Montalbano goes to The Potter's Field

The penultimate episode in this second run of Inspector Montalbano, at 9pm on 3 November, is The Potter's Field, based on The Potter's Field book, the thirteenth in Camilleri's series. The Potter's Field (which I loved) is arguably a perfect crime novel and won the 2012 CWA International Dagger.

As torrential rain pours down on Vigata, a plastic bag containing a body cut into pieces is found in a clay field. All the signs point to an old-fashioned Mafia killing. But why is Montalbano's trusted colleague and friend Mimi Augello suddenly irritable and short-tempered, and why is he insisting that the investigation be assigned to him? Could Mimi somehow be involved in the case?

Jo Nesbo & Harry Hole news

I was very pleased to receive this press release from Harvill Secker yesterday about two more Harry Hole books coming into English next year and confirming that Phantom wasn't the end of the series:

...POLICE will be published by Harvill Secker in autumn 2013.

POLICE continues the story of PHANTOM, which was a Sunday Times #2 bestseller when it was published in March this year, spending 7 weeks in the top ten. The Harry Hole novels have sold over 15 million copies worldwide, over 3 million of those in the UK.

Fans will also be delighted by the news that COCKROACHES, the second book in the Harry Hole series, will be published shortly after POLICE. With its publication, readers will have access to all ten books in Jo Nesbo’s bestselling series. THE BAT, the first ever Harry Hole novel, was published for the first time in English this October by Harvill Secker and went straight into the Sunday Times bestseller list.

Jo Nesbo visited London last week for the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards where he was elected into the International Crime Writing Hall of Fame, alongside such luminaries as Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, P D James, Lee Child, Val McDermid, Kathy Reichs and Mark Billingham.

The Harry Hole books in order.

Cats in Crime Fiction

My other half is currently reading Tom-All-Alone's by Lynn Shepherd (which I got for him as he likes his Dickens) and he is regaling me with quotes about the main character's cat.

"The cat wakes, stretches languorously on the bed then turns himself slowly upside-down, inviting adulation."

(As demonstrated by Foxy.)

Read the Euro Crime review by Terry.

BSP: Cited in White Death

Spotted this today in the paperback edition of White Death by Tobias Jones, a quote from Laura's review:

More Euro Crime citations can be found here.

New Reviews: Blake, Creed, Garnier, McNeill, O'Connor, Rowson, Russell, Shepherd, Varenne

Here are 9 new reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today:

Rich Westwood reviews Nicholas Blake's third Nigel Strangeways mystery There's Trouble Brewing which was reissued earlier this year with three other titles;

Geoff Jones reviews Adam Creed's fourth DI Wagstaffe book Death in the Sun set in Spain;

Earlier this week I reviewed Pascal Garnier's How's the Pain? tr. Emily Boyce a most unusual short crime story;

Susan White reviews the debut from Fergus McNeill, Eye Contact set in Severn Beach;

Maxine Clarke reviews Niamh O'Connor's Too Close for Comfort, the third in her DI Jo Birmingham series set in Dublin;

Lizzie Hayes reviews Pauline Rowson's Death Lies Beneath the eight in her Portsmouth based series featuring DI Andy Horton;

Amanda Gillies reviews Leigh Russell's fourth DI Geraldine Steele outing Death Bed set in London;

Terry Halligan reviews Lynn Shepherd's Tom-All-Alone's (apa The Solitary House), set in the milieu of Bleak House

and Lynn Harvey reviews Antonin Varenne's Bed of Nails tr. Sian Reynolds set in Paris and Lynn writes that it is "a powerful and original debut crime story, definitely one for Vargas fans".

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive.

Forthcoming titles can be found by author or date or by category, here along with releases by year.

OT: It's double Cat-urday

The "girls" (now 15) get a bit overlooked Caturday-wise because they are quite difficult to get decent pictures of, especially Pippa, the darker tortie. Here they are quite recently:

New titles from Little Brown (Jan - June 13)

The catalogues for January to June 2013 are rolling in so I will be doing individual posts per publisher, starting off with Little, Brown (and their imprints). Here are the titles relevant to Euro Crime (or are translated):

Little Brown

February

Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino

Abacus

February

The Day of the Lie

by William Brodrick (paperback) (4th Father Anselm)

March

The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection by Alexander McCall Smith (paperback) (13th Mma Ramotswe, PI, Botswana)

April 

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Simon Mawer (paperback)

