PETRONA

Three Days of Rain at the Apollo theatre

This afternoon, Cathy and I went to see Three Days of Rain, a play by Richard Greenberg. Featuring James McAvoy, this absorbing three-hander reminded me of works by both Tennesee Williams and J. B. Priestley. I enjoyed it very much, particularly the second act (set in the 1960s) and the character of the father (played by McAvoy).

Michael Billington's Guardian review.

Lyn Gardner meets the cast. (Her take on the play? "The irony of Three Days of Rain is that, despite everyone's intelligence, they can't stop themselves destroying the future and failing to understand the past.")

Videos: trailers, pictures and interviews with the cast.

City of fear, by Alafair Burke

I very much enjoyed Alafair Burke's three Samantha Kinkaid novels, which are superior legal thrillers. I blinked, though, because I missed the fact that Ms Burke has started writing a new series, featuring NYPD detective Ellie Hatcher. City of Fear is the second in this series, but there are sufficient clues to enable the new reader such as myself to identify with Ellie, her brother Jess, and the tragedy of her past in which her father died at the hand of a serial killer.
City of Fear is a tight, pacy police procedural, in which three Indiana college girls hit New York for their spring break. They go out clubbing, but one of them decides to stay out later than her two friends - and is murdered before she can return to her hotel. Ellie is out jogging the next morning when she passes the crime scene, so she is the detective assigned to the case, together with her handsome partner Rogan.
The story is a classic one, well-told, managing to tread the difficult line between conveying the horrific crime without salaciousness, and sympathy with the victim and her family. Painstaking police and forensic work identifies a prime suspect, "Jake", who apart from having film-star looks is a hedge-fund trader, so obviously someone not to be trusted. Jake, however, is really too obvious a suspect, and Ellie is convinced that the case is not that simple. Sure enough, a phone tip leads her to dig out some cold cases that were being investigated by her charismatic ex-partner (who featured in the first book in this series). Unable to convince her superiors to follow this evidence, Ellie becomes increasingly sure that the suspect is not the true criminal. Soon she identifies a more likely candidate, who seems to know things about the victim that only the police or the murderer could know. But even this line of enquiry is not what it seems.
City of Fear is a perfect light read. The plot is solid; Ellie is an attractive main character who makes errors of judgement, not least in her romantic choices, but who is determined to succeed as a cop. The red herrings are of a sufficient hue to distract the reader from the true solution to the crime until the end of the book.
Alafair Burke is the daughter of James Lee Burke, but she's a talent in her own right.
She even has a blog.

Books by Alafair Burke.

City of Fear at the UK publisher website (Avon).

 

Princess Alice Hospice

For very many years now, ever since I left home in fact, I have been regularly taking carrier bags full of books, clothes, "stuff" and "bric-a-brac" down to various libraries, charity shops and hospitals. Funnily enough my place of residence never gets any emptier, but I do try to stop it getting fuller.

After many years of this Sisyphean activity, I was accosted last month (in my post-Christmas clear out mode)  in the Princess Alice Hospice shop in Kingston, when dropping off a bag of (what I thought to be) a rather saleable suit, some books, a pair of shoes and some outgrown children's cardigans. "Ah, rumbled", I thought - as the shop is always groaningly full, and I'm surprised that they seem grateful for my humble offerings.  "They are going to say they aren't taking more donations. I'll have to walk round to Oxfam or the Romanians round the corner instead."

To the contrary, the gentle older man in the shop asked me if I was a taxpayer, then provided me with a gift-aid form for my donation, which I duly filled in. He then gave me a card with a bar code on it, and asked me to show it if I made any future donations. I've made two more carrier-bag drops since then, as a matter of fact, each time digging out my card from my purse and seeing it scanned in.

Thinking no more of this, I came home from work today to receive a letter from the "Retail Director" of the Princess Alice Hospice. In it, he tells me that my recent donations have raised £104.00 for the hospice, which with gift aid is increased by 28 per cent. Obviously for bureaucratic reasons, he has to suggest that I donate this money to his hospice. If I don't respond to his letter within 21 days, that's what he will do, and claim his extra 28 per cent. I do not plan to respond.

Isn't that marvellous? Three carrier bags of not-very-useful to me, but perfectly clean and serviceable household items, have gained this worthy local organisation £130. If I manage to keep up my average throughout the year, I'll have made them £780. Great stuff - this can actually make a difference to their work, and I feel that is is actually worth scouring the house for things people have not used for a few weeks, in the secure knowledge that they will be put to good use and go to a good cause, rather than my previous sneaking suspicion that they would end up as landfill.

I like fish, squirrels, octopus and the Dartmoor 12

It's been an educational day. Fish that bounce along the ocean floor, fish with transparent heads and the details of their sex lives (the video, if you can face it, is here) are revealed via Clare Dudman's Twitter feed. Well, I suppose eventually I was bound to come across an undeniable reason for Twitter's usefulness. This has to be it. I also learned, but was sworn to secrecy about the details, that the way to get fantastic web traffic is to write about squirrels or octopus - or at the very least, include at least one of those words in the title to your articles.

