Gwen Moffat lives in Cumbria. Her novels are set in remote communities ranging from the Hebrides to the American West. The crimes fit their environment, swelling that dreadful record of sin in the smiling countryside cited by Sherlock Holmes.
We are in Croatia, 2022: a war-damaged country re-inventing itself as a tourist destination. In the city of Split the attractions are the magnificent Roman ruins which, in the event, have no more to do with this story than has murder. Mother of Sorrows is about a community epitomised by three people surviving the consequences of a crime which, for all its horror, is no more than a catalyst.
On the face of it they are ordinary people. Ines is a receptionist in a chic hotel. A bright and impulsive young woman, she stands in stark contrast to her young brother, Mario, a drone with no job and no interests other than watching football on TV while being indulged and cossetted by Katja, his widowed mother. The family home is a flat in a concrete tower block where Katja works as a cleaner, always at war with the landlord who is currently in the process of turning the communal laundry room into extra space for tourists. Under-paid and over-worked, Katja insists that Ines must persuade her manager to find an easier job for her at the hotel. Which would be a cinch except that, unknown to her mother, Ines is having a covert affair with her manager. Terrified of his wife, a suspicious and vengeful lady, Ines is walking on eggs and in no position to ask favours.
At this moment a body is found by a watchman in an abandoned industrial plant outside the city. The victim is quickly identified as the teenage daughter of a local doctor. She had been raped, stabbed and strangled.
With the community reeling from the shock, the best man is set to head the investigation. Inspector Zvone is the middle ranking policeman with whom we are all familiar in different settings: the good detective who follows his conscience, makes allowances for other people’s mistakes, deplores and learns from his own: a man of empathy and guilt. This one lives in the inevitable decrepit tower block where he cares for his cantankerous old father: a veteran of wars which have left him unmoved and unscathed, a kind of shell with nothing left but a beloved boat, a grumbling prostate and a knowledge of how to kill. The few times that father and son accord are when they go out fishing at night and Zvone becomes aware of the innate difference between them and the inability to do anything about it.
But he‘s a good cop and his percipience comes into play when evidence is found at the scene of the murder and it points to Mario. However, as Zvone starts to move against Katja’s boy, a domineering colleague muscles in with a more obvious and convenient suspect. This is a different kind of man, a pit bull with a personal vendetta against a rapist who has eluded him – and justice - for far too long.
Although Mario remains Zvone’s preferred suspect he’s blind to the intimidation and illicit practices being employed to frame the serial offender. Almost a sub-plot in itself this episode is the kind of diversion encountered by any murder case when the investigators try different roads in the quest for the right one. But this long and meaty insert is more; it’s an expose of bad policing that comes close to the knuckle in more than one small Balkan country. It’s a neat balancing act too: good cop, corrupt cop.
Meanwhile, long before Zvone was aware of Mario’s existence, or as anything more than a faceless hoodlum on a street corner, Ines and Katje knew. They had no doubts (although Katje had excuses); they took the guilt for granted and set out – separately - to shield the killer at whatever cost to themselves.
They were surrounded by crooks. They countered with guile buoyed up by integrity. How the situation was resolved, if it was, the part Zvone played in the resolution (and for some readers it could never be properly resolved) these are questions demanding answers that even as the wispiest of hints would be spoilers.
Here is a craftsman at work, and although the basic theme is one of infallible love and compassion, love has a hard fight against evil. And Pavicic’s villains are superlative. He allows his sympathetic characters to reveal themselves over time, but his miscreants, from the first abusive landlord through cops and priests to faithless lovers, all are drawn with a few strokes of the pen and it’s one that’s been dipped in vitriol.
More than an intriguing read Mother of Sorrows is a masterpiece in construction and style, and well served by its translator, Matt Robinson.
