CRIME SCRAPS

RELOCATION TO CRIME SCRAPS REVIEW

2011-07-08T17:14:00.000-07:00

Crime Scraps is moving to Crime Scraps Review.

All my old posts have already made the journey to the new blog, and new posts will appear there. But I will post the result of the Win a Camilleri Competition at the new blog.

I hope you will join me at Crime Scraps Review.

WIN A CAMILLERI

2011-07-06T09:43:00.000-07:00

Those kind people at Pan Macmillan have sent me a paperback edition of Andrea Camilleri's The Wings of The Sphinx, and the hardback of The Track of Sand.

The Wings of the Sphinx reviewed here is short listed for this years CWA International Dagger.

The Track of Sand, reviewed here, is the 12th book in the superbly entertaining Inspector Montalbano series.

Just answer the questions in this short quiz, and email your answers to thbear08@googlemail.com by 31 July.

I will draw a winner and a runner up from the correct answers, and the winner can choose which of the two books they will receive.

1] What happened on Via Fani in Rome on 16 March 1978?

2] Name the crime writer who wrote a book about the events of 16 March, and its aftermath, and who was born in Racalmuto, Sicily?

3] Who was the Italian novelist, dramatist and Noble Prize winner for literature who was born in Agrigento, Sicily?

4] Many of the events on the Italian Front [1915-1918] in the Great War have almost been fogotten, but two of the most famous people of the twentieth century were involved in that Italian conflict.

One was an ambulance driver, and one a sergeant in the medical corp was a stretcher-bearer. Who were they?

5] Who was the poet, journalist, novelist, dramatist and self proclaimed superman whose followers seized the city of Fiume on 12 September 1919?

Good Luck.

TWO NATIONS*

2011-07-05T06:12:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched the BBC/Open University program Made in Britain presented by Evan Davis.

We were smugly told that Britain's move into high value production and service industries was the only way to go.

This morning it was announced that 1,400 jobs were to go at Bombardier train makers in Derby, because the Government [our government] had awarded the Thameslink contract for 1,200 new carriages to Siemens of Germany.

I immediately thought of the passage in Philip Kerr's Field Grey.

'I don't like the criminals who break the law,' I said.

'What other kind are there?'

'The kind that make the law. It's the Hindenburgs and the Schleichers of this world who are doing more to screw the Republic than the commies or the Nazis put together.'

A smiling, almost smirking at times, Evan Davis suggested a future for the country based on building fighter aircraft for countries that could well use them against us, constructing and selling McLaren MP4-12C cars at £167,000 a throw, designing hotels with helipads in Dubai, selling £25,000,000 plus houses in London to super rich Russian oligarchs, financial services, and selling intellectual property rights.

If you are not an estate agent to the super rich, or an automotive engineer, you can always get a job in a call centre, a fast food outlet, or as a servant.

But if you want to study to be a doctor there might not be a place for you because the University has sold it to the highest bidder from abroad.

We have become in Evan's words "a host nation". An interesting choice of words.

A host: a person or animal on or in which a parasite or commensal organism lives.

*With apologies to Benjamin Disraeli. [Photos-Harrods and somewhere near Wandsworth]

The out of touch politician now our Deputy PM.

FOURTH OF JULY

2011-07-04T04:33:00.000-07:00

Happy Fourth of July to all my American friends.

DEVIL'S PEAK: DEON MEYER

2011-07-04T02:21:00.000-07:00

Thobela "Tiny" Mpayipheli, a Xhosa, is a former soldier trained in Russia and the old East Germany. When his eight year old adopted son Pakamile is killed in a filling station hold- up he seeks justice in the courts. When that fails him he takes on a mission to get justice for all abused children in the only way he knows.

Thobela is a damaged individual, and so are the other two main characters in the story.

Benny Griessel, an alcoholic who has been thrown out of the house by his wife Anna. He was once a great detective, but now he struggles with his demons. He must remain sober for six months for Anna to take him back into the family home. But Benny has seen too many dead bodies and has a bitterness within him.

'Look here. This is a white skin. What does it mean? Twenty-six years in the Force and it means fuck all. It's not the booze-I'm not stuck in the rank of inspector because of the booze.'

Benny has the task of tracking down an assegai wielding vigilante, while he copes with his alcoholism, media pressure and rivalries between the various departments of the Force.

Christine van Rooyen is a beautiful blonde prostitute who has a young daughter. She has chosen that life for the money and for the feeling of power over men that it gives her. But she is as damaged as Thobela and Benny. When Christine gets a regular client who can't be controlled, the three strands of the story will meet in a violent ending.

Devil's Peak is a novel that goes a beyond the usual thriller to study the problems of three individuals, and through them the deep problems of a beautiful but damaged country.

South Africa the rainbow nation, or South Africa, a country with rampant crime, AIDS, and interracial strife? Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaner, English, Cape Coloured, Asian.

Deon Meyer weaves the three strands of the story together with great skill, moving back and forth in time to explain events while keeping up the tension. The translator K.L.Seegers has left just enough Afrikaaner expressions in the narrative to give us real atmosphere while not making the mistake of overdoing it.

Devil's Peak is a fantastic read and shows crime fiction is an ideal medium for discussing serious problems. In this book the reader is informed about child abuse, the lives of prostitutes, the effect of affirmative action, the complex racial and linguistic mix in South Africa, drug gangs, and the devastating results of alcohol abuse. It is a sobering read.

I am not surprised Devil's Peak won the 2010 Martin Beck Prize awarded for the best foreign crime fiction translated into Swedish.

Deon Meyer, who was shortlisted for the International Dagger in 2010 for Thirteen Hours, is rapidly becoming one of my favourite authors, and I await his next book Trackers with great anticipation.

Karen's review at Euro Crime

My review of Blood Safari

My review of Thirteen Hours

THE KASE FOR KINDLES

2011-07-02T05:33:00.000-07:00

No reviews at the moment because I am half way through one excellent police procedural, and three quarters of the way through an exciting and intelligent thriller.

I don't normally read two books at once, as that would require too much effort from the old brain box. But when we were ready to depart on a short visit to friends [a teasing clue to their location is in the photo] I decided that although I was really enjoying reading the bulky paperback of Frozen Moment by Camilla Ceder perhaps it was too big to carry.

I took my Kindle instead because:

1] It weighed less and fits into a bag more easily.

2] I have the version with a light, which means that if I could not sleep in a strange bed I would be able to read.

3] The fact that the font size can be increased for easy reading is one of the major reasons I purchased a Kindle.

The book I started reading while away Devil's Peak by Deon Meyer was recommended by Karen at Euro Crime some while ago, but when I looked at a paperback copy the font seemed miniscule. That made it an ideal choice for purchase on the Kindle.

So while I still like the feel of real books the Kindle is becoming essential for reading anything with small fonts.

Devil's Peak won the Martin Beck Award in 2010 [for crime fiction translated into Swedish] beating books by Arnaldur Indridason and Reginald Hill.

MISS MARPLE MAY APPEAR: 4

2011-06-28T15:18:00.001-07:00

There are many houses in England's glorious small towns and villages that seem designed for Miss Jane Marple. Pity about the TV aerial.

FIELD GREY: PHILIP KERR

2011-06-25T05:42:00.000-07:00

At the start of the seventh book in the Bernie Gunther thriller series it is 1954, and Bernie trying to escape from Cuba is arrested by the US Navy. He is taken to Guantanamo, and then on to New York and Germany, where ironically he finds himself in Cell number 7 at the Landsberg Prison, once occupied by Hitler after his failed Munich Putsch in 1923.

I should warn readers that the front flap synopsis in my hardback copy bears very little resemblance to the actual plot of the book. Possibly the reason for this is that the plot is incredibly complex. I found it a little difficult to follow at times, but that said it is a brilliant novel full of moral ambiguities, difficult compromises, and thought provoking wisecracks from Bernie.

As Bernie is interrogated by his captors, the reader is taken back in various flashbacks to Berlin 1931, France 1940, Minsk 1941 [a particularly horrific part of the story concerning the Einsatzgruppen], and Russia 1945-1946 [when Bernie was a prisoner of war of the Russians].

'Be reasonable, Bernie.'

'Reasonable?'

'These men-Himmler, Heydrich, Muller-they're fanatics. You can't reason with fanatics.'

Bernie is valuable because he can identify Erich Mielke, a real life character, who became Minister of State Security in the German Democratic Republic from 1957-1958, and who was wanted for the murders of two policeman in Berlin in 1931. I always find the pre-war sections of the Bernie Gunther books where Bernie is staunchly anti-Nazi an easier read than the later scenarios, and this book is no exception.

There is an almost overwhelming amount of historical facts within the pages of this book, and sometimes the information is disconcerting.

'Ordinarily, I should send him to the SS quartermaster for an off-the-peg Hugo Boss uniform, but he'll be travelling on the Fuhrer's personal train, so he'll need to look smart.'

But the title Field Grey might not only refer to the uniform Bernie wears but also the shades of grey, and levels of innocence and guilt of the participants.

Hitler, Stalin, Heydrich, Nazis, Germans, Russians, Byelorussians, SS, Gestapo, NKVD, MVD, Stasi, CIA, SDEC [French counter espionage service], French SS, and Vichy all come out of this story with varying amount of blood on their hands.

Reading about all this evil is very unpleasant, but I wonder if our present day politicians could learn something from reading about the past and perhaps avoid the mistakes that they seem to be repeating today.

From the author's notes: Of these [the twenty-four Einsatzgruppen defendants] thirteen were sentenced to death with four hanged on 7 June 1951. Of the remaining twenty all had been released or paroled by 1958. A fact I continue to find incredible.

There are crime fiction series where the author runs out of ideas, but if there is a fault in this superb account of Europe in turmoil it is that in Bernie Gunther's seventh outing there are just too many ideas, too much double dealing and too many historical facts to be fully absorbed in one reading.

Field Grey may not be an easy read, but it is another fine addition to a series that is both educational and thought provoking.

'I don't like criminals who break the law,' I said.

'What other kind are there?'

'The kind that make the law. It's the Hindenburgs and Schleichers of this world who are doing more to screw the Republic than the commies and the Nazis put together.'

A review of Field Gray at Euro Crime.

The Bernie Gunther series with links to my reviews.

March Violets

The Pale Criminal

A German Requiem

The One from the Other

A Quiet Flame

If the Dead Rise Not

THE LAST OF THE LARSSON BLURBS?

2011-06-24T04:46:00.000-07:00

A copy of The Quarry by Johan Theorin struggled through my letterbox today, and I could not help noticing the blurbs.

'Winner of the International Crime Novel 2010 for The Darkest Room' and a new variation on a theme of Stieg Larsson which suggests that someone at the Observer might read the Friendfeed Crime and Mystery Forum.

'If you like Stieg Larsson, try a much better Swedish writer.'

Observer

Does this mark the end of the Stieg Larsson blurb phenomena? I wonder.

My review of Echoes from the Dark at Euro Crime

My review of The Darkest Room

OT: THE CAT DETECTIVE

2011-06-23T09:32:00.000-07:00

A rival to the gorgeous Foxy: handsome Teddy the cat detective on stake out.

THE GALLOWS BIRD: CAMILLA LACKBERG

2011-06-21T06:41:00.001-07:00

Marit Kaspersen, who has left her husband Ola, to live with her girlfriend Kerstin, is found dead in her car which has gone down a steep slope and hit a tree.

She stinks of booze, but Kerstin, Ola and Marit's daughter Sophie say that she never touched alcohol. There are other signs that vaguely remind detective Patrik Hedstrom of something he heard about an unsolved case at a police seminar.

There is plenty going on in the towns of Tanumshede, and Fjallbacka.

The investigation into Marit's death becomes more complex. The lazy incompetent police chief Mellberg has a new romantic interest. Anna with the help of Dan gets over her deep depression, and throws herself into organizing the forthcoming wedding of her sister Erica to Patrik. Hanna an attractive new police officer joins the team at Tanumshede police station.

And a TV reality show is being filmed in the town with cameras following the participants every move, and hopefully creating an economic boost for the town.

When one of the reality TV show's contestants is murdered Patrik and his team realise they may have a serial killer to track down.

The Gallows Bird is the fourth book in this series, and I cannot argue with the blurb that states '7 million books sold', because Camilla Lackberg is definitely very readable. The reader gets almost two or three disassociated stories with a stark gulf between the tales of domesticity, and wedding preparations, and the evil crimes perpetrated within the main story.

I read once that Patrik Hedstrom was the nicest man in crime fiction, but that could be because in Ms Lackberg's books as a contrast to Patrik she creates some pretty revolting male characters.

'True,' said Martin. But what can we do about it? Mellberg and the odious Erling W. Larson are so intent on sucking up to the media that they didn't even consider shutting down the production.'

The translation by Steven Murray is smooth and not intrusive, and that added to the easy reading style. The plot is fairly transparent despite a few red herrings, but I don't really think people read Camilla Lackberg for the Byzantine cleverness of her plots. This series is all about the development of her characters and their lives, and no less worthy of attention for that. At the end of this novel we get a little teaser to encourage us to read number five The Hidden Child, and I will.

The Gallows Bird was sent to me by the very kind Maxine of Petrona.

My review of The Ice Princess

Maxine's review of The Preacher at Petrona

My review of The Stone Cutter

A GAME OF LIES: REBECCA CANTRELL

2011-06-16T03:32:00.000-07:00

Rebecca Cantrell's outstanding debut novel A Trace of Smoke, featuring her feisty crime reporter Hannah Vogel, won the Bruce Alexander Memorial Award for best historical mystery. Hannah Vogel returned in the second book A Night of Long Knives desperately searching for her adopted son Anton, as Hitler in an orgy of killing settles old scores with those around him.

The voice of the founder of the modern Olympics, Baron de Coubertin, boomed out of the loudspeakers. My French had improved since the move to Switzerland, so I did not need to wait for the translation:

" The important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning, but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering, but fighting well."

In the third book in this superb series A Game of Lies Hannah returns to Berlin for the 1936 Olympics posing as a Swiss reporter Adelheid Zinsli and lover of SS officer Lars Lang. Hannah has been collecting Nazi secrets from Lang and smuggling them back to Switzerland and sending them on to London.

Hannah arranges to meet her mentor, Peter Weill, at the Olympic Stadium, but he dies in front of her.

"There is a certain package that she can't deliver. But you can."

Hannah will risk her life as she contacts old friends some of whom may in fact be new enemies as she attempts to find that package. He relationship with Boris has broken down over her repeated dangerous trips to Nazi Germany, and all she has is her beloved Anton living safely in Switzerland, and the fabricated relationship with Lars Lang. Is Lang genuinely anti-Nazi? What work does he do for the SS that leaves him seeking solace in the bottle?

A Game of Lies is a meticulously researched historical thriller written in the first person present tense which brings high tension and immediacy to the narrative. Author Rebecca Cantrell blends real life characters such a Berlin socialite Bella Fromm into her fictional story. And I really liked the way she has added some glimpses of young Anton and his life at school in Switzerland.

Exactly the honor code to which Anton subscribed, as did his hero, Winnetou the Apache brave from Karl May's books.

[Among the admirers of Karl May's best sellers were Albert Einstein and Adolf Hitler]

The story is a thriller but also raises some emotional questions for Hannah Vogel especially when she visits her old friends, Fritz and Bettina.

Now she spoke so casually of sending them off to be indoctrinated. Would I have become so inured to the Nazis that I would have sent Anton marching off in a brown uniform so easily had we stayed?

A Game of Lies does something some books fail to do, it successfully conveys the atmosphere of fear prevailing in Nazi Germany. It also relates, amidst the thrilling spy story with its twists and turns, the background story of an Olympics that is thankfully remembered more for Jesse Owens four gold medals than the Nazi propaganda.

I can highly recommend the Hannah Vogel series, and A Game of Lies is a worthy addition.

Award winning author Rebecca Cantrell majored in German, Creative Writing and History at the Freie Universitaet of Berlin, and Carnegie Mellon University. She lives in Hawaii with her husband and son.

My review of A Trace of Smoke

My review of A Night of Long Knives with links to my four part interview with the author.

Rebecca's website

WHAT HOUND?

2011-06-15T11:19:00.000-07:00

OT, but if the weather on Dartmoor was always as good as it was yesterday I very much doubt if Arthur Conan Doyle would have written The Hound of the Baskervilles.

SUMMERTIME

2011-06-13T01:10:00.000-07:00

I posted this photo, taken earlier in the month, to show that it is not always wet, dark and raining in England's scenic South West.

Interestingly Markusvinsa in Northern Sweden was the hottest place in Europe last Friday.

In Mari Jungstedt's novel The Dead of Summer the weather is mentioned quite a lot.

page 120: I just felt like it today [Karin wearing a dress] since it is so hot.

page 133: The heat had held on for the past two weeks, and plenty of people had a good suntan.

page 150: It was so hot that the air shimmered.

page 171: And it looked as if, this summer temperature would reach record highs.

page 192: Underneath the broiling sun, the temperature slowly but relentlessly rose to more than 85 degrees, even though it was not yet noon.

So those of us not used to the foibles and eccentricities of the publishing industry might wonder why the blurb on the back cover states, with no reference to it not applying to this book:

'Mari Jungstedt creates the special atmosphere of Nordic crime- that land of snow and ice that fires our imagination.' Jane Jakeman, Independent.

Call me a pedantic old fool if you will, but I like my blurbs to tell me something about the book.

But this effort was obviously chosen as a generic blurb for Nordic crime fiction - Scandinavia-cold-"land of snow and ice"-stick that on the back cover.

This is symptomatic of the extremely annoying "sticker marketing" [see examples posted by Karen at Euro Crime] that has gone on since the Stieg Larsson phenomenon.

"If you liked Abba you will love Arvo Part"

[Arvo Part is an Estonian classical composer so they both come from the Baltic region. ;o)]

THE DEAD OF SUMMER: MARI JUNGSTEDT

2011-06-11T01:50:00.000-07:00

Peter Bovide, his wife Vendela, and their two young children are looking forward to four weeks holiday, two weeks on the island of Faro, just off the north coast of Gotland, and two weeks in Mallorca. Peter goes out for his usual early morning run, and is later found with one bullet hole between his eyes, and seven in his stomach.

Detective Superintendent Anders Knutas is on holiday in Denmark, therefore the investigation is begun under the command of Knutas's capable deputy Karin Jacobsson.

'I've contacted the National Criminal Police. Martin Kihlgard and some of his colleagues will be here early tomorrow morning.'

'Good,' said Lars Norrby. 'Sounds like we'll need their help.'

Johan Berg , the TV reporter, and his photographer Pia will as usual in this series conduct their own investigation. Johan has settled on Gotland to be close to his daughter Elin. Johan's life had fallen apart when Emma Wingrave, Elin's mother, broke off their engagement but now he is through the crisis although still very confused and vulnerable to unwise liaisons.

Karin has the investigation under control, but Knutas comes back early from his holiday to take charge and this causes some tension in their close relationship.

