PETRONA

Book review: City of the Sun by David Levien

City of the Sun by David Levien (Bantam/Transworld UK; Random House US).

I wasn’t too sure about this book after reading the first two chapters, which describe in present tense the disappearance of a young teenage boy, Jamie, while on his early morning paper round in his neighbourhood suburb of Indianapolis. But from the moment I started chapter three, with the header “14 months later” I was hooked on this exciting yet thoughtful and well-plotted novel.
After 14 months, the police investigation into the boy’s disappearance has gone nowhere and Jamie’s parents, Mr and Mrs Average American suburban couple Carol and Paul, have sunk into apathetic misery after spending day after week after month handing out buttons and photos of Jamie, joining support groups, surfing the internet and doing all they know to try to find their only son. They go to the police station in a routine follow-up visit and realise that the police have not done anything active for months to look for the boy. Carol is devastated, and as they leave the station a sympathetic cop gives Paul the card of an ex-colleague who is now a private investigator.
Paul is reluctant to go this route, not least because he isn’t rich, but out of curiosity he drives to the PI’s office to check him out. The man, Frank Behr, is not at all what Paul expected, so with nothing to lose, Paul and Carol decide to hire Frank. Frank is suffering himself, as his own young son has died a few years ago and his marriage broke up as a result. He identifies with the pain Paul and Carol are feeling, but warns the anguished parents that it is almost inevitable that by now Jamie is dead.
Frank starts his investigation, beginning with the boy’s movements on the day he disappeared. The reader joins Frank on a fascinating journey in which he follows up on every detail, however slight, as gradually he discovers exactly where Jamie disappeared, and then thinks of a plausible lead to follow that had (again plausibly) eluded the police. I was totally absorbed not only in the way in which the author paces out the slow uncovering of piece after piece of (initially thin, gradually strengthening) evidence as tough-guy Frank follows everything through, but also in the tender relationship between Frank and Paul, who form an initially uneasy partnership born of grief, yet gradually become genuine friends.
There is a lot to like about this book. It’s an intelligent detective story, as Frank digs around among seedy urban enterprises and petty criminals; it’s an action thriller, as Frank continually either welcomes trouble or stumbles into it; it’s strong and unflinching, yet never slips into gratuitousness; and it has a heart. The author genuinely likes his characters, not only his protagonist Frank but the sad family who were destroyed the day that Jamie disappeared. 
City of the Sun is a great read – it is in the mould of Linwood Barclay and C. J. Box, and comes with jacket endorsements from Robert Crais and Harlan Coben.  I definitely see similarities between this fast-paced debut novel and these two authors’ books – which is praise indeed. If David Levien develops the potential he shows in City of the Sun in his future books (the next in the series is called Where The Dead Lay), it won’t be too long before he is up there in that pantheon.

I thank the UK publisher, Bantam/Transworld, for so kindly sending me a copy of this novel.

Other reviews of City of the Sun at:
Blogcritics
Entertainment Weekly
EBR Parish library
USA Today

From Wikipedia: David Levien is an American screenwriter, novelist, director and producer. Best known as the co-writer of Ocean's Thirteen and Rounders, Levien has also produced films such as The Illusionist and The Lucky Ones.

Look out for Swedish Book Review 2010-1

If you are thinking of buying a translated crime novel from Amazon, there is a good chance it will have been reviewed there by Simon Clarke.  I find Simon's Amazon reviews an incredibly helpful guide to whether or not to buy the book - and it's amazing how he always seems to have read the latest, say, Scandinavian novel whenever I first hear of it and go to check it out on Amazon. Thanks to Simon for this greatly appreciated activity.

Simon emailed the other week with some welcome news: he says that the first edition of the Swedish Book Review will be a 'Crime' edition. The first edition of the year is usually out around April time, writes Simon. From the journal's website:  "Swedish Book Review was launched in 1983. It publishes two main issues and a supplement every year, normally in June and December (total number of pages per year: circa 200). The main aim of SBR is to present Swedish literature to the English-speaking world. It carries translated extracts from the works of Swedish writers, often together with an introductory article. Most contributors are based outside Sweden, but familiar with the Swedish scene: they can therefore reflect Swedish views on their literature, and also provide a valuable international perspective. As well as established writers, SBR introduces new or lesser-known writers (including Finland-Swedish authors and poets). At least one writer in this category is introduced in each issue, and the 1999 Supplement was devoted to new writing."

My reviews of 30 Swedish books.

Happy New Year

Apart from two or three pre-timed posts, I haven't written on this blog for about 10 days, owing to my right arm being incapacitated after an operation. As I managed to make the Christmas dinner more or less completely left-handed yesterday, I thought I could run to a blog post today to wish everyone a very happy, if belated, Christmas and a wonderful new year. I spend my blogless phase reading several books and drafting reviews of them in my head. I also decided to clean the Augean stables and embark on my "to be read" shelf - as a result of which I now have a pile of 20 books that I did not finish - I soldiered on to page 100 or beyond in each case, but decided that I would not continue after that point. My confidence wobbled a little (had I gone off reading?), but I did note from the Amazon slips in the books that they date back to 2004 in some cases. My reading choices have become much more refined (in one sense of the word, anyway) since I discovered RSS and blog book reviews 4 years ago.
However, by Christmas morning I had not finished a book for some days, so I was very pleased to receive not one but every book on my list. A kind daughter has taken a picture of my spoils so I can show them to you:

I'm not sure how easy it is to see these selections, but other than the Thesaurus and the book by Nicci Gerrard I have my blogger and internet friends to thank for these books. I have started one already, as the very eagle-eyed will be able to tell by spotting the bookmark.

I hope that you, too, received some good reading material, and indeed if necessary other gifts, for Christmas (or alternative celebration). I look forward to hearing about which books you received, if so, and what you think of them when you have read them.

I think that is all that I can manage to write for now, so farewell for the time being; I'll try to post again briefly tomorrow.

Alphabet in crime fiction: Larsson

Asa Larsson is one of my very favourite authors. She's written most of a six-book series about a troubled Stockholm financial lawyer called Rebecka Martinsson. Three of the books have been translated into English, superbly, by Marlaine Delargy. As I understand it, the translation fate of some or all of the rest hangs in the balance. I truly hope that these excellent novels will be translated and will receive the wider audience they so well deserve.

In the first novel of the series, Sun Storm (UK title The Savage Altar), Rebecka returns to Kiruna, the small town she left in disgrace many years before, because her old schoolfriend Sanna is suspected of murder. Sanna's brother was killed in the revivalist church that he led. To help Sanna, Rebecka has to face the dark past of her childhood. Not only does the novel have an excellent plot, it also provides a rich background of the ways of life in this remote village, especially that of Rebecka's grandfather, and an unusual police detective, Anna-Maria Mella. Sun Storm won Sweden's best first crime novel award (2003) and was shortlisted for the CWA International Dagger (2007), very deservedly so. It has also been filmed (in Sweden), with the title Solstorm.

The second novel, The Blood Spilt, is set in midsummer, and opens with another murder in a church, again in the Kiruna region. Despite these superficial similarities, the two books are very different, as The Blood Spilt explores the shadows within the local community that fell over Mildred, the dead woman, and tells the story of Yellow Legs, a lone wolf living in the forests. This book won Sweden's best crime novel award in 2004.

The Black Path, the third in the series, opens with the discovery of a dead woman in a fisherman's ark on a frozen lake. Anna-Maria needs a lawyer to explain part of the case - so she calls on Rebecka, who is desperate to get back to work. The preface:
"Do you remember what happened?
Rebecka Martinsson saw her dead friend lying there on the gravel in Poikkijarvi. And the world shattered. And they had to hold on to her to stop her walking into the river.
This is the third book."

Links in the book titles above take you to my reviews of the novels at Euro Crime.

Asa Larsson at Wikipedia.

Asa Larsson at Scandinavian Books.

Crime Fiction alphabet series at Petrona.

Mysteries in Paradise, home of the crime fiction alphabet. Visit this link if you would like to participate.

Euro Crime and Petrona reviews posted during November

Even later than Donna, I haven't yet collected up my November book reviews at Euro Crime. In haste, before we run out of December, here they are:

My favourite of my November batch: The Consorts of Death by Gunnar Staalesen (translated by Don Bartlett). "In my opinion, this series stands alongside Connelly, Crais, Temple, Camilleri and others, who are among the very best modern exponents of the poetic yet tough detective story with strong, classic plots; a social conscience; and perfect pitch in terms of a sense of place."

True Murder by Yaba Badoe, "a first novel which is enjoyable and holds a great deal of promise. If you enjoy Ruth Rendell or Morag Joss you will find much to like in TRUE MURDER".

Core of Evil by Nigel McCrery, "a book that slips down a treat. It's easy to read over a couple of hours, mashing up the traditional British detective novel (think Agatha Christie) with the modern police procedural." 

No Escape by N. J. Cooper. "As well as being a satisfying mystery novel, I liked the way in which Karen develops from being rather weedy at the start of the book, to capable self-assurance as she's increasingly threatened by unknown forces."

The Shadow in the Water by Inger Frimansson (translated by Laura A. Wideburg), "a very disturbing novel, clouded and obscured by perceptions and suspicions so that nothing is what it seems".

To Steal her Love by Matti Joensuu (translated by David Hackston). "My favourite parts of the story involved the police and how the lower ranks try to get the job done despite all the politics and rivalries from above and from other departments, and the broader observations of an overstretched societal system teetering on the brink and full of cynical opportunists, in the manner so ably conveyed by Sjowall and Wahloo in their Martin Beck series."

Also during November I posted some new reviews on Petrona:

Wicked Prey by John Sandford.
The Southern Seas by Manuel Vazquez Montalban (translated by Patrick Camiller).
Brief review of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy (translated by Reg Keeland).
The Darkest Hour by Katherine Howell.
Thumbprint by Friedrich Glauser (translated by Mike Martin).
Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo.

Quite a productive month! All my book reviews are archived here, categorised by country of author as well as by genre.

Christmas crime: Blood Safari by Deon Meyer (translated by K L Seegers)

I've been finding it a bit hard to come up with entries for Kerrie's "suggest a Christmas title" collection because I don't read books with an explicitly Christmas theme, rather I find that I am (occasionally) reading a book which turns out to be set in part at Christmas. I read one of these recently, Blood Safari by Deon Meyer, and fortuitously my review of this book was published earlier this week at Euro Crime. My review starts:

"BLOOD SAFARI, originally written in Afrikaans, is an excellent thriller which held me completely entranced from the moment I opened it and read the first page. I'm a sucker for many of its themes, not least the damaged loner protagonist Lemmer, an ex-con now working as a bodyguard for a company called Body Armour, owned and run by Jeanette Louw, one of the most original owners of a security company I've come across in my reading travels.
Lemmer is renovating his house in a small, neighbourly town of Loxton, South Africa. He's knocking down a wall on Christmas day when Jeanette phones him to offer him a job as bodyguard to rich “brand consultant” Emma le Roux. Emma's house was broken into and she was attacked by three armed, masked men a few days previously, barely escaping with her life...."

Read on at Euro Crime for the rest of my review, and do let me highly recommend this superb thriller/detective story. Although the main events take place over the holiday period, you won't find many, if any, Christmas trees, and not a leg of turkey or sprig of mistletoe in sight.

Deon Meyer website.

Karen Meek's review of Devil's Peak(audiobook) by Deon Meyer (tr. K L Seegers).

Bernadette's review of Devil's Peak.

Euro Crime - reviews and news about European (including British) crime fiction. 

Contribute to Kerrie's suggest a Christmas title collection.

Crime-fiction websites for readers

For those interested in international crime writing, Crime Scene is a Crime Time series edited by Bob Cornwell, which looks at "the very best of the international crime writing scene", country by country. Each country profile collects key facts, relevant figures, publishing trends, notable writers, crime fiction festivals and prizes. And each issue is compiled by writers, bibliographers, or other experts active on the Crime Scene in question. Each profile is available to download in PDF format and more will be added as the series develops. So far, countries profiled are France, The Netherlands and Switzerland, characterised by cover images of a mean street, a pair of legs wearing pink high heels, and a pile of sausages, respectively. These PDFs look like excellent resources, and just as soon as I can get my new(ish) computer to talk to the printer, I shall be downloading them to plan some reading. I'll also be checking the Crime Scene index page now and again to see which country will be added next.