June

The Crocodile by Maurizio de Giovanni (1st Inspector Giuseppe Lojacono, Naples)

May

The Black Rose of Florence

by Michele Giuttari (paperback) (5th Michele Ferrara, Squadra Mobile, Florence)

June

When the Devil Drives by Chris Brookmyre (paperback) (2nd Jasmine Sharp, PI, Glasgow)

Sphere

January

Death in St James's Park by Susanna Gregory (8th Thomas Chaloner, Restoration London)

March

The Swedish Girl by Alex Gray (10th DCI Lorimer & psychologist Solomon Brightman, Glasgow)

April

The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (debut) (1st Cormoran Strike)

The Tooth Tattoo by Peter Lovesey (13th Peter Diamond, Bath)

Bad Girl by Roberta Kray

June

Next to Die by Neil White (1st David & Mike Parker, Manchester)

The Game by Tom Wood (3rd Victor, Assassin)

Already Dead by Stephen Booth (13th Detectives Ben Cooper & Diane Fry, Peak District)

Piatkus

March

A Woman Unknown by Frances Brody (paperback) (4th Kate Shackleton, Bradford, 1920s)

Giving Hay the Heave-Ho

I went to Hay on Wye today and sadly this may be my last time. There are posters like the one below dotted around the town. One cafe has asked customers to refrain from using laptops, iPads and iPhones in their premises.

I got my Kindle out in The Granary - which has wi-fi - before I realised that I was putting myself at risk of assault (watch the anti-Kindle video on the hayontv website).

Videos for and against Kindles can be found on Hayontv.com.

You cannot even buy a Kindle book in Hay on Wye (at least from your Kindle) as it has no mobile signal and is currently resisting the introduction of a mast (and a supermarket). Though there is a mobile phone shop...

Review: How's the Pain? by Pascal Garnier

How's the Pain? by Pascal Garnier translated by Emily Boyce, June 2012, 163 pages, Gallic Books, ISBN: 190831303X

“On the dot of eight o'clock, the TV news signature tune spread like a powder trail down the row of caravans, the newsreader's chubby face replicated endlessly.”

Simon is about to retire from the extermination business and is on his way to his last job. When he is overcome with sickness enroute he decides to spend the night in the Spa town of Val les Bains. There he meets a young man, a very pragmatic soul, Bernard, who is looking after his mother whilst he recuperates from losing two fingers at work.

Simon is feeling unwell and hires Bernard to chauffeur him to the Mediterranean town of Cap d'Agde so he can fulfil his last commission.

How's the Pain? is a short and at times amusing novel about Simon and Bernard's adventure and how things don't go to plan; the people they meet on their journey; the people left behind in Val les Bains; Simon's long career and life in France today.

In the notes from translator Emily Boyce, she writes that ”some...label his [Pascal Garnier's] genre the roman gris, with touches of brightness lightening the grim outlook of noir”.

I enjoyed this book, as I have the two similarly brief novels by the slightly more noir Jean-Patrick Manchette: The Prone Gunman and Three to Kill.

[How's the Pain? is currently available at a good price on UK Kindle (£2.56). ]

Montalbano & The Gull's Dance

The next and tenth episode in this second run of Inspector Montalbano, at 9pm on 27 October, is The Gull's Dance, based on The Dance of the Seagull book, the fifteenth in Camilleri's series. The Dance of the Seagull is to be published in the US in February 2013 (and hopefully later in March 2013 in the UK).

Fazio is missing. He's not at home, his mobile is switched off and his father is worried. Believing that the young officer had been working a secret investigation on his own, Montalbano fears that Fazio may be in serious trouble and a frantic search is mounted in an effort to find him alive.

European Crime Writing & Martin Beck on Radio 4

A reminder that a weekday, daily series about European Crime Writing begins on Radio 4 this afternoon and that the Martin Beck Killings, starring Steven Mackintosh, begin on the 27th:

Foreign Bodies presented by Mark Lawson starts on BBC Radio 4 on Monday October 22^nd at 13.45 – with a shortened omnibus edition on Fridays at 9pm.  Each episode is available to download.     

The Martin Beck Killings are broadcast on Saturday afternoons beginning October 27^th at 2.30pm.

Details of the first few episodes, which begin with Poirot and Maigret can be found here. Each episode is 15 minutes long.

