PETRONA

Progress on reading books eligible for the 2011 International Dagger

It was late August when I last asked myself how I am getting on with the books eligible for the International Dagger for 2011. To qualify, books have to be translated, and published in the UK between May 2010 and June 2011. Karen has recently updated her essential Euro Crime blog post of eligible titles, now up to 48.

These are the books on the list that I had read when I wrote my 21 August post (links go to my reviews):

The Wings of the Sphinx by Andrea Camilleri, translated by Stephen Sartarelli (Italy)
Needle in a Haystack  by Ernesto Mallo, translated by Jethro Soutar (Argentina)
Bad Intentions by Karin Fossum , translated by Charlotte Barslund (Norway)
The Inspector and Silence by Hakan Nesser, translated by Laurie Thompson (Sweden)

Since then, I have read:

Red Wolf by Liza Marklund, translated by Neil Smith (Sweden)
River of Shadows by Valerio Varesi, translated by Joseph Farrell (Italy)
Ashes to Dust by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, translated by Philip Roughton (Iceland)
Silence by Jan Costin Wagner, translated by Anthea Bell (German, setting Finland)
Three Seconds by Roslund-Hellstrom, translated by Kari Dickson (Sweden)
Bunker by Andrea Maria Shenckel, translated by Anthea Bell (Germany); review submitted to Euro Crime
Operation Napoleon by Arnaldur Indridason , translated by Victoria Cribb (Iceland); review in draft of a copy via the library.

Books I have on my shelf or e-reader waiting to be read:

1222 by Anne Holt 
The Postcard Killers by Liza Marklund and A. N. Other 

Remaining to read - none of which are yet available on Amazon UK apart from Villain (which is quite expensive):

Basic Shareholder by Petros Markaris
Frozen Moment by Camilla Ceder
Villain by Shuichi Yoshida
Rendezvous by Esther Verhoef
The Leopard by Jo Nesbo
The Quarry by Johan Theorin
The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell
Death on a Galician Shore by Domingo Villar
The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler
The Gallows Bird by Camilla Lackberg
Shadow Sister by Simone van der Vlugt
Bandit Love by Massimo Carlotto
Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End by Leif G W Persson
Summertime by Mari Jungstedt
Blood Sisters by Alessandro Perissinotto
An Uncertain Place by Fred Vargas
Inquisition by Alfredo Carlitto 

There are around 20 titles left to read if I manage to get through all the above list. 

See  International Dagger, a collection of all the posts at Petrona on this topic. 

2011 International Dagger - list of eligible titles.

2010 International Dagger - list of eligible titles.

The CWA International Dagger page, currently featuring the 2010 winner, The Darkest Room by Johan Theorin, translated by Marlaine Delargy.

Petrona's post about the 2010 winner.

The 2010 shortlist, and my reviews of each title on it.

Petrona posts tagged International Dagger.

Euro Crime list of 2011 eligible titles.

Progress on reading books eligible for the 2011 International Dagger

How am I getting on with the books eligible for the International Dagger for 2011, I wondered to myself? Thanks to Karen of Euro Crime, there is a list of the titles at her blog, which she updates as new books are published. To qualify, books have to be translated, and published in the UK between May 2010 and June 2011. As of 2 August, there are 44 eligible titles, and Karen anticipates another 10 to 20 before the eligibility deadline is reached. The full list is at Euro Crime blog.

Books on the list that I have read so far (links go to my reviews):

The Wings of the Sphinx by Andrea Camilleri, translated by Stephen Sartarelli (Italy)
Needle in a Haystack  by Ernesto Mallo, translated by Jethro Soutar (Argentina)
Bad Intentions by Karin Fossum , translated by Charlotte Barslund (Norway)
The Inspector and Silence by Hakan Nesser, translated by Laurie Thompson (Sweden)

Eligible books I have on my shelf to read:

Bunker by Andrea Maria Shenckel
River of Shadows by Valerio Varesi
1222 by Anne Holt 
(I also have The Kingdom of Light by Giulio Leoni, left over from last year's list!)