Another crime-fiction website, CrimeSquad, among other riches is running an interview with Camilla Noli, who has written a highly controversial debut, The Mother's Tale, about the extraordinary pressures on a new mother and her desire to kill her own child. According to CrimeSquad, the book was deemed so controversial that it was delayed a year in publication in deference to public outrage at the Baby P case. (I can't find the interview with the author at the CrimeSquad site, but maybe others have better detective skills than me.)

Other crime-fiction resources include:

Mystery Readers Journal

Shots Ezine

Reviewing the Evidence, whose home page is currently featuring Sharon and Yvonne's top-ten reading lists for the year - with only one overlapping title.

Euro Crime  (my favourite! but they are all great sites.)

Alphabet in crime fiction: Kerrigan

Gene Kerrigan is an award-winning political journalist who has turned his hand to writing crime fiction. According to Wikipedia, "Mr. Kerrigan's journalism is hard-boiled and revealing, and he observes the goings-on and pretensions of those who wield political and financial power with a caustic eye, often with a weary and mordant humour." I think the same description can be applied to his three published novels, all of which I have enjoyed tremendously and reviewed for Euro Crime. From my reviews:

Little Criminals. "I was not sure I'd want to read a book about an Irish gang who kidnap a businessman's wife and demand a huge ransom. But, persuaded by great reviews by the authors of some of the blogs I regularly read, I decided to try it. And I am glad I did: it is excellent. The book opens in a small southern Irish village called Harte's Cross, where Frankie Crowe and his sidekick Martin Paxton unsuccessfully try to steal the takings of the local pub. The actions of that day don't feature again until the very end of the book, when their reverberations contribute to a climax that is like a Greek tragedy in its elements of history, fate and hubris."

The Midnight Choir. "I loved everything about this book. THE MIDNIGHT CHOIR is truly bleak, at times violent and disturbing, but always brilliant. The way in which the plots overlap and sometimes merge in a horridly inevitable cause and effect is masterly. Although I applaud the lack of sentimentality, I was glad that the reader is left with a spark of optimism in the shape of at least two police officers who know how to do the right thing."

Dark Times in the City. "Right from the first page, the reader is grabbed by the author's distinguishing mix of bleak noir, perfect attention to detail, atmosphere and lyricism - no hint of wordiness or sentimentality, but engaging one's emotions and attention right from the first page of poetic description, to the shattered illusions of the last."

Dark Times in the City was arguably the first book to describe the collapse of the "Irish tiger" economy (because of the delay between writing a novel and its publication, the author must have been remarkably prescient, as one might expect from an award-winning political journalist!). This book was also deservedly nominated for the CWA Golden Dagger in 2009, though personally I think it not quite as good as the first two novels. Still pretty spectacular, though.

Reviews of Little Criminals, Midnight Choir and  Dark Times in the City at the excellent blog of Glenn Harper, International Noir Fiction.

Gene Kerrigan's columns in the Irish Independent.

 

Crime Fiction alphabet series at Petrona.

Mysteries in Paradise, home of the crime fiction alphabet. Visit this link if you would like to participate.

Book review: Three weeks to say goodbye, by C. J. Box

“A page-turner”, “unputdownable” and a blurb from Lee Child (“solid gold A-list must-read”) are all somewhat clichés of crime fiction, but in the case of Three Weeks to Say Goodbye by C. J. Cox (Corvus), more than justified. From the first paragraph of the novel, when Denver travel-development specialist and narrator Jack McGuane gets a horrible phone message at work from the agency from which he and his wife Melissa adopted their 9-month-old baby Angelina, I felt compelled to find out what was going on. It isn’t pleasant: owing to an administrative confusion, the baby’s natural father never actually signed the relevant legal documents, and now wants the baby back.
The initial chapters lurch from Jack’s initial belief that this can be easily sorted out, to his awful realisation that not only is he in a mess with no legal leg to stand on, but he can’t afford a lawyer and can’t rely on the support of colleagues or contacts because the baby’s natural grandfather is an ambitious federal judge with a large network of allies and people who owe him favours within the local public and political services. The book succeeds very well in these opening chapters because it focuses on the emotions of Jack and Melissa, truly devoted parents to Angelina, and the havoc caused by the actions of the creepy Garrett Moreland and his powerful father John.
Jack and Melissa try to counter the Morelands’ claim over their baby but fail. Judge Moreland gives the couple three weeks to say goodbye to Angelina and to organise her life so she is ready for the transfer, a Solomon-like dilemma. Jack and Melissa vow to spend this time in fighting the Morelands with everything they have – which isn’t much. The sum total of their weaponry consists of two of Jack’s old schoolfriends: Cody, now a police detective; and Brian, a well-connected player in the Denver local political scene. Brian offers to dig into Judge Moreland’s background to try to find some way to stop him. Cody, however, turns out to be more of a liability than an asset, as Jack discovers when he sees Cody torn to pieces in the judge’s courtroom, for tampering with evidence. Cody is then suspended from the force so is effectively ruined as a useful ally.
Although the pace of the novel is maintained all the way through, and the portrayal of Jack (mainly) and Melissa (less detailed) is empathetic and involving, I felt that the detection aspects were not as strong as they might have been. Brian, and subsequently Cody, spend much time absent, undertaking unknown activities, occasionally phoning Jack with cryptic updates. Most of what the reader experiences is Jack flailing around as disaster piles on disaster, particularly a trip to Berlin which Jack is forced by his boss to undertake, during the somewhat artificial "three weeks" framework. There is a good interlude when the little band of friends travel with Angelina to Montana to see Cody’s dangerous uncle Jed and stop in on Jack’s parents;  and a truly surreal, eventually horror-comic episode when Jed turns up in Denver.
Ultimately, however, the climax of the novel depends more on violence than it does cleverness or dissection of motives and methods, which for me was a slight disappointment. Only slight, though – the plot is a good one and Jack is certainly a very refreshing change from most protagonists. He’s got all the usual human shortcomings; he's the opposite of macho; his devotion to his wife and daughter is touching; and the way he feels and acts in the workplace is very convincing. I very much enjoyed this novel and, though I might not go back and read this author’s previous series, I am extremely well-disposed to any future politico-legal thrillers he might care to write.

I thank Karen of Euro Crime, and the publisher (Corvus), for my copy of this novel.

Author website.

Review of this novel at It's a Crime! blog.

Review of this novel at Shots Mag.

More reading in March

After being overwhelmed with the quality and quantity of paperback reading in store for UK readers in March, I now fear I have to bring some news of yet more joys of that month - in hardback. According to the 4 December issue of The Bookseller, we are due the pinnacle of the reading experience - a new novel by Ian McEwan. It's called Solar, and it tells the story of Michael Beard, "an overweight Nobel prize-winning nuclear physicist, whose career is fading and whose fifth marriage is on the rocks. He sees his chance to sort his life out, and just possibly save the world from environmental disaster." Can't wait.

Another piece of good news is that the excellent The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist, superbly translated by Marlaine Delargy, is due out (as a trade paperback) on 1 March at £10.99. I highly recommend this "futuristic tale set in a dystopian world".

Turning to the crime fiction scene, there are just so many brilliant novels on offer it is hard to know where to start. Nicci French has a new book out, called  Complicit, which concerns a woman who discovers the body of her murdered lover and calls her best friend to help her get rid of the body. Or, how about The Snowman by Jo Nesbo? Harry Hole delves into the unsolved case files - and discovers that a worrying number of wives and mothers have gone missing over the years. The author is a Glass Key award winner and is translated by Don Bartlett, an admired favourite of mine and other Euro Crime readers/reviewers. Another exciting title is The Stone Cutter by Camilla Lackberg, translated by Steve Murray, who has done excellent work with favourite authors of mine Stieg Larsson, Karin Alvtegen and many others. In The Stone Cutter, Patrik Hedstrom has recently become a father, and is summoned to the wharf in the remote Fjallbacka where a young girl's body has been found, presumed drowned. But the post mortem reveals it was murder. Sophie Hannah, now billed as "the queen of psychological suspense" (!) has a new title out, A Room Swept White, in which Fliss Benson, working on a TV documentary about miscarriages of justice involving cot-death mothers, is sent a mysterious card with 16 numbers on it. Then one of the accused mothers is found dead, with a card in her pocket with 16 numbers on it. And so on. Hmm - how believable is this? But the Bookseller calls it "unputdownable".

More English-language originals will be tempting us. Robert Crais, with The First Rule, is the story of how armed men break into Frank Meyer's home and gun down everyone in sight. Joe Pike, his old friend and sidekick of PI Elvis Cole, swears revenge - no matter what. Lee Child (61 Hours), Alexander McCall Smith (the Double Comfort Safari Club, one of his Botswana series), Robert Harris (Lustrum), Jonathan Kellerman (Deception), Simon Brett (The Shooting in the Shop), Linda Fairstein (Hell Gate) and Robert B. Parker (Split Image) also have new titles coming out in March.

Other authors untried by me who have titles coming out in March are: Maggie Orford (Blood Rose), Jefferson Bass (The Bone Thief), Known to Evil (Walter Mosley), D. J. Taylor (At the Chime of the City Clock), Shona MacLean (A Game of Sorrows), S. J. Parris (Heresy), Andrew Williams (To Kill a Tsar), Carol Goodman (Arcadia Falls),  Barbara Cleverly (Strange Images of Death), Louise Welsh (Naming the Bones) and June Hampson (Jail Bait). Plus a few other historical-mystery-code-style adventures, and Robert B. Parker (again) with Appaloosa, a Western adventure/mystery which I mention here because Viggo Mortensen was in the film (which for some unknown reason I have not yet seen).

Finally, a debut that looks interesting, This Perfect World by Suzanne Bugler. "Laura Hamley's past comes back to haunt her after she receives a phone call from the mother of a girl she bullied at school. The woman is now in a psychiatric ward - as a consequence of Laura's cruelty?" I wonder if this author will treat the subject as well as Inger Frimnansson in Good Night My Darling? (Translated by Laura Wideburg.)

Happy about computer and blog

I'm very pleased with my new computer (PC), a Toshiba Satellite something or other. It was half the price of the computer I bought a couple of years ago, and does more. Such is the world of computers. It has Windows 7 installed, including IE8, and I love that compared with IE6 and IE7. (I have not quite worked out how to stop its security obsession which means I can't use bookmarklets very easily but I'll get there on deactivating all its many controls, eventually.) Mainly, it is so quick compared with IE7 (or something), and IE8 has nice features (nicked from Firefox) such as the favourites bar across the top of the screen so I can get to all my favourite places at one click.

I'm also very pleased with SixApart/Typepad, suppliers of this blog for a very reasonable fee. (A few dollars a month.) All year Typepad have been upgrading their software in a big way, introducing many improvements and social features to their blogging platform. (One of these is a free microblogging service, which is fun - why not try it?) The other day the SixApart people wrote a post to ask users what they thought of the improvements and calling for suggestions. What the heck, I thought, and wrote a comment to thank them, saying that all I wanted now is a way to integrate my RSS reader into my blog sidebar so that my blogroll is dynamically updated as I add and drop subscriptions. I follow a lot of blogs and am a bit impatient about dropping them when they are tedious, so it is a bit of a drag keeping Petrona's blogroll vaguely up to date. Imagine my delight when two of the support people at SixApart emailed me to explain how to import Google Reader blogs into Typepad blog sidebar widgets. You can do it for the blog itself (as I've done) or as a real-time service in which the latest posts on the blogs show. I have so many blogs in my blogroll that the second option would take up far too much space. I am now very happy in that when a blog goes dead or dead boring and I remove it from the reader at a click, it vanishes from the blog at the same time. And equally, when I find a new, fascinating blog and add it, it appears on the blogroll!

Thank you Typepad for this great service - really, the customer service aspects of Typepad are beyond compare, I am consistently impressed with the helpfulness and patience of the SixApart support team. And I thank myself for finally dipping into my savings and buying this new computer. I had been telling myself I could not do it because the old one wasn't old enough - but the fact that the Norton antivirus ran out and wanted another ton of money from me for next year made me finally act. A nice person in John Lewis showed me this Toshiba (with a half price Microsoft Office thrown into the deal) and the rest is history, Internet style (ie the computer is now a week old).

Christmas crime: Sun and shadow by Ake Edwardson

This review was first posted on Euro Crime in June 2007.