Foreign Bodies: A History Of Modern Europe Through Literary Detectives

Crime fiction reflects society's tensions. Helped by famous literary detectives including Maigret, Montalbano, Dalgliesh and Wallander, Mark Lawson shows how crimes reflect Europe's times from the world wars of the 20th century to the Eurozone crisis and nationalist tensions of the 21st. In programme one, Mark Lawson looks at the template set by a Belgian created by an Englishwoman and a French cop created by a Belgian: Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Georges Simenon's Jules Maigret hearing from Val McDermid, Lord Grey Gowrie, Andrea Camilleri and David Suchet.

In crime fiction, everyday details become crucial clues: the way people dress and speak, the cars they drive, the jobs they have, the meals they eat. And the motivations of the criminals often turn on guilty secrets: how wealth was created, who slept with whom, what somebody did in the war. For these reasons, detective novels often tell the story of a place and a time much better than more literary novels and newspapers which can take a lot of contemporary information for granted.

Mark Lawson's series focuses on some of the celebrated investigators of European fiction and their creators: from popular modern protagonists - including Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander, Jo Nesbø's Harry Hole and Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano - through Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus and Lynda La Plante's DCI Jane Tennison back to Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Inspector Barlach and Josef Skvorecký's Lieutenant Boruvka.

The Martin Beck series begins with Sjowall and Wahloo's Roseanna:

Roseanna is the first in the Martin Beck series, written over ten years from 1965 - 1975 by the husband and wife writing team of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. Featuring the intriguing, dogged, intuitive complex figure of Detective Inspector Martin Beck and his colleagues in the National Police Homicide Department in Stockholm, the books set a gold standard for all subsequent Scandinavian crime fiction, and for much of the best crime fiction in Britain and America written since the 1960s. The books have been admired and imitated by crime writers and readers ever since their publication; now Radio 4 offers audiences the opportunity to discover just why the books have been so acclaimed by those in the know.

The use of crime and police procedure to hold up a mirror to society and its most dysfunctional elements is commonplace now, but that's because Martin Beck paved the way for subsequent generations of European crime writers whose fallible heroes - Kurt Wallander, John Rebus etc. - make the best fist they can of their own lives whilst trying to tackle the violence around them.

The books were written deliberately to give an unsentimental, realistic portrait of Sweden in the mid-sixties: not the liberal place it was thought to be, but a society suffering from a stifling bureaucracy and a creeping rottenness behind the surface sheen. Confronting the dark side of this society are stubborn, logical, anti-social Detective Inspector Martin Beck, his closest friend Detective Inspector Lennart Kollberg - overweight, hedonistic, opinionated; Detective Inspector Frederick Melander, with a memory like a card-index file and a noxious pipe clamped in his jaws, and their colleagues in the murder squad.

In Roseanna, they are faced with the body of an unknown girl found in a canal dredger. The long investigation ends with a risky and frightening sting.

The twitter hashtag is: #bbcforeignbodies

New Reviews: Faletti, Fitzgerald, Gakas, Giuttari, Gregorio, Kent, Ohlsson, Rinaldi, Vichi

This week we have an Italian theme with seven of the nine reviews either set in Italy, about an Italian or written by an Italian.

Here are 9 new reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today:

[Professor] Michelle Peckham reviews Giorgio Faletti's The Killer in My Eyes, tr. Howard Curtis and has some problems with the "science";

Michelle also reviews Conor Fitzgerald's The Fatal Touch the second in the Commissioner Blume series set in Rome;

Stepping briefly away from Italy, Amanda Gillies reviews the paperback release of Sergios Gakas's Ashes tr. Anne-Marie Stanton-Ife set in 2004 Athens, which reduced her to tears (in a good way);

Lynn Harvey reviews Michele Giuttari's The Black Rose of Florence, tr. Howard Curtis the fifth in the Florence-based Chief Superintendent Michele Ferrara series;

Terry Halligan reviews Michael Gregorio's Unholy Awakening the fourth in their Hanno Stiffeniis series set in 19th Century Prussia;

Terry also reviews Christobel Kent's A Time of Mourning (apa The Drowning River) the first in the Sandro Cellini PI series also set in Florence;

Going north to Sweden, earlier this week I reviewed Silenced by Kristina Ohlsson, tr. Sarah Death the second in the series featuring a specialist Stockholm police team;

Maxine Clarke reviews Lucia Rinaldi's Andrea Camilleri: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction, "a complete accessory to the Inspector Montalbano novels and short stories by Andrea Camilleri"

and Lynn also reviews Marco Vichi's Death in Sardinia, tr. Stephen Sartarelli the third in the Inspector Bordelli series set in 1960s Italy.