The victim Bovide owned a construction company and the police investigate his use of illegal Estonian labour. The killer's use of an 80 year old Russian pistol suggest other lines of enquiry concerning the sale of vodka from Russian ships.

As well as the main narrative there are flashbacks to 1985 with another family preparing to go on holiday to Faro, and this story line will eventually give the reader a clue as to the motive for Peter Bovide's murder.

This is Mari Jungstedt's fifth book in this series set on the island of Gotland, all of which have been smoothly translated by the excellent Tiina Nunnaly.

One of the strengths of The Dead of Summer is we learn something fresh about the character's personal life. The enigmatic Karin Jacobsson becomes a larger presence, and the attraction felt for her by Knutas is a continuing sub plot that will keep the reader guessing as to how, and if, this relationship will develop.

The creation of a team of investigators, in this case both the police and journalists, gives the author a lot of scope for interesting sub plots, such as the tempestuous relationship between Emma and Johan, Anders marriage to his Danish wife Lina, and his tentative feelings for Karin.

Mari Jungstedt gives the reader a very good classic police procedural, but with the extra dimension of exploring the personal lives of the investigators. She also provides in this book some neat red herrings and a surprising twist at the end. The Anders Knutas series seems to me to be getting better and better, and it is a shame that it still has not received the wide attention in the UK that it thoroughly deserves.

'Lina, yes. Terribly attractive woman. And what a sense of humour. They're a lot of fun, those Danes.'

'Right.'

Jacobsson felt a sudden stab of annoyance. She wasn't sure why. But it was gone as abruptly as it had happened.

I never got round to reading Unknown the third book in the series, but here are reviews of the entire series, including Maxine's of Unknown at Euro Crime.

My review of Unseen

My review of Unspoken

Maxine's review of Unknown

My review of The Killer's Art

MERCY: JUSSI ADLER-OLSEN

2011-06-07T03:37:00.000-07:00

Veteran Copenhagen homicide detective Carl Morck has survived a shooting at a crime scene that has left one colleague dead, and another Hardy Henningsen in hospital paralysed.

Morck, still traumatized by this event, is pushed aside to lead a cold case squad [Department Q] in the basement of police headquarters.

'Indolent, surly, morose, always bitching, and he treats his colleagues like crap, so the team is about to fall apart. He's a thorn in our side, Marcus. Send Carl packing and let's bring in fresh blood.'

Department Q consists of Morck and his cleaner and tea maker, Assad, a Syrian immigrant, who obviously held a more responsible position in his homeland. Department Q's large budget, obtained from the weak politicians, will be spent on the main force, while Morck struggles in the basement with apparently unsolvable cases.

Morck's first case will be to investigate the disappearance five years before of young beautiful political high flyer Merete Lynggaard, who had been presumed drowned on a ferry trip. The action switches back and forth between Merete, who has been kidnapped, and Morck and Assad as they find facts that the previous shoddy investigation failed to undercover.

The tension mounts as Merete struggles to stay alive, Morck and Assad close in on the kidnappers, as the two timelines converge towards an exciting climax.

Jussi Adler-Olsen's Mercy is the first of four novels in the Department Q series, the third of which Flaskepost fra P [Message in a Bottle] won the prestigious 2010 Nordic Glass Key. The book is translated by Lisa Hartford [Tiina Nunnally] who has also translated crime fiction written by Karin Fossum, Marji Jungstedt, Peter Hoeg and Camilla Lackberg.

I really enjoyed Mercy, and rated it among the very best thrillers I have read over the past few years. The book follows a formula that has proved successful, and includes almost every feature of Scandinavian crime fiction I posted about last Saturday. But that formula works, and although every reader will work out fairly quickly who has kidnapped Merete this does not detract from one's enjoyment of the book.

Mismatched investigators have been a feature of crime fiction since the days of Homes and Watson, and Carl Morck and Assad are a worthy addition to the genre.

He nodded. 'Carl, I would be killed if I went back. That is how it is. The government in Syria was not really very happy with me, you understand.'

'Why not?'

'We did not think the same. And that is enough.'

'Enough for what?'

'Syria is a big country. People just disappear.'

[Henning Mankell please note.]

The main characters are intriguing, Carl Morck, a traumatized detective with a broken marriage, whose wife has gone off to live with a younger lover, leaving him to look after his unappreciative stepson. Merete Lynggaard, a strong attractive woman totally dedicated to her work, and to Uffe, her brother disabled after a car accident that killed their parents. Assad, the immigrant struggling with and beginning to master this strange new environment.

Allied with a narrative that creates mounting tension, it meant that this reader rushed through those last pages with real concern for fictional characters who had almost become real people.

With the two converging story lines there is nothing particularly innovative about the plot construction of Mercy, but it all works beautifully, and Jussi Adler-Olsen has left me definitely wanting to read the rest of the Department Q series. I hope the translator is hard at work.

Carl dropped heavily on to the chair across from his assistant. 'It smells wonderful, Assad, but this is the police department. Not a Lebanese takeaway in Vanlose.'

Rob's review at The View from the Blue House

Maxine of Petrona's review at Euro Crime

SCANDI-BOOK FANS

2011-06-04T06:23:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I finished reading Mercy by Jussi Adler-Olsen [review to follow next week] and noticed one of the blurbs on the back cover, this one from the Guardian.

'Gripping storytelling. Features all the hallmarks Scandi-book fans have come to adore.'

I know publishers have totally overdone the blurbs and stickers that adorn Nordic Crime Fiction, but these books must have some features in common that are enjoyed by readers.

Also I am fairly sure I prefer being called 'chattering classes' by Mike Ripley in his Getting Away with Murder columns at Shots Magazine which feature his constant digs at Scandinavian crime fiction rather than be called a 'Scandi-book fan' by the Guardian.

I listed some of hallmarks of the Martin Beck novels that could relate to the modern Scandis [Scandinavian and Nordic crime fiction novels] in this April post More Detective Fever. The stories contain:

a] Social commentary

b] Large doses of cynicism

c] Team work, and the difficulties of working in a team.

d] Dollops of humour, light and dark.

e] Characters express distrust of superiors.

f] A feeling of loneliness and despair is expressed by various characters.

g] There are superbly drawn characters in the books.

h] There is a brooding atmosphere of disaster about to happen.

With apparently 80% of the readership of crime fiction novels female, there are some new factors, since the days of Martin Beck, that have added to the popularity of 'Scandis'.

1] The Female author

Even then [1965-1975] Maj Sjowall was at least half the the creative process behind the male investigative team featured in the Martin Beck series.

'Scandis' are written by large numbers of very successful female authors, such Asa Larsson, Camilla Lackberg, Helene Tursten, Mari Jungstedt, Anne Holt, Liza Marklund, Karin Fossum, Karin Alvtegen, Inger Frimansson, Yrsa Sigurdardottir and debut novelist Camilla Ceder.

2] The Female protagonist

'Scandis' frequently feature strong capable women fighting corruption and crime usually perpetrated by men. These could be lawyers, reporters and policewomen such as Rebecka Martinsson and Anna-Maria Mella [Asa Larsson], Irene Huss [Helene Tursten], Annika Bengtzon [Liza Marklund] or Thora Gudmundsdottir [Yrsa Sigurdardottir].

And many of the most successful male crime fiction authors feature female protagonists policewoman Ann Lindell [Kjell Eriksson] and victims Lisbeth Salander [Stieg Larsson] and Merete Lynggaard [Jussi Adler-Olsen].

I am not sure you can 'adore' a hallmark as the Guardian suggests, but I am pretty sure you can believe in, and adore a feisty character like Annika Bengtzon.

'Watch it,' Annika exclaimed sharply. 'You can't just detain journalists for questioning. If the police have detained or arrested a reporter working for one of Sweden's major newspapers, you are required to report that fact to his employer.'

That wasn't true, but the officer didn't know that for sure.

Prime Time: Liza Marklund

INTERNATIONAL DAGGER: A WINNER?

2011-06-01T00:47:00.000-07:00

Update: This blog is now dormant but you can read all the posts here and my new posts at Crime Scraps Review. [http://crimescraps2.wordpress.com]

I have now read all of the 2011 CWA International Dagger Shortlist. My previous posts on this year's books are:

The 2011 CWA International Dagger Shortlist

International Dagger Who Will Win?

I think we can simply dismiss:

The Saint-Florentin Murders by Jean- Francois Parot and River of Shadows by Valeri Varesi neither of which has so far collected a single vote in either of Karen's polls at Eurocrime.

The Parot overwhelms the reader with historical detail, and complex intrigue and is just too long.

The Varesi had atmosphere, but I was not inspired by the character of the protagonist and the action was limited and repetitive.

Of the remaining five books The Wings of the Sphinx by Andrea Camilleri is the eleventh of the twelve books translated so far into English by Stephen Sartarelli. I have read and enjoyed them all, and this Montalbano mystery is one of the best for some time, but I don't think it has that extra special factor that would make it stand out from the shortlist.

Death on a Galician Shore by Domingo Villar is another very good police procedural, and with a combination of humour, social comment, and the interesting location it would be a worthy winner, but for the slightly one paced plot which lacks any twists and real surprises.

Three Seconds by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom has already won Best Swedish crime novel of 2009. It is a fast paced thriller, an exciting read that would make a great movie, but the characters lack depth and the plot predictable.

An Uncertain Place by Fred Vargas, translated by Sian Reynolds, is another outstanding Commissaire Adamsberg investigation full of all the quirkiness, bizarre plots, and eccentric characters that have brought this French author three International Dagger wins. I loved it but surely we need a new face on the winner's rostrum, especially when there is another outstanding novel among the shortlist.

Needle in a Haystack by Ernesto Mallo, translated by Jethro Soutar, is a brilliant book set in Argentina during the 1970s. When I reviewed this novel exactly a year ago I wrote:

This book is a lesson for those authors who think you need to write 600 pages to produce a complex book.

One hundred and ninety pages of great narrative, and cleverly manufactured dialogue, have produced a novel that is a mini-social history of a rotten to the core Argentina, as well as being a very tense thriller.

There is no question in my mind that Ernesto Mallo, and Jethro Soutar, should win the 2011 International Dagger, but nothing would surprise me.

THE SAINT-FLORENTIN MURDERS: JEAN-FRANCOIS PAROT

2011-05-31T01:29:00.000-07:00

In the fifth of the adventures of Nicholas Le Floch, the police commissioner at the Chatelet, he investigates the murder of the Duchess de La Vrilliere's chambermaid, Marguerite Pindron, who is discovered with her throat cut, lying next to a wounded unconscious Jean Missery, the major domo of the household.

Nicholas who is not trusted by the new Lieutenant General of Police, Monsieur Lenoir, is given a series of unconnected investigations to deal with seemingly to put him off the trail of the chambermaid's murderer. Nicholas and his associates, police inspector Bordeau, and navy surgeon Guillaume Semacgus, carry out their investigations in Paris and Versailles, negotiating the squalor of the city, and the stilted manners and etiquette of the court.

The flowery writing style of Jean-Francois Parot, and the translation by Howard Curtis, deeply immerses the reader in the time and manners of France during the reign of the young Louis XVI and his Austrian Queen Marie Antoinette.

Once I had got in to this book I enjoyed the historical detail, but unfortunately it was about 100 pages too long, and with so many characters I had to remind myself constantly of who was who. There is a useful dramatis personae at the beginning that stretches over four pages, and contains a Bourdeau, De La Borde and Bourdier just to confuse me.

There detailed descriptions of huge meals, terrible conditions in a hospital, the court at Versailles, demonstrations of automatons, and the investigative techniques used by Nicholas. There are asides concerning the improvements to be made to the Navy with references to possible problems for Britain in her North American colonies [perhaps the next book in the series?] accounts of the licentious behaviour of the upper classes, and intrigues at court. The vast amount of detail and various sub-plots overwhelm the original crime plot, and I wondered whether this was more of an historical novel with a crime element than crime fiction.

The third course was ready: bacon pies, ramekins of Italian cheese, pureed partridge, duck a l'espagnole, tendrons of veal with Bengal curry, cardons with grated cheese, and fried celery.

The author seems to agree that no one can remember all the complications in this very long book, and we get an epilogue that reiterates the plot and the crimes.

I am quite convinced that hidden among the fascinating detail, the various sub-plots and the annoying constant references to events and characters in the previous books in the series [starting this series at book five is not a good idea] there is a very good historical novel that just needed a bit of editing.

'I understand what you're saying, said Testard du Lys. 'But all this jumble of information makes me even more confused. What connection can there be between all these crimes?'

CHOICES: A DIGRESSION

2011-05-29T03:46:00.000-07:00

When the International Dagger Shortlist was announced on Friday 20 May I stopped reading Mercy by Jussi Adler-Olsen, which didn't make the list, and switched to the impeccably researched long historical novel The Saint-Florentin Murders by Jean-Franc0is Parot, translator Howard Curtis, which did make the shortlist.

I found it difficult at first to get into this book possibly because I am still not used to reading on a Kindle, but now I am enjoying it immensely, although I have some reservations. I should finish reading this book in a few days, and then I will be able to pick my winner from the seven books on the International Dagger shortlist.

I am a bit of a history nut, and my Kindle understands this, because very frequently when switch off up comes a portrait of Alexandre Dumas; reminding me of the first adult books I read- The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After [my favourite] and The Count of Monte Cristo. Tough competition for M. Jean-Francois Parot.

After 7 years of dentistry [5 as a student, 2 as a shakily qualified dentist] I decided I could not face another 30 plus years of molars and incisors, and longed to go back to university to study History.

In those days the London A-level History examination consisted of a paper each on English and European History, and a third paper on a special subject chosen by the school or candidate. One of the special subjects was France in the Age of Richelieu and Mazarin, the years roughly 1624-1661, but although I knew a lot about this period, I decided that the convoluted politics of France were too tricky and that The Great Powers in the Far East, 1840-1941, was an easier option.

The Ancien Regime background to The Saint-Florentin Murders set in 1774, and the more recent events at the Sofitel Hotel in Manhattan make it clear that French political life continues to be Byzantine, and full of "characters".

The British taxpayer after providing me with a generous grant for 5 years, was rightly unwilling to fund a further 3 years study at university, and therefore based on financial necessity I chose dentistry over history. I suppose life is full of choices but would I have read as much crime fiction, or met so many interesting people if I was a history scholar.

If I might digress to ask a question. I was taught in school [admittedly in the era of chalk dust and the cane] that "my wife and I" was the correct usage. But recently I heard the urbane, intelligent and articulate President Obama refer to "me and Michelle", and earlier the slightly less urbane, intelligent and articulate PM David Cameron refer to "me and Samantha".

What is the correct usage? Do politicians have such a huge ego that they automatically think of themselves first?

Oops that is two questions.

INTERNATIONAL DAGGER WHO WILL WIN?

2011-05-25T02:24:00.000-07:00

Seven books. Two French, two Italian, one Spanish, one Swedish, and one Argentinean. Seven very different books that could be classified as; one dramatic historical mystery [still reading that one], one political thriller, one crime thriller, one horror/black humour eccentric police procedural, and three police procedurals whose authors give the reader varying levels of literary style, and different emphasis into the character of the main investigator.

How do each of these books compare with some of the crime fiction of the past few years?

Do they have the exciting plots, cynicism, dark humour, distrust of superiors, political intrigue, brooding atmosphere, social commentary, unusual protagonists, or authors with that special curiosity factor that have recently helped so much to market books?

Do they have an easy reading level, or has style taken precedence over substance?

Is there too much violence, or not enough action?

Is there a satisfactory ending?

The shortlist this year doesn't have a book by Johan Theorin, Arnaldur Indridason, Jo Nesbo or even Stieg Larsson, and as a result does not look as strong as in the previous two years.

But which book should win? [to be continued]

My previous post with links to reviews of the shortlist.

MISS MARPLE MAY APPEAR: 3

2011-05-24T01:48:00.000-07:00

Miss Jane Marple might wonder why there are yellow lines on the road, but I still think she would be happy living in this house.

CRIME FEST 2011 PHOTOS

2011-05-23T02:26:00.001-07:00

Brilliant bloggers Karen of Eurocrime, Kerrie of Mysteries in Paradise, and Dorte of DJ'S Krimiblog at Crime Fest, Bristol 2011.

THE 2011 CWA INTERNATIONAL DAGGER SHORTLIST

2011-05-22T10:19:00.000-07:00

Update:

This blog is now dormant but you can read all the old posts and lots of new stuff at Crime Scraps Review

http://crimescraps2.wordpress.com

Last week Karen of Euro Crime asked us to speculate which seven books that would be on the International Dagger shortlist.

My short list was :

Mercy* by Jussi Adler-Olsen [Denmark] translator Lisa Hartford

The Leopard by Jo Nesbo [Norway] translator Don Bartlett

Phantoms of Breslau by Marek Krajewski [Poland] translator Danusia Stok

These three books failed to make the CWA judges shortlist. I had not finished reading Mercy* but the intriguing start, and watching 20 episodes of The Killing may have influenced my choice of this Danish bestseller.

Three Seconds by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom [Sweden] translator Kari Dickson

An Uncertain Place by Fred Vargas [France] translator Sian Reynolds

Needle in a Haystack by Ernesto Mallo [Argentina] translator Jethro Soutar

Death on a Galician Shore by Domingo Villar [Spain] translator Sonia Soto

When the official award shortlist was announced on Friday evening to those four selections the CWA judges added:

River of Shadows by Valerio Varesi [Italy] translator Joseph Farrell

The Wings of The Sphinx by Andrea Camilleri [Italy] translator Stephen Sartarelli

[the link in this review to the Appreciating Camilleri article on the Picador site is no longer is active, but the article can be read here and here]

and

The Saint-Florentin Murders by Jean-Francois Parot [France] translator Howard Curtis

I am now in the process of reading the Jean-Francois Parot, which I downloaded onto my Kindle just before Crime Fest after reading Karen's enticing review at Euro Crime.

The links are to my reviews, and you can go to the CWA website for more information about the judges, books, authors and translators here.

Last year I posted some details about the history of this award at Deductions from the CWA International Dagger.

In the next few weeks I will discuss this shortlist, and decide to which of the books I would give the award.

Photo Ann Cleeves announces the shortlist.

A GAME OF LIES: A WINNER

2011-05-22T02:50:00.000-07:00

The correct answers to the quiz to win an ARC of A Game of Lies by Rebecca Cantrell were:

1] Which country boycotted the 1936 Berlin Olympics and organized their own games? What prevented those games from starting?

Spain and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.

2] Who was the high jumper prevented from competing in the Berlin Olympics although she held the German record, and had won the British high jump championship?

Gretel Bergmann, later Margaret Lambert, who was Jewish. You can read some of her story here and here.

There were nine correct answers, and as unfortunately I only had one prize we had to draw a lucky winner.

Mrs Crime Scraps, with her eyes closed, picked a numbered piece of paper from a hat, and the prize will be sent off next week to an address west of Barcelona, and east of Vigo.

Sorry to the unlucky eight better luck next time, and thanks for competing.