Sun and Shadow by Ake Edwardson, translated by Laurie Thompson. Publisher: Vintage.

In its first few chapters, SUN AND SHADOW provides an evocative description of life in downtown Gothenburg: not the Sweden of Christmas cards, but the seedier side of drunks and petty crime. Patrik and Maria, two bored teens who hang out on the streets, rebellious and vulnerable, represent the problems of their generation, intersecting the police-procedural plot as the book develops, as a kind of benchmark for the values of the society they live in.

The author has the ability to convey with sympathy a range of characters and their problems: not only Patrik and Maria but the beat police, who have to deal with the casual violence of traffic accidents and after-effects of drug and alcohol abuse. World-weary detectives do their duty and live their tough lives against backgrounds of domestic stress: money troubles, relationship questions, commuter hell, bad weather and health worries.

Erik Winter is a young, successful detective inspector, about to marry his long-term pregnant girlfriend Angela, a doctor. While they are in the process of moving in together, Erik hears that his father, who has retired to Spain, has had a heart attack, so flies to the Costa del Sol to be with him and his mother. Erik's few days there, in the sun of the climate but the shadow of his father's life, take on an existential air, as he lives in and observes an alien, almost opposite world to his icy norm.

The haunting quality continues after Erik returns to Gothenburg. A couple living in one of the flats near Erik's is murdered, possibly to some hideous taped music which is playing in the apartment when the bodies are discovered. Erik and his colleagues struggle to find a motive for the gruesome crime; nothing was stolen and the couple seems to have had not only no enemies, but no close friends either.

Although this book was published in English translation in 2005, it was written in 1999. Part of the atmosphere and tension cleverly created by the author is provided by the advent of Christmas and the looming millennium: the city is gearing up for a huge party on New Year's Eve, and there is a degree of nervousness among the police about the crowds, whether computer systems will break down, and a general unease about the mystic significance of the date change. This lends the book a curiously but sweetly old-fashioned air: although the fears were real enough to many at the time, they now seem quaint only a few short years later.

In this MP3-less era, Erik sets off into the world of indie music to discover where the cassette tape came from, who recorded it and what the words mean. Unhinged biblical prophecies seem to be at the root of it, but are they relevant to the crime?

Characters and plots are interlocked: Angela discovers an unfortunate letter from Spain in Erik's briefcase while looking for some notes about her pregnancy. Patrik is the first to discover the bodies because he has a newspaper round in the apartment block: did he see the murderer leaving the scene? Has he heard this type of music before? Why is he injured? Maria’s mother is the police chaplain who tries to help Erik decipher the strange lyrics on the tape, and who may know more than anyone realises about the secret lives of some of the policemen who seek out her counsel.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The characters are deftly drawn and the writing is unforced and natural - the translator is the excellent Laurie Thompson, who also translates Henning Mankell's novels. I liked the policemen with their various foibles, and admired the way the author increases the suspense while the investigation reaches a climax.

The end, as is so often the case, is a bit of a let-down. Erik seems a bit too dense at realising what the murdered couple were up to, and fails to follow some obvious leads. The identity of the murderer makes logical sense, but could have been any of several characters. Not only that, but the motivation does not hang true - there is no sense of "ah, yes, that explains it", and the murderer suddenly turns out to have abilities that we weren't told about previously. Most of the subplots end in mid-air, which is a pity as many of the characters had come to grow on me. I'll definitely continue to read this series, though, because the characters are so involving, and I have the feeling the author will be building on his initial talent in future books.

Edwardson's books in reading order, plus reviews of each, at Euro Crime.

Join the "suggest a Christmas title" meme at Mysteries in Paradise.

UK booksellers' books of the decade

For the next three weeks (starting last week, 4 December) the Bookseller is looking back at the UK book trade over the past decade. The first feature provided the 100 bestselling authors of 2000-2009 "drawn exclusively from Nielsen BookScan data". *

Hearteningly, the top author by far is J. K. Rowling, who this decade has sold a phenomenal 27,556,478 novels about schoolboy and eventual young adult wizard Harry Potter, at a value of about £216 million. That is presumably just for the books, the merchandising must add tremendously more than that. She's doing better than a country! Seriously, I am so pleased that this brilliant series of (seven) books, with such a strong message about the values of personal integrity and enduring love in a treacherous world, has been enjoyed by so many people and has had such a broad reach. It gives you hope.

Second is Dan Brown (just over 13 million sales of five religious and symbolic thrillers), third is Roger Hargreaves of the children's Mr Men and Little Miss series (11 and a half million sales of these distinctive small-format cartoonish books) and fourth Jacqueline Wilson (just under 11 and a half million), author of contemporary children's and teenage novels. Completing the top 10 are Richard Parsons (don't know him), Terry Pratchett (fantasy), John Grisham (legal supremo), Danielle Steel (romance sagas), James Patterson (increasingly bland thrillers) and, at tenth, Jamie Oliver (a celeb chef). I think this is a pretty good selection of authors - a couple of duffers maybe, but on the whole, it gives you a bit of hope for the human race, or at least that part of it that buys books in the UK! [Crime and thriller authors are in bold.]

Out of interest, how do crime-fiction authors fare in this list?

13 Alexander McCall Smith (6.5 million) Ladies' No 1 Detective Agency (Botswana); short, charming yet unflinching. Also other series one set in Scotland.
14 Ian Rankin (6.3 million) Inspector John Rebus (Edinburgh) and others. Police procedurals; alcoholic, smoking, loner protagonist.
17 Patricia Cornwell (6.1 million) Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta (Virginia, USA). Gruesome and, latterly, slow-paced and boring.
19 Martina Cole (5.6 million) East End of London gangster sagas. Plucky heroines.
35 Andy McNab (3.6 million) not read, but safe to say, military SAS type of stuff.
37 Michael Connelly (3.5 million) Harry Bosch, LAPD. Classic masterpieces of the genre.
41 Kathy Reichs (3.3 million) Forensic archaeologist Tempe Brennan. Quebec. Gruesome. slow-paced and boring.
44  Lee Child (3.2 million). Ex-army MP Jack Reacher roams round USA finding adventures.
53 Jeffrey Deaver (2.7 million) Lincoln Rhyme, paraplegic detective. USA somewhere. I've only read one, serial killer genre if that is anything to go by.
56 Harlan Coben (2.6 million). Myron Bolitar, sports agent detective, and several standalones. The author for whom the phrase "nail biting suspense" was coined. Exciting.
74 Karin Slaughter (2.2 million) Georgia coroner Sarah Linton. Good start to series, showing danger of becoming infected with 17 and 41 disease (gruesome and boring).
91 Peter Robinson (1.9 million). Alan Banks, Yorkshire. Good, classic police procedurals.
96 John Le Carre (1.8 million) Classic spy novels, latterly international conspiracies.
100   P D James (1.7 million). Adam Dalgliesh, senior cop. Was in London last time I read one but I think he's now on the East coast in retirement. Modern "golden age" novels.

Maybe next decade we may even see a translated author in this list - most likely Stieg Larsson (Sweden), though he only wrote three books so is at a disadvantage in a decade list. Other possibilities are Henning Mankell (Sweden), thanks to the recent TV films starring Kenneth Branagh as well as the Swedish TV versions being shown on UK TV. Outside chances are Arnaldur Indridason (Iceland) and Fred Vargas (France), who keep winning awards, or the sublime yet easy-to-read and short novels of Andrea Camilleri (Italy). All credit to the various translators, respectively Reg Keeland, Laurie Thompson and others, Bernard Scudder and Victoria Cribb, Sian Reynolds and Stephen Sartarelli (an award-winning poet in his own right).

As an addendum, three "classic" authors make it onto the list, J.R.R. Tolkien at 23 (sales of 5 million), William Shakespeare at 57 (2.6 million) and Charles Dickens at 93 (1.8 million). The last two of these will have had their sales helped by school syllabuses and the Royal Shakespeare Company et al., as well as the odd TV or film adaptation ;-) Enid Blyton is another high scorer, at 12 (6.8 million). My own favourite author, Ian McEwan, comes in at 36 (3.6 million). Just under Andy McNab! (But just above Michael Connelly.)

*Authors in this list are only counted as sole authors. So, for example, James Patterson is included only for his sole-authored novels, not his collaborations. Nora Roberts (not on the top 100 list) is counted as separate from her J.D. Robb persona, combined she would have made 88th place.

Christmas crime: The Bomber by Liza Marklund

"Journalist Annika Bengstrom is asleep next to her husband when the call comes in at 3.22 a.m. on a frozen December night. It's the weekend; she's busy with two children and she still has Christmas shopping to do. But within minutes, all thoughts of seasonal goodwill are left behind. Annika is looking at a nightmare scene of police tape and rubble, trying to get the best possible picture for tomorrow's edition of her newspaper.
A bomb has not only destroyed Stockholm's new Olympic arena just months before the Summer Games, it has blown someone to pieces. Putting a city on edge with fears of a terrorist on the loose, the Bomber will become Annika's biggest story - and maybe her last.

Set against the breathtaking landscape of the Swedish winter, Liza Marklund's extraordinary writing, bone chilling plot and irresistible heroine have created an international phenomenon as explosive as the Bomber's devastating blasts."

More to follow, in due course ;-)

Euro Crime review of The Bomber, by Karen Meek.

Scandinavian Books reviews The Bomber and other books by Liza Marklund.

Join the "suggest a Christmas title" meme at Mysteries in Paradise.

Alphabet in crime fiction: Jungstedt

 
Mari Jungstedt is a Swedish journalist and popular crime fiction author. Her first three novels have so far been translated into English by the superb Tiina Nunnally, and I hope the next three will follow soon. The books are set on the island of Gotland, which is near the Oland of Johan Theorin's novels, and feature Detective Superintendent Anders Knutas and journalist Johan Berg. I enjoy Mari Jungstedt's books for three reasons: they are well-plotted crime stories with the accent on police procedural; they provide insight into life on Gotland and the characters of people who live there; and the main characters have domestic lives and problems that develop throughout the series. Knutas is fairly unusual among many current policemen in that he has a good, longstanding marriage, whereas the cosmopolitan Stockholmite Berg is fatally attracted to a local married teacher, Emma, who has two small children, leading to many complications.

I have reviewed for Euro Crime all three of the novels that have been translated into English. Here's a taste of each.

Unseen opens with a description of a dinner party at the house of a young professional couple, Helena and Per, where things get a bit out of hand. The next morning, Helena goes for a walk on the misty beach and is later found murdered, together with her faithful dog. The subsequent police investigation is headed by Inspector Anders Knutas, a sensitive, middle-aged man who is irritated by the intrusion of the media into the case, who have discovered and want to reveal salacious details. Reminiscent of the Kurt Wallander series by Henning Mankell, Knutas and his close-knit team solidly look into all leads, investigating the dead woman's friends and family, in the process revealing much about the lifestyles and history of Gotlanders.

Unspoken is a great read, particularly strong in conveying the frailties of human emotion and in the juxtapositions of the police investigation with the media's reporting as well as the domestic lives of the characters.

Unknown (a.k.a. The Inner Circle). The author has a knack for conveying the apparently trivial yet all-important domestic problems of her characters, as well as a touching sympathy with the victims of the crimes she describes.

Even though I felt Unknown was not quite as good as the previous two novels in terms of the plot, I shall definitely return to these books when more are translated, partly because the police-procedural aspects, with the interplay between the detectives, is pretty much on a par (and similar to) Mankell's Wallendar books; and partly because of the excellent way in which TV media politics and the family upheavals of Emma and Johan are portrayed.

Publisher website.

Crime Fiction alphabet series at Petrona.

Mysteries in Paradise, home of the crime fiction alphabet. Visit this link if you would like to participate.

Round the world of series, for the holidays

A holiday break is a good chance to catch up on one's reading, of course, but it is also a good time to start on a series. As many of us will soon be taking some well-deserved time off work and other duties for the Christmas and/or end-of-year celebrations, I thought I might do a round-the-world whistle-stop tour of some series that I like, at a time when there is more of an opportunity than usual to devour a run of connected novels.

