My darling detective

Review by New York Times Review

Robert CAPA'S stark photograph "Death on a Leipzig Balcony," taken in April 1945, shows an American soldier who's been shot dead by a German sniper in the closing days of World War II. As the body lies bleeding, partly on the sunny balcony of a German apartment and partly in its shadowy interior, a figure is visible at the right, a soldier crawling toward his comrade. In Howard Norman's new mystery novel, that soldier is taken out of the shadows and given a name, Bernard Rigolet, and a short life. He's doomed to die soon afterward, leaving a wife and newborn son back in Nova Scotia. "My Darling Detective" picks up in Halifax roughly 30 years later, and its opening scene is almost as dramatic as Capa's image: Bernard's widow, Nora, walks up the aisle of a hotel drawing room where the photograph is being auctioned and splashes it with ink. No one in the audience is more shocked than Nora's son, Jacob, who's there to bid on a 19th-century French photograph for his employer, a wealthy Halifax collector. After all, Jake had assumed that Nora, a former librarian, was "safely tucked away" in Room 340 of the Nova Scotia Rest Hospital, where she's been recovering from a nervous breakdown. Luckily the photo is under glass, so no harm is done. But why did Nora try to destroy it? Jake's fiancée, Detective Martha Crauchet of the Halifax Regional Police, sets out to find the answer. In the process, she discovers that Bernard wasn't the man Jake thought he was. Meanwhile, Martha's hard-boiled partners, Detectives Tides and Hodgdon ("bad cop and worse cop"), stumble across a "cold case," two unsolved Halifax murders committed in April 1945 by a killer who may still be alive. Those two discoveries, it turns out, are connected by a third - a pornographic drawing crudely etched into the back of a card catalog in the Halifax Free Library. (Card catalogs, so dear to memory, are a recurring theme in this ingeniously plotted novel.) If "My Darling Detective" were a film, it would be shot in black and white. The publisher describes it as a "homage to noir," and it's certainly that. Even the lovers' names, Jake and Martha, are noirish. At the photo auctions Jake attends in Paris, London and Copenhagen, the objects of desire are rare colorless jewels in shades of black and white and sepia. Jake and Martha don't like watching TV; they prefer listening to radio dramas featuring a time-traveling detective who moves between the 1970s and - you guessed it - the postwar 1940s. The fictional radio detective's world seems to mirror Jake's, while Martha identifies with the gumshoe's wisecracking girlfriend, "my role model in all womanly things brave and true." The signature elements of Howard Norman's fiction are everywhere in this book. Like his previous novels, it's set in Canada's Maritime Provinces and toys with his trademark preoccupations: libraries, photography, radio, poetry. But despite its noir trappings, "My Darling Detective" isn't as dark as some of his others. "The Bird Artist," "Next Life Might Be Kinder" and "What Is Left the Daughter" were as taut and as finely tuned as harpsichords, literary with a capital L. None were what Graham Greene would have called "entertainments." This one is. There's obviously a more playful hand at work. Norman knows how to weave an enticing and satisfying mystery, one tantalizing thread at a time. And he left me wanting more of Jake and Martha. ? PATRICIA T. O'CONNER'S books on language include "Woe Is I" and, most recently, "Origins of the Specious," written with Stewart Kellerman. They blog about language at Grammarphobia.com.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 9, 2017]

---

Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Although Norman's (Next Life Might Be Kinder, 2014) ravishing novels are steeped in loss, his characters are charming, and his sense of wonder is elating. In his twelfth book, Norman puts a sweetly comic spin on his signature themes to create a delectably clever tribute to cozy crime fiction. In Halifax in 1977, Jacob Rigolet is already on thin ice as an assistant to Esther, a wealthy collector of vintage photographs, when his mother, Nora, a former librarian, strides into an art auction and hurls black ink at Death on a Leipzig Balcony by the celebrated war photographer Robert Capa. Police detective Martha, Jacob's smart, tough-gal fiancée, launches an investigation that ultimately encompasses the WWII death of Nora's soldier husband, the concurrent murders of two Jewish citizens in Halifax, questions about Jacob's patrimony, and suspicions swirling around a former police officer. As Martha sleuths, Jacob earns a library-science degree. With a masterfully constructed plot, brilliantly realized characters, and deliciously witty repartee, Norman offers a soulful variation on Nick and Nora Charles from Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man, while also addressing the tragic legacies of war, paying homage to books and libraries, and celebrating love. An emotionally vibrant, keenly funny, genuinely suspenseful, and altogether spellbinding novel that will thrill Norman's fans and readers who relish creative improvisations on the grand noir tradition.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2017 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