Clare would appreciate, as I do, A. L. Kennedy's inaugural blog post of a series at The Guardian, in which the origins of the recession are coupled with the death of Britain's National Net Book Agreement and a unisex Richard III is not required on voyage (unlike sex-mad fish). Yes it is pointless telling writers not to write and it is in fact pointless telling anyone out of the education system anything in an online context. Blatant lies are stated with impunity, are pointed out, and are "shape-shifted" (a recent rather useful blogging term I learned) into something else to justify an erroneous position. Thank you Jenny D for the link.

"The, mystery readers' bloggende Bernd Kochanowski has responded to the blog of the criminal also enthusiastic Uriah Robinson a head Proviant list discovered. Robinson has over twelve books, to a hitherto Krimiunerfahrenen, which incidentally in a hut on Dartmoor eingeschneit sits, the diversity of the genre could explain. The isolation scenario is no mere gimmick. The books should eingeschneiten thriller novices so spellbound suggest that he is not the whole time with the empty cell phone battery at odds. And they should be in a row can be read without fatigue, and hunger to provoke change." If you want to know what all that is about, see The Dartmoor Dozen. Way to go, Robinson.

Print your own Wikipedia

Here's an interesting development, via The Bookseller.com: print your own customized encyclopaedia, using Wikipedia. "An authoring tool on the Wikipedia website allows users to chose their own encyclopaedia content from the database choosing particular categories or subject areas they like. The book can then be previewed and ordered through PediaPress who transmit the PDF to Lightning Source to print." Apparently the service launched in the German language two weeks ago, and starts this week in various other languages including French, Italian and Spanish. English follows next week, on 1 March. Apparently the technology can be used with any database (I wonder if it works in a similar way to those nice "turn your blog into a book" services?), and is being likened to people's use of an mp3 player to pick and choose their favourite music.

 

Publishing, perishing and typography

I thought I'd mention a few of the blog posts I've read and posted into the FriendFeed book room recently.

The Science Project reports that the Department of Typography at Reading University has become involved in an initiative called Material Text. The aim is to promote interdisciplinary work in 'publishing and the book trade; the history of the book, printing and typography; and the study of the social and communicative functions of texts, whether written, printed, illustrated, performed or mediated'. For my part, I just love the idea of a department of typography and wonder if you can do a degree in it? (Though I will not say that to friends currently struggling with open source fonts.)

A pre-apocalyptic book club discussing post-apocalyptic books? Yes, that's right. They are along the right lines in that they have a video of Viggo, though I have only looked at the screen shot, as I don't watch internet videos, and for Viggo, as ever, I prefer to wait for the film. It's all on BookList Online, if you want to check it out. Apparently, the thing not to do in your book club is to call it "post apoc".

You can also discover a website for trapped authors. Unfortunately, not as fun as it at first may seem - a group of children's authors have created a website to promote their books, in which the authors seem to have been captured by monsters and are being forced to provide copy for the website. Bizarre, and somewhat forced. Perhaps BookBrunch's The End of Newsprint is a better read (though it does have the air of "part 94" about it).

Sunday Salon: A Place of Safety and Bloodprint

I have two book reviews to share with you today. The first is Bloodprint by Kitty Sewell. The author is certainly geographically adventurous, having moved from the icy wastes of Canada and wet Wales from her first book, Ice Trap, to the heat of Florida (by way of Cuba) and Bristol in western England for her second. I enjoyed the book, but felt that too many different types of melodrama were involved, verging onto cliche in some instances. But it is certainly a rich read, with two strongly depicted women as main characters, lots of romance, passion, magic and inter-relationship skullduggery, all tied up in an art and psychotherapy theme. My full review is at Euro Crime.

The second book I've reviewed in the past week is A Place of Safety by Helen Black. Covering serious topics of racism, people trafficking, prejudice and the fate of children who run away from home and have to sleep rough, the book is very readable, largely due to the attractive and funny lawyer-heroine Lilly Valentine. From my review: "The author tries to make the reader question our cosy social assumptions, tackling racism, poverty and snobbery from all points of view. Overall, I was impressed by the author's commitment and her ability to tell a good story while maintaining a clear moral voice." Read the rest at Euro Crime.

A route to reading

 

Join us here for friendly chat about books of mutual interest.

Reacting to what is not there

Over and over again, you see people reacting to a title or a cartoon, and getting it wrong because they have not read the article under the title or that the cartoon illustrates. I've done it myself on occasion, to my chagrin, and am seeing it fairly often at Friend Feed, where only the title of an article is shown and a discussion develops underneath it - not, it has to be said, in the book-associated rooms I am in, but in some of the others. I assume one is meant to read the linked article before commenting, but others don't share my assumption and get het up about an article that is itself getting het up about exactly the same thing, and so on. The Internet is not exactly renowned for self-control and reflection before expounding.