Starting with Australia, who better than (South African born) Peter Temple, and what better series than his Jack Irish novels? Readers in the author's own country can probably read all four titles, but those elsewhere can at least enjoy the first three novels about ex-lawyer turned kind-of private-eye Jack, cabinet maker and horse-race fixer. These novels are not as dark as the other series by this author, Broken Shore and the upcoming Truth; they are more lyrical and poetic as Jack stumbles around in a modern land of cynical opportunism, grieving for a lost past and his own emotional failures. Don't get the wrong impression, though, there is plenty that is funny and upbeat about these wonderful books.

Running up through Laos, we have the marvellous Coroner series by the deeply funny Colin Cotterill, whose word play is beyond compare and whose tiny band of ragged philanthropists bear the weight of this terrible 1970s social experiment with stoicism, good and in some cases slightly wicked humour, and not a little touch of mysticism. Although funny, these books aptly convey the horrors of living in a ghastly regime where an entire country was impoverished and ruined, and the very basis of what makes people individual humans was attempted to be removed en masse by the state. Start with the first, The Coroner's Lunch, and make your way through this effervescent set of tragi-comedies. Author bibliography and reviews at Euro Crime. The author's website is currently down but you can sample his wonderful blogging at International Crime Authors Reality Check.

Moving on to South Africa, a find for me this year has been Deon Meyer, whose Blood Safari (my review to come) is an excellent standalone novel in the tradition of Raymond Chandler, a comparison often made but well earned on this occasion. I haven't read any other novels by this author, who writes in Afrikaans, but based on this one and on reviews I've read of his others, I'm eagerly anticipating reading his first novel, Dead Before Dying, and the rest of his output, which apparently make up a "loose" series in the sense that some of the same characters appear in some of the books. Deon Meyer website.

Travelling north to Europe, I am planning to continue with not one but two series by Ann Cleeves, and if you haven't tried this author before, now is a very good time to do so. First, her Shetland Quartet series is nearing completion, with the imminent publication of the fourth component, Blue Lightning. Until that comes out, you can read Raven Black, White Nights and Red Bones, and get acquainted with Jimmy Perez and the island communities far north of Scotland. Another series by Ann Cleeves is set in north-east England and features police detective Vera Stanhope, who first appeared in a standalone called The Crow Trap, which I enjoyed very much earlier this year. Vera was too full of life to leave to one book, however, so she has since appeared in Telling Tales and Hidden Depths, both of which I look forward to reading, ideally before the UK TV series of the novels begins next year.  

There's so much to choose from in the USA, and indeed everywhere else I haven't mentioned, but I wanted to highlight here Peter Spiegelman, who has (to my knowledge) written three excellent novels: Black Maps, No Way Home (US title Death's Little Helpers) and Red Cat, about a rich Manhattanite, John March, who works as a private investigator to the consternation of most of his wealthy, banking family. The first novel, in particular, is a very strong book about grief and its after-effects, one of the very best I've read on this topic against the background of a strong mystery plot.

Maybe you would like to recommend a or some series to read over the holiday season?

UK paperbacks for March

I've been unable to write any posts for the past few days owing to other priorities - one of which is that I've bought a new computer which is very nice, but is taking a bit of learning/setting up. Here is a rather boring post, I'm afraid: some books that are due out in paperback in the UK in March 2010 (quotes are from The Bookseller). There are just so many of them it is all a bit daunting, but I've highlighted the ones that look most interesting to me, or that have been discussed a bit in the papers and on the Internet, with links to reviews so readers can find out more, and just listed the titles of the rest in a paragraph at the end. I'm currently reading the Donna Leon book and will write a review soon. The book I'm most looking forward to of the list below is the Nicci French title, though The Crossroads by Niccolo Ammaniti looks intriguing.

About Face by Donna Leon
"another subtle and evocative tale. They just get better with each one."

Assassin by Tom Cain
A Sam Carver (Accident Man) series novel. This time, he has to "save the new American president."

What to do When Someone Dies by Nicci French
Link up with Alibi, "a TV channel dedicated to crime".

Bloodline by Mark Billingham
A DI Tom Thorne series novel.

If the Dead Rise Not by Philip Kerr
Quercus say this is Kerr's breakthrough book. It won the 2009 Ellis Peters award for historical crime fiction.

The Neighbour by Lisa Gardner
"Orion is going big on this excellent thriller, her best for some time" according to The Bookseller.

The Last Child by John Hart
Recent winner of the CWA Steel Dagger. His previous novel, Down River, was a Richard & Judy pick. This one is "a complex tale with masses of plot, emotional, violent and compelling, all from a 12-year-old boy's point of view. It is compelling."

Evidence by Jonathan Kellerman
"Alex Delaware back on top form - but this really stars Milo Sturgis. FX TV campaign". Hmmm, although The Bookseller says "my reader was up half the night with it".

Where the Dead Lay by David Levien
Second from the author of City of the Sun, "Frank Behr again, I'd back it."

The Edge by Chris Simms
"features Manchester DI Jon Spicer. He is definitely a talent to watch, a rising star."

The Poisoning in the Pub by Simon Brett
"Lovely cosy English crime with Fethering amateur sleuths Jude and Carole in their 100th mystery."

Judgement and Wrath by Matt Hilton
"Second adventure for Joe Hunter, the British vigilante fighting Amercian criminals."

Relics of the Dead by Ariana Franklin
"....the author is ace and she just gets better. This is set in medieval Glastonbury, terrific stuff."

The Coronation by Boris Akunin
"abduction during the build-up to the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II."

A Visible Darkness by Michael Gregorio
Third in series, in this one "a serial killer attacks women on the gem-rich Baltic coast."

Cold Blood by James Fleming
"Sounds perfect for those missing Alistair MacLean."

The Crossroads by Niccolo Ammaniti
"Renowned Italian prizewinning author with a dark literary thriller, vividly written in a jerky cinematic style and featuring damaged hopeless characters in a violent tale where things go horribly wrong. It's a good read."

Trust Me by Peter Leonard.
"noir thriller full of shady men, double-crosses, car chases and shoot-outs."

Like Clockwork by Margie Orford
"A female South African "Cracker" is introduced in this gritty, Cape Town underworld serial killer novel."

Chez Max by Jakob Arjouni
"A futuristic urban thriller in the style of Chandler, a standalone by the creator of Turkish Frankfurt-based Detective Kayankaya". Sounds intriguing!

Others: 8th Confession by James Patterson; The Brotherhood of Five by Clio Gray; The Crucifix Killer by Chris Carter; Fatal Last Words by Quintin Jardine; Bones of Betrayal by Jefferson Bass; Land of Ghosts by E. V. Seymour; Book of Lies by Brad Meltzer; Tutankhamun by Nick Drake; The Brotherhood of Five by Clio Gray; The Betrayer by Kimberley Chambers; A Day and a Night and a Day by Glen Duncan; Beg to Die by Beverly Barton; Reckless by Andrew Gross (James Patterson's former co-author); Girl in the Woods by Jennifer McMahon; The Book of Love by Kathleen McGowan; The Book of Lies by Brad Meltzer; The Spy Game by Georgia Harding.

Suggest a Christmas Title: Voices by Arnaldur Indridason

If I read novels set at Christmas time, I don't seem to mention this fact in my reviews. Therefore, I'm going to be quite derivative and repost a review of Voices, by Arnaldur Indridason, as part of Kerrie's Mysteries in Paradise "suggest a Christmas title" feature.

Review first published at Euro Crime, in March 2007.

VOICES, the third book by Arnaldur Indridason to be translated into English, is even better than the first two, and that's saying something, as SILENCE OF THE GRAVE, the previous outing for Inspector Erlendur, deservedly won last year's CWA Gold Dagger. Each book covers a narrower canvas than the previous one, but reveals and explores more of Erlendur's psyche. This increasing depth and focus is, for me, what makes this crime-fiction series among the most excellent I have read.

The doorman at a Reykjavik hotel is murdered in his basement room on-site, wearing his "part-time Santa Claus" outfit, just before Christmas. Erlendur and his team investigate the death of this long-term employee, whom his colleagues neither noticed nor liked, against the disapproval and even hostility of the hotel staff. Erlendur suffers a kind of seasonal paralysis, and rather than return to his empty, dingy flat at the end of the first day of the investigation, impulsively takes a room at the hotel - more to spite the manager than anything else. It isn't a nice room and the heating doesn't work, but it forms the nucleus for the story over the few days that follow, as Erlendur observes and absorbs the "voices" and rhythms of the hotel, and has to try to explain to various colleagues and his daughter why he isn't "home for Christmas", even though he is not fully aware of his reasons.

As Erlendur discovers more about the victim and the sad life he led, the title of the book becomes apparent. The "voice" of the victim, all-powerful as a child, has gradually diminished over the years until nobody knew or cared about the man he had become; his voice has, literally, disappeared. Simultaneously, Erlendur sinks into an introspective mood, triggered by the long-ago events and family dynamics he uncovers in the murder investigation. Driven by a hopeless urge to find a way to relate to Eva Lind, his tragic daughter, to prevent her falling back into her old life, he struggles to connect with the voices of his own past. Both for his daughter and for his hopes of a new relationship after his disastrous marriage and subsequent years of solitude, Erlendur is forced to relive a childhood tragedy, and acknowledge its effects on himself and his parents.

Another "voice" is that of a badly beaten boy, whose mother is in a mental hospital and whose short-fuse father is about to go bankrupt. Erlendur's colleague Elinborg is convinced that the boy's father is to blame for the attack, rather than the alleged perpetrators (some schoolboys), and has been trying to coax the silent child to speak out from his hospital bed. Will the boy find his voice and testify, or will the police team find his voice on his behalf, to protect him from the perpetrator, before the case collapses due to lack of evidence or witnesses?

None of the underlying themes and tensions in the book impede the pace. The story of the two crimes and their investigation are deftly handled, being believable and sad, rather than lurid and/or ultimately stretching credibility, like so many genre examples. Indridason is masterly in the way he makes the story of each crime suspenseful yet at the same time an elegy for sad and lonely lives of most of those involved. Part of the book's strength lies in the investigation of past emotional landscapes, which adds insight and emotion to what could otherwise, in terms of basic plot structure, be as shallowly exciting as Agatha Christie. The author (and his translator, who seems to have served him well) has written a spare, direct text, with dashes of grim humour and neat character observations, that slips by so that you have finished the book before you've noticed. But the voices will echo on, and you’ll be waiting keenly for the next instalment.

Read other reviews of Voices at:

Euro Crime (Karen Meek)

Euro Crime (Norman Price, a.k.a. Crime Scraps)

Mysteries in Paradise

January Magazine (Ali Karim)

Brothers Judd (A+ ranking)

The Complete Review (Literary Saloon)

The Independent (Jane Jakeman)

Nordic Bookblog

Reading Matters

Don't mess with the peer-review process

There is always a first time for everything. I didn't think I'd ever attempt to put a video on this blog, but having been shown this on YouTube last night, I thought I'd share it. I have seen other subtitles (on other subjects) applied to this clip, but this particular one is very funny.

Reading books eligible for the CWA International Dagger 2010

Karen at Euro Crime has provided a list of all the novels eligible for the CWA Intenrational Dagger award 2010. Of the 60 titles she identifies, I have read nine (links go to my reviews):

Denmark: Mikkel Birkegaard - The Library of Shadows (review in press)
Italy: Andrea Camilleri - August Heat
Norway: Karin Fossum - The Water's Edge
Germany: Petra Hammesfahr - The Lie
Iceland: Arnaldur Indridason - Hypothermia
Sweden: Stieg Larsson - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest
Germany: Andrea Maria Schenkel - Ice Cold
Norway: Gunnar Staalesen - The Consorts of Death
Sweden: Johan Theorin - The Darkest Room

Who would I pick as the winner on the basis of these nine titles? Well, that's a very tough one; so far as I am concerned there are six of these nine that I'd be happy to see win! I believe that the real shortlist will be announced at Crime Fest next year (May 2010), so I need to decide which of the remaning 51 I can realistically read by then. Unfortunately most of these books will be available only in hardback I assume, if they are only published this year, so it won't be cheap to wade through the list. All other things being equal, these are the titles that most appeal to me, on the basis of having enjoyed other books by their authors (or in the case of Benacquista, because he is a featured author at Crime Fest next year so I'm curious to read one of his books).

