PETRONA

Daniel Craig on a tea towel

Go here if you want a Daniel Craig tea towel: Alpha Mummy - Times Online - WBLG.

Well, actually, don't. Although you can have a look at said tea towel by going to Caitlin Moran's Times blog entry above, her link to the place for ordering it doesn't work. Probably, by now, someone has provided the correct link in the comments. But before you get too excited at the prospect of Daniel on a tea towel, it is just words, no images -- although I am a words rather than an images person, I would make an exception for DC on a tea towel --- to me these particular ones lack the charm of the personification.

Caitlin Moran's blog post is mildly amusing in another way -- yet another one of those posts in which the blogger mentions someone's inability to spell while themselves not spelling correctly.

To return to Daniel, I am sure he will make a good Lord Asriel, but honestly, it is a part made for Viggo. Definitely a missed opportunity there. I'll forgive whoever made that decision, though, as Nicole Kidman is inspired casting for Mrs Coulter. (Viggo M and Nicole K have appeared together, in the film of a Henry James novel, Portrait of a Lady. Bit different from Northern Lights or, as we must learn to call it, The Golden Compass.)

Web metrics in the Economist

Web metrics | Many ways to skin a cat | Economist.com.

The Economist this week (above) gets to grips with the puzzling world of web visitors, page views, download stats, "time spent", and what they all mean for the curious publisher, blogger or author in terms of how many people are reading their output. The piece gets it right to my knowledge -- for example a "hit" is a less useful statistic than a "page view" because the former measures every graphic on a page as a separate visit. However, page views themselves, as well as session-length metrics, have their own problems, as outlined in the Economist article. And don't forget the stories of the hard-to-navigate websites that pride themsleves on the length of time visitors stay -- while all the time the visitors are desperately looking everywhere, not being able to find the information they need.

One thing is for sure: only believe a publication's visitor statistics claims if the statistics are independently verified -- for example "Counter compliant". (Here is some information about Counter.)

Sunday salon: Picador blog

I've been following with interest the relatively new Picador blog, which rapidly distinguished itself in my eyes from all the very many litblogs, and indeed the very many publishers' litblogs, by being a lively, conversational place about the wider world of books, bookselling, commuterdom and above all, reading, from an eclectic mix of contributors. I fell into conversation, as one does, with Jenny Geras, who runs the blog, and she very kindly agreed to consider a submission from me on the subject of our Sunday Salon. I hope that the post might encourage a few new members to join this stimulating yet leisurely (if that isn't a contradiction in terms) discussion group.

I do recommend checking out the Picador blog: the posts are varied yet pertinent. Here is Jenny Geras of Picador on books that made her cry (one of her list had that effect on me, but so did many others -- I cry very easily when I read). Here's Ed Woods of Waterstone's Books Quarterly asking where all the good contemporary war novels have gone. A post I particularly like is one by Jonathan Ruppin (who works at Foyles and writes the "paperback preview" report for the Bookseller) on the best books to read while travelling on the Underground (or any form of public transport, I guess). There are lots of comments to these posts, and to others, creating a real conversation on topics both highbrow and lowbrow (their definitions!). This blog really has a bit of a knack for what we book fans like to chat about, it is nicely designed and a friendly air. Oh, and it also features great publishing questions of today, such as what we all think of the widely reported decision by Picador to forego the hardback format for some of its books.

(Disclaimer: Picador books is a division of Macmillan. In my day job, I work for Nature Publishing Group, which is also owned by Macmillan.)

Bloggers' brunch at Profile books

Have you ever heard of a bloggers' brunch? I hadn't, until I went to one today, courtesy of Benjamin Usher of Profile books (the hosts) and Karen Meek of Euro Crime (the putative guest, who could not attend, so I was very generously allowed to attend in her place, as Euro Crime's roving reporter).

As well as Andrew and his colleagues at Profile books, we also met the impressive Rebecca of Short Books, which is entering the fiction sphere for the first time, and the phenomenally experienced Peter of Serpent's Tail (a firm mainly known to me as publisher of Jenny Davidson's book Heredity, but a quick glimpse of the catalogue showed me that Adrian McKinty is one of their current authors, which allowed me to knowledgeably throw in to the mix the name of Declan Burke). These publishers were keen to hear from the bloggers about their experiences of books and reading on the Internet. I was delighted to learn from Clare and Irene about bookgroup.info, an independent aggregate site for book groups in the UK, and to meet Mary Beard, who as well as being a classics professor at Cambridge, writes for the TLS and blogs for them (A Don's Life, a regular source of interest to Jenny concerning matters Latin, Greek and otherwise ancient). Other guests included the rushed, on-deadline editor from Pulp.net, "the home of new fiction", whose name I failed to catch, and Stephen of This Space, whose blog I know well and with whom I've had several pleasant online interactions.

We all spoke about our own sites and experiences as book publishers, readers and reviewers. Several of us either wore or came away with T shirts for White Bicycles, an autobiography of a music person called Joe Boyd, of whom I'd previously never heard. (As usual, I was by far the uncoolest person there, but this is a role in which I am very comfortable).

When it was my turn to speak, I spoke about the wonderful Euro Crime resource, for which I am privileged to review; and about Petrona, which receives orders of magnitudes less traffic than everyone else present but that isn't why I like her. People were impressed that not only do I know Frank Wilson, evidently a highly respected and popular figure, but that I've reviewed books for his publication, the Philadelphia Inquirer. I had a pleasant talk with Pete of Serpent's Tail about Euro Crime (upper and lower case) and as a result came away with a pile of books for the bus journey back to Kings Cross and ultimately to Petrona Towers, including several by Manuel Vazquez Montalaban, whom Pete tells me was the inspiration for the name of Andrea Camilleri's main character. (Thank you to Norm of Crime Scraps for introducing me to Camilleri and enabling me to maintain a little bit of street cred at this illustrious gathering.)

I could write on, but time is, as ever, short. I am now proud owner of three catalogues of wonderful-looking books, an Alan Bennett tea towel, a white bicycles T shirt, and some very tempting additions to my reading pile, as well as two new-to-me websites to explore. The brunch was a lovely initiative and I enjoyed it tremendously. I am horribly conscious now of how little I know about crime and literary fiction compared with everyone else, and how much there remains to read.

Sunday Salon: Eurocrime reviews

Unable to relax in any salons today, I can instead refer you to the excellent Euro Crime: New Reviews for this weekend. Two books that I've reviewed and are posted today are The Accident Man by "Tom Cain", which featured on Sunday Salon the other week while I was reading it; and Excursion to Tindari, part of the sublime series by Andrea Camilleri. Other books are reviewed at the Euro Crime link, and there are many, many more on the Euro Crime website.