---

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In Norman's smart new novel, set in 1970s Nova Scotia, protagonist Jacob Rigolet is attending a photographic art auction when his mother, Nora, a patient at a nearby residential treatment center, rushes into the room and tosses ink on Robert Capa's famous 1945 photo Death on a Leipzig Balcony. After a swift arrest, Nora is interrogated by Halifax Regional Police investigator Martha Crauchet-who is also her future daughter-in-law. The story behind the attack on Capa's photo is revealed, bringing up other mysteries involving family relationships, romantic entanglements, books, libraries, an amusingly noir radio drama, and murders. All of this is presented in a fast-paced, whimsical, semidetached literary style that few can bring off as successfully or as entertainingly as Norman. Fortunately, Pinchot is an actor capable of the subtlety this type of stylized fiction demands. His excellent portrayals of the hopelessly-in-love Jacob and Martha, to the wistful Nora, and the hard-boiled characters on the couple's favorite radio show, Detective Levy Detects, don't miss a beat. A Houghton Mifflin Harcourt hardcover. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

---

Review by Library Journal Review

In his 2013 memoir, I Hate To Leave This Beautiful Place, Norman reflected on his maturation through an ever-shifting array of residences, from Michigan to Canada. The one form of continuity in Norman's life was the public library, providing the spark for his luminous literary career. His new novel pays homage to the endurance and intrigue of libraries, as it is set in and around the Halifax Free Library. After his mother, recently retired as head librarian, inexplicably defaces a photograph during an art auction, Jacob Rigolet is left with questions about her erratic behavior, the significance of the photograph, and the true identity of his own father. Literally born in the Halifax Free Library, Jacob begins to piece together his childhood memories among the stacks in an attempt to solve the puzzle. Along with his fiancée, Martha, the detective assigned to the case, he soon discovers that the answers to his questions are tied to a cold murder case back in 1945. VERDICT Norman punctuates literary noir's "darkness within" with both poignancy and a penchant for humor. Librarians will appreciate the nod to library and information science. [See Prepub Alert, 10/3/16.]-Joshua Finnell, Los Alamos National Lab., NM © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

---

Review by Kirkus Book Review

An aspiring librarian strives to get to the bottom of a decades-old murder and his mother's act of vandalism in this foray into noir by Norman (Next Life Might Be Kinder, 2014, etc.).Norman's novels tend to recycle themes and settings so consistently that each individual work can feel like a fuguelike variation in a broader epic. Now we are once again in Halifax, in a story centering on a man, Jacob, with a peculiar job (auction representative for a wealthy dowager) who becomes entangled in an unusual calamity. This one involves Jacob's librarian mother, Nora, who has defaced a Robert Capa photo of a dead World War II soldier at an auction; conveniently and peculiarly, the lead detective on the case is Jacob's fiancee, Martha. Her investigation reveals not only that Nora was acting out her feelings toward her soldier husband (who she believes is the man in the Capa photo), but that a different man may have been Jacob's fatherand that man is on the run after having committed an anti-Semitic murder decades ago. The plot is a tangle, often absurdly so, but Norman is gifted at establishing atmosphere and character, and he pleasurably engages with old-fashioned crime-story patter (mostly via a radio drama Jacob and Martha enjoy) and hard-nosed detectives pitted against Jacob's more genteel and bookish sensibility. Norman's idea of a good time is still pretty dour, though. Motifs of doublingJacob's two fathers, his pursuing a librarian career like his mom, the radio drama's echoing Martha's own investigationsuggest a history-keeps-repeating sense of entrapment. But ultimately Norman pulls off what old-school noir pros like Chandler and Goodis did: mixes romance with blood in the gutter, makes sure the bad guys get theirs, and ensures the good guys don't come out unscathed. An unconventional, lively literary mystery. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

