Three

THREE
D. A. Mishani
Riverrun

REVIEWED BY PETER STUPPLES

Dror Mishani is a successful Israeli crime writer, with an interest in the history of the whodunnit and the personalities of famous fictional detectives. His own sleuth, the Mizrahi Avraham Avraham, leads the investigations in three of his novels.

Three is a departure from the series. An attorney, Gil Hamtzani, grooms lonely women, patiently and over a long period of time, if necessary, before pouncing. He covers his traces well, so that the police shelve the cases due to lack of evidence.

The novel concentrates on minute details of the lives of the women, the ordinariness of their circumstances in Tel Aviv. There is no drama, only a gradual drift towards vulnerability. The reader, even early on, is aware of what is happening and the inevitable crimes that lie in wait in the narrative. This inevitability is unnerving. Why are we reading this misogynistic tale? Are we complicit, in watching the fate of these women, in participating in the oppression of women? Can this be regarded in any way as ‘entertainment’?

It is a question that hangs in the air over much crime writing. Or should we be aware that such predatory behaviour is common in all walks of life and cultures throughout history, and thus need to take our heads out of the sand and face the facts of life? Is it, perhaps, info-tainment? What sort of writer is it that spends such a quantity of time and intellectual effort to put together in minute detail such a dark narrative?

Agatha Christie is so unreal as to be available to entertain, but is such penetrating social realism as Three in this category?

Mishani’s musing about detectives in his interview ‘‘The Big Mystery: Dror Mishani on Why Israelis Don't Write Crime Novels’’  is worth reading to inform the way he rounds out this novel, with instances of chance and almost mystical determination.

However, there are major weaknesses in the novel itself as an example of the genre. Gil Hamtzani is given no back story. There is no motive for his criminal obsession.

We see the actions of the novel from the point of view of the women. We understand why they put themselves into his hands, but Gil himself remains a blank. The detection of the crime is also not the focus, but a tag on, leading to an unexpected ending.

It is for these reasons that we may ask ourselves difficult questions about ‘reader motive’.

Peter Stupples, now living in Wellington, used to teach at the University of Otago