Paul Colize is a Belgian crime writer and his intricately-plotted Back Up is the first of his 10 novels to be translated into English.
The story begins in Berlin in 1967 when the lead singer of British rock band Pearl Harbour is drowned in a hotel pool. Within a week, every member of the band is dead. Although the police find no evidence of foul play, the unlikely coincidence, and the fact that four had apparently come into a substantial amount of money just before their demise, is enough to arouse the interest of Irish reporter Michael Stern, for whom the mystery becomes a personal crusade.
A second strand of the story, set in Brussels in 2010, relates to an elderly man who has been run over and now lies in a hospital bed in a semi-conscious state. As he regains awareness, X Midi (as he is known) steadfastly refuses to divulge his secrets despite the determination of his physiotherapist, Dominique, to find out more about his mysterious patient.
Details of the accidents and subsequent investigations in both timelines alternate and are presented in an impartial third person, with a formality of language and attention to detail that you might find in a police file or a newspaper report. Punctuating them are italicised chapters in which we hear X Midi's inner voice reconstructing his life. First person, confessional and with a temporal logic of their own, these sections dictate the pace of the novel and add depth and detail to the facts unearthed by Martin and Dominique. First we learn of his love of rock and his years spent living and working in the music scene. Then he moves on to the evening he played as a replacement drummer for a one-off recording session by (you guessed it) Pearl Harbour; and the pitch changes. Dark hints dropped earlier in the story are expanded, and the three threads converge as the reverberations of that night engulf X Midi and all who come into contact with him.
Although I have limited patience for literary game playing, I found Back Up surprisingly entertaining. I thoroughly enjoyed the picture X Midi paints of the cultural life of the `60s and `70s, and while I was less convinced by the big reveal of the second half (the bad guys are a cheap and easy stereotype), Colize's deft handling of the plot left me guessing right up to - and including - the author's acknowledgements. The secrets X Midi stumbles over straddle the line between conspiracy theory and tin foil-hat paranoia. Their melodramatic nature fits well with the overall tone of the novel and if this is an example of what Belgi-noir has to offer I think Colize is likely to find English readers will be as appreciative an audience as their French counterparts.
Cushla McKinney is a Dunedin scientist.
