August 29, 2004
Death Takes a Holiday
By MARILYN STASIO

ALTHOUGH I haven't yet made a trip abroad because of something I read in a detective story, I can't say I haven't been tempted. Mysteries set in faraway places make me want to toss some clothes in a bag and take off at dawn for:

. . . Cuba, Jose Latour's ''Havana World Series'' in hand, to imagine that wild time when American mobsters were fighting over control of the casinos and making bets on everything but a political coup.

. . . the sleepy back-country township in South Africa where Thobela Mpayipheli, a onetime government agent who has reinvented himself as a peaceable man, is reluctantly coaxed back into action in Deon Meyer's ''Heart of the Hunter.''

. . . the shady precincts of modern-day Shanghai patrolled by Chief Inspector Chen and fellow officers charged with investigating politically sensitive crimes in Qiu Xiaolong's ''When Red Is Black.''

. . . Brazil, clutching ''Southwesterly Wind,'' the latest mystery in a beguiling series by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza, in the hope of catching Inspector Espinosa on one of his meditative walks through Rio.

. . . and, in a fanciful moment, time travel to the Australian city of Melbourne in the 1920's, the setting for Kerry Greenwood's ''Murder in Montparnasse'' and other whimsical mysteries in a series featuring a fashionable liberated woman, Phryne Fisher, as amateur sleuth.

But my first stop would have to be Italy, which teems with resident mystery writers. Although they view their respective regions from a morbid perspective, acute observers like Magdalen Nabb (in Florence), Donna Leon (in Venice), Andrea Camilleri (in Sicily) and Michael Dibdin (who won't stay put) are vivid chroniclers of the daily drama of life and death. And while their sleuths are no less familiar than Virgil with the infernal darkness of the national soul, they make more cheerful tour guides. Their Italian detectives are pensive souls who ponder cases over robust meals in noisy trattorias and refer to Cicero for insights into the human condition. Actually, Andrea Camilleri's cop, Inspector Salvo Montalbano, is more partial to Sicilian philosophers like Giovanni Gentile, and in ''The Terra-Cotta Dog'' he declares himself ''deeply moved'' by fried mullet, boiled squid and poached baby octopus. Michael Dibdin's urban investigator, Aurelio Zen, out of his element in the northern reaches of the Dolomites in ''Medusa,'' struggles to understand the archaic Ladino dialect and has even more trouble digesting the region's smoked meats and gamy stews.

Italian sleuths are also great walkers, invariably taking the most scenic route on their way to break the news to some poor old widow that her good-for-nothing son has been arrested for murder. Ardent admirers of all things beautiful, they will often stop to look at the frescoes in a church. In ''Uniform Justice,'' Donna Leon's sleuth, Commissario Guido Brunetti, even exchanges greetings with a mynah bird in a pet shop.

The point, of course, is that these fictional detectives and amateur sleuths are naturally inquisitive and supremely perceptive. They know their territory intimately and study it obsessively, alert to the slightest signs of change -- and danger. Kurt Wallander, the melancholy police inspector in Henning Mankell's Swedish procedurals, is an eloquent ruminator on the creeping evils of the postmodern era. ''What's happening to the world?'' he demands in ''Firewall'' when two teenage girls show no remorse after killing a taxi driver. Karin Fossum's ''Don't Look Back'' asks the same question in neighboring Norway when the murder of a well-liked girl awakens the residents of a picturesque village to a chilling fact: there are no more islands of tranquillity in a changing world. ''They hug their children close, and nothing feels safe anymore.''

Scandinavian cops may be the most morose of an angst-ridden breed, but they aren't alone. Fictional police officers throughout the world are shaking their heads over criminal behavior that would have been inconceivable to earlier generations. Investigating the murders of two illegal Albanian immigrants in Petros Markaris's ''Deadline in Athens,'' Inspector Costas Haritos visits the street where the couple lived and is stunned by their neighbors' blatant bigotry. ''Why all this fuss about two Albanians?'' demands the owner of a grocery store. ''After all, with two Albanians less and another one in prison, Greece is a better place.''

Don Lee is equally forthright about Japan's racist attitudes toward blacks and Koreans in ''Country of Origin,'' which also takes a gritty look at Tokyo's fabled sex-entertainment industry. Lee's underdog cop, Inspector Kenzo Ota, who is on the team investigating the disappearance of an American woman, is such a naive puppy that he doesn't realize his own landlady is a ''romance consultant'' in the flesh trade.

