PETRONA

Exclusive insider secrets of a baguette

2009-11-06T18:39:29+00:00

A bird dropping a piece of bread onto outdoor machinery has been blamed for a technical fault at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) earlier this week, as reported in The Register. If the LHC had been operational, the machine would have automatically shut down for a couple of days. However, the LHC is still being worked on after the electrical failure and subsequent leak of liquid helium that caused such damage in September, so was not active when the baguette (as it turned out to be) fell into it.

Even so, intrepid Nature reporter Geoff Brumfiel obtained an exclusive interview, under strict conditions of anonymity, with a member of staff at CERN about the errant baguette. From the Q/A:

Can we say anything about the contents of the baguette? Did it contain any tasty filling? If so what type?
Looks to have been a plain baguette - no filling observed. It was very soggy when found.

Is there any indication whether this is a French or a Swiss baguette?
It was a French site – But a frontier crossing bird is not ruled out.

Has anyone considered the possibility that the baguette came from the future to sabotage the LHC? Is there any indication that this is a futuristic baguette?
The possibility has been examined by theoretical physicists - considered unlikely as they feel baguettes will not play a part in future cultures.

Read on at The Great Beyond (the Nature news blog).

Book review: Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo

2009-11-05T18:23:00+00:00

I very much enjoyed this book. I shouldn’t have done if I am logical, as it is not only about a serial killer, but it concerns the murders of young women and girls in very gruesome, slow ways – topics on which I have more than once gone on record as saying “enough, already!”. So why did I like the novel?

Kate Burkholder is chief of police in the small town of Painters Mill, Ohio. She’s ex-Amish, under the bann from her teenage days, when she left her family and the local community (which makes up roughly half the town) for the ‘English’ (the other half). Kate is a professional, competent police officer in her 30s who has built a good strong team and “back office”. As the book opens, she’s called out one freezing night because of some cows that have broken through a fence onto the road. Kate’s irritation quickly turns to shock when she discovers the mutilated body of….yes, you guessed it, a young woman.

What follows are the details of Kate’s investigation of the murder: a very readable and engaging account of the procedures and events that follow a crime, showing the effects on the individuals concerned and on this small community as a whole. Plot-wise, reader interest is maintained by the unusual twist that everyone on the team jumps to the conclusion that, because of a particular “signature” on the victims that was never made public, the murder was committed by a serial killer who struck several times around 16 years ago, but has never been heard of since. Why has he (presumed ‘he’) been silent for so long?

Kate, however, knows that the killer cannot be that person – and she has a certain, secret reason for this knowledge. Hence, she does not call in outside help to follow up that lead, but instead focuses her small team on other avenues of investigation. This is all very well until (inevitably) the killer strikes again – and then again, this time in the Amish community, and Kate is blamed for running an inadequate show. She becomes the victim of inter-jurisdictional and small-town politics as she struggles to keep her investigation on track, while having to follow up in secret her own dark past and that of her estranged family. The only good thing that seems to happen to her is the arrival of a profiler from Cincinnati (the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation) – but even he soon seems suspicious of Kate after the council receives an anonymous note via an Amish churchman.

This book is a great read, written in an assured style and with a fast pace, striking that difficult balance between providing enough details of the investigation and people involved in it, as well as a sense of place, without over-doing things. The story is a very good one, with several interesting angles to do with family, belief, loyalty, morality and so on. The suspense is high, especially when Kate is sidelined so tries to carry on her own investigation even after a (wrongly accused, in her view) suspect has been identified. Although the reader never doubts Kate’s integrity, there is enough of a question over what she did all those years ago to provide more impetus to the story and uncertainty about her current motives.

On the down side, the detailed descriptions of the murders are pointless. The novel would have been just as tense and exciting without the gory information about how these women and girls were tortured and killed. I feel it is simply unnecessary to provide these details – they aren’t necessary to make the villain seem even more bad. I hope they weren’t included for commercial purposes. Whatever the reason, I hope that the next book by Linda Castillo will cut down on these ghastly, explicit aspects. (There are other murders in the book which are just as or even more horrific than those in the main investigation, yet these are sketched rather than dwelled upon – and have just as much emotional impact.)

The closing part of the novel is slightly weak. There aren’t that many potential suspects and the identity of the killer is clear once one of the two obvious suspects suffers a tragedy and is therefore out of the running. And the traditional “woman in peril” climax went on for too long, though at least its initial circumstances were believable.

My main take on this novel is that it’s jolly good, and I’d recommend it to anyone. I don’t mean to moan on too much about the torture but to me this book is a perfect example of one in which some judicious cutting of a few paragraphs here and there would have made it really stunning and of much more broad appeal.

I thank Karen of Euro Crime for my copy of this book, a proof from the publisher, Macmillan.

Other (overwhelmingly positive) reviews of this book can be read at:

Lesa's Book Critiques.

Random Jottings (with a review of The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg).

Bibliophile by the Sea.

Book Addiction.

The Bookbag.

Madhouse Family Reviews.
------
Author website.

Bookgroup.info news for November

2009-11-04T20:28:05+00:00

On the cover of my edition of GO WITH ME is a quote from a review in the Wall Street Journal: ‘A novel with echoes of DELIVERANCE and Cormac McCarthy.’ For me, that promised scary hillbillies, a gothic plot, powerful spare writing and wilderness, and, to some extent, that’s what Castle Freeman’s short novel delivers. But hang on, this is not the badlands of the deep south: this is Vermont, heart of New England, land of chocolate box villages, kissing bridges and ‘leaf-peepers’ who swarm the state in their thousands to drink in the glorious spectacle of the Fall. Isn’t it?

Go With Me is the book of the month at Bookgroup.info, which is also running an interview with the author, Castle Freeman. If the book sounds your kind of thing, you can enter a competition to win a copy. (There are also other competitions on the site, for example you can enter a draw to win a copy of the very well-received Sweeping Up Glass by Carolyn Wall, published by Quercus.)

I highly recommend the bookgroup.info website. Even if you aren't in or looking for a book group, the site is a great collection of reviews, interviews and other reading resources. More about Irene Haynes and Clare Chandler and their site can be found here.

Alphabet in crime fiction: Eriksson, Edwardson and Edwards

2009-11-02T20:19:53+00:00

One of the most enduringly popular genres of crime fiction is the police procedural, and the three E authors I've chosen today are all highly readable exponents. Police procedurals are both challenging puzzles to be solved by logic, and are a comforting reminder that law and order prevails in the end.

Or are they? The two Swedish authors in my selection, Ake Edwardson and Kjell Eriksson, are not in the business of providing an over-cosy experience for their readers. Kjell Eriksson's three novels that have so far been translated into English are centred on Ann Lindell and her team of Uppsala detectives. Not only are these policemen fallible, missing leads and failing to make connections, but the people they encounter - immigrants, drug smugglers, high-rise dwellers, daughters of strange professors - provide a disturbing tapestry. Ake Edwardson's Erik Winter series, set in Gothenburg, is conceived as a ten-part series of which three have so far been translated into English (a fourth is on the way). Erik's team of detectives, too, have their fallibilities - and the stories tend to feature wayward teenagers or abducted children, reflecting the author's own professional experience in this area.

Martin Edwards has already featured in this alphabet series, so I shan't say too much more here about his books except to highlight his Lake District series featuring a senior police detective, Hannah Scarlett. There are three books in this series so far (at least one more is planned); as well as the police investigations, the novels provide an imaginative, mysterious, historical aspect (arsenic labyrinths, cipher gardens and the like) and a literary theme - whether academics or booksellers.

All three authors provide likeable protagonists. Hannah and Ann have trouble with their personal lives - Hannah has an obnoxious partner and Ann is a single parent. Erik is now more happily settled: in one of the earlier novels he was in the throes of domestic uncertainty, but of late he's settled down to being a partner and father as well as a successful detective. None of these three protagonists has any of the classic problems with which the crime-fiction genre is often unfairly characterised - not an alcoholic, melancholic loner among them. Yet they're all rounded, flawed individuals, and all the more interesting to the reader for it. Another common aspect of these books is that they are all gripping without being sensationalistic for the sake of it. They all cover dark themes, usually unflinchingly, but don't rely on gratuitous gore to convey tension and excitement.

And while on that theme, I can't understand why books by award-winning authors like Edwardson and Eriksson don't get more of a push in the UK. (Asa Larsson is another excellent yet under-sold author in this country.) Quercus/MacLehose did a great job on promoting Stieg Larsson, and Jo Nesbo gets lots of marketing exposure from Vintage, as London train and tube passengers can attest. Eriksson's books don't even have UK translations (the three that are in English can be obtained in their US editions), and Edwardson's next English-language translation looks like being the last. Asa Larsson may also face a similar fate. This is really bad news: these novels do so well on mainland Europe, sales- and awards-wise, it is such a pity that the UK can't do better by these authors. I would far rather read my "E" authors than the latest slash-fest!

The links in this post go to the authors' Euro Crime entries, where I and others have reviewed them. (Some of my reviews are in the press at Euro Crime.)

Dorte at DJs krimiblog has written about Martin Edwards in this alphabet meme, and links to her reviews of his books in this post.

Mysteries in Paradise review of The Arsenic Labyrinth by Martin Edwards.

Scandinavian Books on Kjell Eriksson and Ake Edwardson.

My previous posts in the crime-fiction alphabet series.

Mysteries in Paradise: the origin of the crime-fiction alphabet.

My Euro Crime reviews for October

2009-11-01T15:32:04+00:00

The start of a new month prompts me to look at the books I reviewed at Euro Crime during October. (See here for September's batch.)

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, by Stieg Larsson and translated by Reg Keeland, was of course the big title of the month. I wrote: "The Millennium Trilogy is a fantastically exciting and original set of books, admittedly with flaws, but with a great breadth and intelligence - of the characters as well as of the story - and with an ability to draw the reader in to an exciting narrative so that one is lost in the book, not knowing whether to turn the pages rapidly to find out what happens next, or to turn them slowly to prolong the totally mesmerising read". More here.