AN UNCERTAIN PLACE: FRED VARGAS

2011-05-17T02:09:00.000-07:00

"You get some weird goings-on in France too, don't you?" remarked Detective Chief Inspector Radstock, in English, to his Parisian colleagues.

The chief of the Serious Crimes Squad in Paris Commissaire Adamsberg, his walking encyclopedia colleague Commandant Danglard, and young Estalere are in London for a jolly/seminar. On an evening stroll with DCI Radstock they are called to Highgate Cemetery to examine shoes left outside the gates. The problem being the shoes have severed feet left inside them.

On their journey back to Paris Danglard tells them the story of Highgate Cemetery, Lizzie Siddal, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his friend Bram Stoker, creator of Count Dracula.

Once home the squad are called to a horrific crime scene in the leafy suburb of Darche, where Pierre Vaudel, a reclusive semi-retired legal-journalist, has been obliterated, his body crushed to pieces.

A disaggregated body, which did not even arouse disgust, in the sense that it was impossible to associate these elements with anything resembling a human being.

Vaudel had disinherited his son and left his fortune to his gardener, a man with a history of violence.

Adamsberg's investigation will lead him to a Serbian village, and into great danger from both the mysterious perpetrator, and from those in power who don't want the case to be solved.

Fred Vargas, and her translator Sian Reynolds, have blended humour, folklore, horror, witty dialogue, bizarre plot, and eccentric characters and the end result is a brilliant reading experience. An Uncertain Place is designed to be read slowly because you won't want it to end; the literary equivalent of slow cooking, or sipping a fine whisky or wine. A tasty French bouillabaisse of a novel to be enjoyed and savoured by gourmets of crime fiction.

The crime squad characters are uniquely quirky creations, the forgetful scruffy Adamsberg, the alcoholic walking encyclopedia Danglard, the goddess like Retancourt, and Froissy, who has a panic attack when she misses a meal. You don't have to like the strange Adamsberg to enjoy this series, because although the Commissaire is central to the stories his team, and the supporting cast, are so eccentric there is always something to amuse the reader.

'I'm not going to ask you about women. I can see. Lack of confidence.'

'In them?'

'No, in yourself.'

Fred Vargas has explored the murder mystery turned it into a horror story, and then turned it back again into the quirkiest of crime stories. There are so many wonderful passages including one in which a colleague explains to Adamsberg why he alone among police officers cannot be bought by the "great snake", but I will resist the temptation to quote this one.

But one more gem from Adamsberg's time in the Serbian village:

'Show photos? Bad idea. Very bad. Hereabouts they don't like people who ask questions, cops journalists, nosy parkers. You'll have to think of something else. But they don't like historians either, or film-makers or sociologists, anthropologists, photographers, nutters or ethnologists.'

'That's a lot of people they don't like. Why don't they like nosy parkers? Because of the war?'

Fred Vargas is the pen name of Frederique Audoin-Rouzeau, a medieval historian and archaeologist, who has along with translator Sian Reynolds won the CWA International Dagger three times.

An Uncertain Place would in my opinion be a very worthy winner of a fourth award, but this year Fred Vargas, and her French eccentricity, may face challenges from Scandinavia and further afield.

We shall have a better idea when the CWA International Dagger shortlist is announced on Friday evening at Crime Fest.

The rest of the Commissaire Adamsberg series [English publication date in brackets]:

1996 The Chalk Circle Man*** and here [2009]

1999 Seeking Whom He May Devour [2004]

2001 Have Mercy on Us All [2003]

2004 Wash this Blood Clean from My Hand** [2007]

2006 This Night's Foul Work [2008]

Fred Vargas and Sian Reynolds have also won the International Dagger with The Three Evangelists*.

CWA International Dagger winner. *2006, ** 2007, ***2009.

FROM HILL STREET BLUES TO THE KILLING

2011-05-14T12:15:00.000-07:00

We have had our problems with blogger, and then my internet, and television also went down. This always seems to happen at the weekend, but I was told by a reliable source that the copper covering of the cable had been stolen?

Luckily it was a nice day for a drive, and as always the other drivers on the road were so very friendly following me for miles along the narrow roads of Devon. They were so friendly that when they eventually overtook my little car they hooted, and waved; sometimes they waved with a clenched fist and sometimes they waved with one or two fingers. Probably in appreciation of the fact that I had obeyed the speed limit. ;o)

The television is back up but I am suffering from withdrawal symptoms-no The Killing and no Spiral 3 .

No Sarah Lund, no Laure Berthaud.....

Firstly I think this season of Spiral was almost spoilt by too much gore, but the outstanding acting and wonderful casting, of even the minor parts, kept this twelve episode series in the front rank of television crime dramas. Spiral 3 was not perhaps quite as good as the previous series as at times it approached a parody of itself, but it was still very good.

Although definitely not as good as the twenty part Danish series, The Killing, which has had so much attention, and quite rightly so.

What distinguished these two outstanding series was a combination of great production and a brilliant ensemble cast.

Anyone who has ever watched a few minutes of some glitzy British hospital based series when staff, who have supposedly worked a grueling night shift, look as if they have just left a hairdressers on the way to a modeling assignment will know how bad casting and production can affect the veracity of a program.

In both The Killing and Spiral it was clear even the minor parts had been cast with the utmost care.

An ensemble cast is a cast in which the principal performers are assigned roughly equal amounts of importance and screen time in a dramatic production.

In crime fiction books the Martin Beck series by Sjowall and Wahloo, and the Ed McBain 87th Precinct books are the classic examples of the ensemble cast.

The Americans excel in this form of TV drama with a story arc that is comprised of extended multiple storylines continuing over many episodes. The Screen Actors Guild specifically gives an award for outstanding cast performance in a drama series.

The original winners in 1994 were the cast of NYPD Blue [1993-2005], and it was won in 2010 by another crime series, Boardwalk Empire. Other winners of this award have included Mad Men, The Sopranos, ER, The West Wing, and CSI.

Possibly the first of these modern American ensemble crime dramas was Hill Street Blues [1981-1987] set in an unnamed American city and filmed in almost documentary style it followed the activities of the ensemble cast of cops. In the UK we had some outstanding TV police dramas almost but not quite similar in style predating Hill Street, such as Z-Cars [1962-1978] and its successors such as Softly Softly [1966-1969] and Softly Softly, Task Force [1969-1973]. But later the very successful British TV crime series such as Prime Suspect [1991-2006] with Helen Mirren, and Morse with John Thaw, concentrated on one main character.

The team of outstanding actors in The Killing were:

Sofie Grabol [Sarah Lund], Soren Malling [Jan Meyer], Lars Mikkelsen [Troels Hartmann], Bjarne Henriksen [Theis Birk Larsen], Anna Eleonora Jorgensen [Pernille Birk Larsen] and Nicolaj Kopernikus [Vagn Skaerbaek].

The parts of the victim's parents Theis and Pernille were brilliantly acted, and it was this that made the triple story line of police investigation, family reaction, political intrigue work so well.

In Spiral the six main parts are well acted: Caroline Proust [Police captain Laure Berthaud], Gregory Fitoussi [Pierre Clement], Phillipe Duclos [Judge Francois Roban], Thierry Godard [Gilou], Fred Bianconi [Tin Tin], and Audrey Fleurot [Josephine Karlsson]. But with his popping eyes Dominique Dagnier is brilliant in a cameo role as the truly frightening Prosecutor Machard, the boss from hell.

I will miss them all; Jan Meyer's ears, Sarah Lund's expensive jumpers, Josephine Karlsson's freckles, disheveled Laure Berthaud's predatory smile, and Troels Hartmann's electioneering ploys, and I am really looking forward to the next series.

I read somewhere The Killing "redefined the genre", it didn't but it did return it to a very successful formula from the past.

MISS MARPLE MAY APPEAR: 2

2011-05-10T01:54:00.001-07:00

Another in my new series of posts where I explore the villages and countryside of England and find places where you would not be surprised if Miss Marple suddenly appeared.

WIN A GAME OF LIES BY REBECCA CANTRELL

2011-05-09T03:59:00.000-07:00

Those kind folks at Tor/Forge on Fifth Avenue, New York have given me an extra ARC of A Game of Lies by Rebecca Cantrell, which gives you the opportunity to win a copy before the publication date on July 5, 2011.

This is the much anticipated third book in the prize winning Hannah Vogel series.

You can read all about Rebecca Cantrell, her comprehensive research, and this series at Rebecca's website here.

The first book A Trace Of Smoke was set in 1931 Berlin and won the Sue Federer, McAvity and Bruce Alexander Memorial Award for best historical mystery.

The second A Night of Long Knives was set during the June 1934 purge of the SA Brownshirts and was also nominated for the Bruce Alexander last year.[won by The Mapping of Love and Death by Jacqueline Winspear].

A Game of Lies returns Hannah Vogel to Germany as a spy, undercover as a reporter attending the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

My reviews of A Trace of Smoke and A Night of Long Knives [with links to my interview with Rebecca].

As I really enjoyed the first two books and love the brave, feisty heroine, Hannah Vogel, I am really looking forward to reading A Game of Lies and posting a review next month.

How to win a copy. Answer the following questions e-mailing your answers by 21 May to thbear08@googlemail.com.

1] Which country boycotted the 1936 Berlin Olympics and organized their own games? What prevented those games starting?

2] Who was the high jumper prevented from competing in the Berlin Olympics although she held the German record, and had won the British high jump championship?

Good luck.

THE TROUBLED MAN: HENNING MANKELL

2011-05-05T03:14:00.000-07:00

The Troubled Man is the tenth and last book in the Kurt Wallander series by Swedish author, and political activist Henning Mankell.

I have read five other books from this series; Faceless Killers, The Fifth Woman, Sidetracked, and One Step Behind, all a few years ago before I started Crime Scraps.

Kurt Wallander has moved from his apartment in Ystad to a house in the country near where his father used to live. He has got himself a dog, Jussi, and now aged 60 his career as police officer seems to be winding down. He is given only fairly routine cases while seemingly only remaining in contact with his old colleague Martinsson.

Then his daughter Linda, also a police officer, announces she is pregnant with his first grandchild. She is engaged to financier Hans von Enke, whose father Hakan von Enke, is a retired former high ranking officer in the Swedish submarine service.

'Hans said his parents had a philosophy about money,' Linda had explained.

'" You shouldn't talk about money, it should be simply there."'

'If only,' Wallander had said. 'That sounds like something well-heeled upper-class folk would say.'

Wallander, Hakan and Louise von Enke all delight in the birth of a granddaughter named Klara. But at his 75th birthday party Hakan von Enke begins to confide in Wallander about an incident during the Cold War, when the navy supposedly had a Soviet submarine trapped in Swedish territorial waters, and orders from above allowed it to escape.

Shortly after the party Hakan von Enke goes missing and Wallander takes some holiday to conduct an unofficial investigation that will uncover von Enke family secrets, and the confusion at the heart of Sweden's neutrality. Wallander's bleak personal odyssey is brought into focus with appearances by his drunken ex-wife Mona, and Baiba Liepa, the Latvian woman, who he regards as his one true love. [From The Dogs of Riga]

The feisty Linda, and her lively baby daughter Klara, are the only bright positives in this story as Wallander interviews one elderly person after the other; people whose best years are long behind them. Wallander troubled by repeated episodes of memory loss appears much older than his 60 years, and this gives the distinct impression that Mankell is bored with his character.

Is The Troubled Man too depressing for an old man to read?

Answer-definitely yes.

If The Troubled Man was simply the story of a man thinking back over his life with a plethora of regrets about the past it might be regarded as a fine but very bleak novel. But as a crime story the plot is rather thin and the solution is.............

Not a surprise considering the well known longstanding political affiliations of the author.

This a dark story of memory loss, depression, diabetes, cancer, drunkenness, lost past loves, and death. Without Linda or Klara what a total misery it would be.

I used to like the slow methodical build up in the Wallander books, but this one is almost catatonic and far too miserable for me to have enjoyed reading. It made even Leif G.W.Persson's Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End seem fast paced and lively.

That said, The Troubled Man could well be shortlisted for the CWA International Dagger, and that is the reason I persevered to the depressing finale.

She also made sure he bought a new dark suit, accompanied him to the tailor's in Malmo, and when he expressed his astonishment at the price she explained that it was a high-quality suit that would last him the rest of his life.

'You'll be attending fewer weddings,' Linda said. ' But at your age, the number of funerals increases.'

Maxine's excellent review of The Troubled Man at Petrona

A negative view of The Troubled Man in The Guardian I have tried to be a bit fairer than this article in my comments.

MISS MARPLE MAY APPEAR

2011-05-02T13:56:00.000-07:00

SELLING SCANDINAVIANS

2011-04-30T12:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was very relieved to discover that the Royal Wedding dress did not have a marketing sticker on it that said 'The Next Princess Diana'.

Is it not possible for publishers to ignore Stieg Larsson, and Henning Mankell, and try to sell authors on their own merits?

It was bizarre that Henning Mankell's The Man from Beijing was sold with a sticker of Kenneth Branagh playing Wallander, when the book had no connection with the Ystad detective at all except that part of the book was set in Sweden.

But then we also had Johan Theorin and Jo Nesbo both marketed as the 'Next Stieg Larsson'. Camilla Lackberg sold with 'If you like Jo Nesbo you will love this' stickers. Hakan Nessser was favourably compared with both Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell by someone who obviously thinks their books are similar.

Even Professor Leif G.W. Persson was sold with a sticker that proclaimed he was reminiscent of Henning Mankell and of course Stieg Larsson, but not as pretty as Camilla Lackberg. [I added that last bit myself, in case you wondered.]

Even Camilla Ceder's debut novel Frozen Moment comes with the blurb 'Move over Wallander'.

In my excitement I mistakenly posted on Friend Feed that Villain by Shuichi Yoshida did not mention any Scandinavians on the cover, but then remembered an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled Shuichi Yoshida, Japan's Stieg Larsson?

Enough is enough I thought as I viewed the cover of Camilla Lackberg's latest novel The Gallows Bird, sent to me by the very generous Maxine of Petrona.

No stickers, no mention of other Scandinavians with the blurbs on the front cover merely stating 'Seven Million Books Sold' and 'The hottest female writer in Sweden at the moment'.

Do male crime writers ever get described as the 'hottest'?

But in small print on the back cover is the sentence 'Translated by Stieg Larsson's and Henning Mankell's Steven T. Murray'.

Do writers get upset when their translator is marketed as another more famous writers property? I should not think so if it boosts sales, and I expect that will happen despite the very small print.

Read Steven T Murray's complete list of translations here.

Reviews of some excellent books translated by Steven T. Murray.

Review of Shadow by Karin Alvtegen

Review of Detective Inspector Irene Huss by Helene Tursten

Review of The Stone Cutter by Camilla Lackberg

I would have pointed out that the photo of Camilla Lackberg on the back cover of The Gallows Bird is far too small, but for the fact that the Swedish female crime writer closest to my age is Maj Sjowall.

DEATH ON A GALICIAN SHORE: DOMINGO VILLAR

2011-04-28T03:57:00.000-07:00

The body of a fisherman, Juan Castelo, known as El Rubio, is washed up on the beach at Panxon. His hands have been tied in a way that made it unlikely that he had committed suicide. Taciturn Galician Detective Inspector Leo Caldas, and his fiery Aragonese assistant Rafa Estevez begin a slow methodical investigation that involves looking into the loss of a fishing vessel, the Xurelo, over a decade earlier. Three young fisherman including El Rubio had swum to safety, but the elderly Captain Antonio Sousa had gone down with his boat, and his body was recovered later in a trawler's net. But the superstitious locals believe they have seen Captain Sousa near the harbour.

Death on a Galician Shore was translated from the Spanish by Sonia Soto, and is the second book by Domingo Villar that features Inspector Leo Caldas. This novel won the 2009 Brigada 21 Prize for best crime novel in Spain, following up on the success of Water-Blue Eyes which won of the Brigada 21 Prize for best first crime novel, and the Sintagma prize.

This crime novel is a straightforward police procedural in which Leo Caldas, questions witnesses and suspects, and gradually with a little luck solves the case. As would be expected there are a few twists and turns along a trail scattered with false clues.

The questioning and re-questioning of suspects is a little repetitive, but it is definitely not only the criminal investigation that makes this book such a great read. The descriptions of Galicia and the subtle interplay between the characters take the reader right into the action. You can almost smell the plates of seafood, or the salty sea breeze and feel the rain in your face blowing in off the Atlantic.

When he went to university, his father left his job in Vigo and moved permanently to his wife's old family home, which he had gradually restored.

The land, initially providing comfort in his time of affliction, was now a profitable business, and the nights of weeping were no more than a shadow in the memory.

Wine, the downfall of so many men, had been his salvation.

Throughout the book Caldas and his relationships with his father, Uncle Alberto, Estevez, Alba, the woman who left him, and retired Doctor Trabazo play a key role in creating atmosphere in this beautifully written novel.

There are scenes set in the hospital between Leo, his father and Uncle Alberto which are both witty and bittersweet; so when the doctor tells Alberto he will be as good as new in a month, he asks:

'Have you still got your Book of Idiots?'

............

'Well, add that doctor to it,' he said, pointing feebly at the door through which the doctor had departed.

The differing attitudes to suspects, and to life, of the lonely laconic Leo Caldas and the rumbustious Rafa Estevez, from Zaragoza, add a little spice of humour to the story.

'You know I'm not keen on dead people, Inspector,' said Estevez a little sheepishly.

'And the living aren't too keen on you,' murmured Caldas,........

There is also humour involved in Leo's performances on the local Vigo radio station as he struggles to improve community relations by answering questions on 'his program' Patrolling the Waves despite the various distractions.

I really enjoyed reading Death on a Galician Shore despite the fact there were no pyrotechnics just a straightforward story told with skill, and a lot of empathy for the characters.

A successful European crime fiction series that is neither Nordic, Italian or French, would be a bit special.

Maxine of Petrona's review of Death on a Galician Shore at Euro Crime

Jose Ignacio's review at The Game's Afoot

My review of Water-Blue Eyes the first Leo Caldas book.

Leg of veal, boned and chopped small, was simmered over a low heat all morning together with onions,leeks, carrots and seasoning. After about three hours on the hob, the chick peas were added and, at the very end a sofrito of onions, garlic and paprika.

MORE DETECTIVE FEVER

2011-04-26T08:42:00.000-07:00

Earlier in the month I posted about the Six Detective Series to Savour selected by Johanna McGeary of Time magazine, and asked 'What other Detective Series Do You Enjoy?'

I was grateful to receive a stimulating and varied list of detectives, although unfortunately blogger was misbehaving and ate some replies.

HarryBosch/Mickey Haller: Michael Connelly

V.I.Warshawski: Sara Paretsky

Kinsey Milhone: Sue Grafton

Sharon McCone: Marcia Muller [the only author on this list I have not read]

Eduard Martinez and Borja 'Pep' Masdeu: Teresa Solana

Inspector Adamsberg: Fred Vargas

Salvo Montalbano: Andrea Camilleri

Harry Hole: Jo Nesbo*

Erlendur: Arnaldur Indridason

Thora Gudmundsdottir: Yrsa Sigurdardottir

and of course Martin Beck: Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.

