Polish noir: Zygmunt Miloszewski's second

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A Grain of Truth, Zygmunt Miloszewski's second crime novel featuring Polish prosecutor Teodore Szacki (published by Bitter Lemon and translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones), is, like the first book in the series (Entanglement) a satisfying combination of police procedural and mystery novel, with considerable humor and social commentary added in. Szacki has left Warsaw for the small city of Sandomierz, seduced by its beauty but now regretting his separation from Warsaw's urbane pleasures as well as his ex-wife and estranged daughter.

But he finally gets a good murder to sink his teeth into: a well-known woman, wife of a town councillor and herself a promoter of educational theater, is found with her throat slashed just outside a former synagogue (now a state archive). Near the body is found a kind of knife used by kosher butchers, raising the long and continuing history of Polish anti-semitism as well as the country's new liberalism (what if the murderer is in fact Jewish?).

The development of the story and the investigation of the crime develop slowly at first, ultimately shifting into underground tunnels, attack dogs, and multiple murders that veer toward the Gothic and the conspiratorial excesses of Dan Brown (who is mentioned) but ultimately Miloszewski succeeds in accessing the energies of those genres within a contemporary realism that is convincing and satisfying. Plus there's ultimately a twist that will satisfy the fans of the puzzle mystery.

There are profuse references to popular culture, mostly from outside Poland, though there are many references to a Polish TV mystery series filmed in Sandomierz, Father Mateusz, which seems to be a remake of the long-running Italian series, Don Matteo (complete with bicycle and gentle non-threatening plotting. Mateusz provides a contrast for the grittier reality of Szacki's life.

While Miloszewski explores anti-semitism and its history in depth, he leaves unexamined a flaw in his own character that keeps him human but also may irritate some readers. His language, especially in his interior monologues, can be unpleasantly sexist. But he genuinely regrets the actions on his part that destroyed his marriage, and his almost painfully comic blunders with his current love life provide evidence that the author is an intentional character flaw rather than unconscious prejudice (though the flaw may temper a reader's sympathy for Szacki's difficulties with the women in his life).

Both of Miloszewski's novels are complex, involving, and interesting, but A Grain of Truth is more satisfying as a crime story than Entanglement, and the use of history, conspiracy, and the extended range of crime fiction are livelier. Entanglement relies more on the locked-room mystery and the gathering of suspects together in a room, both being longstanding elements of the genre, but tending toward static rather than dynamic plotting. A Grain of Truth shifts toward the dynamic side of crime writing, though still with considerable care in development and careful attention to the voices of all the characters, including the difficult but engaging prosecutor himself.

Arnaldur's new Iclandic noir

To contact us Click HERE

I had some doubts about Arnaldur Indridason's Black Skies when I ordered it, because it is centered on Sigurdur Óli, the least likable or interesting of the cops in the circle around Erlendur, his usual central character. Erlendur has left on a mysterious trip to the area in which he grew up (and where he lost his brother as a child), and the previous book in the series, Outrage (which focuses on Elinborg, the other running character) and Black Skies occur at the same time, with occasional overlaps as the two detectives consult with one another (and worry about Erlendur's extended absence.

I had (as it turned out, well placed) confidence in Arnaldur as a writer, though, and indeed Black Skies is very interesting. As the book explores Sigurdur Óli's life and character he first grows even less likable (without making the story less interesting). He can be a bit impulsive, and in his private life, self-destructive, traits that are given some context. He's also an unrepentant political conservative, going back to his school years (when he edited a conservative literary journal). He's also a bit of a fop, and his taste in clothes in addition to his character overlap just a bit with one of the great characters if Scandinavian crime fiction, Gunvald Larsson (of the Sjöwall/Wahlöö books). Sigurdur Óli is, though, less vocal and violent.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Black Skies is the use of overlapping plots. It's a common strategy to start off with a crime, then shift to another crime that eventually gives way to or becomes connected to that initial scene. Arnaldur plays with that theme here, setting up a gruesome scene that only very gradually comes into focus, while Sigurdur Óli concentrates on other things: primarily a mess he gets into when doing a favor for a friend. When he goes to a couple's apartment (after the friend begs him to scare them into giving up a blackmail attempt) he finds the woman in the couple almost dead, and runs into the assailant. To say more would be spoiling things. The blackmail plot, though, leads in very interesting directions before coming to a surprising conclusion.

One of the interesting directions is an investigation of the Icelandic banking practices that will (not long after the timeframe of the novel) lead to the crash of the country's economy (the book is set just before, but was written just after, the crisis). The ominous shadows of the crash loom over the book.

But the story is not an economic tract: it's aim is both broader, in terms of the society, and narrower, in terms of its vivid portrait of the detective and the numerous characters involved in the story's various threads. Though I'm particularly attracted to Erlendur throughout the series, and though the book focusing on Elinborg was very good, I think perhaps Black Skies is one of Arnaldur's best books (high praise indeed).

Irish noir: Declan Burke's Slaughter's Hound

To contact us Click HERE

Lately I've been reading books by authors who write novels in pairs or trilogies rather than open-ended series, which seems a relatively recent phenomenon in the crime fiction world. In several cases, the switch from one series or trilogy to another is also a shift in style or genre. For just one example, Carlo Lucarelli's DeLuca series (historical police procedurals) is quite different from his Grazia Negro books (serial killer stories), and different still from his Coliandro stories (which are comic, parodies of the police procedural). All of these series seem to be closed, without further installments (though there is one Grazia Negro book that hasn't been translated, Lupo Mannaro or Werewolf).

Declan Burke has just published Slaughter's Hound, the sequel (and seemingly final installment) to his first book, Eightball Boogie. These two books, featuring not-exactly detective Harry Rigby, are hard-boiled noir, in the tradition of Chandler and Ross MacDonald, but with a contemporary relentlessness and literary references that might remind a reader of a more recent noir writer, Ken Bruen. Burke's other pair of novels, The Big O and Crime Always Pays, are lighter, more in a comic or farcical but still noir tone, closer to Elmore Leonard than Jim Thompson. Neither series resembles Burke's brilliant stand-alone metafiction, Absolute Zero Cool.

Burke's literary references are not intrusive or artificial, but integral to his first-person narrator's character and to the story, and range from Joyce, Beckett, and Yeats to Bukowsky and William Gaddis (who is particularly relevant to one aspect of the overall story, dealing with forgery). One reference is closely related to the dark violence of the story, an image and an act that suggest two grotesque passages in Bataille's Story of the Eye and Kosinski's Painted Bird, though neither writer is mentioned. Neither the literary asides nor the overarching paen to an obscure Irish rock band, Rollerskate Skinny (who I confess I thought Burke had made up until I did a web search) slow down the inexorable downward spiral of Harry's life.

Harry is recently released from incarceration in a mental facility, to which he was confined after killing his brother at the end of Eightball Boogie. A roommate there is the son of a wealthy family right out of Ross MacDonald or even Chinatown, and part of the pleasure of the novel is Rigby's narrative exploration of the intricacies of this spectacularly dysfunctional family. The current Irish financial collapse is also a factor, as it plays out on the bars, alleys, and docks of Sligo, on Ireland's northwest.

Rigby's is an entertaining voice to spend time with, which relieves some of the pain in his story, though in the final section, the pain takes precedence, though there is an almost joyful resignation that echoes the passages repeatedly drawn from Rollerskate Skinny's repertoire. It's a dark journey, but rewarding for an intrepid reader.

Lars Kepler's The Nightmare

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The Nightmare, the sequel to a prominent Swedish crime of recent years, The Hypnotist, by a husband and wife writing team known as Lars Kepler, has the bones of a good book, undermined, especially in the first half, by some obvious flaws. Joona Linna, a Finno-Swedish super-detective, is alternately held in awe by other cops and squeezed out of investigations by the police hierarchy and the security police (in typical crime-fiction fashion). The awe he inspires in other cops is naively presented, and the obstructions placed in his way are a bit cliched. But these problems fade away in the second half, particularly with the development of a new character, Saga Bauer (whose name unfortunately coincides with the wonderful female character in the Danish-Swedish TV series, The Bridge, as well as a recurring description of her as rather elfin--fortunately she's simply a bit under-confident rather than autistic-ish, like the TV Saga).
Joona Linna (who's almost always described by his full name) is not, in his own mind, quite the superman that other people think he is. He's even a bit insecure, at times, despite the intuition that is his strongest investigative tool. The authors give him a flaw (a recurring severe migraine that he under-treats because the medicine fogs his mind), and he has a murky and evidently tragic past that only slowly comes to light for the reader. Joona's amazing investigative abilities are something like those of Jo Nesbø's detective Harry Hole, but Joona is a bit less self-destructive; both characters can be a bit irritating in their super-abilities, but neither is ultimately totally unbelievable, and Joona is if anything a bit less superhuman than Harry. There is, however, one action by Joona in the climax that is hardly believable (but then some of Harry's exploits beggar belief, too).
A number of the other characters, on the other hand, are cliches; the security police and SWAT team are drawn as bloodthirsty cardboard cutouts of their roles, especially early in the book. Some of the victims and a number of characters who are mostly bystanders do have individual personalities, and the settings are vividly drawn.
The writing is direct and effective, though there are stylistic quirks that are a bit distracting, particularly in the time-framing of overlapping episodes, such as a chapter early on that repeats almost exactly the chapter that went before, with a slightly different focus and time. There is also a chase sequence that goes on for a very, very long time. And as the plot gets more and more complicated, there begin to be some rather gothic and graphically cruel elements to the story, not everyone's taste I expect.