The Lie, by Petra Hammesfahr and translated by Mike Mitchell. From my review: "Somewhere in all this there is a good little psychological thriller struggling to get out, but unfortunately, for me it never does .... Suzanne is the only character with life or depth, and the aspects of the plot concerning her non-Nadia life are the most interesting." This author wrote the superb The Sinner (translator, John Brownjohn), which I'd recommend much more highly, though it is very dark.

Good Night, My Darling, by Inger Frimansson and translated by Laura A. Wideburg. A haunting novel whose author "has a wonderful ability to draw the reader right in to her subjects' lives and preoccupations." I very much enjoyed reading this book that digs under the surface of small-town life and the veneer of people's public images.

Hypothermia, by Arnaldur Indridason and translated by Victoria Cribb. I wrote: "among the very best of the books I've read this year. It's the sixth of the author's Erlendur series to be translated into English; it is truly a mature, masterful and utterly fantastic book." I described it as "brilliantly depressive" on Twitter, where every word has to count. It could certainly be read and enjoyed without having read the author's earlier books, but you'd be missing out on a real treat if you miss those!

I have an archive of all my reviews over at Vox, a blog platform that seems to be having a few technical troubles at the moment. I hope these are resolved soon, and that Six Apart (owners of Typepad) don't give up on it, as I'd hate to have to shift all those book reviews!

Another bit of housekeeping news: you can access lists of links to my reviews by year by going to the top of this blog. Finally, I've also sorted my reviews by country: if you scroll down the right-hand side of the blog, you'll see a list of countries. Clicking on any one should take you to all my reviews of books by authors from those countries.

I'm reading The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist, translated by Marlaine Delargy

2009-10-30T18:10:48+00:00

I am totally absorbed in The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist, which has very kindly been sent to me by the translator, Marlaine Delargy. I've read good things about this book on various blogs, and on Amazon, so I was quite keen to try it, even though I was not sure if it was going to be science fiction or crime fiction. It is an appealing mix of both, written with an effortless style (I am sure, due in no small part to the faultless translation) that just keeps you reading.
Assuming the book could be classified as crime fiction, I'll write a review and submit it to Euro Crime, so will not say more about the book here. I will, however, reproduce a short passage from the opening page:

Even the bathroom was monitored. There were no fewer than three cameras within that small space, two on the ceiling and one underneath the washbasin. This meticulous surveillance applied not only to the private apartments, but also to the communal areas. And of course nothing less was to be expected. It was not the intention that those who lived here should be able to take their own lives or harm themselves in some other way. Not once you were here. You should have sorted that out beforehand, if you were thinking along those lines.
I was, for a while. I thought about hanging myself or jumping in front of a speeding train or doing a U-turn on the highway and driving toward the oncoming traffic at full speed. Or simply driving off the road. But I didn't have the courage. Instead I just obediently allowed myself to be picked up at the agreed time outside my house.

The book is published by the Other Press, New York, and the translation was supported by a grant from the Swedish Arts Council.

Review of The Unit at Kittling: Books.

Review of The Unit at The Complete Review.

Q&A with the author and other reviews at Amazon (US site).

More about violence in crime fiction

2009-10-29T20:47:38+00:00

I wasn't intending to write a blog post about the endless rehashing over the past week of an article written by Jessica Mann in Standpoint magazine at the beginning of September. In that article, Jessica wrote that she was no longer going to review books that contained "outpourings of sadistic misogyny". I wrote a post here about it, to which several people kindly responded. Martin Edwards also wrote about this article and topic, a few days previously, and an interesting discussion ensued.
All calmed down until last weekend, when The Observer and The Telegraph ran belated articles, picked up by many other newspapers, magazines and blogs, stating that Jessica Mann is giving up reviewing crime fiction - untrue, as summarised in this excellent post by CrimeFictionReader of It's a Crime! blog, and this equally interesting post (with long comment discussion) by Sarah Weinman at Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind blog.
Enough written on the subject, I thought, until today, when author Val McDermid weighs in at The Guardian, in a blog post with the title Complaints about women writing misogynist crime fiction are a red herring. Val McDermid is an internationally best-selling crime-fiction author who has written books that are pretty close to being sadistic enough for me to consider quitting reading her - though her last few novels have been far less explicit, and all the better for it. Val McDermid's thesis in her Guardian piece is that women are no "worse" than men in writing sadistic serial-killer novels, and that it has all been going on for a very long time anyway. She points out, quite correctly, that there are excellent novels being written that address very dark topics, and very poor novels being written that are about cosy, "safe" mysteries.
All fair enough, but I can't agree with her concluding paragraph: "I wish we could get over this pointless gender squabbling and address the really interesting question of why we are so fascinated by the threat, the fact and the consequences of violence." I think Jessica Mann was right to draw attention to the unacceptability of some current commercial fiction - and to point out that in some cases women are writing it. Of course, such judgements have a large element of subjectivity, but I'd personally like to see more marketing budgets devoted to novels that aren't quite so sick - I'm sure they could do just as well, even better. (Stieg Larsson is one example.)
I also take issue with this alleged "fascination with the threat, fact and consequences of violence". What Jessica Mann was speaking out against, I believe, was not "violence" but "sadistic misogyny", which is different - excessive dwelling on torture, in effect. Although I am not "fascinated" with any aspect of violence, I have no objection to it if it isn't done to unnecessary excess. I do like reading a dramatic story - by which I mean a story with drama in it. There probably is some aspect of violence in any drama, almost by definition. But one does not have to be "fascinated" by it or even interested in it. A good author can engage the attention and sympathy of the reader in very many ways, without dwelling on this aspect - think Arnaldur Indridason for example, or Karin Fossum, Michael Connelly, Harlan Coben or Diane Setterfield. Some novels I read are more upfront about violence than others, and I don't mind that at all. I just don't go out of my way to read about it. In other cases (eg Jo Nesbo) I'm quite happy to read the book and skip over the odd page here or there when it all gets a bit much.
I think there are some lazy novels being written (by men as well as by women) that are wholly poorly constructed and feature repeated set pieces of violence in what seems to be the main reason for their existence. Quite a few of them are "best sellers". Although books like this have always been written, it's nice that one has so much choice that one can decide not to read them, and instead turn to books that are less formulaic, reflecting the individualistic imagination of their authors.

A few random things I found out yesterday

2009-10-28T08:56:53+00:00

Both my daughters, one at high school and the other at university, have to run their essays and other written work through the institution's anti-plagiarism software procedure before submitting them for assessment and marking.

Iceland's three Mcdonalds' restaurants will close on Sunday because nobody can afford to eat there. According to Lyst, McDonald's Icelandic partner, costs have doubled since the krona dropped almost 80 per cent against the euro.

I was told that nobody on the infamous "Nick Griffin BBC question time" panel presented immigration in a positive light, but only as a greater or lesser "problem". Why am I not surprised by that? Disappointed, yes, but not surprised, even though I also learned yesterday that a survey by the Legatum Institute (of which I had previously never heard) ranks Britain as the 12th most prosperous country in the world, ranked by "wealth and happiness" and second in the world (top in Europe) for "entrepreneurship and innovation". Make the connection.

Alphabet in crime fiction: Lief Davidsen

2009-10-26T18:38:00+00:00

The Serbian Dane by Lief Davidsen, one of Karen of Euro Crime's top reads of 2007, is a very tense thriller about a visit to Denmark by an Iranian author under threat of a fatwa. The story concerns the local journalist who is covering the story, the policeman in charge of the security arrangements, and the putative assassin. Chapters switch between the viewpoints of these three characters: we learn about their domestic lives, pasts, and emotions, all of which cause sympathies to alternate and lead to an almost-unbearable level of excitement. It is really very good indeed: a book that threatens to make you to miss your stop if reading it on the bus or train.
Here's what Karen wrote in her Euro Crime review: "First published in Danish in 1996, THE SERBIAN DANE feels incredibly fresh and contemporary. Davidsen brings to life Copenhagen the place, the people who live there and the political scene. Vuk is a cold-blooded killer but has moments of vulnerability at night when he's unable to sleep. You don't want him to succeed but it's fascinating to watch how he plans his job and the lengths he goes to. THE SERBIAN DANE is a cracking thriller, which I was hooked by. The excellent translator, Barbara J Haveland, has also translated the Jonas Wergeland trilogy by Jan Kjaerstad for Arcadia."
The Serbian Dane is one of six novels by Lief Davidsen, three of which have been translated into English, according to Wikipedia. One of these is his first novel, The Sardine Deception (1986), which must be one of my favourite titles ever. The book, translated by Tiina Nunnally and Steve Murray, was reviewed earlier this year by Norman (Uriah) at Crime Scraps, who wrote: "This fast paced political thriller is a very easy read, which is a tribute to the translation, and as well as a complex plot has interesting character studies. It has stood up amazingly well to the passage of time and is worth reading if you can find a copy."

This post is part of a weekly series on the crime-fiction alphabet. Previous Petrona posts are collected here.

The crime-fiction alphabet project is the brainchild of Kerrie from Mysteries in Paradise.

The Consorts of Death by Gunnar Staalesen, translated by Don Bartlett

2009-10-25T10:45:26+00:00

I've now read the only three books in the Varg Veum series by Gunnar Staalesen that I'm able to read, and I'm convinced on this basis that this series is a worthy addition to the very top of the stellar PI series that are out there. Maxim Jakubowski calls the series "an upmarket Scandinavian Philip Marlowe", and I agree (not so sure about the upmarket, though) that if you like Chandler, Macdonald, and those who have followed in their footsteps, you surely have to love these books.

I've just finished The Consorts of Death, which I enjoyed the most of the three novels in the series I've read. Although it is the 14th (or 13th?), you can start with this one as most of the book consists of back-story and flashback (not in the least boring, it is an exciting case that can only be solved in the present because of three separate cases in the past, all involving the same person at the centre). Consorts of Death has the added advantage of being translated by the superb Don Bartlett, who also translates (among other authors) Jo Nesbo and K. O. Dahl.

