OUT IN LEFT FIELD

It is election day at last, and I looked up the opening words of the prologue of Philip Kerr's The One From The Other set in Berlin 1937:

I remember how good the weather was that September. Hitler weather they called it. As if the elements were disposed to be kind to Adolf Hitler, of all people.

On this UK election day the heavens have opened and the rain has been bucketing down. I am therefore assuming the bad weather is a good sign for democracy.

On a lighter note Adrian McKinty recently won an award in the Rising Star category from Spinetingler magazine for his novel Fifty Grand, which has moved up a couple of notches on my TBR shelf.

Adrian's blog The Psychopathology of Everyday Life is always interesting and he has posted recently about which baseball team you are allowed to root for, and about the Liberal Democrat manifesto.

Purely for fun I thought I would pick my England Crime Fiction Writers Baseball team. This would allow me to place nine writers in a batting order with the heavy hitters, as in cricket, in the heart of the order at 3,4, and 5. It also allows me to manipulate the American League designated hitter DH rule to allow a designated dead writer DDW in the lineup.

I have tried to keep the choice to English born writers, that I have read, and who set their books in England. I suspect only Scotland, Sweden and the USA could rustle up a team to challenge this group.

1. Mark Billingham

2. John Lawton

3. Colin Dexter

4. Agatha Christie [DDW]

5. Reginald Hill

6. Ruth Rendell

7. P.D.James

8. Peter Robinson [I know he lives in Canada now, but his novels are very English]

9. Martin Edwards

My excuse for this frivolity is that the idea of a "hung" or "balanced" parliament with all the political chicanery that will involve has addled my brain.

I hope this is the dark part of the night, which is generally just before the day.

General Nathaniel Greene quoted in 1776 America and Britain at War: David McCullogh