James Patterson & Liza Marklund in 2010

Details of the result of the collaboration between James Patterson and Swedish author Liza Marklund are now on amazon.

The book is called The Postcard Killers, and is published in August in the US and September in the UK.

Synopsis from amazon:

NYPD detective Jack Kanon is on a tour of Europe's most gorgeous cities. But the sights aren't what draw him--he sees each museum, each cathedral, and each restaurant through a killer's eyes.

Kanon's daughter, Kimmy, and her boyfriend were murdered while on vacation in Rome. Since then, young couples in Paris, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, and Stockholm have become victims of the same sadistic killers. Now Kanon teams up with the Swedish reporter, Dessie Larsson. Every killing is preceded by a postcard to the local newspaper--and Kanon and Larsson think they know where the next victims will be. With relentless logic and unstoppable action, THE POSTCARD KILLERS may be James Patterson's most vivid and compelling thriller yet.

Will you be reading this book?

12 months of Gene Hunt

Had I but known that such a thing was available then I'd have put it on my Xmas list but I only spotted it today in the shops:


It seems to be out of stock at many online retailers, amazon marketplace has one at £99.99...

As one Wallander closes, another one opens...

The brilliant Swedish series of Wallander has just finished on BBC4 with The Secret, but Kenneth Branagh's version returns on Sunday at 9pm on BBC1 with Faceless Killers (the first book in the series and fourth to be televised). The BBC press release is here.

vs

And like buses, not only is there one but two crime programmes on on Sunday. Which to watch and which to record? Scheduled against Wallander is Poirot: Three Act Tragedy (on ITV1 8-10pm) and the guest stars include Martin Shaw and Art Malik.

The full ITV press release is here but here are a few paras from David Suchet concerning Martin Shaw and also the filming locations:

"Three Act Tragedy is to do with this great star, played by Martin Shaw, who swans around and we see his world, his theatrical world if you like, of how he lives, his loves and his tragedies. In it we see crime, we see murder.

"The way the adaptation of Three Act Tragedy works is terrific. Ashley Pearce, who has directed other Poirot’s and therefore knows Poirot very well, has been wonderfully creative and done a sort of theatrical presentation of it.

"It was particularly wonderful for me to be reunited with Martin Shaw. Martin and I go right the way back. It was the first time we worked together since The Professionals, so the best part of 40 years ago. Martin is a really great actor and it was really good to be working with him again.

The main locations we used for Poirot: Three Act Tragedy were Knebworth House and Eltham Palace. Speaking about these David says, “On Poirot we have the great privilege on this series of going to some of the finest locations in England. To go to Knebworth is like going back into another era.

“Although the exterior of Crow’s Nest was filmed in the South West of England we looked for an interior location that we could make look as though it fitted the outside, and we found this at Eltham Palace.

“It was a great joy for me to film at Eltham Palace. It is the most extraordinary location and place to visit. It is very 1930s and very art-deco as well.

“I have two great soft spots for Eltham Palace, one because I do the audio guide there – so if you ever go to Eltham Palace you will hear my voice saying, ‘And on your right is...’ And my other is that it was where we filmed when I played Robert Maxwell, for which I received an Emmy. Going back there was very special to me.”

OT: Foxy in the Snow

Here's Foxy in the snow on Christmas Day, up to his ankle in the stuff. We only had an inch or so in this part of the world and the heavy snow predicted for today hasn't arrived yet.

I've been rather quiet as my pc has had a back-up/delete/re-install over the festive period. It had become rather slow to the point of un-usability (as those who use Windows probably know about) and it seems to be better for now.

I hope to post some more crime fiction related stuff shortly.

Copycat Cover - Best Foot Forward

Elena Forbes's Our Lady of Pain came out in this edition in February. Lauren Barnholdt's (teenage) One Night That Changes Everything will be published in the US in July.

Christmas Crime 2009

Over the last few years I've posted about a few books each December with a Christmas setting and these can be found here.

Kerrie has a meme, aggregating posts from different blogs suggesting Christmas titles at Mysteries in Paradise. Here's one from me which has nothing to do with euro crime but everything to do with coffee!

