New Reviews: Brett, Camilleri, Connor, Griffiths, James, Robertson, Russell, Webster, Zeh

Here are nine reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today, four have appeared on the blog over the last couple of weeks and five are completely new.

Plus a new competition - win an iBook of Invisible by Christine Poulson (no geographical restrictions).


NB. You can keep up to date with Euro Crime by following the blog and/or liking the Euro Crime Facebook page.

New Reviews

Mark Bailey reviews the new Charles Paris mystery from Simon Brett, The Cinderella Killer;

I review the Judges anthology, which contains stories by Andrea Camilleri, Carlo Lucarelli and Giancarlo De Cataldo (tr. Joseph Farrell, Alan Thawley and Eileen Horne);

Amanda Gillies reviews The Caravaggio Conspiracy by Alex Connor;

Michelle Peckham reviews the latest in Elly Griffiths's Norfolk-based Ruth Galloway series, The Outcast Dead;

Geoff Jones reviews Want You Dead, the tenth in Peter James's Roy Grace series;

Terry Halligan reviews Craig Robertson's The Last Refuge, set in the Faroe Islands;

Amanda also reviews Fatal Act by Leigh Russell, the latest in her DI Geraldine Steel series;

Lynn Harvey reviews Jason Webster's Blood Med, set in Valencia

and Laura Root reviews Juli Zeh's Decompression tr. John Cullen which is set in Lanzarote.

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.

Review: Judges - Camilleri, Lucarelli & De Cataldo

Judges by Andrea Camilleri, Carlo Lucarelli and Giancarlo De Cataldo, translated by Joseph Farrell, Alan Thawley and Eileen Horne, May 2014, 165 pages, MacLehose Press, ISBN: 0857052977

JUDGES is a collection of three short stories from three of Italy's top crime writers. The collection was first published in Italian in 2011 and in all three stories, the judge is fighting against a corrupt establishment.

The first story is Andrea Camilleri's Judge Surra, which has been shortlisted for this year's CWA Short Story Dagger, and like his Montalbano series, is set in Sicily but around a hundred years earlier. This is an amusing tale of how the judge unwittingly brings down a mafia boss whilst discovering the local delicacy of cannoli pastries.

The second story is Carlo Lucarelli's The Bambina, set in Bologna in 1980 at a time when judges needed protection from the police. The judge in this case is a young woman, nick-named Bambina who is assigned an older policeman. She's prosecuting a fraud case and doesn't think she requires a bodyguard however she is soon proved wrong and she finds a different way of meting out justice.

The final story is Giancarlo De Cataldo's The Triple Dream of the Prosecutor, set in modern day and the main protagonist, Mandati, is a public prosecutor in a small town who is trying to bring down the mayor, a rival from childhood, and who has his fingers in all the financial pies. The mayor usually thwarts Mandati but will he this time?

Each story covers a similar theme but are all very different in approach and time-frame and the high standard does make you wish that more of Lucarelli's and De Cataldo's books were available in English. All three authors have recently had tv series shown in the UK: Montalbano, Inspector De Luca and Romanzo Criminale, so one can hope.

More short stories from these three authors can be read in the excellent anthology, CRIMINI.

The stories were translated respectively by Joseph Farrell, Alan Thawley and Eileen Horne.

Finally on Inspector De Luca: Via delle Oche

The fourth and final episode of Inspector De Luca is based on the third book in Carlo Lucarelli's De Luca trilogy, Via delle Oche, and is being shown on 12 April at 9pm on BBC Four:

April 1948, and demoted to the role of deputy inspector and assigned to the vice squad, De Luca returns to Bologna. As the first elections of the newly-formed Italian Republic are about to take place, a man is found hanged in a brothel. Although the authorities are quick to pronounce the incident death by suicide, De Luca suspects foul play. His dogged determination provokes a stand-off with his superiors, and the investigation takes a further turn for the personal when the inspector runs into the madam of a brothel located in Via Delle Oche.

Next on Inspector De Luca: Carte Blanche

The second episode of Inspector De Luca is based on the first book in Carlo Lucarelli's De Luca trilogy, Carte Blanche, and is being shown on 29 March at 9pm on BBC Four:

In April 1945, having inadvertently been credited with 'saving Il Duce's life', De Luca becomes a reluctant hero and is promoted to a high-profile job in Bologna. He heads a murder investigation which will lead him to probe the private lives of the rich and powerful during the frantic final days of the fascist regime. The powers-that-be grant him carte blanche, just as long as he arrests the 'right' suspect.