Tonino Benacquista - Badfellas (France)
Leif Davidsen - The Woman from Bratislava (Denmark)
Anne Holt - Death in Oslo (Norway)
Tove Jansson - The True Deceiver (Norway)
Camilla Lackberg - The Stone Cutter (Sweden)
Henning Mankell The Man from Beijing (Sweden)
Deon Meyer - Thirteen Hours (South Africa)
Jo Nesbo - The Snowman (Norway)

Has anyone read other books on Karen's list of eligible titles, and if so, can you recommend any? I recognise that my selection has a Scandinavian bias so I would particularly appreciate recommendations of books by authors from elsewhere. (I definitely want to read K O Dahl (Norway), but to date I have been waiting for them to be available in series order in translation.)

Thanks again to Karen for this great list, which certainly provides plenty of potential reading material for the coming months.

Alphabet in crime fiction: Isaacs

Before there was Janet Evanovich or Desperate Housewives there was Susan Isaacs, an author I discovered quite by chance when I noticed a then-just-published bright yellow Penguin paperback with the intriguing title of Compromising Positions. Published in 1985, almost 10 years before the first Stephanie Plum book, the novel was like a breath of fresh air, unlike anything I had read before. The plot concerns a suburban housewife, Judith, who is bored and stifled by the domestic grind. When a local dentist and "stud" is found murdered, Judith's life takes on a new purpose as she determines to solve the crime - not least when she discovers that several of her women friends (supposedly happily married mothers) have been captured photographically by the dead man - in the compromising positions of the title.

This was a very funny book, and I'd be interested to know if it was the first of the genre of "wisecracking, domestic, comic mystery" as one blurb has it. Maybe it would not seem that original now, but I loved it at the time. I read most of Susan Isaacs' subsequent books, most of which I enjoyed a great deal. Although the protagonist is invariably a strong female, she varies her themes, from crime to romantic to historical, usually with a refreshing, funny touch. One exception to the humour element was Shining Through, a World War two romantic spy story, a good book which was made into a (reputedly) awful film with Michael Douglas. Other books by Susan Isaacs that I've enjoyed were Lily White, a crime thriller about a lawyer amid the privileged Long Island set; After all these Years, about a woman whose husband leaves her after their silver wedding party and is subsequently found murdered; and Magic Hour, murder and romance in The Hamptons.

I lost touch with Susan Isaacs' novels a few years ago until this crime-fiction alphabet series caused me to check out the author's website, where I see that there are three I haven't yet read. Maybe I will, or maybe I would no longer enjoy this lightly amusing, satirical lifestyle type of book. Either way, I think Susan Isaacs is a funny and talented exponent. 

Crime Fiction alphabet series at Petrona.

Mysteries in Paradise, home of the crime fiction alphabet. Visit this link if you would like to participate.

Finished reading Truth, by Peter Temple

I have just finished reading a proof copy of Truth, the latest novel by Peter Temple. The book will be published in the UK by Quercus on 7 January 2010, so my review will appear here in the new year. I'm still reeling from reading this book: a few excerpts might help to show why, and to whet the appetites of any eagerly awaiting readers.

Di Palma offered his hand, Villani shook it. Then he shook Orong's treacherous little hand. He left the offices, walked down the cool and self-important corridor. From the walls, the dead watched him pass, they had seen many a coward come and go.
In a short time, he was on the street, orange sun behind the haze, looking for Finucane, unaccountably thinking about the first horse Bob raced, the best horse he ever had, the lovely little grey called Truth who won at her second start, won three from twelve, always game, never gave up. She sickened and died in hours, buckled and lay, her sweet eyes forgave them their stupid inability to save her.

---

A hot north-west wind on their faces, another blocking system was idling out in the southern ocean. Two long valleys ran from the north-west towards Selbourne, the main road down one of them. The fire would come as it came to Marysville and Kinglake on that February hell day, come with the terrible thunder of a million hooves, come rolling, flowing, as high as a ten-storey building, throwing red-hot spears and fireballs hundreds of metres ahead, sucking air from trees, houses, people, animals, sucking air out of everything in the landscape, creating its own howling wind, getting hotter and hotter, a huge blacksmith's reducing fire that melted humans and animals, detonated buildings, turned soft metals to sliver flowing liquids and buckled steel.

---

He switched off his lights and went to the window. Below, the bright ribbons of traffic. Across the road, the dark of the school and its grounds, the botanic gardens. Then, far away, the gloss of the highways, and, in the sky, gleaming in the clouds, the full luminescence of the huge city.

Peter Temple is Australia's most acclaimed crime and thriller writer - the only author to have won the Ned Kelly prize five times. The Broken Shore won the CWA Gold Dagger, as well as several other prestigious awards. Peter Temple is South African by birth and lives in Ballarat, Australia with his family. Truth his his ninth novel. He is also author of the Jack Irish series: Bad Debts, Black Tide, Dead Point and (yet to be published in the UK) White Dog. Other novels by Peter Temple are Shooting Star, In the Evil Day and An Iron Rose. Without exception, they are wonderful.

Read more reviews and articles about Peter Temple using Crime Fiction Journeys, created by Kerrie of Mysteries in Paradise.

Liking, not liking; dogs, angels and misery memoirs

Crime fiction has featured in the "loving/not loving" readers' column of the Bookseller in the past couple of weeks. In the 20 Nov issue, David Headley of Goldsboro books is loving Acts of Violence by Ryan David Jahn (Macmillan New Writing). He writes: "This is one of the best literary thrillers I have read in 2009......From the very first page this is a shocking and gripping novel and a cinematic tour de force, a terrifying crime novel. I read it in one sitting." It's on my shelf to read. The book he's not loving isn't on my shelf, though: The Scarpetta Factor by Patricia Cornwell (Little, Brown). "I used to enjoy Cornwell's strong and unique style but I am no longer excited by what is going to happen next." I quite agree.

This week's (27 Nov) column is by bookseller Celia Leary of Victoria Park Books. She's loving Gone by Michael Grant (Egmont): "A cross between TV's 'Heroes' and Lord of the Flies". One of my daughters enjoyed this novel very much. She is not loving Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris (Gollancz): "The characters are very two dimensional, the plot was pretty obvious, and for a book set in the south of America it had a real lack of diversity". (I don't quite get that particular point? Isn't there diversity everywhere not just in "the south of America"?)

I was amused by another piece in this week's issue claiming that "women readers are turning to angel books as the appetite for misery memoirs declines". Yes, apparently there are hordes of people that liked reading about people's awful childhoods, but because of the current state of the world they are now all reading books about angels instead. Believe that if you will (I don't think I've ever read a book about either) but I did love this quote from Asda book-buying manager Steph Bateson: "We are still seeing misery working but there are fewer mis-mem titles and more angels books. Dogs is [sic] another crossover - a book that combines mis-mem, angels and dogs is our perfect paperback." (Words fail me! I'd be too busy running away.) The article concludes that angels are "being tipped" to follow vampires as "the next big thing in paranormal romance", a genre that is said to be "mutating". Crime sounds a lot safer to me!

The most reviewed books in the UK press this week were The Passport by Herta Muller and The Scarpetta Factor by Patricia Cornwell. Here are a couple of review snippets. The Passport: "attains the epic ponderousness that defines recent Laureates" (Daily Mail); "elegant simplicity in the great tradition of German storytelling" (Times). The Scarpetta Factor: "The series has picked up a lot....it's not so much the cases being worked I like but rather the relationship dynamics" (Daily Mail); "All the worst aspects of the series' recent instalments: jerky prose; relentless acronyms and brand names; the baffling, repetitive dialogue" (Guardian).

Thinking beyond the Borders

Much ink and many electrons are being expended in the wake of the confirmation that UK Borders is entering administration, after a day yesterday of announcements and denials. Predictably, many of these articles and comments have gone beyond the fact of the Borders news, predicting all kinds of apocalypse for chains, physical bookshops, print books, authors, you name it. The Book Trade information service sums up articles in The Guardian, The Independent, and by Susan Hill (an author and small publisher) in The Spectator, thus:

A double ecology is evolving. Discounted bestsellers from big publishers are being sold in supermarkets, not shops like Borders. But a vibrant and more interesting trade is taking place in smaller shops. People who want to buy serious books can still find them; people who want to write are not without hope of finding a publisher. The electronic book might change everything, of course: margins on ebooks are already greater than in print. But good publishers, and creative retailers, will surely adapt to that too.

Susan Hill has stopped publishing adult fiction because whereas a novel might have sold 2,000 copies in hardback ten years ago, nowadays it is lucky to sell 500 and most sell far less. As an example of the economics of publishing, she mentions a good non-fiction book by a well-known author on a subject of interest to many, which has sold a mere 48 copies in its first couple of months of publication.

It is true, as the authors of these articles and many others state, that a smallish number of "top selling" celebrity ghost books, cookbooks and one or two others, and an equally smallish number of (mostly poor quality) fiction is both skewing the entire publishing/bookselling industry and is subject to a discount "price war" involving each other, Amazon and the supermarkets. I've observed that, for example, W H Smith couldn't (more or less - £5 per title) give away many copies of the current hardback nonfiction list over a weekend, making me wonder how much longer people will be prepared to buy books written on behalf of celebrities recycling half-digested pap, or yet another book filled with painted, sprayed, pretend "meals" full of ingredients that nobody buys to be cooked by methods that nobody has time to undertake. Fine to leave all those to the supermarkets, in my view!

Leaving aside the digression of the "bestsellers", I think there are quite a few factors and features that aren't being taken into account in the articles I'm reading in the news media and on blogs.

First, Borders is coming under attack for selling "non-profitable" DVDs, CDs, stationery, magazines and for hosting coffee-shops. But W H Smith and Waterstone's, (now) the main two UK book chains, do just the same. WHS in particular has turned around its business over the past few years, in part by drastically reducing its book stock in favour of in-store coffee shops, phone shops, post offices (that don't stock bus pass renewal forms, but will exchange your money for other currencies), computer accessory centres, etc. Similarly, in Waterstone's you can have coffee, lunch, dinner and book your holiday, as well as buy stationery, magazines, christmas gifts, calendars, souvenirs, etc. So this can't be a prime reason why Borders has got into trouble. (All three chains have cut down a lot on their DVD and CD stock over the past few years.)

Second, many of these commentators seem to think that e-readers and digital books are threatening to wipe out print books. They won't. There are situations in which digital "books" are useful - in education, as service manuals (eg when the person comes to service my boiler he accesses the latest-edition manual on his laptop), while travelling and so on. It's also confounding the argument to bring e-readers into the equation, as dedicated e-readers may be a temporary technology. As computer screens improve, when Apple produces its famous tablet, people will read books, magazines, news, watch films, etc using these devices when it suits them - as a few do now on their mobile devices or on e-readers. They'll probably still read print books on the beach, in the bath, in the hospital, while telling good-night stories to their children, and in a host of other situations.

Third, one reason why Amazon, perhaps the biggest threat to booksellers even though it only accounts for 15 % of UK book sales, rose so rapidly is that it filled a niche that customers wanted  - limitless stock of everything in print - but that booksellers themselves had not been able to fill because of local competition, technological innovation beyond their expertise, the organisational and logistical challenge, etc. Nowadays booksellers are using the internet more innovatively, for example the independent bookshops network (customers can order online and pick up their title from their nearest independent in the network, as discussed for example in this Petrona post back in 2006), and Waterstone's online. Nobody's online stock matches Amazon's, of course, partly because of Amazon itself and partly because of its marketplace network. Which, of course, enables a tiny local bookshop in Hereford or Salisbury to let me find out about and then sell me an out of print book which they have in stock second-hand. There is every reason for "physical" independent booksellers to do more online innovation and collaboration.

Fourth, publishers are in a time of uncertainty about digital formats and rights management. However, they all have long out-of-print backlists to which they own the rights, and many of them are digitising these to make them available print-on-demand. This is leading to new models of book publishing and selling, as well as writing. An author who will only sell a couple of hundred titles rather than a couple of thousand is a far smaller risk to a publisher on the print-on-demand model rather than the print-run and distribute to bookstores model. And the Espresso machine can only increase the options for publishers and booksellers. To a large extent, once these technologies are perfected (many of them are, or are nearly), it becomes more an issue of marketing than anything else - reaching your market by some other way than a publisher paying a physical bookseller to be "deal of the week" or part of a "three for two" offer.