Kindle fatigue

If I see one more blog post about Kindle, Amazon's ebook reader in case you hadn't noticed, I am going to go quietly even more insane. Back in September, I thought Kindle sounded mildly interesting. Now it is on sale, and everyone is either trying it out or expressing an opinion on it (or both). One wave of reviews and comments was rounded up at OUP blog: from the OUP link you can go to articles in Engadget, New York Times, Wall St Journal, Seth Goldin, Telegraph, Switched, Publisher's Weekly, Errata, Newsweek and Bookseller. If that isn't enough, you can find more comments at the following locations: Joe Wikert (Wiley), Dave's Fiction Warehouse (puncturer of pomposity); Booksellers Association (which is different from the Bookseller post via OUP blog); Book Depository; Guardian; Joe Wikert again (on pricing this time); Info NeoGnostic; Content Matters; and last but most definitely not least, Debra Hamel at the Deblog (who wrote the first article that I saw after launch: well done, Debra!).

But, enough already. Uncle!

Reviews of Beowulf

I have read several positive reviews of the new Gollum-style (motion-capture) film of Beowulf, and Crime Scraps liked the movie if not the cinema. Although I enjoyed the TLS review, by Carolyne Larrington, who writes that "Zemeckis’s Beowulf is in touch with critical debate about the poem" and also reviews a new translation, by Dick Ringer, in my opinion Henry Gee's review of the film (on a "mere blog") is transcendental. Please do read it.

Herny re-read the poem before he saw the film (he makes that account a story in itself), then he summarises the story in his inimitable style, and continues:

"What the film does is very clever: it assumes that the poem that has come down to us is a bowdlerized propaganda version (which it assuredly is, having been through several scribal hands since its original composition) – and proceeds to tell us what really happened. In so doing the script exploits all sorts of odd foibles in the text, showing that Gaiman and Avary well those passions read, stamped on those lifeless things."

And there is lots more, Angelina, Keats, Tolkien (coming to a different view than the TLS on that last gentleman): just read it. Lovely.

All I have to do now is to decide whether I can face the hideous Odeon multiplex fleecing operation so soon after last week's disappointing Elizabeth (only half the required number of beards), or if I can wait until the DVD.

Blogs move into the mainstream

The Copyright Clearance Center announced this week that it is adding blogs to its extensive database of licensable content. CCC will license about 1,000 blogs on business, technology, finance, healthcare, the law and other topics from Newstex, which delivers real-time news and commentary from thousands of newswires, newspapers, magazines, financial and business sources, official government feeds and blogs. The blogs that are part of this agreement will, via Newstex, receive royalty revenue from users of their work.
From the CCC release:

"Blogs have become critical sources of information for CCC's customers—those decision makers who need to share up-to-date news and insights with colleagues, customers and business partners," said Bill Burger, CCC's Vice President of Marketing. "Now we're making it easy for them to use blog content in a host of uses beyond simple linking."

Grand challenges in diseases

In a free-access article in today's Nature, "Grand challenges in chronic non-communicable diseases" a group of the great and the good in medical and clinical sphere (the Grand Challenges Global Partnership) outline their top 20 policy and research priorities for conditions such as diabetes, stroke and heart disease, that account for about 60 per cent of deaths worldwide, and affect people of all ages, nationalities and social classes. The authors write that the challenges they describe are "intended to reduce the global epidemic of these diseases by making the case for worldwide debate, support and funding, and by guiding policy and research in an evidence-based manner" to galvanize the health, science and public-policy communities into action.

The 20 challenges themselves are outlined in this table, grouped into ways in which to raise public awareness; to strengthen legislation and policies; to modify risk factors; to engage businesses and communities; to reduce health impacts of poverty and urbanization; and to "reorientate" health systems.

Declan Burke in the frame

SONS OF SPADE ( a new blog to me: it is for "spotlighting the fictional PI" and is run by J V D Steen) is featuring a Q&A with the writer for whom Petrona's flinty heart has a definite soft spot -- Declan Burke, author of Eightball Boogie and The Big O. No stranger to wielding the rubber truncheon on his own blog, Crime Always Pays, Declan has left the station to subject himself to the harsh lights of external interrogation. Here's a sample:

Q. Who do you think will influence the coming generation and in what way?

A. I think Ken Bruen will exert a massive influence on the next generation of PI writers. His Jack Taylor series is genuinely breaking new ground, given that it’s a post-modern appraisal of the notion of the PI and the PI novel – Bruen has gone beyond the conventional three-act investigation of a crime, gone beyond the protagonist as a righter of wrongs, a man or woman who uncovers dirty deeds and precipitates a satisfactory resolution. In Taylor’s world, everyone is equally culpable, and Bruen has inverted the focus of his PI’s gaze so that it’s himself he’s investigating, his morality, the part that he plays in creating the kind of world where good, bad and indifferent all jostle for pre-eminence.

See more at Sons of Spade--- there's lots of other reading matter there, too.

The Reincarnationist in the Philly Inq

My review of The Reincarnationist, by M. J. Rose, is published today at the Philadelphia Inquirer. My thanks, as ever, to Frank Wilson, Sir Galahad of the Blogosphere, for so kindly asking me to review the book.

At the start of my review, I compared The Reincarnationist to Coma, by Robin Cook, an immensely successful 1970s thriller in which the author had the then-original idea of mixing key ingredients from the bestseller lists to create a genre-busting roller-coaster, but with a serious message. Here is a little bit of the unedited version of my review containing the comparisons that didn't make it into the paper: "The novel opens when Josh Ryder, a photojournalist, is injured during a terrorist attack. Reminiscent of Stephen King’s thrilling The Dead Zone (in which a coma patient awakens to find he has second sight), while Josh is unconscious he “is” Julius, a pagan Roman living in 391 AD, guarding the vestal virgins from the emperor’s soldiers, who are cruelly enforcing the Christian religion – a type of muscular religious conflict featured in The Jester, one of James Patterson’s bestsellers."

One comparison that did make it to the published review is with The Da Vinci Code, a book which shares many themes with The Reincarnationist. I'd suggest that if you liked DVC, you may well like The Reincarnationist (neither DVC nor the Reincarnationist had the serious message that underlaid Cook's novel, however). But if you didn't, you might wish to give this one a miss. Here's the last paragraph of my review: "Like Robin Cook, M. J. Rose has a superb instinct for marketing. She is, rightly, a widely admired figure among authors for all the marketing and publishing advice she freely provides. The Reincarnationist is written by someone with a great grasp of what sells. For me, however, it was neither absorbing nor exciting."