Favourite Discoveries 2011 (I)

As is customary here at Euro Crime towers I have asked my fellow reviewers to come up with their top 5 reads of 2011 - these will be collated and announced in January. As a bonus question, I asked them what their favourite crime fiction discovery of 2011 - be it book, film or tv series - has been. Mark Bailey kicks us off with his choice, one which I have also read thanks to Europa Editions which published these 2006-2008.

Mark Bailey's Favourite Discovery of 2011

Absolutely the best thing that I have read this year is Carlo Lucarelli's De Luca trilogy (Carte Blanche (Carta Bianca), The Damned Season (L'estate Torbida) and Via delle Oche ) – small delicately shaped morsels (the longest is 160 pages and all three together are shorter than your typical doorstop novel).

In the last days and aftermath of World War II Italy, the world of Commissario de Luca, a fundamentally good man driven by a desire for justice who is (and has been) forced by circumstance to work for people with evil in the hearts is, to my mind, one of the great creations of modern crime fiction. I have the award winning TV movie adaptions on my to-be-watched list for Christmas and can’t wait.

Reviews of the first two parts of the trilogy can be found on the Euro Crime website's bibliography page.

You can read Mark's reviews for Euro Crime here by searching for his name.

A link to the DVD on amazon for more information.

De Luca's last stand?

It's not long to wait now until the release of the final part of the De Luca trilogy by Carlo Lucarelli, Via Delle Oche. Europa Editions have done a fabulous job bringing this and many other European novels into English.

The first two parts of the trilogy are Carte Blanche and The Damned season.

Synopsis from amazon.com: There has been a murder on Via delle Oche, the Bologna street at the center the city's notorious red light district. As always, De Luca is unwilling to look the other way when the evidence points to certain local politicians and members of the upper echelons of the Bologna police. A nation's fate is soon to be decided in bitterly contested elections; once again, the brutal worlds of crime and politics collude and collide, creating an atmosphere that becomes more volatile with each passing day.

Via Delle Oche is out 1 May in the US according to amazon.com or 5 June on the Europa Editions website.

New Reviews and Updates

Here are this week's new reviews, website updates and a reminder of January's competition:

Latest Reviews:

Maxine Clarke reviews The Dark Eye by Ingrid Black - a book which starts well but ultimately disappoints;

Maxine is also disappointed with the debut novel from Elena Forbes - Die With Me and gives the writer a tip for the next book...;

Terry Halligan rose to the challenge of the monumental girth of Elizabeth George's What Came Before He Shot Her and enjoyed it enormously;

I took on the minuscule girth of the middle part of the amazing De Luca series by Carlo Lucarelli - The Damned Season - a short book but with a lot packed into it

and Laura Root reviews Frank Tallis' Fatal Lies and finds it continues his high standard.


Other Website Updates

The News page has been updated.

The Authors page (a list of author homepages) now has 608 entries.

The New Releases pages have been updated.


Current Competition (closing date 31 January):

Win a copy of Bad Traffic by Simon Lewis (UK & Europe only)

(geographical restrictions are in brackets)

Recent Italian crime fiction reviews in the blogosphere...

A few weeks ago I posted that I was looking forward to God's Spy by Juan Gomez-Jurado. Well it seems Material Witness has acquired an advance copy and calls it "...a ripping tale and a very good read". You can read the full review here.

Crime Scraps posted a review recently of the second in the De Luca trilogy by Carlo Lucarelli - The Damned Season - which came out in the UK on 17 June. The De Luca books are set in an Italy in chaos at the end of the Second World War. The first one in the series is Carte Blanche, reviewed here on Euro Crime.

New Reviews on Euro Crime

As usual, a quick reminder of this month's competitions:

Win one of five copies of 'Haggard Hawk' by Marcus Barr (UK & Europe)

Win one of five copies of 'Cross' by Ken Bruen (No restrictions)

Win one of ten copies of A Greater Evil/Evil is Done by Natasha Cooper (US, UK & Europe)

Win one of two sets of Seasons 1-3 of Wire in the Blood on DVD (R1) (US only)

This week's new reviews are:

The Death of Dalziel by Reginald Hill, reviewed by Karen Chisholm, Dead Simple by Peter James, reviewed by Geoff Jones, Carte Blanche by Carlo Lucarelli reviewed by me and Hit and Run by Cath Staincliffe, reviewed by Sunnie Gill.

Bibliographies have been added for - Fred Johnston, John McAllister, Joe Stein and Camilla Way - and updated for - Michael Dibdin, Ian Rankin and Ruth Rendell.

The news page was updated yesterday with links to the previous week's UK reviews and articles.

Details of all the updates can be found on the site progress page.