THE JEWISH CHRONICLE 40 ARTS&BOOKS thejc.com 27 JUNE 2008 BooKS

Peter James is a bestselling crime writer who takes his preparatory fieldwork to alarming limits. By Jenni Frazer CHApTER & vERSE bArAck bAckers BLONE REASON why Barack Obama Research? I’m dead serious has been able to mount such a successful nomination campaign might be the resounding backing he has received from various writ- Photo: maxIm aryuKov ers. Among them are some of the many star American Jewish authors interview currently in the literary firma- s bEfIts a crime ment. The Huffington Post website w r i t e r , P e t e r reveals just how much individuals James’s London have contributed. According to the flat is a mys- HuffPost, Nicole Krauss, has given tery. try as you $1,250 to the Obama coffers, while might, you will her husband, Jonathan Safran Foer, not see a regula- has contributed the unlikely sum tion front door, of $1,408. Fellow novelist Michael hall or porter. Chabon has pitched in with $4,600, Instead, there is a gate, which gives while Shalom Auslander sent the Aout mixed signals: might this be the Big O $300. way in, or is it a disused tradesman’s entrance? You have to get up close to discover the secret of getting in and, once inside, the unwary visitor drAgon duo has to battle with a lift which would BLJUST AS the JC and LJCC introduce not look out of place in a run-down our version of Dragon’s Den (see this council block, rather than the bijou week’s Business page), two enterpris- apartments it serves. ing Jewish writers are launching since there is a truly horrible scene their own moneymaking scheme in his latest book, Dead Man’s Footsteps, — and it already has the backing of which takes place in a lift, one is enti- one of the BBC’s dragons. Stuart tled to wonder, and the answer comes Brodkin, former editor of the Lon- straight away. “Yes”, says James with don Jewish News, and Laurie Stone, relish, “I based that scene on that lift, a journalist who works for The Sun, it’s awful, isn’t it?” He’s grinning as have combined to ghost-write the he says this and that may well be the memoirs of stationery and lingerie secret of his success: he is warm and king Theo Paphitis. Their book, Enter cheerful and, at 60, retains an almost the Dragon: How I Transformed My boyish enthusiasm for his work, which Writer as ladykiller? Peter James at home with a suspiciously horizontal female guest marking out the carpet Life and You Can Too (Orion, £18.99), encompasses television, cinema (he tells how, after being turned down was a producer on al Pacino’s Merchant James’s meticulous research has what did become of roy Grace’s wife, ronto, when he was 22. It was, he says, by several potential backers, Paphi- of Venice), and the bestselling roy given him a unique insight for a crime sandy. a revelation. He arrived on a friday tis’s first big deal was financed by Grace thrillers. writer. He has a close association with James, who is currently in discus- night to find a beautifully set shabbat the Israeli Mizrahi Bank. James’s enthusiasm for research the police, to the extent that he is able sions to turn the roy Grace books into table and a family who “welcomed can sometimes be perhaps a tad too to accompany them on their daily a tv series, has a fascinating identity me with open arms… they couldn’t strong. In his first roy Grace book, rounds. this gives his books an unpar- story in his own background. His fa- believe my mother hadn’t told me Dead Simple, he places one of his pro- alleled authenticity. (and if you ever ther, an anglican chartered account- anything.” tagonists in a stag night that goes hor- wondered, the police’s most hated ant, was married to the Queen’s His background, James says, “has left TITLES IN vIEW ridly wrong when his “friends” put cases are “domestics”.) glovemaker, Cordelia James, a Jewish me deeply interested in prejudice”. al- him in a coffin and leave him there. Grace, his fictional detective, based refugee from nazism. as a schoolboy at though he hasn’t yet brought his fami- these are scenes that one reads with in brighton (where James himself lives Charterhouse, James was bewildered ly’s Holocaust survival into his books, Allegro mA non troppo mounting anxiety but James himself, when not in London), is now on his to be picked on as Jewish, because he he does plan to eventually. a self-confessed claustrophobic, says: fourth outing and the new book exam- barely knew anything about his moth- In the meantime, watch out for an Maestros, “I wanted to know… I went to an un- ines what lies at the heart of all crime er’s background, and it took him a entertaining twist in book number Masterpieces dertaker and asked not only if they fiction: questions of identity. not only long time to get her to acknowledge five in the roy Grace series. there will, and Madness, would put me in a coffin, but if they does one of his villains reinvent him- the Jewish part of his family. inevitably, be some dastardly torture, by