---

Interlocutrix The auction was held at 5 p.m. in the street-level drawing room of the Lord Nelson Hotel, here in Halifax. Death on a Leipzig Balcony, by Robert Capa, was the first item on the docket. The auctioneer had just said, ". . . taken on April 18, 1945," when my mother, Nora Ives ​-- ​married name, Nora Ives Rigolet ​-- ​walked almost casually up the center aisle and flung an open jar of black ink at the photograph. I heard, "No, it can't be you!" But it was my own voice, already trying to refute the incident. My mother was tackled to the floor by the auctioneer's assistant. An octopus of ink sent tentacles down the glass. My mother was lifted roughly to her feet by two security guards and escorted from the room. And here I thought she was safely tucked away in Nova Scotia Rest Hospital, across the harbor in Dartmouth, room 340. I had been at the hotel to bid on Forest of Fontainbleau, an 1863 landscape by Eugène Cuvelier, the tenth photograph on the docket. Of course I lost out on that. Because immediately I went to the police station on Gottingen Street. There, through the one-way window, I witnessed my mother's interrogation at the hands of my fiancée, Martha Crauchet. "We get the Chronicle-Herald in the common room, interlocutrix," my mother said to Martha. I saw Martha jot down a word on her legal pad; I assumed it was 'interlocutrix.' "Last week, Tuesday's edition, maybe it was Wednesday's, there was a notice of the auction. Right then I put my thinking cap on." My mother fit on an invisible cap, like screwing in a lightbulb. "I decided it was best to leave during tea. You must understand, interlocutrix, that the hospital staff is always distracted during tea. I filched money from the attendant's station. A little tin box they keep there. Then I slipped out the food service door. Free as a bird." "Then what ​-- ​you made your way down to the wharf, right?" Martha said. "I had on my good overcoat," my mother said. "Not to worry I'd catch a cold." "And of course you now had pocket money for the ferry." "Once I arrived Halifax-side, I made my way to the Lord Nelson and sat down in the room where the auction was held. Have you ever been to the Lord Nelson, interlocutrix?" "I have. Yes." "A very nice hotel, don't you think? I sat there just as I pleased. Just like that. It was all quite exciting. I had my little jar of ink in my coat pocket. From Arts and Crafts." Transcript, March 19, 1977 ​-- ​Halifax Regional Police The interrogation ended around 7 p.m. Before a police officer accompanied her on the return ferry to Dartmouth and then to Nova Scotia Rest Hospital, I watched my mother, still in the interrogation room, make a drawing of Halifax Harbor for Martha. She drew it on a napkin. My mother had been given cups of coffee and a scone to tide her over. She signed the drawing, and in addition wrote, "Thank you for the warmest conversation I've had in possibly three years. Let's please stay in touch." I lived in the cottage out back of 112 Spring Garden Road, a big Victorian house owned by Mrs. Esther Hamelin, my employer. The other person who lived on the property was a Mrs. Brevittmore (whose position was referred to as the "all-purpose"), who occupied a large, sunny room toward the rear of the house, overlooking the spacious, manicured lawn and garden. Mrs. Hamelin had turned seventy on March first. As she put it, "I was born into money. It was from the fisheries." Mrs. Hamelin's photographic collection was mostly on the walls of the master bedroom, down the hall from the library, and two guest rooms on the third floor had some photographs on their walls. Also, there were fifteen late-nineteenth-century French photographs in the library. In my time working for Mrs. Hamelin, I knew her to have plenty of people in for tea. Plenty of professors of art from far-flung places. Plenty of dinner parties, but no overnight guests. Depends, of course, on what one means by overnight guest. Because one morning at about 4:30 I did notice Mrs. Brevittmore leave Mrs. Hamelin's bedroom, carrying a tray with teacups and saucers and a teapot on it. I had been an insomniac in the library, studying up on Avignon Pont St. Bénezet, 1861, by Édouard Baldus, which I was to bid on in London a week later. (I lost out on it seconds before the final gavel.) It depicted wooden boats along a riverbank, an unfinished stone bridge, quiet waters. Anyway, I heard a rustle in the hallway, looked up, and saw Mrs. Brevittmore closing Mrs. Hamelin's bedroom door. When I mentioned this to Martha, she said, "Well, either they'd just had a rendezvous or they didn't. Either-or, it's none of your business. Love is difficult enough to find in the world, isn't it, and judgments don't have a place here. You're either happy for someone or you're not. I'm happy for them. If you aren't, then I'm not happy with you. Like my mother put it, 'Some things say a lot, even if you can't pronounce all the words.' Then again, my mother read a lot of Victorian novels." "Okay, fine, but by 'rendezvous' you mean ​--" "Use your imagination, Jacob. It's the one thing left you when someone's door is closed. I want to meet those two. Please introduce me to them soon. It's just not right that I haven't met them yet." "Mrs. Hamelin wants to meet you too," I said. "She told me she's looking at her calendar for when." "She's been looking at it a long time," Martha said. "But I refuse to get grumpy about it. I just won't. Things happen when they're meant to, mostly. But you have told her we're serious, haven't you?" "Yes, I have," I said. "I most definitely have." My employment had originally been listed in the Chronicle-Herald: "Wanted: Live-in assistant. Must have special interest in travel. Interviews by appointment." During my interview, Mrs. Hamelin asked how much education I'd had. I told her one year at Dalhousie University. She asked why I had dropped out. I told her I couldn't afford the tuition. "Oh, I see," she said, adding, "even though I've heard it's modest for residents of Nova Scotia." She asked my age. I told her I was twenty-nine. She asked how I'd been supporting myself, and I said, "Receiving and sorting stock at John W. Doull, Bookseller. Also, weekends I worked in the Halifax Free Library. My mother formerly was head librarian there." She asked if I read a lot. I dissembled by replying with a question, hoping there was just enough irony in my voice to imply that the answer should be obvious. "Well, I am around books seven days a week, aren't I?" She laughed hesitantly and asked if I'd done particularly well in any subject during my one year at university. I said, "That would have been a course called Introduction to Psychology." She asked, "Why do you suppose you did well?" I said, "Because as I understood it, it was all about taking notice of people's behavior and having strong opinions about it." She said, "Good, good. Taking notice of people's behavior at auction is very useful. You have to be competitive, especially at the opportune moment. You have to keep your wits about you. Do you think you're up to that, Jacob?" "Yes," I said truthfully, "and I also need the work. I'm helping support my mother." She listed what would be my other responsibilities and then I was hired. "We'll give it a try, then, you and I," she said. Five weeks later in Amsterdam, I bid for and brought home Rock-Tombs and Pyramid, 1857, by Francis Frith, for three hundred dollars below what Mrs. Hamelin instructed was to be my ceiling bid. And that was exactly my bonus, three hundred dollars. A small fortune to me at the time, and still would be. Excerpted from My Darling Detective by Howard Norman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

---