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A Failed Trilogy
27 Jul 2004
Felaheen - Jon Courtenay Grimwood - Simon and Schuster 2003
* *
Alarmingly, the subtitle on the cover has changed. Whereas the previous novels in this series were subtitled "The First Arabesk" and "The Second Arabesk", it's now "An Ashraf Bey Mystery". Apart from being a misnomer (there's not a lot of mystery), it implies that there are more books to come. This would be a pity, because the law of diminishing returns has struck with a vengeance and Grimwood has clearly run out of inspiration.
Grimwood's first unforgivable sin is to move the action out of El Iskandriya, which was the chief reason for reading the other two books. This was a marvellous evocation of a near-future, alternative Alexandria, set in a world where Britain lost the First World War (quite why this happened is not explained, but at a guess the Americans were persuaded to stay out). As a result the chief powers are the Germans, the Ottomans (whose empire, of course, never collapsed), the French and the Americans. El Iskandriya is a semi-anarchic city nominally under the rule of the Emir of Tunis, but with strong colonial influence from Germany and distinct French and American presences.
It was Grimwood's descriptions of the geography and architecture of El Iskandriya - the baking hot terraces, the cool, rich interiors - that gave the earlier books so much of their atmosphere. Unfortunately, this book is largely set in a series of generic locations in Tunis which, while they capture the hot, dusty feel of Northern Africa, lack the memorability of the Mansion Al-Mansur or the Cafe Trianon.
I have always had a problem with Raf, the lead character. He's likeable enough, but he is, basically, a superman with enhanced hearing, eyesight and reflexes. Now I should say that I do not like superheroes except in comics. The limitations of our senses, reflexes and intelligence - our fallibility - are part of what makes us human and so I tend to find such characters uninteresting. To engage my attention, the author has really got to get inside the head of his hero and convince me that he is human despite lacking some of the limitations that human beings have. This Grimwood's slightly chilly prose fails to do. Instead, he tries to interest in Raf by giving him a) an immensely complicated back-story (which became so convoluted in this book that by the end I'd completely lost track of it and stopped caring) and b) an artificial intelligence called the fox which occasionally pops up and gives sardonic advice. Sadly, the latter device, which played an important part in the previous books, contributes nothing here. Raf had resolved all his problems with it and Grimwood clearly couldn't think of any more complications.
Grimwood's second unforgiveable sin is the sidelining of the two interesting female characters, Raf's feisty sort-of girlfriend Zara and his 11 year old prodigy of a niece, Hani. In the previous books, Grimwood did a good job of transcending the limited range of actions allowed for women by the traditional Ottoman society of El Iskandriya, but again his imagination fails him here. When Raf leaves for Tunis, he does so without telling either Hani or Zara what he is up to (why? why?). Hani spends the first half of the book doing some detective work to deduce where Raf has gone, but Zara simple sits around in a quite uncharacteristic fit of pique. Worse, their sole purpose in the second half of the book is to play the traditional female role of helpless victims whom Raf must protect and rescue. Come on, Grimwood! Surely you could have come up with something better than that?
Grimwood is a clever writer who uses a number of techniques to hold the reader's attention. First, there's the narrative web - there are several viewpoint characters including a flashback to Raf's mother (though irritatingly typeset in italics - an alternative font would have been better). Secondly, he makes good use of what I call "The Soldier in the Mist" technique (after Gene Wolfe's fine novel) where almost every chapter is set in a new location and several hours after the previous one. This means that the reader's attention is kept constantly engaged as they try to deduce what must have happened in the interim. That said, both these approaches only really work if you are reading in long stretches. If you only have time for a chapter or two before bed, the effect is fragmentary and disengaging. You have to keep paging back to remind yourself of what just happened and that stops you from entering into the world of the novel.
So why all the flaws that make this book so disappointing? The answer, I think, was that Grimwood always had a trilogy in mind, with Raf going up a level in social status in each book. But the sort of novel he was writing was a mystery in the style of Raymond Chandler, and the whole point about those is that the interest lies in the small stuff, the telling details of the locale in which the detective is working. This Grimwood did to excellent effect in book one and to a lesser extent in book two, but here the social status ratchet demands that the action be set in Tunis so that it could involve the Emir, which required Raf to leave El Iskandriya, which meant that Hani and Zara had to follow him or get left out of the story altogether, which meant... (there is in fact a murder mystery similar to those in the first two books, but the victim is someone we don't really care about and it is resolved in a fairly perfunctory manner). Also, to make the trilogy work, the political situation would have had to develop in each book so that Raf's actions acquire more and more significance, but instead, as with a murder mystery where normality is restored at the end, it remains unchanged. Grimwood should have decided from the outset whether he was writing a trilogy or a set of murder mysteries, rather than trying to do both. It's possible that now he's got the trilogy off his chest, so to speak, he can settle down to writing better stories, but I'll need some convincing to read another "Ashraf Bey mystery".