Good cop, bad cop, Google cop

Blogger Successfully Defends Against Lawsuit tells how Pamela Greenbaum failed in an attempt to make a New York State court order Google to hand over details about anonymous critics on a Blogger-hosted blog. On her blog, "Orthomom" objected to Greenbaum, who was standing for re-election as a school board member, proposing use of public funds to teach private school classes; her commenters called Greenbaum a 'bigot'. Greenbaum lost the subsequent election. Google had apparently agreed to disclose the identities of the blogger and the commenters if Orthomom, an "Orthodox Jew and a mother of five" agreed -- but she didn't.

On the other hand, via Dave Lull, here is an article in Slate reminding us of the controversies over Google's book search, and focusing on its "Android", a Linux-based operating system for mobile phones that comes with a free set of tools that should make it easy for anyone to write applications. According to the Slate article, it is "conquering the business culture of the telephone, as opposed to the computer—that is Google's great challenge." Worth a read.

Pick of some recent reviews

A pick of some of the reviews and interviews I've read and enjoyed in the past few days.

Material Witness likes No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay. I'd already added this to my basket in Amazon on the basis of reading a preview in the Bookseller, so it is good to know that the promise of this book seems more than realised.

Crime Fiction Dossier makes Gordon Campbell's Missing Witness his book of the week. Apparently the author spent nearly 30 years writing this legal thriller, so you may have to wait a while for his next.

Random Jottings interviews Sarah Bower, author of Needle in the Blood, a book which I've bought for Cathy on the basis of RJ's and other recommendations. This book took a mere 3 years to write, but the author couldn't find a publisher until "I was Editor of the Historical Review and I had been reviewing a book by one of Snowbook's authors, J D Landis, and I thought I would see if they were interested in Needle.  So I sent an email to Emma with the first three chapters attached and within 12 hours she got back to me asking for the rest and within 48 hours she had said yes."

Aust Crime Fiction reviews The Killing Hour by Paul Cleave, thoroughly enjoying it. This is the second book by this author, and apparently he is writing a third. None of them seem to be available yet in the UK (no Amazon listing), sadly.

Reading Matters and It's a Crime! both feature positive verdicts on Arnaldur Indridason's Voices. I agree that it's a very good book, and I think its sequel, The Draining Lake, is even better.

Sunday Salon: ghosts in daylight

In Ingrid Black's The Dark Eye, Saxon begins to read a book containing a collection of photographs taken by Felix Berg. On the title page is an epigraph by Baudelaire, which, translated, reads: "Swarming city, city full of dreams, where a ghost in daylight clutches a passer-by!" To Saxon, this sums up perfectly what Berg had tried to portray in his photographs:

"They were cityscapes mainly, street scenes, shot in black and white, but with occasional splashes of colour for effect or contrast. And they were cities I knew well, or thought I'd known well before then........he made them all seem alien. And what made them stranger still were the figures who inhabited them.

...He had taken multiple shots of the same street at different times of day and night and then superimposed the pictures over one another endlessly until one would lose count and there was layer upon layer of these strange figures inhabiting the same space, getting in each other's way, but always unaware of one another's very presence, until the image became so faded and crowded that the figures were insubstantial as phantoms -- ghosts in the daylight clutching at passers-by -- and you could see he stones of the city through their bones and skin.

The photographs were simultaneously tranquil and hectic. On one level, the city itself became the only reality, the still point in the turning world, and on another level my head ached with the multiplicity of images, presences, lives, all clashing and conflicting with one another in a mad claustrophobia which made you realise as you looked at them how crowded and insane a city was, who lives jostled and ground against one another without ceasing, even when they were unaware of doing so, and how nothing was ever really your own, everything had been claimed before, everywhere had been occupied and reoccupied repeatedly.

You were just there on sufferance till the next person took your place, and the next one took their place, and the next theirs, in endless disconnected uncaring succession."

Sunday Salon: clubs and Ingrid Black

In the prehistoric era (2 years ago) before I discovered blogging, I relied for tips of new (to me) crime fiction authors on the Mystery and Thriller Guild, a book club which I repeatedly joined to get the "5 books for 1 p each" introductory offers, then bought the minimum number of books at "club price", then cancelled membership, rejoining six months later. Since starting my blog in 2005, I have had no need to do this any more, as I have no shortage of recommendations -- both from the selected (and select) blogs I read regularly and, latterly, from the Sunday Salon participants: Amazon's prices are pretty competitive with the book club, so I have shifted my spending pattern over to a more personalised choice rather than to the "editor's recommendation" for that month. Another advantage is that I could stop reading James Patterson books (quite often sent to members as freebies, so presumably they weren't selling their stock even at 1p). Actually when I first joined a book club, Patterson was pretty good. But now, forget it.

This preamble is to note that I discovered quite a few very good authors for the first time via the editor's recommendation route. One was Lee Child, whose first novel I read when it came out in book club edition. Others that I remember were Karin Fossum, Denise Hamilton, Paul Carson, Denise Mina, Mary Higgins Clark, Michael Connelly, Victoria Blake, and I am sure others whose names temporarily escape me. One such author is Ingrid Black, whose first two novels I purchased via book club editions. I read her first novel, The Dead, when it came out, which a glance at Fantastic Fiction tells me was 2003. It turned out to be Irish noir, partly a police procedural with a woman in charge -- and partly private eye, with an ex-FBI agent called Saxon, relocated from Boston. In an original touch, it turns out that these two characters are gay and are having an affair. I liked the book, but not enough, it seems, to read the second.

Recently, the estimable Declan Burke of Crime Always Pays ran a competition to win the new (third) Saxon novel, just out in paperback. It was pretty taxing, I have to admit:

"Is Ingrid Black …?
(a) Benjamin Black’s daughter;
(b) Benjamin Black’s mother;
(c) Neither, you moron, they’re both pseudonyms."

I had a premonition that I might have managed to get the answer right, so I decided to dig out the second book, The Dark Eye, and start it, just in case. And it is jolly good so far. Just as well, because yesterday, a parcel dropped through my letterbox from Penguin Books - yes, I got the answer right! My copy of The Judas Heart was enclosed. Thank you, Declan and thank you, Penguin (who seem to have taken over from Headline in publishing this author).

