhov), and the other because it plays on a classic of the genre. So despite the iffy start, this ended up being one of my favourites of these collections overall.
Here are a few of the stories that stood out for me:-
The Spider by Koga Saburo translated by Ho-Ling Wong. Japanese. Part crime/part horror and definitely not one for arachnophobes! A scientist built a tower where he keeps vast numbers of spiders for study. But one day a visitor to the tower comes to a sticky end. Our narrator is looking into events after the later death of the scientist himself. This is almost Poe-ish in style in that we learn what happened mostly from the diaries of the scientist – a tale told by a man driven mad. Those spiders have haunted me for weeks now!
The Venom of the Tarantula by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay translated by Sreejata Guha. Indian. Very much a Holmes pastiche and excellently done. The detective Byomkesh Bakshi and his Watson, Ajit, apparently appeared in many stories and I'd happily read more of them. In this one, an old man is driving his long-suffering family crazy – he takes a drug that makes him impossible to deal with and they don't know how he's getting hold of it. The solution is very Holmesian even if it's a little obvious, and the story is highly entertaining.
The Kennel by Maurice Level translated by Alys Eyre Macklin. French. There is a crime here, a fairly horrific one too, but mostly this is a great little gothic horror story. A man suspects his wife of having an affair, especially when he finds another man in her room. She claims it's all very innocent but things are about to take a very nasty turn. It has a darkly twisted ending that made me gasp aloud (and then laugh). The author apparently wrote for the Grand Guignol and this story is of that type – melodramatic, gruesome and lots of fun!
The Cold Night's Clearing by Keikichi Osaka translated by Ho-Ling Wong. Japanese again – there's something about the Japanese approach to crime fiction that always draws me in, and this is the story I referred to above as being one of the best crime shorts I've ever read. It's also by far the darkest story in the book. A teacher is called out in the middle of the night to his friend's house, where he finds his friend's wife and cousin dead, Christmas toys and sweets strewn around the floor, and the couple's young son missing. Beautifully written and translated, the author uses the winter snow, the dark night and the frozen countryside to create a great atmosphere of uncanny dread, and there's an excellent puzzle to be solved too. I was blown away by this story – a little piece of dark perfection.
So some great stories in there that well outweigh the less good ones, and make this for me one of the best of these collections... so far! Highly recommended and I hope Edwards and the BL keep 'em coming!
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, the British Library.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Another collection of vintage short stories from the great partnership of the British Library and Martin Edwards, this one is different in that these are all translated. Many are from European countries but there are some that range further afield – Russia, India, Mexico, Japan. As always the book begins with a highly informative and entertaining foreword from Edwards who always manages to get the tricky balance between not enough and too much information just about perfect. Each story also has its own little introduction, where Edwards gives some information about the author and in this collection also about the translation. Some of the stories were translated earlier and have appeared in magazines or other collections, but some have been translated specifically for this collection and are appearing in English for the first time.
There are fifteen stories in all, and as always the quality is variable. There are “impossible” crimes, Holmes pastiches with a foreign slant, little stories that are just a bit of fun, dark stories that linger in the mind, stories that verge on gothic horror. For me, the collection got off to a pretty poor start – I wasn't impressed by the first two or three and began to think I'd made a mistake with this one. But as it goes on, the stories get better and better, and some of the later stories are very good indeed. One of them in particular rates as one of the best crime short stories I've ever read. In the end, I rated 6 of the stories as 5 stars and another 5 as 4 stars, and there were only two that I thought were complete duds that didn't really deserve inclusion on the basis of their quality, although I could see why Edwards had picked them – one for the author's name (Chekhov), and the other because it plays on a classic of the genre. So despite the iffy start, this ended up being one of my favourites of these collections overall.
Here are a few of the stories that stood out for me:-
The Spider by Koga Saburo translated by Ho-Ling Wong. Japanese. Part crime/part horror and definitely not one for arachnophobes! A scientist built a tower where he keeps vast numbers of spiders for study. But one day a visitor to the tower comes to a sticky end. Our narrator is looking into events after the later death of the scientist himself. This is almost Poe-ish in style in that we learn what happened mostly from the diaries of the scientist – a tale told by a man driven mad. Those spiders have haunted me for weeks now!
The Venom of the Tarantula by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay translated by Sreejata Guha. Indian. Very much a Holmes pastiche and excellently done. The detective Byomkesh Bakshi and his Watson, Ajit, apparently appeared in many stories and I'd happily read more of them. In this one, an old man is driving his long-suffering family crazy – he takes a drug that makes him impossible to deal with and they don't know how he's getting hold of it. The solution is very Holmesian even if it's a little obvious, and the story is highly entertaining.
The Kennel by Maurice Level translated by Alys Eyre Macklin. French. There is a crime here, a fairly horrific one too, but mostly this is a great little gothic horror story. A man suspects his wife of having an affair, especially when he finds another man in her room. She claims it's all very innocent but things are about to take a very nasty turn. It has a darkly twisted ending that made me gasp aloud (and then laugh). The author apparently wrote for the Grand Guignol and this story is of that type – melodramatic, gruesome and lots of fun!
The Cold Night's Clearing by Keikichi Osaka translated by Ho-Ling Wong. Japanese again – there's something about the Japanese approach to crime fiction that always draws me in, and this is the story I referred to above as being one of the best crime shorts I've ever read. It's also by far the darkest story in the book. A teacher is called out in the middle of the night to his friend's house, where he finds his friend's wife and cousin dead, Christmas toys and sweets strewn around the floor, and the couple's young son missing. Beautifully written and translated, the author uses the winter snow, the dark night and the frozen countryside to create a great atmosphere of uncanny dread, and there's an excellent puzzle to be solved too. I was blown away by this story – a little piece of dark perfection.
So some great stories in there that well outweigh the less good ones, and make this for me one of the best of these collections... so far! Highly recommended and I hope Edwards and the BL keep 'em coming!
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, the British Library.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com