I would add a few of my own choices:

Morse: Colin Dexter

Rebus: Ian Rankin

Andy Dalziel and Peter Pascoe: Reginald Hill

Reg Wexford: Ruth Rendell

Annika Bengtzon: Liza Marklund

Hannah Scarlett and Daniel Kind: Martin Edwards

Inspector Sejer: Karin Fossum

Some of these series are in their dotage, or retirement, and some are still only in nappies. But I would suggest they should all exhibit features common to good crime fiction: great characters, good plots, compelling atmosphere, believable situations, a simple style, and with some exceptions* a degree of violence and gore acceptable to most readers.

The classic Martin Beck books are particularly brilliant in that they encapsulate almost every factor that has gone on to make the modern crime fiction novel so popular.

a] Social commentary

b] Cynicism

c] Team work, and the difficulty of working in a team.

d] Humour, light or dark.

e] A distrust of superiors.

f] A feeling of loneliness and despair expressed by various characters.

g] Superbly drawn characters.

h] A brooding atmosphere.

No human being, particularly a young attractive woman, is so alone that there is no one to miss her when she disappears.

[Roseanna: Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo 1965]

I am looking forward to starting my Martin Beck re-read project later in the year.

Update: Even More Detective Fever. Did I really forget the following?

Chief Inspector Van Veeteren: Hakan Nesser

Kurt Wallander: Henning Mankell

Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn: Tony Hillerman

ANZAC DAY 2011

2011-04-25T01:54:00.000-07:00

A day to remember.

Expeditions which are decided upon and organised with insufficient care generally end disastrously.

Lloyd George, Memorandum to War Council, December 1914

SERIOUS CONTENDERS

2011-04-22T09:55:00.000-07:00

The short list for the CWA International Dagger is to be announced on Friday 20 May at Crime Fest in Bristol. Therefore it is time to read some of the serious contenders beginning with Death on a Galician Shore by Domingo Villar.

Cristina came to take their order for the main course. She offered them bacalao a la gallega, cod with potatoes, or squid in its ink with rice. Caldas chose the squid.

A promising start.

HOTEL BOSPHORUS: ESMAHAN AYKOL

2011-04-22T06:43:00.000-07:00

Kati Hirschel is the owner of a crime fiction bookshop in Istanbul, a city where she was born before returning with her parents to Germany at the age of seven. She returned to Istanbul and has now been living there for thirteen years reacting like a local 'Istanbullu' to the daily trials and pleasures of the city.

Her old friend from university Petra Vogel contacts her, because she is in Istanbul to make a movie. A few days later Kurt Muller, the film's director, is found murdered in his luxurious hotel suite, at the Hotel Bosphorus. Someone has thrown an electric iron into his bath. Kati decides in the tradition of Miss Marple to investigate.

This novel is full of interesting details about the complex relationship, and cultural differences between Turks and Germans. It could even be considered more of a social commentary and travelogue than a crime fiction novel. Kati Hirschel herself is a confused character; a Turkish citizen at home in Istanbul, but never fully Turkish, and also as is explained not fully German.

There is a lot of classic stereotyping in the narrative and sharp dialogue, which at times does get a bit annoying, for instance there really must be some Germans with a sense of humour. ;o) Do Turks only eat kebabs and toasted cheese? Do Germans only eat schnitzel, and sausage, while drinking beer?

"A German without beer in the house is like a football team without a manager," he said.

But Kati's mother lives in Berlin and her attitude to 'Gastarbeiters' is not much better.

"And now they're using our money to set up integration courses for the Turks. To be paid for by Mrs Hirschel."

Kati's burbling information dumps about friends, fatty kebabs, potential lovers, police corruption, and local mobsters hold up the progress of the plot, and some of her behaviour is frankly stupid. [End of chapter 5]

But as the book progresses Kati calms down, the reader can enjoy the bustling atmosphere of the city, and her character starts to grow on you.

Although this debut was slightly disappointing, with its exotic location and its feisty female investigator the series has the potential to develop hopefully in the Turkish location. I don't think readers would want Kati Hirschel to make too many trips to Berlin, and become yet another Northern European detective.

Author Esmahan Aykol was born in 1970 in Edirne, Turkey, and now lives in Istanbul and Berlin. Hotel Bosphorus is the first of three Kati Hirschel mystery novels, and has been translated into English by Ruth Whitehouse.

: the European Union should stand firm because Turkey has set its sights on becoming a member and is taking decisive steps in that direction. That was why the Turkish police were showing respect for human rights.

LAND OF MISS MARPLE AND LORD PETER

2011-04-20T04:11:00.001-07:00

We are very lucky that there are still houses in England where the visitor would not be too surprised if Miss Jane Marple, or Lord Peter Wimsey with Harriet Vane answered the door.

BANDIT LOVE: MASSIMO CARLOTTO

2011-04-18T02:23:00.000-07:00

Marco Buratti aka The Alligator is back in Massimo Carlotto's latest Italian noir novel Bandit Love, translated from the Italian by Anthony Shugar.

When Sylvie, the girlfriend of Marco's closest friend Beniamino Rossini is kidnapped, Marco, "Old Rossini", and Max la Memoria, must tussle with some of the new style mafias that have come to dominate Northeast Italy.

This is a short classic example of Carlotto's writing that leaves you slightly breathless and wanting more. The ending is abrupt and somewhat enigmatic, but the 177 pages are packed full of action, corruption, wisecracks, murders, unpleasant characters, politics, ideas and beautiful women.

" Is she another Lacan-quoting shrink like the last three?"

" No, I seem to have run out of those," he answered, resentfully. "She's a substitute teacher, a militant member of the worker's collective, divorced, no kids."

"Cute?"

" Not only is she cute," he exulted. "She smokes, she drinks, she's not taking a creative writing course and she doesn't have a gym membership."

The first person narrative by Marco tries to direct the reader through a complex harsh brutal tale of revenge and double cross and triple cross. With all the various characters the plot was a bit incoherent as it involved the theft of narcotics from the high-security, armor-plated storeroom in the cellar of the Department of Forensic Toxicology at the University of Padua, and gangsters from every country in the Balkans and further afield.

Just as all the characters are villains of one degree or another, so no country comes out as beyond reproach in the tangled mess Europe is in.

In the meantime, the law -abiding citizens of Northeast Italy continued to entrust their elderly relatives to illegal-immigrant nurses and caregivers; their house were still being cleaned and their meals were being cooked by undocumented house-keepers.

This is a typical Carlotto book angry that the old Robin Hood style criminals, who won't deal in drugs or traffic women, have had to make way for the more vicious new breed from abroad. Angry at the treatment of women, and angry at the politicians and police who let it happen.

If only it were longer......

"We're old school gangsters, relics of the past that's gone forever. They'll eat us alive."

Massimo Carlotto's Fugitive Experience

A review of Poisonville: Massimo Carlotto and Marco Videta

Link to Euro Crime review of Death's Dark Abyss

Euro Crime review of The Fugitive

A review of The Colombian Mule featuring Marco Buratti

A review of Master of Knots featuring Marco Buratti

THE READING ROOM

2011-04-17T10:21:00.000-07:00

If I ever win the Euro Millions Lottery I am going to buy this house just for the name. ;o) Another reason is that it is situated in an idyllic Somerset village with an excellent pub.

PHANTOMS OF BRESLAU: MAREK KRAJEWSKI

2011-04-15T05:13:00.000-07:00

Update: This blog is now dormant and I have moved to Crime Scraps Review, where you can read all the old posts and lots of new material.

http://crimescraps2.wordpress.com

Marek Krajewski's Eberhard Mock series is traveling back in time and in Phantoms of Breslau [translated from the Polish by Danusia Stok] we are now in 1919.

The naked bodies of four young men are found battered and horribly mutilated on an island in the River Oder.

"All they are wearing are sailor's hats on their heads and leather pouches over their genitals."

The vice department of the Police Praesidium are called in with its chief, Criminal Councillor Ilssheimer and his best men, Criminal Assistant Eberhard Mock and Criminal Sergeant Kurt Smolorz. The dead men's strange attire is not the only reason for the vice department being brought in, Mock is personally involved, a note has been left demanding that he 'admits to a past mistake, and believe......'

When two potential witnesses questioned by Mock are murdered the mystery deepens. Mock struggles to cope with his own demons, stubborn superiors and dissolute subordinates as he attempts to find the murderer, and protect his loved ones.

The Eberhard Mock series is unusual, and features such an original protagonist that it is perhaps not for everyone. I really enjoy these books but don't know what that says about my character.

Decadent, eccentric, and outrageous characters have sexual liaisons with beautiful women, whilst also over eating and drinking vast quantities of schnapps. Mock, is violent like Gilou in Spiral, but has a classical education and that makes him a much more complex anti-hero; although of course they both share a taste for prostitutes.

The narrative with its episodic timed passages raises the tension, and also draws the reader into Mock's world with the descriptions that capture the atmosphere of the city. You can almost smell the tobacco, the beer, the smoked fish, and the blood.

Admiring the edifice of the modern market hall, he relished a chilled glass of schnapps, which cut the taste of the Bismarck herrings whose silver skins were slashed with black criss-crosses. He divided a hot potato with his fork and slathered half of it with the soured cream coating the herrings.

Phantoms of Breslau is a little bit different from the average crime fiction book, with its secret societies, a unique protagonist, truly obnoxious characters, and the historical setting this gripping novel continues an increasingly impressive series. With so many books using the same repetitive plots and locations it is a pleasant surprise to read truly unique crime fiction with a fascinating historical setting.

A good client in taverns and brothels. A good client with whom nobody had any sympathy-no innkeeper and no whore. And why should they sympathize with him? After all how were they to know that some monster was slaying people and writing him letters!

The former German city of Breslau is now the Polish city of Wroclau; Marek Krajewski, a lecturer in Classical Studies at the University of Wroclau, explains the changes in the ethnicity of the city's population in the interview.

My Euro Crime review of Death in Breslau

My review of End of the World in Breslau

My interview with Marek Krajewski and here.

'I LIKE A GOOD MURDER'

2011-04-11T06:54:00.000-07:00

'I like a good murder that can't be found out' says Mrs Hopkinson in Emily Eden's novel The Semi-Detached House [1859]

There is 'a detective fever' [The Moonstone:Wilkie Collins] all these years later with crime fiction still the most popular genre.

In 2005 Johanna McGeary in Time magazine noted "Six Detective Series to savor", which were:

Maisie Dobbs- Jacqueline Winspear

Marcus Didius Falco-Lindsey Davis

Alan Banks -Peter Robinson

Guido Brunetti- Donna Leon

Bernie Gunther- Philip Kerr

Frederick Troy- John Lawton

How are these series going nearly six years after the Time article?

I haven't read either Jacqueline Winspear or Lindsey Davis, clearly an oversight I must remedy soon.

Jacqueline Winspear won the 2011 Bruce Alexander Historical Award for the best mystery novel covering events prior to 1950 with The Mapping of Love and Death, her 7th Maisie Dobbs book.

The Bruce Alexander Award was won in 2010 by Rebecca Cantrell's A Trace of Smoke, a novel I championed on this blog.

Lindsey Davis has written her twentieth Marcus Didius Falco book, Nemesis, is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2011 CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger, and is a featured guest author at Crime Fest 2011 in Bristol.

The other four series are all among my favourites, and are all still very successful.

Here is a link to my Euro Crime review of Bad Boy, the latest in the Alan Banks series.

The idiosyncratic career of Frederick Troy proceeds in various time frames, and I reviewed John Lawton's latest book A Lily of the Field here. There are also links to reviews of the rest of the series. John Lawton is attending 2011 Crime Fest.

I really enjoy Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther series and If The Dead Rise Not, the sixth novel in the series, won the 2009 CWA Ellis Peters Award for Best Historical Crime Novel. The seventh novel in the series Field Grey sits temptingly on my TBR shelf.

I recently finished reading Donna Leon's A Question of Belief and was reminded how much I enjoy reading about Guido Brunetti and his supporting cast; perfect Paola, cool Signorina Elettra, reliable Vianello and the truly obnoxious Vice- Questore Patta.

Thanks to the ever generous Maxine of Petrona I have the next book in the series Drawing Conclusions on my TBR shelf.

What other detective series do you enjoy, and do you think they will still be going strong in five or six years time?

HMP DARTMOOR

2011-04-11T06:07:00.000-07:00

The Honeytones website has been updated and now contains a letter from the Social Inclusion Officer at Dartmoor Prison. A letter that made me cry.

RIVER OF SHADOWS: VALERIO VARESI

2011-04-07T06:56:00.000-07:00

The Po Valley is deluged with rain and the river is about to break the banks spreading out into the floodplain. A huge barge steers erratically down the swollen river, and when it eventually it runs aground there is no one on board.

Commissario Soneri is called to investigate an apparent suicide at the hospital in Parma where an elderly man, 76 year old Decimo Tonna has jumped, or been pushed out of a third floor window.

When Soneri discovers the barge was owned by Anteo Tonna, Decimo's elder brother and both men were involved with the Fascists during the war he goes to the riverbank to investigate the missing bargeman.

River of Shadows is the first in a series featuring Commissario Soneri written by journalist Valerio Varesi, and translated by Joseph Farrell, professor of Italian at the University of Strathclyde. The series has been adapted and is one of Italy's most popular television dramas.

This was a little bit of a curate's egg of a novel as far as I was concerned.

I really enjoyed the wonderful descriptions of the Po River, the sharp political asides, and the way Soneri chats with the bargemen to elicit little snippets of information about past conflicts between the blackshirts and the partizans.

But River of Shadows was a little slow in plot development, and we did not learn enough about Soneri for this reader to become as attached to him as I am to Montalbano, or Brunetti. He has a lawyer girlfriend Angela with a taste for love in dangerous locations, and he possesses a mobile phone with a ringtone that played Verdi. Doesn't everyone in Italy?

But Soneri does not seem to like working with his colleagues, and where Andrea Camilleri would have had Salvo Montalbano drooling over what reads like a superb meal Valerio Varesi only mentions it in passing.

A wager was celebrated like a rite and a fixed menu was prescribed. Culatello as a starter, followed by anolini in brodo and then wild boar with polenta. Gutturnio was a non-negotiable wine.

"So nothing at all came from the post mortem?'

I am one of those readers who resists change, and it takes a lot for me to devote myself to reading a new detective series. Soneri is not much fun, but this series does have a lot of promise with an interesting supporting cast such as his sexy girlfriend lawyer Angela, and the tiresome magistrate Alemanni always talking about taking early retirement.

And when it came to politics and the Po, I found myself warming to the story.

The same water which gives you food to eat also leaves you starving. People move away from the river and then come back to it, and those that live on its banks have no choice.

.........................

And therefore in the town too.....in a bend in the River Po, communists still faithful to Stalin and hardline Fascists could survive, just as the rosemary could survive between the walls and the embankment.

This novel should remind readers that you can't sweep away history, old grudges survive, especially in those countries that lived for years under autocratic empires, fascism and communism.

Thanks once again to Maxine of Petrona, who gave me the book.

You can read her fine review of River of Shadows here.

'I mean the new right wing, the shopkeeper's right wing, one which has taken off its black shirt and put on a tie.'

RESPECT FOR AGE

2011-04-04T06:37:00.000-07:00

Last month Brian Oliver, Sports Editor of The Guardian, produced a list of the ten best modern European Crime Writers.

It was an idiosyncratic list and immediately had me searching my Oxford English Dictionary for a definition of modern [relating to present or recent past] because of the advanced age of several of those writers on the list. You would have to be an oldie like me to accept that 1975, the date of the last book in the Martin Beck series, as creeping in as recent past.

The list with year of birth:

Pierre Magnan 1922

Andrea Camilleri 1925

Maj Sjowall 1935 and Per Wahloo deceased

Petros Markaris 1937

Manuel Vazquez Montalban deceased

Jean-Claude Izzo deceased

Timothy Willams 1946

Henning Mankell 1948

Fred Vargas 1957

Arnaldur Indridason 1961

My own choice would have included Hakan Nesser 1950, Karin Fossum 1954 and Jo Nesbo 1960, but obviously in Europe the art of crime writing is considered something for the more mature author. Apart from Camilla Lackberg, I cannot think of any other big name crime author from Europe under forty.

But I expect there are some who have not yet been translated into English?

THE LEOPARD: JO NESBO

2011-03-31T07:02:00.000-07:00

'My name is Kaja Solness. I have been tasked with finding you. By Gunnar Hagen.'

No reaction to the name of his Crime Squad boss. Had he gone?

Detective Harry Hole deeply traumatised by the events of The Snowman investigation is hiding out in the opium dens of Hong Kong. When the beautiful Kaja Solness tells Harry his father Olav is dying, he agrees to return to Oslo and investigate the murders of two women, found with twenty four inexplicable puncture wounds, both drowned in their own blood.

There are more murders and as the body count rises Harry, with the aid of the 'safely sectioned' Katrine Bratt's internet search skills, finds a connection between the victims. [Police colleague Katrine Bratt featured in The Snowman]

They all spent one night at the Havass mountain cabin, and so the story becomes an updated version of the old English country house mystery so popular in the Golden Age.

While trying to find the other occupants of the cabin, potential victims or perpetrators, Harry becomes involved in the political battle between Crime Squad, and Kripos lead by the charismatically handsome Mikael Bellman, a man with few scruples and boundless ambition.

'So if you can use this to outsmart the smart-arse and it leads to Bellman's plans for the evil empire being shelved, accept it with my blessing.'

This is a book about human relationships and what can develop from them; love, hate, vengeance, greed, ambition, humiliation, fear, and loneliness. The whole panoply of emotions felt from youth to old age and I should warn that is also a rather violent book, and contains just a few passages involving torture. The action takes place briefly in Hong Kong, mostly in Norway and then partly in the Congo, with a large cast of sharply drawn, but mostly unsympathetic characters.

The Leopard is a very long book [611 pages] that proved to be a very fast read because I was so completely engrossed in the characters, complexity of the plot and the various subplots. Definitely a page turner!

Jo Nesbo, aided by an excellent translation from Don Bartlett, teases the reader with plot twists and turns, providing a different solution to the crimes, and then taking the story back to change this again, and again, until the reader is left almost giddy. In what has become almost a trademark style he seemingly finishes the story, and then restarts it again to reach a slightly different ending.

Harry Hole, his character and his internal struggle, is the glue that holds this series together. Harry is tied up in a battle of intellects with both the perpetrator and with Bellman. The conflict is exacerbated because it seems Bellman has everything Harry lacks, position, power, wife, family, children, henchmen, and mistress. But Harry cares about people, Olav his father, Sis his sister with her 'little touch of Down's syndrome', his lost love Rakel and her son Oleg, his friend Oystein and his colleagues and this makes him vulnerable.