Felaheen - Jon Courtenay Grimwood - Simon and Schuster 2003
* *
Alarmingly, the subtitle on the cover has changed. Whereas the previous novels in this series were subtitled "The First Arabesk" and "The Second Arabesk", it's now "An Ashraf Bey Mystery". Apart from being a misnomer (there's not a lot of mystery), it implies that there are more books to come. This would be a pity, because the law of diminishing returns has struck with a vengeance and Grimwood has clearly run out of inspiration.
Grimwood's first unforgivable sin is to move the action out of El Iskandriya, which was the chief reason for reading the other two books. This was a marvellous evocation of a near-future, alternative Alexandria, set in a world where Britain lost the First World War (quite why this happened is not explained, but at a guess the Americans were persuaded to stay out). As a result the chief powers are the Germans, the Ottomans (whose empire, of course, never collapsed), the French and the Americans. El Iskandriya is a semi-anarchic city nominally under the rule of the Emir of Tunis, but with strong colonial influence from Germany and distinct French and American presences.
It was Grimwood's descriptions of the geography and architecture of El Iskandriya - the baking hot terraces, the cool, rich interiors - that gave the earlier books so much of their atmosphere. Unfortunately, this book is largely set in a series of generic locations in Tunis which, while they capture the hot, dusty feel of Northern Africa, lack the memorability of the Mansion Al-Mansur or the Cafe Trianon.
I have always had a problem with Raf, the lead character. He's likeable enough, but he is, basically, a superman with enhanced hearing, eyesight and reflexes. Now I should say that I do not like superheroes except in comics. The limitations of our senses, reflexes and intelligence - our fallibility - are part of what makes us human and so I tend to find such characters uninteresting. To engage my attention, the author has really got to get inside the head of his hero and convince me that he is human despite lacking some of the limitations that human beings have. This Grimwood's slightly chilly prose fails to do. Instead, he tries to interest in Raf by giving him a) an immensely complicated back-story (which became so convoluted in this book that by the end I'd completely lost track of it and stopped caring) and b) an artificial intelligence called the fox which occasionally pops up and gives sardonic advice. Sadly, the latter device, which played an important part in the previous books, contributes nothing here. Raf had resolved all his problems with it and Grimwood clearly couldn't think of any more complications.
Grimwood's second unforgiveable sin is the sidelining of the two interesting female characters, Raf's feisty sort-of girlfriend Zara and his 11 year old prodigy of a niece, Hani. In the previous books, Grimwood did a good job of transcending the limited range of actions allowed for women by the traditional Ottoman society of El Iskandriya, but again his imagination fails him here. When Raf leaves for Tunis, he does so without telling either Hani or Zara what he is up to (why? why?). Hani spends the first half of the book doing some detective work to deduce where Raf has gone, but Zara simple sits around in a quite uncharacteristic fit of pique. Worse, their sole purpose in the second half of the book is to play the traditional female role of helpless victims whom Raf must protect and rescue. Come on, Grimwood! Surely you could have come up with something better than that?
Grimwood is a clever writer who uses a number of techniques to hold the reader's attention. First, there's the narrative web - there are several viewpoint characters including a flashback to Raf's mother (though irritatingly typeset in italics - an alternative font would have been better). Secondly, he makes good use of what I call "The Soldier in the Mist" technique (after Gene Wolfe's fine novel) where almost every chapter is set in a new location and several hours after the previous one. This means that the reader's attention is kept constantly engaged as they try to deduce what must have happened in the interim. That said, both these approaches only really work if you are reading in long stretches. If you only have time for a chapter or two before bed, the effect is fragmentary and disengaging. You have to keep paging back to remind yourself of what just happened and that stops you from entering into the world of the novel.
So why all the flaws that make this book so disappointing? The answer, I think, was that Grimwood always had a trilogy in mind, with Raf going up a level in social status in each book. But the sort of novel he was writing was a mystery in the style of Raymond Chandler, and the whole point about those is that the interest lies in the small stuff, the telling details of the locale in which the detective is working. This Grimwood did to excellent effect in book one and to a lesser extent in book two, but here the social status ratchet demands that the action be set in Tunis so that it could involve the Emir, which required Raf to leave El Iskandriya, which meant that Hani and Zara had to follow him or get left out of the story altogether, which meant... (there is in fact a murder mystery similar to those in the first two books, but the victim is someone we don't really care about and it is resolved in a fairly perfunctory manner). Also, to make the trilogy work, the political situation would have had to develop in each book so that Raf's actions acquire more and more significance, but instead, as with a murder mystery where normality is restored at the end, it remains unchanged. Grimwood should have decided from the outset whether he was writing a trilogy or a set of murder mysteries, rather than trying to do both. It's possible that now he's got the trilogy off his chest, so to speak, he can settle down to writing better stories, but I'll need some convincing to read another "Ashraf Bey mystery".