Books I definitely plan to read (mostly not published yet):

Frozen Moment by Camilla Ceder
Silence by Jan Costin Wagner
Basic Shareholder by Petros Markaris
Ashes to Dust by Yrsa Sigurdardottir
Villain by Shuichi Yoshida
Three Seconds by Roslund-Hellstrom
Rendezvous by Esther Verhoef
Red Wolf by Liza Marklund
The Postcard Killers by Liza Marklund and A. N. Other (possibly)
The Leopard by Jo Nesbo
Operation Napoleon by Arnaldur Indridason
A Place of Blood by Johan Theorin
The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell
Death on a Galician Shore by Domingo Villar
The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler
The Gallow's Bird by Camilla Lackberg
Shadow Sister by Simone van der Vlugt
Bandit Love by Massimo Carlotto
Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End by Leif G W Persson

That leaves almost 20 on the list that so far that I may not read due to lack of time or interest, though that could change! I'd certainly like to read A Short Cut to Paradise by Teresa Solana but as I think it is a sequel to A Not So Perfect Crime, I need to read that first. There's one, I Kill by Giorgio Faletti, that I am definitely not going to read on the basis of looking at it in the bookshop the other week.

I have made a category for this blog called International Dagger, which I have applied retrospectively to the posts I wrote about the 2010 and 2009 titles, so they can all be read together by clicking on the link.

2011 International Dagger - list of eligible titles.

2010 International Dagger - list of eligible titles.

The CWA International Dagger page, currently featuring the 2010 winner, The Darkest Room by Johan Theorin, translated by Marlaine Delargy.

Petrona's post about the 2010 winner.

The 2010 shortlist, and my reviews of each title on it.

Petrona posts tagged International Dagger.

The Darkest Room is winner of this year's International Dagger

 I am so pleased to read on Euro Crime blog that Johan Theorin's The Darkest Room, superbly translated from the Swedish by Marlaine Delargy,  has won the International Dagger award for 2010. 

I think this book is wonderful, far more than a standard crime book. The author is extremely talented and combines a good plot with a sensitive observation of character, time and place. Although I read the book some time ago, it haunts me still.

The other books on the shortlist are all excellent, I recommend them all. For me, Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indridason came next-closest to winning, but on balance I felt The Darkest Room was a more rounded book - though my own emotional identification with the protagonist in Hypothermia is stronger.

My Euro Crime review begins...."THE DARKEST ROOM is a wonderful book, framed as the story of a wooden house, Eel Point, on the coast of the small island of Oland, Sweden - an island where the population is small and the old traditions continue. The house has a long, tragic history associated with the building of the two lighthouses on the nearby rocks, shipwrecks and various residents. The brief stories of these old tragedies are told in short sections interleaving the book's chapters, showing how Eel Point has become regarded today as haunted. The reader is never sure whether the ghosts are real, or to what extent the house's sad, cruel past is influencing current events." Read on here.

I think the judges did a great job in a year when the competition was intense - not only Hypothermia and The Darkest Room, but The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, the superb climax to Siteg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, and 13 Hours, Deon Meyer's adrenalin-packed thriller. Badfellas (Tony Benacquista) and August Heat (Andrea Camilleri) are also noble contenders. 

Now, our next task is to read the novels eligible for the 2011 award, a delightful prospect. Or, if you have not yet done so, you can read the winner and the five other titles that made up the 2010 shortlist. My reviews of all six can be accessed from this post.

--

Euro Crime list of titles eligible for the 2011 award, which will be updated as new titles are published.

Johan Theorin's English-language website.

International Dagger 2011 - eligible titles

I have some very significant news to report - Karen of Euro Crime has begun her list of books eligible for the 2011 CWA International Dagger award. As ever, Euro Crime and its associated blog are a great source of reading recommendations as well as the Euro Crime database being an incredibly useful  reference when looking for something to read. Well, I think I may have had my searching task considerably eased by the 2011 list that Karen has begun to compile.