The plotting is the real strength of the book, along with the scene-setting. There are, however, some flashbacks that are intended to illuminate some of the character's biography and motivation, but some of these simply impede the story and pad out the page-count and may induce a bit of skimming on the reader's part.

Marke Krajewski, The Minotaur's Head

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Since 2008, Marek Krajewski's crime novels featuring detective Eberhard Mock in the (then) German city of Breslau have been appearing in English, courtesy first of McLehose Press and more recently Melville International Crime, in the order of their original publication in Polish. Now we have a fourth Eberhard Mock novel, but it looks like they've skipped four of the Polish originals to bring out the 8th novel in English, not the 4th through 7th. It's wonderful to have Mock back again, but I have to wonder about those missing books, especially since the first three were in a very unusual pattern, each novel set earlier than the previous one,not sustainable, of course, unless we eventually ended up with Eberhard Mock, toddler-detective; but I wonder when the pattern was actually broken--since the new book is set after the first three. Mock is now integrated into the German Army, but is sent back into police-work to assist in the pursuit of a serial killer who has struck Breslau after two earlier killings in Lwow.

At first unwillingly, and then fully engaged in the task, Mock is instructed to work with Polish detective named Popielski, a wonderful creation who seems at first totally opposite to Mock, but who actually has some common ground with him. The serial killer seems to be selecting only young virgins to mutilate and murder, and Popielski is in mortal fear that his own daughter will be the next victim.

The situation seems like a normal crime-novel plot, but as anyone who has read any of Marewski's books will know, these are not normal crime novels. Krajewski explores the lower depths of prewar Germany and Poland beetween the wars through not only the crimes but also the character of the thoroughly debased Mock himself. With the more-or-less straitlaced Popielski as a foil, The Minotaur's Head is at first somewhat less decadent than the first three books, but Popielski has some secrets that are gradually reveales, not to mention the gradual revelation of what is actually going on in the murders. By the time we reach the end, we have twisted downn into the murk along with the characters, who achieve a form of justice almost in spite of themselves.

And Popielski seems ripe for appearance, in a somewhat changed role, in future novels (I won't provide any spoilers). The Mock series is very dark and sometimes very funny (also in a dark way). Human appetites of all sorts are explored in the stories, in a style that is both jagged and literary, often with aspects of the author's classical scholarship in evidence (but in a playful way). The arrival of a new Krajewski novel in the landscape of English-language crime fiction is like a lurid spark that illuminates another way of doing and thinking about crime fiction, an illicit pleasure that the author graciously shares with the reader.

Polish noir: Zygmunt Miloszewski's second

To contact us Click HERE
A Grain of Truth, Zygmunt Miloszewski's second crime novel featuring Polish prosecutor Teodore Szacki (published by Bitter Lemon and translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones), is, like the first book in the series (Entanglement) a satisfying combination of police procedural and mystery novel, with considerable humor and social commentary added in. Szacki has left Warsaw for the small city of Sandomierz, seduced by its beauty but now regretting his separation from Warsaw's urbane pleasures as well as his ex-wife and estranged daughter.

But he finally gets a good murder to sink his teeth into: a well-known woman, wife of a town councillor and herself a promoter of educational theater, is found with her throat slashed just outside a former synagogue (now a state archive). Near the body is found a kind of knife used by kosher butchers, raising the long and continuing history of Polish anti-semitism as well as the country's new liberalism (what if the murderer is in fact Jewish?).

The development of the story and the investigation of the crime develop slowly at first, ultimately shifting into underground tunnels, attack dogs, and multiple murders that veer toward the Gothic and the conspiratorial excesses of Dan Brown (who is mentioned) but ultimately Miloszewski succeeds in accessing the energies of those genres within a contemporary realism that is convincing and satisfying. Plus there's ultimately a twist that will satisfy the fans of the puzzle mystery.

There are profuse references to popular culture, mostly from outside Poland, though there are many references to a Polish TV mystery series filmed in Sandomierz, Father Mateusz, which seems to be a remake of the long-running Italian series, Don Matteo (complete with bicycle and gentle non-threatening plotting. Mateusz provides a contrast for the grittier reality of Szacki's life.

While Miloszewski explores anti-semitism and its history in depth, he leaves unexamined a flaw in his own character that keeps him human but also may irritate some readers. His language, especially in his interior monologues, can be unpleasantly sexist. But he genuinely regrets the actions on his part that destroyed his marriage, and his almost painfully comic blunders with his current love life provide evidence that the author is an intentional character flaw rather than unconscious prejudice (though the flaw may temper a reader's sympathy for Szacki's difficulties with the women in his life).

Both of Miloszewski's novels are complex, involving, and interesting, but A Grain of Truth is more satisfying as a crime story than Entanglement, and the use of history, conspiracy, and the extended range of crime fiction are livelier. Entanglement relies more on the locked-room mystery and the gathering of suspects together in a room, both being longstanding elements of the genre, but tending toward static rather than dynamic plotting. A Grain of Truth shifts toward the dynamic side of crime writing, though still with considerable care in development and careful attention to the voices of all the characters, including the difficult but engaging prosecutor himself.

Arnaldur's new Iclandic noir

To contact us Click HERE

I had some doubts about Arnaldur Indridason's Black Skies when I ordered it, because it is centered on Sigurdur Óli, the least likable or interesting of the cops in the circle around Erlendur, his usual central character. Erlendur has left on a mysterious trip to the area in which he grew up (and where he lost his brother as a child), and the previous book in the series, Outrage (which focuses on Elinborg, the other running character) and Black Skies occur at the same time, with occasional overlaps as the two detectives consult with one another (and worry about Erlendur's extended absence.

I had (as it turned out, well placed) confidence in Arnaldur as a writer, though, and indeed Black Skies is very interesting. As the book explores Sigurdur Óli's life and character he first grows even less likable (without making the story less interesting). He can be a bit impulsive, and in his private life, self-destructive, traits that are given some context. He's also an unrepentant political conservative, going back to his school years (when he edited a conservative literary journal). He's also a bit of a fop, and his taste in clothes in addition to his character overlap just a bit with one of the great characters if Scandinavian crime fiction, Gunvald Larsson (of the Sjöwall/Wahlöö books). Sigurdur Óli is, though, less vocal and violent.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Black Skies is the use of overlapping plots. It's a common strategy to start off with a crime, then shift to another crime that eventually gives way to or becomes connected to that initial scene. Arnaldur plays with that theme here, setting up a gruesome scene that only very gradually comes into focus, while Sigurdur Óli concentrates on other things: primarily a mess he gets into when doing a favor for a friend. When he goes to a couple's apartment (after the friend begs him to scare them into giving up a blackmail attempt) he finds the woman in the couple almost dead, and runs into the assailant. To say more would be spoiling things. The blackmail plot, though, leads in very interesting directions before coming to a surprising conclusion.

One of the interesting directions is an investigation of the Icelandic banking practices that will (not long after the timeframe of the novel) lead to the crash of the country's economy (the book is set just before, but was written just after, the crisis). The ominous shadows of the crash loom over the book.

But the story is not an economic tract: it's aim is both broader, in terms of the society, and narrower, in terms of its vivid portrait of the detective and the numerous characters involved in the story's various threads. Though I'm particularly attracted to Erlendur throughout the series, and though the book focusing on Elinborg was very good, I think perhaps Black Skies is one of Arnaldur's best books (high praise indeed).

Irish noir: Declan Burke's Slaughter's Hound

To contact us Click HERE

Lately I've been reading books by authors who write novels in pairs or trilogies rather than open-ended series, which seems a relatively recent phenomenon in the crime fiction world. In several cases, the switch from one series or trilogy to another is also a shift in style or genre. For just one example, Carlo Lucarelli's DeLuca series (historical police procedurals) is quite different from his Grazia Negro books (serial killer stories), and different still from his Coliandro stories (which are comic, parodies of the police procedural). All of these series seem to be closed, without further installments (though there is one Grazia Negro book that hasn't been translated, Lupo Mannaro or Werewolf).

