Mall-minded

>> Scooby Doo-style mystery and shop psychology in Silvermeadow

by JULIET WATERS

 A passage from Zola's The Ladies' Paradise, a novel about a big department store that takes over Paris, shows how little the principles of capitalism have changed over the years:

 "Mouret... finished explaining the basic mechanism of modern commerce... It was for woman that all the establishments were struggling in wild competition; it was woman whom they were continually catching in the snares of their bargains, after bewildering her with their displays... And if woman reigned in their shops like a queen, cajoled, flattered and overwhelmed with attentions, she... pays for each fresh caprice with a drop of her blood... Now the Baron understood... His eyes twinkled in a knowing way, and he ended by looking with an air of admiration at the inventor of this machine for devouring the female sex. It was really clever."

 Over the years, of course, as the machine has evolved from department store to mall, techniques have been even more refined. In Barry Maitland's Silvermeadow, a murder mystery set in a mall, a character explains a phenomenon called "Gruen transference," named after Victor Gruen, the architect who designed the first mall in Minneapolis in 1956. Gruen specifically designed his mall to create an enclosed environment that would disorient and then compel a consumer to wander aimlessly past shops, magnetically pulled by the bigger stores, while distracted by the smaller ones.

 But malls have always attracted more than consumers; they are also meccas for the aimless, particularly teenagers. And for those who have other reasons to prey on the aimless. The rumour about Silvermeadow, an ultra-sophisticated mall near Essex, England, is that young girls have been disappearing there without a trace. No bodies have ever been found until the corpse of Kerri Vlasich, age 14, is discovered in a recycling plant. Her body has been condensed into a tiny bundle by a trash compactor at the mall.

 DCI Brock is on the case. However, the story increasingly focuses on Brock's protégé, DS Kathy Kolla, as she becomes drawn into the weird culture of the mall while maxing out her credit cards.

 Maitland, who also happens to be a professor of architecture as well as an increasingly acclaimed mystery novelist, has a lot of insight into how the mall makes its inhabitants vulnerable, while doing little to protect them. For instance, the mall has a video surveillance system that would make Big Brother proud. Yet all the tapes are erased after 24 hours, because it's only designed to protect store owners, not abducted children.

 The problem with the book is a phenomenon that I guess I'd have to call "Scooby Doo transfer." No matter how intelligent, well crafted, literate and original a mystery is, when it's about teenagers in a scary place, it's practically impossible not to expect it all to end with someone being led away in handcuffs, muttering "those damn kids, they ruined everything." Silvermeadow is populated with villains who fit that stereotype: the dotty archeology professor who has it in for the mall because it was built on an ancient Viking burial site; the suspicious, greasy, gelato store owner, Bruno Verdi, who's probably not even Italian; the creepy wheelchair-bound geek, "Speedy," who's in charge of the surveillance system and seems to have tapes on everybody. In the end, Silvermeadow doesn't turn out to be that facile, but there seems to always be a whiff of Shaggy and his dog around the corner.

 And place is no substitute for character. The idea of going into the mind of a mall, instead of the increasingly tired formula of going into the mind of a serial killer, is unique. But in practice it still doesn't have the drawing power. Silvermeadow is an extremely well-designed mystery. Distracting, if not compelling, nicely paced, dangerous but ultimately not too disturbing. Something not unlike a stroll through a well-controlled mall. :

 

Silvermeadow by Barry Maitland, Orion, pb, 365pp, $21.95