PETRONA

The Rising and other books on a wet weekend

I've taken advantage of a wet weekend to read a proof of Brian McGilloway's latest novel, The Rising. It's great, and I'm in mid-draft of my review for Euro Crime. Apparently, The Rising is published in the UK on 2 April, so you have plenty of time (!) to discover this author by reading his first three novels about Garda Inspector Ben Devlin: Borderlands, Gallows Lane and Bleed a River Deep. You can watch a video of the author talking about his new novel at Vimeo or YouTube.

I also read the 26 February issue of The Bookseller (delivered on Saturday instead of Thursday, as I am growing to expect!). There's a feature on page 27 about the self promotion that authors have to do now that publishers' "ever-tightening marketing budgets are increasingly being earmarked for the big names". One of these initiatives, mentioned in the Bookseller article, is the airport tour undertaken by the Curzon group, a self-organised number of crime-fiction authors. They started at 5 a.m. (I don't know when they finished!) because they reckoned that this is when many people have time on their hands and are browsing in airside branches of W H Smiths. Another author, Katy Moran, says that she sets up as many school visits as possible (she writes the "Bloodline" series of children's historical fiction); she has set up a Facebook page, a Wikipedia entry and so on. She says "Trying to get reviews in national newspapers is like flogging a dead horse. Review space is so small now, especially for children's literature. Authors are reduced to grass roots methods. We've got to become literate in social media."

Robert Muchamore, who writes the popular Cherub spy series for teens, chats daily on his website with readers; Matt Lynn (one of the Curzon group) recommends book festivals and bookstore signings/events, and of course, blogs and other online platforms allow authors not only to communicate with their readers but also to reach potential new readers. The article doesn't mention this, but encouraging readers to post reviews on Amazon and other large bookselling platforms is another way to spread the word. Overall, I found this feature a bit quaint, as many authors have been doing lots of these activities for many years.

This edition of The Bookseller has a paperback preview for June (UK). June - will it ever arrive, bringing sunshine, warmth and dryness? Sarah Broadbent, editor of this section of the magazine, writes briskly that the quantity of new titles for June is substantially less than previous months this year: "Those categories deemed dwindling - clogs, shawls and chick lit - have precious little." Instead it is all supernatural and a few futuristic thrillers (Tim Powers' Declare and Mat Frei's The Stranger are the most highly recommended of this last category, which I suspect is not for me - I can't see into the future so I can't be sure).

For crime-fiction enthusiasts, we can look forward to Play Dead, an early Harlan Coben from 1990 that only had a very limited release in the UK at the time (I haven't read it); Adrenaline by Jeff Abbott - start of a new series about a CIA agent; Ice Hunt by James Rollins; The Twelve by Stuart Neville, which was very well-received when it was first published (in hardback) and very highly recommended by The Bookseller; The Fate of Katherine Carr by Thomas H Cook, about a girl's disappearance 20 years ago; My Last Confession by Helen Fitzgerald- "chick lit noir" to quote one reviewer; Dark Places by Gillian Flynn; and I Kill by Giorgio Faletti (Constable) - a "major Italian crime writer with a detective and FBI agent hunting a deranged killer in Monte Carlo".

There are lots of other titles due for paperback publication in June (if we ever get there), so it seems to me that the crime fiction/thriller genre is alive and well, even if clogs, shawls and chick lit aren't. I also do not (yet) spot the promised/threatened avalanche of books about angels and dogs combined with misery memoirs.

Book review: The Missing by Jane Casey

Thanks to the generosity of Karen of Euro Crime, I have just read a copy of a very good book. On the cover, Sophie Hannah writes: "Compulsive, menacing and moving - a very satsifying psychological thriller". I agree completely. Here's my review:

The Missing
By Jane Casey (Ebury Press, 2010, paperback)

I thoroughly enjoyed Jane Casey’s debut novel, The Missing. The story is told from the perspective of Sarah, a young English teacher whose brother Charlie disappeared from the family garden almost 20 years ago.  Sarah was in the garden at the time, but half-asleep, so can’t remember exactly what happened. Part of the novel tells the story of the impact of this event on Sarah and her parents. Gradually, we come to see the full effects of the devastation wrought on all three of them – as individuals, as a family, and as the rest of the community in their Surrey commuter town perceives them.

The main narrative takes place in the present day, beginning when a girl from Sarah’s class of 12-year-olds disappears. Sarah and a policewoman talk to the girl’s distraught parents to try to determine who last saw her and what she was doing. Sarah, a quiet, introverted woman, is deeply affected by this disappearance, not only because it concerns one of her students but because it causes repressed memories and emotions concerning Charlie to come to the surface.  She goes out for her usual run the next morning and discovers a body in the woods. It is the missing girl.

In the immediate aftermath, the book focuses on the school’s response: what the teachers and headmistress do about the situation, and how the media insinuate themselves and compromise the police investigation. During this phase, Sarah comes over as somewhat irritating and wimpy, being rather feeble about dealing with an over-keen male colleague and a pushy reporter, for example. As the novel continues, the school aspects fade out and we focus much more on Sarah’s relationship with her mother, the police who are investigating the crime, and her own attempts to find out for herself what happened, in the process beginning to recognise and face her feelings about her brother’s loss and its shockwave. I really enjoyed this perspective, in which Sarah sees herself as helping the police, but can’t actually know what leads they are following or what they are concluding – even about her own involvement. Gradually, through her experiences and discoveries, as well as her shifting relationships with each of the very well-portrayed detectives Vickers and Banks, she gains strength and resilience.

This is a novel of many levels – first and foremost it’s a good story, with a believable and exciting double plot. I desperately wanted to know how it was all going to turn out, and in particular whether we would ever know what happened to Charlie. The author does not disappoint in her realistic, naturalistic account.  The book is also an excellent character study of the effects of one traumatic act over a period of years, mainly on Sarah and her mother, but also on the family’s dynamics. I was impressed with how the author avoided some of the clichés to bring true emotional resonance.  The story is topical, in the sense of being about some of the darker activities that go on in the world today, with the author getting the balance just right between not pulling her punches and not dwelling unnecessarily on the sordid or the gruesome for their own sake.  There is also a dash of romance, which I liked. Unusually for a crime novel, major and minor characters seem real and individual, without any of the shorthand or stock elements that are so common to the genre. Although the climactic scene is somewhat melodramatic compared with the discipline of the rest of the novel, the outcome of the two mysteries is very well thought-through. I highly recommend this novel  as a great combination of insight, suspense, sadness, excitement and well-constructed plotting.

I like the apt quotation from Webster (The Duchess of Malfi) at the start of the book:

Those houses, that are haunted, are most still
Till the devil be up.

Other reviews of The Missing:

Michelle at Euro Crime

Fleur Fisher reads

Paul Engles at Book Geeks

Meta-reviewing and musing

One of my harmless foibles is that I like to read reviews of books I've already read, to see what other people made of them. I've seen a few of these recently, which I'd like to share in this post.

The Disappeared, by M. R. Hall, is reviewed by Cathy of Kittling:Books. Of the protagonist, Cathy writes: "Jenny Cooper is a very interesting, and very flawed, character. She suffers from acute anxiety and depends upon medication to keep herself together. She's raw from a nasty divorce. She's trying to be a good parent to a difficult teenaged boy. The man in her current relationship wants commitment, and her job is stressful and demanding. She's trying to give 110% to each facet of her life, and there are times when she almost comes unglued." Cathy identifies several aspects of the book to which I had a similar reaction. One thing that surprised me is that, she writes, The Coroner, the first novel in this series, has not been published in the USA. This is crazy - not only is The Coroner a superior book (in my opinion), but one needs to read it before The Disappeared in order to fully appreciate what is going on with Jenny and the other regular characters. (See my reviews of The Coroner and The Disappeared.)