Declan Burke has just published Slaughter's Hound, the sequel (and seemingly final installment) to his first book, Eightball Boogie. These two books, featuring not-exactly detective Harry Rigby, are hard-boiled noir, in the tradition of Chandler and Ross MacDonald, but with a contemporary relentlessness and literary references that might remind a reader of a more recent noir writer, Ken Bruen. Burke's other pair of novels, The Big O and Crime Always Pays, are lighter, more in a comic or farcical but still noir tone, closer to Elmore Leonard than Jim Thompson. Neither series resembles Burke's brilliant stand-alone metafiction, Absolute Zero Cool.

Burke's literary references are not intrusive or artificial, but integral to his first-person narrator's character and to the story, and range from Joyce, Beckett, and Yeats to Bukowsky and William Gaddis (who is particularly relevant to one aspect of the overall story, dealing with forgery). One reference is closely related to the dark violence of the story, an image and an act that suggest two grotesque passages in Bataille's Story of the Eye and Kosinski's Painted Bird, though neither writer is mentioned. Neither the literary asides nor the overarching paen to an obscure Irish rock band, Rollerskate Skinny (who I confess I thought Burke had made up until I did a web search) slow down the inexorable downward spiral of Harry's life.

Harry is recently released from incarceration in a mental facility, to which he was confined after killing his brother at the end of Eightball Boogie. A roommate there is the son of a wealthy family right out of Ross MacDonald or even Chinatown, and part of the pleasure of the novel is Rigby's narrative exploration of the intricacies of this spectacularly dysfunctional family. The current Irish financial collapse is also a factor, as it plays out on the bars, alleys, and docks of Sligo, on Ireland's northwest.

Rigby's is an entertaining voice to spend time with, which relieves some of the pain in his story, though in the final section, the pain takes precedence, though there is an almost joyful resignation that echoes the passages repeatedly drawn from Rollerskate Skinny's repertoire. It's a dark journey, but rewarding for an intrepid reader.

Lars Kepler's The Nightmare

To contact us Click HERE
The Nightmare, the sequel to a prominent Swedish crime of recent years, The Hypnotist, by a husband and wife writing team known as Lars Kepler, has the bones of a good book, undermined, especially in the first half, by some obvious flaws. Joona Linna, a Finno-Swedish super-detective, is alternately held in awe by other cops and squeezed out of investigations by the police hierarchy and the security police (in typical crime-fiction fashion). The awe he inspires in other cops is naively presented, and the obstructions placed in his way are a bit cliched. But these problems fade away in the second half, particularly with the development of a new character, Saga Bauer (whose name unfortunately coincides with the wonderful female character in the Danish-Swedish TV series, The Bridge, as well as a recurring description of her as rather elfin--fortunately she's simply a bit under-confident rather than autistic-ish, like the TV Saga).
Joona Linna (who's almost always described by his full name) is not, in his own mind, quite the superman that other people think he is. He's even a bit insecure, at times, despite the intuition that is his strongest investigative tool. The authors give him a flaw (a recurring severe migraine that he under-treats because the medicine fogs his mind), and he has a murky and evidently tragic past that only slowly comes to light for the reader. Joona's amazing investigative abilities are something like those of Jo Nesbø's detective Harry Hole, but Joona is a bit less self-destructive; both characters can be a bit irritating in their super-abilities, but neither is ultimately totally unbelievable, and Joona is if anything a bit less superhuman than Harry. There is, however, one action by Joona in the climax that is hardly believable (but then some of Harry's exploits beggar belief, too).
A number of the other characters, on the other hand, are cliches; the security police and SWAT team are drawn as bloodthirsty cardboard cutouts of their roles, especially early in the book. Some of the victims and a number of characters who are mostly bystanders do have individual personalities, and the settings are vividly drawn.
The writing is direct and effective, though there are stylistic quirks that are a bit distracting, particularly in the time-framing of overlapping episodes, such as a chapter early on that repeats almost exactly the chapter that went before, with a slightly different focus and time. There is also a chase sequence that goes on for a very, very long time. And as the plot gets more and more complicated, there begin to be some rather gothic and graphically cruel elements to the story, not everyone's taste I expect.



The plotting is the real strength of the book, along with the scene-setting. There are, however, some flashbacks that are intended to illuminate some of the character's biography and motivation, but some of these simply impede the story and pad out the page-count and may induce a bit of skimming on the reader's part.

Marke Krajewski, The Minotaur's Head

To contact us Click HERE




Since 2008, Marek Krajewski's crime novels featuring detective Eberhard Mock in the (then) German city of Breslau have been appearing in English, courtesy first of McLehose Press and more recently Melville International Crime, in the order of their original publication in Polish. Now we have a fourth Eberhard Mock novel, but it looks like they've skipped four of the Polish originals to bring out the 8th novel in English, not the 4th through 7th. It's wonderful to have Mock back again, but I have to wonder about those missing books, especially since the first three were in a very unusual pattern, each novel set earlier than the previous one,not sustainable, of course, unless we eventually ended up with Eberhard Mock, toddler-detective; but I wonder when the pattern was actually broken--since the new book is set after the first three. Mock is now integrated into the German Army, but is sent back into police-work to assist in the pursuit of a serial killer who has struck Breslau after two earlier killings in Lwow.

At first unwillingly, and then fully engaged in the task, Mock is instructed to work with Polish detective named Popielski, a wonderful creation who seems at first totally opposite to Mock, but who actually has some common ground with him. The serial killer seems to be selecting only young virgins to mutilate and murder, and Popielski is in mortal fear that his own daughter will be the next victim.

The situation seems like a normal crime-novel plot, but as anyone who has read any of Marewski's books will know, these are not normal crime novels. Krajewski explores the lower depths of prewar Germany and Poland beetween the wars through not only the crimes but also the character of the thoroughly debased Mock himself. With the more-or-less straitlaced Popielski as a foil, The Minotaur's Head is at first somewhat less decadent than the first three books, but Popielski has some secrets that are gradually reveales, not to mention the gradual revelation of what is actually going on in the murders. By the time we reach the end, we have twisted downn into the murk along with the characters, who achieve a form of justice almost in spite of themselves.

And Popielski seems ripe for appearance, in a somewhat changed role, in future novels (I won't provide any spoilers). The Mock series is very dark and sometimes very funny (also in a dark way). Human appetites of all sorts are explored in the stories, in a style that is both jagged and literary, often with aspects of the author's classical scholarship in evidence (but in a playful way). The arrival of a new Krajewski novel in the landscape of English-language crime fiction is like a lurid spark that illuminates another way of doing and thinking about crime fiction, an illicit pleasure that the author graciously shares with the reader.

Polish noir: Zygmunt Miloszewski's second

To contact us Click HERE
A Grain of Truth, Zygmunt Miloszewski's second crime novel featuring Polish prosecutor Teodore Szacki (published by Bitter Lemon and translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones), is, like the first book in the series (Entanglement) a satisfying combination of police procedural and mystery novel, with considerable humor and social commentary added in. Szacki has left Warsaw for the small city of Sandomierz, seduced by its beauty but now regretting his separation from Warsaw's urbane pleasures as well as his ex-wife and estranged daughter.

But he finally gets a good murder to sink his teeth into: a well-known woman, wife of a town councillor and herself a promoter of educational theater, is found with her throat slashed just outside a former synagogue (now a state archive). Near the body is found a kind of knife used by kosher butchers, raising the long and continuing history of Polish anti-semitism as well as the country's new liberalism (what if the murderer is in fact Jewish?).

The development of the story and the investigation of the crime develop slowly at first, ultimately shifting into underground tunnels, attack dogs, and multiple murders that veer toward the Gothic and the conspiratorial excesses of Dan Brown (who is mentioned) but ultimately Miloszewski succeeds in accessing the energies of those genres within a contemporary realism that is convincing and satisfying. Plus there's ultimately a twist that will satisfy the fans of the puzzle mystery.

There are profuse references to popular culture, mostly from outside Poland, though there are many references to a Polish TV mystery series filmed in Sandomierz, Father Mateusz, which seems to be a remake of the long-running Italian series, Don Matteo (complete with bicycle and gentle non-threatening plotting. Mateusz provides a contrast for the grittier reality of Szacki's life.