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive.

Forthcoming titles can be found by author or date or by category, here along with releases by year.

CWA Awards 2012 - Gold, Steel & Creasey winners

The winners of the CWA's Gold, Ian Fleming and John Creasey Daggers were announced last night:

CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger:

Heart-Shaped Bruise by Tanya Byrne (Headline)
A Land More Kind than Home by Wiley Cash (Transworld/Bantam) - Winner
Good People by Ewart Hutton (HarperCollins)
What Dies in Summer by Tom Wright (Canongate)

Wiley Cash said "As an American writer, it's a shock and a real honor to win an award in a genre with such a proud British tradition."

CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger:

Dare Me by Megan Abbott (Picador)
A Foreign Country by Charles Cumming (HarperCollins) - Winner
The Fear Index by Robert Harris (Hutchinson)
Reamde by Neal Stephenson (Atlantic Books)

Charles Cumming said "For spy writers, the Steel Dagger is our Booker prize, so I'm thrilled to have won such a prestigious award. Some great writers have picked up the Steel Dagger, including Henry Porter, Dan Fesperman and Tom Rob Smith. I'm honoured to have joined their ranks."

CWA Gold Dagger:

Vengeance in Mind by N.J. Cooper (Simon & Schuster)
The Flight by M.R. Hall (Mantle)

The Rage by Gene Kerrigan (Vintage) - Winner

Bereft by Chris Womersley (Quercus)

Gene Kerrigan commented: "I'm aware of the writers who have previously received the Gold Dagger and I'm honoured to have my name on the same page."

Other Dagger winners:

The Specsaver’s Bestseller Dagger 2012:

• Kathy Reichs

The Film Dagger

• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Studio Canal)

The TV Dagger

• Sherlock: Series 2 (Hartswood Films/BBC1)

The International TV Dagger

• The Bridge (Danmarks Radio, Sveriges Television/BBC4)

The Best Actress Dagger

• Claire Danes for Homeland (Teakwood Lane Productions, Showtime Productions, Cherry Pie Productions, Keshet Media Group, Fox 21/Channel 4)

The Best Actor Dagger

• Benedict Cumberbatch for Sherlock (Hartswood Films/BBC1)

The Best Supporting Actress Dagger

• Kelly Macdonald for Boardwalk Empire (HBO/Sky Atlantic)

The Best Supporting Actor Dagger

• Martin Freeman for Sherlock (Hartswood Films/BBC1)

Montalbano's Age of Doubt & some good news

The next and ninth episode in this second run of Inspector Montalbano, at 9pm on 20 October, is The Age of Doubt, based on The Age of Doubt book, the fourteenth in Camilleri's series. The Age of Doubt is published in the UK on 22 November though it was released in the US in May.

The yacht of a wealthy woman docks at Vigata's harbour as a disfigured body is discovered at sea. Coastguard Laura Belladonna is assigned to the case to assist Montalbano and the two soon become close. The investigation casts doubts on the motives and sincerity of the yacht's crew and Montalbano begins to suspect that there may be more to the story they have given him.










The Age of Doubt is actually the last episode shown in Italy however there is good news. Luca Zingaretti is reprising the role for four more episodes. From (a Google translation of) Sorrisi.com:

How many new episodes of Montalbano is running?

"Four, the last two novels out," The game of mirrors "and" The smile of Angelica, "and two as yet unpublished," A blade of light "and" The Voice of night. '"

Review: Silenced by Kristina Ohlsson

Silenced by Kristina Ohlsson translated by Sarah Death, August 2012, 468 pages, Simon & Schuster UK, ISBN: 1847379613

The Stockholm police special team headed by Alex Recht returns in Silenced, the sequel to Unwanted. Alex's team is small comprising civilian Fredrika, the promising but sexist Peder and a newcomer Joar.

After Fredrika's performance in Unwanted she is now accepted in the team (and the tiresome attitudes against her have gone). Heavily pregnant and not feeling well she is on reduced hours so Joar is brought in. He and Peder do not get on particularly well at the beginning and their relationship deteriorates.

The team are handed two cases both of which may not be murder but are a bit fishy. One is a hit-and-run and the other a murder-suicide of a vicar and his wife resulting from the death of one of their daughters. The team must locate the couple's other daughter to break the bad news. When it's discovered that the vicar was a passionate supporter of helping immigrants and had even hidden illegal entrants to the country in his home in the past, then the investigation initially focusses on a right-wing group. Meanwhile the hit-and-run victim had some scraps of paper with Arabic on them. Are the two cases linked and if they are, how? And where is the missing daughter?