I was also quite surprised to note from the Fantastic Fiction site that Ingrid Black is not only a pseudonym, but is a husband-and-wife team. I had imagined her as a Veronica Guernin-style undercover journalist, writing crime stories on the quiet. Just as well I am only a reader, not a real detective. I was quite taken in by the photo on the cover of my copy of the book and on Crime Always Pays.

Sunday Salon: Black Tide

Black Tide (publisher: Quercus) is the second in Peter Temple’s Jack Irish series. Jack is a lawyer who doesn’t really practice, rather he works for therapeutic reasons for a traditional furniture maker and undertakes investigations. Occasionally he helps out at a racetrack scam operated by some other friends to help his financial situation, and his spare time is spent either with the supporters of his father’s old footy team in the local pub, or doing some solitary reading and cooking.

As Black Tide opens, Jack is doing rather a lot of this mooching about as things are not going well with Linda, the feisty TV reporter he met in Bad Debts, the previous novel. We already knew from the last book that Jack’s wife was murdered; here we learn that he had a first, brief marriage which broke up after producing a child. Presumably we will find out more in a future book. Before too long, Jack meets Des, an old friend of his father’s, who is about to have his house repossessed because Des’s son Gary has persuaded his father to sign the house over to him and has disappeared with the money. Moved by Des’s memories of his parents’ courtship, Jack starts looking for Gary in a desultory way, but gradually becomes more intrigued and entangled in an increasingly murky situation.

All the usual Peter Temple ingredients are here: the writing is fabulous, so evocative of Melbourne life as Jack knows it,  poetic and spare in its mourning for the old ways that are fast being swept away by the pseudo-sophisticated and flashy, bland “multiculturalism”. Yet the book isn’t sentimental in its nostalgia – we see how the past wasn’t that great either. Another typical ingredient is that all the women Jack meets are filtered through his eyes in terms of their attractiveness – and as they all seem to be potentially susceptible to his charms it’s only a matter of time until he’s involved with one of them despite his sporadic, mainly internal, attempts to reconcile with Linda. A further trademark is the blokeish matiness between Jack and his many friends and associates, which he regularly uses to help his investigation along.

The reader might guess at the outset that the title “Black Tide” refers to the melancholy experienced by Jack as he tries and fails to come to terms with the loss of Linda and his previous wives. It doesn’t, though: eventually, the investigation of Gary’s disappearance begins to gel, and Jack’s prodigious memory for remembering every casual detail mentioned by the people he interviews, together with the help of his latest love interest (the friend of a missing journalist), Jack realises he is uncovering a vast political conspiracy involving drug-dealing, the secret service (itself riddled with double- and triple-crossers) and corruption at the highest levels --- you know the kind of thing. As is so often the case with thrillers, the last section of the book is too action-packed and too full of spookily efficient, corrupt government officials to be totally engaging. But never mind, Black Tide is a great read and I am eagerly anticipating the next couple of Jack Irishes (and any more, should Peter Temple care to write them).

(Here is my review of Bad Debts, first in the Jack Irish series.)

Francis Drake was robbed

Elizabeth: the Golden Age was presumably better than Children in Need, but nonetheless disappointing. The acting was superb, particularly Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth) and Samantha Morton (Mary Queen of Scots). The first half was atmospheric, beautiful and involving, as Elizabeth fends off various suitors and Philip of Spain and Mary Q of S plot to remove her. But the second half is, well, weedy. The plot disintegrates into Elizabeth's mooning over Clive Owen's Walter Raleigh -- a handsome rake indeed, but it doesn't work to try to turn him into Johnny Depp/Captain Jack Sparrow and at the same time have him impregnate and feel obliged to marry a lady in waiting -- a predictable event but not carried out with much enthusiasm on Clive's part -- he is much more convincing when he talks about the joys of sailing off to America. I don't understand why the director and writer decided to focus on the love triangle aspects (boring and hackneyed) and skip over the aftermath of the failed conspiracy and barely feature the dramatic story of the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

Francis Drake hardly figures at all: he has a couple of late scenes in a ship's cabin with map on table, saying "what shall we do, Walter?", while Clive Owen's Raleigh is the hero of the hour, single-handedly directing a fireship into the advancing CG Spanish fleet (special effects worse than an episode of Dr Who) and hence repelling the invaders. Meanwhile, on shore, Elizabeth gets on a white horse and does an Aragorn-imitation speech instead of the (excellent) real thing.

Far from being a pale adjunct to Raleigh, Francis Drake was another bearded pirate much favoured by Elizabeth, who was only too pleased when these two gentlemen (and others) plundered Spanish trading ships or colonies and bought her the spoils. After the events shown in the film, Drake was the first Englishman to sail round the world; on his return the queen knighted him on his ship The Golden Hind. He was in charge of the navy at the time of the Spanish threat (Raleigh was, as the film shows, imprisoned in the Tower at the time, and it is possible that, as the film portrays, the reason was because Elizabeth was annoyed that he had married). Drake famously refused to do anything about the Armada until he had finished his game of bowls in Plymouth. When he was ready, he sent eight fireboats into the Spanish fleet which was anchored off Calais. This caused them to scatter and, aided by a convenient storm, they were easily attacked by the much smaller English ships. Spain lost seventy ships and England none: Elizabeth became a legend in her own time in this amazing triumph over the odds.

So why the film couldn't have featured some of this instead of shots of Clive Owen and a white horse swimming in a tank, I don't know. Yes, Clive is suitably bearded -- though not quite as luxuriously as Sir Walter's portraits -- but just think, we could have had two pirates instead of one, two beards (in the movie, Francis is clean shaven! The horror!), lots more action -- including the game of bowls, I was looking forward to that -- and far fewer shots of rustling petticoats and yearning looks across the throne room.

(I wrote about Francis Drake off the top of my head, but here is one place where you can read more, and see the beard.)

Adults in need

I shan't be online for the rest of the evening because the adults in the house are fleeing, while the non-adults watch "Children in Need" which, apparently, lasts all evening. One of the many items I have seen in the past week or two but not got around to blogging about is a rather nice graphic in this article: BBC NEWS | Special Reports | 629 | 629 | Our first 10 years. The graph shows the striking growth of visits to the BBC News website in the past decade, with pictures of what was happening at the "spikes".

Enjoy! Back tomorrow.