Pepe Carvalho, the world-weary private eye in ''The Buenos Aires Quintet'' and other books in a series by Manuel Vazquez Montalban, makes no apologies for his indifference to anything happening outside his native Barcelona. But when his uncle asks him to track down his wayward son in Buenos Aires, Carvalho is prepared to consider the possibility that ''a new Argentina has been born, a new breed of Argentines.'' His tolerance fails him, however, once he comes face to face with the legacy of violence passed down by a succession of ruthless military regimes.

This gritty genre realism is all very informative, you might say, but having traveled this far for a vacation, may I please have some restorative culture -- and perhaps some mindless fun? Leslie Forbes's ''Bombay Ice'' comes close to being mindless, with its overstuffed plot about rampant corruption, but this potboiler still qualifies as fun, with its gaudy picture of a Bollywood film factory whose production head is suspected of having murdered his wife. If modern India seems overwhelming, you'll find relief -- and pure entertainment -- in Barbara Cleverly's enchanting stories set in the declining years of the Raj. ''The Damascened Blade,'' the third in a richly atmospheric series, takes her Scotland Yard investigator, Joe Sandilands, to the lawless northwest frontier that India shares with its fierce neighbor, Afghanistan.

Amelia Peabody, the bossy archaeologist in Elizabeth Peters's romantic adventures set in Egypt at the turn of the last century, makes a perfect companion for a cruise up the Nile. After being hustled with your tour group through four temples and six tombs in one day, you can relax on deck and sink into ''Guardian of the Horizon,'' the latest adventure featuring an intrepid heroine who has been fighting grave robbers and fending off lusty sheiks for close to 30 years. Or you could choose to travel with Gareth Owen, the Mamur Zapt, or chief, of Cairo's secret police, in ''Death of an Effendi'' and other whodunits by Michael Pearce, set in the same colorful period. But Egypt hounds should also stock up on the gorgeously detailed dynastic mysteries of P. C. Doherty and Lynda S. Robinson.

Rereading ''Gorky Park'' is still the best way to get through a plane trip to Moscow. But once you arrive, the newly translated novels of Boris Akunin, which are set in czarist times and feature the escapades of a dashing diplomat-sleuth named Erast Fandorin, will introduce you to the unique Russian sense of humor. For all its elegant style, ''The Winter Queen'' is a madcap spoof of those absurdly romantic feats of heroism so dear to the Russian soul.

The reader who has been to London a million times and already knows to pick up the latest P. D. James or Peter Robinson can get a fresh slant on familiar territory with the historical mysteries of Leonard Tourney (16th century) and Bruce Alexander (18th century) -- or the incomparable Dr. Sam Johnson mysteries by Lillian De La Torre, if you can find these out-of-print classics -- as well as the better-known Victorian series by Anne Perry. But I must admit Paris is a blind spot with me, since I have yet to discover a more agreeable companion than Inspector Maigret.

As for culture, that's easy enough to find in genre novels, especially if you're headed for Spain, the setting and inspiration for Arturo Perez-Reverte's sophisticated literary thrillers. These intellectual puzzles, full of the most extravagant refinements, are the work of a mind enthralled by the aesthetic mysteries posed by old paintings (''The Flanders Panel''), rare manuscripts (''The Club Dumas''), arcane arts (''The Fencing Master'') and religious architecture (''The Seville Communion''). Finding himself in a cathedral square that ''had witnessed the bonfires of the Inquisition,'' the protagonist of ''The Club Dumas'' reflects that ''after all, this was Toledo. A crucible for underground cults, initiation rites, false converts.'' And suddenly you too are there.

In the end, though, what you most want to hear when you're on foreign soil are the voices of the people who live there. To my ear, the most insistent regional accents are heard in Scotland, in the brutal street talk of writers like Ian Rankin, Val McDermid and Denise Mina as well as in the more subtly sinister tones of Louise Welsh (who argues, in ''The Cutting Room,'' that Glasgow, for all its claims to toughness, is ''a peaceful wee haven'').

But if there's one person who can drown them out, it's the deceptively soft-spoken Precious Ramotswe, ''the only lady private detective in Botswana'' and the sensible heroine of a delightful series by Alexander McCall Smith that began with ''The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.'' Thinking about all the stories she has heard of her native land, Precious wonders, ''Who is there to write down the lives of ordinary people?'' -- and the answer is right there, in the lovely sound of her own sweet voice.

Marilyn Stasio writes the Crime column for the Book Review

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