There's nothing cozier than a winter evening in Greenwich Village. Streetlights shimmer through icy flakes, cafés glow with welcoming warmth, and a layer of snow dusts historic townhouses like powdered sugar on holiday confections. Murder has no place in such a pretty picture, until now...

Coffeehouse manager Clare Cosi has grown very fond of Alfred Glockner, the part-time comic and genuinely jolly charity Santa who's been using her Village Blend as a place to warm his mittens. When she finds him brutally gunned down in a nearby alley, a few subtle clues convince her that Alfred's death was something more than the tragic result of a random mugging--the conclusion of the police. With Clare's boyfriend, NYPD Detective Mike Quinn, distracted by a cold case of his own, and ex-husband Matt investigating this year's holiday lingerie catalogs (an annual event), Clare charges ahead solo to solve her beloved Santa's slaying. Then someone tries to ice Clare, and she really gets steamed. But she'd better watch out, because if she fails to stop this stone cold killer, she may just get the biggest chill of her life.

This very special holiday entry in Cleo Coyle's nationally bestselling mystery series includes a bonus section of delicious holiday recipes as well as a glossary of coffeehouse terms, instructions on making espressos and lattes without an expensive machine, and tips for creating tasty coffeehouse syrups at home.

I haven't read any of this series yet but I have enjoyed the authors'* Alice Kimberley books.
(*Alice Alfonsi and husband Marc Cerasini.)

Cover Theme - Wire Fences

Some recent and forthcoming covers with wire fences...


















Update(s)

New Reviews: Fowler, Grace, Hall, Meyer, Monroe, Weeks

The newest competition which closes on 31 December: Win Murder on the Cliffs by Joanna Challis (UK & Europe only)

Here are the new reviews that have been added to the website (yesterday and) today:

Terry Halligan reviews The Victoria Vanishes by Christopher Fowler and he seems as taken with the series as I am;

Amanda Gillies reviews Tom Grace's The Secret Cardinal and she recommends it to "fans of Tom Clancy and Jack Higgins";

Amanda Brown reviews the latest in Simon Hall's photographer/police-officer series, The Judgement Book writing that "for me this is the best one yet";

Maxine Clarke reviews the paperback edition of Blood Safari by Dean Meyer, tr. K L Seegers (another one of my favourite authors) and Maxine begins her review: "an excellent thriller which held me completely entranced from the moment I opened it and read the first page";

Norman Price enjoyed Aly Monroe's Washington Shadow and is looking forward to more books with her series character Peter Cotton

and Michelle Peckham reviews Lee Weeks' third Johnny Mann book, Death Trip, the violence in which left her seeking a nice cosy read afterwards.

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive and forthcoming titles can be found here.

New Reviews: Grace and Hall

Here are a couple of this week's new reviews, the rest should follow tomorrow:

Amanda Gillies reviews Tom Grace's The Secret Cardinal and she recommends it to "fans of Tom Clancy and Jack Higgins"

and Amanda Brown reviews the latest in Simon Hall's photographer/police-officer series, The Judgement Book writing that "for me this is the best one yet".

More reviews can be found on the review page

Upcoming releases can be found here and the December competition is here.

OT: Caturday Photo

I'm not sure who was there first but Nimes (aged 18) is looking a bit long-suffering at having to share his chair with Toffee (aged 12).

Bits and Pieces (4)

A few things I've discovered recently:

Sony is to sponsor the e-book category prize at next year’s Crimefest.

Tom Harper aka Edwin Thomas will take over the CWA chair in April from Margaret Murphy.

There's a five minute video interview with William Brodrick author of the 2009 Gold Dagger winning, A Whispered Name, on the Whole Story Audio Books website.

The latest edition of Radio 7's Foul Play which is available to listen again/iplayer is The Adventure of the Murdered Heiress - "Crime writers PD James and HRF Keating try to solve the deadly case of a jewel theft. Written and chaired by Simon Brett".

Website updates - December

Today, I've refreshed a good chunk of the Euro Crime website:

The Author Websites page now lists 801 sites.*

The New & Upcoming Releases pages have been updated.

