The butler, with the candlestick, in Bethlehem - Haaretz

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The butler, with the candlestick, in Bethlehem

By Shiri Lev-Ari

Tags: Israel, literature

Gone are the days when British author Arthur Conan Doyle felt he had to apologize to his mother that he was "only" a mystery writer, and not something substantive like a doctor or lawyer. Detective stories seem to have become a truly legitimate genre in Israel in recent years. More and more contemporary and classic detective novels are being published, and they're selling well. More academic researchers are examining the detective in literature as a social seismograph, and discussing the disappearing gap between high and low literature.

A few years ago, Am Oved Publishers began publishing novellas by Belgian author Georges Simenon, translated by Yehoshua Kenaz. These were not Simenon's classic detective stories about Inspector Jules Maigret, but they were well-received. Now Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing is launching a new series of mysteries, edited by Michal Arbel. The first book is Simenon's first Maigret book, "The Case of Peter the Lett."

Meanwhile, Am Oved's Classic series has published what is considered the very first detective novel: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1841. This book contains the first three mysteries starring literature's first detective, C. Auguste Dupin, along with the short story "The Man of the Crowd," from 1840, often considered the precursor to detective literature and the detective character.

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Rounding out these publications is a new book from Keter Publishing, "Sof Onat Halimonim" (The End of the Lemon Season), by Shulamit Lapid, featuring sleuth Lizi Badichi. In another few weeks Keter will also be publishing a translation of the detective romance novel "The Collaborator of Bethlehem," the first book in a series by Israel-based English journalist Matt Beynon Rees, who writes about mysterious crimes in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

"There is new interest in detective literature," says Arbel. "[This genre] deals with lust, violence, crime, guilt, innocence, fear, investigation and the search for truth, so ultimately even 'Oedipus Rex' is a detective story, as is 'Crime and Punishment.' To a certain extent, so are the stories in Genesis, such as the fruit eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and the ensuing investigation, followed by the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Then comes the first murder, a fratricide. Freud believes human culture begins with overcoming the patricidal urge, and that we are constantly brushing this issue aside by putting it in popular literature."

In Israel, the sleuth genre began as cheap commercial paperbacks. In 1932, journalist Shlomo Ben-Yisrael and sleuth David Tidhar started the "Detective Library." Tidhar was an officer with the British Mandatory Police and later opened his own private investigations office. The two writers published magazines of detective stories written about the Land of Israel, its people and its landscapes, based on the experiences of Tidhar, which very quickly made him a popular figure.

The modern sleuth first appeared in original Israeli literature in the 1980s, in the books of Amnon Jackont, and later in two series - one by the writer Batya Gur, with her protagonist Michael Ohayun in "Saturday Morning Murder," and the other by Lapid, with Lizi Badichi in "Local Paper." Uri Adelman, Yair Lapid, Ehud Asheri, Limor Nahmias, Gal Amir, Shimon Adaf and many other Israeli writers also have written mysteries.

Academia views the detective as a research tool for social and cultural studies: The sleuth's investigation is a mirror for society, and the mystery is sometimes only an excuse.

"A detective is driven by the spirit of his times and is acutely attuned," says Arbel. "Just as Sherlock Holmes raised major issues of his time, such as rationalism versus barbarism and coincidence versus causality, today's detectives address deeper questions involving the current mood, such as the ethical separation or non-separation of the individual from history. P.D. James, for example, deals extensively and pessimistically with children and sexual abuse. She considers this metonymic for corruption in the world.

"The detective is a protagonist," says Arbel. "Perhaps this explains why the reader needs him right now. Finding the truth at the end is an important part of the pleasure. Most detectives embody a truth that can be understood, but there are books where uncovering the truth really does not solve the chaos in the world. Despite the human need to understand the enigmas of this world and to control it with the intellect, it turns out that the forces at work are still beyond the human brain and cannot always be deciphered.

"The moment the line between high and low literature blurred, starting in the 1980s," says Dror Shimoni, Haaretz's books editor, who is writing his doctorate on the emergence of this genre in Europe in the 19th century. "Researchers began seriously studying the sleuth in Europe and the United States."

Important researchers in this genre include Roland Barth, Walter Benjamin, Slavoj Zizek and Frederic Jameson.

"The main insight that all these researchers noted is that detective stories contain something that underlies a great many modern cultural phenomena, something that is also part of psychoanalysis and literary interpretation. The detective becomes a metaphor or an explanation for modern phenomena."

In Israel, says Mishani, the genre has been slow to obtain full acceptance.

"Now it is receiving legitimacy among Israeli academia and readers. Many people read detective novels and apologize for it. I hope they soon will stop doing this."

Television journalist Oren Nahari, a mystery buff and the editor of Keter's "Akivot" (Footprints) series (which has so far released "The Big Sleep" by Raymond Chandler), says legitimacy is an ongoing debate.

"Of all the legendary paperback books, there were a lot of bad ones and a few good ones, as in any literary genre," he says, "but the best detectives were always accepted, even by the elite. You can't say Edgar Allan Poe was not accepted in literary circles. Furthermore, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett are the direct literary forbears of [Ernest] Hemingway. Graham Greene also wrote wonderful suspense and spy stories, and John le Carre started out with two suspense novels where his master spy George Smiley solves murder mysteries.

"Harry Potter, too," continues Nahari. "Every book in that series is a murder mystery. Within whom is Voldemort hiding? Who is involved? Nowadays there are different kinds of detectives. Some have a sense of humor. 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency,' by Alexander McCall Smith, contains almost no suspense, but features the endearing character of Mma Precious Ramotswe. Likewise, Boris Akunin's books give us a sense of another culture. There are also Jasper Fforde's books, which are downright funny. Dennis Lehane, who wrote 'Mystic River,' has written an amazing series about detectives in Boston. Through them, you get a sense of America's vibrant urbanism and rot.

"Mystery novels were always ahead of their time, just like fantasy and science fiction," says Nahari. "They didn't replace [Joyce] or [Samuel] Beckett, but by the 1920s Philip Marlowe replaced Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie's sleuths, because even at the end of their books justice does not prevail, and even when the truth is revealed and there are disputes over what it really is, the detective still has to wake up in the morning and fight the system anew. The books and movies from the 1950s and 1960s were an expression of a deep truth beneath the proper facade of the British estates and the American skyscrapers, and still are today."

Nahari says the level of mystery writing has been improving, "due to the competition for our hearts and souls."

The more conflicts and problems there are in the world, and the less our institutions protect us, we as a society struggle more with questions of right and wrong, good and evil.

"Radical post-modernist philosophers say there is no good or bad, and that terror attacks are understandable, but people still want to read a book that addresses ethical questions. Not necessarily a book with a happy ending, because the ending is not always good. Much of the success of Harry Potter, science fiction and fantasy stems from ethos. We want to believe there is good and evil. We want to know that there is someone who knows, whether it is a frightened 11-year-old boy or scarred Philip Marlowe, who will always get up and fight. We want to know that there is someone who knows, and that he has a solid set of ethics and is prepared to fight. Perhaps at the end of the book the detective will let the murderess go, but he will have a good reason. The classic hero who develops his own values and fights with the few against the many - that is part of the success of the modern mystery solver."

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