While Miloszewski explores anti-semitism and its history in depth, he leaves unexamined a flaw in his own character that keeps him human but also may irritate some readers. His language, especially in his interior monologues, can be unpleasantly sexist. But he genuinely regrets the actions on his part that destroyed his marriage, and his almost painfully comic blunders with his current love life provide evidence that the author is an intentional character flaw rather than unconscious prejudice (though the flaw may temper a reader's sympathy for Szacki's difficulties with the women in his life).

Both of Miloszewski's novels are complex, involving, and interesting, but A Grain of Truth is more satisfying as a crime story than Entanglement, and the use of history, conspiracy, and the extended range of crime fiction are livelier. Entanglement relies more on the locked-room mystery and the gathering of suspects together in a room, both being longstanding elements of the genre, but tending toward static rather than dynamic plotting. A Grain of Truth shifts toward the dynamic side of crime writing, though still with considerable care in development and careful attention to the voices of all the characters, including the difficult but engaging prosecutor himself.

Arnaldur's new Iclandic noir

To contact us Click HERE

I had some doubts about Arnaldur Indridason's Black Skies when I ordered it, because it is centered on Sigurdur Óli, the least likable or interesting of the cops in the circle around Erlendur, his usual central character. Erlendur has left on a mysterious trip to the area in which he grew up (and where he lost his brother as a child), and the previous book in the series, Outrage (which focuses on Elinborg, the other running character) and Black Skies occur at the same time, with occasional overlaps as the two detectives consult with one another (and worry about Erlendur's extended absence.

I had (as it turned out, well placed) confidence in Arnaldur as a writer, though, and indeed Black Skies is very interesting. As the book explores Sigurdur Óli's life and character he first grows even less likable (without making the story less interesting). He can be a bit impulsive, and in his private life, self-destructive, traits that are given some context. He's also an unrepentant political conservative, going back to his school years (when he edited a conservative literary journal). He's also a bit of a fop, and his taste in clothes in addition to his character overlap just a bit with one of the great characters if Scandinavian crime fiction, Gunvald Larsson (of the Sjöwall/Wahlöö books). Sigurdur Óli is, though, less vocal and violent.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Black Skies is the use of overlapping plots. It's a common strategy to start off with a crime, then shift to another crime that eventually gives way to or becomes connected to that initial scene. Arnaldur plays with that theme here, setting up a gruesome scene that only very gradually comes into focus, while Sigurdur Óli concentrates on other things: primarily a mess he gets into when doing a favor for a friend. When he goes to a couple's apartment (after the friend begs him to scare them into giving up a blackmail attempt) he finds the woman in the couple almost dead, and runs into the assailant. To say more would be spoiling things. The blackmail plot, though, leads in very interesting directions before coming to a surprising conclusion.

One of the interesting directions is an investigation of the Icelandic banking practices that will (not long after the timeframe of the novel) lead to the crash of the country's economy (the book is set just before, but was written just after, the crisis). The ominous shadows of the crash loom over the book.

But the story is not an economic tract: it's aim is both broader, in terms of the society, and narrower, in terms of its vivid portrait of the detective and the numerous characters involved in the story's various threads. Though I'm particularly attracted to Erlendur throughout the series, and though the book focusing on Elinborg was very good, I think perhaps Black Skies is one of Arnaldur's best books (high praise indeed).

Irish noir: Declan Burke's Slaughter's Hound

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Lately I've been reading books by authors who write novels in pairs or trilogies rather than open-ended series, which seems a relatively recent phenomenon in the crime fiction world. In several cases, the switch from one series or trilogy to another is also a shift in style or genre. For just one example, Carlo Lucarelli's DeLuca series (historical police procedurals) is quite different from his Grazia Negro books (serial killer stories), and different still from his Coliandro stories (which are comic, parodies of the police procedural). All of these series seem to be closed, without further installments (though there is one Grazia Negro book that hasn't been translated, Lupo Mannaro or Werewolf).

Declan Burke has just published Slaughter's Hound, the sequel (and seemingly final installment) to his first book, Eightball Boogie. These two books, featuring not-exactly detective Harry Rigby, are hard-boiled noir, in the tradition of Chandler and Ross MacDonald, but with a contemporary relentlessness and literary references that might remind a reader of a more recent noir writer, Ken Bruen. Burke's other pair of novels, The Big O and Crime Always Pays, are lighter, more in a comic or farcical but still noir tone, closer to Elmore Leonard than Jim Thompson. Neither series resembles Burke's brilliant stand-alone metafiction, Absolute Zero Cool.

Burke's literary references are not intrusive or artificial, but integral to his first-person narrator's character and to the story, and range from Joyce, Beckett, and Yeats to Bukowsky and William Gaddis (who is particularly relevant to one aspect of the overall story, dealing with forgery). One reference is closely related to the dark violence of the story, an image and an act that suggest two grotesque passages in Bataille's Story of the Eye and Kosinski's Painted Bird, though neither writer is mentioned. Neither the literary asides nor the overarching paen to an obscure Irish rock band, Rollerskate Skinny (who I confess I thought Burke had made up until I did a web search) slow down the inexorable downward spiral of Harry's life.

Harry is recently released from incarceration in a mental facility, to which he was confined after killing his brother at the end of Eightball Boogie. A roommate there is the son of a wealthy family right out of Ross MacDonald or even Chinatown, and part of the pleasure of the novel is Rigby's narrative exploration of the intricacies of this spectacularly dysfunctional family. The current Irish financial collapse is also a factor, as it plays out on the bars, alleys, and docks of Sligo, on Ireland's northwest.

Rigby's is an entertaining voice to spend time with, which relieves some of the pain in his story, though in the final section, the pain takes precedence, though there is an almost joyful resignation that echoes the passages repeatedly drawn from Rollerskate Skinny's repertoire. It's a dark journey, but rewarding for an intrepid reader.

Lars Kepler's The Nightmare

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The Nightmare, the sequel to a prominent Swedish crime of recent years, The Hypnotist, by a husband and wife writing team known as Lars Kepler, has the bones of a good book, undermined, especially in the first half, by some obvious flaws. Joona Linna, a Finno-Swedish super-detective, is alternately held in awe by other cops and squeezed out of investigations by the police hierarchy and the security police (in typical crime-fiction fashion). The awe he inspires in other cops is naively presented, and the obstructions placed in his way are a bit cliched. But these problems fade away in the second half, particularly with the development of a new character, Saga Bauer (whose name unfortunately coincides with the wonderful female character in the Danish-Swedish TV series, The Bridge, as well as a recurring description of her as rather elfin--fortunately she's simply a bit under-confident rather than autistic-ish, like the TV Saga).
Joona Linna (who's almost always described by his full name) is not, in his own mind, quite the superman that other people think he is. He's even a bit insecure, at times, despite the intuition that is his strongest investigative tool. The authors give him a flaw (a recurring severe migraine that he under-treats because the medicine fogs his mind), and he has a murky and evidently tragic past that only slowly comes to light for the reader. Joona's amazing investigative abilities are something like those of Jo Nesbø's detective Harry Hole, but Joona is a bit less self-destructive; both characters can be a bit irritating in their super-abilities, but neither is ultimately totally unbelievable, and Joona is if anything a bit less superhuman than Harry. There is, however, one action by Joona in the climax that is hardly believable (but then some of Harry's exploits beggar belief, too).
A number of the other characters, on the other hand, are cliches; the security police and SWAT team are drawn as bloodthirsty cardboard cutouts of their roles, especially early in the book. Some of the victims and a number of characters who are mostly bystanders do have individual personalities, and the settings are vividly drawn.
The writing is direct and effective, though there are stylistic quirks that are a bit distracting, particularly in the time-framing of overlapping episodes, such as a chapter early on that repeats almost exactly the chapter that went before, with a slightly different focus and time. There is also a chase sequence that goes on for a very, very long time. And as the plot gets more and more complicated, there begin to be some rather gothic and graphically cruel elements to the story, not everyone's taste I expect.



The plotting is the real strength of the book, along with the scene-setting. There are, however, some flashbacks that are intended to illuminate some of the character's biography and motivation, but some of these simply impede the story and pad out the page-count and may induce a bit of skimming on the reader's part.

Marke Krajewski, The Minotaur's Head

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Since 2008, Marek Krajewski's crime novels featuring detective Eberhard Mock in the (then) German city of Breslau have been appearing in English, courtesy first of McLehose Press and more recently Melville International Crime, in the order of their original publication in Polish. Now we have a fourth Eberhard Mock novel, but it looks like they've skipped four of the Polish originals to bring out the 8th novel in English, not the 4th through 7th. It's wonderful to have Mock back again, but I have to wonder about those missing books, especially since the first three were in a very unusual pattern, each novel set earlier than the previous one,not sustainable, of course, unless we eventually ended up with Eberhard Mock, toddler-detective; but I wonder when the pattern was actually broken--since the new book is set after the first three. Mock is now integrated into the German Army, but is sent back into police-work to assist in the pursuit of a serial killer who has struck Breslau after two earlier killings in Lwow.