Michael Hann at the Guardian makes fun of himself in this regard, in an article about how surprised he was to find that Clint Eastwood's latest film, Gran Torino, is not in fact a mature, reflective elegy about a grandmother in Turin, but instead tells of a crotchety old racist and a car. He goes on to describe some other films that weren't what he expected based on their titles, for example Kiss of the Spider Woman, and invites readers to nominate their own choices. There are quite a few funny responses which don't answer the question asked, but of the on-topic ones my favourites are the person disappointed that Miami Vice wasn't about woodworking and those who thought Wizard of Oz was a biopic of Don Bradman. (Tell that to Sean Connery.)

This topic isn't always amusing, of course. In the past couple of days I have seen several prominent blogs attack a cartoon in the New York Post that appeared to be a racist, violent attack on Barack Obama. (I won't reproduce or link to the cartoon here, but it should not be hard to find if you haven't seen it and are inclined to do so.) It has taken Scott Adams, veteran of more Dilbert cartoons than you and I have had Fried Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, to explain the difference between what is really there, and what it "remindsmeof".

Celebrating atomic beauty

Unlikely stories don't come much more unlikely than this. I was fascinated to read on The Great Beyond (the blog of the Nature news journalists and editors) about an unusual kind of beauty contest - one for the Russian nuclear industry. From the post, which is by Alison Abbott:

"Russia’s sixth such contest is now ongoing. Any female between 18 and 35 who works for the industry in the former Soviet republics may enter Miss Atom 2009, reports the German news magazine Der Spiegel. And nearly three hundred have done so. Their pictures are displayed in an online gallery with text supporting their candidature – and, of course, their vital statistics. Some of the more serious beauty contestants say they hope for world peace. More career-orientated contestants say things like “I don’t need a modelling course - I am, after all, an employee of the company ‘Atomtrudesurcy’ ”. "

The online gallery of entrants is at the "nuclear.ru" website. I did not spot any men, though I confess to not looking too hard - there are more than 12 pages of entries, with 30 pictures per page. Apparently, visitors to the gallery can vote, and the three winners (to be announced on 5 March) will be rewarded with holidays to Cuba, Morocco and the Adriatic (I was thinking perhaps Cumbria, Pennsylvania and, er, the Ukraine might be more appropriate).

Ilya Platonow, organiser of the contest, told Der Spiegel that with its promotion of all that is healthy and beautiful in the controversial energy sector, the contest should finally torpedo ‘the cliché of dangerous and threatening nuclear energy’.

Ten things to get over you

We've all heard of PostSecret (a rather spooky blog that I find too creepy to visit), but via Frank Wilson of Books, Inq. I learn of Some of the Things I Have Done to Get Over You, a "blog cum theatre project". The blogger is in London, UK, and has this to say: "Some of the things... is a project gathering first-person testimony for a theatre installation. Do write to us about some of the things you have done to get over someone. We post a selection of contributions on the blog. Click on “profile" to find our email address. Your name and address will remain confidential."

Frank writes that he is not sure he has ever got over anyone, but that the evidence is overwhelming that they have managed to get over him. I find that hard to believe, but actually, now he comes to write that, I feel similarly. (Funny what can crystallise about your inner thoughts when you read a blog post that speaks to you.)

Anyway, as the wholly admirable Lynne Scanlon (whose blog I highly recommend) says in the comments to Frank's post, "WOW. Pretty rough stuff. Such howls of pain, join the chorus. I've just sent the link around to a few friends (male and female) to see if they'd like to contribute. Hey, it might be cathartic!"

Some examples:

"I stared at strangers on the tube and tried to guess whether they were happy or unhappy in love. It was hard to tell. I still wonder whether you know I used to love you."

"I sent you long long emails that I thought were sensible and calm but were filled with pain and anger. You never replied to those. I'm not surprised. What would you have said?"

"I sat in a launderette and wept until my socks were dry."

"I started to run, and have now completed a number of half marathons."

"I did the London Knowledge. It took three years and two months. You have to cram your head full of street names and routes. There wasn't room to remember the colour of her eyes or how it felt when she kissed me."

"I lived in my dressing gown for a week. The old lady next door took pity on me and brought me groceries."

Crime fiction for all tastes

I haven't posted many "round ups" of links here recently because I am mildly addicted to Friend Feed, so I post links there - in the crime and mystery fiction room if they are about my current kind of reading; in the book room if they are more general; in the science online room if they are about communication of science; at OWL if they arrive by OWL post; in the life scientists' room if they have a biological aspect, and to "my feed" if they are particularly pithy posts about the awful banks or other shifting interests. All these rooms are open to anyone to join by clicking on the links in this post, and you can subscribe to my Friend Feed if you want to find out more. (Is Friend Feed the grown-up Twitter?)