Finally, one good aspect of all of this is that we still read lots of books, in whatever format. I read an article the other day in which the point was made that the industries and companies most vulnerable to collapse are the ones that focus on doing just one thing and doing it superbly. Those that survive are the ones that are good at looking around them. (A restatement of Darwin's argument that the species that survives is the one that adapts best to its environment.)  I think that there is still plenty of lateral thinking that can be applied to the writing, production, selling and, indeed, reading of books.

A short review of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a powerful book which combines a strong story with haunting characters and a crusading message. Mikael Blomkvist, a financial journalist, publisher and co-owner of the independent magazine Millennium, loses a libel case bought by magnate Hans-Erik Wennerstrom, so takes leave of absence to enable the magazine's survival. Mikael is astonished to be summoned to meet the reclusive millionaire Henrik Vanger, who asks Blomkvist to solve the long-ago mystery of his granddaughter Harriet's presumed murder, in return for an irresistible reward. Vanger has had Mikael checked out by a detective agency which has hired Lisbeth Salander to hack into his computers. Lisbeth is an emaciated young drop-out, a ward of court unable to control her own finances or manage her own life, but she's drawn to Mikael and he to her. Aided by Lisbeth, Mikael pieces together the complicated Vanger family relationships while Lisbeth is shockingly persecuted by her guardian and enacts violent revenge. Eventually, the two of them come close to discovering what happened to Harriet, only for Mikael to find himself in great danger as a result.

In The Girl Who Played With Fire, Lisbeth Salander returns undercover to Stockholm some months after the climactic events of the previous book. Three brutal murders occur on one night. Lisbeth, the only apparent link between all the victims, is the prime suspect and becomes the focus of a national police hunt. Although a fugitive, she refuses to be victimised or to cooperate, and sets out to find out the identity of the killer(s) so she can deal with them herself. Mikael Blomkvist, publisher of Millennium magazine, is also investigating the murders. Two of the victims were colleagues and friends of his, and he's convinced that their deaths are related to their work in uncovering a massive scandal of prostitution and drug trafficking between Russia, Eastern Europe and Sweden. Even though she won't contact him, Blomkvist is convinced that Lisbeth is innocent and attempts to uncover other motives for the crime. The book is packed with incident, thrills, characters, rich details and plot revelations, reaching an emotionally draining climax of almost intolerable pitch.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest begins directly after the dramatic finale of the previous novel, after which Lisbeth lies paralysed and critically ill in hospital, knowing that Zalachenko is nearby and trying to finish his malign task - while other forces are keen to try her for murder, label her as insane and send her back to the secure institution where she spent her unhappy adolescence - assuming she survives her terrible injuries. Lisbeth's enemies enlist the help of psychiatrist Peter Taleborian, whom she has good reason to hate, to silence her for good. Mikael, Lisbeth and her underground hacker friends form the online ‘knights of the idiotic table' and embark on wreaking all kinds of electronic havoc. As the date for Lisbeth's trial draws near, Mikael gradually comes to suspect the existence of a conspiracy he calls "The Section", and with his allies plans to best this coalition of "men who hate women" on his own terms, and liberate Lisbeth from her life-long brutalisation and oppression. Lisbeth, of course, has her own plans, if she can recover sufficiently to apply her own explosive form of justice. 

The Millennium Trilogy is published by Maclehose Press, an imprint of Quercus, and is translated from the Swedish by Reg Keeland. Links in this post take you to my full reviews of each book at Euro Crime.

Alphabet in crime fiction: Howell

My contribution this week of H is a review of The Darkest Hour by Katherine Howell, her second novel, which  tells two connected, interweaving stories with a cracking pace and confidence. I enjoyed it tremendously, despite not being sure about it at first.
The book opens with Lauren Yates, a Sydney paramedic, almost running over an injured young man running across the road late at night. Jumping out of her ambulance to help, the young man and his friend hastily drive away. Lauren investigates the alley where the men had run from, and encounters a horrific crime in progress. What’s more, she knows the perpetrator, who is able to threaten her sufficiently to make her stay silent about what she’s seen.
Six months later, Lauren and her partner Joe are called to the scene of another crime, this time a street where a man, James Kennedy, has been stabbed. While the ambulance is racing to the hospital, Kennedy is able to say the name of the man who attacked him: the same man who previously threatened Lauren. Lauren therefore has a dilemma – she has previously lied in court at the inquest of the man murdered in the alley in denying that she saw the attack, yet she can’t withhold the name of Kennedy’s assailant from the police because Joe, her colleague, also heard it.
Lauren is one of the two main protagonists in this novel; the other is Ella Marconi, a police detective who is being investigated after events in the previous book by this author (Frantic). Ella is determined to prove herself so that she gets to stay in homicide, hence when she pulls the James Kennedy investigation she is determined to solve it. She’s stymied, however, when Lauren withdraws her evidence about the perpetrator.
I was in two minds about this book up to this point. I wasn’t impressed by the coincidence of Lauren being involved in two cases involving the same perpetrator, or with her dilemma of silence. Lauren is a competent and committed paramedic who has evidently shown plenty of resilience at earlier stages of her life. I didn’t find her vacillation very interesting to read about.
But luckily it doesn’t last long, as Lauren realises that she and her family can’t live with a threat hanging over them. After she comes clean with Ella and the police force, the book shifts a gear into overdrive, and continues at a breathtaking pace until the end. Katherine Howell has a great way of keeping up the action and tension, while also providing plenty of authentic details about the police investigation and the paramedics’ life of constant call-outs, tension and bravery as they repeatedly help the victims of accidents, attacks, and self-destruction.
The police investigation is compelling, with several different divisions coordinating various lines of enquiry as it becomes clearer that certain events must be connected. The question is, how? I really enjoyed the way in which witnesses were interviewed, phone records checked, and evidence gradually put together to build up a complete picture. The author is particularly good at interspersing chapters from the point of view of some of the less savoury characters without giving away to the reader how everything is related. And she presents really authentic characters in Lauren and Ella by showing the reader glimpses of their home lives, their families and how they deal with everyday and not-so-everyday domestic tensions.
Although this is the second novel by Katherine Howell, you don’t have to have read the first to enjoy it (I haven’t). It seems that the character of Lauren is new to The Darkest Hour, and one learns enough of Ella’s back-story not to feel one is missing out by not knowing all the events described in Frantic.
Above all, The Darkest Hour is written with confident and authoritative prose. The author is clearly very talented and I’m eagerly awaiting her next novel, Cold Justice.

I thank Crimefiction reader of It's a Crime! blog, and the publisher PanMacmillan, for my copy of this book.

Read a review of Frantic at It's a Crime!

Read another review of The Darkest Hour at The Guardian (review by Joanna Hines, but it is brief.)

The author interviewed at It's a Crime! after winning the Davitt award.

Author website.

Mysteries in Paradise, the home of the crime-fiction alphabet.

The crime-fiction alphabet series at Petrona.

Observer interview with Maj Sjowall

The couple of recent magazine articles about Stieg Larsson and his Millennium trilogy, one in Prospect magazine and the other in Vanity Fair, were rather disappointing: a mix of rehash of the already well known and not very well-informed opinion on the part of the writers. These articles, I felt, were more to do with their writers showing off their intellectual credentials (not, as it happens!) to their readers, than with conveying anything constructive about the appeal of these books and their author's story.

Completely different from these two pieces in almost every way is a superb piece in today's Observer (22 Nov), by Louise France, about Maj Sjowall. Although I know the 10-book Martin Beck series, written by Sjowall and her partner Per Wahloo during the 1960s and 70s, and have read several articles about the authors and their novels, I learnt a lot while reading it, and found it very moving.

Sjowall did not become rich by writing these masterful books; she lives in a small flat and cannot afford a car, but she's happy and "free" as she defines it. The article tells the story of Sjowall's early life, how she met Per Wahloo, and how they came to write the Martin Beck books. Louise France, a fan of the novels, is right to point out how they still hold up today as exciting, involving detective stories even without the internet, email, faxes, DNA profiling and mobile phones, because they rely on tight plots, characterisation and have a strong authorial voice. Or, as she puts it: "what makes the books so compelling? There's something inherently honourable about them, something to do with the meticulous research that went into each one before it was written, and the frail humanity of the characters. They display, say critics, a relevance and timelessness that is the mark of all good fiction. The deceptively simple style is both sparse and dramatic – an accomplishment all the more remarkable when you think that the books were written by two people. "We worked a lot with the style," explains Sjöwall. "We wanted to find a style which was not personally his, or not personally mine, but a style that was good for the books. We wanted the books to be read by everyone, whether you were educated or not." People tell her that the Martin Beck series marked the beginning of a lifetime of reading. "They picked them up off their parents' shelves when they were teenagers and discovered a love of books." "

When they first met, Sjowall and Wahloo enjoyed reading the same type of detective fiction, those that had taken the genre out of the drawing room and onto the streets - Hammett and Simenon, for example. For their own novels, "Their aim was something more subversive than what had gone before. "We wanted to describe society from our left point of view [says Sjowall]. Per had written political books, but they'd only sold 300 copies. We realised that people read crime and through the stories we could show the reader that under the official image of welfare-state Sweden there was another layer of poverty, criminality and brutality. We wanted to show where Sweden was heading: towards a capitalistic, cold and inhuman society, where the rich got richer, the poor got poorer." They planned 10 books and 10 books only. The subtitle would be "The story of a crime" – the crime being society's abandonment of the working classes. The first plot came to them on a canal trip from Stockholm to Gothenburg. "There was an American woman on the boat, beautiful, with dark hair, always standing alone. I caught Per looking at her. 'Why don't we start the book by killing this woman?' I said." " That idea, of course, became Roseanna, the first book in the Martin Beck series.

Did the society that Sjowall and Wahloo feared come to pass? "Yes, all of it," she replies. "Everything we feared happened, faster. People think of themselves not as human beings but consumers. The market rules and it was not that obvious in the 1960s, but you could see it coming."

There's lots more in this excellent article, so I do recommend reading it. Perhaps, if you haven't read any of these novels, it might encourage you to try one. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

See also: Maj Sjowall interviewed at the WSJ.

Reviews of the Martin Beck novels at Euro Crime, including several by me.

Book review: The Southern Seas by Manuel Vazquez Montalban

Translated by Patrick Camiller.
If  the Swedish authors Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, writing in the 1960s and 70s, are often held to be the parents of the modern police-procedural crime novel, then the Spanish Manuel Vazquez Montalban, writing a decade or more later, is held to be as significant for detective fiction. So much so that the author Andrea Camilleri named his Italian police chief Salvo Montalbano after the Spanish writer, sadly now deceased.
In THE SOUTHERN SEAS, written in 1979 but not translated into English until about 20 years later and published by Serpent's Tail, private detective Pepe Carvalho is commissioned by the wife of a missing millionaire businessman, Stuart Pedrell, to find her husband after his disappearance a year ago – assumed to have departed for a new life in Polynesia. That is, until his body is discovered in a run-down tenement block in a run-down area of Barcelona.
The bulk of the book concerns Carvalho’s interrogation of everyone connected with the life of the dead man, in an attempt to discover where he has spent the missing year. Carvalho has to don many personae in this process, involving him as it does in highbrow literary and metaphysical debate as well as dealing with the advances of the dead man’s nubile daughter. Unfortunately, I somewhat parted company with the book at this point, as books in which older men “take advantage” of vulnerable young women (however “inappropriate” their behaviour) make me cringe. In this case, I found it hard to sympathise with Carvalho’s (or any of the male characters’) self-indulgent and selfish attitude to women, which is Neanderthal.
There is charm in Carvalho’s refusal to toe the line to the health police, and his almost self-enforced, mechanical enjoyment of as much food and drink as he can ingest or imbibe. I also liked the images of post-Franco Spain, a country struggling to find a future in the fantasies of Communist ideology. And the investigation, during which the dogged Carvalho refuses to tell anyone, even his employer, what he has found out until he eventually gets to the truth, is admirable and, in the end, poignant.
There is something cold about this book, particularly its attitude to women—not only Pedrell’s daughter but the dead man’s young activist girlfriend and Carvalho’s longstanding female “companion” (a prostitute) seem to my eyes to come in for undeserved sneering. Even Carvalho’s manic and vast consumption of food and drink conveys none of the sublime appreciation felt by Camilleri’s Montalbano. I admire the plotting and the intellectual depth of the book, but I couldn’t warm to it.