As with the best of PI and other crime fiction, the appeal of the Varg Veum books is not only their plots and the gradual development through the protagonist's life and times, but their sadness at the human condition, a strong sense of social justice, and their wonderful sense of place. All the best novels have this poetic element that can speak to the readers' emotion at another level from the events in the plot. Here is an excerpt:

It was beginning to get dark as I drove into Osen where the Gaular waterway plunged like a faded bridal veil towards the fjord. High up above the mountains the moon had appeared, the earth’s pale consort, distant and alone in its eternal orbit around the chaos and turmoil below. It struck me that the moon wasn’t alone after all. There were many of us adrift and circling around the same chaos, the same turmoil, without being able to intervene or do anything about it. We were all consorts of death.

I shall say no more here as I must now write my review of the book and submit it to Euro Crime. Until then, however, if you are short of a book to read, perhaps sad that Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy is over, or tired of waiting for the next Temple or Connelly or Crais, give The Consorts of Death a try. I don't think you'll regret it.

Some related articles:

The Consorts of Death reviewed in the Independent. (Positive review of the book which gives due credit to the translator.)

Simon Clarke's Amazon review of The Consorts of Death. (Another positive review.)

The Consorts of Death at the Arcadia website.

Gunnar Staalesen at Euro Crime.

Varg Veum films discussed at International Noir Fiction in July, August and September.

Reviews of The Writing on the Wall at Scandinavian Books and at Euro Crime.

Doing myself out of book deals

2009-10-24T21:47:32+01:00

One aspect of Thursday night's Kingston Killers evening at Waterstones was that books by the nine authors present were being sold on a three-for-two offer for that event only. I wanted to buy the paperback edition of Echoes of the Dead by Johan Theorin because the translator, Marlaine Delargy, had told me that it contains a little photo essay about Oland by the author not present in the proof I had previously read. However, after poking about among the piles of other books, I could not see two others that I wanted to buy (I already have review copies, or own, or have read, quite a few of them), so conscious of my vast quantity of unread tomes at home, I only purchased that one book.

Next day, I was describing Ariana Franklin's talk and novels to Prof Petrona, who expressed an interest in reading one of them. So I have bought Mistress of the Art of Death, the first in the series. By buying it a couple of days after the Waterstones event - and by buying at at a different bookshop - I missed out on my "3 for 2" offer. But, never mind - because I also bought York Notes: William Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and a rather colourful notebook, I qualified for W H Smith's offer of the day - "spend £15 and buy any top 30 hardback for £5.99". Excitedly I went to the display - and again, could not see any book I wanted to buy, even at that price. (I have already read Fever of the Bone by Val McDermid, and have previously purchased the Guiness book of Records and The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown - for other family members, not me!). To be honest, "rather sad" was my mental reaction to the "top 30" display of celebrity bios and cookery books, etc. Then I remembered I had in fact only paid £4.99 for The Lost Symbol and not much more for the Guiness Book of Records, so cheered up a bit.

The last book deal I missed out on was the one I thought the best. In yet another bookshop, which just happened to be on my route home so only required the tiniest of detours, I noticed next to the till an offering of the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson and a large bar of Galaxy chocolate, all tied up with a gold ribbon, price £20. Now that is what I call a special offer worthy of take-up! I asked the woman at the till if she'd read them and she hadn't, though she said she "kept hearing good things about them" - so I recommended that she snap them up as great reads at a bargain price (even without the chocolate).

How many plots are there?

2009-10-23T17:35:53+01:00

I spent a most enjoyable evening at Waterstones in Kingston last night with Karen of Euro Crime website and blog, at Killer Reads, an event devised by Chris Simmons of CrimeSquad. Yaba Badoe, Chris Carter, N J (a.k.a. Natasha) Cooper, R J Ellory, Ariana Franklin, Johan Theorin (fresh from his CWA dagger John Creasey/New Blood award the night before for Echoes from the Dead), Cathi Unsworth, Nicola Upson and Laura Wilson all read from their novels and talked about their writing as well as the usual topics about the appeal of the genre. One inevitable result is that I now have even more books for my reading list.

Among the interesting perspectives provided was one by R J Ellory, in jetlagged yet energetic mode, who emphatically opined that there are only three kinds of British crime fiction (cosy village murder, gritty urban police procedural, and I forget the third!), which is why he writes novels based in different times and places in the United States, where there are (in his view) far more regional and temporal differences. I find this point of view exceedingly unconvincing. Probably so did everyone else, but they were too polite to say so. He also went on to say that there are only three kinds of author, but I have even less memory of those generalizations - other than it is good to aspire to write a book like To Kill a Mockingbird or In Cold Blood.

It was amusing in this context to read Sharon Wheeler's post about Nick Hay's selection procedure for books to read for review for Reviewing the Evidence. "Oh look, here's a mad monk running around mittel Europe in search of a religious icon. And there's another, with added Freemasons at no extra cost. Yes, and there's yet another, with a beautiful woman to help our intrepid hero track down said mad monk. If the writer's feeling particularly radical, there'll be a mysterious library in there somewhere." Many other books fall into a couple of other categories: Mr Average in small-town America avenging himself on threat to family; and thrillers involving former military heroes charging round the United States.

Alphabet in crime fiction: Robert Crais

2009-10-20T17:54:44+01:00

I decided to follow the lead of some others and find an old post to recycle this week. Already, a lot of good Cs have been taken(the perils of leaving a weekly task to Tuesday!) - Connelly, Christie, Cotterill, etc. So who is left? I decided to look through my old posts, betting with myself that the first C would be Coben or Crais. So - was I right? (Clue is in the title of this post.) Here is a post from 18 February 2006 (one of six posts that day! How my blogging frequency has decreased over the years):

Last night I finished reading Robert Crais' latest book, The Forgotten Man, just out in paperback in the UK (though I got it in hardback a couple of weeks before the paperback release from Amazon UK, where it was heavily discounted to below the p/b price to clear out stocks in anticipation, presumably).

Crais is, if nothing else, an object-lesson in writing series. About 3 chapters in, after drawing you in to the current plot, he writes a short (paragraph) recap of where we were at in the last book. Thanks!

The latest of the Elvis Cole novels is focused mainly on Cole (not much of Pike in this one) and his will-they-won't-they relationships with Lucy and (nascently) with Starkey. I much prefer the character of Starkey to that of Lucy, so I know which way I hope it comes out.

As usual with Crais, the plot is pacy, prose spare and the whole an absorbing read. The author has a talent for conveying the emotions hidden by the laconic exterior of Cole's character. The search for his unknown father is poignant, both in the flashbacks to Cole's life as a boy and in the present-day. This area of emotion, which Cole thought he had long-since packaged away ("forgotten"), is gradually shown to be unrepressed -- and the resultant clouding of his judgement in the case he's involved in is brought into focus by the solution to the mystery.

I look forward to the next in the series.

Mysteries in Paradise crime fiction alphabet meme.

Previous letters at Petrona.

About Double Exposure, by Michael Lister

2009-10-19T18:14:00+01:00

In her Boucheron wrap-up post at Hey, There's a Dead Guy in the Living Room, Alison Janssen writes that "Tyrus author Michael Lister became an instantly buzzed-about author when his latest novel, Double Exposure, was cited by Michael Connelly as one of the best books he's read recently. I KNOW, CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!"

So I went over to the Tyrus website to take a look at this book, and sure enough:

“Double Exposureis absolutely riveting! I sat down, plugged in and didn't get up until the last page. With elegiac prose, insightful characterization and a wonderfully ingenious plot, Michael Lister has squeezed every ounce of terror and thrills out of a dark night in the woods.”
—Michael Connelly

Here is the blurb about the book:

DOUBLE EXPOSURE
September 2009 (according to Amazon UK, available in "1-3 weeks")
216 pages
Paperback | ISBN 978-0982520925 | $14.95
Hardcover | ISBN 978-0982520932 | $24.95

"Following his dad’s death, Remington James returns to the small North Florida town where he grew up to assume his father’s life—taking care of his dying mother and running the local gun and pawn shop.One fateful fall evening, as the sun sinks and the darkness expands, Remington ventures deep into the river swamp to try out some new equipment and check his camera traps. Encountering the kind of wildlife that made him want to be a photographer in the first place, Remington gets some of the best shots of his life, but he’s about to happen upon the most dangerous animal of all—a feral, patient, sociopath who wants Remington dead."

Hmm, well, on the face of it, not a book I would usually pick up and read, but with a recommendation like this, I probably should give it a try.

Author information, including bibliography.

Read an excerpt from Double Exposure.

About Tyrus books, where Alison Janssen is Senior Editor.

Book review: Publish or Perish by Margot Kinberg

2009-10-18T18:16:56+01:00

Academic intrigue is deeply entrenched at Tilton University. Graduate student Nick Merrill has devised Learn It!, a computer program to help students learn English, which seems from initial trials to be very effective. Nick asks Connor Hadley, his academic mentor, to go through his write-up of his results before submitting them for publication, without realizing that Hadley himself is due for tenure and desperate to impress the committee that is about to decide his fate. Nick is also carrying on affairs with two women, a juggling act that can’t go on for ever, and attracts envy from other students by his application for a prestigious scholarship.
Publish or Perish is a brisk, engaging account of the hectic lives of the students and faculty of Tilton. Teaching, committees, observations, research and writing fill up the time of the academics, all desperate to stay on the ladder of success, or, in the case of the students, steady employment for a year or two.
Before too long, there is a death – could it be murder? Professor Joel Williams thinks so. Williams is a retired cop who has retrained as a teacher, and is now on the faculty of the criminal justice department at Tilton. He was a colleague of the victim, and uses his contacts with the police to investigate the crime – if there was a crime.
Publish or Perish is a literate, light yet engaging read. The account of life at Tilton University rings authentically true, as one might expect from the author’s credentials as an associate professor at a prestigious US university. The pace never flags as the investigation narrows down to a small group of suspects, and previous associations become clearer.
I thoroughly enjoyed Publish or Perish, and can recommend it to anyone who wants to be taken out of themselves for a couple of hours, and who is curious about the backstabbing and doublespeak that can go on in the groves of academe.

Publish or Perish by Margot Kinberg (Eloquent books, New York).

Publish or Perish reviewed at Mysteries in Paradise.