Interspersed in the Stockholm sections are chapters from an unidentified Swedish woman in Thailand who is in deep trouble; her identity's being erased and she's trapped.

As well as the police investigation and the Thailand segments, time is spent on the personal lives of the main players in the team in particular Fredrika and her unusual domestic set-up, Peder with his immature behaviour and Alex whose wife seems to be hiding something from him.

Silenced is an entertaining and easy read, the 468 pages fly by, helped partly by a large print size and wide margins but mainly by the unravelling of a complex story with its several unforeseen twists. The police investigation is handled better than in Unwanted (with phone records and unlimited surveillance teams apparently readily and immediately available) and it all takes place over a breathless few days. Ohlsson likes to put her characters through the emotional ringer so there are a couple of shocks at the end of the book, one has more impact than the other due to the time invested in the affected parties.

Fans of Kjell Eriksson should enjoy Kristina Ohlsson's books with their mix of domestic, professional and political issues.

Website Updates - October 2012

Website Update

The Euro Crime website's state of play on 14.10.12:

On the Reviews page links to individual pages have been added for reviewers Mark Bailey, Lynn Harvey, Lizzie Hayes, Sarah Hilary, Rich Westwood and Susan White.

On the New Releases page, I've added 2013 UK releases by category (though there aren't any anthologies listed yet).

The Author Websites page now lists 954 sites.

In Bibliographies there are now bibliographies for 1815 authors (9334 titles with links to 2410 reviews).

I've added new bibliographies for: Martyn Beardsley, August Blanche, Susanna Calkins, Phil Campion, Karen Charlton, Sheila Connolly, Michael Ennis, M C Grant, Lotte and Soren Hammer, James Harland, Marie Hermanson, Anna Jansson, Seppo Jokinen, Hans Olav Lahlum, Leena Lehtolainen, Pierre Lemaitre, Christopher Radmann, Michael Robertson, Leonard Rosen, Mackenzie Smith, Andrew Swanston, Franck Thilliez and T H White.

I've updated the bibliographies (ie added new titles) for: Jussi Adler-Olsen, Tom Bale, Emily Barr, David Barrie, Quentin Bates, Belinda Bauer, M C Beaton, Tom Benn, Parker Bilal, Benjamin Black, Sean Black, Sara Blaedel, Robin Blake, Hilary Bonner, Rhys Bowen, Alan Bradley, Christopher Brookmyre, John Burdett, Declan Burke, Andrea Camilleri, Chris Carter, Maureen Carter, Jane Casey, Joyce Cato, Ann Cleeves, Martina Cole, Alex Connor, John Connor, F G Cottam, Lindsey Davis, A M Dean, Maurizio De Giovanni, Anders de la Motte, P C/Paul Doherty, James Douglas, Ruth (R S) Downie, David Downing, Martin Edwards, Chris Ewan, Barry Fantoni, Conor Fitzgerald, Tana French, Michele Giuttari, Alan Glynn, Christopher (C W) Gortner, Alex Gray, Susanna Gregory, Elly Griffiths, Penny Grubb, Peter Guttridge, Wolf Haas, M R Hall, Bruno Hare, Tom Harper, Cora Harrison, Veronica Heley, Mandasue Heller, James Henry, Antonio Hill, Matt Hilton, David Hodges, Arnaldur Indridason, Graham Ison, David Jackson, Quintin Jardine, Paul Johnston, Doug Johnstone, Tobias Jones, Will Jordan, Mari Jungstedt, Mons Kallentoft, Erin Kelly, Jim Kelly, Simon Kernick, Max Kinnings, Tom Knox, Roberta Kray, Deryn Lake, Stephen Leather, Howard Linskey, Michael Litchfield, Frances Lloyd, Peter Lovesey, Stuart/Stuart B MacBride, Liza Marklund, Edward/A E Marston, Andy McDermott, Claire McGowan, Grant McKenzie, The Medieval Murderers, Denise Mina, Aly Monroe, Susan Moody Frank/T F Muir, Barbara Nadel, Jo Nesbo, Hakan Nesser, Chris Nickson, Niamh O'Connor, Mark Pearson, Arturo Perez-Reverte, Anne Perry, Leif GW Persson, John Pilkington, Ann Purser, Ian Rankin, Michael Ridpath, Craig Robertson, Michael Robotham, Priscilla Royal, Leigh Russell, Fay Sampson, C J Sansom, Simon Scarrow, Stav Sherez, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Roger Silverwood, Chris Simms, Joanna Campbell Slan, Alexander McCall Smith, Teresa Solana, Sally Spencer, Mel/Melvin R Starr, Jack Steel, Linda Stratmann, Andrew Taylor, Aline Templeton, The Mulgray Twins, Rebecca Tope, Simon Toyne, M J Trow, Fred Vargas, Marco Vichi, Jan Costin Wagner, Alex Walters, Minette Walters, Robert Wilson, Emily Winslow, Tom Wood and Anne Zouroudi.

