Ashes To Ashes

Some crime novels invite you in with a whisper. Others grab you by the sleeve, usher you into a dark alley of human frailty, and leave you there with the uneasy sense that civilisation is really only a thin administrative layer over chaos. Ashes to Ashes by Barbara Nadel is very much in that second tradition.

Published by Headline in 2009, this is one of those titles that already arrives with a certain grim efficiency. Ashes to Ashes is not promising a light-hearted jaunt, a restorative village fête, or the sort of murder that can be tidied away before supper. It is announcing, with admirable lack of fuss, that matters here will involve ruin, aftermath and the general inconvenience of mortality. Which, for the crime reader, is usually a good sign.

Barbara Nadel is, of course, one of those writers who understands that crime fiction works best when it is not really just about crime. A corpse is all very well as a narrative starter motor, but what keeps the engine going is people: their secrets, loyalties, compromises, obsessions, delusions and all the little emotional miswirings that make homicide such a regrettably renewable resource. Nadel’s novels tend to know this perfectly well. They are not interested merely in puzzle mechanics. They are interested in atmosphere, psychology, place, pressure and the slow, uncomfortable unpeeling of lives.

And that is part of the pleasure here. Ashes to Ashes sounds Biblical, terminal and faintly accusatory, as though the reader is being reminded that everyone ends badly and some just get there more dramatically than others. It has exactly the right sort of title for modern crime fiction: sombre, elemental, memorable, and just poetic enough to suggest that this is not going to be a book about straightforward paperwork. Something will smoulder. Something will be uncovered. Someone will almost certainly regret everything, though perhaps not in time to be useful.

There is also something wonderfully satisfying about Barbara Nadel as a presence in crime writing. She has that ability to make darkness feel inhabited rather than decorative. Some thrillers merely splash about in menace for effect. Nadel tends to give the impression that the darkness belongs to actual lives, real pressures, and the long messy business of being human. Which is far more interesting, even if it does rather spoil the comforting fantasy that crime is committed only by flamboyant maniacs with a theatrical sense of timing.

As sold by Crappy Old Books, this copy is in Good condition, which feels exactly right for a novel of this sort. Crime fiction should not look too precious. It ought to have the air of a book that has already spent time in someone’s hands, perhaps read late into the evening with growing suspicion about everybody involved. Good condition suggests a respectable, readable survivor: looked after, but not absurdly babied. A book that has done what crime novels are meant to do, namely accompany a reader through several hours of pleasurable unease.

There is a pleasing irony, too, in finding Ashes to Ashes second-hand. A novel about endings, ruin or the reduction of things to their final state turns up perfectly intact and ready for another life. The title sounds terminal; the object is not. It has already passed from hand to hand and now continues its little career on the shelves of Crappy Old Books, which is really the best sort of literary afterlife. Not entombed, not remaindered into oblivion, just circulating quietly among readers with a taste for the darker side of human behaviour.

For fans of crime fiction with atmosphere, psychological bite and a little more substance than mere body-count aerobics, this is an excellent find. It is likely to be sharp, shadowed, intelligent and agreeably unsentimental. The title alone suggests a certain severity of mood, and Barbara Nadel is not the sort of writer to waste such a good title on anything trivial. This is a book that almost certainly means business.

So this is not just another paperback crime novel. It is a compact invitation into a world where the past refuses to stay buried, where human motives are rarely tidy, and where the neat phrase “ashes to ashes” turns out to contain rather more menace than consolation. A good, solid slice of modern crime writing with just the right amount of darkness in its bones.

Condition: Good. Respectable, sturdy, and still perfectly capable of drawing one more reader into trouble. Sold by Crappy Old Books.

Keep browsing: See more Crime books Other books by Barbara Nadel