In Bibliographies there are now bibliographies for 1504 authors (7715 titles with links to 1641 reviews):

I've added new bibliographies for: Yaba Badoe, John Baird, Barbara Baraldi, Sean Cregan, Ella Griffiths, Luigi Guicciardi, Bruno Hare, Peg Herring, Mike Hodges, Erin Kelly, Zygmunt Miloszewski, Tom Morton, Christi Phillips, Martin Stratford, Robert Tenison, Jeri Westerson, Philip Wilding, Conrad Williams, Patrick Woodrow and Nancy Means Wright.

I've updated the bibliographies (ie added new titles) for: Paul Adam, Catherine Aird, Kate Atkinson, Colin Bateman, Carrie A Bebris, Tonino Benacquista, Mark Billingham, Benjamin Black, Richard Blake, Stephen Booth, John Brady, Simon Brett, Frances Brody, Karen Campbell, Aifric Campbell, Ottavio Cappellani, Jacques Cressex, John Connolly, N J Cooper, Clare Curzon, Carola Dunn, Jeremy Duns, R J Ellory, Helen Fitzgerald, Karin Fossum, Nicci French, Elizabeth George, Ann Granger, J M Gregson, Allan Guthrie, Cora Harrison, Mo Hayder, Mick/M Herron, Matt Hilton, Graham Ison, Claude Izner, Rebecca Jenkins, Mari Jungstedt, Jim Kelly, Bernard Knight, Martin Langfield, Patrick Lennon, Stuart MacBride, Henning Mankell, Scott Mariani, Brian McGilloway, Pat McIntosh, Shirley McKay, Dreda Say Mitchell, Nick Oldham, Sarah Pinborough, Sarah Rayne, Matt Benyon Rees, Rosemary Rowe, Pauline Rowson, Craig Russell, Kate Sedley, EV Seymour, Zoe Sharp, Jeffrey Siger, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Nicola Slade, Sally Spencer, Cath Staincliffe, Aline Templeton, Mark Timlin, Lucie Whitehouse and Anne Zouroudi.

*Note to authors: I have removed a few websites that seemed defunct but if I am now missing yours, do let me know and I'll reinstate it.

Kurt's Back (New Wallander on BBC4)

The eleventh episode of the Swedish Wallander series will be shown on BBC4 on Saturday 12 December at 21.35 and repeated on Wednesday 16 December at 22.55:

Blood Line

Following an argument with her lover on her boat, a woman is found dead. Wallander and the Ystad police investigate - their enquiries lead them to a farm commune and to an old friend of Linda's.

Win: Murder on the Cliffs by Joanna Challis

This month's competition is to win a copy of Murder on the Cliffs by Joanna Challis, the first in a series featuring Daphne du Maurier:

The storm led me to Padthaway. I could never resist the allure of dark swirling clouds, windswept leaves sweeping down cobbled lanes or a view of the sea stirring up its defiant nature. The sea possessed a power all of its own and this part of Cornwall, an isolated stretch of rocky cliff tops and unexplored beaches both enchanted and terrified me.

It is not a lie to say I felt drawn out that day, led to a certain destiny...

So begins this new mystery series featuring young Daphne du Maurier, headstrong, adventurous, and standing at the cusp of greatness.

Walking on the cliffs in Cornwall, she stumbles upon the drowned body of a beautiful woman, dressed only in a nightgown, her hair strewn along the rocks, her eyes gazing up to the heavens. Daphne soon learns that the mysterious woman was engaged to marry Lord Hartley of Padthaway, an Elizabethan mansion full of intriguing secrets.

As the daughter of the famous Sir Gerald du Maurier, Daphne is welcomed into the Hartley home, but when the drowning turns out to be murder, Daphne determines to get to the bottom of the mysteries of Padthaway—in part to find fresh inspiration for her writing, and in part because she cannot resist the allure of grand houses and long buried secrets.

Read Joanna Challis's guest post about the series, here.

The competition question and tie-breaker can be found here.

Site Maintenance

I'm currently doing some Euro Crime site maintenance ie mending broken links and such so unfortunately there won't be any new reviews today. I will be refreshing the bulk of the website and then new releases pages will include more 2010 titles that I've recently discovered.

More later...

Who is Ricardo Cupido?