At first unwillingly, and then fully engaged in the task, Mock is instructed to work with Polish detective named Popielski, a wonderful creation who seems at first totally opposite to Mock, but who actually has some common ground with him. The serial killer seems to be selecting only young virgins to mutilate and murder, and Popielski is in mortal fear that his own daughter will be the next victim.

The situation seems like a normal crime-novel plot, but as anyone who has read any of Marewski's books will know, these are not normal crime novels. Krajewski explores the lower depths of prewar Germany and Poland beetween the wars through not only the crimes but also the character of the thoroughly debased Mock himself. With the more-or-less straitlaced Popielski as a foil, The Minotaur's Head is at first somewhat less decadent than the first three books, but Popielski has some secrets that are gradually reveales, not to mention the gradual revelation of what is actually going on in the murders. By the time we reach the end, we have twisted downn into the murk along with the characters, who achieve a form of justice almost in spite of themselves.

And Popielski seems ripe for appearance, in a somewhat changed role, in future novels (I won't provide any spoilers). The Mock series is very dark and sometimes very funny (also in a dark way). Human appetites of all sorts are explored in the stories, in a style that is both jagged and literary, often with aspects of the author's classical scholarship in evidence (but in a playful way). The arrival of a new Krajewski novel in the landscape of English-language crime fiction is like a lurid spark that illuminates another way of doing and thinking about crime fiction, an illicit pleasure that the author graciously shares with the reader.

Polish noir: Zygmunt Miloszewski's second

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A Grain of Truth, Zygmunt Miloszewski's second crime novel featuring Polish prosecutor Teodore Szacki (published by Bitter Lemon and translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones), is, like the first book in the series (Entanglement) a satisfying combination of police procedural and mystery novel, with considerable humor and social commentary added in. Szacki has left Warsaw for the small city of Sandomierz, seduced by its beauty but now regretting his separation from Warsaw's urbane pleasures as well as his ex-wife and estranged daughter.

But he finally gets a good murder to sink his teeth into: a well-known woman, wife of a town councillor and herself a promoter of educational theater, is found with her throat slashed just outside a former synagogue (now a state archive). Near the body is found a kind of knife used by kosher butchers, raising the long and continuing history of Polish anti-semitism as well as the country's new liberalism (what if the murderer is in fact Jewish?).

The development of the story and the investigation of the crime develop slowly at first, ultimately shifting into underground tunnels, attack dogs, and multiple murders that veer toward the Gothic and the conspiratorial excesses of Dan Brown (who is mentioned) but ultimately Miloszewski succeeds in accessing the energies of those genres within a contemporary realism that is convincing and satisfying. Plus there's ultimately a twist that will satisfy the fans of the puzzle mystery.

There are profuse references to popular culture, mostly from outside Poland, though there are many references to a Polish TV mystery series filmed in Sandomierz, Father Mateusz, which seems to be a remake of the long-running Italian series, Don Matteo (complete with bicycle and gentle non-threatening plotting. Mateusz provides a contrast for the grittier reality of Szacki's life.

While Miloszewski explores anti-semitism and its history in depth, he leaves unexamined a flaw in his own character that keeps him human but also may irritate some readers. His language, especially in his interior monologues, can be unpleasantly sexist. But he genuinely regrets the actions on his part that destroyed his marriage, and his almost painfully comic blunders with his current love life provide evidence that the author is an intentional character flaw rather than unconscious prejudice (though the flaw may temper a reader's sympathy for Szacki's difficulties with the women in his life).

Both of Miloszewski's novels are complex, involving, and interesting, but A Grain of Truth is more satisfying as a crime story than Entanglement, and the use of history, conspiracy, and the extended range of crime fiction are livelier. Entanglement relies more on the locked-room mystery and the gathering of suspects together in a room, both being longstanding elements of the genre, but tending toward static rather than dynamic plotting. A Grain of Truth shifts toward the dynamic side of crime writing, though still with considerable care in development and careful attention to the voices of all the characters, including the difficult but engaging prosecutor himself.

Arnaldur's new Iclandic noir

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I had some doubts about Arnaldur Indridason's Black Skies when I ordered it, because it is centered on Sigurdur Óli, the least likable or interesting of the cops in the circle around Erlendur, his usual central character. Erlendur has left on a mysterious trip to the area in which he grew up (and where he lost his brother as a child), and the previous book in the series, Outrage (which focuses on Elinborg, the other running character) and Black Skies occur at the same time, with occasional overlaps as the two detectives consult with one another (and worry about Erlendur's extended absence.

I had (as it turned out, well placed) confidence in Arnaldur as a writer, though, and indeed Black Skies is very interesting. As the book explores Sigurdur Óli's life and character he first grows even less likable (without making the story less interesting). He can be a bit impulsive, and in his private life, self-destructive, traits that are given some context. He's also an unrepentant political conservative, going back to his school years (when he edited a conservative literary journal). He's also a bit of a fop, and his taste in clothes in addition to his character overlap just a bit with one of the great characters if Scandinavian crime fiction, Gunvald Larsson (of the Sjöwall/Wahlöö books). Sigurdur Óli is, though, less vocal and violent.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Black Skies is the use of overlapping plots. It's a common strategy to start off with a crime, then shift to another crime that eventually gives way to or becomes connected to that initial scene. Arnaldur plays with that theme here, setting up a gruesome scene that only very gradually comes into focus, while Sigurdur Óli concentrates on other things: primarily a mess he gets into when doing a favor for a friend. When he goes to a couple's apartment (after the friend begs him to scare them into giving up a blackmail attempt) he finds the woman in the couple almost dead, and runs into the assailant. To say more would be spoiling things. The blackmail plot, though, leads in very interesting directions before coming to a surprising conclusion.

One of the interesting directions is an investigation of the Icelandic banking practices that will (not long after the timeframe of the novel) lead to the crash of the country's economy (the book is set just before, but was written just after, the crisis). The ominous shadows of the crash loom over the book.

But the story is not an economic tract: it's aim is both broader, in terms of the society, and narrower, in terms of its vivid portrait of the detective and the numerous characters involved in the story's various threads. Though I'm particularly attracted to Erlendur throughout the series, and though the book focusing on Elinborg was very good, I think perhaps Black Skies is one of Arnaldur's best books (high praise indeed).

Irish noir: Declan Burke's Slaughter's Hound

To contact us Click HERE

Lately I've been reading books by authors who write novels in pairs or trilogies rather than open-ended series, which seems a relatively recent phenomenon in the crime fiction world. In several cases, the switch from one series or trilogy to another is also a shift in style or genre. For just one example, Carlo Lucarelli's DeLuca series (historical police procedurals) is quite different from his Grazia Negro books (serial killer stories), and different still from his Coliandro stories (which are comic, parodies of the police procedural). All of these series seem to be closed, without further installments (though there is one Grazia Negro book that hasn't been translated, Lupo Mannaro or Werewolf).

Declan Burke has just published Slaughter's Hound, the sequel (and seemingly final installment) to his first book, Eightball Boogie. These two books, featuring not-exactly detective Harry Rigby, are hard-boiled noir, in the tradition of Chandler and Ross MacDonald, but with a contemporary relentlessness and literary references that might remind a reader of a more recent noir writer, Ken Bruen. Burke's other pair of novels, The Big O and Crime Always Pays, are lighter, more in a comic or farcical but still noir tone, closer to Elmore Leonard than Jim Thompson. Neither series resembles Burke's brilliant stand-alone metafiction, Absolute Zero Cool.

Burke's literary references are not intrusive or artificial, but integral to his first-person narrator's character and to the story, and range from Joyce, Beckett, and Yeats to Bukowsky and William Gaddis (who is particularly relevant to one aspect of the overall story, dealing with forgery). One reference is closely related to the dark violence of the story, an image and an act that suggest two grotesque passages in Bataille's Story of the Eye and Kosinski's Painted Bird, though neither writer is mentioned. Neither the literary asides nor the overarching paen to an obscure Irish rock band, Rollerskate Skinny (who I confess I thought Burke had made up until I did a web search) slow down the inexorable downward spiral of Harry's life.

Harry is recently released from incarceration in a mental facility, to which he was confined after killing his brother at the end of Eightball Boogie. A roommate there is the son of a wealthy family right out of Ross MacDonald or even Chinatown, and part of the pleasure of the novel is Rigby's narrative exploration of the intricacies of this spectacularly dysfunctional family. The current Irish financial collapse is also a factor, as it plays out on the bars, alleys, and docks of Sligo, on Ireland's northwest.