Confessions of a Mystery Novelist is Margot Kinberg's blog. Such a good blog, with consistently well-written, thoughtful, constructive and engaging posts daily - that it made me want to read her book.

Nine Dragons (Connelly) and Doors Open (Rankin)

2009-10-17T17:55:40+01:00

Many of us go through reading highs or lows, in which every book seems to be spot-on or the opposite. I've been going through a low recently - starting and putting down three books after struggling to maintain interest in the one before that. To break the spell I went out and paid for the new Michael Connelly, Nine Dragons, in hardback. I read it this week, followed by Ian Rankin's Doors Open (kindly sent to me by Pat of Mysterious Yarns, who reviewed it for Euro Crime). Although I did read both these books from beginning to end, I can't summon up enough enthusiasm to write a proper review of them, so will just make a few remarks here.

Nine Dragons is a typical Michael Connelly - he is a superb author at the top of his game, deeply embedded in his main character (Harry Bosch), his mission (to stand up for the dead) and his world (LA, with whom Connelly and Bosch are tightly integrated). If you like Connelly's novels, you'll like this one, it is well up to standard. As well as a tight plot with a twist, Bosch is taken out of LA for 39 hours in the middle of the book, when most of the (very fast and furious) action happens. It's interesting to read about Harry when he's a fish out of water; we see him much more objectively, as rather an objectionable character in this part of the book, as his driven, obsessive and blinkered personality dominate everything and everyone, sometimes to destructive effect. One very much has the sense in Nine Dragons, as in The Scarecrow before it, that the author is setting the scene for what will happen after Bosch's imminent mandatory retirement from the LAPD. By the end of Nine Dragons, a couple of characters have been removed from the scene so that Bosch, McEvoy (an ex-journalist), Rachel Walling (FBI agent) and Mickey Haller (the "Lincoln lawyer" who has more than one connection to Bosch's personal life) can form some kind of partnership....well, that's my theory.

Doors Open by Ian Rankin is a heist story about an art theft. It's mildly diverting, particularly in the second half after the heist actually takes place (I usually find the planning stages of these crime "capers" rather tedious). For me, the motivation of the "criminals" is always unconvincing, as is the portrait of the gang boss (cloned from Big Ger of the Rebus series). Rebus himself is alluded to, not by name, as an aside in the middle of the book. There's lots of neat little touches in this novel, particularly many nods to the author's knowledge of art and music, but it doesn't add up to much of a whole. It passes the time in a pleasant enough fashion but I can't say that I was gripped by it. The behaviour of the characters became less and less likely, a few "cheats" are thrown in (the reader not being told about certain events), and the wrap-up plus outcome for the "gang" was somewhat flat, silly even.

Blacklands by Belinda Bauer in the Bookseller

2009-10-14T18:33:00+01:00

One advantage of the various local postal strikes in London is that the Bookseller is arriving late, so I am reading it in a less rushed fashion and focusing on bits of it I might usually skim over in my weekday haste. (OK, this is a stretch of a good reason for a postal strike or two, but I am trying to be positive.)

One such article in last week's (9 October, p. 23) issue is a profile of an author of a book that looks intriguing. Belinda Bauer, author of Blacklands (hmm, lots of Bs there - why didn't I think of that for my last crime-fiction alphabet post?), was highly commended by the CWA in the debut dagger category this year. Ms Bauer says that she did not set out to write a crime novel: "to me a crime novel is Val McDermid or Sue Grafton or Michael Connelly, where there is a crime. And in my book the crime had taken place many years before, and it was the aftermath of the crime that I was dealing with....."

The book, published in the UK by Transworld (Bantam Press) in January of this year according to the Bookseller, 2010 according to everyone else, is the story of a 12-year-old boy who lives with his mother and nan. His uncle had disappeared when aged 11 - believed to have been murdered and buried on Exmoor. The boy is searching for his uncle's body to "heal his fractured family"......It's the first of a trilogy, apparently.

Ms Bauer trained as a journalist and worked as a reporter for a news agency - good training for novel writing. She wrote a screenplay in the evenings, and fortuitously entered, and won, the Carl Foreman Award. The prize was to study screenwriting at California State University, where she found it empowering to be "in a town where when you said you wanted to be a screenwriter nobody laughed in your face". (What a sad comment on English life.) Returning to Cardiff having written a screenplay "Happy Now", made into a film starring Ioan Gruffudd but never released, she eventually wrote Blacklands in just 4 months.

Detectives in novels and on screen

2009-10-13T18:10:00+01:00

I am sure many other people will have read the article in today's (13 October) Times, in which P. D. James and Ruth Rendell (who also writes under the name of Barbara Vine) discuss their lack of regard for the TV adaptations of their novels. They weren't too keen on their respective leading detectives - Baroness James says that Dalgliesh does not have a moustache (you never see a senior detective with one, according to her), and Barnoness Rendell that Wexford was ugly (she thinks George Baker too handsome). I did see a few of these adaptations years ago, and I suppose I must agree. I invariably prefer books to TV or film adaptations, so have just learnt to see them as completely different entities.

If I were an author of a series, I'd find it hard to continue once actors were firmly established as my characters. As a reader, it is bad enough - can one read a Henning Mankell now without visualising Ken Branagh as Wallander? Whatever one may think of Ken Branagh in that part, he is not the books' Wallander. Everyone liked John Thaw as Morse - I was already a fan of Colin Dexter's books long before the TV series was dreamed up - but even though I did not see all that many of them, it is impossible to detach Morse from John Thaw in my mind.

The best part of the Times article, for me, is this: "Baroness James said that she had given up trying to make sense of changes made to her stories when they were adapted for television. “I don’t read a script of adaptations because I know I’m not going to like it. They do things sometimes that are nonsensical.”
Dame Ruth said that her stories were always augmented with irrelevant action sequences. “They put a car chase in all of mine. There’s no reason for a car chase but everyone likes one. In the end you don’t care.” "

Absolutely. Fewer car chases and more plot, please (ideally, a plot that actually makes sense). I doubt this will ever happen. But it is why I tend not to watch detective programmes (or anything else) on TV - because it is always obvious what is going to happen after the first few minutes. One exception to this rule was Cracker, which started out being about a truly unpleasant person (Cracker, played by Robbie Coltraine) and some gritty police procedural, headed up by Christopher Ecclestone. He (Ecclestone) soon jumped ship, and before you knew it, Cracker had morphed into a "loveable old rogue" and I switched off. David Jason as Frost was (is?) similar: the character on TV had very little connection with the scurrilous, politically incorrect man in the books - superficially wisecracking with very off-colour humour, bursting with obsessive energy, but a very sad, lonely person at some level. Again, I switched off after a few episodes. Not because I'm a purist about differences between page and screen, but because the screen versions were boring in their predictability and sameness to each other (both within and across series).

Last words to the Baronesses: "Dame Ruth, who has written 21 Wexford books, said that she had no creative control over television adaptations but that they were not important to her. “I think that people expect us to be far more concerned with our television productions than we are. You can say that television makes you famous and sells your books but you don’t care very much about it.” "

Alphabet in crime fiction: Desmond Bagley

2009-10-12T20:19:26+01:00

This is my second entry in Kerrie's alphabet meme.
During the 1970s, I was an avid reader of authors like Alistair MacLean, Hammond Innes and Desmond Bagley. I liked Desmond Bagley’s thrillers so much that I actually kept a couple of my favourites from all those years ago – Fontana paperbacks priced at 85 p each.
It’s quite amusing looking at these titles now. One is called Running Blind, and the blurb reads:
The tip of the iceberg…. “It’ll be simple”, they said at the Department. “You’ll just be a messenger boy.” But to Alan Stewart, on a deserted road in Iceland with a murdered man at his feet, it looks anything but simple.
The cover of my edition is a dark photograph of a handsome looking actor with a flash stating “now a BBC TV serial”. I am not sure whether I ever watched it, we did not have a TV in those days and I don’t remember it, but according to the back cover, the hero is played by Stuart Wilson, and the serial was produced by Bob McIntosh for BBC Scotland.

My other favourite, I think the favourite, The Enemy, I recall because it was a scientific thriller about genetics, and the plot depended on knowing the DNA code. I don’t remember any other details about it (apart from liking it so much I read it about three times). The blurb reads:
The enemy strikes and strikes again, as George Ashton flees for his life after an acid attack on his daughter. Who is his enemy? Only Malcolm Jaggard, his future son-in-law, can guess – when, as a government agent, he sees Ashton’s secret file.
In a desperate manhunt Jaggard outwits the KGB and stalks Ashton to the silent and wintry forests of Sweden….

Iceland? Sweden? I detect a bit of a foreshadowing of my later reading habits here!

Will you be buying the international Kindle?

2009-10-11T10:08:14+01:00

With the announcement by Jeff Bezos of Amazon that the Kindle is now available to order from many countries outside the US, the UK included, for delivery from 19 October, I thought I'd attempt to weigh up the pros and cons.

As I'm sure everyone knows by now, you can't actually buy the Kindle in other countries, you have to order it via the US site (though you won't be charged for shipping) and therefore there are some questions about the wireless access - in effect, this seems to be via US wireless networks (via the deals Amazon has with service providers there) not UK networks. What I'm not sure about is the effect this will have on costs to the UK user long-term, after Amazon does introduce a UK-centric Kindle (later this year apparently).

As the big advantage, or rather selling-point, of the Kindle compared with currently available e-readers eg the Sony is the wireless access, I think this point is worth anyone looking into, before purchasing. The Sony and other e-readers need to be plugged into a PC before e-books can be bought and downloaded.

I advise checking into pricing - I think that Amazon will be charging more for an e-download on its international Kindle than the amount charged by existing readers available in the UK (certainly Amazon will charge more to international users than it charges to US Kindle users - eg $11.99-13.99 for a typical bestseller to international users compared with $9.99 to US users). Also, of course, an e-reader like the Sony is cheaper to buy than a Kindle, which is $279 for the international version.

