DOUBLE NEGATIVE and FROM AWAY: The Discreet and Dangerous Charms of David Carkeet

Crime fiction columnist, blogger, critic and journalist extraordinaire Sarah Weinman looks at two novels by David Carkeet: Double Negative and his new novel From Away: " One thing should be clear from the outset: David Carkeet is not a crime novelist, not in the way we think of the term now. He doesn't set out with a sense of righteous fury to chronicle society's ills, nor does he wish to document murder in all of its transfixing brutality. Instead his touch is lighter, more whimsical, featuring protagonists who, instead of being tortured, are mildly affronted at best. When they find themselves in the crosshairs of the law, they don't mount an outraged crusade, but conduct a parallel investigation of the real culprit of murder that carries a veneer of the absurd, as if they know how ridiculous it is to play amateur sleuth. And while a crime novel's devil should always be in the details, Carkeet's characters are more often bedevilled by linguistic anomalies, the taste of homemade pie, and the baffling habits of the women they want to woo. Put another way, crime fiction protagonists find murder, while murder finds Carkeet's reluctant sleuths. They aren't looking for trouble, or at least not according to their own occasionally convoluted logic. They want to be liked, but sometimes have a hard time expressing that to others, who misconstrue their habitual complaining as a manifestation of darker emotions. The net result for readers is a sense of being swayed off the expected narrative course into more intriguing, messier byways of human behavior, whose larger mysteries will always dwarf that of who killed whom." Read the full review here.