QUIRKY QUIZ: THE ANSWERS PART ONE

Here are the answers to the first five questions of the Quiz, the rest will be posted later in the week in order to stretch out the agony.

1) In which book was 40 kilos of cocaine smuggled into Italy from Montenegro?

The brilliant third book in the Guido Guerreri series Reasonable Doubts.

2) Which crime writer was born in Racamulto, Sicily?

A little trick question as it was not Andrea Camilleri, but the master Leonardo Sciascia. Camilleri was born in Porto Empedocle.

3) Which crime writer died in Lausanne, Switzerland?

Georges Simenon, creator of Maigret.

4) "The day was hot and stifling, without a breath of air." Is the first sentence of a crime novel set in which city?

This was another tricky question, and one contestant who knows what a devious mind set the questions made an intelligent but incorrect guess of Oslo.

It is the first sentence of "Polis, polis,potatismos", Murder at the Savoy in the English translation, by the Swedish masters of the police procedural Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, which is set in Malmo.

5) What apart from writing crime fiction did Raymond Chandler and Rex Stout have in common?

These two masters of the genre were both of Quaker descent.