Will Harry find the perpetrator before Mikael Bellman, who seems to know the Crime Squad's moves before they happen? Why are the occupants of the Havass cabin being murdered one by one? What is the terrible connection with the Congo?

Right from the dismantling of colonialist governments in the sixties, they have used white people's feelings of guilt to acquire power, so that the real exploitation of the population could begin.

I can highly recommend The Leopard, despite the torture passages, and also the entire Harry Hole series as one of the best in modern crime fiction. Ignore the Next Stieg Larsson blurb Jo Nesbo is a unique talent, and Harry Hole one of my favourite detectives.

'You know me,' Harry said as Oystein stopped on red outside the Radisson SAS Hotel.

'I bloody do not,' Oystein said, sprinkling tobacco into his roll-up.

'How would I?'

'Well, we grew up together. Do you remember?'

'So? You were already a sodding enigma then, Harry.'

The Harry Hole series [books one and two are yet to be translated into English]

Keeping Harry in order

The Redbreast

Nemesis

The Devil's Star

The Redeemer

The Snowman

SIZE MATTERS: THE LEOPARD

2011-03-29T06:12:00.000-07:00

I am now reading the 600 page Jo Nesbo thriller The Leopard. It is providing some much needed exercise just carrying it around as it dwarfs some other books on my TBR list.

There are very few authors who could get me involved in a book of this length, but I have whizzed through the first 200 pages totally engrossed, and of course teased by a typical Nesbo's surprise plot twist. It goes without saying that the translation by Don Bartlett reads so naturally that it seems as if the book was written in English.

'Who's out of his mind?'

'We're working in a prison,' Bjorn said. 'We're risking our jobs if the boss finds out what we're up to, and our colleague in Bergen......'

'Yes?'

'She is seriously out of her mind.'

'You mean she's .....?'

'Sectioned out of her mind.'

A QUESTION OF BELIEF: DONNA LEON

2011-03-27T08:38:00.000-07:00

It is a miserably hot August in Venice and Guido Brunetti is dreaming of his holiday. But his colleague Vianello's aunt may the victim of a clever scam, and Brusca, head of the department of employment records at the Commune has a problem. Various court cases are being delayed for months, a procedure which benefits one of the parties, by Judge Coltellini, who appears to have her infatuated clerk Araldo Fontana trapped in her web.

When Brunetti leaves for his family holiday, getting away from Venice's stifling heat the train barely reaches Bolzano before he is brought back to investigate Fontana's murder, during an apparent mugging.

Donna Leon is back to form with this very Italian story of corruption, a clever scam, nepotism, and different forms of love cleverly worked into less than 300 pages.

Brusca sighed, then said in a sober voice, 'I think a great number of people are more interested in money than in love. Or even sex.'

The beautiful Paola Brunetti along with their children Raffi and Chiara add some eccentric charm to what is otherwise a fairly bleak tale of human frailty.

His daughter had gone to Milano, Brunetti reflected, site of the Brera Gallery, site of Leonardo's Cenacolo, site of the greatest Gothic Cathedral in Italy, and she had gone shopping.

Brunetti is assisted as usual by the ever reliable Ispettore Vianello, and the cool computer expert Signorina Elettra, while the sycophantic Vice-Questore Patta is up to his usual tricks.

She promised to get to it when the Vice-Questore was safely off to the Island of Ponza, where he and his family were to be the guests of the head of the city council of Venice, who had a summer home there.

'Yet another way to ensure the complete objectivity of the forces of order in any investigation of local politicians', Brunetti said when he heard the name of Patta's host.

Donna Leon writes to a formula that is successful because of the interesting characters, the Venetian setting, Brunetti's meals, and also because the books recount the struggles of honest men like Brunetti and Vianello trying to work in a system that is basically corrupt. Within her cleverly varied plots she is able to discuss all the problems that beset Italy including immigration, Mafia, the Church and endemic nepotism.

I know I will continue to read this fine series.

Review of About Face

Link to Euro Crime Review of The Girl of His Dreams

Euro Crime review of Suffer the Little Children

Review of Through a Glass Darkly

Brunetti's Italy

SPRINGTIME

2011-03-26T12:50:00.000-07:00

The clocks go forward in the UK tonight as we move on to British Summertime.

PAOLA BRUNETTI'S POLITICS

2011-03-24T06:22:00.000-07:00

There is one shining exception to the plethora of melancholic single male detectives that are scattered throughout crime fiction. Commissario Guido Brunetti is very happily married to the fragrant Paola.

She was more than twenty years older than when he had first met her, and yet he could see no difference. Blonde hair that had a will of its own, a nose that was perhaps too large for this era of female beauty, the cheekbones that had drawn his first kisses.

Part of Paola's appeal is not only her intelligence, beauty, and cooking ability [not necessarily in that order] but her charmingly liberal left wing views. Of course with a career as an academic, and as the daughter of Count Orazio Falier, and the wife of Commissario Brunetti [definitely in that order] she is protected from most of life's harsh financial realities.

But the politicians are making such a complete hash of the future prospects for our children that even Paola is drifting rightwards.

I was surprised to realize a few days ago that some of the things the Lega says-those same things that had me wild with anger a decade ago-they're beginning to make sense to me.

O Paola say it ain't so.

But Paola is not alone. 'It didn't matter if the people who spoke to him had voted for or against the politicians they reviled: they'd be happy to lock them all up in the local church and set it ablaze.'

Quotes from A Question of Belief the 19th Venice-based Commissario Brunetti novel by Donna Leon.

NO-ONE LOVES A POLICEMAN: GUILLERMO ORSI

2011-03-21T09:06:00.000-07:00

Argentina in the early twentieth century was one of the riches countries in the world, but by 2001 when this thriller No-One Loves a Policeman by Guillermo Orsi [translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor ] is set, the country is in economic meltdown.

Pablo Martelli, known as Gotan, was a policeman, a member of an elite unit known as the 'National Shame' but now sells bathroom fittings and lives with his cat Felix Jesus.

He receives an urgent late night phone call from his close friend Edmundo Carcano, and hurriedly drives to his coastal retreat at Mediomundo. But when he gets to his friend's chalet he is too late, Edmundo is dead.

We were thirty-six when a drunken general gave the order to invade the Malvinas. Too old to fight a war that was lost before it began, and yet two decades later my friend abandoned his wife Monica for a twenty-year-old blonde who was scarcely born when another general surrendered Port Stanley to save the lives of thousands of soldiers, not to mention his own.

Gotan searches for Edmundo's young girlfriend, and then attempts to find out what happened to his friend.

Along the way he meets corrupt provincial cops, a rotund pathologist, an investigative journalist, and an honest magistrate. He drives for miles across vast pampas, investigates derelict ghost towns, and hospitals now used as arms dumps having long ago given up the task of providing good medical care for the poor. He dreams of the tango and a lost lover, who rejected him when she learned of his past, and he uncovers cliques, cabals and treacherous plots aimed at the chaotic heart of Argentina.

Guillermo Orsi was born in Buenos Airies, where he lives and works as a journalist. His previous novel, Suenos de perro, won the Semana Negra Umbriel Award in 2004.

This novel is a brilliant account of a once rich country destroyed by corrupt, greedy politicians. That is what makes it so powerful and so relevant today, when we see around us how politicians will promise anything, and do anything, to obtain and maintain power.

There must be so little oxygen in the stratospheres of power that the politicians' neurones stop working.

No-One Loves a Policeman is full of dark cynicism and despair, and the historical asides tell a bleak story of stark brutality. While Argentina is looking back to its violent past as it deals with its ordinary citizens using the gun, the baton, tear gas and water cannon, but strangely ignores the drug gangs, who provide an income for a corrupt establishment. The social commentary in the book is reminiscent of Scandinavian crime fiction, but of course Argentina has a myriad of problems compared to Skane, or Oslo, or even downtown Malmo.

These were once the domain of Mapuches, Araucanians and Tehuelches, until in the nineteenth century that they were all wiped out by the campaigns of a general called Roca, the same general who the Peronist government decided to honour by baptising this railway line in his name.

I really enjoyed the cleverness and wise words in this black comedy of novel, but towards the end the closing chapters became a bit confused with a little too many twists and turns for my liking.

This was a novel well worth reading, and I shall keep an eye out for more of Guillermo Orsi, an author who truly understands the limitations of politicians.

The problem isn't the fact that this government will fall halfway through its term, it's who will take its place and announce for the nth time the arrival of a New Argentina.

Maxine of Petrona kindly gave me the book, and you can read her superb review of No-One Loves a Policeman here. I also "borrowed" her map of Argentina.

MYSTERY TOUR

2011-03-20T03:44:00.000-07:00

The crime fiction connections seem to follow me even when we are away from home for a few days.

If I was twenty years younger, and a lot wealthier, I might buy that Swedish retreat simply as a place to enjoy reading Asa Larsson and Johan Theorin

A LILY OF THE FIELD: JOHN LAWTON

2011-03-18T08:45:00.000-07:00

In 1934 Vienna concert pianist Viktor Rosen, a Jew in exile from Germany, teaches Meret Voytek, a ten-year old cello prodigy, but three years later as the Nazi menace approaches Rosen packs up his possessions and leaves for London.

Meret is not Jewish but she sees the effect on her city and her orchestra of the Nazi race policies; later she is arrested as a political prisoner and sent to Auschwitz.

Ironically Viktor Rosen, and Hungarian physicist Karel Szabo, who was working at Cambridge, are sent to the British internment camp on the Isle of Man along with a disparate foreign born group that includes Rod Troy, brother of Inspector Frederick Troy, the main protagonist of the series.

The big man replied in flawless English that he was, "fine with English," and Kornfeld readily deduced that this was yet another long-term resident, doubtless convinced of his own Englishness, caught in the net of a foreign birth, and contradictory truths.

...........

"I'm Rodyon Troy, from Vienna. I think you will find quite a few of us are.

Physicist Karel Szabo is lucky and gets sent to Canada and from there to New Mexico to work on the Manhattan Project.

"I was thinking of a line from the Bhagavad Gita, 'I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' "

Moving on to post war London, the 1948 Olympic host city, the story becomes a police procedural with Frederick Troy investigating, in his inimitable style, a murder on the Northern Line of a Polish refugee.

Every country is pitching in to stop this event looking shabbier than it is. Between you and me it's a threadbare business, cobbled together, and I dearly wish the Mongolians or Mexicans were staging the games not us. We cannot afford it.

The story becomes imbued with large doses of English eccentricity and that considerably lightens the mood. A string of cameo appearances from lanky lunatic squadron leader Angus Pakenham, his spare false leg Ernest, crazy Polish pathologist Kolankiewicz, Jack Wildeve, Guy Burgess, doctor Anna Pakenham in a backless dress, and Quentin Crisp brought a smile to this reader's face.

"And so you find me here. Maudlin pissed, very much alive, chatting to a bloke on his way to a fancy-dress do. Once he gets the fruit hat on he''ll be a dead ringer for Carmen Miranda."

Troy thought better of explaining that Mr Crisp was in his everyday garb and said instead, "And you called me why, exactly?"

A Lily of the Field deals with very serious subjects, the death factory at Auschwitz, the Nazis destruction of the artistic and scientific life of Central Europe, the beginning of the Nuclear Age, the Cold War, spooks, codes, guns and the problems of post war austerity Britain, but it still keeps at its centre the charmingly eccentric Frederick Troy-part Endeavour Morse, part Bulldog Drummond.

This superb novel confirms John Lawton as one of today's finest writers of historical fiction.

The Troy series is definitely one not to be missed if you are interested in the social and political history of twentieth century Britain.

Troy novels in chronological order with links to my reviews:

Second Violin

Riptide [Bluffing Mr Churchill in the USA]

Black Out

A Lily of the Field

Old Flames

Blue Rondo [Flesh Wounds in the USA]

A Little White Death

ICONS OF TV CRIME FICTION

2011-03-14T06:10:00.000-07:00

Watching the superb Danish television series The Killing I wonder if Sarah Lund's 280 euro sweater will join that exclusive group of iconic items that have become part of TV crime fiction folklore.

Columbo's raincoat

Inspector Morse's Jaguar.

Maigret's pipe.

Is The Killing the best TV crime program since The Wire or Spiral?

GUEST APPEARANCES

2011-03-12T12:07:00.000-08:00

Last year I made a guest appearance as a humble policeman in the charming Aly Monroe's atmospheric spy thriller Washington Shadow.

Washington Shadow was nominated for the 2010 CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award, but I think that had a lot more to do with the tension filled story than my name being used.

But now I have been upstaged as another member of our blogging group makes an appearance in John Lawton's historical novel A Lily of the Field, as a character who is a virtuoso violinist, a former child prodigy now in her early twenties, she is tall, dark, and ..........

Early twenties, tall, talented-I am a little jealous.

More about John Lawton.

THE INSPECTOR AND SILENCE: HAKAN NESSER

2011-03-10T06:20:00.001-08:00

'If the shit hits the fan, you can always get in touch with VV instead,' Malijsen explained. 'He's an old colleague of mine, and owes me a favour.'

When during the heat of a sweltering summer an anonymous woman caller telephones Acting Chief of Police Kluuge informing him that a girl is missing from the summer camp of the strange religious sect, The Pure Life, he sends for Chief Inspector Van Veeteren.

Van Veeteren is contemplating retirement, a position in an antiquarian bookshop, and an upcoming holiday in Crete, by chance in the same hotel as a chestnut haired woman from an earlier case. But the 'crackpot' Maljisen did save his life so he travels to Sorbinowo, a lake town deep in the forest, to investigate where he discovers that Oscar Yellinek, the priest who leads the sect, his three adult women disciples, and the twelve young girls attending the summer camp are all very uncooperative.

Then a girl's body is found in the woods, raped and strangled, and Oscar Yellinek has disappeared.

A media frenzy ensues but the women and girls of the Pure Life sect remain obstinately silent.

The Inspector and Silence by Hakan Nesser is virtually a thesis on Van Veeteren's disillusionment with his job. Does he stay in the police seeing more bodies, dealing with more murderers and criminals, or does he retire to a life of books, drinking, eating, playing chess and listening to Faure and Pergolesi?

And if this sounds depressing the story's wit and ironic humour makes it a far less gloomy read than might be supposed from the subject matter.

The cameo appearances of interesting characters such as elderly newspaper editor Andrej Prezebuda, and the wooden legged cop Suijderbeck, as well as the accounts of Van Veeteren's idiosyncratic detection strategies make this a great read.

Red wine, he decided instead. It was only eleven in the morning, but not a minute too soon for a glass and a cigarette.

Hakan Nesser brilliantly captures the slowness, the frustrations, the boredom and false trails that can constitute a murder investigation.

The Van Veeteren books are a very intelligent police procedural series, and I am very much looking forward to the next book in the series out later this year.

'We have nothing to do with the investigation,' Reinhart explained. ' We've come here to track down an ancient detective chief inspector who's disappeared.'

'I'm on his trail,' said Van Veeteren.

Maxine of Petrona's review of The Inspector and Silence at Euro Crime.

My review of The Mind's Eye

My review of Borkmann's Point

My review of The Return and here and here

My review of Woman with Birthmark

ANOTHER BOOKSHOP CLOSES

2011-03-08T06:58:00.000-08:00

Monday was a beautiful sunny day, so we drove up the scenic Exe Valley to Tiverton.

While Mrs Crime Scraps went into charity shops I rushed along to Waterstone's for some bibliotherapy. Imagine my surprise and shock to find it closed.

Next door to the defunct Waterstone's is an Alworths replacement for Woolworth with a 70% sale on, and on the other side Edinburgh Wool with a 60% sale, so I should hardly have been surprised that this small market town is suffering so badly from the recession.

But the fact that the shop was shut was not the only annoyance, as the abandoned bookshop had a notice on the window stating that Waterstone's nearest store was in Barnstaple.

This is of course absolute nonsense, because Exeter [16 miles with two stores] is much closer to Tiverton than Barnstaple [30 miles].

It is sad that an interesting book store has closed, and extremely sad that the Waterstone's management don't know the geography of Devon.

But I was cheered up no end by the display in WH Smith, where as you can see the virulent Stieg Larsson sticker has mutated into a Jo Nesbo and the epidemic has spread to Camilla Lackberg's books.

TRUE HEIR

2011-03-06T04:31:00.000-08:00

I recently treated myself by purchasing brand new copies of the ten Harper Perennial Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo Martin Beck books that I did not have in my possession in order to make a complete set.

They certainly look rather smart on my bookshelf, and the pages are readable unlike the miniscule font in some of my battered 1970 editions. The introductions by some famous authors should be an interesting diversion, although I immediately spotted a error in Henning Mankell's intro to Roseanna, the first book in the series.

'They were influenced and inspired by the American writer Ed McBain.'

Not true says Maj Sjowall in this article by Tom Nolan.

'When we started writing the series we didn't know about Ed McBain.'

My real purpose in these purchases was not the aesthetics of my shelving, but my plan [health willing] to do a marathon ten Martin Beck read later this year. I have read these books out of order, spread out over a period of nearly thirty years, and it is clearly time to go back and re-read them in the intended order.

At the moment I am about half way through Hakan Nesser's The Inspector and Silence, the fifth book in the ten book Van Veeteren series to be translated into English by Laurie Thompon.

With its chess playing, music loving detective, idiosyncratic characters, ironic humour and intelligent thought provoking plots this series is in my opinion rapidly assuming a premier position among police procedurals.

Hakan Nesser looks to me more like the heir to Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo than any of his rivals?

They had spent several hours together on subsequent evenings, and the lasting impression Van Veeteren had of his rescuer was that he was a rather untalented crackpot holding a series-more or less seriously meant-ideas and principles about practically everything.

A post about Hakan Nesser with links to reviews of the four previous books in the Inspector Van Veeteren series.

A MOST PECULIAR MALAYSIAN MURDER: SHAMINI FLINT

2011-03-03T07:43:00.000-08:00

I have just finished reading Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder by Shamini Flint.

Shamini Flint was a lawyer who worked with a prestigious international law firm in Singapore traveling extensively around Asia, before resigning to become a writer, stay-at-home mum, lecturer and environmental campaigner.

A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder is the first in a series in which Inspector Singh, a portly and sometimes grumpy Sikh police officer, travels round Asia solving crimes. The other books in the series are set in Bali [Indonesia], Singapore [Inspector Singh's home country], and Cambodia.

Sometimes blurbs and reviews give a slightly incorrect slant on a book. The review in the Guardian, quoted on Shamini's website begins...

'Down these mean streets a man must waddle'

On the back cover we read Inspector Singh 'travels throughout Asia busting crimes! Stop No 1: Malaysia'

I think this might give some potential readers the impression A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder is merely a light romp. In my opinion it is a topical book, that addresses many of the important cultural differences between Malaysia and Singapore, some of which may become more relevant to Europe in the future.

Singaporeans were always adding to the list of reasons each one kept to hand, in case they met a Malaysian, of why it was so much better on the island than the peninsula. They ranged from law and order to cleanliness, from clean government to good schools, and always ended up on the strength of the Singaporean economy. But in the end, the Malaysian would nod, as if to agree to the points made-then shrug to indicate that they probably wouldn't trade passports, not really.