However, I've read a couple of blog posts recently that might be of more general interest than just us Friend Feed specialists, so here are some links.

Dorte of DJS Krimblog writes about the first adult crime novel she read: Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L Sayers. "One of the things I remember about "Clouds of Witness" is that I thought Wimsey and Parker were ´old men´, or at least middle-aged, so I was amazed when they had solved the mystery and celebrated by getting drunk. I thought that was out of character." Can you remember the first adult crime novel you read? (Or just the first adult novel?)

Norman of Crime Scraps has modified the categories in the Dartmoor Dozen in a superb post. This post is a beautifully clear and loving description of the crime-fiction universe; I especially love the wild card. I encourage you to read the post and undertake the challenge. I plan to do so, not least because it will give me the chance to choose 12 more books!

The ultimate Carnival of the Criminal Minds is here, with links to all the excellent and informative posts in the series. Please visit if you want to know why a range of people think crime fiction is fab. Great thanks are due to Barbara Fister for dreaming this one up and organising it. These things take a lot of work, so well done to her.

And Karen at Euro Crime brings us a preview of the latest buzz book - The Reunion by Simone van der Vlugt, translated by Michele Hutchison - which is due to be published in the UK in March. Five lucky Euro Crime readers can win a copy of the book in the site's current competition - so do check it out. (I've entered!)

Sunday Salon: Norman's icy challenge

Norman at Crime Scraps wrote a post asking what books in the crime-fiction genre you would recommend to someone who has never read any before. Not so much "desert island books" as "snowed-in on Dartmoor books", he writes. Norman's challenge is to recommend one book from each of twelve sub-genres recommended by BookMarcs online blog (see discussion on Friend Feed - I think the link to BookMarcs was first posted by Mack, but I can't now find the evidence). Of course, one could argue late into the night about these sub-genres (see here for Dorte's preference), but for the purposes of this exercise,  I am going to take them as read and try to recommend one book from each. Any readers who wish to take up the challenge are very welcome to do so, and to drop a line in the comments so I can read your choices!

Whodunnit:

Last Seen Wearing by Hillary Waugh

Locked room mystery:

The Locked Room by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

Golden Age mystery:

Have His Carcase by Dorothy L Sayers

Historical fiction:

The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney

Crime fiction:

Little Criminals by Gene Kerrigan

Detective fiction:

The Black Echo by Michael Connelly

Hardboiled detective fiction:

Flood by Andrew Vachss

Inverted detective fiction:

Sleeping Beauty by Philip Margolin

Thriller fiction:

Where are the Children? by Mary Higgins Clark

Spy and espionage fiction

In the Evil Day by Peter Temple

Caper fiction:

The Herring Seller's Apprentice by L C Tyler

Psychological suspense fiction:

Losing You by Nicci French

And to make the dozen a baker's dozen,

Journalism crime fiction:

Paradise by Lisa Marklund

I could get into this - if you are interested in science-in-crime fiction:

Total Eclipse by Liz Rigbey

And chess-in-crime fiction:

The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis.

OK, I'll stop there. I realise that I could repeat this process a dozen more times, listing a different set of recommendations in each list.

Here are Dorte's dozen recommendations. I haven't come across anyone else who has yet completed the Crime Scraps challenge.

True confessions of a blogger

For various reasons, I don't write much on this blog about myself - my feelings, major (and minor) life-events, etc. I think I did so a bit when I started blogging (I did what a lot of new bloggers do, and wrote about my feelings of liberation as a result of discovering the medium) but do it even less now. I have written a bit more in the past about my daughters, when they were both blogging also and gave permission, but since they stopped doing that a couple of years or more ago, I have said less about them - the odd bit of "news involving them as passing characters", perhaps, but not any direct information about matters such as what colour they dye their hair or how often they trash the house (not and never, incidentally). I also lack the imagination to construct a fantasy life and write about that as if it were real, as I know some bloggers do (I've been taken in more than once.) This may be dull and lead to my blog being characterised so in some of these automatic tests that others have run on it for me, but c'est la vie.

I also steer away from reading "human interest" blogs, being bored by the unrelieved minutiae of the blogger's life, feelings and thoughts (usually not original enough to be distinctive), being much more drawn to blogs that are about ideas - expressed from a personal perspective, of course, that is what gives blogs their charm, but none the less, about ideas and thoughts compared with domestic details. I'm not suggesting that I only read blogs that are like factual automata, often the blogs I like do feature posts about other things, which is fine by me, and nice, as one feels one "knows" the author, via a previous discussion of ideas.

So, I scan the new blog posts in my RSS reader most days, scrolling through a few hundred blog posts and stopping to read a few here and there. (Apart from those in the category "a daily read", which I read in full.) Even this activity, over time, results in some bloggers and blogs having quite a strong "personality" in my mind even if I only read the odd post they write, if it seems likely to be of direct interest from the RSS fragment.