Rigby's is an entertaining voice to spend time with, which relieves some of the pain in his story, though in the final section, the pain takes precedence, though there is an almost joyful resignation that echoes the passages repeatedly drawn from Rollerskate Skinny's repertoire. It's a dark journey, but rewarding for an intrepid reader.

Lars Kepler's The Nightmare

To contact us Click HERE
The Nightmare, the sequel to a prominent Swedish crime of recent years, The Hypnotist, by a husband and wife writing team known as Lars Kepler, has the bones of a good book, undermined, especially in the first half, by some obvious flaws. Joona Linna, a Finno-Swedish super-detective, is alternately held in awe by other cops and squeezed out of investigations by the police hierarchy and the security police (in typical crime-fiction fashion). The awe he inspires in other cops is naively presented, and the obstructions placed in his way are a bit cliched. But these problems fade away in the second half, particularly with the development of a new character, Saga Bauer (whose name unfortunately coincides with the wonderful female character in the Danish-Swedish TV series, The Bridge, as well as a recurring description of her as rather elfin--fortunately she's simply a bit under-confident rather than autistic-ish, like the TV Saga).
Joona Linna (who's almost always described by his full name) is not, in his own mind, quite the superman that other people think he is. He's even a bit insecure, at times, despite the intuition that is his strongest investigative tool. The authors give him a flaw (a recurring severe migraine that he under-treats because the medicine fogs his mind), and he has a murky and evidently tragic past that only slowly comes to light for the reader. Joona's amazing investigative abilities are something like those of Jo Nesbø's detective Harry Hole, but Joona is a bit less self-destructive; both characters can be a bit irritating in their super-abilities, but neither is ultimately totally unbelievable, and Joona is if anything a bit less superhuman than Harry. There is, however, one action by Joona in the climax that is hardly believable (but then some of Harry's exploits beggar belief, too).
A number of the other characters, on the other hand, are cliches; the security police and SWAT team are drawn as bloodthirsty cardboard cutouts of their roles, especially early in the book. Some of the victims and a number of characters who are mostly bystanders do have individual personalities, and the settings are vividly drawn.
The writing is direct and effective, though there are stylistic quirks that are a bit distracting, particularly in the time-framing of overlapping episodes, such as a chapter early on that repeats almost exactly the chapter that went before, with a slightly different focus and time. There is also a chase sequence that goes on for a very, very long time. And as the plot gets more and more complicated, there begin to be some rather gothic and graphically cruel elements to the story, not everyone's taste I expect.



The plotting is the real strength of the book, along with the scene-setting. There are, however, some flashbacks that are intended to illuminate some of the character's biography and motivation, but some of these simply impede the story and pad out the page-count and may induce a bit of skimming on the reader's part.

Marke Krajewski, The Minotaur's Head

To contact us Click HERE




Since 2008, Marek Krajewski's crime novels featuring detective Eberhard Mock in the (then) German city of Breslau have been appearing in English, courtesy first of McLehose Press and more recently Melville International Crime, in the order of their original publication in Polish. Now we have a fourth Eberhard Mock novel, but it looks like they've skipped four of the Polish originals to bring out the 8th novel in English, not the 4th through 7th. It's wonderful to have Mock back again, but I have to wonder about those missing books, especially since the first three were in a very unusual pattern, each novel set earlier than the previous one,not sustainable, of course, unless we eventually ended up with Eberhard Mock, toddler-detective; but I wonder when the pattern was actually broken--since the new book is set after the first three. Mock is now integrated into the German Army, but is sent back into police-work to assist in the pursuit of a serial killer who has struck Breslau after two earlier killings in Lwow.

At first unwillingly, and then fully engaged in the task, Mock is instructed to work with Polish detective named Popielski, a wonderful creation who seems at first totally opposite to Mock, but who actually has some common ground with him. The serial killer seems to be selecting only young virgins to mutilate and murder, and Popielski is in mortal fear that his own daughter will be the next victim.

The situation seems like a normal crime-novel plot, but as anyone who has read any of Marewski's books will know, these are not normal crime novels. Krajewski explores the lower depths of prewar Germany and Poland beetween the wars through not only the crimes but also the character of the thoroughly debased Mock himself. With the more-or-less straitlaced Popielski as a foil, The Minotaur's Head is at first somewhat less decadent than the first three books, but Popielski has some secrets that are gradually reveales, not to mention the gradual revelation of what is actually going on in the murders. By the time we reach the end, we have twisted downn into the murk along with the characters, who achieve a form of justice almost in spite of themselves.

And Popielski seems ripe for appearance, in a somewhat changed role, in future novels (I won't provide any spoilers). The Mock series is very dark and sometimes very funny (also in a dark way). Human appetites of all sorts are explored in the stories, in a style that is both jagged and literary, often with aspects of the author's classical scholarship in evidence (but in a playful way). The arrival of a new Krajewski novel in the landscape of English-language crime fiction is like a lurid spark that illuminates another way of doing and thinking about crime fiction, an illicit pleasure that the author graciously shares with the reader.

Google Approves Responsive AdSense Ads

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When AdSense launched about a decade ago, people mostly accessed websites from their desktop or laptop computers. Fast forward today and all sorts of devices – mobile phones, gaming consoles, ebook readers and even televisions – are being used to connect to the Internet. →

Web designers are therefore increasingly relying on a technique called Responsive Web Design where a single layout of the websites works across all devices, irrespective of the screen size or the resolution of the device.

Google AdSense ads are fixed-width but there’s a little workaround that can  make your Google ads responsive. The idea is that if a visitor is reading your web page on a large desktop screen, they are served the large 728×60 or 336×280 units while if another visitor is viewing the same page on a smaller mobile screen, you can dynamically serve the 200×200 (or similar) ad unit.

I shared the relevant JavaScript snippet last year and, since then, its been a topic of debate in several online forum threads. The primary concern among web publishers was (and still is) that Responsive Google Ads could be against Google AdSense policies since they require modification in the default JavaScript code.

Michel Wester of WebSonic.nl, an AdSense publisher from Netherlands, contacted the Google AdSense team for a confirmation and here’s the official response (in Dutch):

“De voorbeeld website die u stuurt geeft al de juiste javascript code die u kunt gebruiken.” Google AdSense support has confirmed that Responsive Ads are allowed.

The rough Dutch to English translation is:

AdSense Ads can be adapted to different screen sizes using a simple JavaScript snippet. To take advantage of responsive design, create multiple ad formats, such as 728×90, 468×60 and 300×250. Then you implement an “if-else’ fragment so that the right ad format is displayed based on the size of the device of the user.

The example website that you sent has the correct JavaScript code that you can use. Well I would like to emphasize that further change the AdSense code is not allowed. Advertisements may also not be hidden with CSS.

Thus you won’t violate any of the AdSense program policies for using responsive ads on your website. The JavaScript snippet isn’t modifying the AdSense code but is simply requesting a different ad unit based on the viewport width of the current visitor’s screen.

---

This story, Google Approves Responsive AdSense Ads, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 20/02/2013 under Google Adsense, Internet.

Dark Cloud's tools

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Who ever played to a game called Dark Cloud? It was my first game for PS2 and I remember that I found it on a demo-disc. Recently I saw a video that show the beta version of this game, much different from the final version, so I developed an unpacker for this game to see if some old data was keep (and yes, I founded some "old" data) that I want to share.
The files required to use the unpacker are data.dat and data.hd2, and you can get them from the disk/iso. I found a lot of models (in MDS format), another data.hd2 that seems to point an old version of the game, gdata_e3.edt_ that seem a file from the E3 demo, some test files and a setting file from the Map Editor of the game! We can found also some scripts, for example I found the scripts of the boss in export\dun with .cfg extension. Other scripts are located to export\dun\cloth with .clo extension. Also in each folder of export\gedit we can found a lot of scripts in .cfg format, like mapinfo.cfg and sound.cfg. A lot of .img files can be found, a container for TM2 format. Also some files with "_" can be found, like _dunmenu.pak, maybe unused stuff that was left. If someone is interested to the hacking of this game write here, I can give an help :).