And if pressed for a reason they would fall back on that old chestnut which seemed to capture everything that was wrong about Singapore-

-but your government bans chewing gum.

Chelsea Liew, a famous Singaporean model, has been arrested for the murder of her abusive and unfaithful ex-husband, Alan Lee, a man whose considerable wealth comes from the timber industry. Inspector Singh is sent by the Singapore authorities to ensure the investigation of his murder has been carried out correctly, and Chelsea Liew gets a fair trial. Chelsea and Alan had been involved in an acrimonious custody battle for their children, but Alan had taken a major step in winning that battle by converting to Islam, and this is regarded as Chelsea's misguided motive for killing him.

If they do that -well, then strictly as a matter of Islamic family law, the children should be brought up as Moslems...and by Moslems.

Inspector Singh believes she is innocent, perhaps he is influenced by her beauty, or by the fact there are a string of other suspects with good motives for murder.

Inspector Singh, with the young Malaysian police man Sergeant Shukor, begin to investigate those suspects, who include, Kian Min and Jasper, Alan's brothers, Marcus, his son, and Sharifah, his teenage mistress. Definitely enough suspects for a string of red herrings, sub plots and false trails to be laid before the dramatic finale.

The author takes us on a guided tour of the complexities of the position of minorities in the Muslim state of Malaysia, while we also learn about the environmentally damaging deforestation of protected areas in Borneo.

But those regular ingredients of the crime novel, greed, sexual jealousy, infidelity, spousal abuse, and revenge play a large part in an interesting first book in what promises to be a series with great scope for varied plots in some exotic locations.

FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES*

2011-03-01T02:31:00.000-08:00

I'm not big on social graces

Think I'll slip on down to the oasis

Oh, I've got friends in low places

[From the 1990 hit Friends in Low Places sung by Garth Brooks, lyrics by Dewayne Blackwell and Earl Bud Lee]

EUROCRIME REVIEW: LUMEN: BEN PASTOR

2011-02-28T11:04:00.000-08:00

I have just noticed that my review of Ben Pastor's Lumen was posted on Euro Crime back on 2 January.

Interestingly 'Ben' Pastor is the pen name of Maria VerBENa Pastor, and even more surprisingly it has taken 11 years for the novel to reach us in the UK, courtesy of the innovative Bitter Lemon Press.

THE TRACK OF SAND: ANDREA CAMILLERI

2011-02-26T03:44:00.000-08:00

UPDATE:

This blog is now dormant and has moved with all the old posts and comments to Crime Scraps Review at:

http://crimescraps2.wordpress.com

Most readers will know by now that I am a Camilleri aficionado enjoying everything he writes. The plots may be uneven and sometimes both Salvo Montalbano and the reader may become confused by events, but the books are always fun to read.

They have four basic ingredients, Salvo Montalbano, great supporting characters, gorgeous food, and beautiful women, [or should that be beautiful food and gorgeous women].

In The Track of the Sand, the twelfth Montalbano book to be superbly translated by Stephen Sartarelli into English, the melancholic detective awakes from a strange dream and finds a dead horse on the seashore outside his house.

"Of a clandestine horse-racing circuit in Vigata."

"And you think this horse was killed as a consequence of something that happened in those circles?"

"What else could it be? All we gotta do now is wait for the consequences of this consequence, which there will surely be."

It turns out that the horse may be one that disappeared from the stables of Saverio Lo Duca, one of the richest men in Sicily, and that it may belong to the stunningly beautiful blond Rachele Esterman.

Complications occur, Montalbano's house is ransacked, and he becomes even more melancholic reminiscing about his childhood, a night-fishing expedition with his uncle, and the taste of a lightly fried sole.

Montalbano also enjoys the company of Rachele, and along the way we discover not all the food in Sicily meets with his approval.

The waiter arrived, again with three plates. This time it was fried mullet.

The unmistakable stink of fish that had been dead for a week wafted into the terrified inspector's nostrils.

Montalbano and Rachele naturally avoid eating this, and few days later eat a antipasto that filled their table with goodies.

Shrimp, jumbo prawns, squid , smoked tuna. fried balls of nunnatu [tiny newborn fish], sea urchins, mussels, clams,............

The Track of the Sand is a fairly typical Montalbano book with a confusing plot, a large cast of characters, sparkling humour, Mafia, obnoxious superiors, culinary descriptions, and enigmatic women. These novels always exhibit the author's deep love of Sicily, and Sicilians.

I can highly recommend this light short read, that just happens to have a hero who enjoys reading Swedish crime fiction.

Its protagonist was a colleague of his, Inspector Martin Beck, whose manner of investigation he found very appealing. When he had finished the novel and turned out the light, it was four o'clock in the morning.

CHRISTCHURCH EARTHQUAKE RELIEF

2011-02-25T03:46:00.000-08:00

Margot at Confessions of a Mystery Novelist is organizing a charity raffle for Christchurch, New Zealand Earthquake Relief.

You can find full details here.

I remember many years ago checking through the Commonwealth War Graves website to find out where my uncle was buried. I came across a small cemetery in Northern France where there were the graves of two British soldiers, and forty four New Zealanders.

This is a worthy cause.

THE ABOMINABLE MAN: SJOWALL & WAHLOO

2011-02-22T06:45:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend I read The Abominable Man by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. This was the tenth and last book in the Martin Beck series that I have read, although it is seventh book they wrote. Usually reading a Scandinavian crime fiction series out of order is due to the eccentric publishing order, but in my case it was simply due to availability of the books in English. I read my first Martin Beck books about thirty years ago, and I might now go back and read all ten again in the correct order; they are that good.

When Chief Inspector Stig Nyman is sliced up with a carbine bayonet while ill in a Stockholm Hospital, Martin Beck and colleague Einar Ronn don't get much sleep as they investigate a long list of those who might have a grudge against the policeman. When Lennart Kollberg, who knew Nyman in the Army, and the abrasive Gunvald Larsson join the hunt for the perpetrator the action moves rapidly on to an exciting and dramatic denouement.

The theme of this book is the abuse of power by the state, in this case police officers, against vulnerable and apparently powerless citizens. When those citizens decide to fight back the authorities are caught off guard. This is a theme very relevant today, and something that has been taken up more recently by other Scandinavian crime writers.

Perhaps the brass realized that in the long run it would prove untenable simply to insist that everyone involved in sociology was actually a communist or some other subversive.

Of course Marxists Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo make you feel sympathetic to the underdog perpetrator, as they did in the previous book in the series Murder at the Savoy. The real villain there was unfeeling corrupt capitalism, in this book it is the 'look after our own' brutal police force backed by all the power of the state.

Martin Beck looked him in the eye and said reluctantly, 'He was a bad policeman.'

"Wrong,' said Kollberg. 'Now listen. Nyman was one hell of a bad policeman. He was a barbaric son of a bitch of the very worst sort.'

Written nearly forty years ago The Abominable Man is a simple uncomplicated short [216 pages] police procedural but the character development and theme are dealt with so cleverly that it is a classic read.

Sjowall and Wahloo were among the very few writers who could blend humour and tragedy so successfully into a concise story, leaving you satisfied but also wanting so much more of their addictive characters.

'If we'd known what society was coming to, we wouldn't have had any children at all. But they've been leading us on all these years.'

'Who?' said Ronn.

'The politicians. The party leaders. The ones we thought were on our side. Just gangsters, all of them.'

BOOKS READ SO FAR 2011

2011-02-19T02:22:00.000-08:00

I have managed to read two books so far this year, and both were good enough to keep my attention, no mean feat in the current circumstances.

The Serpent's Pool by Martin Edwards continues his brilliant Lake District Mystery series. DCI Hannah Scarlett finds that one of her old cold cases has links to the recent horrific death of a wealthy book collector, who happens to be one of boyfriend Marc's best customers. The story has a cast of great characters many of whom are the wealthy incomers, who in every country seem to occupy the most beautiful scenic areas ensuring that the locals cannot afford to live where they were born.

Martin Edwards has successfully blended the history of the Lake District, police politics, book shops, literary festivals and the personal relationships of his characters to give the reader an up to date version of the traditional English police procedural.

I will definitely return to this series to find out if Hannah dumps Marc, and does something about her attraction to Daniel.

My review of The Arsenic Labyrinth by Martin Edwards.

U for Undertow by Sue Grafton is the first book I have read on my Kindle.

I am not sure I am a Kindle person as I love the feel of a book in my hands, but I can definitely see the advantages when faced by a heavy hardback of the neat easy to hold Kindle. The ability to increase the print size was a major factor in my purchasing the Kindle, and as I also had the clever cover with a built in light it was very useful when reading in bed, and not disturbing Mrs Crime Scraps.

The Kindle's ability to allow the reader to place bookmarks and comments, and retrieve them with ease is a boon to reviewers, and I might take more advantage of this in the future.

I must have read Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone novels before, after all A for Alibi was published in 1983, but I cannot remember which book it was among all the alphabetical titles.

In U for Undertow it is 1988 when Michael Sutton consults PI Kinsey Milhone, claiming to have seen two men burying a body behind a school friend's house back in 1967. It was around that time that a young girl was kidnapped and never seen again. Michael believes they were burying the victim but he was only six years old at that time and had a very disturbed childhood; so we can't be certain the event actually occurred. Is he crying wolf?

Sue Grafton alternates Kinsey's 1988 investigation with flashbacks to 1967. She writes from different perspectives, and takes us back into the world of the sexually liberated drug obsessed sixties, while also portraying the lives of her characters in Santa Teresa, a prosperous California town in the 1980s.

Family problems, including Kinsey's own, are the theme of the novel, and the reader is involved with the why and how, rather than who committed the crime. I am very tempted to go back and read some of Kinsey Milhone's earlier cases.

Sue Grafton and Martin Edwards are both excellent storytellers, more important in my mind than writing beautiful prose, and have created two of the most interesting female protagonists in crime fiction.

I should point out that owning a Kindle one does have to be very careful not to purchase book after book, because the ordering process is made dangerously easy. Be warned!

APPRECIATING CAMILLERI [PART TWO]

2011-02-17T12:18:00.000-08:00

Some long running series exhaust their own resources for plots, and lose their freshness and vitality; but Camilleri avoids this by blending contemporary issues, such as illegal immigration, with his Sicilian setting, producing each time a mystery that engages both Montalbano and the reader.

Also a strongly drawn cast of major and minor characters are a sustaining strength of the series. Take for example the women in Salvo Montalbano's life: his girlfriend Livia, who lives in Genoa and is either too far away, or too close for comfort, depending on the situation; Ingrid Sjostrom, the blonde Swedish former racing driver, who Salvo thinks smells of apricots; and Adelina, his housekeeper, who rewards or punishes him with the dishes she leaves for him to eat.

The language that Camilleri uses is an integral part of the humour and entertainment that the books offer to the reader. The character of Catarella, who answers the phone at the police station desk, who mishears everything and mangles his words has become one of the great comic creations in crime fiction. He speaks in his own strange dialect and is the Sicilian equivalent of Mrs Malaprop. Translator Stephen Sartarelli does a fine job with Catarella's dialect, giving it a recognisable pattern of accident, and accent, that is both universal to verbal twits everywhere and somehow uniquely Sicilian as well.

At root though, it is the charm and wit of Salvo Montalbano, the liccu cannaratu [gourmand and glutton] that are the enduring reasons for reading these books. He exhibits an intense irritation with Italy's bureaucratic imbecility and has no patience with either stupid superiors or the new breed of sycophantic policemen.

Montalbano stands in contrast to his world so that the reader can identify with his honesty and his concern for other people. When he is not enjoying his time with Livia, reading, eating gorgeous meals, or enjoying precious solitude and thinking time, he is trying to bring law and order to the mean streets of Sicily.

A review of August Heat

A review of The Wings of the Sphinx

Salvo Montalbano's team

In the next few weeks I will dive into The Track of Sand, the twelfth Montalbano novel to be translated in English which sits very temptingly on my TBR shelf.

APPRECIATING CAMILLERI [PART ONE]

2011-02-16T04:33:00.000-08:00

This is an article I wrote for the Picador website a couple of years ago. They have revamped the website and the article has been archived so I thought I would revive it here.

Andrea Camilleri was born in 1925 in Porto Empedocle, Sicily, and came to writing late in life. He has been a TV producer, drama teacher and theatre director. A committed Marxist, he was a great friend of another superb crime writer, Leonardo Sciascia, and he follows Sciascia's example of packing plenty of hard hitting content into a very few pages. Clive James once commented in The New Yorker that Camilleri could do a character's entire back-story in half a paragraph.

Now living in Rome, Camilleri sets his Montalbano novels in the fictional Sicilian town of Vigata. Since his success, his home town of Porto Empedocle has added Vigata to its name.
Sicily is the island where, as Sciascia said, 'the left hand does not trust the right hand even when they belong to the same man.' The Montalbano books communicate a real sense of place and through reading them we learn about the fabric of Sicilian society, Sicilian food, and also wider Italian history and politics.

Delicious meals and recipes are a major part of the entertainment in the Montalbano books and a cookery website in Illinois, Champaign Taste was inspired to start an event based on recipes from the novels.

Hardly surprising when Camilleri writes a sentence like this:

The pasta with crab was a graceful as a first-rate ballerina, but the stuffed bass in saffron sauce left him breathless, almost frightened. [The Snack Thief]

Salvo Montalbano, unlike his Northern European counterparts, is only really depressed when his housekeeper Adelina has left him nothing in the fridge and the Trattoria San Calagero is closed.

An erudite writer, Camilleri pepers his novels with references to authors such as Leonardo Sciascia, Luigi Pirandello, Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and William Faulkner; as well as philologist NicoloTommaseo, composers Giacomo Puccini and Guissepe Verdi, and to hefty chunks of Italian history. It is important to read translator Stephen Sartarelli's excellent notes to be able to better appreciate and enjoy the texture of the stories as they are woven onto the Sicilian canvas.
[to be continued]

A LITTLE BIT AT A TIME

2011-02-14T06:34:00.000-08:00

One of the very kind messages of condolence we received after Jacob's death said 'better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.'

It reminded me of when Jacob was born and how that was such a stressful time; of course at that stage we did not know then he would be a constant joy, achieve so much and make us proud.

One of my patients an elderly lady with a foreign accent said 'better to have a child like that than never be able to have children', and she drew back her sleeve, and showed me what I realised was a concentration camp tattoo. I had a little cry with her then, and I have cried a lot these last few weeks.

But you have to move on a little bit at a time.

Blogging requires:

1] The ability to concentrate in order to be able read a fair amount of books.

2] Some opinions to express.

3] The motivation and energy to post those opinions.

I am alright with number two but a bit wobbly in the other departments at the moment, in fact at my present reading rate I might complete twelve books this year!

I have been watching a lot of light escapist TV programs such as Masterchef New Zealand, which is brilliant nonsense, a subtle blend of Masterchef, The Apprentice, and Big Brother.

Daytime TV does have some appalling features, such as the constant adverts for ambulance chasing lawyers and loan sharks [Ooops debt management and helpful loan companies] charging interest rates varying from 2,000-4,000% APR. The mob have a lot to learn from these guys.

Movies that I can recommend are:

The Town starring Ben Affleck and based on Chuck Hogan's Prince of Thieves. I think the ending of the film was slightly different from the book which I read in 2006, but it was a very exciting movie about bank robbers and armoured car thieves in Charlestown, Boston.

Winter's Bone set in the Missouri Ozarks and based on the book by Daniel Woodrell. This was a brilliant film with an evocative portrait of a very different poverty stricken America than we usually get dished up by Hollywood. It reminded us of our experience of driving through the beautiful mountains of Eastern Kentucky back in 2003.

Over the next few weeks I will be posting an article I wrote about Andrea Camilleri for Picador* [they have removed it from their website after a couple of years, so I better repost it here], my Best non-Eurocrime reads of 2010, and some thoughts on the Martin Beck books.

I think all those Vintage, Global, and Alphabetical challenges will be a bit beyond me this year, but I am hoping that Crime Scraps will continue even if on less regular basis.

[* at the instigation of Maxine of Petrona]

THE QUIZ ANSWERS: FINAL PART

2011-02-06T03:33:00.000-08:00

8] Who was going to "stop at Marcini's for a little dinner on the way", and what was the connection to Yaakov Liebmann Beer?

I thought this might stump people, but you are a well read intelligent group.

At the end of The Hound of the Baskervilles Holmes asks Watson to go to the opera, and "stop at Marcini's for a little dinner on the way". The opera they are going to see is Les Hugenots by Giacomo Meyerbeer, whose real name was Yaakov Liebmann Beer.

9] A colourful British regiment should give you firstly a few clues that will lead you to cinema versions of a 1944 crime novel, and a fictional scourge of the French Revolution, on to a 1942 war movie and a Pulitzer Prize winning novel?

If you have found all the links you should have four matching pairs.

I admit this question developed a mind of its own and from a simple germ of an idea grew and grew into an ever more complex riddle. But one of the best efforts worked out that the 1944 crime novel was Green for Danger by Christianna Brand, and that obviously the fictional scourge of the French Revolution was The Scarlet Pimpernel.

But then went a bit off the track.

The important words were 'cinema versions' and the clue 'firstly a few'.

Let us start with the cinema version of The Scarlet Pimpernel, which starred Leslie Howard as Sir Percy Blakeney.

Leslie Howard also starred in a 1942 war movie called 'First of the Few' when he played the part of R.J.Mitchell, designer of the Spitfire.

I am sure you see where we are going now.

One of Leslie Howard's most famous roles was as Ashley Wilkes, in Gone With the Wind, based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Margaret Mitchell.

The 1946 cinema version of Green for Danger starred another British actor Trevor Howard.

There is a very famous British regiment called the Green Howards.

So we have, the Green Howards and Green for Danger, Leslie Howard and Trevor Howard, R.J.Mitchell and Margaret Mitchell, and the Scarlet Pimpernel and Scarlett O'Hara.

THE QUIZ ANSWERS: PART TWO

2011-02-03T13:34:00.000-08:00

6] What is the link between:

a) Max Mallowan and 10 Rillington Place

The name Christie is the link. Sir Max Mallowan was Agatha Christie's second husband, and 10 Rillington Place was the scene of a probable miscarriage of justice involving serial killer John Reginald Christie.

b) Betty Joan Perske's first husband, and a dealer in ship's supplies.

Chandler is the link. A dealer in ship's supplies is a chandler; Betty Joan Perske's screen name was Lauren Bacall, and her husband Humphrey Bogart famously played Raymond Chandler's private detective Philip Marlowe in the 1946 movie The Big Sleep.

c) A place of worship and a Celtic people.

Think of places of worship; church, synagogue, mosque? Temple!

South African born Aussie author Peter Temple's private detective is called Jack Irish.

7] How are transport to a music festival, biblical daughters, a lengthy conundrum and a path through trees, all linked to a Maltese Jew?