  
Over at Mysterious Books News, you can read a review of Martin Edwards's latest novel in his Lake District series. From the review:  "The Serpent Pool is a superb mystery, from both a plot, replete with classical literary references, and stylistic perspective. The characters are delightful and well drawn, the Lake District setting beautiful and charming. Even the various romantic elements, including those simmering just beneath the surface, play an important role here. As dark and disturbing secrets come to light, answers to questions of murder or suicide, past and present, are finally established in the thrilling conclusion to this exciting suspense novel." My take on the same book is here.

At Crime Scraps, you can read a review of About Face, by Donna Leon. Uriah a.k.a. Norman writes: "I find Donna Leon's books a constant delight as she describes a society where government agencies live alongside criminal gangs and sometimes you can't tell which is which."  You can see what I thought of this book at Euro Crime.

Finally, for now, Glenn Harper of International Noir Fiction writes a superb review of Peter Temple's brilliant Truth, "a complex story with an ambivalent moral sense, told in terse coded dialogue among the police and an almost stream of consciousness narrative in the third person but from the point of view of the new head of homicide, Stephen Villani."  My review of this book was the first post of the new year at Petrona. "This is a fantastic book: it has a strong, satisfying plot; yet in its brutal, sad poetry it is a telling account of the myriad tragedies and ruined lives in our shallow, materialistic and unedifying age, dominated by our fascination with the power of technology and wealth, but lacking principle, depth or kindness."

Alphabet in crime fiction: Last Light by Alex Scarrow

For my contribution to the letter S, I have written a review of the book Last Light by Alex Scarrow.

Last Light is a very exciting thriller based on the premise that the world’s oil supplies run out. Andy Sutherland, a consultant geologist originally from New Zealand, is commissioned to write a secret report about the vulnerable parts of the supply chain. While delivering this report, his nine-year-old daughter Leona accidentally sees some of the people who commissioned it.

Ten years later, Andy’s marriage is essentially over. Ever since writing the report he has been convinced that energy supplies must soon collapse, and has tried to persuade his wife Jenny to move to the country, become self-sufficient and prepare for the worst. Eventually she has had enough of his paranoia and, soon after Leona goes to university and the younger child, Jacob, departs for prep school (on the proceeds of Andy’s fee for writing the report), the couple decide to split. Andy goes to Iraq on a consulting project and Jenny goes to Manchester by train for a job interview which, she hopes, will be the start of a new life for her and her son.

That day, however, massive explosions occur at the Holy Mosque in Mecca and in other places of worship in Saudi Arabia. Within hours, a religious civil war has broken out.  Crippling explosions at oil refineries and pipelines in Georgia, the Gulf and Venezuela soon follow. In the UK, the Prime Minister and his immediate advisors assess the situation and realise that the country has only about two weeks’ oil reserves left. They decide to recall all the military from Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere to maintain order, and close down all the train and air services. Major roads are closed. Rapidly, the country degenerates into chaos and anarchy as electricity fails and food supplies run out.

The novel focuses on the efforts of the fractured family to reunite at their house in Shepherd’s Bush in west London. Each member of the family faces almost insurmountable dangers in attempting their journey. Andy is in a hostile country with a small unit of British soldiers, trying to make their way through dangerous terrain to any friendly base. As Andy picks up fragments of what is going on in the world from half-heard radio reports and phone conversations snatched when the signal is good enough and while he still has a battery, he realises that the events he outlined in his report are really happening.  Jenny is stuck in Manchester with no means of transport, surrounded by increasingly hungry and violent people. Leona is in the most danger of all the family, although she does not realise it, because of what she witnessed as a child. And Jacob isn’t allowed to leave his school without signed permission from his parents (a nice touch). The novel switches perspective between Andy, Jenny and Leona as they struggle towards safety, each of them increasingly aware that their destination may be far from being the refuge that they hope for.

Last Light is a breathlessly exciting novel told at an incredibly fast pace. The author conveys with great believability the speed with which British society breaks down in the face of this disaster. No stiff upper lip or World War Two spirit here. The characters of the Sutherland family and the people they meet over the time of the novel are extremely well depicted, and the reader is constantly urging them on in their seemingly impossible task of meeting each other again. However, the novel is far less successful as a “global conspiracy” thriller. The hired assassin elements are clichéd, and the explanation for who is behind the report Andy wrote, and why, seems almost to come from a different book altogether. Even so, I highly recommend this nailbitingly exciting novel.

Last Light was published in 2007, and is explicitly a homage to 9/11 and 7/7, as well as considering what might have happened had SARS or avian flu epidemics actually happened on the extreme scale of the predictions. The book was published before the global financial crisis took over the headlines, and it would have been very interesting to see how the author would have incorporated that into his plot had he written it a year or so later.

There is a fascinating afterword to the novel by the author, about how and why he came to write the book. “It’s not really a book about Peak Oil – that was merely the starting point for me. No, it’s a book about how lazy and vulnerable we’ve allowed ourselves to become. How reliant on the system we are.  How little responsibility we are prepared to take for our actions, for ourselves, for our children.  .....And here we are, the ghastly events of 7/7; the increasing prevalence of gang-related gun crime in London; legions of disaffected kids packing blades to go to school; a media that night and day pumps out the message – screw everyone else, just get what’s yours; reality TV that celebrates effortless transitory fame over something as old-fashioned as ‘achievement’; corporations that rip of their employees’ pension funds; politicians of all flavours putting themselves and their benefits first. All these things, I suspect, are the visible hairline cracks of our broken society that hint at the deeper, very dangerous, fault lines beneath. And all it’ll take is some event, some catalyst, for the whole thing to come tumbling down.”

The author also recommends a website, Life after the oil crash , for those interested in knowing more about 'Peak Oil' and what might lead to the kind of crisis described in Last Light.

I thank Material Witness for recommending this novel to me.

Alex Scarrow's blog

Alex Scarrow's website (with brother Simon)

Crime Fiction alphabet series at Petrona.

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

New books by Chessex and Kinberg

A couple of newly published books caught my attention in the past week or two - books that are destined for my reading shelves.

"A novel based on a true story . . .On April 16, 1942, a few days before Hitler’s birthday, a handful of Swiss Nazis in Payerne lure Arthur Bloch, a Jewish cattle merchant, into a stable and kill him with an iron bar. Europe is in flames, but this is Switzerland, and Payerne, a rural market town of butchers and bankers, is more concerned with unemployment and local bankruptcies than the fate of nations across the border. Fernand Ischi, leader of the local Nazi cell, blames everything on the Jews and Bloch’s murder is to be an example, a foretaste of what is to come once the Nazis take over Switzerland." So runs part of the publisher's description of A Jew Must Die, by award-winning Swiss author Jacques Chessex and translated from the French by W. Donald Wilson, a professor at the University of Waterloo, Canada. The book is published in the UK this month.

 “A novella of immense power… In its imagined evocation of historical fact, A Jew Must Die is in itself a justification of the power of art. This brief, disturbing masterpiece goes to the heart of the creative process.” The Independent. Chessex is, according to the publisher, considered one of Switzerland’s greatest authors. His other works include The Vampire of Ropraz, also published by Bitter Lemon Press.

B-very flat is the second novel in the Joel Williams series by the accomplished author Margot Kinberg.  "Is anyone really safe? Not necessarily. At nineteen years old, Serena Brinkman, an undergraduate violin major at Tilton University, seems to have a very secure future; she's got good looks, money, people who love her, and rare musical talent. She's also got a coveted Amati violin, a musical rival, friends whose secrets she knows, and an obsessed fan." Having very much enjoyed the first novel in this series, Publish or Perish (who can resist a book with that title?!), I'm certainly looking forward to the second. Here's a sample from my review of the first novel: "The pace never flags as the investigation narrows down to a small group of suspects, and previous associations become clearer. I thoroughly enjoyed Publish or Perish, and can recommend it to anyone who wants to be taken out of themselves for a couple of hours, and who is curious about the backstabbing and doublespeak that can go on in the groves of academe."

