Tangled Web UK Review June 2012
No Sale [Kindle Edition] by
Patrick Conrad
pbk out June 12
(Bitter Lemon Press)
at £7.63
Patrick Conrad is a Dutch author, and this novel, translated by Jonathan Lynn,
makes excellent use of his knowledge of the film world – he has written
and directed twenty films over the years. This book won an award for the best
crime novel in Dutch in 2007, and I can see why. It is extremely well-crafted
and intriguing. After a woman’s body is found in an Antwerp dock, the cops
turn their attention to the victim’s husband, Victor Cox, but they are unable
to prove that he killed her. The action really takes off when the focus switches
from the investigation to the life and misadventures of Victor, a professor of
film history, and my only real criticism of the book is that an even greater focus
on the intense situation in which Victor finds himself might have made it even
more consistently gripping. Victor is soon enmeshed in a nightmarish sequence
of events, as a number of women with whom he is connected meet gruesome deaths
– and the crimes seem to be patterned on killings which occur in film noir
classics. For a film noir buff, this novel is utterly fascinating, but a wider
readership will be gripped by the increasing sense of paranoia that Victor experiences,
especially when a young woman to whom he is attracted disappears in strange circumstances.
The unravelling of the complex plot is very well done, and there are some marvellously
atmospheric scenes. A very good example of Eurocrime.
(
Martin Edwards
- author of the highly acclaimed Harry Devlin Mysteries)
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