Of the five books published in June 2010, I have read one, The Wings of the Sphinx by Andrea Camilleri, translated by Stephen Sartarelli. Another title, Needle in a Haystack by Ernesto Mallo, is on my shelf to read. And of the seven published in July 2010, I have also read one. The Inspector and Silence by Hakan Nesser, translated by Laurie Thompson (review submitted to Euro Crime). Two other July titles are eagerly anticipated by me: Bad Intentions by Karin Fossum and Ashes to Dust by Yrsa Sigurdardottir.

August looks fantastic, with some titles I am already keen to read: Frozen Moment by Camilla Ceder, Basic Shareholder by Petros Markaris, Villain by Yoshida Shuichi, and Silence by Jan Costin Wagner. There are also some must-reads for the rest of the season, including newly translated   novels by Liza Marklund, Domingo Villar, Henning Mankell, Roslund-Helstrom, Esther Verhoef, Leif G W Persson, Johan Theorin, Jo Nesbo, Anne Holt, Arnaldur Indridason and Camilla Lackberg. What a wonderfully rosy prospect!

The 2010 CWA International Dagger award has not quite yet been given. The shortlist has been announced (at CrimeFest in May), and the winner will be revealed later this month at the Harrogate Crime Writers' Festival. My money? Johan Theorin (The Darkest Room) or Arnaldur Indridason (Hypothermia). See this Petrona post for the shortlist, links to my reviews of the titles, and my musings on the possible winners - no doubt wildly inaccurate, but we'll be finding out soon enough.

International Dagger shortlist, announced and reviewed

Awards are the name of the game at the moment, with two of the main crime-fiction prizes achieving escape velocity on Friday by announcement of their respective short and long lists. In this post, I focus on one of these awards.

The shortlist for the International Dagger award of the Crime Writers' Association was announced at Crime Fest. The list is available at Euro Crime blog, which contains links to Euro Crime reviews of all six  titles. Inevitably there has been quite a bit of buzz about the selections, for example at Friend Feed (please let us know your opinion there!).

Although I did not do a great job at predicting the shortlist (I got two out of six), I think the CWA list is a good one because it is geographically varied (2 novels from Sweden (one mainland, one island!), with one each from Italy, South Africa, France and Iceland), and thematically varied. My mistake on my predicted shortlist was to limit it to "traditional" crime novels. The selections on the actual list all provide a terrific atmosphere and sense of place. They all seem to be translated very ably and with insight into the author's intentions. Here's the list, with an attempted brief summary of each novel:

Tonino Benacquista - Badfellas (translator: Emily Read)
Black comedy and culture shocks as a Sopranos-style family in the US witness protection program settle in to French small-town life.
Andrea Camilleri - August Heat (translator: Stephen Sartarelli)
Inspector Montalbano investigates shady property deals and worse in the last remnants of traditional Sicily in a bitter comedy of life's tragedies.
Arnaldur Indridason - Hypothermia (translator: Victoria Cribb)
Erlendur investigates an apparent suicide, and old and new missing-persons cases, while reflecting on his own past actions and mistakes.
Stieg Larsson - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (translator: Reg Keeland)
Climax of the Millennium Trilogy as Lisbeth and Michael face down their respective nemeses, culminating in courtroom scenes and subsequent thrills.
Deon Meyer - Thirteen Hours (translator: K. L. Seegers)
Frantic pace as police and criminals pursue an American student through Cape Town over the course of a long day, while other crimes are committed and resources are stretched.
Johan Theorin - The Darkest Room (translator: Marlaine Delargy)
Shadows of the distant and recent past (maybe even ghosts) infect a young family while a policewoman investigates a series of burglaries on the island of Oland.
 