Book review: The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths

The Crossing Places
By Elly Griffiths (Quercus, 2009)

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel by Elly Griffiths, which depicts a vivid and attractive character, Dr Ruth Galloway, a forensic archaeologist at North Norfolk University, a fictional institution near the salt marshes of the east coast of England. Ruth is 40 and lives alone in an isolated cottage on the marshes. (There are only two other cottages nearby.) She’s a keen and able academic, bringing an enthusiasm to her analysis of old bones and what they tell her about the way of live of our prehistoric ancestors that is most engaging.  Ruth is content in her solitude, living with two cats after ending her relationship with Peter, another academic,  a couple of years previously. Ruth’s parents, however, are a malign influence on her inner life, as she regularly reflects on their constant disapproval of her atheist, independent lifestyle, and their criticisms of her weight and dishevelled appearance.

As the novel opens, some human bones are found at the edge of the salt marsh where Ruth lives. The police have been searching for Lucy, a child who went missing 10 years ago, so they ask the archaeology department at the university to help them examine the find. Ruth performs the analysis and is able to tell the police, in the shape of DCI Harry Nelson, that the bones date from a couple of thousand years ago. Later, Harry calls Ruth and asks her to look at taunting letters he has been receiving since Lucy’s disappearance. Despite their differences in style – Harry is a gruff northerner who is married to Michelle, a “bottle blonde” who runs a hairdressing salon, and with whom he has two teenaged daughters who like shopping and parties – whereas Ruth loves reading, walking and her solitary life away from people and noise, the two instinctively recognise that they have in common a seriousness about their rather similar lines of work.

Ruth is able to provide Harry with some leads from her analysis of the letters. Then, another young girl goes missing, presumed abducted while playing with her siblings in the family garden. Harry turns to Ruth for advice at various points in his investigation, as the mismatched pair develop a mutual respect and liking. This attraction of opposites is a really great part of the book, particularly the character of Ruth, a warm and humorous woman who despite being patronised by her male colleagues pursues her own goals without being distracted.

The mystery aspects of the story are less satisfactory, depending too much on coincidence and on a small cast of characters. Although one of the subplots is cleverly deconstructed, the other one fails to convince or explain. I don’t want to reveal some of the flaws here, as this would spoil new readers’ enjoyment of this extremely promising book – not least because it ends at a very interesting point for Ruth’s future.

The next book in this series, The Janus Stone, has recently been published, and is high up on my reading list.

Read reviews of The Crossing Places and The Janus Stone, both by Pat Austin, at Euro Crime.

Review of The Crossing Places by Peter Millar in The Times.

Interview with the author, Elly Griffiths, at Shotsmag.

The Crossing Places has been reviewed on many book blogs.

Horror in crime fiction

While scrolling through the (hundreds of) posts in my RSS reader the other day, my eyes idly passed by an article, I think it was on one of the Guardian blogs, that opined that the boundaries between crime fiction and horror are now so blurred that they are pretty much one and the same. I wanted to write a post disagreeing, of course, but I haven't been able to track down the original article. So instead of disagreeing with the specific article, I'll disagree with the premise.

Books that are said to blur the distinction between horror and crime fiction are, for example, American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis, Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist and almost anything by Stephen King. I haven't read either of the former two books, and have not read any Stephen King for years, until I attempted to read "Cell" over Christmas (a book I bought purely on the strength of its title, but it turned out to be about phones not biology). I didn't get very far with it, as it was a series of set pieces describing deaths in nauseating detail, with practically no plot (such as it was, the plot was done much better in the same author's The Stand many years ago).

I don't read the horror genre, but looking at the best selling "crime" novels, one sees books that dwell on the minutiae of dead bodies, ancient dead bodies, deformities, torture by, respectively, Patricia Cornwell, Kathy Reichs, Mo Hayder and Karin Slaughter. Whether one would call these in any sense "horror" novels, rather than an excessive interest in decay and pain, I don't know. I don't think I would.

The best-selling crime novelists in the world are, to my knowledge, James Patterson, Dan Brown and John Grisham. James Patterson writes fairly up-front violence as part of his plots, but in a comic-book sense. Dan Brown writes conventional action thrillers with a religious/symbolic element.  John Grisham mainly writes legal, courtroom-style dramas. No horror there, then.

The best-selling crime authors in the UK are Ian Rankin and Val McDermid. The former writes conventional police procedural detective stories, and the latter, although she has flirted with the torture-porn genre, has moved away from that in the past few years and now writes books without that element (her initial Tony Hill novels were quite gruesome, but no longer are).

People who read crime fiction regularly will be familiar with Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Harlan Coben, Martin Edwards, Ann Cleeves, Peter James, Peter Robinson, Janet Evanovich, George Pelecanos, Susan Hill, Jonathan and Faye Kellerman, Sue Grafton, J. D. Robb, Linwood Barclay, Mary Higgins Clark and many other top-selling novelists. One thing all these writers have in common is that their books are based on plot, not on gruesome grisle: their appeal lies in the fact that they tell a good story - sometimes dark, sometimes not - about interesting characters.

Moving to mainland Europe, the most popular authors at the moment include Andrea Camilleri, Henning Mankell, Karin Fossum, Jo Nesbo, Stieg Larsson, Arnaldur Indridason and Camilla Lackberg. No "blurring of the horror boundaries" in any of these novelists' work - although Jo Nesbo does like his set-pieces of baroque violence, these are limited to a (skippable) few pages in each tome, the vast majority of each being a traditional police-procedural story.

Of course I have missed out many examples here. I have also ignored some authors who do write visceral books, eg Stuart MacBride, Simon Beckett or Mark Billingham, or who like to describe lots of violence in the form of fights, shoot-outs, etc (I can't give many examples as I don't read many in this subgenre). However, a fascination with violence is not the same as horror.

To my mind, "horror" involves the supernatural in some sense - the book is about events that can't be explained. This genre goes back to Edgar Allen Poe, Henry James and stretches to James Herbert, Clive Barker and many others of whom I've never heard - culminating in the current teenage vampire fad (soon to be replaced by angels and dogs I gather) represented by Stephanie Meyer and countless other similar authors. Crime fiction, on the other hand, is about a plausible, real-world story, perhaps not explained but certainly explainable. Perhaps an analogy is the difference between "science in fiction" (Arrowsmith, Intuition) and "science fiction" (Foundation, Contact, Dune). In my mind, therefore, if it's about ghosts, vampires and other impossible constructs, it isn't crime fiction.

Book review: Where the Dead Lay by David Levien

David Levien’s second novel to feature PI Frank Behr certainly lives up to the promise of the first, City of the Sun.  As Where the Dead Lay opens, Behr is distraught to discover the dead body of his jiu-jitsu teacher and close friend, Aurelio Santos. Aurelio has obviously been murdered, so Behr calls in the police, who aren’t too sympathetic. Behr is determined to discover who killed his friend, but despite his best efforts, he can’t find any leads.

While Behr is mourning his loss, he receives a call from a large investigation agency, asking for an appointment. The CEO and his lawyer want Behr to find two of their operatives, who have gone missing, Behr being a lot cheaper than the $300 per hour in lost fees the missing men’s colleagues would cost the agency to assign to the case. Despite needing the money, Behr turns them down, as he’s suspicious of their secretiveness. Soon afterwards, Behr’s old police supervisor and nemesis, Lieutenant Pomeroy, contacts Behr and asks him if he will take on the same case, hinting that Behr may be reconsidered for the police force if he does. Behr can’t resist this incentive, so finds himself tracking down an illegal gambling racket among the decrepit low-rent and abandoned neighbourhoods of Indianapolis.

The reader has a little bit more of an idea than Behr as to what is going on – part of the enjoyment of this novel is seeing how Behr is going to discover the pieces of the jigsaw that we have been told about, and fit them together. To reveal any more would be to spoil this excellent, traditional detective novel, but suffice it to say that the plot is a good, strong one with lots of satisfying, disparate elements to delight the keen crime-fiction reader.

Where the Dead Lay is more than an action thriller, though.  Behr is a lost soul, whose world view can be summarised as  “...it was a shit world, lousy with fear and not knowing and death, full of people in a constant state of panic and desolation, the more they learned the more the truth swam away...”. Part of this novel is about the possibility of a new start for Behr, and whether  he can put behind him the tragedies of his past – all the more tragic because of his own culpability.

