BRIDES OF BLOOD by Joseph Koenig, 
BRIDES OF BLOOD by Joseph Koenig,
Avon, 1995, $5.50 ISBN 0-380-72258-5
Even before the latest wave of isolationism swept over Washington, agents and editors were warning their authors to be wary when it came to setting their novels in any country more exotic than the UK. There were exceptions to be sure, but they applied mainly to the Robert Ludlums who wrote big suspense blockbusters. Even then, they were careful to use sympathetic Americans as their protagonists.
Several years ago, when Martin Cruz Smith proposed the idea of making his hero a Russian detective, and not, say, an American gumshoe who somehow ends up investigating a horrific murder in Moscow, the publisher balked. Cruz Smith went ahead anyway, a decision in retrospect that seems inspired. Nonetheless, the precedent established by Gorky Park, still seems an aberration. It is worth recalling the model of Gorky Park in considering Brides of Blood. In fact, this book seems to demand such comparison.
Darius Baktiar is a man who has fallen through the cracks of the Iranian Revolution that toppled the Shah in 1979. He is a homicide detective and he is only trying to do his job as honestly and efficiently as he can. But the regimes that he serves are not nearly so interested in solving a case or seeing justice done. His old masters at SAVAK, the notorious secret police of the Shah, regard him as a traitor for having shot a corrupt thug in their ranks who would otherwise have gotten away literally with murder. But with the ascent of the Islamic fundamentalists, his act of righteous indignation is seen in an entirely different light. Not exactly a hero, he is allowed to continue in his old job. Which is how he becomes involved in a series of sordid killings that are linked to heroin trafficking and then to the smuggling of mycotoxins highly lethal substances derived from mushrooms whose only usefulness is as a weapon of biological warfare.
Any reader even remotely familiar with Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade would recognize Darius immediately. His marriage is on the rocks, he is suffering a crisis of confidence, and he has a pronounced fondness for drink. But by setting the novel in Iran of the mullahs, Koenig gives the stereotype a novel spin. It is Darius' failure to subscribe to the Islamic dogma that his wife clings to, that is in large part responsible for the disintegration of his marriage. His drinking doesn't help, either. Although alcohol is illegal, Darius position gives him access to as much alcohol as he can get his hands on.
His investigation leads him down an ever more bewildering path. He
traces the drug and mycotoxin smuggling to a Shiite camp in southern
Lebanon, where young women were transformed into fanatics ready to
give their lives in the war against the Jews. These Brides of Blood
have now dispersed, but their secret is one that everyone seems to
covet. Former SAVAK agents swoop down to recruit Darius to their
cause. The
The story is filled with diverting asides about the customs and absurdities
of a regime which condemns the exposure of a woman's ankle in the
street, yet condones the idea of a man away on business marrying
a woman for forty-eight hours so that he can have sex with her without
being guilty of engaging in prostitution. Teheran, as Koenig depicts
it, brings to mind Orwell's novel, 1984. This is a place where the
graffito -- The Road to Salvation: Faith, Holy War, and Martyrdo is
one that everyone but Darius seems to believe in. How a reader, with
scant knowledge of Iran, will take to this novel is an other question.
Review by Leslie Alan Horvitz
NMM
This review appears in Volume IV number 2 of New Mystery Magazine
DEATH GOES ON RETREAT
by Sister Carol Anne O'Marie, Delacorte Press, ISBN# 385-31047-1
$21.95.
One of our favorite women novelists, and an actual Roman
Catholic Sister, the author continues her cool, ironic and wise series
of that supersleuth in black. Sister Mary Helen is on another murder
case in the San Francisco Bay Area. We call this fine series of
novels and their subgenre, "cozies with rosaries". It is refreshing
to have the optimism and moral underpinnings of American Catholic
literature reach out into the mystery form...especially when many
mysteries novels these days have no moral underpinnings at all...many
of the so-called woman's novels, in fact, are simple jingoist propaganda
tracts dressed up with poisoned romance trimmings.
Critics and the marketplace tend to agree, the Sister O'Marie books sell
well and get good reviews.
Sister Mary Helen and co-Sister Eileen, plagued with human frailties,
(agedness, loss of memory and occasional cantankerous moods,) show
up a week early for their annual retreat in the redwood mountains
and discover they will have to stay at the lodge during a diocesan
priests retreat.
Like all independent, hard-working, intellectual Northern Californian
women, they decide to just kick back for a relaxing week of vacation...until
a dead body is found.
Great dialogue, good and bad Catholics, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Review by Linda Wong
Koenig photo by Knox Burger