Which one do I think will win? Well, obviously I am not very good at predictions! Even so, the two choices of mine made previously that are on the actual shortlist are the two books that I think most likely to win, The Darkest Room and Hypothermia, both of which look at changes in a relatively small, isolated (island) community over a period of many years, and the adaptations people and society have made over this time. The device for this survey, in both books, is to look at old, more recent, and new crimes (for crimes, read crises, as none of these events is sensationally described as if it were the point in itself, which I appreciate - rather the crimes are the stimulus to set in motion chains of events which give the authors freedom to reflect). 

I'd be more than happy if either won (or any of the others), but I'd slightly be in favour of The Darkest Room because it covers more themes than Hypothermia, and because it conveys such a terrific sense of atmosphere, menace and a range of perspectives on life and living, by its various characters. Hypothermia's appeal, to me, is mainly the dark and long journey Erlendur is taking into his own soul, which is fascinating to me as I strongly identify with it, but which is perhaps too mono-dimensional in this particular book in the series to fully justify a win. But, that having been said, I think it is an excellent novel in its own right, and along with any of the other 5 novels, would be a worthy champion.

Some other early speculation on the shortlist can be found at Euro Crime blog (lots of suggestions in the comments), International Noir Fiction (where Glenn got three out of six right) and Crime Scraps (plus Norman's reaction to the shortlist).

The full shortlist. with judges' comments (not read by me before writing this post) and other information about the awards are at the CWA website.

Petrona's long and short lists for the International Dagger award

As my loyal readers may know by now, I have been reading as many as possible of the titles eligible for this years International Dagger prize before CrimeFest, which is when the judges will announce the shortlist. Karen at Euro Crime blog has invited bids for the shortlist.  CrimeFest starts tomorrow and I have read about a third of the possible titles. I'm calling a halt, therefore. Here are the books I've read:

Mikkel Birkegaard - The Library of Shadows   Denmark
Andrea Camilleri - August Heat  *** Italy
Leif Davidsen - The Woman from Bratislava ***  Denmark
Karin Fossum - The Water's Edge ***   Norway
Petra Hammesfahr - The Lie   Germany
Anne Holt - Death in Oslo  Norway
Arnaldur Indridason - Hypothermia ***  Iceland
Camilla Lackberg - The Stonecutter  Sweden
Stieg Larsson - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest *** Sweden
Deon Meyer - Thirteen Hours *** South Africa
Jo Nesbo - The Snowman  ***  Norway
Claudia Pineiro - Thursday Night Widows ***  Argentina
Andrea Maria Schenkel - Ice Cold    Germany
Gunnar Staalesen - The Consorts of Death ***  Norway
Johan Theorin - The Darkest Room ***   Sweden
Tonino Benaquista - Badfellas     France
Eugenio Fuentes - At Close Quarters ***    Spain
Luigi Guicciardi - Inspector Cataldo's Criminal Summer ***  Italy
Henning Mankell - The Man from Beijing *** Sweden
Dominique Manotti- Affairs of State *** France
Petros Markaris - Che Committed Suicide ***  Greece
Juli Zeh - Dark Matter *** Germany

and, since my last post on this topic:

Poisonville by Massimo Carlotto and Marco Videtta ***  Italy

The Last Fix by K. O. Dahl *** Norway

Mari Jungstedt The Killer's Art (Euro Crime review T/C) *** Sweden

That makes 25 out of a possible 61 books - not brilliant but not too bad. The big problem, as I have noted previously, is choosing a shortlist out of these. Even out of these 25, I would find it very hard indeed to choose a shortlist of, say, six. The standard is extremely high (I have put three stars on the ones I think anyone would find a must read!), and there are only about five titles that I would certainly not include. I am going to have a go at choosing a shortlist here, with the caveat that I could almost just as easily have put about 18 of the above titles on it. It will be amusing next week to compare it with the real thing to see how close I got!