This week, in the past few days, actually, I've experienced unexpected pain by this activity. One person wrote about bloggers that she feels a connection with and plans to meet, but what if they die? She went on to name several blogs she follows or knows about when the blogger has died. Another person wrote about failure to get jobs she had been applying for (having previously written about the career choice she had made), from the perspective of having returned to doing what she had been doing in an earlier stage of her life, because of her lack of success. A third person, writing on a publisher's blog, wrote about how the publisher had rejected her new novel, after publishing previous ones. A fourth, a very well-known author and journalist, has just written a one-sentence blog post (the entire post is the title, so it is very big font) - "What do you read when your husband has just left you for another woman?"

Reading about pain, and experiencing its sharp pangs, when you are not expecting it is unsettling and quite dramatically affecting. It comes at you out of left field. This has happened to me before when reading blogs - I've suddenly come across a post that raises old, buried wounds and have been unable to read on. But this cluster in the past few days has been unprecedented. Would I write on my blog if I'd been rejected in some way, or was suffering from some particular cause? Probably not. I suppose that makes me a repressed coward in some respects.

Northern lights of crime fiction

As everyone surely knows by now ;-), I was given a subscription to The Bookseller for Christmas, even though I am not of that trade. The magazine has a website, much of which seems to be free. Some content from the printed magazine is not on the website (visible to me), which I find surprising, given that the magazine I work for is less than half the price of The Bookseller, has about twice as many (or more) pages per week, and gives you not only full access to the magazine online, but also lots of additional online-only information. This preamble is to say that I finally got around to finishing an article in last week's (6 February) issue, pp 24-25,  "Northern Lights", introduced thus: "The latest surge of Scandinavian novels is leading a crime-in-translation boom from across the continent. Roger Tagholm puts the new trend under the microscope and looks at why murder from Europe is so appealing".

It is a good, solid article (despite the lazy if understandable choice of a big picture of Kenneth Branagh as Wallander), leading with Danish author Peter Hoeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow in 1993 (so good until the last quarter, in my view) and the critical role of Christopher MacLehose (interviewed for the feature), then of Harvill, now with his own imprint at Quercus (most famous for Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, but publishing many other excellent titles). The article touches on Henning Mankell, and other Swedish, Icelandic, Italian, Greek, German and Polish authors familiar to readers of Euro Crime.

Authors who get particular shout-outs include Simone van der Vlught, whose novel The Reunion is published in the UK in March, and who is compared with Ruth Rendell; Mari Jungstedt, Stieg Larsson, Yrsa Sigurdadottir (whose second novel My Soul to Take is coming out in April, and who will be at Crime Fest and Harrogate this year), and K. O. Dahl.  Other authors are mentioned, too. Scandinavia, and Sweden in particular, is said to dominate the UK's taste for European translated crime fiction, and the article addresses some reasons for this - the assassination of Olaf Palme and the "disappointed" society that emerged - epitomised by Hakan Nesser (another 2009 Crime Fest attendee). Pleasingly, Christopher MacLehose awards credit to Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo as "the mother and father of the Scandinavian crime resurgence......They had a detective who was the original melancholy, alcoholic, divorced, music-lover, just like Morse, just like Wallander."

Arcadia books, publisher of award-winning Dominique Manotti, are also covered in the feature, as is Andrea Camilleri, author of the much loved (by me and fellow-European crime fiction fans) Salvo Montalbano books. (The article does not dig a little deeper and discover the"father" of those Italian books, the Spanish author Manuel Vazquez Montalban, after whom Camilleri's main character was named.) The success of all these novels is attributed by MacLehose to "an increasingly globalised world due to the internet and the greater number of people travelling and working abroad". National bodies such as Norwegian Literature Abroad play a significant part. But, above all, these books are "wonderfully good stories", says MacLehose. "Do I think that books, or crime in particular, will defeat the recession and come out on top, more than fur coats and caviar, as it were? Yes I do."

If anyone is interested in reading the whole two-page article, please drop a line in the comments.

The Whisperers and digital lives

I am currently attending an excellent (and free) conference at the British Library on "Digital Lives". Lots of excellent things about it, but I did enjoy a talk today by Orlando Figes. From Wikipedia:

"Figes has made a significant contribution to the development of oral history in Russia. With the Memorial Society, he gathered several hundred private family archives from homes across Russia and interviewed thousands of survivors as well as perpetrators of the Stalinist repressions for his book The Whisperers. This represents one of the biggest collections of documents about private life in the Stalin era. Housed in the Memorial Society in Moscow, St Petersburg and Perm, many of these valuable research materials are available on line."