Private Investigator Ricardo Cupido is Spanish author Eugenio Fuentes's series character and makes his fourth appearance (in English at least) in the recently published At Close Quarters (tr. Martin Schifino), he describes himself on p51:

He’d never been someone given to confidences or talking about himself, but with the passage of time he was becoming even more secretive. He hid from everyone his disappointments, his loneliness, his fears and how fed up he was with his job, the profession that led him to believe that no person can love another forever. He kept those impressions to himself, where no one might see them and point out their painful harshness. Looking back, he realised he’d been able to salvage very few things from the wreckage of time, that the wealth of his youthful dreams had rotted before they could come true. He no longer hoped to have children. Nor did it seem likely that he would have for a woman feelings as intense as when he had first loved. He no longer believed that an ideology could make the world a better place; and as for the human condition, well, he’d seen his fair share of evil and misery, and had concluded that some men can only do harm. He’d seen people die and people kill. It was true that, when he thought of the future, the moral landscape he identified in himself was not lacking in dignity, but it wasn’t the kind best shared with anyone else. He was over forty and knew that, unless he did something about it, he’d get lonelier as each year passed. Up to this age, he often told himself, most of the people one has met and known are alive, but from now on the balance will start to even out, until the presence of the living weighs as much as the memories of the dead. And a little later everyone would start dying around him, if his number didn’t come up first.

On the High 'C's

Good news in the Bookseller for fans of Ann Cleeves and Martina Cole:

Pan Macmillan is to rejacket crime author Ann Cleeves’ Inspector Vera Stanhope novels with an “atmospheric” new look.

The publisher has also delayed publication of the titles to tie in with broadcast of the ITV1 adaptation of Cleeves’ novel Hidden Depths, which has now been set for September 2010.

Hidden Depths, The Crow Trap and Telling Tales will now be published on 3rd September as £7.99 B-­format paperbacks by Pan, with a new Vera Stanhope novel, as yet untitled, to be published as a £16.99 hardback on the same day by Macmillan.

Raven Black, the first title in Cleeves’ Shetland series, will also be a BBC Radio 4 “Afternoon Play” in January.

Read the whole article and view the new cover here.

Headline has signed a new four-book deal with bestselling crime author Martina Cole.

Since Cole signed with Headline in 1992, for the debut Dangerous Lady, she has published 16 bestsellers with combined sales of more than 10m copies. Her latest novel, Hard Girls, has sold more than 126,000 copies in five weeks and knocked Dan Brown off the number one spot.

This year Sky One broadcast a dramatisation of her novel "The Take". The same channel will show an adaptation of The Runaway in early 2010.

Read the whole article here.

Guest Post: Joanna Challis on writing about Daphne du Maurier

Joanna Challis's first Daphne du Maurier mystery is Murder on the Cliffs:

The storm led me to Padthaway. I could never resist the allure of dark swirling clouds, windswept leaves sweeping down cobbled lanes or a view of the sea stirring up its defiant nature. The sea possessed a power all of its own and this part of Cornwall, an isolated stretch of rocky cliff tops and unexplored beaches both enchanted and terrified me.

It is not a lie to say I felt drawn out that day, led to a certain destiny...

So begins this new mystery series featuring young Daphne du Maurier, headstrong, adventurous, and standing at the cusp of greatness.

Walking on the cliffs in Cornwall, she stumbles upon the drowned body of a beautiful woman, dressed only in a nightgown, her hair strewn along the rocks, her eyes gazing up to the heavens. Daphne soon learns that the mysterious woman was engaged to marry Lord Hartley of Padthaway, an Elizabethan mansion full of intriguing secrets.

As the daughter of the famous Sir Gerald du Maurier, Daphne is welcomed into the Hartley home, but when the drowning turns out to be murder, Daphne determines to get to the bottom of the mysteries of Padthaway—in part to find fresh inspiration for her writing, and in part because she cannot resist the allure of grand houses and long buried secrets.

---

Joanna Challis explains the background to her new series:

Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley.

The storm led me to Padthaway.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is my all-time favourite book. I also love the black and white movie with Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, chillingly transcribed to screen by Alfred Hitchcock. So when my agent first came up with the idea of using Daphne as a fictional heroine, I blinked not once but twice.

