Some Mini Scandi Reviews II

Here are brief reviews of some of the Scandi books I've read this year. I'm including Vargas here as Iceland plays a significant role in her latest Adamsberg.

Karin Fossum – hellfire tr. Kari Dickson

Another bleak outing from Karin Fossum. It starts with the murder of a mother and child and the narrative subsequently alternates between events of several months leading up to the present day, and the present day investigation by series regular, Sejer. Fossum really knows how to break a reader's heart.





Leif G W Persson – The Dying Detective tr. Neil Smith

Shortlisted for the Petrona Award 2017 and winner of the CWA International Dagger 2017, there's not much to add to that. I loved this book. Borrowing from a tradition (I think) begun with Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time, our ailing detective Lars Martin Johansson is laid up and asked to investigate a cold case from his sick bed - incidentally a case messed up by one Evert Backstrom. He must find the killer of a little girl. As the statue of limitations has passed what can they do if they do find the murderer? One of the many questions pondered by Johansson.

Yrsa Sigurdardottir – Why Did You Lie? tr. Victoria Cribb

Also shortlisted for the Petrona Award 2017, Why Did You Lie? is a multi-person narrative – how do their stories overlap and who is behind the sinister events affecting each person? This is the sort of book that when you get to the conclusion you then have to go back to the beginning of the book to see how it's all been cleverly woven together. Some of the narratives are more compelling than others so overall it doesn’t quite live up to the heights of the Petrona Award winning The Silence of the Sea, which I loved.


Fred Vargas – A Climate of Fear tr. Sian Reynolds

This is the latest in the Commissaire Adamsberg series to reach us in English, and it was shortlisted for the CWA International Dagger 2017. This one is mostly set in Paris and surroundings with a significant thread playing out in Iceland which necessitates a visit by Adamsberg and some of his colleagues. Vargas weaves her usual fantastical tale this time revolving around Robespierre and the French Revolution/Reign of Terror. I found this topic interesting up to a point but the pace of the book sags in the middle after what seems like countless historical re-enactments and only springs back to life in the subsequent Icelandic section. Overall this was a bit of a disappointment compared to her usual 5-star outings. Nonetheless she's always worth a read but it's perhaps not the best one to start with.

Reviews: Bolton, Carter & Ripley, Ferris, Holt, James, Jones, McKinty, Vargas, Woodhouse

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

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

New Reviews

Amanda Gillies reviews the paperback release of Sharon Bolton's Like This, For Ever, the third in the Lacey Flint series;

Albert Campion returns in Mr Campion's Farewell, based on Philip Youngman Carter's unfinished manuscript and completed by Mike Ripley, reviewed here by Terry Halligan;

Terry also reviews Gordon Ferris's Gallowglass, the newest and final book in the Douglas Brodie series;

Amanda also reviews the first part in the Carnivia trilogy - The Abomination - by Jonathan Holt, set in Venice and now available in paperback;

Rich Westwood reviews Almost Love the second in the DCI Yates series by Christina James, set in the Lincolnshire Fens;

Geoff Jones reviews Carys Jones's Prime Deception, a political thriller (ebook only);

Mark Bailey reviews In the Morning I'll Be Gone by Adrian McKinty, the third in the Sean Duffy series;

Lynn Harvey reviews Freg Vargas's Dog Will Have His Day, tr. Sian Reynolds, the second in the "Three Evangelists" series

and Michelle Peckham reviews After the Silence the first part in Jake Woodhouse's Amsterdam Quartet.


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: Dog Will Have His Day by Fred Vargas tr. Siân Reynolds

Dog Will Have His Day by Fred Vargas translated by Siân Reynolds, April 2014, 256 pages, Harvill Secker, ISBN: 1846558190

Reviewed by Lynn Harvey.
(Read more of Lynn's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

Paquelin leaned over the object more closely. The little thing was gnawed, corroded, pierced with dozens of pinpricks, and slightly brown in colour. He'd seen bones before, but no, this fellow must be having him on.