Another factor to bear in mind is availability of books. Sony uses the e-pub format which is the nearest there is to a universal standard among British publishers. Amazon, on the other hand, has not completed its negotiations with publishers on rights and formats before announcing the Kindle's wider availability, so although many have signed up, others have not - notably Random House, OUP and PanMacmillan. Therefore, Kindle users may have a while to wait before being able to download any book they want, even if it is available in e-format. Nevertheless, apparently 200,000 titles are available via Kindle so the owner is not exactly stuck for choice.

In sum - e-readers have not taken off hugely in the UK, not least because of the lack of wireless access. It seems to me that this first-generation Kindle (for non-US users) is perhaps a premature investment. If you are in the UK, it might be better to buy a reader like the Sony or similar, which apparently offers a nice reading experience, even though it doesn't have the wireless access; or wait for the UK-centric Kindle which will be available fairly soon; or hang on for the Nirvana of the single device (phone, internet, e-reader, email and music). From what I read, the most likely winner in that game will be Apple, not Amazon or Sony, who may find themselves having produced expensive "interim" devices that nobody will want in a year or so.

The urge to criticise

2009-10-09T20:41:39+01:00

Watching the news of this year's Nobel prize winners appearing on Twitter and elsewhere over the past week has been a learning experience for me. The first couple (physiology or medicine and physics) were fine - the reactions were largely excited and congratulatory. But then came chemistry. Even before the announcement that Yonath, Steitz and Ramakrishnan had won for their studies on the structure of the ribosome, the twittosphere was replete with sarcastic wit about the fact that a biological discovery would probably win. And sure enough - the fact that the ribosome is a biological structure seemed more important to many twitterers and bloggers than the achievements of the prizewinners. As Nature put it:
"It is the third time in seven years that the chemistry Nobel has been awarded to crystallographers who have determined the structure and function of a complex biological molecule. "It does seem to be a recurring theme," says Thomas Lane, president of the American Chemical Society. But at its heart, this structural biology is "fundamentally chemistry", adds Jeremy Sanders, head of physical sciences at the University of Cambridge, UK, "even if many chemists had never heard of any of the winners"." A commenter at the Sceptical Chymist blog wrote: "To me, chemistry is the study of atomic and molecular structure and understanding how these structures affect the properties of molecules and molecular assemblies. In this respect, the work of Ramakrishnan, Steitz and Yonath falls right into the heart of what chemists do." Quite.

This was nothing, of course, to the reaction to the announcement that Herta Muller was to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Many in the UK and America, myself included, had never heard of this writer. Rather than by reacting with curiosity and interest in her work, the main intent of twitterers seemed to be to sneer either at her or at the Nobel committee, implying that the award was not deserved in some way. I was glad to read a piece in the Guardian today correctly pointing out that "By awarding the 2009 Nobel prize for literature to Herta Müller, the Swedish Academy is not only honouring a beautiful writer, but also expanding our concept of Europe". (I'll refrain from commenting here about the non-winning, introspective, self-regarding US literature about the collapse of the American Dream, etc;-). ) I was also glad to read that the publishers Serpents Tail and Granta are to reissue two of Muller's books in translation. No doubt, as a result of the Nobel, more will continue.

And even this was a storm in a teacup compared with today's announcement that Obama is to be awarded the Nobel Peace prize. Frankly I'm nauseated by the constant carping nastiness and "jokes" on twitter today, and have "unfollowed" several people as a result - not because of any views one way or the other about the recipient, but because I wish that rather than impulsively and emptily criticising, people might bother to think or find out why the award is given, before jumping in to share their knee-jerk petulance with the world. I was impressed, both by a video interview between a very highly groomed American TV lady and the chair of the Nobel committee in which he explained their rationale for the award (unanimous, across the political spectrum of the committee members from left to right), and with another one of Obama's reaction speech (video embedded at link). There's lots of good in all of this if people care to listen, not least in the mood of consensus building, which is essential if the world is to make anything of the political, economic, social and environmental mess it is currently in.

Hobbyist and professional bloggers

2009-10-08T18:59:00+01:00

I keep reading interesting posts on blogs and online newspapers, but can't get enough into any one of them to do more than to post a link/comment at Twitter. However, a few highlights from them:

The Huffington Post says that very few individuals in the book publishing industry are blogging, because companies don't like it. Apparently crime-fiction author Jason Pinter (The Mark, etc) was an editor at Random House and lost his job because of his blog - or so states the Huffington Post. Yet the same day, I read a PW interview with Rebecca Ford, who runs the (US) Oxford University Press blog and Evan Schnittman, the company’s vice president of global business development, who maintains his own publishing-centric blog, “Black Plastic Glasses.” A well-run blog benefits a publisher by promoting authors, the brand and encouraging debate, they say. Quite. It doesn't seem to me that there is much of a shortage of publishing blogs.

The Guardian technology blog weighs in on the just-announced US FTC plans to regulate bloggers. It is still unclear to me what exactly is planned - and enforceable, across international boundaries. According to the Guardian, it is their relationship with advertisers that bloggers must disclose. But this isn't how many book bloggers are interpreting it, according to various discussions about what do do about declaring receipt of free review (advance-reading) copies of books and bound proofs that publishers send (often unsolicited) to bloggers. Other bloggers are, rightly, questioning how to declare a relationship with a Google ad box with automatically generated content. Frank Wilson collects some unsurprisingly negative coverage of the plans over at Books, Inq. Ed Champion puts it well in a comment to that post: "If the FTC wants to rake in some cash and keep media clean, they're better off going after the big boys, not the legions of hobbyists who clearly aren't blogging for lucre."

'Life sentences' are people who everyone knows one thing about. Dan Quayle, for example, cannot spell potato (that's my contribution). Some nice examples here. And on the same blog (Nicci French) - Murphy's law or Mruphy's Lore: bad grammar or misunderstood irony?

I barely watch any TV, let alone daytime TV, so my heart fell a bit when I saw in my RSS reader that the Guardian is running a series in which they ask readers who are at home during the day to submit reviews of TV programmes that they watch. I should not be so quick to form an opinion: this review of a programme called Pointless is rather good, even though it is a game show and (therefore, of course) I have never seen it. Chalk up another win to the "hobbyist" bloggers!

Crimefest returns to Bristol, 20 - 23 May 2009

2009-10-06T18:01:00+01:00

Next May may seem like a long way away, but preparations for CRIMEFEST 2010 are well under way. Colin Dexter, Gyles Brandreth, M. C. Beaton and Ariana Franklin have already been announced as "featured authors" but some new names have just signed up: Michael Stanley, author(s) of the Inspector Kubu series; Jonathan Hayes, born in Bristol, and now a veteran forensic pathologist in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Manhattan by day and crime writer (amongst many other things) by night; Dan Waddell (Creasey Dagger nominee); and Laura Wilson (Historical Dagger nominee). Lots of other participants have signed up already: a full list is available here, and you can register for the festival here (special registration rates available until 15 October; special hotel rates available until April 2010).
Crimefest have also announced the next online reading group title, "an excellent debut crime novel that has just been nominated for a Gold Dagger: M.R. Hall's The Coroner. The novel is set in Bristol and the Wye Valley, and not only does it catch the atmosphere of CRIMEFEST 's home base, it is a great psychological suspense novel as well. To receive a copy, the first twenty people to email us at read@crimefest.com with 'Coroner' in the subject line and their postal and email address in the body of the message will receive a free copy of the book. The deadline is October 30. Have you already read the book and would like to join the discussion? Then please sign up at ONLINE READING GROUPS." A new book is discussed every month, and several copies of each month's selection are given away free.
You can also enter a competition to win a signed first edition of Fever of the Bone, the latest in Val McDermid's chilling Tony Hill series. To enter the draw for the free signed first edition, send an email with 'Bone' in the subject line, and your name, postal and email addresses in the body of the message to enquiries@goldsborobooks.com. The deadline to enter is October 30.

Lifestyles of the online wanderers

2009-10-05T19:29:25+01:00

I was rather taken by a post by Bill Thompson, Neo-Nomad at Large, which I read on Saturday and has stuck with me. Bill already lives as the aforementioned neo-nomad, "one of the growing number of people who use digital technologies to allow them to work from anywhere, living with 'no office, colleagues who are largely engaged with online and often a number of overlapping projects to be juggled and managed at the same time'." Now, he is taking the concept one stage further by selling his house and embarking on life as a "digital bedouin", seeing how far he can get with a laptop and an internet connection without having to be rooted anywhere: home or office. He's giving it a trial period of a month, to see how he can use the technologies around him to support his existence. If it's the kind of life that interests you, there are some useful pointers in Bill's post as to what devices to use and storage/back-up systems to prevent your very being from vanishing into the 'cloud'.

Or, you could just go to China instead. For that, you'll need a bit more than a laptop and an internet connection, it seems.

Alphabet in crime fiction: Hunt by A. Alvarez

2009-10-03T12:42:40+01:00

I'm going to have a go at Kerrie's Alphabet crime fiction meme, in which participants write a post a week featuring successive letters of the alphabet.

Back in 1978, for the sum of £4.95 for the hardback, I read a book called Hunt, by A. Alvarez (two As for the price of one!), perhaps better known for his work on suicide and poetry than for crime fiction. To my knowledge, it is the only crime-fiction book he wrote, though he did go on to write non-fiction about gambling, the subject of Hunt.

Conrad Hunt leads a tedious suburban life with his wife and sons, painting in the attic while the rest of the family watches TV. But he finds himself caught up in a confusing and bizarre game of gambling in which he has no idea of the rules or the players - and his life spirals out of control.

The publisher's blurb reads: "Hunt is a taut, funny, psychological thriller with brilliantly realised characters: a book/game in which even the reader who would die rather than risk a shilling [sic] on the Derby will turn the next page as inevitably as the gambler reaches for the next card."

Opening paragraph: "Conrad Hunt, foxy moustache, sly melancholy eyes, sat over his beer and brooded: "Loves me, loves me not, loves me, loves me not." He sipped his beer, puffed his cigarette and stared at his newspaper but did not take it in. Did not even take in the daily horoscope he usually paid so much attention to."