Download White Cloud and Light Cloud

Installare Mac OS X Lion sull'ASUS U36SD [AGGIORNATA x2]

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Prerequisiti:
QUESTO archivio
- Un Mac già funzionale (va bene sia su hardware reale sia su virtuale)
- L'immagine retail in formato DMG di Lion (scaricabile legalmente dall'App Store)
- Una penna usb, un hard disk esterno o altro che abbia minimo 8GB di memoria, preferibilmente con un attacco 2.0
- Un pizzico di conoscenza e pazienza

Questa è la situazione che OSX si ritroverà a fine guida:
- Intel HD3000 con uscita HDMI e VGA funzionante, risoluzione 1366x768 e accelerazione video QE/CI
- Nvidia GT520M con Optimus non riconosciuta
- Audio funzionante
- Microfono funzionante
- Webcam funzionante, ma girata di 180°
- Scheda Ethernet funzionante
- Scheda Wireless funzionante
- Porta USB 3.0 funzionante
- Lettore schede funzionante
- Riavvio funzionante
- Shutdown NON funzionante (esegue tutte le operazioni all'uscita ma non manda il segnale di shutdown all'ACPI. Causa schermo nero e pc acceso)
- Sleep NON funzionante (il computer non va in standby e si blocca con schermo nero)
- Batteria funzionante
- Gestures trackpad basilari funzionanti
- Aggiornamenti dell'OS funzionanti
- Tasti FN NON funzionanti



Passo A: preparare l'USB storage per l'installazione (la parte più lunga e scocciante)
0) [COLOR="DarkRed">ATTENZIONE: Con questa procedura, tutti i dati contenuti nel vostro storage USB andranno perduti![/COLOR]
1) Da un altro computer con OSX già installato, collega la tua memoria di massa USB e da Applicazioni\Utility, aprite Disk Utility.
2) Selezionate la vostra penna USB appena collegata, andate su Partizione e selezionate 1 Partizione dal menu a tendina dello Schema Partizioni.
3) Selezionate il bottone Opzioni, selezionate Tabella partizione GUID, assicuratevi che il formato della partizione sia Mac OS Extended e non MS-DOS e date l'ok premendo sul pulsante Applica.
4) Aprire il terminale da Finder/Via/Utility (oppure con SHIFT+SUPER+U), scrivete defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE, confermate con INVIO e riavviate il Finder scrivendo sempre su terminale killall Finder.
4b) Questa operazione vi farà visualizzare tutti i file nascosti nel vostro Mac. Per nasconderli nuovamente, ripetere il punto 4 con l'unica differenza nello scrivere FALSE al posto di TRUE.
Per far ritornare tutto nella norma, basta sostituire il valore TRUE con FALSE.
5) Localizzate il setup di Lion scaricato dall'Apple Store e montate il file immagine in formato DMG. Aprite dal Finder la nuova partizione che vi è appena uscita e cliccate su Mostra contenuto del pacchetto facendo click col pulsante destro (quindi visualizzando il menu contestuale) su Install Mac OS X Lion.app.
6) Nella cartella Contents/SharedSupport, troverete un altro file immagine chiamato InstallESD.dmg: cliccateci due volte per montarlo e come prima, una nuova partizione verrà resa disponibile dal finder.
7) Aprite la nuova partizione ed andate nell'unità chiamata Mac OS X Install ESD, dove al suo interno troverete un file nascosto chiamato BaseSystem.dmg. Montate anche questo e riaprite il Disk Utlity.
8) Nella seconda metà dell'elenco dei file immagine montati che trovate nella lista a sinistra di Disk Utility, selezionate Mac OS X Base System, andate su Ripristina e trascinate la partizione creata in precedenza nella vostra memoria di massa su Destinazione. Assicuratevi che la vostra partizione creata precedentemente per la vostra penna USB sia settata su Destinazione e che su sorgente non ci sia BaseSystem ma Mac OS X Base System e poi cliccate sul bottone Ripristina, in modo da copiare tutto il contenuto di BaseSystem nella vostra partizione, che verrà rinominata automaticamente in MAC OS X Base System.
9) A fine processo, smontare (rimuovere, espellere o disattivare è la stessa cosa) il vecchio MAC OS X Base System montato in precedenza (lo potete riconoscere dal fatto che quello nella vostra USB key vi dirà quanto spazio avete ancora a disposizione, l'altro no perché sarà impossibile modificarne il contenuto) ed accedete all'altro MAC OS X Base System che trovate dall'elenco partizioni (il Base System nella vostra USB key).
10) Entrate nella cartella System/Library, cancellate il collegamento a Packages (ha un'icona bianca con una freccia), copiateci la cartella Package che potete trovare in Mac OS X Install ESD e, a fine processo, smontate il volume Mac OS X Install ESD.
11) Nell'archivio scaricato in questo post (la pswd è GuideByXee) installate i tre packages nella cartella USB Setup e ricordatevi di cambiare il percorso di destinazione selezionando Mac OS X Base System (se vi dice che è impossibile installare il package in quel percorso, chiudete e riaprite il setup).

Passo B: preinstallare i driver e patchare il setup
1) Copiare il contenuto della cartella Kexts (che troverete allegata nell'archivio di questo post) sul desktop.
2) Dalla cartella Tools lanciate il programma KextBeast e prima di cominciare l'installazione, cambiare come al solito il percorso di destinazione selezionando la vostra pen drive.
3) Aprite dalla cartella Tools il programma MultiBeast e selezionate MacBook Pro 8,1 sotto Customization/System Definitions/MacBookPro e NullCPUPowerManagement sotto Drivers&Bootloaders/Kext&Enablers/Miscellanous.
4) Se volete formattare l'intero drive, andate al punto 4A, se avete un computer con uno schema di partizioni MBR (formato standard per Windows) andare al punto 4B, se invece è in formato GPT allora andate al punto 4C.
4A) Avrete due scelte importanti da fare a questo punto: scegliere se utilizzare lo schema di partizioni MBR o GPT. Lo schema di partizioni MBR è lo standard per Windows, quindi oltre ad OSX potrete installare anche tutti gli altri sistemi operativi Microsoft e anche le vecchie distribuzioni Linux sul vostro hard disk, però bisognerà patchare il setup di OSX (nulla di dannoso); in questo caso passate al punto 4B. Se invece scegliete di usare il moderno sistema di partizioni GPT, supportato nativamente da OSX, sappiate che il sistema operativo di casa Apple si avvierà solo se la partizione del Mac sarà la prima partizione mai creata nello schema di partizioni, altrimenti si rifiuterà di partire. Questo costerà caro nel caso vorrete reinstallare OSX, che vi costerà la ripartizione dell'intero hard disk, pena perdere tutto o ripristinare l'ultimo backup. Se il vostro BIOS non supporterà il boot in modalità UEFI, sarà impossibile installare anche Windows. Se siete sicuri di procedere con lo schema di partizioni GPT, allora passate al punto 4C.
4B) Copiate il file OSInstall.mpkg su System/Installation/Packages e il file OSInstall su System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Install.framework/Frameworks/OSInstall.framework/Versions/A/, sostituendo quello già esistente. Troverete i due file sotto la cartella MBR Patch nell'archivio scaricabile qui.
4C) Prima di procedere, leggete un attimo il punto 4A. Se avete installato già un altro sistema operativo sul vostro hard disk in formato GPT, sappiate che dovrete fare il backup di tutti i vostri dati perché lo schema di partizioni dovrà essere partizionato come piace ad OSX (-.-). Durante il setup infatti, dovrete reinizializzare l'intero drive altrimenti OSX si rifiuterà di avviarsi.