The website The Whisperers: private lives in Stalin's Russia, is an example of why archiving, and oral history, is so important to us all. Orlando Figes told us how, on 4 December 2008, the police raided the St Petersburg offices of the Memorial Society and not only removed the hard disc drives of the Stalin oral history project (also on the Figes website, so in actuality not lost) but all the other archives of this section of the Memorial society. One of these projects is the virtual Gulag. As things stand, the only way your average Russian can find out about the Gulags is the one museum on the topic, which is in the Urals, 150 miles from the nearest large town. The Memorial society was some way along a project to create a virtual Gulag museum, so that all Russians and those in former Soviet Union countries could know about this awful history. No longer, since the December police raid. Orlando Figes told us about the Putin regime's programme to rehabilitate Stalin as a national hero. Chilling. The oral history project in which he interviewed many families about their experiences in that era, however, was the opposite - one is just grateful that there are people around us who are doing this kind of thing.

The Whisperers at Google Books.

Guardian review of The Whisperers.

New York Times review of The Whisperers.

The Times review of The Whisperers.

Spread the word for Bad Traffic

Here is a nice message from Natania of Sort Of books:

"First of all THANK YOU for helping to vote Simon Lewis’ brilliant novel BAD TRAFFIC onto the shortlist of the Spread the Word, Books to Talk About promotion. His was the only crime book to get through. It would make a huge difference if he won it...especially if helped through by the crime writers and readers community (what IS the collective known? Cell, maybe? Or mob? Or list of suspects?). All your readers need to do is register and then vote  via the website. Also, if they post a comment on that website and send it to me at nat [at] sortof.co.uk along with their home address they could win a free book (available for the first 10 entries)." You have until 27 February to vote.

Bad Traffic, by Simon Lewis, is an edgy, racy and highly recommended read.

See here for my review at Euro Crime.

Laura Root reviews the book at Euro Crime.

And so does Terry Halligan!

Read another review at It's a Crime! (or a mystery...).

Publisher's website review and information.

Sunday Salon: The Herring Seller at Euro Crime

This week, or thereabouts, is the UK paperback debut of The Herring Seller's Apprentice, by L. C. Tyler. I was given the hardback edition as a gift some while ago, by my esteemed colleague James Long. I also had the honour of meeting the extremely pleasant, friendly, frighteningly well-educated and intelligent, multi-talented author, "Len", at CrimeFest last year, and enjoy his occasional posts on the Macmillan New Writers' blog. Unfortunately, I did not make the time until recently to read the book itself. Now I have, and I am very glad indeed to have done so. My review is up today at Euro Crime: please read it, and then, the book. It is a very short novel with a striking cover, and you will not regret spending time in its funny, perceptive and bitter-sweet world. From my review:

"THE HERRING SELLER'S APPRENTICE is a wonderful book. It is one of those books that transcends the genre of crime fiction and speaks to all readers. I was completely absorbed in it, totally enjoying my sojourn in its multilayered, trippingly written, disciplined, and astutely observed world. Bravissimo!" Read on here. And thank you, James!

Karen Meek's Euro Crime review of the book.

Review of the book at It's a Crime! (or a mystery..).

Highly readable Q and A with L. C. Tyler at Crime Always Pays.

More about the covers of L. C. Tyler's books - and about his next book - at It's a Crime! (or a mystery...).

L. C. Tyler's website.

Publisher's website.

The rest of this week's new reviews at Euro Crime - and much more.

Times of terror, things of darkness

I know that this pairing is not as good as recent offerings, but  was struck by the similarity of the covers of Time of Terror, Seth Hunter's latest Nathan Peake novel of the British navy in the times of the French revolution, and This Thing of Darkness, Harry Thomspon's novel of Captain Fitzroy and the voyage of the Beagle:

   

UK crime-fiction paperback releases

This is a total laundry-list post, courtesy of The Bookseller, for crime-fiction addicts only. (Other readers may scroll back one and read my review of the film Jar City!) To plan your reading, paperbacks due out in May in the UK include The Likeness, by Tana French (don't be put off by my review, my slightly lukewarm reaction to this book was unusual, all the reviews I read were very positive); The Pyramid, by Henning Mankell; The Darker Side, by Cody McFadyen; Phantom Prey by John Sandford; Final Theory, by Mark Alpert; and Deadly Intent, by Lynda La Plante. As well as these established authors, we have a debut thriller to look forward to: Soul Murder, by David Blake. Apparently this is Harper's major launch for the summer, featuring "flawed FBI hero Francesco Patrese" (though the author is British).

Other titles due for paperback release in May are Bravo Jubilee, by Charlie Owen; Viper, by Michael Morley; Exposed, by Alex Kava; Singing to the Dead, by Caro Ramsey; Anarchy and Old Dogs, by Colin Cotterill; The Mind's Eye, by Hakan Nessar; The Taint of Madness, by Anne Zoudoudi; Stratton's War, by Laura Wilson; and The Bellini Card, by Jason Goodwin. Another debut is Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder, by Shamani Flint, the first in a series where a "Morse-like detective from Singapore travels throughout Asia busting crimes", starting with Kuala Lumpur. Diane Wei Long's Paper Butterfly is also due a paperback outing in May. The character here is a female P.I. who previously appeared in The Eye of Jade, "a lady who shows us a China visitors never see, as she examines the country as it was and as it is now. A dangerous business."