Petrona's shortlist (in no particular order):

The Darkest Room by Johan Theorin (translator: Marlaine Delargy)           (Sweden)
Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indridason (translator Victoria Cribb)                 (Iceland)
The Killer's Art by Mari Jungstedt (translator Tiina Nunnally)                      (Sweden)
The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell (translator Laurie Thompson)   (Sweden)
The Consorts of Death by Gunnar Staalesen (translator Don Bartlett)        (Norway)
At Close Quarters by Eugenio Fuentes (translator Martin Schifino)             (Spain)

Of those six, I would choose either The Darkest Room or Hypothermia as the winner. If I were forced to choose between them, I would go for The Darkest Room, with the distinguishing factor being that Hypothermia is quite late on in a series, so the characters to some extent depend on the previous knowledge of the reader. Although The Darkest Room is second in a quartet, it isn't a sequel as such, rather it features some of the same characters, in most cases rather fleetingly.

My overwhelming feeling, on reading these 25 books, is that in almost all cases I have enjoyed, learnt and been moved by the sheer quality and range of themes. This exercise has definitely reinforced my impression that translated fiction is of a generally higher standard than the non-translated fiction I read, as well as providing more varied perspectives and characters. I shall be reading more of it! (See Karen's Euro Crime blog post for more shortlist selections.)

Progress on reading books eligible for the 2010 International Dagger

It is a while (5 March, in fact) since I have posted about my attempt to read as many as possible of the 61 books eligible for this year's International Dagger award - the annual CWA prize for a novel originally written in another language and translated into English. My end-date is the announcement of the shortlist, which will happen at CrimeFest next month (May). 

In my 5 March post, I reported that I had read fifteen of the books, which are listed below, with links to my reviews either at Euro Crime or at Petrona. 

Mikkel Birkegaard - The Library of Shadows (review t/c)
Andrea Camilleri - August Heat  
Leif Davidsen - The Woman from Bratislava (review t/c)
Karin Fossum - The Water's Edge
Petra Hammesfahr - The Lie
Anne Holt - Death in Oslo
Arnaldur Indridason - Hypothermia
Camilla Lackberg - The Stonecutter
Stieg Larsson - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest
Deon Meyer - Thirteen Hours
Jo Nesbo - The Snowman (review t/c)
Claudia Pineiro - Thursday Night Widows
Andrea Maria Schenkel - Ice Cold
Gunnar Staalesen - The Consorts of Death
Johan Theorin - The Darkest Room

Since then, I have read the following eligible books:

Tonino Benaquista - Badfellas
Eugenio Fuentes - At Close Quarters
Luigi Guicciardi - Inspector Cataldo's Criminal Summer
Henning Mankell - The Man from Beijing
Dominique Manotti- Affairs of State 
Petros Markaris - Che Committed Suicide (review t/c)
Juli Zeh - Dark Matter (review t/c) 

This takes my total to 22, that is, about one-third of the total eligible. As things stand, I think the judges have a real problem on their hands, because only three of these 22 are, in my opinion, not likely to make the shortlist. I would be happy to see any of the remaining 19 go forward to the next round! Maybe I have been lucky in the particular books I have read out of the 61 possibles. (Not all of these 61 will have been put forward for the competition by the publishers, I guess, so it is possible that the judges will have an easier task if some of them were not submitted!)

In the meantime, any recommendations from among the remaining 39 books would be much appreciated.

International Dagger update and judges revealed!

The Crime Writers Association (CWA) has updated its website in anticipation of the Dagger awards for 2010. It is quite hard to find this, but the trick is to go to the "rules" page, which encourages publishers to submit eligible books for each category of award, and scroll down. The category that interests me the most, as it will be no surprise to know, is the International Dagger - which you'll see on the tabs along the bottom of the rules page. I am doing my best to read the eligible titles, in the hope of having some good knowledge of the eventual shortlist, which will be announced at Crime Fest (the 2010 programme is now up at the festival's website).  