The pain of chocolate

From End of the Pier Show (Henry Gee at Nature Network):

".....In the office I googled ‘pain au chocolate’ and instead of receiving the usual error – ‘Did you mean “pain au chocolat”?’ – I got scads of recipes for the fictitious pastry with the extra ‘e’. Had the world gone mad? To check, I bearded my colleague Oliver Morton, Nature’s respected Chief News and Features Editor, a man who combines wit, a forthright manner and urban sophistication with an ability to spell. He reasured me that, no, I hadn’t gone mad, and that the superfluous ‘e’ was (and I quote) “a sad reflection on the world in which we live”.... "

Read on for thoughts on spelling, careers and the fragility of trust -- not to mention train journeys even more insanely early than mine. Though my train doesn't have a buffet. Hence no hurtful product of the cocoa bean, no "almost coffee", and no excuse for a blog post. (Debra, if you are reading, please note with, I hope, approval, the last comma in that list in the previous sentence.)

Tamara Drewe's Wessex

Tamara Drewe is the second graphic novel by Posy Simmonds (the first being Gemma Bovary, which did not appeal to me so I haven't read). The new book is reviewed by Mick Imlah in the TLS (see link at start of post) with the rather grammatically puzzling standfirst: "The modern Hardyesque of Posy Simmonds' brilliant plot management and visual invention."

According to the review, the book is about a retreat for writers "run by Beth Hardiman (there is plenty of gentle wordplay), a good, busy, unglamorous woman of fifty, who is also required to manage the life of her husband Nicholas, creator of the lucrative series of “Doctor Inchcombe” detective novels. (Nicholas “likes to show off to women”, and as the book opens he is guiding his wife through the ruins of his latest affair in publishing, with Nadia from foreign rights – “I won’t lie. She was important to me”.)" One of the authors is Tamara Drewe, based on Bathsheba Everdene from Far from the Madding Crowd, my favourite Hardy novel. The review continues:

"If there was a time when what Posy Simmonds seemed to offer was an “entertaining satire on the middle classes”, that limitation no longer applies. There is nothing in Hardy, you might say, which more grimly conveys the paralysis of lesser rural life than her pictures of Casey and Jody at the old bus shelter. Andy Cobb laments that Ewedown now has “no shop, no bus, no post office”, but it is the teenage population who have to act out the consequences: “We were going to get a lift into Hadditon with Jody’s mum, but decide not to – we’re skint, it’s freezing, and getting back means staying there bloody hours till her mum finishes her shift at Tesco”. "

Detective novels and a modern Bathsheba Everdene -- this one is definitely going on my Christmas list. Here's the Amazon (UK) link -- £10.19, compared with a list price in the TLS review of £16.99.

Round-up of crime

Prairie Mary reviews Bill Liversidge's A Half Life of One, describing it as "one of the most chilling horror stories I’ve read. And it could happen anywhere." She also refers to Pundy as "mild mannered" -- clearly she hasn't seen his latest publicity still, which, I hasten to add before you go to the link, is not for the faint-hearted.

Leigh Russell has written a crime-fiction book called Cut Short, and has started a blog called Crime Fiction (not the greatest title I have to say) about the process of writing and publishing it. He (or she) promises a post each Wednesday. I like the tone of the blog so far, as Leigh discovers the difference between comments and posts, asks for opinions on the cover of the book, and so on. This is from Leigh's Blogger profile: "I'm a first time author of what my publisher describes as "gripping psychological thrillers" which are "seriously creepy". Under the circumstances, I take that as a compliment! CUT SHORT is coming out in April 2008 as the first of a three book deal with my publisher. The series follows a police detective, DI GERALDINE STEEL. As she solves murder cases, Geraldine also has her own demons to confront...."

Declan Burke of Crime Always Pays provides a round-up of reviews including "Benjamin Black's" second book, The Silver Swan. The first, Christine Falls, is just out in PB in the UK, so I have purchased it for the tottering heap. The Silver Swan has been enthusiastically received by The Sunday Times and The Irish Times, who even tipped it for a Booker. As Declan writes, "cripes"! Declan also rounds up a few other reviews of Irish crime fic, including one of Tara French's In the Woods on Euro Crime. The reviewer seems a little strange.

Damien of Crime Down Under is reading Skin and Bone by Kathryn Fox - her third in this series. I asked Damien in a comment if these books improve or if they are all in similar vein, as I didn't find the first one very well written or realistic. He hasn't answered yet.

Material Witness, after reviewing John Connors' latest Karen Sharpe book Falling, here subjects the author to a bit of the old Q and A.  What do you think of this, though: "Q. Who would play you in a film of your life? A. No idea."? Bit feeble. I'd say from the picture accompanying the interview he could have gone for Clive Owen in a curly wig.

And last, for this post, Glenn Harper of International Noir Fiction reviews Grace Brophy's The Last Enemy, first in a series set mainly around Assisi. The review is mainly positive but Glen picks up on some poor editing and proof-reading. I mention this only because I've seen a similar comment made recently about a self-published book, with the implication that it is because the book was self-published that it contains this type of error. That may be true, but there are plenty of books published professionally that also contain editing and proofing errors -- not just the one Glenn reviews. I've just read two books by leading publishers that both contain errors that should have been caught. Long live the editor!

Pullman-Tolkien mash-up

BRIAN SIBLEY : my blog: DAEMONIZED is a post describing a book that shall certainly feature this Christmas at Petrona Towers: that is, Brian Sibley's movie guide for Northen Lights (oh, OK then, The Golden Compass if you must). As we can attest from his many Lord of the Rings and Narnia books that adorn our abode, Brian is the "book of the film" writer par excellence, not to mention the beautiful illustrations that accompany his commentaries, whether movie stills or Pauline Baynes' evocative and lovely pictures of Narnia.

I had not appreciated the delightful mergings of Tolkien and Pullman that are revealed in Brian's latest volume (see his post for the "inside story", ha): all the more reason to look forward to it, and of course, the movie. Northern Lights is Pullman's masterpiece; unfortunately the rest of the trilogy does not match up to the quite brilliant and wonderful first volume -- one of those unique books that seems to be set apart from anything else one has read. (The second volume started well, but after the first few chapters most of it was a disappointment, and the third was more of the same). Maybe the second two books will work better as films than they did as books. And of course, as well as the small companion volume Lyra's Oxford, we have a fourth book in the main series (previously billed as a trilogy) to look forward to soon, apparently.

