Greuceanu: Novel with a Policeman (Greuceanu, roman cu un politist, 2007), by Stelian Țurlea, is a melding of Petre Ispirescu’s nineteenth-century fairy-tale with a modern crime novel. Set in a provincial Romanian town, Greuceanu, the titular policeman, takes on the local gang bosses, their wives and foot soldiers. They are thriving through intimidation and bribery, aided by police indifference and judicial and political corruption. Their magnificent houses and lavish lifestyles are in marked contrast to the standard of living experienced by most people.
Greuceanu is a lowly member of the force
who spends most of his time working in the archives. This gives him an understanding of the way
the town works, and he can see how the tentacles of criminality can be found anywhere
there is money to be made. He stumbles
on an illegal gem-polishing operation that has severe consequences for the
health of those who are employed in it.
Inspired by the new mayor and his lovely daughter, who have a genuine
desire to clean up the town and are not afraid to put their personal safety on
the line, he decides to look into it.
The trail leads to an unpleasant trio, the
Matache brothers, and their wives, who collectively control the town, having
taken advantage of the post-1989 freedoms to build up a criminal empire, such
that there are those citizens who pine for the good old days, when social order
prevailed. Greuceanu goes head-to-head
with the hoodlums, and as his
successes gradually accumulate, he builds a reputation for his ability to get
things done, despite the adversity he regularly faces. Having dealt with the diamond polishing,
Greuceanu uncovers a pyramid scheme, and slowly he dismantles the organisation.
Although he is likeable and honest, our
hero is by no means possessed of great strength or, according to his own
account, supernormal intelligence. He is
an ordinary chap, but he is marked out from his colleagues by being tenacious,
resourceful, loyal to the town, possessed of a strong sense of right and wrong,
and with the support of friends, and to an extent his immediate boss, who help
him achieve his goals. He also has, it
must be said, quite a lot of luck.
As a result of his labours, involving
significant personal risk, he emerges, as in all good fairy stories, triumphant
– good having vanquished evil – and with the love of the fair maiden, in this
case the mayor’s brave and beautiful daughter.
The implication, though, is that while the Matache extended family may
have been vanquished, there will be other villains to take their place while existing
civic structures are inadequate to contain them. A just society requires more than the
occasional star crime-fighter to keep at bay those who would exploit the system
for their own benefit.
The 2015 Profusion translation has a brief
introduction by Mike Phillips. He draws
out the parallels between the fairy story and Țurlea’s novel, particularly the zmei, ogres and witches faced by the
original Greuceanu, and the mobsters in modern-day Romania. They have in common a grasping nature which
seeks to possess at the expense of the wider society. In both stories they are overcome, and a
happy ending ensues. In dark times, it
is always nice to see the good guys win.
