{"id":7135,"date":"2018-03-20T08:08:26","date_gmt":"2018-03-20T12:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7135"},"modified":"2018-03-20T08:08:26","modified_gmt":"2018-03-20T12:08:26","slug":"back-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7135","title":{"rendered":"*****Back Up"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

photo: Darren Price, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

By Paul Colize, translated by Louise Rogers Lalaurie —<\/strong> This crime thriller by Belgian writer Paul Colize about a British rock band was short-listed for a number of prizes when first released. Only now available in English, the book should find a natural home and receptive audience among rock fans everywhere.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 1967. The rock band Pearl Harbor is taking a break after a hastily organized, late night Berlin recording session, and its four members have scattered. Within days, each of them is dead and unaccountably flush with cash.<\/p>\n

One is found at the bottom of a swimming pool in a luxury hotel in Palma de Mallorca, one with a bullet in his head in a hotel room in Hamburg, one crushed under a train in a Berlin U-Bahn station, and one who was apparently hiding out in a London hotel and jumped from his fifth floor room.<\/p>\n

Who could believe all these deaths were coincidental? The authorities, with their scattered jurisdictions and the differing modes of death believe it, especially when the bodies\u2014and the victims\u2019 histories\u2014reveal alarmingly high levels of drug and alcohol abuse. The band members become no more than rock n roll detritus, washed up by the tide of 1960s counterculture. It\u2019s a bang-up start to this well-constructed mystery.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to 2010. In Brussels, a homeless man is hit by a car near the Gare du Midi train station. He\u2019s badly injured, cannot speak, cannot be identified, and comes to be known as X Midi. You are privileged to read his thoughts, however, as he recuperates. He reconstructs his past and his fleeting but deadly association with Pearl Harbor in chapters that alternate with those narrated by his caretakers. They are trying with infinite patience to help him recover from locked-in syndrome, which leaves him almost totally incapable of communicating.<\/p>\n

Drug and alcohol use is part of the immersive environment Colize creates and manages not to become tedious. Rumors of U.S. military involvement in the testing psychoactive drugs simmer. There\u2019s lots of music-making too, which is filled with energy and considerable joy. Berlin\u2019s rock scene takes place in bars and nightclubs, and the bartenders and denizens are portrayed convincingly.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, you may be grateful when X Midi\u2019s narrative emerges from his substance-abusing days to confront the deeper and more sinister evil dogging him. Only gradually does he come to understand the true significance of Pear Harbor\u2019s fateful and final recording session, in which he served as the substitute drummer. The back up.<\/p>\n

And murder has a long tail.<\/a>
\n<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Paul Colize, translated by Louise Rogers Lalaurie — This crime thriller by Belgian writer Paul Colize about a British rock band was short-listed for a number of prizes when first released. Only now available in English, the book should … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"****Back Up - excellent thriller about murders that start in 1967 in Berlin with a 4-man British rock band. Why were members of Pearl Harbor killed?","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,40,207,3,126],"tags":[1273,1271,333,678,1272,1274],"class_list":["post-7135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-fiction","category-music","category-mystery","category-reading-2","tag-back-up","tag-berlin","tag-london","tag-murder","tag-paul-colize","tag-rock-and-roll"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1R5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7135"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7137,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7135\/revisions\/7137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}