Time isn't up for amateur detectives

Dave Lull sent me a link to an essay in the Spectator by Alan Massie called "Murder most Serious". Alan Massie is a historical military fiction novelist, but also writes consistently interesting journalism on the crime-fiction genre. In his current outing, he discusses the English detective novel. He reminds us that Chandler praised Hammet for "having given murder back to the sort of people who commit it", a barb aimed at the classic English amateur detective story. Mr Massie believes that Chandler has won the argument:

"With only a few exceptions — Simon Brett and Andrew Taylor in his Lydmouth novels, for instance — the crime novel in Britain as in the US generally owes more to Hammett and Chandler than to Christie. Murder is given back to the sort of people who commit it and the amateur detective has given way to the policeman. Even when he is a rebel and loner, like Ian Rankin’s Rebus, who may be held to owe more to Chandler’s Marlowe or even Hammett’s Sam Spade than to your average DI, he still can’t altogether escape the requirements of police procedure, and this gives the fiction a realistic feel."

Mr Massie then goes on to dismiss the idea that "only certain sorts of people" commit murder, highlighting a few authors whose stories are about the force of circumstances, and puts forward an almost moral case for Christie and co: "Yet there is a sense in which Christie, at her best anyway, is more serious than Chandler and Hammett, simply because murder horrifies and disgusts her (even while she employs it for our amusement) as it doesn’t apparently horrify them."

There is much food for thought in the essay, but I was struck by the assertion that British crime novels are more Hammet/Chandler than Christie/Conan-Doyle. I think the assertion has to be a straw man, as the British crime fiction genre, as it is everywhere, has long since abandoned a narrow definition and escaped into the mainstream. Sticking to "books set in the UK", Mr Massie alludes to Ian Rankin, and it is certainly true that the police-procedural is thriving (thankfully), but other popular (and bestselling) authors write successfully about amateur sleuths, notably Val McDermid, M. C. Beaton (Agatha Raisin), Denise Mina, Rhys Bowen, Michelle Spring, Martin Edwards, Anne Cleeves -- I could go on. (Visit Euro Crime for lots more, including capsule summaries and links to author websites.) 

Getting your book reviewed

Part of a press release from I-newswire:

"The Kirkus Discoveries Review service gives a whole new class of writers the opportunity to get attention for their books and gives the reading audience the chance to keep a keener eye out for books that might interest them. Traditionally, getting a book review is perhaps one of the most challenging tasks for any published author. A positive book review from a respected source can lend a great deal of credibility to an author’s published work and have an immeasurable impact on book sales.

With Kirkus Discoveries, a brand that has long been trusted by the publishing industry as an indispensable tool for promoting and building awareness of deserving books, Xlibris authors now have the opportunity to receive an honest, caveat-emptor evaluation, under the same impartial rubric, and written in the same format and style as a traditional Kirkus review.

The review is also posted on kirkusdiscoveries.com, and is eligible for inclusion in the monthly Kirkus Discoveries eNewsletter. The newsletter highlights the best submissions to the program and is sent to a targeted base of subscribers, including librarians, agents, rights representatives, booksellers, and film and television producers."

So this accounts for some of the fuss I've read in past weeks about Kirkus publishing "paid-for" reviews. Just so long as the company makes the distinction clear to readers....

See here for more on Xlibris book publishing.

Sunday Salon: conveying characters

I'm currently reading Black Tide by Peter Temple, the second of his Jack Irish series. (See here for my short review of the first, Bad Debts.)

Here are two paragraphs from page 126, character sketches of a married couple whom Jack has just met as part of his investigation:

"We sat in the huge fenestrated space, the house expensive beyond dreams, servants waiting somewhere, a beautiful woman, dresser of hair, a hardness to her mouth, fibro house in Broadmeadows floating out there in her past, sweet, sad memories of a patch of dying lawn, a father and a mother and a little girl. Arms around each other.
Below us, a rich man, thin, all body fat dissolved, was pushing himself: against water, against age, against the inability to sleep unless exhausted."

I don't know if these people will appear again in the book, but I love the way Peter Temple instantly fixes them and their lives in the reader's mind with such economy and poetry.

Authors' choice books for Christmas

It's a Crime! (or a mystery...): Books for Christmas.

Well, to pinch a lovely phrase from Peter Temple, it is Satdee arvo -- and I don't have much to write, so am glad to see that CrimeFicReader has spared me the trouble by the spiffing news she conveys at the link above. She's persuaded several super crime fic authors to provide their recommendations for books to read for Christmas, and will be drip-feeding us with the results on It's a Crime in the second half of November. Can't wait. Watch out for the red stocking logo to identify said recommendations, she tells us.

While I am here, don't forget the Sunday Salon tomorrow. See you there, I hope.

Global warming warning

You've got to laugh. (Well, I did.) From The Great Beyond blog: "Earlier this week climate change sceptics were receiving an email from one Dr Mark Cox. In this email Dr Cox implored them to write about a tale of “treatment of some academic colleagues by what seems like a kind of ‘climate change mafia’”. Cox’s colleagues had discovered evidence that overthrew the idea of man-made global warming, the email said. Those who took this email at face value are now looking rather foolish. But why did “Dr Mark Cox” create a fictional journal, write a bogus paper, invent authors, reviewers and implore sceptics to write about the paper? Read on..."

Let's hear from one of the climate-sceptic blogs, Peer Review Florida: "I, along with a number of other bloggers, and even Rush Limbaugh, apparently, fell for what has turned out to be a complete hoax.  A made up abstract published at the website of a fake science journal purports to explain global warming by monitoring bacteria emissions.  As I stated in the post, I can't claim to understand the research which formed the basis of the argument in the paper, which is now obvious as it was totally made up."

After the story blew, the Great Beyond got the interview. "After attempting to get hold of the person behind the 'Journal of Geoclimatic Studies' we were contacted by “Dr Mark Cox”. Well, it’s someone who said they were Dr Cox, it could be someone spoofing the spoofer but you have to trust people at some point, even if they are claiming to be people who construct elaborate hoax[e]s." The text of the (spoof?) interview of the (spoof?) interviewee follows.

I'll leave the last word on this little story to a comment to the Peer Review Florida post above: "  "Global warming cultists"? You posted your whole-hearted support for a hoax, not because of sound science, but because it said what you wanted to hear. If the scientists that follow the evidence are "cultists", then what do you call people who cherry pick any data that supports their point of view, no matter how easily shown it is a hoax, and disregard the rest?"

If you want trustworthy information on climate science at an accessible level, try Nature Reports Climate Change, Editor, the estimable Olive Heffernan.