There’s a little too much fascination with bodybuilding and fighting in this novel for my own taste, but other than that, Where the Dead Lay is a very good read indeed. When I first started reading it I was prepared to be a bit disappointed, because I thought what worked so well in City of the Sun (Levien’s debut) was the juxtaposition of Behr’s world and that of his clients, a suburban couple. When I realised that there was to be no “client” in this second book, rather that the plot seemed as if it was going to depend on Behr’s discovery of a friend’s body (a friend not mentioned in the first book), I admit to a few doubts. But I needn’t have worried, the book is solid and engrossing, with Behr an attractively flawed protagonist, sensitive as well as macho. I was particularly entranced by the subplot of Behr’s relationship with his sort-of girlfriend Susan.

You can enjoy Where The Dead Lay without having read City of the Sun, but you’ll understand Behr more if you’ve read the first novel, in particular the events of his past that triggered his lasting depression, and why he is no longer in the police force but yearns to return as part of his internal quest for a family. David Levien has written two excellent novels in a series that I hope will continue for many future titles.

My review of City of the Sun.

Other reviews of Where the Dead Lay at:

The Mystery Reader

The Agony Column

Shotsmag

I thank the publisher, Bantam Press, for my copy of this novel.

Alphabet in crime fiction: Rigbey

Every now and again, you read a book that is truly original – not perhaps the best-written book ever, or the sort of book that will win literary prizes, but a book that really sticks in the mind for years. Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow is one example, and Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo another. For “R” in this series, I am choosing such a book – Total Eclipse by Liz Rigbey, which I read back in 1995. It’s a novel I’ve kept since then and shall definitely read again one day.

The story is about a group of astronomers in northern California, one of whom, Julia, is accused of murder.  Despite the seemingly cast-iron evidence against her, Lomax (another of the group, and in love with Julia) decides to prove her innocent of the crime. The rest of the novel tells the story of this task. This is a very exciting novel indeed. It was so refreshing to read a convincing novel about scientists, by an author who had certainly done her research. Another aspect that struck me at the time (but perhaps would not seem so strange 15 years after the novel was written) was that all the characters Lomax encounters on his journey to uncover the truth are female, representing a range of professions. The outcome of the novel perhaps does not quite match up to the suspense and the telling of it, but it's nevertheless a superb read. 

 
The Wall Street journal said of this novel: “gripping, creepy, moving and suspenseful....This one-of-a-kind book is a comedy of manners, a sexually charged romance, a science problem, a detective story, a courtroom thriller – and one heck of an impressive debut”.

Of course I eagerly awaited Liz Rigbey’s next novel, which came along in 2003, called   Summertime. This novel was also very good, about a woman’s search to find out why someone   murdered her father, a retired geology professor, and in the process discovers hidden truths about her own past. Although I recommend this book as a superior thriller, it does not have quite the impact of Total Eclipse.

Looking to see if Liz Rigbey has written any more books since then, I see she (now called “Elizabeth” Rigbey) has written one other novel, The Hunting Season, in 2007. From the blurb: “The rugged Rocky Mountains are a place some go to hide inside, some to escape into and others to hunt in. Dr Matt Seleckis has never been one for the woods: he remembers his childhood vacations there with his mother and father; and the looming threat of an unexplained death. Now Matt lives in Utah with his wife and young son. Yet the prospect of a hunting trip alone with his father is bringing back dark, unwelcome memories of a certain vacation, of his beloved parents. And of a hushed-up tragedy that he’s sure concerns him. But with the arrival of these unsettling memories comes the creeping realisation that in nature, death for the unwary lies around every corner.” One I shall be ordering!

Liz Rigbey does not appear to have her own website, and it's not that easy to find reviews of her novels.

Maxim Jakubowski writes a brief review of Summertime at the Guardian.

Total Eclipse at Amazon UK.

Fantastic Fiction has the author listed twice, once as Liz (reviews of Total Eclipse and Summertime) and once as Elizabeth (reviews of Total Eclipse and The Hunting Season, but not Summertime).

Publisher website (Penguin) for Summertime and The Hunting Season. Total Eclipse was published by Orion, but does not feature on the publisher's current 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.

Online social networks, 2: getting it right

If you are a user of a social network, you aren't interested in whether or not it makes money, you just want it to do whatever it is you need. This may seem obvious, but I think it poses a problem for social network "owners" - users will just go off somewhere better on a whim (as happened with MySpace). Stuffing the network full of advertising, even if that were a viable business model, is not appealing to many users either.

Of course, for a user it is easy to say what's right about a social network. It should enable you to do what it is you want to do, easily, without distractions but with "targeted serendipity". I am increasingly aware that the power of the internet is not to do with speed - these days, if there is a world-shattering event or someone famous dies, I duck. First Twitter, then blogs, are instantly filled with many identical observations. In my opinion, there is no news that can't wait for a day to be read at leisure in the newspaper. I, like everyone else, am very busy so I don't want to read the same thing over and over again, usually with no added value or insight to the other people's posts.

So, what the internet is good for is filtering. This is why for me, the best social networks are Friend Feed and Nature Network, supported by an RSS reader (Google Reader), Twitter, and, recently, this Typepad blog. Other people will prefer other social networks depending on their needs. There is no relationship, from the user perspective, with the number of people on a network and its success. What is important to the user is the quality of the other users, not the quantity. That way, you can have what I've called here "targeted serendipity", eg "I know I like Bernadette's book reviews so even though I've never heard of this author I'll read this book on the basis of her review" or "I really don't need to add another blog right now to my reading list but Kerrie recomends Margot's blog, so I'll take a look" (that's how I discovered one of my very favourite blogs, Confessions of a Mystery Novelist).

Why do I like the networks that I like?

Friend Feed is a microblogging service that, unlike Twitter, allows you to aggregate posts into groups or "rooms" based round a common interest. Friend Feed also allows you to integrate much of your online activity into one place (your profile), and to see other people's activities on those platforms. If I don't use any of the 40 or so websites that FF supports, but I am interested in you and you do, I can use FF to see your activity on those platforms. If I don't like your contributions to FF, I can block you specifically so that I don't see anything you write. If I visit another social network so don't want that duplicated on FF, I can block that network. The end result is a highly personalised web service which I primarily use to discuss books and reviews of those books with a small group (172 at last count) of people round the world who (mostly) like the same type of book.

Nature Network is a group of blogs and forums whose content is entirely provided by users, most of whom are scientists or interested in science communication of some kind. it is free to use. It is not as technically sophisticated as some of the other platforms, but its main pleasures are the concentration of scientifically minded people who share interesting opinions, and the personalities of those people, most of whom are charming, witty, argumentative (in the nicest sense of the word!), creative and friendly. What NN lacks in technical sophistication it more than makes up for in its customer service: the NN team of about half a dozen publishers, editors, community managers and programmers are always at the end of an email if anything goes wrong, and regularly take part in the conversations. What a breath of fresh air in an increasingly "outsourced" world, to know that one can ask Lou, Matt, Jo or Ian (say) something, and get a thoughtful answer from a real person.

Google Reader. This isn't a social network really, though it tries to be. It is the way in which I read and comment on blogs - all the blogs I regularly read are delivered to one website (Google Reader) so I only have to access one site instead of every single blog I read. GR is introducing more and more social features, eg you can see your "friends' " choices of blog reading, you can "like" someone's blog posts and see how many other people feel the same, you can easily email posts to people. However, I don't see my use of GR changing significantly from being my window to blogs and to keep me in touch with what those bloggers are writing and conversing about at their own sites.