Read about this author and his books at Serpent's Tail, the publisher's website.

Review of Tattoo, another novel by Montalban, by Mike Ripley at Euro Crime.
________

Filament, my Typepad microblog. Typepad microblogs are free, include pictures and videos, and automatically post to Twitter and Facebook.

New UK paperbacks in February 2010

Finally, just in time for this week's issue, I have caught up with my archive of Booksellers. From the 23 October issue comes news of the paperbacks that will be published in the UK in February 2010. 
Among the predicted "top sellers" are Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child (Bantam, £7.99), which opens with Jack Reacher suspecting a woman on the New York subway of being a terrorist. For me, these books have become somewhat mechanical, but the Bookseller calls this "one of his best" and says that the next one (the 14th) is even better. Other predicted top sellers are Fever of the Bone by Val McDermid (Sphere, £6.99), a fast paperback publication for this novel about an internet stalker of teenagers; John Connelly's The Lovers (Hodder, £7.99), about Charlie Parker's childhood; and Alexander McCall Smith's Tea Time for the Traditionally Built (Abacus, £7.99), a series that I've enjoyed but am about three behind.
Moving to the "major sellers" category, we have The Secret Speech by Tom Rob Smith (Pocket, £7.99), his follow-up to the amazingly successful Child 44; and The Given Day by Dennis Lehane (Black Swan, £7.99), not strictly a crime title, being "an epic American novel of Boston in 1918/19, of strikes, poverty, racism.....action-packed and violent...", etc. Its release has been delayed from 2009 to coinicide with the film of Shutter Island.
Perhaps more interesting than any of these are some titles from the "more normal" categories, including The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley (Orion, £7.99), apparently "a pastiche of an Agatha Christie-style English country murder mystery, only our detective is a precocious 11-year-old girl". This book has received tremendously positive reviews in many places.
Titles I can highly recommend on the basis of having read them myself (links go to my reviews) are: After the Fire by Karen Campbell (Hodder & Stoughton, £7.99); Red Bones by Ann Cleeves (Pan, £7.99); Skin and Bones by Tom Bale (Preface, £7.99), Close-Up by Esther Verhoef (Quercus, £7.99); Shadow by Karin Alvtegen (Canongate, £7.99); and The Chalk Circle Man by Fred Vargas (Vintage, £7.99) - winner of the International CWA Dagger for 2009.
Titles I haven't read but have heard good things about include Dead in the Water by Aline Templeton (Hodder, £7.99); Death Watch by Jim Kelly (Penguin, £7.99), War Damage by Elizabeth Wilson (Serpent's Tail, £7.99); A Visible Darkness by Michael Gregorio (Faber, £6.99); Angel with Two Faces by Nicola Upson (Faber, £7.99) and The Hidden Man by David Ellis (Quercus, £7.99). These are just a few selected titles, there are plenty more! (Including TV or film "tie-in" editions of three more of Henning Mankell's books, The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, and Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane - which must be a leading candidate for my prize for the novel with the worst "cheat twist" I've ever read.)

UK crime week in June next year

The Crime Writers Association (CWA) is to hold a National Crime Week in the UK in 2010 to celebrate crime writing. During the week, which runs from 14 June, members of the CWA will take part in readings, discussions, readers' group events and workshops all over the country. (via The Bookseller.)

Free Agent or Lost Symbol?

In last week's (13 November) Bookseller, Robert Chilver, a buyer at Waterstone's in Colchester, took his turn to reveal his current reading likes and dislikes.

He's loving Free Agent by Jeremy Duns (Simon & Schuster £12.99). "After a jaw-dropping first chapter, I was quickly drawn into Jeremy Duns' excellent thriller......It reveals insights into a relatively unknown era without ever infringing on the twisting plot. With a protagonist you can never quite trust, this is a real page-turner."

Free Agent was reviewed recently at Euro Crime by Michelle Peckham, who writes: "on the cover of the copy I was sent to review it says 'Top Secret, Uncorrected proof'. On the fly leaf, the official looking stamp urges me not to leave the book on a train, plane, in a car or on the bus." She finds the book well plotted and enjoyable 'boy's own' stuff.

Returning to Robert Chilver, he is not loving The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown: ..."the hype was far more entertaining than the book.....Thrillers essentially need to be thrilling and whereas Duns creates a fast-paced, exciting ride, Brown's idea of creating tension is a page break."

Brief Guardian review of Free Agent. "Be warned: Duns loves shocking reversals".

Permission to Kill: interview with Jeremy Duns who, echoing Michelle's words, says: "I want people who don’t usually read thrillers to read my work, and hope that pretty much anyone over the age of fourteen or so could enjoy Free Agent."

Four articles and an email concerning Stieg Larsson

I picked up a copy of the latest Books Quarterly, the Waterstones magazine, at the weekend (issue 34, 2009) and discovered that it contains an article by Val McDermid on Stieg Larsson. I thought I'd mention the article here, especially as Books Quarterly is now available online, but before I could do so, the author burst into the news again in three articles.

The most significant of these is at Crime Scraps, where blogger Norman Price (a.k.a. Uriah Robinson) has finished the third in the trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, and reviews the novel in particular, the Stieg Larsson phenomenon in general, and provides a useful set of links to previous reviews and discussion of these books. Significantly, one conclusion of Norman's about the trilogy is that "when any state regards some citizens as less important than others, we are on that slippery slope to totalitarianism".

In the second article, last Thursday, The Times jumped onto the "Stieg Larsson legacy" bandwagon, concerning the dispute between his putative legatees, and which I won't rehash here. ("Losing the plot over the cash" was the insensitive headline.)

And in a third article, Vanity Fair published a two-page article by Christopher Hitchens, a typically acerbic article laced with innuendo and speculation, which combines the themes of the previous two pieces: a review/retrospective of the books and a rehash of the family dispute. Hitchens is quite critical of everyone concerned including the books themselves and the characters therein, concluding that the books' success are down to "emotionless efficiency of Swedish technology, paradoxically combined with the wicked allure of the pitiless elfin avenger, plus a dash of paranoia surrounding the author’s demise."

What I actually set out to write in this post was a short piece about the Books Quarterly article by Val McDermid, which like the previous three articles is partly a review of the Hornet's Nest (publisher: MacLehose Press) and partly an analysis of the Stieg Larsson phenomenon. In response to a question about the characters' reading habits by Martin Edwards, Val McDermid has paid more attention than I did, revealing that Blomkvist (the hero) reads Sue Grafton through Sara Paretsky to "my own work" as Val McDermid puts it, in her view books that become more threatening in keeping with the increasing darkness of the novels. Salander herself, of course, reads Nature. (Val McDermid picks up one or two more of Larsson's word games with names.) It is a very good piece, and I recommend it as a sincere tribute to this author who died so tragically young -- or "The Man Who Died Too Soon" as the article's title would have it.

But what is even better than this is an extract from an email by Larsson, written to his publisher Eva Gedin, on 30 April 2004. (Larsson died on 9 November of that year.) He writes:

I’ve tried to create main characters who are drastically different from the types who generally appear in crime novels. Mikael Blomkvist, for instance, doesn’t have ulcers, or booze problems or an anxiety complex. He doesn’t listen to operas, nor does he have an oddball hobby such as making model aeroplanes. He doesn’t have any real problems, and his main characteristic is that he acts like a stereotype ‘slut’, as he admits himself. I’ve also changed the sex roles on purpose: in many ways Blomkvist acts like a typical “bimbo”, while Lisbeth Salander has stereotype ‘male’ characteristics and values.....
....I abhor crime novels in which the main character can behave however he or she pleases, or do things that normal people don’t do without those actions having social consequences. If Mikael Blomkvist shoots somebody with a pistol, even in self-defence, he will end up in dock.
Lisbeth Salander is the exception to this quite simply because she is a sociopath with psychopathic traits, and doesn’t function like ordinary people. She doesn’t have the same concepts of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ as normal people, but she also has to face up to the consequences of that.

The email contains more of Stieg Larsson's thoughts on his characters of Salander and Blomqvist, and his opinions on crime fiction as a genre. It is very sad experience to read possibly the last words ever by this very talented author, at a time when he was so full of hope and involvement in his wonderful creations.

Alphabet in crime fiction: Glauser

Thumbprint is the first novel in a series written in the 1930s by Friedrich Glauser; a series so influential that Germany’s main crime-fiction award is the Glauser prize. The novel is a highly readable affair, opening with the imprisonment of Erwin Schlumph, a young man arrested for shooting Wendelin Witschi, a travelling salesman and father of Schlumph’s sweetheart, Sonja, in the woods late at night. Schlumph is visited in prison by the man who arrested him, Sergeant Studer, who discovers that the young man has attempted suicide. After rescuing him, Studer decides to look into the case in more detail, as he’s fairly convinced that Schlumph didn’t commit the crime.

First, Studer has to convince the investigating magistrate to authorize him to take this course, which Studer realises isn’t going to be easy as the man is a stickler for procedure and wants the case tidied away with no fuss.

“Sergeant Studer, I would like to ask you, in all politeness, what you think you are doing? Could you explain how you cam to involve yourself without authorization – I repeat, without authorization -- in a case which…”

The examining magistrate broke off, though he couldn’t have said why himself. The man on the chair before him was a detective, a simple policeman. He was middle-aged and there was nothing special about him: a shirt with a soft collar, a grey suit that had gone slightly baggy in places because the body inside it was fat. He had a thin, pale face with a moustache covering his mouth so that you didn’t know whether he was smiling or not. And this simple policeman was sitting there in the chair, legs apart, forearms resting on his thighs, hands clasped…

The Magistrate himself couldn’t have said why he suddenly adopted a slightly warmer tone.

Sure enough, Studer is allowed to investigate the case, and so travels to Gerzenstein, a microcosm of Swiss village life, where everyone listens to the radio all day and sounds like the announcer, and where every other building is a shop or small business. Studer is somewhat stifled by the atmosphere:

God, people were the same everywhere. People in Switzerland tended to keep their little indiscretions very much to themselves, but as long as they didn’t impinge upon other people’s lives, nothing was said…….Unless something unexpected happened. Such as a murder. And a murder needed a murderer, like bread needed butter. Otherwise people would complain. And if the presumed guilty party tries to hang himself, and a detective comes along who is stubborn as a mule, then it can happen that al the little irregularities there are in everyone’s life suddenly become important. You work with them, like a bricklayer with bricks, to erect a building. A building? Let’s say a wall just for the moment.

And later:

“Perhaps you remember the case of that dental technician in Austria? Put his leg on a chopping block and hacked away at it until it was left hanging by a scrap of flesh, just to pocket a huge sum from the insurance. There was a big trial.”

“Well yes,” the examining magistrate said, “in Austria. But we’re in Switzerland here.”

“People are the same everywhere”, Studer sighed.

For the rest of the novel, Studer, helped by the local police chief,  works on the shooting, with a mixture of forensics, witness interviews, psychological insight and dogged persistence. Dreams and hallucinations begin to come into play – Studer’s wife and Sonja both have a tendency to stay up all night reading novels – which renders them into a dream-like state by day. Studer himself drinks too much and later becomes ill with an infection, causing him to vividly imagine various scenarios that may have led to the murder, and providing some flashes of inspiration.

At its heart, though, the book is a classic story of a murder, some suspects, some social observations, and a neat solution. What makes it special, and fresh more than 70 years later, is its straightforward truthfulness, lack of pretension and yet, despite these pragmatic aspects, its hints of other worlds through which Studer’s perceptions are filtered.

What had people done with their own voices? Had they been infected by the radio? Had the wireless sets in Gerzenstein triggered off a new epidemic: voice-swapping?

My final words of the review part of this post are in praise of the translator, Mike Martin, through whose interpretation the novel reads as if it were written yesterday. I also put in a note of thanks to the publisher, Bitter Lemon Press, which since 2004 have published all five of Glauser’s Studer novels in English translations (all, I believe, by Mike Martin).

 

Friedrich Glauser was born in Vienna in 1896, and died aged 42, a few days before he was due to be married. He was a schizophrenic, addicted to morphine and opium, and spent much of his life in psychiatric wards, insane asylums and in prison for forging prescriptions. He spent two years in the Foreign Legion in North Africa, and worked as a coal miner, gardener, labourer and hospital orderly.