Fruit flies poised to take on world

Thursday 8 Nov 0847: It may be small, but the humble fruit fly is the undisputed king of the laboratory. You can listen to this edition of the BBC Radio 4 Today programme until next Wednesday, and hear my colleague Chris Gunter tell the world about an analysis of ten newly sequenced Drosophila (fruit fly) genomes published in Nature this week.

You can see a special Nature web focus here, in which Chris and her editor colleagues write that since its first use as a model organism 100 years ago, "Drosophila is one the most Internet-savvy laboratory organisms, with extensive databases devoted to genetics, genomics, taxonomy, breeding and mail ordering. Several Nobel Prizes have been based in part or in total on work in flies. Flies have even been sent on the space shuttle to study immune system function." To accompany publication of the new analysis, the web focus contains articles by scientists on "the past, present and future of Drosophila in many diverse areas of biology — from physiology and cell biology to neural circuits and gene expression. Size doesn't matter: these tiny fruit flies are once again poised to take on the world." From this web focus page, you can also listen to Nature's free podcast on the genome work, and access other scientific work, websites and resources.

Blog to book or book to blog?

Via the Grumpy Old Bookman:
"Marilyn Saklatvala wonders whether she has found A New Way to Do Old Things no. 95, and I think she may have.
Marilyn, writing as M.J. Sak, has published a children's book via Lulu: The Stone Summons. In the book, one of the characters (Alex) writes a blog. She had hoped that a mainstream publisher might publish the book, and, as part of the marketing, ran a competition for a youngster to write Alex's blog. In the end, having to resort to Lulu, she thought what the hell, might as well write the blog myself. Which she did."

(But, from same source, please note: "How do you all feel about the Writers Digest? They are, for the sixteenth time, running a competition for self-published books. And the entry fee is $100. Well, that should keep out the riff-raff.")

Puzzles and passion

The TLS reviews a new biography of Arthur Conan Doyle here: The ghosts of Arthur Conan Doyle - Times Online. From the review:

"It is odd that so much comfort is to be had from Sherlock Holmes, given the brutal violence of his adventures. Not only are those who cross his path routinely shot, bludgeoned, or knifed, they run the risk of being starved, buried alive, attacked by huge and frenzied hounds, killed by horses, jellyfish, or venomous snakes, asphyxiated with toxic vapours, afflicted with foul diseases, or crushed in giant iron presses. They might lose a thumb or an ear; occasionally they lose their minds. Yet Holmes is the most consoling of literary icons. He cannot always prevent crime or punish the criminal, but he never fails to explain what has happened, and how, and why. The prosaic Watson likes to claim that his hero is infallible because he scorns the emotional baggage that befuddles the judgement of lesser men. In fact these stories are tense with feeling, for Holmes’s hatred of wrongdoing is a passion rather than an intellectual commitment."

The review is by Dinah Birch, Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool. The TLS says she is the General Editor of a forthcoming edition of the Oxford Companion to English Literature, and her new book, Our Victorian Education, will be published this year.

Billing error: breaking news

TypePad Customer Support has responded to your ticket 'Billing error'.
Hi Maxine,
Thanks for the note.  When I checked your account today, it shows that your billing ran successfully last night and your account is now up to date.
Please let us know if there is anything else we can do for you.
Thanks,
Kymberlie

----------------------------------------

Hmm. "Please let us know if there is anything else we can do for you" could have been more accurately rephrased "We apologise for incorrectly accusing you of failing to pay your account", but never mind, Petrona seems to have been reprieved. By the way, I have now added "tracking" to the comments of Petrona posts, one of Typepad's new features. I don't feel very well-disposed to them just at the minute, but I suppose I'll say thank you when I'm feeling a bit better.

Look ahead to January books

As I'm still here, and I managed to unearth three old copies of the Bookseller on a huge pile of journals and magazines in the office yesterday, which I read last night, I'll log news of some books coming out in the UK in January -- for when you've finished reading all your Christmas presents.

Two interesting paperbacks: Unspoken by Mari Jungstedt (Doubleday) and The Patience of the Spider, the eighth in the Inspector Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri (Picador). Benedicte Page of the Bookseller has this to say about Unspoken (a follow-up to Unseen): "Swedish thriller set on the island of Gotland, where first an alcoholic is found murdered, and then a young teenager disappears. Chief Inspector Anders Knutas and Detective Karin Jacobsen investigate."

Also coming out in January is a first novel by Yrsa Sigurdardottir called Last Rituals (Hodder and Stoughton). Described as a new Icelandic crime writer, the novel has been sold in 30 languages, apparently, and is the story of a dead student whose studies into witchcraft are connected to his death. Attorney Thora Gudmundsdottir investigates. Sounds great. The author is described as a "civil engineer currently working on one of the largest hydro construction projects in Europe". Even better.

Kate Bradley, head of fiction at the UK's BCA (Book Club Association), highlights No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay (Orion) as one of her Bookseller panel January recommendations. "One night, Cynthia's entire family disappears and 25 years later she is about to find out what happened. It's a rollercoaster of a book that has bestseller written all over it".

Finally, there are some intriguing advertisements in the form of issues of "The Millennium Newsletter" for the eagerly awaited The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larrson, being published in January by the new MacLehose Press imprint of Quercus (much discussed in our part of the crime-fiction blogosphere a few weeks ago). This book is the first of the author's Millennium Trilogy, "the compulsive 1,500-page chronicle of a family at war with itself, of crime and punishment, of sexual deviance and financial skullduggery -- and of a tender, fragile, agonising love story between a disgraced journalist and a tattooed, anorexic biker girl with a rare genius for hacking into computer systems, arguably the most memorable partnership in the annals of crime fiction". Can't wait.

Update: Petrona's future uncertain

Thank you, everyone, for your kind support in my "payment issue" with Typepad. I have always found Typepad to be very professional and courteous, so I am not going to yell at them or sue them (yet!). I haven't had a response to them to my overnight help ticket asking them to check their facts and please not to delete my blog, though as you can see I am still here (just? California's day starts later than mine).

I called my credit card company this morning to check on this regular monthly payment, and they have no record of Six Apart trying to take a payment in the past few days. They say that if payment was declined, they would have a record of it, with a reason as to why, but they don't have any such record. As far as they are concerned, Typepad didn't try to take payment. They suggested "internet glitch" (I quote) at the biller's end. So I've asked Typepad to try again and to let me have a copy of any error message they receive if they get another one.

Crimeficreader: yes I immediately suspected fraud when I received the first email from Typepad saying that my payment had been refused, as these payments have been going out each month for over a year with no problems, so rather than respond via email I opened a Typepad help ticket. They confirmed via that route that the email is genuine. I am continuing to deal with them (including respond to their emails) only via the help ticket system in the Typepad dashboard so I know that I am interacting with the real organisation.

