Spring 2024 - Recrudescence

Itxaro Borda able to identify with other types of crime, such as burglary, which deserved to be taken just as seriously given the major impact of these crimes on the lives of their victims. He had often read about families who were forced to relocate in the aftermath of a burglary, regardless of whether their abode had sustained any damage or whether the victims had been at home or not at the time of the break-in, simply because they now regarded their home as forever tainted with insecurity. Brandeggen also scoffed at Van Dine and Knox’s unbending rule that the detective must never solve the crime as a result of blind chance, coincidence, or being at the right place at the right time. On the contrary, this became the Red Handler’s modus operandi, given Brandeggen’s deep interest in coincidence, the collective unconscious, and synchronicity. “Our reality is full of coincidences, or seeming coincidences. Linkages and undercurrents. Why shouldn’t the Red Handler live in the same reality?” Brandeggen wrote in his notes. Again, he believed that reorienting the genre around a greater appreciation of people’s lived reality would be key to the Red Handler’s success. 7 As early as the first Red Handler novel, the style has been perfected. The solution comes before the reader has a chance to get bored. Or, as Brandeggen himself wrote in one of his notebooks, in English (probably because he imagined presenting his concept to international publishers): Crime fiction for the gentleman who loves crime novels, but hates reading. 8 The final reference to the Red Handler’s wife, and one of only a handful to smoking. Brandeggen himself smoked constantly and advocated for the greater social acceptance of double-smoking (inhaling from two cigarettes simultaneously) as something more than a party trick. 9 The one exception to musical references noted above in the footnote about Glenn Gould. A possible nod toward the Saraghina sequence in Fellini’s 8 ½, a film dear to Brandeggen ever since he began frequenting the Stavanger Film Club, where he never missed

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