Half Broken Things by Morag Joss

Half Broken Things is advertised as a "novel of suspense." It won an award from the Crime Writers Association, and I picked it up ready to puzzle through an unsolved mystery. But this book is not a whodunit; if there are murders at its center (and, my goodness, there are!), there is never a question of who commits them. Instead, the suspense builds around the fates of the three protagonists, who, throughout the course of the book, commit theft--and grisly murders. What will happen to them? And what should happen to them--what do they deserve? 

For these characters are as sympathetic as they are sinister. They have no money, no friends, and, until they find one another, no hope that their lives can change. Jean is an aging house-sitter who has been given notice; she has no family or home of her own, subsisting entirely in the houses she watches, often for months at a time. Michael is an unsuccessful thief who is deep in debt and paralyzed by chronic depression. As a character, Steph is the most conventional (she is also the least convincing): she's pregnant, and her boyfriend is abusive. Author Morag Joss spends the first half of the book laboring to show us just how lonely these people are. 

This set-up is essential. By a series of fabulous coincidences, à la Charles Dickens, these three loners find one another: they make a home together in Jean's current residence, an idyllic country mansion whose owners are on an extended holiday. For the first time, they see what it is to live a comfortable life. They are not greedy; they do not take more than they need; many would call simple the life they see as luxurious. But it is clearly their togetherness, their devotion to one another, that brings them the most happiness, and it is hard not to share in the sheer joy they feel at alleviating their loneliness. It is almost difficult to remember that they are, in order to maintain this neat little life, committing fraud, theft, and--as time passes--cold-blooded murder. 

It seems clear that their life is unsustainable: the residents will return to their house, eventually, and the secretly killed will be reported missing. But it seems equally clear that they are not going to be arrested like common criminals, put on trial, and thrown in jail. In the world of their new life, there is no room for that kind of mundane reality. Until the last few pages of the book, I genuinely had no idea how it would end (and the ending is surprising in just the right way: you realize what will happen the moment before it actually does). I enjoyed the ambiguity because it also forced the reader into a moral quandary: what possible outcome will serve justice? In the end, of course, there is no justice but the poetic kind--but it is so deliciously rendered that it hardly matters. 

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

This book, originally published in Sweden after Larsson's death, is in many ways an old-fashioned morality tale: Crime, both white-collar and cold-blooded, is at its heart, and it is a scathing indictment of the conscience-shocking behavior of men in power. They embezzle; they rape; they murder. But this idea is not new, and it is not what makes the book so compulsively readable. Rather, it is the murder mystery at the story's center that compels the reader forward: Larsson has, first and foremost, written a heckuva thriller.

The story's protagonist is not a detective but a financial journalist (Larsson himself worked for many years as an editor). Recently (and perhaps wrongly) convicted of libel, Mikael Blomkvist is contacted by Henrik Vanger, an aging former CEO and member of a well-known corporate dynasty, to solve a murder that occurred over 40 years ago: his beloved niece Harriet disappeared without a trace from a small island off the Swedish coast. The murder perplexed family members and police officials alike; nevertheless, Vanger wants Blomkvist to give it a shot.

This premise is one of several moments in the book in which Larsson demands that the reader suspend her disbelief. Blomkvist drops everything to live on an island with Vanger for an entire year; he attracts and beds women with unrelenting ease; his hacker accomplice can gather literally any information he needs within 24 hours. More central to the story's progress is the improbable circumstances under which the teenage Harriet was murdered: Because a fire occurred on the island's only bridge to the mainland that same day, the case is a so-called "locked room mystery." Only about 15 people, all of them members of the Vanger clan, could have actually committed the crime.

I initially balked at what struck me as obvious plot devices. However, this book is not necessarily attempting realism. It is a thriller, and thrillers do not operate under the same rules as realistic fiction, my normal domain as a reader. Harriet's murder is an engaging puzzle precisely because it can be logically investigated and neatly analyzed.

In many ways, though, the murder itself is a plot device, meant to support Larsson's central thesis: power corrupts. Corporate and government officials, both those involved in the murder and those featured in related subplots, are guilty of financial corruption and sadistic personal habits. Yet Larsson's accusatory finger points inward, as well. Even the story's heroes are frequently morally degenerate. Obvious underdogs, righteous journalists, victimized women--they are sympathetic, but they also lie, cheat, and commit violent crimes of their own.

Incidentally, that fact is probably what saves the novel from slipping into self-important moralism: it raises questions even as it indicts. When is violence wrong, and when is it necessary? When should then truth be concealed? When does an end justify the means? These questions are interesting, if not always smoothly or subtly executed, and they have remained with me now that the book is done. But while I read, I read for one reason: What really happened to Harriet that day? The answer, and the manner in which it unfolds, is enough to make the book worth reading.