And the legacy will be death: a Ukrainian detective with Carpathian mysticism

With this publication, Intent continues its series of reviews dedicated to the works of contemporary Ukrainian authors. The reviews for Intent as part of this project are written by Maria Galina, a Ukrainian writer, poet, and literary critic, winner of literary awards.

I started my column for Intent with a review of a space opera. Now it's the turn of a detective story. And for good reason. So we will gradually talk about genres and trends, because, strangely enough, the demand for books is growing: there was a crowd at the Book Arsenal, and at the Book Country, too. And this is despite the fact that book prices are also rising. But usually the attention is paid to, let's say, artificial products, High literature. So we will probably try to break the trend here.

Mass literature, whatever we mean by this term, should not be despised. Because it is the basis on which mass consciousness is built. And while with regard to fiction we should probably talk about the consciousness of civilization, international, the detective story is another matter. I would venture to say that it is the detective who is both the reflection and the creator of the national consciousness. Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, and Hercule Poirot did no less for the national consciousness of the British than, say, Thackeray or Shaw. Commissioner Maigret did no less for France (which is significant: he belongs to the system, while the heroes of British detectives are mostly amateurs). Noir with Philip Marlowe set the style of the era with which we associate the United States. So it is clear that Ukraine, building its national consciousness, desperately needs its own kind of detective genre.

So what do we have?

Judging from what I see, we have gradually developed a specific format where an isolated village (most often in the Carpathians) acts as a kind of Gothic castle with ghosts - starting with the magnificent, classic Uriz cycle by Halyna Pahutyak, through I See You're Interested in Darkness by Ilarion Pavliuk, and up to The Abandoned by Oksana Kovalchuk (a different location, but the message is the same).

Here I would point out certain typical features. First, the city of the action is usually a village cut off from the main roads. Therefore, according to the canon of the hermetic detective, we have a limited circle of potential criminals, a picturesque setting, and, as a rule, an outside investigator who does not always come for the purpose he declares out loud. And what is important, and what distinguishes Ukrainian mass-market detective fiction, is the presence of mysticism, which from time to time directly interferes with the plot and from time to time hides something purely mundane, earthly. It is not for nothing that Ilarion Pavliuk, who is very sensitive to mass demand, began his literary career with a postmodern interpretation of The Eyelash. It is a handful of mysticism that adds ethnic color to the work. It's like pepper or basil in a dish: if it's not there, something seems to be wrong. It is not surprising that publishers sensitive to demand (perhaps not even articulated demand) have begun to dig in this direction. In particular, the young publishing house Vihola, for which I give it a lot of respect, because, as I said here, the spirit of the nation is formed here and now, and not always through art houses.

So now let's take a look at one such detective story, because we have an occasion. Hanna Dychok, the author of the novel And Death Will Be the Inheritance (Vihola, 2025), has been living in Odesa for the last few years, and we have already mentioned that Intent prefers authors or events related to the southern regions of Ukraine. And with Odesa itself, of course.

Hanna Dychok. PHOTO: book-ye.com.ua

One more important thing. Or more than one. I'm a bore, this is my debut novel, and spoilers (we talked about them in the previous column) are a deadly thing for a detective. A deadly thing. So for now, we need to somehow get around those spoilers.

In the village of Yaruzhne, which, of course, is more or less isolated from the big world, there is a mysterious murder of a young man who has just returned from the city where he went to work... His fiancée has committed suicide, and the local authorities, as usual, are in no hurry to find and punish the criminals, so a couple of, how shall I say... not even official investigators, but emissaries, arrive in the village. Mariana and Dmytro have to understand what really happened here, and of course, there are many skeletons in the closet, and almost everyone they meet here is hiding something. Of course, their arrival triggers further events, of course, everything is gradually revealed to both the researchers and the reader. And then there are the ancient rituals that the locals observe, and then there is the mysterious ghost of a woman in white that the locals see, and then...

The unhurried narrative unfolds into a cozy story, I would say, despite the blood, horrors, and family secrets, and this is also in the spirit of genre traditions. Because we don't read such detective stories to find the culprits together with the researchers and the author. We read them for what is called the atmosphere. And those who want to spend a quiet evening with a story that follows the canons of the genre will get everything they opened the book for on the first page. Well, yes, instead of the family castle, there is an isolated village, instead of a ghost rattling chains, there is a white figure with a sickle, but these are all normal components of the purely national branch of the genre that is now being built almost before our eyes. Therefore, we can only congratulate the young author who has contributed to this structure, which is conventionally called the "national detective" (and no, there are no ghouls here).

Well, since we're avoiding spoilers, but analyzing genre features, I'll add this. In my opinion, a detective story is a genre that does not require psychology or a complex figure of an investigator or a murderer. On the contrary, it requires what we conventionally call archetypes. Miss Marple is the archetype of the Victorian spinster, Holmes is the archetype of the weirdo sociopath, Philip Marlowe is, of course, a guy in a black coat with a turned-up collar and a soft hat, and so on... Their antagonists are not exactly complex figures either. Well, yes, Moriarty is an underworld genius, and that's all we know about him. Does he have a wife? Children? What does he like for breakfast? It doesn't matter to us.

So to demand psychology from a detective novel is at least ridiculous, because if we're that picky, we end up with Crime and Punishment or The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and what do we do with that? So by definition, we don't expect any depth of motivation or character. On the contrary, we expect something close to a sketch, a comic strip, a caricature, like Hercule's mustache or Megret's pipe. And one more thing. From a detective novel, where the action takes place in a confined space, we expect an atmosphere. And it is directly related to what we conventionally call the genius of place. And the genius of a place is research, texture, rough realities. Time. Location. You know, like Ellis Peters and her brother Cadfael.

It was here that, despite all the intrigue built up (we have no idea what motivated the criminal to the last), something prevented me from fully immersing myself in the text. Because it is very difficult to understand exactly where and even when the events of the novel take place. It seems to be before the two great wars, yes. Because there is a gendarmerie, obviously there are no telephones, everyone travels by carts, etc... But on the first pages I came across the term "village council". According to Wiki, it appeared only in the early 20s of the last century, so it seems that the author herself was not exactly sure about the realities and time. So yes, the story the author tells us is demonstrably out of time and even out of space... We don't even know under whom that village was actually located or even in which region. There is Yaruzhne and there is Novyi Misto, where Myroslav went to work and where the mock investigators came from-and that's it. By the way, almost everyone in the village is literate. This is important for the plot, but is it typical for a small village somewhere on the edge of the world? That's why the village elder says something like, "You're too emotional for an investigator..." And so on.... This timelessness was probably deliberately chosen by the author as a feature of the novel. But, in my opinion, it is the detective story as a conventional, formal genre that desperately clings to the little things, to the details-this gives it texture, flesh. Therefore, it is a detective story (or rather a series of novels) that will be immersed in everyday life, in ethnic textured details, with a charismatic figure of the investigator, with vivid characters, tied to a very specific historical period of time, that will do for the national consciousness what any high-minded text cannot do.

What does Kokotyukha have to do with it?

But here's something else I'd like to point out, and what I really liked about it is the female characters and the role of women as levers of the plot in general. Perhaps, if we look back at the time and location, this is too bold an assumption. Maybe not. But there is a truth that is stronger even than historical truth.

So we can only thank the publishing house for being willing to take risks, discovering new names and new directions, because that's what publishing houses are supposed to do.

Марія Галіна