Spread the Word 2009 - Bad Traffic (free book offer)

From the Spread the Word Website:

So many books, so little time.

Thousands of books are published every year, and only a small percentage makes the mark that it should.The World Book Day team asked publishers large and small to submit books they thought deserved to reach a wider readership – most specifically those that would make good subjects for discussion, those that don’t merely entertain, but give greater food for thought.

From the many submissions received, we have selected fifty titles we feel fulfil the criteria. Each and every one brings something different, refreshing and stimulating.

This is an opportunity to vote for your favourite book on the list, so that we can find The Book to Talk About 2009.

Voting on the long list will end on 2nd January 2009. A short list of ten titles will be announced on 30th January 2009 and voting will recommence. The winner will be announced on World Book Day - Thursday 5th March 2009.

The fifty titles include both fiction and non-fiction. The crime fiction selections include The Bloomsday Dead by Adrian McKinty and Bad Traffic by Simon Lewis.

In Declan Burke's review of The Bloomsday Dead, he concludes:

McKinty is a rare writer, one who can combine the conventionally muscular prose of crime fiction with a lyrical flair for language, and the blend is a compelling one. Forsythe is himself a fascinating character, brusque and blunt in his public exchanges, lethal when trapped in a tight spot (of which there are many in this furiously-plotted tale, which loosely follows the path laid down by both Leopold Bloom and Odysseus), yet possessed of a poet's soul during his interior monologues. The violence is graphically etched into the page, as if stamped there by the force of its authenticity, but McKinty never forgets that his first priority is to entertain, leavening the bleakness with flashes of mordant humour.

Bad Traffic by Simon Lewis is a rare thing: all three reviews, on the Euro Crime website, are united in their praise and desire to see more from this writer.

Laura Root wrote:

BAD TRAFFIC is a compelling and page-turning thriller. The main characters are convincingly drawn, and Simon Lewis vividly depicts the cultural and language barriers that Jian and Ding Yi experience. I look forward to further books in the Inspector Jian series.

Maxine Clarke begins her review:

BAD TRAFFIC is a book that epitomises all that is great about the crime-fiction genre. It has a tight plot that unfolds at breakneck pace; it depicts an alien world vividly; there is a range of believable and sympathetic characters; it constantly unsettles the reader; and the events it describes seem as if they could really happen. Although the book has strong elements of the noir genre, with its atmosphere of Greek tragedy in which events and characters fulfil the dictates of fate and there is an absence of sentiment, the book is by no means boiled as hard as noir often can be - hope and humanity are there to be found, like specks of jewels glistening in the depths.

and Terry Halligan concludes his review:

I found this book hugely entertaining and a real page turner and I look forward to reading the next books of this deeply, atmospheric thriller writer.

Voting and commenting on the titles requires a simple registration. The free book offer comes from Sort of Books, the publishers of Bad Traffic, who are:

offering free books to the first 25 voters who post a comment about Bad Traffic on the Spread the Word website. All you need to do is email the comment and your postal address to nat@sortof.co.uk.