If you spot any errors or omissions please do let me know.

Danish Tasties

A number of Danish authors/titles are getting a UK publication next year:

Jussi Adler-Olsen's Department Q series continues with Redemption published in April and Contempt in September (no details available yet), published by Penguin.

Two boys, brothers, wake tied and bound in a boathouse by the sea. Their kidnapper has gone, but soon he will return. Their bonds are inescapable. But there is a bottle and tar to seal it. Paper and a splinter for writing; blood for ink. A message begging for help.

In Copenhagen's cold cases division Carl Mørck has received a bottle. It holds an old and decayed message, written in blood. It is a cry for help from two boys. Is it real? Who are they and why weren't they reported missing? Can they possibly still be alive?








In June, Bloomsbury publish The Hanging by Lotte and Søren Hammer...

The first in an exciting new six-part crime series, international bestseller The Hanging is an explosive introduction to the dark world of Copenhagen police investigator Konrad Simonsen On a cold Monday morning before school begins, two children make a gruesome discovery. Hanging from the roof of the school gymnasium are the bodies of five naked and heavily disfigured men. Detective Chief Superintendent Konrad Simonsen and his team from the Murder Squad in Copenhagen are called in to investigate this horrific case - the men hanging in a geometric pattern; the scene so closely resembling a public execution. When the identities of the five victims and the disturbing link between them is leaked to the press, the sinister motivation behind the killings quickly becomes apparent to the police. Up against a building internet campaign and even members of his own team, Simonsen finds that he must battle public opinion and vigilante groups in his mission to catch the killers. A nerve-wrenching look at justice and retribution, The Hanging is a spectacular crime tale straight from the heart of Scandinavia.

and in July the UK edition of Sara Blaedel's Call Me Princess (US title) is published as Blue Blood, y Sphere. According to her Facebook page Blue Blood should be available as an ebook in December 2012.

In an idyllic neighbourhood of Copenhagen, a young woman, Susanne Hansson, is discovered in her apartment bound and gagged, the victim of an extraordinarily brutal rape attack. Detective Inspector Louise Rick soon learns that Susanne met the rapist on a popular online dating site, something Susanne shamefully tries to hide.

Events quickly spiral out of control as a horrified Louise realises that the rapist is using the website to target specific women for future attacks. But as she soon finds out, he has no intention of leaving these other victims alive...

Undercover and in danger in this world of faceless dating, Louise must try and stop a murderer who has shocked Copenhagen to its core. But how much is she willing to risk in order to catch a killer?



But before those we have Invisible Murder by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis, the sequel to The Boy in the Suitcase, published in November 2012 by Soho Press.

In the eagerly awaited follow-up to The Boy in the Suitcase, Red Cross nurse Nina Borg's life is at a turning point. Her husband, Morten, has pleaded with her not to get involved in any more dangerous projects assisting illegal immigrants and refugees. But when Morten is away on business, Nina agrees to help her friend Peter at a camp of mysteriously ill Roma refugee children. The situation reveals itself to be much more complicated and perilous than she could have imagined, yet suddenly more than her marriage is at risk.

Publishing Deal - Hans Olav Lahlum

A brief snippet in today's Bookseller about a new to English crime trilogy from Norwegian author Hans Olav Lahlum:

Mantle publisher Maria Rejt has acquired world English language rights  in a crime trilogy written by Norwegian historian Hans Olav Lahlum.

Rejt plans to publish all three titles in 2014.

The first book is titled Human Flies and is scheduled for March 2014. Here's a description from the Panmacmillan rights guide catalogue:

Oslo, 1968. The body of Harald Olesen, politician and war hero who fought with the resistance, is found in his apartment. He has been shot dead.

As Detective Inspector Kolbein Kristiansen (known as K2) begins to investigate, it quickly becomes clear that the murderer can only be one of Olesen’s fellow tenants in the apartment building.