The book's prologue is an excerpt from a piece in the Times from 9 September 1977: "The names and personal details of tens of thousands of people scrutinised by the Special Branch for reasons of national security are to be fed into a new criminal intelligence computer bought by Scotland Yard and shrouded in mystery.
When plans for the computer were drawn up two years ago it is understood that the Special Branch was allocated space on it for up to 600,000 names out of the system's total capacity of 1,300,000 names by 1985. The work would begin with the transfer of a much smaller number of records as a pilot project.
Yesterday a police source said that the Special Branch had yet to decide how many names would be placed on the computer and denied that anything like 600,000 names would eventually be filed."

My Euro Crime book reviews for September

2009-10-02T11:23:13+01:00

It's more than a month since I posted links to my new reviews at Euro Crime, so here are the book reviews that have gone up during September:

Fever of the Bone by Val McDermid. "It's a perfect holiday or weekend piece of light reading (despite the dark central theme) that leaves plenty of issues to ponder after the last page is turned."

Back to the Coast by Saskia Noort, "an excellent little thriller, an easy read that can be raced through in a couple of hours and that leaves a haunting impression."

Close-Up by Esther Verhoef : "if you like your crime fiction suspenseful, erotically romantic, tense and pacy, this is definitely a book for you."

The Darkest Room by Johan Theorin, "a wonderful book, framed as the story of a wooden house, Eel Point, on the coast of the small island of Oland, Sweden - an island where the population is small and the old traditions continue. The house has a long, tragic history associated with the building of the two lighthouses on the nearby rocks, shipwrecks and various residents. The brief stories of these old tragedies are told in short sections interleaving the book's chapters, showing how Eel Point has become regarded today as haunted. The reader is never sure whether the ghosts are real, or to what extent the house's sad, cruel past is influencing current events."

Books to put on your Christmas list

2009-09-29T13:02:05+01:00

I keep reading that 1 October, though a Thursday, will be a "super Tuesday" of the book publishing world, with a huge post-DB splurge of predicted best-sellers due for publication (not least Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - as described in the previous post and others, if you'd like to scroll down for more information about this eagerly awaited novel).

However, life goes on - and as I see from recent Booksellers that December is expected to be a "quiet" month for UK book releases, I thought I'd post a few here so you can plan your holiday reading or even drop a few hints to Santa.

There's massive publicity to support publication of Three Weeks to Say Goodbye by Edgar-winner C. J. Box (Corvus, £12.00 HB), his UK debut. The plot: a couple adopt a baby, only to be told a few months later that the father did not sign away his parental rights, and wants her back - very badly. Not so surprising, perhaps, but a sinister motive emerges.

Other December HB releases include Two Tribes by Charlie Owen (Headline, £12.99); Paying Back Jack by Christopher G. Moore (Atlantic, £12.99); A Murder on London Bridge by Susanna Gregory (Sphere, £19.99); and True Blue by David Baldacci (Macmillan, £17.00) - one of those authors with whom I parted company some time ago despite a few exciting early novels, including his cracking debut Absolute Power (made into a film starring Clint Eastwood, not bad in itself but which ruined the plot and the logic by ducking the shock that happened half-way through the book).

Moving on to paperbacks, more my cup of tea (price- and size-wise), of the December crop I am most looking forward to Death in Oslo by Anne Holt (Sphere, £7.99), one of Norway's best-selling authors. This is the first in a series in which the female US president disappears while on a state visit. I liked the two so-far-translated Johanne Vik novels by this author, and am keen to try this one.

Peter James's Dead Tomorrow is out in PB (Pan, £6.99), a super outing in the Roy Grace series, this one about organ and child-trafficking. "It's a sad tale of desperate needs taken to extremes, really very disturbing", according to The Bookseller. You can see what I thought of it in my review (of the HB).

Other December PBs - well, get the megasellers out of the way first, we have Run for your Life by "James Patterson" & Michael Ledwidge (a strangely dry month for James P, only one out by him in Dec); and Girl Missing by Tess Gerritsen (Bantam, £6.99) - warning, this is her debut crime novel, out in the US in 1994, only now getting a UK publication.

Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo (Pan, £6.99) has received excellent reviews in the professional media and on blogs, so I shall certainly be reading this one. It is about an Amish community disrupted by murder with, according to The Bookseller, "an amazing hook, sense of place and a terrific twist. It's for the P. J. Tracy market and had my reader totally gripped right from the start". [Not that I am that keen on P. J. Tracy but I will nevertheless give Sworn to Silence a go, based on reviews I've read.]

A few more: The Taken by the controversially named, pseudonymous Inger Ash Wolfe (Corgi, £6.99), second in the Hazel Micallef series, the first not much liked by me; The Fury by Jason Pinter (Mira, £6.99), fourth in the Henry Parker series and much praised by The Bookseller (I must read The Mark, still on my shelf from ages ago); Dishonour by Helen Black (Avon, £6.99), one of the childcare lawyer Lily Valentine series (the third, I think); Mud, Muck and Dead Things by Ann Granger (Headline, £7.99), first in a new series set in the Cotswolds; Playing with Bones by Kate Ellis (Piatkus, £6.99), second in the Joe Plantagenet series (Kate Ellis also writes the well-established Wesley Peterson series, an attractive mix of contemporary and historical crime, based on the one I've read, Bone Garden); and Bad Penny Blues (Serpent's Tail, £7.99) by Cathi Unsworth, a "1960s tale of brutality, police corruption, perverted aristocrats and murdered prostitutes, with a bit of mystic stuff thrown in."

Lisbeth Salander's favourite reading material

2009-09-27T12:41:02+01:00

I am even more grateful than I realised in advance to the publisher (MacLehose Press) for sending me the perfect weekend distraction of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, by Stieg Larsson, translated by Reg Keeland. The book is out in the UK and Australia on 1 October, so if you haven't read the first two in this trilogy, you just about have time to rectify that situation before the final volume is out. You certainly need to have read them both before embarking on Hornet's Nest. Like the previous volumes, the opening 100-or-so pages are not an obvious way to begin a novel of this calibre. But persevere - I am now 200 pages in and at that delicious stage of wanting to race on as fast as possible, yet not read any so that I don't finish the novel. (As, sadly, there will be no more by this author.)

Lisbeth Salander, the scorching protagonist, is in hospital because of her serious, life-threatening injuries incurred at the end of book 2 (The Girl Who Played With Fire). Here's an excerpt from Hornet's Nest (p. 187 of my edition), an exchange between her surgeon and a psychologist at the hospital:

... "I asked her if she wanted something to read, whether I could bring her books of any sort. At first she said no, but later she asked if I had any scientific journals that dealt with genetics and brain research."
"With what?"
"Genetics."
"Genetics?"
"Yes. I told her that there were some popular science books on the subject in our library. She wasn't interested in those. She said she'd read books on the subject before, and she named some standard works that I'd never heard of. She was more interested in pure research in the field."
"Good grief."
"I said that we probably didn't have any more advanced books in the patient library - we have more Philip Marlowe than scientific literature - but that I'd see what I could dig up."
"And did you?"
"I went upstairs and borrowed some copies of Nature magazine and The New England Journal of Medicine. She was pleased and thanked me for taking the trouble."
"But those journals contain mostly scholarly papers and pure research."
"She reads them with obvious interest."

See Euro Crime news for some early reviews of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

More about the Millennium Trilogy, with links to reviews of and articles about the earlier books.

After eighteen years

2009-09-26T13:26:31+01:00

I spent the morning
Sitting in your chair
Looking at your bookcase
With all the books arranged higgledly-piggeldy
Covered in dust.

I pulled out the bookcase and Hoovered up behind it
Years of dust, fluff, hairclips and beads
A little heart-shaped box with gold and orange shapes all over it.

I put your Charlaine Harris series
Into the empty space I’d made
I wasn’t too keen on you reading those
But now the array of black
With red-lipped woman
Is what I have.

I empty the half-full jar of pesto
That sits in the door of the fridge
I wash it out
And put it in the recycling bin

Nobody to eat it now
Or the breaded fish fillets
In the freezer.
Nobody will eat those
Or the single chicken fillet
Likewise breaded.
Will they keep till December
Or shall I throw them out?

We won’t have to be quiet
In the mornings now
When we get up at 6
And make the tea.
We can even switch on
The dishwasher before we leave the house
In the morning.
That’s looking on the bright side.

The little girl across the road
Scoots along
Her mother walking beside her
The little girl chats
Lost in her fantasy
Telling her mother all the details
Of what’s in her mind.
The mother is half-listening
The other half
Watching to make sure
The girl does not fall off.

You said I could watch your West Wings
and your series 2 of House.
You've left them for me to watch
You said.

You’ve taken your space cup from
The NASA canteen.
You’ve taken your coats
So I have somewhere
To hang mine now.
That’s great.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest has arrived!

2009-09-25T17:32:47+01:00

Q: When is it that when a 602-page book arrives in your post, you not only can't wait to start reading it, but wish it were longer?

A: When it is The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, the third part of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, published by the MacLehose Press (an imprint of Quercus), and translated from the Swedish by Reg Keeland. What's it about?

...women who were common soldiers, who bore arms, belonged to regiments, and played their part in battle on the same terms as men. Hardly a war has been waged without women soldiers in the ranks.
It is estimated that some six hundred women served during the American Civil War. They had signed up disguised as men. Hollywood has missed a significant chapter of cultural history here - or is this history ideologically difficult to deal with? Historians have often struggled to deal with women who do not respect gender distinctions, and nowhere is that distinction more sharply drawn than in the question of armed combat.

After reading the first 43 pages, I am pretty sure that Lisbeth Salander is going to buck this trend, simply by taking no notice of it.

The author of The Millennium Trilogy, Stieg Larsson, was Editor in Chief of the anti-racist magazine Expo. He died suddenly in November 2004, at the age of 50, soon after delivering the text of the three novels to his publisher. The first of these, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, won ITV's International Author of the Year Award 2008; the Galaxy British Book Award for crime thriller of the year 2009; Waterstone's book of the year 2009; and the Crimefest Sounds of Crime Award 2009 (audio version). The second novel, The Girl Who Played with Fire, received superb reviews upon its UK and (very recent) US publication.