W. H. Smith has a crime-fiction promotion during February, in which you can get a free book for every one you buy. You need to sign up for their 'privilege programme' and print a voucher downloaded from their website.

Watching the film Jar City

So, one of the many good things about the recent snowy weather in the UK is that my younger daughter's parent-teacher evening at school yesterday (Tuesday) was postponed. Therefore, I could, if I wished, go to the cinema to see the one and only showing of the film Jar City in Kingston (2030 h on Tues). I decided I would see the movie, so tramped down to the cinema in the icy, silent and dark streets. It turned out that about six other people had made the same effort.

The film, based on the book by Arnaldur Indridason, is excellent. It is soon out on DVD (in the UK at least) and it is very well worth watching. Although the police team are not exactly how I had imagined from the books, the actor playing Erlunder was convincing in the role, really inhabiting the morose detective's skin and with the requisite intense focus. From my memory, the film stuck pretty closely to the plot of the book, and it was telling (if poignant) to note that the late Bernard Scudder, Indridason's superb translator, was responsible for the English subtitles.

So, what of the film? It is a straight police procedural, in that Erlunder and his team investigate the death of a late-middle-aged man bashed on the head with an ashtray. The case reveals to them that the victim may have raped a woman many years ago, and this is somehow relevant to the birth of a girl, Aude, who died young of a disease. Erlendur, the lead detective, and his team (portrayed tellingly as real, believable individuals that one might see on the street or at work tomorrow) soon discover that the death is linked with the Icelandic genetic database. There are many wonderful, atmospheric scenes of the hamlets of this barren, rocky isle, where people seem to be clinging to a life in a harsh environment - a hardy people, content in their solitude. But scratch the surface and unpleasant adaptations begin to emerge.

The Icelandic database project is real. Every person on the island (who has given consent, which is most of this small and inter-related population) has his or her genetic data held there. The plot depends on one person having faked a research project, got through several ethical and scientific review boards, and having access to all these data. This could not happen. A person could not undertake such a course without a body of published research, an active group, and other types of accountability. Indridason, and the film-makers, want to explore the consequences of an individual having total access to this information, so they venture into unrealistic territory. On one level, I am glad that they have done so, because the core of the story involves the genetic "deviants" who carry the potential for disease, and how this affects human emotion and entire lives. This field is one that is very little understood, apart from those who live under the burden of such genetic darkness. (I have personal reasons to understand this subject, as well as a professional interest.) On another level, I feel disappointed that the plot has to depend on the scientific community being stupid - the system simply does not and cannot work in the way shown in the film.

In the film, more than in the book, this discrepancy does not matter. Erlunder pursues his goal - discovering the truth - and in the process we see many small, delightful quirks that could never be conveyed in a Hollywood or other commercial film. I loved the depictions of Icelandic life- whether eating a sheep's head (eyes and all), snacking in the mortuary, the knitwear, the little houses clinging to the windswept rocks and plains, the introspection, misery, boredom, drug addition (the story of Eva Lind and her father Erlunder is a moving aspect of the film, as in the books) and bleakness is all there, speaking to the audience. But above all, the enduring memory is the beautiful young child in her white communion dress in her coffin, the ruin of the lives of her parents, and the sheer tragedy of it all, reflected in the eyes of Erlunder as he sings in the choir that forms the elegy in the prologue and epilogue of this remarkable film, which drew me in and absorbed me totally.

Jar City: Observer review.

Jar City: Times review.

Arnaldur Indridason's books reviewed at Euro Crime.

Update: review of the film at Crime Scraps.

Authonomy author starts to blog

I received an email today from Authonomy, the Harper-Collins website to "flush out the brightest, freshest new writing talent around" (their words) or the online "open slushpile" to use another description. (The Guardian called it an "outsourced slushpile".) You probably read recently how this cynicism was not in the event borne out, when Harper Collins offered publishing deals to three authors who had uploaded their books to the site (Authonomy's announcement is here).

Today's email (and, doubtless, press release) is to say that one of the three authors, Miranda Dickinson, is going to write a series of posts on the Authonomy blog detailing "her journey from unpublished to published author". She describes in her first post the excitement of getting a book deal. I enjoyed reading her post, which starts well: .."let me start at the beginning... Picture, if you will, a small office somewhere near Birmingham airport, September ‘08. This was my workplace – and things were not boding well for my job. We’d started to notice that work just wasn’t coming in, with our bosses remaining tight-lipped about the reasons why."

Each month, editors at Harper Collins read the five titles that have received the most votes from site visitors. This month's selections are up, if you want to take a look (link in first sentence of this post). I'm quite intrigued to see how this project pans out, as it sounds as if it has got a lot better than when I last looked, which was at the time of the official, post-beta launch. My best wishes to the selected authors.