Soon, with the help of a brilliant, wheelchair-bound young woman, Patricia, K2 will find his investigations leading back to dark events that took place during the Second World War; and discover that each of the building’s tenants harbours a reason for wanting Olesen dead.

This gripping mystery – the first in a trilogy featuring K2 and Patricia – is a homage to the great Agatha Christie and will plunge readers into a complex web of deceit and betrayal, corruption and murder . . .

Inspector Montalbano: The Paper Moon

The next and eighth episode in this second run of Inspector Montalbano, at 9pm on 13 October, is Paper Moon, based on The Paper Moon book, the ninth in Camilleri's series.

(Whereas the episodes have been shown in two series in the UK, in Italy they were shown in eight series over twelve years. The Paper Moon is the the last episode in the seventh series, shown in Italy in 2008. The  final set of four episodes were shown in 2011.)

A distressed woman arrives at Vigata police station to report the disappearance of her brother. Soon enough, the man is found murdered in what appears to have been a crime of passion. But Montalbano is reluctant to give too much credit to appearances and digs into the victim's past, talking to anyone who might have had an involvement in the case. Meanwhile, a number of high-profile businessmen and politicians die as a result of cocaine overdoses.

New Reviews: Brodrick, Brooks, Ceder, Chatterton, Conway, Dahl, Kray, Meyer, Upson

Here are 9 new reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today:

Terry Halligan reviews William Brodrick's The Day of the Lie, the fourth in the Father Anselm series;

Susan White reviews Kevin Brooks' Until the Darkness Comes the second in the John Craine, private detective, series;

Maxine Clarke reviews Camilla Ceder's follow-up to Frozen Moment, Babylon tr. Marlaine Delargy which sees the return of Gothenburg detective Christian Tell and co.;

Mark Bailey reviews Ed Chatterton's first foray into adult crime fiction, A Dark Place to Die set in Liverpool;

Lynn Harvey reviews and thoroughly recommends Rock Creek Park by Simon Conway;

Earlier this week I reviewed The Blinded Man by Arne Dahl, tr. Tiina Nunnally also published as Misterioso;

Lizzie Hayes reviews Roberta Kray's Nothing But Trouble which is now out in paperback;

Terry wishes all books he reviewed were as good as Deon Meyer's Heart of the Hunter tr. K L Seegers

and Susan also reviews Nicola Upson's Fear in the Sunlight the fourth in this series featuring Josephine Tey, now out in paperback

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive.

Forthcoming titles can be found by author or date or by category, here along with releases by year.

Poirot & Me by David Suchet (Press Release)

I'm looking forward to this one, Poirot and Me by David Suchet and Geoffrey Wansell:

Press Release:

Headline’s Emma Tait has acquired the world rights in Poirot and Me by David Suchet, writing with Geoffrey Wansell.

Filming is about to commence on the very last episodes of the international television phenomenon Agatha Christie’s Poirot. These final five episodes will mean that all the Poirot stories have been filmed with Suchet in the starring role. In Poirot and Me David Suchet will reflect, for the first time, on the 24 years that he has played the role and the fondness he has formed for the eccentric Belgian detective, and his fans worldwide.

The book was bought at auction from Michael Alcock at Johnson and Alcock. Headline plans to publish in autumn 2013.

Emma Tait: ‘I am so excited to be publishing this book, which offers a unique opportunity in television publishing. Rather than an outsider's overview, it is the story of an iconic role told by the actor himself and it is fantastic to be working so closely with David and Geoffrey. I believe it will be a very special book and a wonderful way for David to bid farewell to his old friend Hercule Poirot.’

David Suchet and Geoffrey Wansell: ‘We are thrilled to be given this chance by Headline to bring his portrayal of Hercule Poirot to life for his millions of fans around the world. It's a wonderful – and rare – opportunity for a character actor to be able to explain his life and craft and exactly how he brought such a famous character to television audiences in more than eighty countries.’

Extracts from book:

“He was as real to me as he had been to her, a great detective, a remarkable man, if, perhaps, just now and then, a little irritating. He had inhabited my life every bit as much as he must have done hers as she wrote thirty-three novels, more than fifty short stories, and a play about him – making Poirot the most famous fictional detective in the world alongside Sherlock Holmes.

