The best-written translated crime novel of the century
Read the opening pages from our pick below ^ Plus Part 26 of The Demon Inside David Lynch
In today’s issue:
—’We drive through the city, black holes open up on every corner, they tug at the sheet metal of the ambulance, Stepanovic is kneeling beside the shitty stretcher I’m lying on, he’s holding me, he’s holding my hand and he’s singing something to me, I like the tune but the words make me want to puke’: the best-written previous winner of the Dagger Award for best translated crime novel, part of our project to find the best-written novel of the century to date.
We recently posted our pick from the Dagger shortlist for this year’s best English-language crime novel. The winners will be announced on the 4th of July.
—‘While everyone waited for the auteur to appear that day, the tone of mind of the world reached its highest ever point. Entities gathered round the crystal bowl of the horizon to share 10D popcorn and Maltesers and watch what unfolded’: Commander Holy Cross of the Grand Order of Geniuses of the United States of, for Now, Still Just President Trump, Part 26 of The Demon Inside David Lynch: TV Drama’s Worst Fiasco.
The entire series is available here, and a free copy of the fully illustrated .epub is available on request at auraist@substack.com. Thanks for the support Auraist readers have continued to show this series.
You can also browse our author masterclasses on prose style, picks from the best-written recent releases, from prize shortlists, the best-written books of the century, and extracts from many of these.
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THE DAGGER AWARD FOR BEST TRANSLATED CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR
Previous winners
2006 Fred Vargas The Three Evangelists, tr. Sîan Reynolds
2007 Fred Vargas Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand, tr. Sîan Reynolds
2008 Dominique Manotti, Lorraine Connection, tr. Amanda Hopkinson and Ros Schwartz
2009 Fred Vargas The Chalk Circle Man, tr. Sian Reynolds
2010 Johan Theorin The Darkest Room, tr. Marlaine Delargy
2011 Roslund/Hellström Three Seconds, tr. Kari Dickson
2012 Andrea Camilleri The Potter's Field, tr. Stephen Sartarelli
2013 Pierre Lemaitre Alex, tr. Frank Wynne
2011 Fred Vargas The Ghost Riders of Ordebec, tr. Sîan Reynolds
2014 Arturo Pérez-Reverte The Siege, tr. Frank Wynne
2015 Pierre Lemaitre Camille, tr. Frank Wynne
2016 Pierre Lemaitre, The Great Swindle, tr. Frank Wynne
2017 Leif G. W. Persson The Dying Detective, tr. Neil Smith
2018 Henning Mankell After the Fire
2019 Dov Alfon A Long Night in Paris, tr. Daniella Zamir
2020 Hannelore Cayre The Godmother, tr. Stephanie Smee
2021 Yun Ko-eun The Disaster Tourist, tr. Lizzie Buehler
2022 Simone Buchholz Hotel Cartagena, tr. Rachel Ward
2023 Javier Cercas Even the Darkest Night, tr. Anne McLean
The best-written of these is
WAS THAT IT THEN, I ASKED
We drive through the city, black holes open up on every corner, they tug at the sheet metal of the ambulance, Stepanovic is kneeling beside the shitty stretcher I’m lying on, he’s holding me, he’s holding my hand and he’s singing something to me, I like the tune but the words make me want to puke.
.
two days earlier, a hotel near the port in Hamburg
‘Hello love.’
‘Hello, how can I help you?’
‘I’m from Unimax. About the sprinkler system.’
‘Yes…?’
‘Maintenance works.’
‘Ah, OK. The keycards for the cellar, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Just a sec … both cards?’
‘Two cards would be ideal.’
‘No problem … Here you are then.’
‘Super, thanks. We’ll just leave them on the counter when we’ve finished, same as ever, yeah?’
‘Yes, of course, same as ever.’
‘Perfect. Have a nice day, and, ah, you know, you really are looking great today.’
‘Oh, thank you, how nice of you.’
‘Corporate philosophy.’
Twinkle, twinkle.
Smile.
Back and forth.
Departure.
.