Paris, 1995
Marthe, who must be about 70 now, is sitting in the café doing a crossword when Louis Kehlweiler comes in. She interrogates Louis at the top of her voice as usual: what’s he doing here – what's he working on – where's the girlfriend? Louis, one-time investigator for the Ministry of Justice tells her, not unkindly, to keep her voice down and, after a drink together, sees her home. He is on his way to one of his many observation posts – “Bench 102”. Here he keeps an eye on the nephew of a far-right politician. And although it is pouring with rain, Kehlweiler knows how to look like a tramp on a bench under a tree. He pulls a disgusted face. Some dog has done his business at the foot of the tree. That's happened since Kehlweiler was last at here at lunch-time.
Next morning, back at the bench, one of his helpers – Vincent – is already in place. Louis asks if Vincent minds if he puts Bufo on the bench; Bufo is Louis' confidante and companion, a pet toad. Vincent has no objection. But he tells Louis that Marthe is homeless, evicted by a landlord keen to redevelop. It was typical of Marthe's pride not to have let on when Louis delivered her to her front door last night. Louis is distracted by a tiny white object under the tree, where the dog had left its calling card. A bone. A human bone. A toe bone in fact.
The Paris police are not interested in the bone. Kehlweiler feels he has no option but to do what he does, which is to investigate. Using his small army of “co-investigators” and street-contacts he keeps watch on the routine evening dog-walkers. He even calls for help from medieval historian Marc Vandoosler, already employed in maintaining the archive of cuttings necessary for Kehlweiler's investigations. When Vandoosler finds no reports of Paris deaths that would tally with the toe bone, Kehlweiler asks him to broaden the search to recent deaths outside Paris. One – an elderly woman who fell and died whilst collecting winkles from rocks in Brittany – tallies with the ownership of a certain dog and draws Kehlweiler and Bufo to the far west.

An unashamed Vargas fan, I've been looking forward to DOG SHALL HAVE HIS DAY. This is not a new Vargas book in fact, but a translation by Vargas's long-time prize-winning translator into English, Siân Reynolds, of the second Three Evangelists book which was published in France in 1996. As such, it re-introduces us to the young archaeologist/historian trio of THE THREE EVANGELISTS and in particular, to the medievalist Marc Vandoosler, clad in black and still searching for chivalric love. But it is the obsessive investigator Louis Kehlweiler, mysterious as to his own past, family and nationality, who is central to this story of a bone, a toe, a corpse and a dog.

If you know the work of four-times CWA International Dagger Award winner, Fred Vargas, you know to expect a crime story of mystery and suspense filled with rich characters and regionality. And although these characters are rich to the point of eccentricity, they still convince. DOG WILL HAVE HIS DAY does not disappoint. An earlier book, it is more of a straightforward "whodunnit" than some of the Adamsberg books. But the Vargas eye and ear for individual character, voice and conversation is all here. She has said in an interview: "I like to use these people from villages. Theirs are the voices that never move and never change." Her innate knowledge of community and character which she depicts with humanity is what make her books a joy. They are deeply “French” – in the tradition of the films of Renoir and Truffaut: life is here, complete with both humour and tragedy, but not painted so dark as to make traumatic reading. DOG WILL HAVE HIS DAY is a well-told intriguing mystery: a story about people's lives, desires and intrigues. So, although there is no Inspector Adamsberg, this is Vargas through and through. Read and savour.

Lynn Harvey, April 2014.

New Reviews: Aykol, Johnstone, King, McKinty, Nickson, Shepherd, Vargas

Win Where the Devil Can't Go by Anya Lipska (UK only)





Seven new reviews have been added to Euro Crime today:


I review Esmahan Aykol's second Kati Hirschel investigation Baksheesh tr. Ruth Whitehouse, set in Istanbul;


Amanda Gillies reviews Doug Johnstone's latest Gone Again which she found even better than Hit & Run;



Lynn Harvey reviews the most recent in the Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes series by Laurie R King, Garment of Shadows, set in Morocco;




Mark Bailey reviews Adrian McKinty's, I Hear the Sirens in the Street, the second in the 1980s-Northern Ireland Sean Duffy trilogy;


Geoff Jones reviews the fifth in the historical Richard Nottingham series by Chris Nickson: At the Dying of the Year;




Terry Halligan reviews Lloyd Shepherd's sequel to The English Monster, The Poisoned Island


and Sarah Hilary reviews Fred Vargas's The Ghost Riders of Ordebec tr. Sian Reynolds.




