Sunday Salon: Norwegian, Australian and Montana noir

Are there any book readers and reviewers out there in the blogosphere that aren't in Sunday Salon? ;-) Yes, I see from my online reading, one or two. I'll highlight a few blog posts of possible interest to salonists.
Here is another review of Jo Nesbo's latest, Nemesis, this one at Material Witness. "This is another assured, skillful book from Nesbo, who has a gift for narrative as strong as that for dialogue, and is fast establishing himself in the very top tier of European crime novelists." (For some more Nesbo discussion, see International Noir Fiction.)
Peter Rozovsky, familiar to crime-fiction readers as the Detective Beyond Borders, reviews Adrian Hyland's Moonlight Downs for the Philadelphia Inquirer. When I read the book it was called Diamond Dove, and I couldn't agree more with the standfirst of Peter's review: "Adrian Hyland's debut novel explores lovely and forsaken terrains of land and soul."
PrairieMary writes a fascinating post about Montana Noir -- the post itself is an open letter to an author of the genre, Gary J Cook, but it also lists some examples, one of which is Red Harvest, by the master himself, Dashiell Hammett. It's enough to make me want to go and read it again. Returning to Gary J Cook, here is PrairieMary on one of his books, Wounded Moon: "it was a good thriller besides -- all the best heroes get martyred. All the best lovers escape having to live happily ever after, washing the dishes and fixing the car. And there was a dog named "History." "

Comments

[Mary Scriver]

Egads! It turns out I made a major blunder. There are evidently quite a few Gary Cooks who write and the one who wrote "Wounded Moon" is NOT from Montana. (Three others ARE.) The one I THOUGHT I was writing about is Gary J. Cook, who is not unfamiliar with this problem and was even plagued by a dyslexic version named GRAY Cook who had a PO Box next to his and an unpaid bill...

Gary J. Cook is the author of "Graveyard Rules" which he insists is NOT noir -- more of a buddy cop book with Vietnam echoes -- and "Blood Trail" which I have yet to read.

I'll blog today about this.

Prairie Mary

[Maxine]

Thanks for noting the clarification here, Mary. Even though it wasn't the "right" Cook, I liked your thoughts on Montana Noir....and look forward to your "too many Cooks spoiling the broth" post to come!