Reg Keeland has translated all three novels; he is also the distinguished translator of other novels including those by favourites of mine Helene Tursten, Karin Alvtegen, Henning Mankell, Leif Davidsen and Camilla Lackberg, some of these in collaboration with Tiina Nunnally, also a very distinguished translator. (See here for more about Reg's work.)

I shall be aiming to read this book and have my review delivered by its official publication date of 1 October. If you don't hear from me between now and then, you will know why.

Petrona posts about Stieg Larsson

Crime Fiction journeys posts about Stieg Larsson, including many more reviews of the first two books.

Publisher website for the Millennium Trilogy.

Favourite literary heroes

2009-09-24T12:54:41+01:00

The Book Depository blog has provided the shortlist for a competition being run by Mills & Boon and the Times Cheltenham Literary festival to identify "the nation's favourite literary hero" (yuk!). Despite hating the idea of the "nation's" favourite anything, I'm quite intrigued by the concept of a favourite literary hero. Of the ones in the list provided, I would, probably obviously, choose the perfect Mr Darcy (Jane Austen's of course). I haven't read the Sharpe novels, nor the books by Jilly Cooper or Audrey Niffenegger on this list. Of the rest, I'd eliminate Heathcliff as not heroic, Oak as boring, Butler as superficial and Rochester as misogynistic (despite his rehabilitation as portrayed by Toby Stephens in the recent TV adaptation, in the book he was not so nice).

Richard Sharpe -- Sharpe by Bernard Cornwall

Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy -- Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

Mr Mark Darcy -- Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

Mr Rochester -- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Rupert Campbell Black -- Rutshire Chronicles by Jilly Cooper

Rhett Butler -- Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Heathcliff -- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Captain Corelli -- Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres

Henry DeTamble -- The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Gabriel Oak -- Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Before the UK's obsession with Mr Darcy and the other Mr Darcy, Guy Perron from The Raj Quartet (a.k.a. Charles Dance) had considerable mass appeal. One of my own favourite literary heroes when I was in my 20s was Mr Knightley (Jane Austen's Emma). (As an aside, why is he always played by someone too young in recent - and upcoming - dramatisations?) I also rather liked Edwin Clayhanger and Doc (Cannery Row). Before that, I adored characters like Robin Hood, Achilles and Sherlock Holmes, who probably would not have been all that nice to know in reality. A sort of modern-day equivalent of these impulsive, rebellious types is the rather appealing Sirius Black (J K Rowling), but look what happened to him. Of course nowadays I suppose I am too old to have literary heroes, and I also don't read "literature" (or Jilly Cooper!). But I do rather like Erlendur (Arnaldur Indridason) because he likes to spend his "spare" time quietly reading a book. (I'd have to draw a veil over some of the local specialities he eats.)

If you want to vote on the shortlist above, here is where to go. You don't get my options, I'm afraid. Nor any Dickens, Eliott, Tolstoy, et al.

Viking preview: The Hammer and the Cross

2009-09-23T11:20:52+01:00

There's an interesting profile of Robert Ferguson, author of a new book The Hammer and The Cross (Penguin Press, November in the UK and Australia) in The Bookseller last week (18 September, p. 19; I think print-only). The author hopes to revive interest in the Vikings, along the lines that has been done over the past few years for the Romans. Apparently, historians currently view the Vikings (who did not keep written records) as having been traders, craftspeople and settlers, in contrast with their traditional popular reputation as warriors, pillagers and associated delights.
Ferguson thinks the Vikings need rehabilitation as violent, brutal people. His book has taken seven years to write, and looks at the "psychotic rage" of the Viking age from its beginnings (around the beginning of the last millennium) to the early 11th century, when it "fizzled out after mass conversion to Christianity". The book explores settlements in Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland, the activities of the Swedish Vikings (who went as far south as the Black Sea), and the Vikings in Normandy, Spain and England, complete with "horrific details", apparently. The Vikings "won" in England after 150 years of attacks; Cnut ruled the country for 30 years. "Had he been luckier with his sons, Britain might be a Scandinavian country today."
The author has lived in Norway for many years, learning the language so he could study the early modern writer Knut Hamsun and write a book about him. He then wrote biographies of Henry Miller and Henrik Ibsen. According to the Bookseller, his "literary background is evident in the book's skilful use of Viking saga and poetry to flesh out the history." Here is an excerpt (not for the faint-hearted):

Now, with the chamber boarded up, came what was probably the heart of the proceedings. Four or five dogs and two more oxen were slaughtered, as well as fifteen horses that had first been run to exhaustion. The furniture, tools and carriages scattered across the foredeck were bathed in their blood. Stones were then piled over the ship, breaking many of the grave-goods and rendering them unusable. The sights and sounds accompanying such an orgy of blood-letting we might perhaps be able to imagine, the atmosphere conjured by it probably not. As the mourners then set about completing the mound the sight before them must have been eerie and awe-inspiring, the blood-spattered ship with its cargo of dead women seeming to lurch forward across the field in a last attempt to shake off the engulfing wave of dark earth rising behind it. The meadow flowers preserved from this stage of the proceedings were autumnal, showing that the whole process from the opening of the furrow to the closing of the mound must have taken about four months. Clearly at least one of the women had died long before the burial took place.

The Page Turner on UK TV on 23 September

2009-09-20T12:30:23+01:00

Sometimes, something just catches your eye and you aren't sure why. I was flicking through the various sections of the Saturday Times this morning (a Sunday morning habit) when the phrase The Page Turner jumped out at me. On closer inspection this turns out to be the title of a 2006 film which is showing on Film4 on Wednesday 23 September at 2250 UK time. From the Times's blurb:

Revenge is a dish served icy cold in the French writer-director Denis Dercoult's taut, psychologically charged Euro-thriller. Catherine Frot plays a successful concert pianist who hires a new assistant (Deborah Francois), not realising that this seductive femme fatale has scores to settle with her from years before (85 min).

I may have read about this film when it was first released, but if so, I'd forgotten about it - it sounds good even if it is not, as my subconscious brain must have at first thought, about books. The 85 min is also quite appealing, so I might attempt to set up the timer for it (if we even get this channel), because even though it is a short film, it's too late to watch "live" as it were.

More information:

La tourneuse de pages at the IMDB

Film4 review and info about the film

Observer review by Philip French

Finished reading: The Disappeared by M. R. Hall

2009-09-19T19:20:27+01:00

I was thinking of writing a review of The Disappeared, M. R. Hall's follow-up to his very successful debut The Coroner. My very kind colleague at Pan Macmillan, James Long, gave me a proof copy of the book, which I've just finished. But I see from the back cover of the proof that the book is not published until January 2010, so my review will have to wait.

The Disappeared continues the story of Jenny Cooper, Coroner for the Severn Dale district of Bristol in the south-west of England, across the river from Wales. Jenny is in her 40s, divorced from David, an arrogant surgeon. At the moment, their teenage son Ross is living with Jenny, but they aren't getting on too well - Jenny because she's permanently stressed out at work and suffers from chronic anxiety; Ross because he's a typical alienated teenager who wants independence until someone doesn't put a meal on the table when he's hungry. Both mother and son are recovering addicts, so their relationship is highly unstable.

Jenny has problems at work with her prickly assistant Alison as well as various male authority figures in the police force and at the morgue. The Disappeared is mainly about Jenny's investigation into two missing young Asian students, and the obfuscations she experiences from the police, MI5, the university, lawyers and assorted other people. At the same time, Jenny isn't sure about her relationship with Steve, her neighbour, or how she feels about Alec McAvoy, a maverick, struck-off lawyer who seems to be using his charms to manipulate her investigation.

The Coroner is just out in paperback in the UK and is doing well in the charts. The author, M. R. Hall, is a screenwriter, producer, and former criminal barrister.

Post for a silly day: book titles, updated

2009-09-15T11:50:13+01:00

When you log into the Typepad dashboard now, you get to see all kinds of things, including a question of the day. Today's is: if you met yourself as a teenager now, what three things would you tell yourself?
I'll take a raincheck on that, but on a day when despite my best intentions not to mention the DB or TLS words, the internet and blogosphere is overwhelmed by Dan Brown -- Waterstones and the Bookseller read and live-Twittered The Lost Symbol overnight and the Guardian (clearly not as dedicated in the line of duty) started the same exercise this morning -- I feel like writing something silly.

So here is a post via Boing Boing which I think is a better challenge than the one posed by Typepad's question of the day. It is "if literary classics had been retitled", or as the source post at Your monkey called more aptly puts it: "Book titles, if they were written today". An example is:

Then: The Wealth of Nations
Now: Invisible Hands: The Mysterious Market Forces That Control Our Lives and How to Profit from Them

As is so often the case, the best examples are in the comments to both posts. A few favourites:

Then: Dante's Inferno.
Now: Dante's Descent into Dummy Loan Felonies —With a Detour for Minimum Security Prison— and Amazing Redemption as an "Ethical Financial Advisor"

Then: The Art of War
Now: 13 Chapters of Highly Effective Warfare Techniques (Illustrated)

Here's two with Dan Brown themes:

Then: The Double Helix
Now: The Stuff of Life: The Hunt For the Code Behind Every Living Thing

Then: The Iliad
Now: The Trojan Code

OK - that's enough DB -- ed.

Then: Moby Dick
Now: Sea Trek 2: The Wrath of Ahab

Then: The Bible
Now: The Dangerous Book for Adults. Lessons on Life, Love, War and Sin. Includes dream interpretation and The Bible II - revised edition with all 4 gospels.

Then : The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
Now: The Jungle Book by Bernie Madoff/Ben Bernanke

And finally....

CHARLES J. DICKENS
The Twist Progression

CHARLES J. DICKENS
The Jarndyce Inheritance
BY THE AUTHOR OF THE TWIST PROGRESSION

CHARLES J. DICKENS
THE NEW INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
The Havisham Agenda

Feel free to add your own, here or at your own blog (or both!).

Reading Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indridason

2009-09-13T17:14:23+01:00

I started reading Hypothermia this morning, and have just finished it. I had to break off at a couple of points during the day to do other things, but equally I had to take any opportunity to return to it and read on until I got to the end. It's a brilliant book. (How could a book by this author with this title not be great?!)