OPEN UP, POLICE
Stepanovic takes his foot off the gas, he pulls over and switches off the engine. It’s November, it’s dark, it’s cold.
It’s quiet.
No wind.
He gets out, leans against the car and lights a cigarette, the sky gleams orange.
As of a good half-hour ago, he’s supposed to be on the twentieth floor of this hotel at the harbour edge; he’s supposed to be sitting there, celebrating with his colleague Faller, who turned sixty-five today.
And that’s damn-well worth celebrating. If you’ve made it that far without being completely screwed.
Stepanovic drags on his cigarette and watches a woman in the building opposite, on the third floor. Although the woman isn’t wearing conspicuously little, she hasn’t got that much on either, he can see a bare shoulder, a slipped shirt, fair hair pinned up. She’s holding a telephone to her ear with her right hand, with her left hand she’s stirring a pan.
Stepanovic smokes on, the cigarette helps counter this tightness in his chest that he always feels when he’s supposed to do something that he can’t. Finally getting himself up to that hotel bar, for example.
But he could ring that woman’s doorbell and say ‘open up, police’ and then he’d stand up there in the doorway and smile at her and create an instant, a situation, something fun, charming, stunning, something at any rate, and she’d let him in, and he wouldn’t need long to get her to fall in love with him, at least for a couple of minutes, or for one night, and then he’d be allowed to eat with her, whatever it is she’s cooking there right now, and he’d be allowed to stay overnight with her, the main thing being not going home, and the main thing being not going to that shitty hotel for this so-called party.
It’s not about parties themselves, a party can be perfectly fine. But not when the guests include two lovers, or ex-lovers, of a woman he loves with everything he has on hand, even if that’s not particularly impressive, but hey, we can only do our best.
What on earth are you talking about, he hears her say.
Yeah, my God, fuck off.
He throws the cigarette in a puddle, locks the Mercedes, walks over the road and presses the bell belonging to the flat on the third floor, left.
The pressure on his ribcage eases a little.
He takes a deep breath, and the night air unscrews his heart, so that the moment that’s about to happen can get in there too.
.
WHY EXACTLY DO WE NEED ALL THAT GELIGNITE AGAIN?
An empty warehouse by the Oberhafen in Hamburg. Inside the warehouse, thirteen men are sitting on crates, one is standing by a table, he’s bending over something that looks like a building plan. The man has the air of a leader, he’s not overly tall, but hulky. You can see he works out, looks like he’s just finished a work-out. He’s wearing a dark bomber jacket, with a black hoodie under it, on his head there’s a grey knitted cap. His skin is leathery, as if he lives by the sea, under the sun, as if he’s in the wrong place here. The other men watch him as he studies the plan, nobody says anything. The youngest is maybe in his mid-twenties, the eldest around fifty or so, the men come in all colours and all shapes. Some are a little nervous, because a gathering like this, the scent of imminent action, just cries out for nervousness. But because all of them have learnt, over the years, to hide feelings behind faces of cement, what you get is a consciously unruffled conglomeration.
Some light up cigarettes, the ringleader also pulls a packet from his jacket pocket and smokes, and when he’s finished checking out the site plan, he says: ‘OK, men.’
The men nod, a couple of them murmur.
‘Guns?’ asks the ringleader.
‘Got the guns,’ one says, standing up, ‘and the ammo’s ready too. Take your pick – we’ve got Uzis, we’ve got nice, elegant .45s. Plus two pump guns and a sawn-off shotgun. For those of you who like things a little bigger.’
He sits back down.
Murmuring.
‘Gelignite?’ asks the ringleader.
‘Gelignite’s fine,’ says the weapons guy, ‘we’ve got plenty.’
‘Why exactly do we need that gelignite, I thought we’d got a tunnel to exit by…’ says another, but stops talking when the leader looks at him.
‘Tunnel’s in progress,’ says a small, wiry guy with a beard, who’s chewing the nail on his right index finger.
The ringleader asks about the keycards.
Someone, sitting at the edge, on the left, says: ‘Sorted.’
‘And how about the clothes?’