 

Der Bund: Glauser has elevated his material to an exquisite artistic level, a master of psychological analysis, a warm, sensitive and wonderfully observant writer.

Nationalzeitung Basel: Perfect characterization, brilliant portrayal of humour and irony against the dark, brooding background of small-town life.
Bayerische Rundfunk: Friedrich Glauser is a remarkable discovery. An ability to translate an erratic, obsessive life into language that seduces by its intimacy. A reflection of his suffering and compassion.

Glauser at the Bitter Lemon website.

Glauser's books reviewed at Euro Crimeand Reviewing the Evidence.

Glauser at Wikipedia.

Mysteries in Paradise, the home of the crime-fiction alphabet.

The crime-fiction alphabet series at Petrona.

Book review: Wicked Prey by John Sandford

Wicked Prey is nineteenth in the Lucas Davenport series (there is a twentieth, Storm Prey, due out early next year). I haven’t read all of the previous books, but have read enough of them (about six) not to be lost at this late stage.
Davenport is a tough but dandyish ex-cop who has previously had to leave the force because of killing someone (I surmise), and is now an agent of some kind for the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in Minnesota. He’s married to a surgeon called Weather, who barely features in Wicked Prey as she’s always at work, but she’s been significant in earlier books. The couple have a little boy called Sam, and have recently fostered a 14-year-old girl called Letty, who has had plenty of violently traumatic experiences in her past (doubtless told in a previous book).
Don’t let this preamble put you off – the author is very skilful at slipping in sufficient back story to orient the new or forgetful reader without affecting the pace of his plot. And it is some plot! A small gang plan a series of robberies at the Republican convention in St Paul, which is to endorse John McCain as official candidate for the US presidency. Davenport is called in to investigate, partly because all the cops are busy defending against a possible terrorist threat, but also because discretion is needed about the tarnished set-up in the political machine.
At the same time, Letty is working as an intern for a local TV station (for a woman who, it turns out, is the mother of another of Davenport’s children, but this relationship does not feature in this particular book). Letty becomes aware that she’s being watched by a strange trio – a man in a wheelchair, a teenage girl who appears to be a hooker, and a dope-addled hanger-on. It turns out that the disabled man, Randy Whitcomb, blames Davenport for his condition, and is plotting revenge in some way that involves Letty.
Both these plots are handled with wit, flair and pace. When I first realised I was going to be reading a book about a heist and a teenage girl being stalked and kidnapped, my heart sank. But it soon turned out that I was totally unfair to prejudge this double-whammy – the book is clever, fast, subtle and very witty indeed. It’s particularly strong on the interplay between Davenport and colleagues; and between the putative robbers.
I was engrossed in the strategy taken by the strong-willed Letty, and in the war of minds between the four members of the thieves’ gang and the various local and national law-enforcement agencies. An additional plus is that Davenport and co use plenty of traditional detective skills to work out who they are chasing and, more difficult, what the villains are planning to do and when. The scenes at the Republican hospitality centre are particularly good.
I found the resolution of both main plot themes a bit of a let-down, rather hastily treated. Letty is a cold piece of work, and will no doubt have this side of her character dissected in future instalments. The ending of the heist story was disappointing after all the situational and character build-up, so I’d rate this novel a high beta rather than an alpha. Very well worth reading, though – and one can forgive a lot when a book is so full of laconic humour and cynically mature observations of modern mores.

Wicked Prey by John Sandford. Simon and Schuster, 2009. £12.99.

Author website, including bibliography.

I thank Karen of Euro Crime for my copy of this book.

Reading suggestions for January

If you are in the UK and are anticipating the need to decide on some books to buy in January (perhaps after receiving book vouchers for Christmas?) to see you through the last of the holiday season, here are a few of the paperbacks that will be published that month, via the Bookseller (25 September issue).

Long Lost by Harlan Coben (Orion, £7.99). A return to the author's original character, sports agent Myron Bolitar. The least-good book I've read by Coben, but still better than many thrillers out there.

Just Take My Heart by Mary Higgins Clark (Pocket, £6.99). If you read this author you will know exactly what to expect and won't be disappointed.

From among the predicted "major sellers", some I haven't read myself: Don't Tell by Karen Rose (Headline, £6.99); The Shakespeare Curse by J L Carell (Sphere, £6.99); The Price of Love (short stories) by Peter Robinson (Hodder, £7.99); Daemon by Daniel Surarez (Quercus, £7.99); Blind Eye by Stuart MacBride (Harper, £6.99) and one I'm looking forward to - Far Cry by John Harvey (Arrow, £6.99).

And from the "crime and thriller" category: Occupied City by David Peace (Faber, £7.99); No Lovelier Death by Graham Hurley (Orion, £6.99); Whispers of the Dead by Simon Beckett (Bantam, £6.99); Awakening by S. J. Bolton (Corgi, £6.99); Gutted by Tony Black (Preface, £7.99); Runner by Thomas Perry (Quercus, £7.99); Sure and Certain Death by Barbara Nadel (Headline, £7.99); Dark Waters by Jack Ross (Arrow, £7.99); Unknown by Mari Jungstedt (Corgi, £7.99); and one that is definitely on my "must read" list, The Reunion by Simone van der Vlugt (HarperPress, £7.99). One that sounds quite intriguing is "the fourth in the Mobile Library series", The Bad Book Affair by Ian Samson (4th Estate, £7.99).

There are a couple that sound a bit gruesome: Cut Out by Patrick Lennon (Hodder, £6.99) and Stop Me by Richard Jay Parker (Allison & Busby, £7.99) in which "a chain email might save a kidnapped girl's life in a tale that explores internet celebrity and obsession". And finally, a couple of old names: The Goliath Bone by Mickey Spillane with Allan Collins (Quercus, £7.99), and Salt River by James Sallis (No Exit Press, £7.99).

Links go to reviews of the books at Petrona, Euro Crime, It's a Crime! and Reviewing the Evidence.

The future of real-world bookselling

"How Waterstones killed bookselling" and "How Waterstones crushed the publishing industry" are two articles in today's Guardian (website and G2 - the second possibly not available online) that have been aired and rehashed all over the Internet, unsurprisingly. The Bookseller.com has a good, measured analysis of the Guardian pieces, including pertinent examples of dissenting comments made by readers at the Guardian website.

The Guardian article, by Stuart Jeffries, attacks Waterstones for centralisation of its stock (little autonomy of staff in branches), complex pricing, and lack of specialist choice of books for readers. About half way through, he gets around to the reasoning behind these moves: the first of two huge changes for the UK book publishing and selling industry was the court-induced abolition of the national net book agreement (NNBA, already under pressure in any event) which opened the floodgates for book megastores. These massive shops did pretty well for readers as well as booksellers and publishers, until the second huge change - the Internet, and specifically Amazon, an unstoppable force from which "conventional" booksellers are still reeling, possibly never to recover, even as they create their own bookselling websites (not a patch on Amazon for pricing or stock).

To me, it seems ludicrous to "blame" Waterstones for this state of affairs. True, Waterstones has expanded, centralised, and sells a lot of bland fare that does not differ much from what you can get in a supermarket. But it does also offer a huge range of books for the interested browser or specialist enthusiast, and I know at least two people who like the Costa coffee shop in the basement of the Piccadilly store (as well as the lovely restaurant at the top of the shop). For his article, Stuart Jeffries interviews a few standard book industry people (for example, Tim Coates, ex-MD of Waterstones now well-known for his library campaigns; and Nicholas Clee of Bookbrunch, ex-editor of the Bookseller), but they come up with no realistic alternative for Waterstones - probably because there isn't one.

Factors to consider are that many people who like reading and who buy a lot of books will continue to use real bookstores as well as online retailers in combination. These people like browsing in bookshops but will often go online for either price or stock reasons, or both. I think Waterstones' stock in my own local branch is not bad, but I have to buy almost all the crime fiction I like to read online, because translated or backlist fiction is not cost-effective to store on the shelves - this was true even before the Internet was thought of and while the NNBA was in full force, when I worked in vacations in a bookshop and learnt some basic economics of the cost of keeping unsold, low-priced stock (an individual book) for considerable time. A lot of other people either don't buy many books over a year, and/or use the library.

A much better article than the Guardian's blaming broadside, in my opinion, is this one at the Idea Logical blog (8 November): "Can the chains provide us with better small bookstores?"  In this piece, Mike Shatzkin analyses the rise and fall of the huge bookstore in the USA, concluding that, in the post-Internet retreat of the giant megabookseller, a great stock is no longer the answer for profitability. He suggests that a solution that might work for the future is a mini-B&N or Borders sited within another large retailer. "This will require a different kind of inventory management than the chains exercise now; more of a rack-jobbing approach. But their capabilities: to source books, select books, organize books for presentation, and to deliver books all over the United States, will have more consumer demand than they’ll be able to satisfy with only their own very large stores." Waterstones might take note of this idea - instead of the Costa or Starbucks within the bookshop, the bookshop becomes within the Costa or Starbucks!

Already the bookselling industry in the real (not online) world has separated out into the "top 1000" books, sold at heavily discounted rates often in supermarkets (which only stock "top" titles); and "the rest". The question is, will it be profitable enough for booksellers to continue to sell "the rest"? And will it be profitable enough for publishers to continue to publish "the rest" of authors? People who love reading and buy a lot of books will read a higher proportion of "the rest" than of the "top 1000". But whether collectively we read and buy enough to support these industries is a question to which I don't know the answer. I do know, though, that the suggestions in the Guardian article (comfy chairs, etc) aren't going to stimulate or sustain the traditional bookselling business to the extent necessary for survival - especially with technologies such as e-readers and print-on-demand machines on the scene.

Thanks to Bernadette for sharing the link to the Guardian article at Friend Feed.

See also: The Third Player, an excellent post at The Digitalist blog, looking at the future of the e-reader and e-book market, and the possibility of Google's dominance of the whole supply chain.

Alphabet in crime fiction: Fossum

Karin Fossum is one of my favourite authors. I read her first translated novel, Don't Look Back (winner of the Glass Key award), when it was first translated into English about seven years ago, and have enjoyed all her novels since then. I've reviewed Calling out for You (also called The Indian Bride, and shortlisted for the Gold Dagger in 2005), Black Seconds, The Water's Edge (all 'Inspector Sejer' novels) and Broken for Euro Crime. The first two or three of Fossum's novels were translated by Felicity David (Tiina Nunnally) and the rest by Charlotte Barslund, in both cases very sympathetically, I am sure preserving that delicate yet cold sense from the original Norwegian.

The Times made Karin Fossum number 27 in their list of 50 "greatest" crime writers, saying: "The Sejer novels typically feature dark secrets in small, often isolated, communities with the detective's own melancholy personality augmenting Fossum's sound grip on criminal psychology and willingness to question perceptions of normality."

Earlier this year, The Independent ran a very good interview of Karin Fossum by Christian House, from which I quote: "Bizarrely for one of Europe's most celebrated crime writers, Fossum doesn't consider herself a great purveyor of her genre. "I'm not a good crime writer. I'm not good with plots... so I have to do something else." Her alternative is to concentrate on the yearnings of life's also-rans, and how fragile minds fracture when seclusion or routine is disturbed. This is when anomalies occur. Fossum describes it as a fascination with "the tragedy, the drama, the sadness" of such events. She is interested in "the good guy who does something evil" rather than the bogeyman. The former, she believes, is "much more frightening". There remains an underlying optimism to Fossum's stories, I suggest. "I hope so," she says, "but I suppose I'm a melancholic person." "

Those of us lucky enough to be at CrimeFest in 2008 were able to attend a fascinating interview of this author by Ann Cleeves, which was a highlight of the festival for me, particularly Fossum's chilling story of a roadside death which she told an entranced audience.

In her last-but-one book, Broken, Karin Fossum moved away from her pragmatic, spare Sejer series and wrote an existential, magical novel, in which one of an author's future characters jumps the queue and forces his way into a novel. The interactions between this character and the shadowy author form an unearthly context for the more down-to-earth events of the novel. This move into the inexplicable is what made me find some similarities in mood and message between Fossum and Ninni Holmqvist, author of The Unit, a novel which I highly recommend. Another author who shares some similarities with Fossum is Fred Vargas, not in terms of passion or impulse or plot, but in terms of the novel-as-fable.

Previous posts in the crime-fiction alphabet series.

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

Exclusive insider secrets of a baguette

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

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

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.