It's a perfectly told story - an apparently straightforward set of plots that play out in interlocking fashion - and also is a superb picture of the protagonist's internal emotional landscape through which events are filtered. Erlendur's decades-long musings on the effects of loss colour his thoughts and actions to this day. I identify with him more than any other character in fiction, as his age (and hence the way in which he responds to the world and current events) and preoccupations are so similar to my own.

But that identification apart, this is a wonderful book, relying entirely on good storytelling and authorial insight, and not at all on thrills, technology, special effects or other machinations. Yet it is never less than tense or compelling. When the last page is turned, one is left with a sense of having really experienced life in the book's setting in Iceland; of having learned something about human nature and relationship dynamics; but above all of having read a great story straight from the land of the imagination.

My review is being drafted and in due course will be submitted to Euro Crime.

Publisher description: One cold autumn night, a woman is found hanging from a beam in her summer cottage by Lake Thingvellir. At first sight it appears to be a straightforward case of suicide; the woman, Maria, had never recovered from the loss of her mother two years earlier and had a history of depression. But when Karen, the friend who found her body, approaches Erlendur and gives him the tape of a seance that Maria had attended, his curiosity is aroused. Driven by a need to find answers that even he does not fully understand, Erlendur embarks on an unofficial investigation to find out why the woman's life ended in such an abrupt and tragic manner. At the same time he is haunted by the unresolved cases of two young people who went missing thirty years before, and, inevitably, his discoveries raise ghosts from his own past.
About the Author: ARNALDUR INDRIETHASON worked for many years as a journalist and critic before he began writing novels. Outside Iceland, he is best known for his crime novels featuring Erlendur and Sigurdur Oli, which are consistent bestsellers across Europe. The series has won numerous awards, including the Nordic Glass Key and the CWA Gold Dagger. His most recent novel is Arctic Chill. (Hypothermia, translated by Victoria Cribb, is published in the UK in October 2009).

Reviews of Indridason's previous Erlendur books.

Dinner with the Criminal Minds

2009-09-12T10:50:42+01:00

The Criminal Minds: a virtual panel is a great blog with a great publishing strategy. Each week, "seven crime fiction authors respond to a question about writing, reading, murder and mayhem" - so a different person writes a post answering the same question each day of the week. For the week of 7 September, the question concerned who you would invite to dinner, what would be on the menu and what would you discuss? Here's a post on the topic from Rebecca Cantrell, author of the Hannah Vogel series set in 1930s Berlin (which I have not yet read, but thanks to the generosity of Norman (Uriah) of Crime Scraps, hope to do so soon). Norman's review of A Trace of Smoke and his interviews with the author can be found here.

Rebecca Cantrell's meal and guests have a distinctly German theme. I, on the other hand, would probably go for sushi or a Thai meal as I so rarely get the chance to sample those cuisines. The guests, though? You're allowed three, and assuming they have to be people you don't actually know, I'd choose Viggo Mortensen, J. K. Rowling and Ian McEwan (that did not take long to decide!). I wouldn't need to do any talking, just listen (and, occasionally, watch of course.) Maybe you'd like to answer the dinner-guest question on your own blog or in the comments here.

The Criminal Minds blog/panel is well worth subscribing to if you don't know it already - as well as the themed posts you can also email questions to the seven authors, and it looks as if you can win prizes for writing good comments. It also reminds me that I've been meaning to try a novel by one of its bloggers, C. J. Lyons (great dinner companions!), as I like medical thrillers, so I'll add one to my list. (Currently running at about 500 books, and that's not counting the couple of hundred actual ones I have on my shelves waiting to be read.)

The Darkest Room and more from Johan Theorin and Marlaine Delargy

2009-09-10T20:59:03+01:00

My review of the superb book The Darkest Room, by Johan Theorin and excellently translated by Marlaine Delargy, was published last Sunday at Euro Crime. I feel that my review did not do this brilliant story full justice; I also think that I did not edit and revise the review enough times before finishing it, so apologies to those who read it for those aspects. Be that as it may, I think this author combines the talents of a natural storyteller, an excellent plotter, a shrewed yet sympathetic observer, and a sensitive empathiser, more than any author currently writing crime fiction. (I would be delighted if anyone could provide examples that would contradict this assertion!). It is, I think, impossible to do this rich book justice in a brief review, but here is an excerpt:

Above all, the author himself is a wonderful storyteller; one becomes totally immersed in his Oland world and in the lives and personalities of the superbly well-observed characters, major and minor. He is also a great plotter - the main stories as well as the minor ones weave in and out of each other: apparently small details in one story turn out to be highly relevant in another. [read on here.]

There are some other very good reviews of this book which I link to in this post 'Not getting away with Scandinavian murder'. If you haven't read these reviews, I do urge you to, in case you think I am just getting a bit carried away. I do think that Johan Theorin has a special talent.

I was enormously flattered to receive an email from Marlaine Delargy, the translator of Johan Theorin's novels, after my review of The Darkest Room was published. Apparently she and the author read and enjoyed my review, nice enough in itself but it is heartwarming that they took the trouble to write to tell me so. Marlaine writes about an earlier, equally superb, book by the same author, Echoes From the Dead: the small-format paperback issued this year in the UK by Black Swan contains "about 8 wonderful black and white photographs in the back, all from Johan, and he has written a short commentary on each one. They really help to bring his stories to life, and there's also the map of Öland that's in the front of The Darkest Room." I think I shall be buying this edition of Echoes From The Dead to see these photographs and read the commentary.

Finally, Marlaine writes about Johan Theorin: "he's hard at work on his third novel, and the publishers are hoping it will be ready around Christmas." Me, too!

Book review: The Crow Trap, by Ann Cleeves

2009-09-09T21:11:36+01:00

Weighing in at 550 pages, I was slightly daunted at the prospect of reading this book, but I need not have worried. It’s very absorbing – a slow burn of a book (published by Pan Macmillan), full of atmosphere and suspense, as well as with a well-drawn cast of characters and a satisfying plot.
The first part of the novel concerns three women who are staying in a remote cottage in a village in the north of England. Rachael, Anne and Grace are conducting an ecological review, the results of which will determine whether the area can be developed into a quarry. As the novel opens, Rachael arrives at the cottage to begin the project and discovers her friend Bella, owner of the neighbouring farmhouse, hanging from a noose, having apparently committed suicide. This being a crime novel, we know that this conclusion may not be justified, but for the first part of the novel, the author is content to let everyone believe that Bella took her own life, while we get to know the living characters and the dynamics between them. Each section of the book is told from the point of view of one of the three women researchers, having the double benefit that the characters and their concerns can come to life, and that certain events can be with justification kept from the reader.
Tensions build between the women and with the people in the nearby village who have conflicting interests in the project. Peter, the women’s employer, is a greasy-pole-climber who among other nefarious activities has plagiarised Rachael’s research and discarded her after an affair without telling her he’s begun to see another woman (whom he eventually marries). Rachael is the most successfully portrayed of the three central women, as she fights to overcome her insecurities and relationship with her confident, overwhelming mother. Anne is married to the local squire, but their relationship is semi-detached to say the least; Grace also has a local connection – she is the most mysterious of the three women and one senses she must have some connection to Bella’s death.
A crisis occurs in the shape of another death, which leads to the introduction of DI Vera Stanhope, a middle-aged, unmarried and distinctly unconventional woman who has bags of external confidence but her own share of internal insecurities relating to her own past, and in particular her father’s “secret obsession”. Vera brings a welcome dynamism to the book, both in terms of plot and her working environment with her subordinates.
The author cleverly switches between points of view; these, together with her paced revelations of past events gradually show the full extent of the network which Vera must unravel to get to the bottom of the mystery (or mysteries). I shall certainly be reading the next books in the Vera Stanhope series (though I believe that THE CROW TRAP was originally written as a standalone novel), not least because I find her an attractive and unusual character, and want to know more about her.
Since first drafting this review it has been confirmed that Vera Stanhope is to become a TV detective. I’m very much looking forward to watching her exploits, and well-deserved congratulations to Ann Cleeves for this news.

Ann Cleeves's online diary

The Crow Trap reviewed at Reviewing the Evidence

Wheredunnit on Northumberland, Ann Cleeves and the Vera Stanhope books.

Brief review at Mysteries in Paradise, as part of a "female detectives" post.

Ann Cleeves guest post on "crime for all" at DJ's krimblog.

Posts about Ann Cleeves at DJ's krimblog: includes reviews of all the Vera Stanhope series.

A few thoughts about the Dagger shortlists

2009-09-07T21:02:59+01:00

As usual late to the party, the shortlists for the "Specsaver ITV3 crime and thriller Dagger awards" have been announced today (approx). ITV3's web page for what they call the "bestseller" award is here, where you can see videos of the nominees Martina Cole, Dick Francis, Nicci French, Alexander McCall Smith and Harlan Coben. Tough call - I'm tending to Nicci French but possibly Harlan Coben might sneak up on them. I am not sure at this stage whether these awards are for a particular book or for a body of work by these authors. I suppose I'll have to go and watch some of those videos to find out.

By the way, the same ITV3 web page contains a video "hall of fame": Ruth Rendell, Lynda La Plante, P D James, Colin Dexter, Val McDermid and Ian Rankin all talk about their novels. Tempting for the next time I have a spare half-hour (probably never).

Perhaps more interesting than "bestselling" is the CWA Gold Dagger prize, for the "crime novel of the year". The shortlist for 2009 is:

Kate Atkinson: When Will There Be Good News? (Black Swan/Transworld)
Mark Billingham: In the Dark (Little, Brown)
Lawrence Block: Hit and Run (Orion)
William Broderick: A Whispered Name (Little, Brown)
MR Hall: The Coroner (Pan Macmillan)
Gene Kerrigan: Dark Times In The City (Harvill Secker)

Of these, I've read only The Coroner and Dark Times in the City, and I am completely stumped as to which I'd choose if I were a judge as they are both fantastic crime novels. I suppose I will have to read the other four now. I really enjoyed Case Histories by Kate Atkinson, so perhaps I'll soon embark on When Will There be Good News, not least because, surprisingly, she is the only woman author on this shortlist.