Found in Translation.

Congrats to Annie J!  (Now we know what she's been doing besides
attending grad school full-time AND teaching Iowa undergrads in
Iowa City.)  What a nice feather in her translator's cap!

Brenner And God
By Wolf Haas, translated by Annie Janusch, Melville House, 224 pages, $14.95

“My grandmother always used to say to me when you die, they’re gonna give that
mouth of yours its own funeral.”

That opening line introduces the narrator of this superb translation of one of
Austria’s finest crime novels. As he/she relates the adventures of ex-Inspector
Brenner, late of the police, now a chauffeur for a billionaire land developer,
the pace is gentle, the humour subtle, the ideas fresh. In short, we get a series
that has elements of the delightful Fred Vargas’s Inspector Adamsberg, but really
owes more to the elegant German author H.H. Kirst, who chronicled the idiocies
of total war in his Gunner Asch series and climaxed his career with the brilliant
Night Of The Generals. Nothing is rushed as the story begins with a kidnapping
and ends with murder.

We first encounter Brenner as chauffeur to the Kressdorf family. Pa is the Munich
developer. Ma is a well-known (and much maligned) doctor who operates a
controversial birth control clinic in Vienna. Brenner, or Herr Simon as the
Kressdorfs prefer, drives their two-year-old daughter Helena, from one parent
to another, or to their mutual home in Kitzbuhel. The job is easy. Brenner likes
the baby. He has a roof, a salary, benefits. One day, while he’s buying Helena a
chcolate bar at a gas station, she vanishes. Brenner is summarily sacked. The
real police will search for Helena. Haas never loses the thread of investigation,
even as he introduces off-beat characters and a very complex plot.

This 2009 work predates the Euro crash so Haas’s observations of the German
plutocracy, smugly ensconced in their BMWs, is essential to the story. The
Developer is plowing under a famous park to build MegaLand, a combination
shopping mall, entertainment hub and living space. Oh, and Brenner does
find God.

This is the first of the Brenner novels in English. We can only hope for more, soon.

WOLF HAAS was born in 1960 in the Austrian province of Salzburg.
He is the author of seven books in the bestselling Detective Brenner mystery
series, three volumes of which have been made into popular German-language
films. Among other prizes, the Brenner books have been awarded the German
thriller prize and the 2004 Literature Prize from the City of Vienna.

ANNIE JANUSCH, who no longer puts her foot in her mouth as her
outstanding translation of Haas' book proves, is also the translator of
the Art of the Novella edition of Heinrich von Kleist’s The Duel.