Shortlist announcement
On 21st May, 2010 the shortlist will be announced at CrimeFest at a special party hosted by the organisers. To facilitate this, the submission dates have altered slightly so please be aware of the earlier closing date of March 12th, 2010.

What jumps out at me, however, is the pre-eminence of the judging panel. Here it is:

JUDGING PANEL

Chair: Ann Cleeves
Karen Meek
John Murray-Browne
Ruth Morse

Yes, that's Karen! Congratulations to Karen on being selected as a judge. I feel so honoured to know such a renowned person. And naturally, I am looking forward to the shortlist announcement with even keener interest than before.

Previous posts about my attempts to read the books eligible for the 2010 International Dagger:

1 December 2009. I've read 9 of the possible 61 novels, and provide links to my reviews of 8 of these.

16 January 2010. I've read Death in Oslo and The Woman from Bratislava.

13 February 2010. Progress report.

15 February 2010. A review of Thursday Night Widows, one more on the list.

4 March 2010. I've read Thirteen Hours and have started on At Close Quarters.

This brings my grand total up to FIFTEEN (so far - about a quarter of the list):

Mikkel Birkegaard - The Library of Shadows
Andrea Camilleri - August Heat
Leif Davidsen - The Woman from Bratislava
Karin Fossum - The Water's Edge
Petra Hammesfahr - The Lie
Anne Holt - Death in Oslo
Arnaldur Indridason - Hypothermia
Camilla Lackberg - The Stonecutter
Stieg Larsson - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest
Deon Meyer - Thirteen Hours
Jo Nesbo - The Snowman
Claudia Pineiro - Thursday Night Widows
Andrea Maria Schenkel - Ice Cold
Gunnar Staalesen - The Consorts of Death
Johan Theorin - The Darkest Room

Reading books eligible for the CWA International Dagger 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vargas wins International Dagger 2009

I am the last person in the world to have heard about the CWA International Dagger award for 2009, announced last night. Fred Vargas and her translator Sian Reynolds won for The Chalk Circle Man,the most Harry Potter-esque of the shortlist. Because I go to bed at about 9 pm and wake at 6 am, and the internet (social aspect) is not part of my routine until I get home at night, everyone else had reacted to this news long before I received it via an industry email sent to my work account this afternoon. Predictably there is much comment that the winning book is (1) by an author who has already won twice; (2) the only non-Nordic book on the shortlist; and (3) is French. OK I made that last one up - but taking into account last year's winner, Dominique Manotti with Lorraine Connection, translated by Amanda Hopkinson and Ros Schwartz, with Vargas and Reynolds again for 2007 and 2006 (Wash This Blood Clean from my Hands and The Three Evangelists, respectively), Gallic honours are very high.
Incidentally, in the context of this award, "international" means "translated into English from their original language, for UK publication". Books originally written in English whatever the nationality of the author qualify for the main annual award, for example Peter Temple deservedly won in 2007.
Returning to 2009, I believe that points (1), (2) and (3) are irrelevant in deciding the winner, and although the judge's choice wasn't the book I would have selected, I think it is a fine example of contemporary crime fiction (actually it was written quite a few years ago, but never mind - most foreign-language books seem to take a while to have English translations published). Another point to bear in mind is that all the books on the shortlist have flaws - of course, all books have flaws of some kind, but crime fiction does tend to suffer from cliche, formula and incredulity somewhat more than most, and these downsides can be applied at times to all the titles on the shortlist, I think.
Looking forward, I can already imagine a few strong candidates for next year's shortlist: The Preacher by Camilla Lackberg, translated by Steven T. Murray (reviews here at Euro Crime, Reading Matters and Nordic Bookblog); The Water's Edge by Karin Fossum, translated by Charlotte Barslund; and Library of Shadows by Mikkel Birkegaard, translated by Tiina Nunally. (Strangely, these are all Scandinavian!)
 