Typepad. Six Apart, the company that makes the Typepad blogging platform, have introduced a lot of changes over the past year. One of these is that the blog dashboard is now a way to connect to and follow other Typepad bloggers and people with a Typepad profile. When I log on now, I see posts and comments from the people I follow. I use this service a bit - i.e. I follow five people, only two of whom have Typepad blogs. I think this service would be more useful if I read more Typepad blogs, but most of the blogs I read seem to be on Blogger - Typepad and Wordpress are in a minority. The Typepad system does work, though, because I do comment on Kim's blog Reading Matters more frequently through seeing her posts and comments every day in my dashboard, and similarly for Ben of Material Witness. I'd do the same for It's a Crime! blog and Random Jottings blog also, but their bloggers don't seem to be part of the new system, as yet. (Incidentally, I like Typepad very much, not strictly on-topic for this post, but their customer service is also great, once again staffed by real people who go the extra mile, totally unlike Google's automated forums.)

Twitter. I do see the use for Twitter now, but again, I am so pressed for time that I don't follow anyone who uses the service to "chat" about their daily comings, goings and musings. I follow two or three individuals who share common interests, a couple of lists, and apart from that, organisations (eg publishers, publications) who post links to articles or books that I am likely to want to read. Twitter is a similar service to Friend Feed but its aggregation is by hash tag (created by all the users interested in one topic, eg a conference or a TV programme or a joke on a theme) rather than by "rooms". You can't build up a conversation on Twitter in the same way that you can on Friend Feed, but it is increasingly popular as a way to communicate about or during a mass event.

Facebook. I think this is the world's most popular social networking site, and the one that seems to be making the most out of the current fad for mobile applications. I don't use it myself apart from maintaining a presence there as it does not fit any of my lifestyle needs, but I can understand why it is very popular when I see how young people I know use it to keep in touch - with year groups from school or college, to share photos, to arrange events, share mutual jokes,  and so on. It's cheaper and more efficient than the phone. It is carrying an increasing amount of advertising, and it will be interesting to see if it goes the way of MySpace and becomes essentially unusable because of the quantity and quality of ads. It will also be interesting to see if it continues to annoy its users by introducing new features without asking them first, then having to backtrack (as happened to Google with Google Buzz).

Well, this post is a bit of an incoherent information dump, but I enjoyed writing down what I like about certain social networks. I doubt that any of them will make money by following my advice, but they will have some happy users!

Disclaimer: I am aware there are lots of other social networks out there, and have even used quite a few of them. I'm just focusing here on the ones I like, and return to regularly.

Earlier post: Online social networks, 1: getting it wrong.

Book review: Thursday Night Widows, by Claudia Pinerio

Thursday Night Widows

Claudia Pineiro, translated by Miranda France

 Thursday Night Widows is a remarkable novel.  Without taking any editorial or judgemental line on the characters it describes, it relates the story of some wealthy Argentinian families who live in an exclusive gated community, or Country Club, outside Buenos Aries. The estate is a desirable destination for well-off people when they feel restricted by their apartments in the city, when they want to start a family, and enjoy the fruits of their considerable wealth.

The story is told from the perspectives of many of the female residents, most often Virginia, a wife whose husband Ronie has lost his job and shows no inclination to find another one. Hence Virginia has turned her hobby of tipping off acquaintances when a property is about to come onto the market into a profession. As an estate agent, she is first to know whose marriage is in trouble or who is on the brink of financial disaster, and also acts as a gatekeeper to keep out unsuitable potential residents (the racism is very ugly).

The wives in this novel do not work in the sense of having a regular job. They all have maids who take their children to the nearby exclusive school which teaches its lessons in English. They have servants, gardeners, drivers and nannies, whom they treat with casual nastiness. One of the wives is an alcoholic; another becomes a kind of “landscape architect”, a role that mainly consists of telling the neighbours what sort of (expensive) plants they should buy; and another is a depressive who joins a local artists’ group. All of them are united by the tennis and golf club, by the social mores of their neighbours, and by “the Association” that makes everyone keep to the (increasingly ludicrous) rules of the Country Club by the threat of either social ostracism or a hefty fine.

Inevitably there are some shoots of resistance in this utopia, mainly from the younger generation.  Juani, Virginia and Ronie’s adolescent son, persistently gets into trouble with his school for his honesty and lack of hypocrisy. Romana, his friend, is an unwanted adoptee, and she also tries to live according to her own principles. Her story and character are perhaps the most attractive, and sad, in the book. There is also a lovely section in which one of the wives, now a divorcee, is reunited with a former maid sacked by her husband.

Thursday Night Wives is written with deceptive lightness, creating a closed world in which I was fascinated, as it is so different from anything I’ve ever experienced. Because the author refuses to judge any of her characters, however unsympathetic, the reader is almost unaware of the grossly distorted morality of these ludicrously pampered  women, with their wasted, empty lives bought at the expense of other people. The men are somewhat more detached as characters, but for them, too, appearance is all – the master of the tennis court or golf club is the highest of the social stratum, and it is taken for granted that they all earn vast quantities of money that their wives can spend at will.

It is the cracking of this front that forms the “crime” in this novel. Although there is no way out of the chains that many of these compromised people have made for themselves, at the end of the book a few of the characters have the choice of returning to reality – a choice that I hope they will take.

This novel is a hilarious yet telling social satire, extremely readable and well translated by Miranda France.  Although only just published in English, it was written in 2005, when the Argentine currency inflation  was out of control and the characters are terrified by the potential effects of the 9/11 atrocity. Not only is the book a fascinating harbinger of the financial crisis that hit so many other parts of the world a few years later, but also, according to the publisher’s blurb, it “eerily foreshadowed a criminal case that generated a scandal in the Argentine media.” Do yourself a favour, and read it.

Reviews of Thursday Night Widows at:

Euro Crime - Karen Meek (thanks, Karen, for the book!)

Crime Scraps - Norman Price

International Noir Fiction - Glenn Harper

Publisher's website (Bitter Lemon Press)

Fresh Fiction

New Internationalist

About the film adaptation, including trailer.

Online social networks: 1, getting it wrong

In the light of the new service Google Buzz and the announcement a couple of days ago that Google has acquired Aardvark, I thought I'd attempt to write a couple of posts about getting it wrong and getting it right about online social networks. I'm starting today with "getting it wrong". I'm not going to link to Google Buzz and Aardvark, but you can easily find them via a web search.

Google Buzz is automatically part of gmail (googlemail), so if you use that you will see a GoogleBuzz icon in the list of "inbox", "compose message", etc. This means you are "opted in" to a network of anyone else in your contacts list who has a gmail account. Via a pop-up window in  
the middle of your screen you can see what these people are doing on the internet and they can see what you are doing. I've immediately deactivated it because most of these people in my contact list are unknown to me, my dealings with them being limited to things like ordering goods from them or having them comment on my blog. At least I am not like the person who wrote a long rant because unknown to her, Google Buzz had put her ex-husband and her (secret) new boyfriend in direct contact, but you get the picture of what can go wrong with this "automatically opted in" method. Google, this is called "doing it wrong".

Aardvark is a good idea in principle - a semi-automatic question and answer service. I joined it because I received a recommendation from a colleague (now an ex-colleague!) who had told Aardvark three key areas of expertise that I have (in his opinion). I accepted Aardvark's invitation to join. The idea is that people who want to know the answer to a question ask Aardvark. If the question relates to your area of expertise (all users provide three), Aardvark passes the question on to you via a little pop-up window. You answer it. I have to admit that one reason I joined is that I was looking for an Italian tutor and could not find one, so I asked Aardvark but never got a coherent answer. But, I myself began to be bombarded by all kinds of questions on topics I know nothing, or very little, about. On the odd occasion when I received a question on one of my specialities, I found myself embroiled in silly responses about, eg, the relationship between science and religion, from questioners who simply would not go away and whom Aardvark could not or would not block. Pretty soon, I unsubscribed -not easy to do, and I still get auto-email messages from the organisation even though I attempted to remove myself completely from their database.

I assume that by its acquisition of Aardvark, Google will be integrating it into its Buzz feature, leading to a life of hell as one is constantly interrupted by lunatic questions and arguments from people who don't like one's answers. I hope I shan't have to find out anything about it, as I have no interest in signing up to it in its new incarnation, but I hope that the filtering functions are improved so that users receive relevant questions, and I hope that there is some system for blocking/reporting inappropriate and abusive questioners.