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.

An Uncertain Place - Cover Opinions

This week's selection for "cover opinions" is the US and UK covers for Fred Vargas's CWA International Dagger shortlisted, An Uncertain Place.

So what are your thoughts on the US (LHS) and UK (RHS) covers? Which would entice you to pick the book up if you were not familiar with the books of Fred Vargas? (The US edition will be out 25 October 2011.)

If you have read it, how well do the covers match the story?

Read the Euro Crime review (by me) of An Uncertain Place tr Sian Reynolds.

New Reviews: Hampson, Johnstone, Jungstedt, Vargas, Verhoef, Zimler

April's competition:
Win a copy of Apostle Rising by Richard Godwin UK & Europe only.

Here are this week's reviews:

Lizzie Hayes reviews June Hampson's sixth book in her "Daisy Lane" series, Fighting Dirty;

Amanda Gillies provides a whisky-themed review of Doug Johnstone's Smokeheads;

Laura Root reviews the paperback edition of Mari Jungstedt's The Killer's Art, tr. Tiina Nunnally;

A few days ago on this blog I reviewed the latest in the Adamsberg series from Fred Vargas - An Uncertain Place, tr. Sian Reynolds;

Maxine Clarke reviews the paperback release of Esther Verhoef's Rendezvous, tr. Alexander Smith

and Terry Halligan was deeply impressed with Richard Zimler's The Warsaw Anagrams.

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive and forthcoming titles can be found by author or date, here.

Review: An Uncertain Place by Fred Vargas

An Uncertain Place is published today.

An Uncertain Place by Fred Vargas, tr Sian Reynolds (March 2011, Harvill Secker, ISBN: 1846554452)

AN UNCERTAIN PLACE was published in French in 2008 and is the seventh in the Commissaire Adamsberg series. English readers almost have a full set of the previous entries with only the fourth instalment yet to be translated. The non-linear translation order has made Adamsberg's romantic-life and his relationship with Camille, who flits in and out of the stories, a little confusing to follow however the later books which are all set close together in time have come out more or less one after the other.

The book opens in London, where Adamsberg and two of his colleagues including the human encyclopedia Danglard, are attending a conference. After-hours, one of the English policemen, Radstock, takes his French guests around the neighbourhood which includes Highgate Cemetery. Radstock is horrified to discover a vast number of shoes (with the feet still inside) outside the cemetery. The French delegation return home to Paris shortly after and on the journey Danglard regales his colleagues with tales of the cemetery and its master vampire.

Soon though Adamsberg has a new murder case of his own. A semi-retired legal-journalist has been found obliterated in his apartment. The victim was not well liked even by his son and has left most of his fortune to the gardener who is soon suspected, however Adamsberg doesn't think he did it. This investigation begins to go off the rails and as in WASH THIS BLOOD CLEAN FROM MY HAND Adamsberg has to go off the grid and solve the case by himself.

The journey takes him to a small village in Serbia, where an old colleague turns up, and also back several centuries to find the seed of the present murderous activity.

Vargas has previously covered ghosts, werewolves and plagues so the subject matter of vampires isn't a stretch and though the story is fantastical it has its own well-plotted logic and the most incidental of happenings often proves significant as the story progresses. I have never warmed to the lead character Adamsberg, as I find him a cold creature, but he is surrounded by a cast of unusual and more likeable colleagues such as the aforementioned Danglard, a single parent with a penchant for wine and the redoubtable Retancourt, a goddess in Adamberg's mind.

Though over 400 pages long, AN UNCERTAIN PLACE didn't feel quite as meaty or as intricate as some of Vargas's earlier books, but it was still a great pleasure to read, with its excellent translation by Sian Reynolds.