Some posts about the 2009 International Dagger awards:

Lying for a Living by Meg Gardiner, MC for the awards evening (lovely pictures).
Euro Crime blog
Crime Scraps: Fred Vargas wins again!
Discussion at Friend Feed.
Mysteries in Paradise: I am not always right.
Scandinavian crime fiction: c'est dommage.
It's a Crime...or a mystery.
Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind.
Mystery Fanfare.

Possibly my last word on the topic before the International Dagger winner is announced

Now that I have read all the books on the shortlist for the International Dagger award 2009, the question on everyone's mind is "am I sticking to my earlier choice of winner?" That earlier choice was made exactly one month ago today, on the basis of having read four of the six novels.

The books, with links to my reviews, are:

Karin Alvtegen - Shadow (translated by McKinley Burnett)
Stieg Larsson - The Girl Who Played With Fire (translated by Reg Keeland)
Johan Theorin - Echoes From The Dead (translated by Marlaine Delargy)
Fred Vargas - The Chalk Circle Man (translated by Sian Reynolds)
Arnaldur Indridason - Arctic Chill (translated by Bernard Scudder and Victoria Cribb)
Jo Nesbo - The Redeemer (translated by Don Bartlett)

Two of the novels are exciting thrillers - Redeemer and The Girl Who Played with Fire. Only one of them, Shadow, is not a police procedural, in whole or part. They are all very sad -each of them facing up to the cruelties of human nature. Two of them, Shadow and Echoes from the Dead, are explicitly about the lasting effects of the Second World War on the present, and one, The Redeemer, has its roots in the horrors of more recent conflicts in the Balkans. Arctic Chill is an indictment of racism and, in common with The Redeemer, condemns the attitudes of comfortable cultures on those less fortunate. The Chalk Circle Man is an oddity - not necessarily because it is French whereas the other books here are Swedish, Norwegian or Icelandic- but because it is a fable. Even so, what gives it its heart is the same as the core appeal of the other books - its identity with the weak, the old, the abandoned child, the immigrant, those whom society would ignore.

All the books share one feature in common - they are all superbly translated by people who have real empathy with the text and seem to genuinely interpret the intention of the author, as well as the actual words. Perhaps it goes without saying that they all have a committment to showing the truth - either via a detective or via one or more of the characters who aren't formally investigators, but who also are the conscience of the events that are described. The books all also share the accolade of being impossible to stop once you start. You live with these books while you are reading them, and for long afterwards.

All, then, are worthy winners. None of these books is noticeably "better" than the others. All these books have a heart, and speak for those who don't usually have a voice: children, women, the poor, the bereaved, the old, the forgotten. For me, the emotion evoked by the sadness of Shadow and Julia's enduring grief in Echoes from the Dead possibly lift these two books onto a higher plane. But these are personal reactions from one who recognises the suffering. Arctic Chill is an utterly sympathetic portrait of depression and of the awareness of life's pragmatic disappointments. The Girl Who Played with Fire is a sprawling, occasionally flawed novel of immense heart and passion, burning with revenge in a cold, fierce heat. The Chalk Circle Man is a magical, glassy, brittle affair, told with baroque detail and with a splinter of ice in its heart. Echoes from the Dead identifies not only with the impossible grief of a mother who has lost her child and has no subsequent engagement with life, but is also an elegy of old age - the enforced patience, the slow death of faculties physical and mental. Shadow is Chekhovian in its unblinking portrayal of lives, old and young, destroyed by ambition - and Shakesperian in the playing out of the roles of the characters.

All of the books except Shadow are series. The Chalk Circle Man and Echoes from the Dead are the first in their respective series (Echoes from the Dead is a debut with the second yet to be translated; The Chalk Circle Man has been translated long after several later installments). The Redeemer and Arctic Chill are relatively late entries, and probably suffer slightly if you haven't read the earlier volumes. The Girl Who Played with Fire is second in a posthumous triology and definitely requires a previous reading of the first volume.