But how had it come to this? How had I come to inhabit his morning jacket and pin-striped trousers, his black patent leather shoes and his elegantly brushed grey Homburg hat for so many years? What brought us together? Was there something in me that found a particular echo in this short, tubby man in his sixties given to pince-nez and saying ‘chut’ instead of ‘ssh’?

Looking back now, these many years later, I suspect in my heart there was.”

“In the end Brian and I came up with a moustache that we both thought exactly conveyed what Dame Agatha had in mind – a small, neat, carefully waxed one that curled upwards at each end, and where the tip of each of end of the moustache would be level with the tip of my nose. For us it was the best-looking waxed moustache in England, and exactly what Hercule Poirot must have.”

From Lynley to Gamache

Very British thesp Nathaniel Parker, probably best known for playing Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley, has been cast as Quebecois Chief Inspector Armand Gamache in Still Life, based on Louise Penny's novel. From her website:

STILL LIFE (PDM Entertainment): Based on the award-winning novels by international best-selling author Louise Penny, comes an event TV movie about murder in a small town. The village of Three Pines, Quebec may seem tranquil, but all is not as it appears. In this psychological thriller that combines Hitchcock with Christie, death comes to this peaceful Eden, and brings with it Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, the head of Homicide for the Surete du Quebec. Here he discovers that nature, both human and otherwise, is capable of great beauty, and great cruelty. Beneath the exterior of the pretty little village, dark secrets lie hidden. Behind cheerful smiles, hurtful thoughts swirl. As he digs deeper, Chief Inspector Gamache finds old sins, buried alive. Rancid and stinking. And now, one of those secrets has surfaced, and created a corpse. C.I. Gamache must follow the trail of smiles and lies, of courtesy and cruelty. To the killer.

From her Facebook page:

Stanbridge East, in Quebec's Eastern Townships is standing in for Three Pines

Nathaniel Parker has recently been in Merlin:

and will appear next Friday (12th) in a new BBC Comedy, Me and Mrs Jones:

Review: The Blinded Man by Arne Dahl

The Blinded Man by Arne Dahl translated by Tiina Nunnally, July 2012, 437 pages, Vintage, ISBN: 009957568X

When Stockholm police officer Paul Hjelm shoots (and injures rather than kills) a hostage-taker he is hailed as a hero by the media but is not so popular with internal affairs who think his unofficial behaviour may encourage others. Instead of being sacked though, he is seconded to a new team, the A-Unit, a hand-picked team of detectives who are tasked with solving the murders of two top Swedish businessmen. They have more powers than the normal police and they can use the Swedish police to do their donkey work.

THE BLINDED MAN follows the team's efforts to track down the serial killer and involves routine police-work during which the team begin to bond and the different personalities are revealed.

Incidentally, SAPO, the security forces, are yet again (see Larsson, Tegenfalk) shown in a bad light as they jump to the conclusion that the deaths are the work of terrorist undermining Sweden's economy and go their own way.

Despite being over ten years old (first published in Swedish in 1999) the storyline involving bankers, a depressed economy and immigration policies is very contemporary.

THE BLINDED MAN is a solid police procedural with a group of unusual police officers, from different regions of Sweden and different cultural backgrounds. The plot is well thought out and unusual though I found the pace did slow a bit in the middle. This was an enjoyable read with plenty of humour and I look forward to the next book, BAD BLOOD, in 2013.

NB. THE BLINDED MAN was first published in English in the US under its original Swedish title MISTERIOSO.

Montalbano's The Track of Sand is next

The next episode in this second run of Inspector Montalbano, at 9pm on 6 October, is The Track of Sand, based on the book, the twelfth in Camilleri's series.

Montalbano wakes up one morning to find the carcass of a dead horse stranded on the beach below his house. Soon after, a beautiful woman walks into Vigata police station to report the abduction of her racehorse. A line of investigation emerges that brings Montalbano into contact with the elegant world of horse racing, via some illegal horse betting rackets organised by the Mafia.

Event News: Boris Akunin in London (February 2013)

From an email from the London Review Bookshop:

Russian crime writer Boris Akunin will be in conversation with James Meek about how his writing reflects and interacts with literary traditions, as well as Russian culture, history and politics.

A philologist, critic, essayist, and translator of Japanese, Boris Akunin published his first detective stories in 1998 and has already become one of the most widely read authors in Russia. His Erast Fandorin books, full of literary games and allusions, are translated into English by Andrew Bromfield.

The event is on Friday 1 February at 7.00 pm and tickets are £10, bookable here.

Boris Akunin's bibliography on the Euro Crime website.