The key issue is that if a company wants to introduce a social network onto an existing service, the users should be invited to join it, not automatically signed up to it, and the users should be able to control how they use it. The Internet is full of rubbish and distractions, and the art of making it useful is to filter it. Anything that introduces a lot of unwanted information into one's screen is just not only annoying, but positively harmful to the delicate balance between being enlightened and being swamped.

The next time I write on this topic, I'll write about social networks that "get it right".

[The image is not relevant for the post but it is nice and calm.]

Progress on reading novels eligible for the International Dagger

I am inevitably doomed to failure in my task to read the books eligible for this year's International Dagger award in time for the announcement of the short list at this year's Crime Fest. However, here is an update on how I am doing.

In my previous summary post on this topic, written on 1 December last year, I reported that I had read nine of the 61 eligible titles (eligible according to the Euro Crime database). My reviews of eight of those novels have been published (links are in the previous post) and a ninth is in press.

Of the remainder, I thought at the time of that post that this set of books looked like ones I might enjoy reading next:

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)

I can report that I've now read three of these: Death in Oslo (review linked above); The Snowman (review submitted to Euro Crime) and The Woman from Bratislava (I have just finished that one today, it's a long book. I'll be drafting my review later and will also submit that to Euro Crime.)

I have acquired, thanks to the kindness of Karen and the publishers, The Stone Cutter and Thirteen Hours, so I think I shall be reading them next. I also have copies of some other eligible titles that are not on my second-wave list: Claudia Pineiro - Thursday Night Widows, Frank Schatzing - Death and the Devil, and Eugenio Fuentes - At Close Quarters, so they will be assigned higher priority than hitherto. The Man from Beijing and Badfellas are now published, so I can get hold of those. I wonder if I can get even that far before Crime Fest and the shortlist announcement?

And of the titles I've read, which is my front-runner? So hard to say, as the standard is extremely high. So far, in my mind, it's between The Snowman by Jo Nesbo and The Darkest Room by Johan Theorin, but I expect that will change. (Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indridason is my favourite from the titles I've read so far for personal reasons, but these Nesbo and Theorin titles are, objectively, better crime novels as they have a broader canvas.)

Previous winners of the International Dagger, at the CWA website.

New books for May: in heaven, hell or inbetween

I cannot reproduce it here because of copyright, but I think that today's Dilbert strip sums up our present age in a perfect nutshell. "I think I died, am I in heaven or hell?" asks a man in a white gown to another man sitting at a desk. The reply: "You're in helven; heaven and hell have been outsourcing souls to us since the demons and angels unionised". (Rather than "unionised" I'd have written "merged after a company takeover".)
There is a punchline window also, but don't think it necessary. (Punchline: "So is this place good or bad?" "Well, you get a harp but you won't like how we give it to you.")

Moving on, to last week's (5 Feb) Bookseller, in which new books being published in the UK in May are highlighted in the preview section. Just picking a few of the very many of these, I'm looking forward to: Innocent, by Scott Turow, the prequel to his brilliantly nailbiting 1987 debut bestseller Presumed Innocent; Shadowplay, by Karen Campbell, third Glasgow-set Anna Cameron novel; The Liar's Lullaby, by Meg Gardiner, sequel to The Dirty Secrets Club and featuring Jo Beckett again; Hailey's War by Jodi Compton, if this is the same Jodi Compton who wrote two good novels a few years ago and with whom I have lost touch since; and Afterlight, by Alex Scarrow, sequel to Last Light (yet to be read but I am looking forward to it after a recommendation from Material Witness).

Other new May novels that look interesting are some debuts: Death in the Latin Quarter by Raphael Cardetti, set in Paris, about the restoration of a medieval palimpsest; The Whisperer by Donato Carristi, a bit of a grim-sounding plot about severed arms being found in a forest, but apparently a very popular book in its native Italy; and Down Among the Dead Men by Robert Gregory Browne, about a disgraced newspaper reporter trying to find the truth behind the killing of some nuns in the Mexican desert.

There are also some best-selling authors who have new novels coming out in May: Lynda La Plante has written a third in her Anna Travis series called Blind Fury; P J Tracy's latest is Play to Kill, in which Grace MacBride is recruited by the FBI to find a serial killer on the internet; Silent Scream by Karen Rose, an author who is becoming increasingly popular in the UK; Private by "James Patterson", start of a new series (!) featuring Jack Morgan, former war hero, now head of a global private detective agency; and A Better Quality of Murder by Ann Grainger, a third Victorian crime novel starring Inspector Ben Ross of Scotland Yard and his wife Lizzie.

(Apologies for the lack of links in this post, due to a sore hand which means I can type only for a limited time.)

Speaking up for Oxfam and for those who seek to do good

I don't like to post negative opinions here, but I have got pretty cross at Susan Hill's latest broadside, against Oxfam bookshops, in her Spectator blog. Some of the comments to her post are, in my view, quite ugly. (There are some more enlightened points of view at the Bookseller's website, including some comments by me.)

Susan Hill does not like Oxfam bookshops because she says they are putting good independent and antiquarian booksellers out of business. She likens them to Ottakar's, a bookshop chain which, according to her, checked out small towns for the presence of a thriving independent bookshop, and then opened up nearby, putting said bookshop out of business. She does not bother to reconcile this accusation with the fact that Ottakar's itself went out of business.

Further, she does not like Oxfam bookshops because she says that they are unfairly competing with local charity shops, such as hospice shops. This is certainly not the case where I live, where the local hospice charity shop does a roaring trade despite an Oxfam bookshop, an Oxfam "normal" charity shop, a Fara (Romanian orphans) shop and a cancer charity shop all in walking distance. 

Ms Hill is very rude about Oxfam, damning the whole organisation on the basis of a couple of anecdotes on the level of one of its staff having a four-wheel drive in a poor country. She is also incensed at the organisation's stance in global warming, a fact in which Ms Hill does not believe on the basis of flawed arguments by the likes of Nigel Lawson. I refer both of them, and anyone else, to the facts and evidence about climate.

As is probably evident, I disagree almost totally with Susan Hill's diatribe. Oxfam is doing basically good work, raising money to help those less well off than me, Ms Hill, and most other people lucky enough to be born in affluent countries. If Oxfam can raise money for a good cause by selling second-hand books, good luck to it.

There are problems in the bookselling trade and challenges to the book publishing industry. But don't blame Oxfam for them. And I see no reason to believe that Oxfam is putting other charity shops out of business, either. They are all trying to do good, and I admire them all for it. We should be applauding them, not lambasting them.

Game, sets and matching titles

 
Feeling in a bit of a silly mood, I thought I would share some of the titles of the many books that are sitting on my shelves waiting to be read. They seem to fall into sets. Here's one:

The Last Ten Seconds (Simon Kernick)
Six Seconds (Rick Mofina)
Thirteen Hours (Deon Meyer)
Thursday Night Widows (Claudia Pineiro)

Another set:

The Black Monastery (Stav Sherez)
The Dark Vineyard (Martin Walker)
Last Light (Alex Scarrow)
Black Out (John Lawton)
This Night's Foul Work (Fred Vargas)
Blacklands (Belinda Bauer)
Dark of the Moon (John Sandford)
Dying Light (Stuart McBride)
[Light Reading (Aliya Whiteley) - does not really fit here]

Another:

The Eye of Jade (Diane Wei Liang)
Tomato Red (Daniel Woodrell)
White Corridor (Christopher Fowler)
Steel Witches (Patrick Lennon)
Sunstroke (Jesse Kellerman)
A Trace of Smoke (Rebecca Cantrell)

Another:

Where the Dead Lay (David Levien)
Die a Little (Megan Abbott)
Death in Breslau (M Krajewski)
Death and the Devil (Frank Shatzing)
Dead at Daybreak (Deon Meyer)
Dying in Style  (Elaine Veits)
Deadly Deception (Peter Conway)
Dead Calm (Charles Williams)
Handling the Undead (John Ajvide Lindqvist)
Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death (M C Beaton)

Another:

The Crossing Places (Elly Griffiths)
Roadside Crosses (Jeffrey Deaver)
Cross (Ken Bruen)

Another:
The Sins of the Children  (James Brownley)
The Children of Men (P D James)
Child 44 (Tom Rob Smith)
Brother & Sister (Joanna Trollope)
The Good Husband of Zebra Drive (Alexander McCall Smith)
The Water Widow (Ella Griffiths)

And:
Judas Heart (Ingrid Black)
Pieces of my Heart (Peter Robinson)
Heart of the Hunter (Deon Meyer)
Skin and Bone (Kathryn Fox)
The Wings of the Sphinx (Andrea Camilleri)

Stop press: Thanks to Dorte, I can now create another category:
Snow Angels (James Thompson) (thanks Dorte!)
Winterland (Alan Glynn)
[Unusual to have so few snowy wintery books at the moment, as they seem to make up much of my reading! I have just finished reading The Snowman by Jo Nesbo, so that missed the cut. With a different twist, I could add A Quiet Belief in Angels by James Ellory to Dorte's generous gift, instead of pursuing a weather/seasonal theme.]