The Vargas-Reynolds pairing has already won the CWA International Dagger three times, will 2011 see a fourth? Time will tell.

You can read multiple reviews of Vargas's earlier books and get the series's correct order on the Euro Crime website.

The Chalk Circle Man - Cover Opinions

This week's selection for "cover opinions" is the US and UK covers for Fred Vargas's The Chalk Circle Man tr. Sian Reynolds.

So what are you thoughts on the US (LHS) and UK (RHS) covers? Which would entice you to pick the book up if you were not familiar with Fred Vargas?

If you have read it, how well does the cover match the story?

Here are the Euro Crime reviews by Fiona and Michelle.


UK paperback:

New Reviews: Hosp, Kernick, McDermid, Moffat, Vargas, Wilson

This month's competitions:

Win a copy of Tell-Tale by Sam Hayes (worldwide)
Win a copy of The Preacher & The Stonecutter by Camilla Lackberg (UK only)

check back later this week for an exciting Stieg Larsson competition.

Here are this week's new reviews:

Terry Halligan reviews Among Thieves by David Hosp; though written by an American author and set in the US there is a St Patrick's Day and Irish connection;

Maxine Clarke reviews Simon Kernick's new thriller The Last Ten Seconds;

Laura Root reviews the paperback release of the latest in the Tony Hill series from Val McDermid, Fever of the Bone;

Amanda Gillies reviews G J Moffat's debut, now out in paperback: Daisychain;

Michelle Peckham reviews the first Adamsberg novel from Fred Vargas, tr. Sian Reynolds, also now out in paperback - The Chalk Circle Man

and Maxine also reviews The Lying Tongue by Andrew Wilson

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

New Reviews: Campbell, Gilbert, Martin, Monroe, Peace, Vargas

Two competitions are up and running. The prizes are Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor and The Herring Seller's Apprentice by L C Tyler.

The following reviews have been added to the review archive over on the main Euro Crime website:

New Reviews:

Maxine Clarke is very impressed with Karen Campbell's debut novel, The Twilight Time, set in Glasgow and now out in paperback;

Amanda Brown finds that the stories in Paul D Gilbert's The Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes "add to the Holmes legacy";

Geoff Jones reviews Lee Martin's Gangsters Wives (the case of the missing apostrophe perhaps?) calling it "an easy read";

Terry Halligan gives an explanation for the (perceived) slow pace of Aly Monroe's The Maze of Cadiz which he enjoyed nonetheless;

Pat Austin continues her reviews of the Red Riding Quartet by David Peace, with part three, 1980 - "the writing is superb and I really couldn't put it down."

and Fiona Walker reviews the latest and in fact the first in the Adamsberg series by Fred Vargas to be translated into English - The Chalk Circle Man calling it a "condensed Vargas primer"

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

UPDATE: Possible spoiler in the comments below if you haven't read White Nights by Ann Cleeves.

New Reviews: Adair, Davis, Tyler, Vargas & New Competition

A second competition is up and running. NB This one will close on 21st.

The following reviews have been added to the review archive over on the main Euro Crime website. The faint theme this week is humorous mysteries:

New Reviews:

Rik Shepherd was disappointed that the third Evadne Mount book from Gilbert Adair, And Then There Was No One, took an entirely different approach to the previous two;

Mike Ripley reviews Alexandria by Lindsey Davis a series which he describes as "a long-running situation comedy";

Maxine Clarke reviews the paperback edition of L C Tyler's The Herring Seller's Apprentice which she calls "a wonderful book"

and Michelle Peckham reviews the paperback edition of This Night's Foul Work by Fred Vargas.

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

The new competition is for a copy of The Doomsday Prophecy by Scott Mariani. (Closing date is 21st February, one entry per household and UK/Europe entrants only.)

The existing competition is for a set of the ten Martin Beck books by Sjowall and Wahloo. (Closing date is 14th February, one entry per household and UK/Europe entrants only.)

