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Americans are notorious for missing out on translated fiction. Here are two terrific thrillers -- one brand new and one a classic -- from best-selling authors you might never have heard of. My first thriller in translation is Javier Cercas’ new novel, “Even the Darkest Night.” It is translated by Anne McLean. Cercas, who lives and writes in Barcelona, is one of the bestselling authors in Spain and Europe. His central crime-solver in this book, detective Melchor Marin, possesses such an intricate and contradictory personality that the nuances of the case he’s solving are a sideshow to the intrigue of watching him solve it. It's a character quality I look for in my favorite suspense writers. The detective also has one of the most original backstories I’ve found in a fictional cop. Born to a mother who was a prostitute, Melchor is drawn into a violent gang despite his mother’s attempts to protect him from the crime and poverty in their Barcelona neighborhood. In prison, he encounters a fellow inmate, an intellectual who escapes the walls of the prison through reading. The inmate hands Melchor a thick volume and warns him: “If you want to end up as miserable as me, don’t study.” The title on that novel? “Les Miserables.” The book and its characters become a touchstone for Melchor's transformation from criminal to crime fighter. The other thriller in translation you shouldn’t miss is a classic and the first novel in a series that roars off the launchpad with a kind of “locked room” puzzle, an airtight alibi and the matching of wits for two geniuses. Penned by one of Japan’s bestselling thriller writers, Keigo Higashino, “The Devotion of Suspect X,” was published in 2005 in Japan and translated by Alexander O. Smith. It debuts a character who is a scientist and crime-solver nicknamed “Professor Galileo.” Galileo, aka Dr. Manabu Yukawa, is a brilliant physicist who is called in sometimes to help the police. When the alibi of the prime suspect, who is believed to have been an accessory to murder, holds despite investigators' conviction he’s lying, a cat-and-mouse game ensues between Galileo and the suspect.
— Kerri Miller | MPR News | 