I also have many books that I feel ought to be part of categories, but I only have one title at the moment, for example: numbers (The Tenth Case by Joseph Teller); disappearances (The Missing by Jane Casey); and waking up (Awakening by S J Bolton and The Rising by Brian McGilloway (joke - I don't know anything about The Rising, yet, but I doubt it is related to sleeping) ). I also have the odd ghost, journey, object (stone, jewel), dream/nightmare, animal, and wood/forest.

It's enough to make you pleased when you have books on your shelf with titles like "I was Dora Suarez" or "The Curse of the Pogo Stick" (awaiting my perusal, together with many others not mentioned here).

How well can you do at creating categories out of your "to be read" books? No cheating, the titles have to be books physically on your shelf or in your e-reader/audio device that you haven't yet read, and not books that you haven't yet obtained or books that you have already read. I look forward to seeing if anyone can get a greater set-tally than me!

[Many of the books mentioned here are from publishers, either via Karen of Euro Crime, or directly sent to me. More than several, however, I have purchased myself, some of them a very long time ago!]

Alphabet in crime fiction: Quigley

The crime fiction alphabet has rolled round to "Q", and as I am working through authors' surnames, I have to confess I am stuck. The only author whose name begins with Q and whom I can recall reading is Sheila Quigley. I have read one of her books, Run for Home, in the days when I was in a book club and this debut was the recommendation one month. I can't remember all that much about it, except that it is a bit like a Martina Cole/Lynda La Plante cross, set in the north of England, written in dialect, and involving abducted children, not my favourite topic. Here's the blurb from the author's website:

In 1985: a man runs for his life - exhausted, wounded, hunted remorselessly by a woman assassin known only as The Head Hunter. At the end, he has just enough energy to spit in her face.
In 2001:sixteen-year-old Kerry Lumsdon runs across the same terrain. She runs to win and she runs to forget.
When a headless body is found in the wastelands of the Seahills Estate, Detective Inspector Lorraine Hunt is called in to investigate. Kerry and Lorraine, different ages and from different worlds, come together when Claire Lumsdon, Kerry's sister, is violently kidnapped - the fourth in a series of abductions of young girls.
Headstrong, wilful and convinced the police can't help, Kerry sets out on a frantic search of her own. But her hunt takes her to a world she never knew existed: a violent underworld; a sixteen year old murder; and, finally, to secrets about her own past which her mother hoped she'd never have to face.
And all the time, the clock is ticking for Claire.

Sheila Quigley has written four novels since then, Bad Moon Rising (review by Sharon Wheeler at Reviewing the Evidence); Living on a Prayer (review at Euro Crime by Pat Austen); Every Breath You Take (review at Euro Crime by Michelle Peckham); and most recently, The Road To Hell (book description at the author's website, including a link to a trailer on YouTube). All five novels are set in the Seahills Estate, a fictitious estate in Houghton-le-Spring, north-east England and feature DI Lorraine Hunt. There's a map of the estate at the author's website.

Sheila Quigley was a grandmother of eight, living in a council house in the north east of England, when she signed a £300,000 two-book deal with Random House. Now published by Tonto Books, I will leave the last word with author Tess Gerritsen: "Sheila Quigley is queen of the rough and tumble thriller. With her strong heroines and gritty plots, she draws us into a shadowy world where only the strong survive..".

Crime Fiction alphabet series at Petrona.

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

 

Some news about books in May - via the Bookseller

As usual I am somewhat behind in reading the Bookseller, but the 29 January issue has lots in it. Here's some of it, filtered.

Among many titles to look forward to that are coming out in paperback in the UK in May are An Empty Death, Laura Wilson's follow-up to the excellent WW2-set Stratton's War; Ice Cold by Andrea Maria Schenkel, translated by the recently honoured Anthea Bell and, indeed, a book that very much lives up to its title; Daniel (brother of Johnny) Depp's Loser's Town, first in a series about a "former stuntman and laid back PI"; Trail of Blood by S J Rozan, the UK launch of the first in this series (called The Shanghai Moon in the USA) billed as a "Sue Grafton/Harlan Coben cross"; The Black Monastery by Stav Sherez, in which two crime writers arrive on the Greek island of Palassos as a 33-year-old crime resurfaces; The Scarecrow by the master, Michael Connelly; Christobel Kent's A Time of Mourning, introducing an ex-policeman now private detective Sandro Cellini of Florence, apparently "in the Donna Leon mould";  The Merry Misogynist, the sixth Laos-based coroner's tale by the wonderful, witty wordsmith Colin Cotterill; A Deadly Trade, the second novel by "Michael Stanley", following the exciting debut A Carrion Death; and Lennox by Craig Russell, the first of a "gritty, Glasgow-based 1950s series featuring a shady private eye. It's gangland stuff mixed with arms trading."
[Links in the paragraph above go to reviews at Euro Crime, It's a Crime!, Petrona, The Guardian, The Independent and Mostly Fiction.]

Another author better known in other spheres is making the move to crime: Toby Litt has produced what the Bookseller calls "a stunning commercial mystery called King Death" (Penguin) which will apparently be backed by a lot of marketing when it comes out in May as an original large (A) format paperback. "A fantastic medical thriller set among London medical students" is all the bookseller says about the contents (at the moment!).

If you are interested in which (crime) authors made the most money in the UK in 2009, the answer, according to Neilsen/the Bookseller, are Dan Brown (2),  "James Patterson" (3) - though I think it unfair to count him as one author - Stieg Larsson (6), Martina Cole (11), John Grisham (12), and Patricia Cornwell (20). The amounts are on a scale ranging from £15 million plus (Brown) to a shade over £4 million (Cornwell). I suppose nobody is guessing who is at no 1, but just in case - yes, it is Stephanie Meyer (almost £30 million). However, in Europe overall, Stieg Larsson outsold Stephanie Meyer  in 2009- they are numbers 1 and 2, respectively. (Dan Brown is 3, Carlos Ruiz Zafon 5, Camilla Lackberg 6, Henning Mankell 9, Simon Beckett 11 and James Patterson is down at 12, one above Roslund-Hellstrom. Other favourites of mine include Andrea Camilleri at 18, Asa Larsson at 23, Saskia Noort at 29, Harlan Coben at 30 and Mari Jungstedt at 42.) This list is based on chart positions rather than numbers of sales.

There are quite a few controversies in the book business being discussed everywhere just now, not least the Bookseller: electronic book tokens have finally been introduced in the UK, but the independent booksellers are upset about them because they take much longer to process when issued, and the purchaser can go and cash them in at other (non-independent) bookshops, including online if the seller is a member of the Booksellers' Association (which Amazon isn't, and I presume supermarkets aren't). There is also a lot of kerfuffle about e-readers and digital formats, given the recent launch of the iPad and the argument over pricing that Macmillans (and no doubt soon other publishers) are having with Amazon. Google book search is still providing much fuel for the fire, and John Blake laments the England/Wales libel laws: "significant and important books that would have been published five years ago, are now simply not worth the risk." (Did someone tell Katie Price, one of John Blake's authors?)