This question had people stumped. It was even suggested that the Maltese Jew was Peter Lorre, who was in fact born in Austria -Hungary [in present day Slovakia].

It was much more straightforward than that.

Transport to a music festival? Glastonbury, no Woodstock. Transport. Last Bus to Woodstock.

A path through trees, or The Way Through the Woods?

A lengthy conundrum? A conundrum perhaps a riddle. Lengthy? The Riddle of the Third Mile.

Biblical daughters? The Daughters of Cain.

They are all titles of Colin Dexter's books.

The connection with a Maltese Jew is Marlowe's play The Jew of Malta from which comes the quote The Wench is Dead, used as the title of another of Dexter's superb Morse books.

[to be continued, two more answers to come, one elementary, and one a creation of a mind with too many useless facts spinning round in it.]

THE QUIZ ANSWERS: PART ONE

2011-02-02T09:09:00.000-08:00

I will start back by giving you the first few answers to the Winter Quirky Quiz.

You can see the full list of questions here.

1] The photos are of course two time winner of the Best Swedish Crime Novel Inger Frimansson, and the wonderful Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.

2] What is the cinematic link between Patricia Highsmith, and the British band Coldplay?

I did not want the first result of googling this [Jamie Thraves and the Cry of the Owl] but the much better known star from the movie of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley, Gwyneth Paltrow, who is married to Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin, who comes from Exeter.

3] Who was "inquisitive, impetuous, alert, skeptical, pertinacious and resourceful"?

Archie Goodwin, according to supersleuth, gourmet and orchid collector Nero Wolfe.

4] Which crime fiction books end with the words:

a) X as in Marx.

This could only be from those well known Marxists Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, and comes from The Terrorists, the tenth and last Martin Beck book.

b) "...never retired from work and came to grow vegetable marrows."

The murderer's lament at the end of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie.

5] Which crime fiction writer lost a name, the art of working together and a burial place when he crossed the Atlantic?

This was the first slightly tricky question. Here is how to tackle it.

The art of working together is collaboration= collaborator?

A burial place is a grave.

Who wrote books with 'collaborator' and 'grave' in the titles and those titles were changed?

The answer is:

Matt Beynon Rees in the USA became Matt Rees in the UK. The Collaborator of Bethlehem in the USA became The Bethlehem Murders in the UK, and A Grave in Gaza in the USA became The Saladin Murders in the UK.

[to be continued]

A STAR

2011-02-01T05:55:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone for the cards, letters and emails expressing condolences and sympathy.

Jacob was very special to us and to all his many friends. The feeling of loss and the pain is indescribable.

It may seem strange but Jacob seemed a lot of the time to be looking after our family rather than the other way round. Jacob's homespun philosophy cut through the humbug and hypocrisy that mars relationships between supposedly intelligent people, and he got to the guts of problems. Jacob made himself an independent life as a musician, gardener, cleaner, cafe/bar worker, farm worker, traveller [New York, France, Spain, Romania and Ireland] and Star Trek fan. He made us proud.

In a few days I will begin posting the answers to the Winter Quirky Quiz, and then see how I feel about continuing to blog.

Margot's wonderful tribute to Jacob at Confessions of a Mystery Novelist

Jacob at The Honeytones

WINTER QUIZ REMINDER

2010-12-30T06:46:00.000-08:00

You have only a few days more to enter the 2010 Winter Quirky Quiz.

See the questions here and send your answers to thbear08@googlemail.com by midnight 4 January 2011 GMT.

Good Luck.

THE POWER OF THE DOG: DON WINSLOW

2010-12-30T04:04:00.000-08:00

Update: This blog is now dormant and has moved to Crime Scraps Review where you can read all the old posts plus lots of new material.

http://crimescraps2.wordpress.com

I read The Power of the Dog for three reasons:

1] It had been named as one of the ten best crime fiction books of the decade by The Times.

2] Don Winslow is a guest at Bristol's Crime Fest in May 2011, and naturally I felt I should read at least one of his books.

3] I was snowed in, and I felt the tightly packed 500 plus pages would snugly fill up the rest of 2010.

The plot deals with an almost thirty year battle between various Mexican drug gangs, and DEA agent Art Keller. The book could be considered faction as real life events [such as the assassination of Cardinal Posadas Ocampo at Guadaljara International Airport in 1993] are used as a basis for a complex story of extreme violence and constant betrayal.

The Independent on Sunday blurbled 'This is Winslow's masterpiece....Superb!'

While an Amazon reviewer stated it was 'just a fun gangsters book for the masses'.

Why was I a bit disappointed with a novel that apparently took six years of research to write?

Firstly I constantly got a feeling of deja vue as I was reading. it seemed like a composite of The Godfather, Good Fellas, Clear and Present Danger, All the Pretty Horses, and No Country for Old Men; and as I got further into the book previous events in the book seem to be repeated over and over again. Real life perhaps, as betrayal followed betrayal, but repetitious and overwhelming.

Then the characters never go beyond the shallow stereotypes one sees in gangster movies, there are Mexican killers, Mafia killers, Ex Vietnam CIA American killers and Irish killers:

Callan- the Irish-American stone cold killer who tells his girl friend, Siobhan, he is going straight and hides a Swedish Model 45 Garl Gustaf 9-mm submachine gun under the bed. [Shouldn't that be Carl Gustav]. Siobhan finds it doing the dusting.

Nora- the good hearted whore, who happens to meet Archbishop Parada in the ruins of Mexico City after the 1985 earthquake and decides to use her position, and his to do some good.

This relationship provides almost the only faint glimpse of humanity and humour in the book.

He smiles again, and nods, and says, " I'm going to wager that you're a very successful call girl."

"I am," Nora says. "I'll bet you're a very successful archbishop."

"As a matter of fact. I'm thinking of quitting."

"Why?"

"I'm not sure I believe anymore."

Nora shrugs and says, "Fake it."

"Fake it?"

"It's easy," she says. "I do it all the time."

When Archbishop Parada embraces liberation theology you know he will go the way of Big Paulie.

The plot is a blur of conflicts and deals between various ruthless government agencies, the Barrera organization [Tio Miguel Angel, and brothers Adnan and Raul], and another equally violent drug lord Guero Mendez. The action whizzes around from Mexico, to New York [you know a character named Big Paulie is bound to be hit], El Salvador, Honduras, and Hong Kong. You start to believe that all Mexican police agencies from federales to state cops are in the pay of the drug cartels, and all Mexican Presidents!

And as Art's thirty year struggle to bring down the Barreras goes on and on and on.....surely an editor could have tightened the plot down to 350 pages? With almost ever major character so flawed it is difficult to feel any sympathy for them or interest in their fate. Perhaps that is why the book was such a quick read despite its length.

You wonder if the tragedy going on in Mexico is the real responsibility of the drug traffickers, the CIA, the Sandinistas, the Vatican, Opus Dei, the Mafia, the PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party], Right Wing Death Squads, Left Wing Death Squads, NAFTA, or George Walker Herbert Bush.

Is there a solution? If drugs were legalized and supplied by the government tomorrow, would the gangs carry on dealing in people, women and children for sex, body parts, anything people will pay for?

You have to lack human compassion to deal in drugs, and the violence perpetrated by the characters in this book is both horrific and constant. There may be other attendees at Crime Fest, most of whom are female, who may not be able to deal with this level of violence, and the macho attitudes towards women. So be warned if you want to read a Don Winslow book before Crime Fest, and are of a cosy disposition avoid The Power of the Dog.

HOUSEBOUND

2010-12-29T07:15:00.000-08:00

Heavy snow and slippery ice followed by a case of "man flu" has meant that I have been housebound for two weeks! I have had my flu jab this year, but whatever it was that has been passed on to me by one of the children has knocked me sideways.

After a lovely family Christmas Eve get together, late the following day I started to feel awful and am still lacking in energy, although today I am feeling a smidgen better.

Therefore some of the items I was going to discuss at length will now wait until next year, or go by default.

During this period on television I watched:

David Suchet in a dark version of Murder on the Orient Express. I am one of those people who don't like television productions to deviate from the plot of the book, but watching David Suchet's performance as Poirot is always a pleasure.

Rolf Lassgard, as Kurt Wallander, in a rather long winded two part adaptation of Henning Mankell's Firewall.

Rolf Lassgard, as Wallander, in the superbly acted episode, One Step Behind. I have to admit that Lassgard's Wallander has grown on me, and it does help that he has such strong support from the rest of the cast. I can well understand how those who saw Lassgard's performance first regard him as the definitive Kurt Wallander.

A BBC4 program on Italian Noir that was interesting but perhaps had too much commentary from experts, and not enough comment by the authors themselves. I hope this program encouraged readers to try the novels of Andrea Camilleri, Carlo Lucarelli Massimo Carlotto, and Leonardo Sciascia [1921-1989] all of whose work I have reviewed on Crime Scraps.

Romanzo Criminale, the film mentioned on the program, based on the novel by Giancarlo De Cataldo, is one of the best crime movies I have seen, and definitely something not to be missed if it appears on television.

The message of this program was that Italian crime writers set their plots in the real world where because of circumstances there might not be punishment for a crime, even when the police can identify the perpetrator. I don't think there was quite enough emphasis on the sometimes competing, and sometimes cooperating, movements that have had so much influence on life in Italy, and especially on Sicily; Communism, Fascism, Catholicism, and Mafia.

Italian Noir novels are usually of a manageable length and get their message across with a little subtlety, and even a degree of obliqueness.

Subtlety is not a word you could associate under any circumstances with the 500 page blockbuster, The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow.

I finished reading this book yesterday, and will produce a review in a few days if I am feeling well enough.

One reviewer on Amazon.com said he wanted to put the book down, and have a long hot shower, a sentiment with which I concurred.

I sometimes wonder if I am the only person who reads these books from cover to cover. It is not masochism, but my naturally optimistic nature, because I simply cannot believe that the story is not going to improve.

This was not quoted in the novel, but I was surprised it was not:

'Poor Mexico, so far from God, and so close to the United States' attributed to Mexican President Porfiro Diaz.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

2010-12-24T03:32:00.000-08:00

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas!

DAVID SUCHET ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

2010-12-23T02:17:00.000-08:00

I watched David Suchet take a trip on the Orient Express last night.

This program was screened in the USA back in July, but we have had to wait until now because it is an appetizer for the Murder on the Orient Express film starring David Suchet to be screened by ITV1 at 9.00 p.m. on Christmas Day.

Some of the scenery as the train travelled south from Calais to Paris, Innsbruck and Venice, and then back north to Prague was magnificent. The service seemed impeccable and the food on the train looked superb. The 1920s luxury of the carriages appeared a tempting holiday option for someone approaching important milestones in their life, but having investigated the cost and the fact that the train accommodation lacks en suite facilities I have decided that perhaps this is not for me.

But it was an absolutely fascinating program, and David Suchet, was a charming host, who frequently bubbled over with genuine enthusiasm during the trip. Especially when they let him drive the train!

There have been some brilliant depictions of fictional detectives over the past 30 years on British television, for instance as John Thaw as Morse, Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes, and Warren Clarke as Andy Dalziel, but David Suchet actually becomes Hercule Poirot.

As my late mother- in- law would say "I like a good murder, when is Piro on."

REVIEW OF 2010: COUNTRIES

2010-12-22T02:59:00.000-08:00

Of the fifty eight books I read in 2010 a total of fifteen were set in Nordic Countries with a hefty nine from Sweden.

UK 10

Sweden 9

USA 6

Italy 4

Germany 3

Norway 3

REVIEW OF 2010: SPLITS

2010-12-22T02:35:00.000-08:00

In 2010 I read 58 books.

Twenty seven were translated into English, and thirty one were originally in English.

Thirty eight and a half were written by male authors and nineteen and one half by female authors. That odd half author is a result of reading Murder at the Savoy by the husband and wife combination of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.

NORDIC NOIR ON BBC4

2010-12-21T04:19:00.000-08:00

Last night we watched Nordic Noir: The Story of Scandinavian Crime Fiction on BBC4.

We really enjoyed one of the most intelligent discussions about crime fiction, and its ability to address the problems of society that I have seen on television. A lot more than the Stieg Larsson phenomenon was covered, and it even got Mrs Crime Scraps interested. When it comes to crime fiction usually Mrs C is a one man girl, and that man is Tony Hillerman, but this program was great marketing for several superb authors.

There were thoughtful contributions from authors Maj Sjowall, Hakan Nesser, Jo Nesbo, Karin Fossum, and actor Krister Henriksson.

Henriksson spoke with emotion about the lovely actress Johanna Sallstrom, and convinced me that British actors should not attempt to play introspective Swedes such as Kurt Wallander.

It is like a Swede playing Lord Peter Wimsey.

Hakan Nesser was amusing, as he was at Crime Fest 2009, but he also spoke about the traumatic effect the shooting of Olaf Palme had on the Swedish people. Their 9/11 he called it.

Maj Sjowall spoke about her pleasure at working with Per Wahloo in the evenings on the ten books that make up the story of a crime from 1965-1975.

Jo Nesbo made interesting comments on the effect sudden wealth had on the social fabric of Norway.

Stieg Larsson was praised as a great campaigning journalist, and the Pippi Longstocking genesis of the character of Lisbeth Salander was analyzed.

And of course Krister Henriksson and the other contributors discussed Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander at length.

There were shots of dramatic Icelandic scenery, and the iconic clip of Arnaldur Indridason's Erlendur tucking into his sheep's head in the film Jar City.

Hopefully next week's Italian Noir program might have some more enticing meals.

Incidentally was Karin Fossum [who was charming at Crime Fest 2008] telling us that she wanted the reader to care about her victims, and the isolated communities they live in that captured Mrs Crime Scraps interest.

My only criticism of the program was that new stars Johan Theorin, and Anders Roslund/ Borge Hellstrom, and leading sellers Liza Marklund and Camilla Lackberg, were not mentioned.

REVIEW OF 2010: FIRST TIME AUTHORS TO ME

2010-12-19T04:31:00.000-08:00

I am well and truly grounded as the roads and pavements are still covered with snow and ice.

Those of us old enough to remember the English winter of 1962-1963 realise this could go on for several months even until March!

It could mean more reading time?

I only managed to read 58* crime fiction books this year for several reasons:

1] My accident and subsequent operation in March meant that I was unable to concentrate for several weeks.

2] Some of those 58 books were 500 page doorstops, for instance Leif G.W. Persson's Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End.

3] I also read some lengthy, but interesting history books.

4] More family activity.

5] I spent a lot of time reading all the excellent blogs linking in to the Friend Feed Forum.

6] Too much time watching television!

[*At the moment I have started reading another particularly thick 500 page book The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow, which I think might take me through to the end of the year.]

That is enough excuses. The authors new to me that I did I manage to read were:

Petros Markaris**- Che Committed Suicide

Martin Edwards**- The Arsenic Labyrinth

Qiu Xiaolong*- Death of a Red Heroine

Jonathan Valin- Extenuating Cirunstances

David Zelsterman*- Pariah

Deon Meyer**- Blood Safari and Thirteen Hours

Craig Nova*- The Informer

Ernesto Mallo**- Needle in a Haystack

Louise Penny- The Brutal Telling

Leah Giarrantano*- Vodka Doesn't Freeze

Paul Cleave- Cemetery Lake

Carl Hiaasen**- Skinny Dip

Andrea Maria Schenkel*- Bunker

Teresa Solana**- A Not So Perfect Crime

Barbara Baraldi- The Girl with the Crystal Eyes

Jan Costin Wagner**- Silence

Val McDermid**- Trick in the Dark

Lenny Kleinfeld**- Shooters and Chasers

Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom**- Three Seconds

Leif G.W. Persson**- Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End

Domingo Villar**- Water Blue Eyes

Ben Pastor*- Lumen

Gunnar Staalesen*- The Writing on the Wall

Don Winsow **- The Power of the Dog

I have given two asterisks to those authors I definitely plan to read again, and one asterisk to those I might read possibly again.

You can read more about bloggers 'First Time Authors' at:

Detectives Beyond Borders, Reactions to Reading, The Game's Afoot, Petrona, Eurocrime, To Be Read and The View from the Blue House.

THE WRITING ON THE WALL: GUNNAR STAALESEN

2010-12-17T05:57:00.000-08:00

Private Detective Varg Veum is hired by Sidsel Skagestol, who is separated from her husband, to try and find her teenage daughter Torild, who has disappeared.

Varg Veum begins by questioning Torild's friends and their parents, but his investigations will lead him through Bergen's underworld where young women are bought and sold; and the case becomes connected to the discovery of the body of a seventy year old judge dressed in women's underwear in one of the town's better hotels.

Gunnar Staalesen has twice won Norway's top crime fiction prize, the Golden Pistol, and published the first book in the long running Varg Veum series in 1977. The Writing on the Wall, translated by Hal Sutcliffe, dates from 1995 and is the 11th book in the series.

Varg Veum is a pun on the expression in Norwegian, varg i veum which means persona non grata or outlaw. Varg means wolf or culprit. Varg Veum was a social worker specializing in child care until he became disillusioned with the hopeless life situations of some of the children, and left the service to become a private detective.

I did find this book a little bit ponderous and predictable, while the first person narrative limited both the action and possible plot development. That said it was a solid private eye novel with a subject matter, the exploitation of young teenage girls, that possibly needed bringing to public attention in conservative Norway back in 1995. The author obviously feels strongly about his subject matter, but attempts to lighten the mood with descriptive passages that take you to winter in Norway, and are in stark contrast to the harsh reality of the plot.

Around Lille Lungegard Lake the flock of ducks had thinned out considerably. Only the omnivorous gulls tottered about on the half melted ice, pecking around one of the holes near the edge in the hope of finding something to eat.

However the character of Varg Veum came over to me as a bit one dimensional, and there was a jerkiness in the narrative with incidents appearing to be added on to the basic plot. But then perhaps I have become too reliant on plot pyrotechnics and outlandish characters for excitement to fully appreciate a solid private eye story.

Of course reading the eleventh book in a series first is not the best introduction to a character, but the out of order publishing of Scandinavian authors seems almost unavoidable.

'In other words, the power apparatus! The people who occupy positions of power in society at large also have to be in a position of power when they buy sex too. They have to feel secure and feel they're on top, literally, so they won't be challenged just where they feel most vulnerable, if you get my drift.'

I will possibly try another Varg Veum book, and see if the character grows on me, because his fifteen year old social commentary is perhaps even more relevant to our society today.

'I believe you when you -! You sound just as daft as those social freaks in Child Welfare and places! You're all just as daft, the whole lot of you! You lot don't have a fucking clue about-anything-about what it's like to be young nowadays...'

Suddenly there were tears in her eyes.

WALLANDER, POIROT AND MONTALBANO

2010-12-15T07:25:00.000-08:00

We may be facing another burst of arctic weather but this weekend we have on British television a veritable cornucopia of crime fiction programs to keep us warm.

On Saturday 18 December at 9.00pm on BBC4 we have another episode of Wallander starring Rolf Lassgard. This is the two parter Firewall which is concluded at 10.00pm Monday 20 December.