E-publishing updates from the Bookseller

I seem to get "briefing" and "bulletin" emails every day from the Bookseller as part of my (very expensive, Christmas present) subscription. I think that these mostly find their way into the printed edition of the magazine each week, but I have not really worked it out yet. Here are a few highlights, in any event:

Waterstones have sold more than 30,000 Sony e-readers since last September's launch, and about 75,000 e-books, to their surprise. (On Christmas day, Waterstones sold more e-books than physical books on their website, and Random House reported significantly higher sales of e-books over the Christmas period, which they put down to people being given e-readers as presents.) The main bottleneck, says David Kohn, Waterstone's "head of commerce", is that there are not enough e-books out there. He thinks that every conventionally published book should simultaneously be released in e-form, but I think publshers might be finding that technically and operationally hard to achieve (even if economically desirable, which I am not sure about either). Amazon may be about to launch its second-generation Kindle at a press conference on 9 February (next Monday), according to rumours reported in the New York Times. I do not get the impression that the UK and the rest of Europe is likely to be able to buy it yet. Good news for those who read Spanish, though - you can download e-books for 5 euros. And good news for schools - which will increasingly be using this form of book.

Print on demand is another e-technology that is coming into its own with a vengeance. One POD provider, Lightning Source, reports that publishers are increasingly using its service to increase print runs. A book that would previously have had a print run of 250 is now more likely to get one of 1,000, thanks to this technology and the help it gives to publishing economics. Lightning Source printed 30,000 books in its first year of operation (2001); last year it printed 2 million. It has just printed its 7 millionth book in total. I have one or two Lightning Source books and like their production values - very white paper and large, dark print.

Although Borders is not doing well in some respects, being about to close down its shops at UK airports, its website seems to be increasingly popular, achieving third place (up by 56) in a ranking by Retail Bulletin. HMV is at number 29, Play.com at 35, Waterstones  at 43, and W H Smith at 104 - equal to Amazon, which must say something about this particular list. Whatever one may think about Amazon's principles, it has a huge amount of stock on its site, and is easy to use and order (even though its browse and search functions are nowhere near as good as they were in the old Google partnership days, as I discovered yet again yesterday when trying to find books about Shelley's poems -- at least I found one in the end, which is one better than all the physical bookshops in Kingston). And returning to online for the minute, I am pleased to read today that Woolworths is to be reborn online! I wait with bated breath - but not in the hopes of finding anything there about Shelley.

Sunday Salon: books of the year at Euro Crime

Karen Meek of Euro Crime has compiled a list of the favourite books read by the site's reviewers during 2008. The selection (which contains links to reviews of the chosen books where one exists) is an excellent guide to some of the cream of the books read (not necessarily published) in 2008. There is a wide-ranging mix of the literary, the psychological, thriller, historical, noir, police procedural and classic fiction - with a European accent, of course - so take your pick. Many of the selections were first written in languages other than English; I have deep admiration for the translators who have so sympathetically and in such a talented way enabled us to enjoy these books. My own selections are as follows:

English language origin:
Nicci French - Losing You
Simon Lewis - Bad Traffic
Diane Setterfield - The Thirteenth Tale
Laura Wilson - Stratton's War

Translated into English:
Karin Fossum - Broken
Arnaldur Indridason - Arctic Chill
Asa Larsson - The Black Path
Johan Theorin - Echoes from the Dead
Helene Tursten - The Torso

I like them all because they are strong books - thoughtful, interesting characters, intelligent writing, and show the effects on people of challenging circumstances. My reviews of all these books are at Euro Crime and can be found via Karen's Euro Crime page.

I read several books last year that I did not review, so did not include those in my selection criteria. However, I would like to mention one of these books here, as it was perhaps my favourite book of 2008. It is What Was Lost, by Catherine O'Flynn. This book is not "crime fiction", though it does feature an unusual detective element. It is a haunting and poignant portrait of the world as seen through the eyes of a delightfully unusual child, as well as some others on the fringes. It's a witty satire on urban values, and extremely perceptive. I cannot recommend this short, sad (but funny) book highly enough. Thanks to Karen for encouraging me to read it.

Other Euro Crime reviewers who provide selections of their 2008 favourites are: Pat Austin, Paul Blackburn, Karen Chisholm, Sunnie Gill, Amanda Gillies, Terry Halligan, Geoff Jones, Karen Meek, Michelle Peckham, Norman Price, Mike Ripley, Laura Root, Kerrie Smith and Fiona Walker. A summary of the books chosen and the combined favourites can be found at Euro Crime's blog. Some of us continue the reading conversations, with other bloggers and readers, in a "room" for Crime & Mystery fiction at FriendFeed - please do join us there, it is a very user-friendly web interface and there is lots of fascinating chat and exchange of reading news and information.