My main advice is to read all six books. All of them transcend the mere labelling of genre. All of them present characters who live outside the page, and provide an involving, exciting plot. All of them will involve you, will make you laugh at times and make you feel sadness, anger and despair. None of them should be consigned to a genre. It's a very worthy list indeed: I commend them all.

The winners will be announced next week, on 15 July.

A selection of posts and polls about the International Dagger 2009 award.

 

My contribution to the many posts about the CWA International Dagger shortlist

Trying to calm down a bit after that last post, I see from many blogs including Karen of Euro Crime and Norman/Uriah of Crime Scraps that the CWA International Dagger shortlist has been announced. It is an excellent list, and I think impossible to say which of these books is "better" than the others. I reproduce the list from Euro Crime blog:

Karin Alvtegen - Shadow (translated by McKinley Burnett)
Stieg Larsson - The Girl Who Played With Fire (translated by Reg Keeland)
Johan Theorin - Echoes From The Dead (translated by Marlaine Delargy)
Fred Vargas - The Chalk Circle Man (translated by Sian Reynolds)
Arnaldur Indridason - Arctic Chill (translated by Bernard Scudder and Victoria Cribb)
Jo Nesbo - The Redeemer (translated by Don Bartlett)

I've read four from the shortlist, and of these, after much thought, I would recommend Shadow to win the prize. (Although I haven't read these particular books by Vargas and Nesbo, I have read others by these authors, and I venture to suggest that my proposed winner would not change had I read these titles.)

Indridason's novel is part of a masterly series of books, but Arctic Chill - though I loved it -  is not quite as good as the previous novel, Draining Lake. Some of the power in Arctic Chill rests on the book being part of the series, as it requires the reader to identify with the depressive main character, rather than for the book on its own, so for this reason I would not choose it as the winner, even though I loved its sympathy for the outsiders.

The Girl Who Played With Fire is hard to judge because one does not know how it would have turned out if the author had lived to make corrections and edits to tighten it up a bit and remove one or two obvious plot howlers. Although it's an incredibly exciting read, it has one major flaw - the irrelevant first third. (This section might not be irrelevant in context of the trilogy - the third component of which is not yet published in English - or of the planned but never to happen entire series of ten books, but in terms of The Girl Who Played with Fire as a book that needs to stand alone to win a prize, it has to count against it.) I think that this thrilling, campaigning trilogy will best be judged as a trilogy, and not as separate books.

This leaves me with Echoes from the Dead and Shadow as the two front-runners. Both these books are superb. On balance I would choose Shadow because it goes further down to the line of human emotion, parable and psychology, in its relentless investigation of the price of fame - what a man will do to achieve it, and the consequences of those actions. Also, the historical perspective of the effects of a regime of terror on the most tragic character in the book - the character who never has a voice but whose story is the one that lives on in the heart of the reader - adds a dimension of sorrow that lifts the book out of formula or genre. Another plus of this book is the way that it follows through its premise to the bitter end, without sentimentality or distraction.

Nevertheless, the depiction of a mother's longstanding grief in Echoes from the Dead is truly superb. I found the author's empathy with Julia to be awesome. The character of Julia's father is also delightful and memorable, both in itself and its insight into a way of life. I found the historical aspects of this book (the back-story of the outcast which is told in the middle section) not quite as strong as the rest, though the modern story was brilliantly absorbing. Although the denouement packed a great punch, the resolution of the older story was less satisfying than the brilliantly realised modern one.

In all honesty, I'd be happy whichever of these superb books wins the prize. But if I were the judge, I would award it, by a whisker, to Shadow, Karin Alvtegen's remarkable testament of the iron-cold grip of the past, the allegories of fable, the price of fame and political manouvering, the bitter family saga and the loneliness of age, with its inevitable alienation from the modern world. (Honours shared, of course, by the able and sympathetic translator, McKinley Burnett.)