EURO-MURDER ON THE ISLAND: Swiss and Irish Crime Novels set away from New York

Books discussed in this essay: The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer by Joel Dicker, translated by Howard Curtis (UK: MacLehose Press £20.00 ISBN9780857059208) The Perfect Lie by Jo Spain (UK: Quercus £14.99 ISBN 9781529407242)

It may have been only a coincidence that I should be asked to review two crime novels back to back which both turned out to be by European authors, and both set on Long Island, but looking at the two in retrospect it seemed to me to make a certain type of sense as an entry point into America for them and their audiences.

In both books, we are dealing primarily with people, and in each book with lead police characters, who have moved out of New York City to sleepier beachside towns on the Island, looking for a quieter life. Yet in both, of course, they are faced with crimes which differ from those in the city primarily by their unusualness, though in Joel Dicker’s Orphea (don’t look back, anyone?) we discover an underbelly of crime, while in Jo Spain’s Newport, we are faced with questions of cover-up and an interesting look at the Gatsby-esque lifestyles which sit side-by-side with the world of the true locals.

Spain’s book is also set in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at Harvard, and briefly in New York City, while New York features only as background for Dicker. But whatever the setting, the past is an important part of both books; in Spain’s novel the crime with which she is charged has its roots in previous…