‘I collected the suits yesterday, from assorted dry-cleaners all around the city,’ says someone in the back row.
‘SWAT team uniforms, helmets, gear?’ asks the ringleader.
‘Ready to go, man.’
‘Crow bars, climbing ropes, rubble chute?’
The leader’s gaze flies around the room and catches on a man with a baseball cap.
‘It’s all there, where it’s meant to be, boss.’
‘And everyone could recite the plan from memory in their sleep?’
Collective nod.
‘Good. Then we’ll run through this thing again.’
The Demon Inside David Lynch states that the celebrated director was possessed by a ten-dimensional entity that went on to make Twin Peaks: The Return. Obviously this is fiction, satire. But the descriptions of The Return’s content are not fiction, no matter how much you come to believe or wish otherwise.
Commander Holy Cross of the Grand Order of Geniuses of the United States of, for Now, Still Just President Trump
[Ella]
For many months following the finale pride and relief kept filling the skies of the world, flowing on through streams in hills, thundering all the way down past hotels in plunges which were magickal. These wild and glad feelings swept on across the whole planet and made themselves felt in art galleries, museums, nightclubs, boutique hotels, cupboards for podcasting, psychiatric wards, prisons, terminals for buses, oilrigs, and toxic dumps. This new magick coated the earth with sparkles and painted every bit of continental space with sparkling glamour, went on painting, painting the marvellously revived lands of this world of ours in the months after The Return bowed out in glory.
At long last the United States of America had given the planet a work which did not merely match Don Quixote and The Divine Comedy and other epics but zoomed away past them in every way which mattered—nice to see the country regain its pride like this, after all those years of not being Great. To thank David Lynch, who was of course possessed by the Demonic Twin, in June 2018 the president hosted a parade at Washington DC’s National Mall.
While everyone waited for the auteur to appear that day, the tone of mind of the world reached its highest ever point. Entities gathered round the crystal bowl of the horizon to share 10D popcorn and Maltesers and watch what unfolded.
Along the balcony of the president’s palace this large group got ready to express the delight they felt: Jeffrey Epstein, the curatorial staff from MoMA, Richard Brophy of The New Yorker, Martha P. Nochimson, Franck Boulègue and other Cahiers du cinéma writers, Pablo Casado, Rudy Guiliani, Prince Andrew, Jim Jarmusch, Damon Lindelof, John Waters, Sam Esmail, Bryan Fuller, Rian Johnson, Ron Jeremy, and Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby that had been especially released for this occasion. Sí, this was the day that the Demonic Twin would meet for the first time much of the cast of Season 4. It was also the first meeting of the future Club Gevurah and also the waiting list for membership.
Then onto the Mall stepped the auteur’s auteur in red pumps, red ankle-socks, and not a lot else. And exhibiting an erect red penis hung with minúsculas red bells.
Great inward breaths from the crowds now as this red figure dashed up the Mall to give everyone a good look at the sight of him, and a good listen to the cheerful bells.
Then down, down the Mall this tinkling figure dashed with one hand placed upon a hip and one waving Howdy at wellwishers, the exertion of it all turning that celebrated craggy face an attractive fiery red.
On the palace balcony there came gleaming a pornographic grin from the president as the auteur raced towards him, gorgeous as a god, extraordinariamente fackeen red by now, shooing packs of barking strays spellbound by those merry tinkles.
Then the president, who was cheered on by the crowds in rapture, placed on his head a red cap with the words MADE AMERICA GEEENIUS AGAIN. As everyone else did the same as this, he invited David Lynch, as he believed it was, to join him and his fellow celebrators up there on the balcony, and the beyond-doubts erect auteur was watched on screens across the world in patriotic, red-blooded apotheosis, face bright red in a red cap and a red coat which was pinned with the red ribbon of Commander Holy Cross of the Grand Order of Geniuses of the United States of, for Now, Still Just President Trump.
The Twin waited for silence from the crowds, from the celebrities, and finally the bells. Then it smiled the repugnante sneering smile of a heel in wrestling and said into the waiting microphones: ‘President Trump could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history because he has disrupted the thing so much.’