I never thought of writing as a real person. The first thing that flashed through my mind was ‘restricted.’ Unlike fictional protagonists, real people and more so real ‘famous’ people left behind a wealth of information.

Daphne du Maurier did more than that. She wrote her own biography Myself When Young charting her early years up to the publication of her first novel and marriage. Daphne is quoted as saying “an autobiography is self-indulgent” and when asked if she planned a sequel to Myself When Young, she replied: “No. I believe one can become too introspective writing this type of thing. I intend to look to the future rather than the past and all I can say is that I had a very happy married life, have a delightful family, and I don’t like books which are full of name dropping.”

Myself When Young – the Shaping of a Writer formed the basis for my fictional Daphne. Although many biographers have stitched together other versions of the real Daphne, none can compare to the horse’s own mouth. In her autobiography, she paints a painfully honest picture of herself, her relationship with her parents and her sisters, her education in Paris, her love for Cornwall and abhorrence for London life, her unrelenting interest in history and her ambition to succeed as a writer. As I devoured Myself When Young, I realized I had a kindred spirit in Daphne. She loved the same things I did: travel, ruins, history, and writing. She often felt socially inept, drawn more to observe people than participate. She loved adventure and intrigue and there were no limits to her imagination.

Of course, I knew when embarking upon a new mystery series featuring Daphne du Maurier, particular criticism would be levelled at me. In creating a fictional Daphne, a heroine starring in her own fictional novel, one providing inspiration for her future works, I had to distance myself from the magnitude of biographers out there who all had a pre-conceived idea of who Daphne was. At the end of the day, nobody knows the real Daphne but Daphne herself and she is no longer here to speak for herself. The legacy of family, friends and her writings are left behind to give us clues and they all paint a fascinating, complex personality, not unlike writers today. Daphne lived in her own world and loved to create worlds. Reading her words, my fictional Daphne-the-heroine leapt off the page and I’m sure if she were alive today, to some extent she would be amused by the thought of becoming an amateur sleuth in the great houses of England.

Sharing Daphne’s deep love of Cornwall, I set Murder on the Cliffs, out this month by St Martin’s Minotaur, on the Cornish coast. Above the waves and the cliffs, a great mansion looms called Padthaway, the home of the aristocratic Hartley family. As Daphne is on holidays, she is drawn to the house and the mystery of the young bride found dead on the beach. She won’t rest until she has unearthed all the secrets of the eerie Elizabethan mansion, even if it places her in danger.

Murder on the Cliffs was written with a large nod to Rebecca, du Maurier’s all-time classic. Padthaway forms the inspiration for Manderley and the young dead bride Victoria to Rebecca. Other than that, Murder on the Cliffs has its own mystery to solve and Daphne is just the one to do it. She’s trusted by the family and this provides the perfect basis for her to subtly begin her inquiries.

Murder on the Cliffs (published by St Martin’s Minotaur) is out 1st December, 2009.

Following on with Daphne’s deep love of Cornwall, Peril at Somner House is next, a Winter manor-house mystery set on the Isles of Scilly (to be published 2010).

For more information, please visit www.joanna-challis.com.

Thank you Joanna, I look forward to reading Murder on the Cliffs. A competition for a copy of Murder on the Cliffs will be uploaded soon to the Euro Crime website, so check back here often for details.

Bits and Pieces (3)

A few things I've discovered recently:

A new blog - Murder is Everywhere - "Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Leighton Gage, Michael Stanley, Cara Black and Dan Waddell blog each week on different days from our different corners of the globe".

Campbell Read Books: the only approved online outlet for signed copies of Quintin Jardine's best-selling Bob Skinner and Primavera Blackstone Novels.

Le Serpent will be on Film Four on 10th December at 23.05:
Yvan Attal plays a photographer who becomes the target of a deranged ex-classmate (Clovis Cornillac) who is obsessed with avenging a childhood slight.



This ITV press release reveals more about the plot of VERA which is based on Ann Cleeves's Hidden Depths and stars Brenda Blethyn and David Leon. It will be shown on ITV1 in 2010.

and finally, many thanks to Canongate who've named Euro Crime as their The Gatekeeper's Site of the Week.