Is this the end?

Typepad keeps sending me emails saying that my credit card payment has been denied. There is no reason for this, nothing has changed about my status and my credit card statement is in an admirable position ;-). I suppose that there is nothing I can do if Typepad decides to delete my blog, that's it, I am gone. They don't seem interested in my telling them that my payment has gone through every month since 2006 (including October 2007) and there is no reason why things have changed now. I shall be devastated if they unfairly pull the plug on me, but there you go, I am in the hands of forces outside my control. If you come here tomorrow and see no Petrona, you will know that some major meltdown has occurred between Typepad and Mastercard, in which I am a mere splinter in the maelstrom. It was nice knowing you.

Workshop on popular science books

Via Nature Network:

"We are looking for contributors for a one-day event on popular science books to be held at Imperial College, London on 22nd Feb 2008. Literary critics, historians, writers, illustrators, publishers, prize-givers, reviewers, readers, booksellers, teachers (and others) are all invited to take part. Contributors will be asked introduce a book, collection, theme, or popular science author, perhaps with a small extract, and use it to raise a topic for discussion in or about popular science."

"If you are interested in contributing, please send us an outline of your presentation (500 words maximum) and a short bio (approx 200 words). The outline should list the source(s) you want to discuss, and preview the discussion topic your session would raise. Email this to [email protected] by the 23rd November 2007." (See Nature Network link above for more details.)

See also The Science Project blog, whose authors "discuss things related to books, new media, children, and science and technology, in no particular order."

The Janissary Tree

Last week I received a reading recommendation from an old friend: the person who was the main source of my crime fiction reading from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, via her generous loans of the books which she buys regularly. Her recommendation is The Janissary Tree, by Jason Goodwin. (Link goes to UK Amazon.) I haven't read or bought it (yet), but it looks pretty good.

Sunday Telegraph, June 3 2007
This congenial murder mystery, blending historical scholarship and deft characterisation, is upmarket crime fiction with a smile on its face.

The Times, June 2 2007
The richly detailed evocation of the period, which gives The Janissary Tree such an authentic feel, is combined with a playful humour
and a hero unconventional enough to rival Boris Akunin's Erast Fandorin.

The author's website is here.

The movie star they missed

Who is Hollywood's most well-adjusted star? asks Abby McGanney at the Guardian blog, providing a top ten list. The list may be all very well, but they missed the top guy. I don't need to provide the name to regular readers, but for those just passing by, the answer, without a doubt, is Viggo Mortensen. If you need to ask why, just go to the link.

Sunday Salon: Dead Watch

My own contribution to the Sunday Salon is rather a feeble one: another thriller. This one, Dead Watch, is by John Sandford, and is a standalone. The author writes two series, the Prey books (some of which I have read and can definitely recommend if you like the police procedural/thriller mix genre); and the Kidd series, which I haven't read.

Dead Watch is very good for the first two-thirds. A retired senator has vanished, and soon is found dead. Was he abducted by the Watchmen, a cross between the boy's brigade and a private police force of the state governor? Or is there a more complex conspiracy in play? Jake Winter, a US Army veteran who is a political insider and spare-time university academic, is called in by the White House -- not only to investigate the case but also to distance the president from any possible fallout. The best parts of the book concern the Washington insider politics, and Jake's dance with the various political factions, the grieving widow (or is she?), the media, and a group of the dead man's friends -- I particularly liked the way that nobody did anything until they had worked out all their future deniability options. The less good part is at the end -- as is so often the case with thrillers -- when the inevitable action finale takes over. Dead Watch will certainly pass the time on a journey, though (as I also concluded after I had finished my last Sunday Salon assignment, The Accident Man by Tom Cain).

Here is my review of Invisible Prey, the last book I read by John Sandford.

(Thanks to Karen of Euro Crime for my copy of Dead Watch.)

Sunday Salon: books and covers

My daughter Jenny started a book this morning and had finished it by teatime.

It is a novel of the French Revolution:

"The Lacemaker and the Princess" by Kimberley Brubaker Bradley, about a girl who befriends Marie Antoinette. Although this seems to be a new book, it seems from Amazon as if the author has been writing children's books for many years.

Jenny also read a whole book yesterday (Saturday). It arrived from Amazon on Friday so she received it when she came home from school.

I bought it for her because she had just finished "Wendy" by Karen Wallace, and despite having about 200 books in her room and a further 200 in her elder sister's room to explore, she claimed she hadn't got anything to read. So I ordered her one by the same author -- this one called "The Unrivalled Spangles", about a circus troupe in the nineteenth century (Victorian times). It went down a treat.

One thing that is very important to even the most avid young reader is the cover of a book. If the cover doesn't appeal, forget it -- the contents won't be read. I bore this in mind, as well as the probable content, on Saturday afternoon when in Waterstone's, buying the Lacemaker/Princess and three or four other titles for her.

Crime recommendations from blogs

News of a few upcoming or just-out books that look to be worth reading:

Peter Rozovsky here writes about Peter Temple's third Jack Irish novel, Dead Point. This post isn't a review, nor is an earlier one about the same book, but you can discover some examples of Peter Temple's humour and join in the discussion. I have read only the first Jack Irish novel so far, it is called Bad Debts and I reviewed it as part of a round-up here. UK publication of this series is slightly behind the US (where Peter R is based), so I am only just about to read the second Jack Irish book. I highly recommend them though -- and anything else by Peter Temple, he is jolly good indeed.

This link isn't to a book review but to a TV review, of Proof, an Irish crime series. The review is at Glenn Harper's blog International Noir Fiction. This blog is excellent, you always know the review is going to be worth a read even if you aren't going to read or view the source material. As I still haven't watched any of the DVD series that I bought in the wake of my kind readers' recommendations in December 2006, I will hold on this one until I have at least made a start on those, which are sitting temptingly in a box. Watching DVDs isn't something in my schedule of life, currently -- if I can get to watch them, they have to be something that everyone else wants to watch too, and crime fiction isn't as popular with the other residents of Petrona towers as it is with me.

Finally, for now, here is a link to a review on Material Witness of the latest book by the very good but under-rated John Connor. It's called Falling and sounds well worth reading. I've very much enjoyed the previous outings for Karen Sharpe and colleagues - a blend of police procedural with undercover anti-terrorist operations, and the confusion that can ensue on a human as well as professional level.