A long profile of publisher Anthony Cheetham (late of Abacus, Sphere, Futura, Century Hutchinson, Orion, Random House and Quercus, several of which he founded), who has now taken up a role at Corvus, recent publisher of US author C. J. Box's Three Weeks to Say Goodbye. Apparently he will be revealing details of his new non-fiction imprint Castillo at the London Book Fair this year, and is also involved in a separate digital publishing project. He explains his view about how the publishing business is changing from a collaboration between publisher, author and bookseller to now, where publishing is becoming a "copyright business, not a book business. It is a whole new dimension of understanding various media, in the larger context of being the author's business partner."

Euro Crime reviews for January, and a few more

January is by far the longest month - you get paid for December before Christmas instead of on the last day of the month, so from that point of view, January starts on about 23 Dec. Then you buy things for Christmas in a last-minute splurge, then there are the sales, then back to school and work, then a long, long time in the snow, sleet, dark and cold before the 31st arrives. One upside of this is that there are more opportunities for reading than usual, so I have a nice crop of Euro Crime and Petrona reviews to show for January. The links to these are archived on my reviews page at Petrona, and the reviews themselves are archived at my Vox blog (which is not bang up to date but not far off). I also log on that blog what I'm currently reading and (an occasional feast) watching.

So, without further ado, my Euro Crime reviews for January 2010 were:

Tooth and Claw, by Nigel McCrery, the second in the series about DCI Mark Lapslie, begun in the rather good "Agatha Christie noir" novel CORE OF EVIL (aka STILL WATERS). As might be expected from the author's credentials as an ex-policeman and highly successful TV scriptwriter, both books are smoothly written, with the action occurring at a fast pace.

Blue Lightning, by Ann Cleeves, final installment of the Shetland quartet. I cannot recommend the novels too highly. Together they represent a superb achievement, both as excellent crime fiction and as sensitive evocations of the meshing of age-old lifestyles with the priorities and technologies of the modern world. [Actually, this review was posted on 1 February, but never mind.]

Captured, by Neil Cross, one of those books for which you will have to set aside an hour or two to read from first page to last without a break.

The Disappeared, by M. R. Hall, second in the series about coroner Jenny Cooper, a fascinating character who stands out as a true individual in a crowded crime-fiction landscape.

About Face, by Donna Leon, a perfect miniature of a book with a social sting in its tail.

If I am allowed to count the 1 Feb as "January", my Euro Crime review award for the month goes, without a doubt, to Blue Lightning by Ann Cleeves. If not, Captured by Neil Cross takes the medal.

Of all the books I reviewed in January, my award has to go to an exceptional book, Truth, by Peter Temple. Any other month, and Reunion by Simone van der Vlugt or The Vault by Roslund-Helstrom would have romped home, but all aces are trumped by Truth.

Alphabet in crime fiction: Palmer

My contribution to the letter “P” is a review of Michael Palmer’s latest medical thriller, The Last Surgeon. This book is published in the USA on 16 February; via Margot Kinberg’s blog, I discovered that the author is making available advance copies to book bloggers. Even though I live in a different continent, Michael Palmer has very generously sent me a signed advance copy of the novel. If you follow Michael at Twitter or Facebook, he will be releasing some exclusive material. You can also visit his website for Q&As, podcast and a ringtone (which I assume is different from Wallender’s). Here's my review:

The Last Surgeon is a very exciting thriller which I read in a day (Sunday, as it happens). Dr Nick Gerrity, nicknamed Nick Fury after a comic-book character, is serving in Afghanistan when a terrible act of terrorism devastates his life. After recovering physically from his dreadful injuries he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) so is unable to return to his army post. He finds satisfaction in working for (and driving) the Helping Hands Mobile Medical Unit, in which, in partnership with Julie, a middle-aged nurse, he helps the people of the streets of Washington DC and Baltimore, also (based on his own experience) helping veterans to navigate the bureaucratic maze of the Veteran’s Administration in order to successfully claim their benefits. Nick is also searching for his best friend, an army colleague whom he last saw some years ago, living as a down-and-out, possibly alcoholic.
At the beginning of the novel, a hired assassin kills a beautiful young nurse, Belle Coates, making the death look like a suicide – the reader has no idea why. Belle’s much older sister Jillian is alone in refusing to believe that sister took her own life, spending her time since that event desperately trying to get the media or anyone interested in helping her find out what really happened. She believes that she must be right when her home is incinerated in a firebomb, destroying all the boxes of Belle’s possessions. One box contained a bizarre collection of comics, about a character called Dr Nick Fury – together with a note in Belle’s handwriting with some odd phrases including Nick’s name. Jillian mentioned this oddity on a late-night radio programme in which she appealed for information about her sister’s death, and to her excitement, a caller says that he knows “Dr Nick Fury” as Dr Nick Garrity, from his days in the army. Jillian determines to find Nick and see how he might be connected to her sister.
The novel continues at breakneck speed as Nick and Jillian, helped by various friends and people who owe Nick favours, try to find out what happened to Belle. Unknown to them, they are racing against time as the killer is continuing his evil work – and, via a clever disguise that keeps the tension pitched high, is keeping track of Jillian’s movements. One of the aspects of the novel I enjoyed the most was the description of Nick and his partner Julie’s medical work, and the details of how they help the victims and poor people on the streets in an uncaring society.  The author has a true talent for making the work of Nick and his friends come alive, and makes us really care about Nick’s search for his lost colleague and Jillian’s attempts to find out what really happened to her sister, which via some neat detective work at a nearby private hospital and a bit of computer hacking lead to an exciting but violent climax. As a thriller this book is excellent and I highly recommend it, though I found the eventual solution not as interesting or compelling as the rest of the novel.

Michael Palmer's website: read a "sneak preview", get the ringtone, widgets and view the trailer of The Last Surgeon, and read about the author's other books - most of them excellent medical-oriented thrillers.

The Last Surgeon reviews page, where the author has collected excerpts from and links to bloggers' reviews.

Crime Fiction alphabet series at Petrona.

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

Starting to read The Snowman, by Jo Nesbo

I have just started reading an advance copy of The Snowman by Jo Nesbo, thanks to Karen of Euro Crime. So far, it is great, not to mention beautifully translated by the peerless Don Bartlett, as ever perfectly in tune with the author's words and meanings. I thought I'd share an excerpt from page 19, in which Inspector Harry Hole meets a new partner, Katrine Bratt, who says to him after they are introduced:

"But you should show me round and take care of me for the next few days. Until I'm up and running. Can you do that, do you think?"
Harry eased off a smile. So far he liked her, but of course he was open to changing his opinion. Harry was always willing to give people another chance to end up on his black list.
"I don't know," he said, stopping by the coffee dispenser. "Let's start with this."
"I don't drink coffee."
"Nevertheless. It's self-explanatory. Like most things here. What are your thoughts on the case of the missing woman?"
Harry pressed the button for Amerciano which, in this machine, was as American as Norwegian ferry coffee.
"What about it?" Bratt asked.
"Do you think she's alive?" Harry tried to ask in a casual manner so she wouldn't realise it was a test.
"Do you think I'm stupid?" she said and watched with undisguised revulsion as the machine coughed and spluttered something black into a white plastic cup. "Didn't you hear the Politioverbetjent say that I worked at the Sexual Offences Unit for four years?"
"Mm," Harry said. "Dead then?"
"As a dodo," said Katrine Bratt.
Harry lifted the white cup. He pondered the possibility that he had just been allocated a colleague that he might come to appreciate.

The Snowman (English language version) is published in March this year by Harvill Secker. It is the fifth book by Jo Nesbo to be translated into English (and fifth of those in chronological order). It was awarded the Norwegian booksellers' prize for best novel of the year, 2007. See Euro Crime for reviews of Nesbo's earlier novels.

Jo Nesbo's website, which features extracts and trailers of The Snowman as well as a video interview with the author.

Jo Nesbo at Wikipedia.

Posts about Jo Nesbo and his novels at Crime Scraps, a longstanding advocate of this author and his books.