Norman would screw the lid down and leave self, taking advantage of the chaos but for James, being Jewish is a although James, being a warm, friend- Lebrecht me there for half-an-hour. and I was that resulted from the tragedy of 9/11, matter for celebration and, he freely ly Jewish man, admits he even has a (Penguin, £8.99) going bonkers. I kept thinking: What but so does the book’s slightly dodgy acknowledges, it was “a huge advan- soft spot for his villains. is an enjoyable if the undertaker drops dead? no one heroine. and James has a surprise for tage” in kicking off his film career in mélange of would know I was in here. but I do like readers who have been wondering, america. His first encounter with the Dead Man’s Footsteps by Peter James is matters musical to do the research.” since the first book in the series, quite rest of his Jewish family was in to- published by Macmillan at £16.99 (the alliteration is catching) including gossip, controversy and informed opinion. Not only is there a top 100, but there is also the “20 worst classical recordings”. Lost in Hoffman’s dark, lonely characters A fAmily scArred Forty-year-old Katrin Himmler illuminAtions ings about her musical talent and her importance of place and belonging. doesn’t have departure from Poland. He rages against what the russians a mere black By eva hoffman It is not altogether surprising, then, are doing to his people and is full of sheep in her Harvill Secker, £16.99 that her new book, her second novel, anger and contempt for the prosper- family — more a reviewed by dAvid hermAn is about a woman pianist and her in- ous western Europeans who look on, black-hearted, volvement with a man who represents oblivious. two pictures of Europe monstrous wolf. va Hoffman burst on to the the violent upheavals of the post-Com- emerge, one prosperous and civilised For she is the literary scene in 1990 with Lost munist soviet union, bringing togeth- but complacent; the other, violent and great-niece of SS in Translation, her superb ac- er two of the central preoccupations in dangerous. head heinrich Ecount of growing up in post- her earlier writing. as she travels, Isabel reflects on her himmler. She tells her family history war Poland and losing her childhood Isabel merton, the main character past; her piano teacher, a German ref- in The Himmler Brothers (Pan, world when she moves with her family in Illuminations, is an accomplished ugee; her tragic childhood; and her £7.99). Now living in Berlin, Katrin to Canada. she has since established concert pianist touring Europe. she tormented younger brother, Kolya, a himmler is married to an Israeli jew. her reputation as one of the best writ- has recently broken up with Peter, her brilliant mathematician. ers in English about Jews, Poland super-rational husband, an american she is never comfortable. on the out- terkel tAlkies and the new Eastern Europe with a lawyer in new York. she meets anzor side, Isabel encounters a lawless po- number of books including Exit Into Islikhanov, a dark, tortured Chechen, litical world, threatened by terrorism, earlier this year History (1993), Shtetl (1998) and After and they have a passionate affair. and there is also “that other lawless in the JC, Peter Such Knowledge (2004). anzor is everything that Peter is not. realm, the realm of the heart”, in which moss hailed In a memorable moment in Lost in Peter embodies law and reason; anzor individuals do terrible things to each Studs terkel’s Translation, Hoffman describes her comes from a world of violence and other. throughout, there is an abiding Touch and Go parents weighing up whether to emi- Eva Hoffman: a disturbing world view unreason. the relationship, too, is a sense of loneliness, of lonely people as at least the grate to Canada or Israel. Her mother is meeting of opposites. she represents colliding with each other, rather than equal best worried about her talented daughter’s indeed be able to get piano lessons in art, beauty and innocence and knows enjoying a loving family or relation- memoir he had future as a pianist, and writes to the Israel. a wonderfully personal touch, nothing of Chechnya and its history ship. this is a dark book, beginning read. Now, the Israeli Prime minister, David ben-Gu- though it didn’t change the family’s of suffering. for her, art and music are with music and love and ending with a New Press has rion, “to inquire whether I’ll be able to direction. what matter. disturbing view of the world. released The get piano lessons if we come to Israel”. music plays an important part in the she is cosmopolitan, without roots Studs Terkel ben-Gurion writes back, assuring book and Hoffman writes movingly in any place or centred family life. He David Herman is the JC’s chief fiction Interviews: Film and Theatre Eva’s mother that her daughter will about her teachers and her mixed feel- embodies nationalism and the crucial reviewer (£9.99). Subjects include cagney, Brando and Sir Ian mcKellen.