Preceding this Swedish Wallander at 9.00pm is a program about the success of Nordic Noir, narrated by Mariella Frostrup [the presenter of The Book Show on Sky Arts 1].

On Sunday 26 December at 9.00pm there is another Rolf Lassgard Wallander, One Step Behind.

On Monday 27 December at 9.30pm a program on Italian Noir, and a repeated episode [from two years ago] of Inspector Montalbano program that I can recommend for among other things a brilliant portrayal of Catarella.

All these programs are on BBC4.

But not to be outdone ITV1 at 9.00pm on Sunday 19 December have the program 'David Suchet [the definitive Hercule Poirot] on the Orient Express'. This is a trailer for their 9.00pm Christmas Day production of David Suchet as Poirot in Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express.

A lot to enjoy, and if you do want to talk to your relatives over the holiday period you can always record these programs to watch later.

WINTER QUIZ REMINDER

2010-12-14T01:44:00.000-08:00

Only three weeks to go to the 4 January 2011 deadline for entries to the Winter Quirky Quiz, see the questions here.

Book prizes to be won.

SWEDISH WALLANDER: ROLF LASSGARD

2010-12-13T03:18:00.001-08:00

UPDATE:

This blog is now dormant. You can read all my old posts along with the new stuff at Crime Scraps Review

http://crimescraps2.wordpress.com

On Saturday night BBC4 showed The Man Who Smiled [2003] starring Rolf Lassgard as Henning Mankell's detective Kurt Wallander.

This was the sixth of nine films produced by SVT [Sveriges Television] between 1994 and 2007 which all starred Rolf Lassgard. The films were scripted from the actual novels rather than based on new stories using Mankell's characters.

Lawyer Sten Tortensson contacts his old friend Wallander, because he believes the death of his father Gustav, also a lawyer, in a car crash was not an accident. Wallander is busy thinking about his own problems, which involve a mistake made on a work trip to Stockholm that will come back to haunt him.

But when Sten Torstensson is found shot through the eyes Wallander's team begin to investigate the lawyer's clients. Gustav worked for Skane's most popular man millionaire philanthropist Alfred Harderberg, who is of course too good to be true.

Rolf Lassberg's Kurt Wallander is the third interpretation of the character we have seen on British TV in the past couple of years; following the Kenneth Branagh and Krister Henriksson versions. There is bound to be a lot of discussion over the merits of the actor's performances and the respective quality of the productions.

My problem in deciding which I prefer is that I have only read five of the Wallander books [Before The Frost, Faceless Killers, Sidetracked, One Step Behind and The Fifth Woman] and that was about eight years ago.

If I had watched the Rolf Lassgard first I think he would be closer to my memory of the character, although with shorter hair. While I enjoyed Krister Henriksson in the part on the evidence of this one film, and taking into account my failing memory, Rolf Lassgard is more like the introspective depressing Wallander of the books.

The Man Who Smiled's excellent cinematography showed off the beautiful scenery around Ystad, and I thought the production was superior to the equivalent BBC Kenneth Branagh version.

Lassgard was aided by fine supporting performances from Kerstin Andersson as Wallander's boss Lisa Holgersson, Christer Faust as Svedberg, and the gorgeous Marie Richardson as Maja Thysell, Wallander's colleague and girlfriend. The part of Alfred Hardeberg was played by Claes Mansson, who is one of Sweden's best known comedians.

I am looking forward to next week's episode, Firewall, a two parter from 2006, which is scheduled for Saturday 18 December, and I think Monday 20 December.

A question: Why don't they show the nine films in order starting with Faceless Killers from 1994?

HEROES AND FOOLS

2010-12-12T06:03:00.000-08:00

On occasions a photo can say a lot more than pages of prose. On the right Cpl Ricky Ferguson MC gravely injured in Afghanistan, a true hero.

On the left the stupid son of a wealthy pop star who has issued an apology for defacing the Cenotaph. He now says he is ashamed, or was it his parent's public relations firm that said that. Frankly it is an apology that needs to be made in person preferably in court.

It is not entirely young Gilmour's fault that he behaved so foolishly, because he has been failed by both his upbringing and his expensive education.

A history student at Cambridge should at least have the common sense to look around the corner to read the sign on the monument. A history student should know what happens when mob rule takes over the streets.

Unfortunately the constant denigration by the glitterati of our history and the sacrifices made for our freedoms have left too many of our young people with a warped view of society and the world.

One could say that there are not enough proper graduate level jobs in the country, so why should the tax payer artificially fund so called vocational courses that cannot cannot possibly provide employment. It is a fraud perpetrated on the young people to say that everyone who takes a degree in Football Studies, or Food Styling with Photography, or Television Outside Broadcast [production operations], is going to be able to gain employment in those specialities.

I wonder if some courses are more about providing jobs for the lecturers than a viable career for the students.

One thing I am certain of is that the unacceptable violence, and the desecration of the Cenotaph, on Saturday have damaged any case against the rise in the tuition fees.

WATCHING CRIME FICTION ON TV

2010-12-10T06:49:00.000-08:00

The last few weeks I have watched a couple of DVDs of the subtitled episodes of Beck, a Swedish series based on the characters created by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo starring Peter Haber as Martin Beck, and Mikael Persbrandt as Gunvald Larsson.

They were fine viewing mainly because I got the impression the actors had read the books from cover to cover, and then were determined to stick to those original characters rather than create their own version. Many thanks to the kind person who brought them back from Sweden.

There have also been some really good crime fiction series on British TV, and the cable channels which show some of the best from past years.

I watched Sherlock, Foyle's War, Morse, Garrow's Law, and on Sky 1 David Morrisey in Thorne: Sleepyhead and Scaredycat, based on Mark Billingham's books.

I have only read one Tom Thorne book, and these TV programs were a bit too graphic for me.

Sherlock was superb fun, with Bernard Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, an eccentric but believable modern day Holmes and Watson.

Garrow's Law is an interesting historical drama series based on the real life cases of the 18th century lawyer William Garrow.

However my personal favourites are Morse, with John Thaw's definitive performance as Morse and the wonderful Oxford scenery, and Foyle's War, with Michael Kitchen's superb portrayal of the thoughtful wartime detective.

Foyle's War is beautifully acted, and so evocative of the time exhibiting all the restrained attitudes and accents of that period.

I could listen to Honeysuckle Weekes as Samantha Stewart all day long.

But when I have ventured away from wartime Hastings, and the dreaming spires of Oxford, the one US series that has gripped me is The Good Wife, with the winning combination of attractive women, the law, and political intrigue.

And now there is only a day to wait for Rolf Lassgard's Wallander on BBC4 at 9.30 pm.

GETTING IT WRONG

2010-12-08T03:41:00.000-08:00

Most of the books I read I get on recommendation from other bloggers, and these I almost always enjoy. The Friend Feed Crime and Mystery Forum know their onions.

But sometimes I ask for books from Karen at Euro Crime based not on her recommendation, but on my interpretation of the publishers blurb, and it is here that occasionally I run into trouble. So I was very interested to see on Monday Dorte at DJS Krimiblog posting about books she did not finish, and asking what made you give up on a book.

This subject was expanded on by Rob at The View from the Blue House yesterday with an excellent ten point list of failings that led to a DNF.

I am a bit stubborn in that if I have started a book I almost always finish it, especially if it is one of those received from Karen at Euro Crime. I have felt obligated to finish and review every book, although this has caused problems for poor Karen in the past. I have felt guilty about this as the problems have been entirely my fault.

She has wisely decided not to publish one negative review [book A]; and I decided not to review another book [book B] as in my opinion it qualified on at least four of Rob's ten points for a DNF.

I had struggled through to the end of book B as I thought it had to improve at some point, but I was gravely disappointed.

Book B was a perfect example of two of Rob's points:

'A writing style that is all style and no substance-nice prose is good, great story is better' and 'Too much sermonising and/or pretentiousness'.

I shall be most interested in other reviews of Book A [the paperback is out shortly] because it was a case of an author, who I had previously read and enjoyed, really disappointing me with a story that totally lacked credibility.

I very nearly chucked book A in the bin when after two hundred pages the leading character decided to whiz down to his local Gestapo HQ to discuss his girl friend's membership of an anti-Nazi resistance group; and then try to make a deal with those brutes. I would suggest that by 1942 most people in Nazi Germany had worked out that whoever you were you stayed as far away as possible from the Gestapo, and SS, based on events such as the Night of the Long Knives [June 1934] when the Nazis slaughtered large numbers of their 'friends', including Hitler's predecessor as Chancellor General von Schleicher, his wife, and Gregor Strasser, father of Hitler's godchildren.

There were other glaring examples of what Rob mentions as 'Lack of credibility and realism in what purports to be realistic fiction.' Perhaps more of those another time.

In future I won't be wasting time with books that don't grab me and are too much like hard work. There may be a few more DNFs or WNRs [will not reviews].

AUSSIE AUTHOR CHALLENGE 2011

2010-12-07T13:26:00.000-08:00

Part of this Aussie Author Challenge is not to mention the cricket at all, even a little bit. At Adelaide England won by an innings and ....Oops.

The challenge is being hosted by Joanne at Book Lover Book Reviews where you can read the rules.

I am tackling this at the Tourist level: read three books by three different Aussie authors.

I have already selected the three books for this challenge:

Gunshot Road: Adrian Hyland

Deep Water: Peter Corris -joint winner of the 2009 Ned Kelly

Wyatt: Garry Disher-winner of the 2010 Ned Kelly

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET 2011

2010-12-07T13:07:00.000-08:00

Another day, another challenge.

Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise is organizing the 2011 Crime Fiction Alphabet Meme.

You can read the rules here.

This time I am going to be strict with myself and stick to surnames for the titles of my posts.

I may review a book by that author, or just write a short bio, or perhaps a item concerning some aspect of the author's life.

But I will be trying to avoid too many of the subjects I used last year, although some of the posts may double up with other challenges, or refer back to older posts.

My 2009-2010 Crime Fiction Alphabet roundup post.

VINTAGE MYSTERY READING CHALLENGE

2010-12-06T07:25:00.000-08:00

This is the time of year when the 2011 reading challenges come thick and fast. I have already committed to Dorte's Global Reading Challenge, and now I cannot resist the chance to dive into some of the books on my TBR shelf for the 2011 Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge hosted by Bev at My Reader's Block. [all the rules are there]

The books to be included as vintage have to date from before 1960!

Obviously younger bloggers have a different perspective on what is a vintage mystery.

With my other commitments, I am only entering this one at the basic level-'In a Murderous Mood', which involves reading 4-6 books.

I have lined up the following seven books from some of the greatest crime writers of all time, and will select four [or possible six] to read during the year.

Before the Fact [1932] Francis Iles

The League of Frightened Gentlemen [1935] Rex Stout

Peril at End House [1932] Agatha Christie

And Then There Were None [1939] Agatha Christie

Green for Danger [1944] Christianna Brand

The Case of the Footloose-Doll [1958] Erle Stanley Gardner

The Eighth Circle [1958] Stanley Ellin

POISONVILLE: MASSIMO CARLOTTO & MARCO VIDETA

2010-12-05T02:43:00.000-08:00

Italian noir writer Massimo Carlotto has teamed up with screenwriter Marco Videtta to give us a bleak tale of corruption in the industrialized north east of Italy. The book is translated by Antony Shugaar, and the original title Nordest has been given a neat twist to the English Poisonville, which is apt on several levels.

The book is partly narrated by Francesco Vitelin, a rich young lawyer from one of the two families that run everything, including the justice system, in the region, and partly by a narrator who follows various other characters. Francesco will be taken into his father Antonio's very successful firm on his marriage to the beautiful lawyer Giovanna, who already works for Vitelin senior.

Francesco's future is assured as his father's firm represent the Torrefranchi Foundation, the local consortium which controls industry in the region.

Then just before their wedding Giovanna is murdered, and the superficial nature of everything around him is exposed. There are various sub plots scattered through the narrative, Giovanna's previous lover Filippo is deranged, and there is a gang of hoodlums carrying out a series of home invasion robberies, but most readers will easily guess the identity of the murderer. But this does not reduce the novel's impact. As Francesco, along with Giovanna's friend Carla, and one honest policeman begin to investigate they uncover other crimes and murders, that were covered up to ensure profit and position.

Small businessmen who had become arrogant with rivers of cash they had made in the eighties and nineties, and who were now wetting their pants at the prospect of being swept away by their hungry and ambitious Chinese rivals.

......

And the anger was growing rapidly because they couldn't blame the usual crowd of thieves running the government, now that the government was being run by people just like them-irate businessmen and media tycoons.

Poisonville was written in 2005 and deals with many of the major problems that face Western Europe; corporations moving factories to the non-regulated low labour cost countries of the East, illegal toxic waste disposal, the inability to control immigration, an irresponsible frenetic media and the treatment of small business by the banking system.

"Zuglio, that bastard son of a bitch," he snarled. "He was the bank officer who destroyed my business. I had a contract to manufacture furniture for a chain of hotels in Turkey. It was two solid years of production, but he cut off my line of credit, out of the blue, and demanded all the money back. It was a knockout blow."

You cannot really feel sympathy for any of the novel's characters who look down on ordinary workers from their position in society, even if like the Hermes clad Contessa Selvaggia they were not born into privilege. The message is far more important than the messengers in this dark factional satire.

Il Mattino states that Poisonville is a black fable that exposes that dark side of the wealth that has been generated over the last few decades.

La Republica tells us the novel is about Corruption. Cynicism. Illegality. Collusion.

In Poisonville the wealth makers have no loyalty to anything except profit, and locality, region, country, and even family mean nothing to them.

Is this the reality behind globalization, and the European Union?

Poisonville is another brilliant example of how crime fiction can tackle the problems, and attitudes, that non-fiction writers may be nervous of tackling.

"We're packing our bags," he added, after biting into a pastry. We're all heading for Romania. Fuck the Chinese, and fuck the tax collectors."

"Will you still be dealing in waste?"

.............

"What about the others?"

He shrugged. "A lot of them are third -world immigrants, and they can just go back home, because we're sick and tired of blacks and Moroccans.

You can read other reviews of Poisonville by Maxine at Petrona, and Glenn at International Noir.

ANOTHER SWEDISH WALLANDER ON BBC4

2010-12-04T02:46:00.000-08:00

This blog is now dormant but you can read all the old posts and lots of new material at my new blog at Crime Scraps Review.

http://crimescraps2.wordpress.com

Thanks to the encyclopedic Karen at Euro Crime for the information that on Saturday 11 December at 9.00pm we will get a chance to see Rolf Lassgard as Kurt Wallander in the original 2001 SVT series.

The opening sequence to Sidetracked.

Unfortunately we won't see this episode, but this short clip gives me the idea that this Swedish version might be better than the Branagh version.

CHALLENGES

2010-12-04T01:42:00.000-08:00

I had to laugh when after reading Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise [I must not mention the cricket ;o)] I went over to A Novel Challenge to find the latest post was about a US Civil War Challenge!

I think I will give this one a miss on the grounds that Mrs Crime Scraps, has accompanied me [translation 'been dragged round'] on five trips to a number of Civil War related sites, and thinks I have already read every book ever written on the subject.

I still haven't forgotten that someone put a Quilt Museum at Paducah KY on the route between the Lincoln Boyhood Home in Southern Indiana, and Shiloh.

How much time can you spend looking at quilts! A lot!!

CRIME SCRAPS

RELOCATION TO CRIME SCRAPS REVIEW

WIN A CAMILLERI

TWO NATIONS*

FOURTH OF JULY

DEVIL'S PEAK: DEON MEYER

THE KASE FOR KINDLES

MISS MARPLE MAY APPEAR: 4

FIELD GREY: PHILIP KERR

THE LAST OF THE LARSSON BLURBS?

OT: THE CAT DETECTIVE

THE GALLOWS BIRD: CAMILLA LACKBERG

A GAME OF LIES: REBECCA CANTRELL

WHAT HOUND?

SUMMERTIME

THE DEAD OF SUMMER: MARI JUNGSTEDT

MERCY: JUSSI ADLER-OLSEN

SCANDI-BOOK FANS

INTERNATIONAL DAGGER: A WINNER?

THE SAINT-FLORENTIN MURDERS: JEAN-FRANCOIS PAROT

CHOICES: A DIGRESSION

INTERNATIONAL DAGGER WHO WILL WIN?

MISS MARPLE MAY APPEAR: 3

CRIME FEST 2011 PHOTOS

THE 2011 CWA INTERNATIONAL DAGGER SHORTLIST

A GAME OF LIES: A WINNER

AN UNCERTAIN PLACE: FRED VARGAS

FROM HILL STREET BLUES TO THE KILLING

MISS MARPLE MAY APPEAR: 2

WIN A GAME OF LIES BY REBECCA CANTRELL

THE TROUBLED MAN: HENNING MANKELL

MISS MARPLE MAY APPEAR

SELLING SCANDINAVIANS

DEATH ON A GALICIAN SHORE: DOMINGO VILLAR

MORE DETECTIVE FEVER

ANZAC DAY 2011

SERIOUS CONTENDERS

HOTEL BOSPHORUS: ESMAHAN AYKOL

LAND OF MISS MARPLE AND LORD PETER

BANDIT LOVE: MASSIMO CARLOTTO

THE READING ROOM

PHANTOMS OF BRESLAU: MAREK KRAJEWSKI

'I LIKE A GOOD MURDER'

HMP DARTMOOR

RIVER OF SHADOWS: VALERIO VARESI

RESPECT FOR AGE

THE LEOPARD: JO NESBO

SIZE MATTERS: THE LEOPARD

A QUESTION OF BELIEF: DONNA LEON

SPRINGTIME

PAOLA BRUNETTI'S POLITICS

NO-ONE LOVES A POLICEMAN: GUILLERMO ORSI

MYSTERY TOUR

A LILY OF THE FIELD: JOHN LAWTON

ICONS OF TV CRIME FICTION

GUEST APPEARANCES

THE INSPECTOR AND SILENCE: HAKAN NESSER

ANOTHER BOOKSHOP CLOSES

TRUE HEIR

A MOST PECULIAR MALAYSIAN MURDER: SHAMINI FLINT

FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES*

EUROCRIME REVIEW: LUMEN: BEN PASTOR

THE TRACK OF SAND: ANDREA CAMILLERI

CHRISTCHURCH EARTHQUAKE RELIEF

TOP READS 2010

THE ABOMINABLE MAN: SJOWALL & WAHLOO

BOOKS READ SO FAR 2011

APPRECIATING CAMILLERI [PART TWO]

APPRECIATING CAMILLERI [PART ONE]

A LITTLE BIT AT A TIME

THE QUIZ ANSWERS: FINAL PART

THE QUIZ ANSWERS: PART TWO

THE QUIZ ANSWERS: PART ONE

A STAR

WINTER QUIZ REMINDER

THE POWER OF THE DOG: DON WINSLOW

HOUSEBOUND

MERRY CHRISTMAS

DAVID SUCHET ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

REVIEW OF 2010: COUNTRIES