Passo C: installare OSX Lion
1) Spegnete il notebook, collegate la vostra USB key in una delle due porte USB 2.0, accendete e quando vi apparirà il logo ASUS, premete una, due o anche tre volte il pulsante ESC, in modo da entrare nel menu dove potrete decidere da quale periferica dovrete fare il boot.
2) Nel menu che vi apparirà, il primo elemento vi permetterà di avviare il sistema operativo installato nel vostro hard disk, il secondo dovrebbe essere la vostra pen drive; selezionatela, premete INVIO, nella schermata che vi apparirà assicuratevi di essere sopra Mac OS X Base System e premete nuovamente INVIO per eseguire il boot del setup.
3) Una volta dentro il setup, selezionate la nostra lingua ed andate avanti; vi apparirà il solito menu in alto: da li selezionate Disk Utility (o Utilità Disco) sotto il menu Utility. Se la schermata del setup non vi dovesse apparire, passate al punto 3a, altrimenti proseguite normalmente verso il punto 4!
3a) Ci possono essere diverse cause che impediscono l'avvio del setup. Eseguite di nuovo il punto 1 e 2, ma prima di selezionate Mac OS X Base System con INVIO, pigiate sulla vostra tastiera i comandi "-v -x -f" (da notare che il trattino è possibile scriverlo solo col pulsante per fare l'apice, quello a destra dello zero), e premete INVIO. Se vi darà nuovamente una schermata di errore (chiamata Kernel Panic) o vi si bloccherà, provate a ripetere questo punto per altre 2 volte (raramente capita che OSX non vuole partire, un riavvio e funziona di nuovo tutto). Se di nuovo continuerà a non partire, mi dispiace dirlo ma dovrete ripartire dal passo A (vedrete che la seconda volta che seguirete questa guida, ci metterete la metà del tempo ;)).
4) A questo punto, dopo aver letto attentamente il punto 4 del passo B e dopo aver capito i rischi, passiamo avanti. Notiamo che selezionando il nostro Hard Disk, ci verrà mostrato in basso a destra con quale tabella di partizioni lavora (al 95% sarà Master Boot Record). Se sarà MBR passate al punto 4a, se avete intenzione di formattare usando GPT passate al punto 4b, se avete già GPT (verrà indicato con Tabella di partizione GUID), allora sapete che dovrete formattare tutto in ogni caso. Personalmente vi consiglio di usare MBR, dato che personalmente ho avuto brutte esperienze con la GPT. Un altro consiglio che vi posso dare è di fare il backup di tutto il computer e ripartizionare tutto quanto per fare prima, altrimenti le operazioni successive saranno un po lunghe, noiose ma anche rischiose per i vostri dati.
4a) Se volete mantenere tutti i vostri dati, passate direttamente al punto 4b, altrimenti proseguite. Questa operazione DISTRUGGERA' tutti i vostri dati contenuti nel vostro disco, ma almeno vi assicurerà di avere un hard disk pronto e pulito per ospitare OSX e volendo anche altri sistemi operativi. Andate su Partizione da Disk Utility, premete il pulsante Opzioni che troverete al centro in basso e selezionate Master Boot Record (o Tabella di partizione GUID, ma vi creerà grossi problemi nel caso vogliate formattare OSX o vogliate installare un altro sistema operativo), nel menu a tendina dove ci sarà scritto Attuale, selezionate il numero di partizioni che volete. Personalmente ho creato 4 partizioni, una per Windows da 64GB, una per Mac da 32GB, una per Ubuntu da 16GB ed una partizione condivisa dai 3 sistemi operativi dove metto tutti i miei dati (se vi state chiedendo perché ho 3 sistemi operativi, sappiate che il Mac lo uso solo per usare XCode, Ubuntu come unico sistema operativo che mi permetterebbe di recuperare gli altri 2 o se un giorno volessi programmare per multipiattaforma e Windows per tutto il resto). Formattate tutte le partizioni in MS-DOS FAT tranne la partizione dove dovrete installare OSX, che la formatterete come Mac OS Extended (Journaled) (chiamate la partizione Lion). Applicate le modifiche e passate al punto 5.
4b) *punto solo per utenti un po più esperti* Ritornate un attimo su un sistema operativo funzionante (io ho usato Win), scaricate GParted Live ed installatelo con Universal USB Installer su un'altra pen drive libera. Riavviate il vostro notebook, premete di nuovo ESC all'avvio e selezionate la pen drive dove avete installato GParted. Dovrete ridimensionare le vostre partizioni per ricavarne una con minimo 20GB (l'operazione di ridimensionamento potrebbe richiedere molto tempo se ridimensionate una partizione verso destra). Inizializzate lo spazio vuoto come una partizione di tipo HFS+. RICORDATE che la partizione da creare deve essere una partizione primaria, rieseguire il setup del vostro mac come descritto dal punto 1, 2 e 3, su Disk Utility dovrebbe mostrarvi una nuova partizione, dove se sezionata sarà possibile premere il pulsante nella barra degli strumenti di Disk Utility di colore verde chiamata Abilita Journaled. Una volta premuto passate al punto 5.
5) Uscite da Disk Utility e continuate l'installazione. Selezionate il vostro drive e fate partire (finalmente) l'installazione! Se per caso vi da un certo errore riguardo la partizione GUID, allora non avete eseguito corettamente il punto 4B del passo B.

Passo D: il primo boot di Lion
1) Avviate nuovamente la vostra pen drive e selezionate la vostra partizione di OSX chiamata Lion, premete INVIO e... Se sarà partito sarete quasi alla fine! Passate al punto 2! Viceversa, allora ci saranno state delle complicazioni (ma no?). Provate a rieseguire il punto 1 per altre 2 volte e, se il problema sarà sempre lo stesso, continuare a seguire questo punto, altrimenti passate al punto 1a.
1a) Riavviate il vostro notebook, selezionate di avviare la vostra pen drive e, quando vi troverete sopra la partizione Lion, digitate -v -x -f. Se vi restituirà un Kernel Panic relativo al componente AppleACPIPowerManagement.kext, andate al punto 1b, se apparirà scritto Still waiting for root device passate al punto 1c, se vi si bloccherà e basta, provate ad eseguire di nuovo il passo C, se si bloccherà nuovamente, mi dispiace dirlo ma dovrete rieseguite tutto da capo, a partire dal passo A.
1b) Rifate il boot del setup e stavolta avviate il Terminale invece che il Disk Utility. Scrivete cd /Volumes/Lion/System/Library/Extensions/ dove Lion sarà il nome della partizione da voi precedentemente creata, poi scrivete cp -rf /Volumes/Mac*/System/Library/Extensions/Null* ./ per copiare NullCPUPowerManagement.kext e fixate i permessi del file scrivendo chmod -R 755 ./Null*. Riavviate, bootate la partizione Lion e se tutto è andato a buon fine, passate al punto 2.
1c) Dovrete rieseguire il passo C, provando a ripartizionare tutto il drive (mi raccomando al backup).
2) Inserite tutti i dati a vostro piacimento ed una volta davanti al desktop di OSX, inserite una pen drive con l'archivio scaricato da questo post. Scompattate tutto, prendete il contenuto della cartella Kexts, copiatela sul desktop ed installare Multibeast, esattamente come avete fatto nei primi punti del passo B. Installate anche Chameleon 2.0 RC5 e riavviate, senza avere necessariamente inserita la pen drive usata per il setup.
3) Collegatevi ad internet (preferibilmente via LAN per velocizzare il tutto), andate sul logo della mela in alto a sinistra e fate verificare ad OSX se ci sono nuovi aggiornamenti. Vi proporrà diversi aggiornamenti, tra cui la versione 10.7.2 del sistema operativo (riaggiornerò l'articolo quando usciranno le prossime versioni). Installateli tutti e riavviate.
4) Dal vostro desktop, fate click col pulsante destro del touchpad su VoodooHDA.kext e fate Mostra contenuto pacchetto. Andate su Contents, aprite info.plist e cercate la scritta MixerValues. Modificate i valori di PCM, iGain ed iMix ed impostateli tutti a 100 (questo permetterà di avere il microfono e la porta di ingresso funzionanti). Cercate anche la stringa Vectorize e modificate il valore da false a true. Chiudete e rieseguite la stessa procedura del punto 2. Fatto questo dovrete avere il sistema operativo perfettamente funzionante, esattamente come un vero e proprio MacBook Pro!

Note finali: Problemi conosciuti, consigli ed altro
Ad ogni aggiornamento ufficiale di OSX, alcuni kexts modificati potrebbero essere sostituiti da nuovi ufficiali della Apple, quindi alcuni driver dovranno essere riapplicati usando MultiBeast. Il Mac non è in grado di switchare tra le due schede grafiche, quindi anche se installassimo i driver della GT520, non potremmo comunque usarla; per questo aspettiamo un aggiornamento al kernel da parte dei developer Apple per avere uno switch nativo tra le due schede. Il sistema inoltre, non è in grado di effettuare lo shutdown correttamente o di mettersi in standby, perciò se arrestate il sistema e il computer rimane acceso ma con lo schermo nero non vi preoccupate, il sistema ora è spento ma non è stato in grado di inviare al BIOS il segnale di shutdown (problema che si potrebbe aggirare modificando le impostazioni dell'ACPI di OSX). Per lo standby invece, dovrete modificare nelle opzioni del risparmio energetico il fatto che il computer se ne va in blocco dopo un tot di minuti (di default sono 15). Mettete al massimo quel valore finché il sistema vi segnalererà Mai e potete risolvere questo problema. Il driver audio attuale inoltre non supporta l'accelerazione tramite istruzioni SS2: per farlo andate nella cartella Extra Stuff dell'archivio ed installate Voodoo SS2 Enabler. Ho messo inoltre dei driver generici per abilitare il bluetooth, ma NON GLI HO TESTATI PERSONALMENTE! Vi consiglio anche di scaricare Monolingual, che vi permetterà di guadagnare oltre 1GB di spazio! L'hardware dell'ASUS U36SD, per quanto possa essere simile all'hardware dei nuovi MacBook Pro, non potrà mai raggiungere la perfezione, per questo invito gli utenti di questo forum a postare nuove soluzioni ai problemi già citati in precedenza per rendere il sistema sempre più perfetto.