Queen Vargas and Adamsberg the First

Fiona Walker alerted me yesterday to the fact that amazon.co.uk are listing a new offering from Fred Vargas for February 2009 - The Chalk Circle Man.

The lovely publicists at Harvill have advised me that this is in fact the first in the Adamsberg series (and I believe first published in French in 1996 as L'Homme aux Cercles Bleus).

Currently translated in the Adamsberg series are nos 2,3, 5 and 6:

Seeking Whom He May Devour (2004) #2
Have Mercy on Us All (2003) #3
Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand (2007) #5
This Night's Foul Work (2008) #6

Copycat Covers - of a sort

Not quite identical but thematically similar, both are published by Harvill Secker:

This Night's Foul Work was released in February and is reviewed here.

Arctic Chill will be out in October. The blurb from Amazon is as follows:
On an icy January day the Reykjavik police are called out to a block of flats where a body has been found in the garden: a young, dark-skinned boy, frozen to the ground in a pool of his own blood. The discovery of a stab wound in his stomach puts paid to any hope that this was a tragic accident. Erlendur and his team embark on their investigation with little to go on but the news that the boy's Thai half-brother is missing. Is he implicated, or simply afraid for his own life? The investigation soon unearths tensions simmering beneath the surface of Iceland's outwardly liberal, multicultural society. A teacher at the boy's school makes no secret of his anti-immigration stance; incidents are reported between Icelandic pupils and the disaffected children of incomers; and, to confuse matters further, a suspected paedophile has been spotted in the area. Meanwhile, the boy's murder forces Erlendur to confront the tragedy in his own past. Soon, facts are emerging from the snow-filled darkness that are more chilling even than the Arctic night.

There's Something About Vargas

To celebrate the publication of Euro Crime favourite Fred Vargas' This Night's Foul Work, the new Commissaire Adamsberg novel, this week all the new reviews are of Adamsberg titles. Five of the Euro Crime reviewing team have contributed - producing seven reviews of the four titles currently available in English.

Vargas and her translator Sian Reynolds have been the only winners so far of the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger, which they have won both years since its inception in 2006 first for the non-Adamsberg The Three Evangelists and then for Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand.

For English readers, the Adamsberg series was initially published out of order - with no. 3, followed by no. 2 - then missing out no. 4 it went on to nos 5 and 6 in the series so I'll list the books in the actual order they were published in French:

No. 2 is Seeking Whom He May Devour, where Adamsberg joins the book quite late on to track down a werewolf in the mountains near the Italian border. Reviewed by Maxine Clarke.

No. 3 is Have Mercy on Us All, where a plague seems to be hitting Paris. Reviewed by Fiona Walker.

No. 5 is the International Dagger winning Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand, which sees Adamsberg chasing a serial killing 'dead man' who follows him to Quebec. Reviews by Maxine Clarke and Geoff Jones.

and finally, the most recent book, no. 6, This Night's Foul Work, which takes place both in Paris and in Normandy. Reviewed by me, Norman Price and Fiona Walker.

Vargas' writing is unique and she wrestles with Jo Nesbo for the top spot on my list of favourite authors. I do hope these reviews inspire you to give her a try if you haven't already. My favourite is still The Three Evangelists but This Night's Foul Work came close.

Good news came recently from Detectives Beyond Borders' interview with Sian Reynolds...she's already finished the translation of the first Adamsberg. Read the excellent interview here.

Adamsberg's back in January

I've just seen on amazon.co.uk that the next offering from the 'incomparable' Fred Vargas is 'The Eternal Forest' out in January 2008.

Synopsis:
On the edge of Paris, two men have had their throats cut. Adamsberg's investigation brings him into contract with the pathologist Amane Lagarde, someone he had come up against twenty-five years previously. A new lieutenant appears hostile to him, and what is more, he is from a neighbouring village in the Pyrenees. He helps out Camille by babysitting their son, but fears she may have found someone else. "The Eternal Forest" is the finest novel yet from the wonderful Fred Vargas.

For once, the English title is similar to the original French title - 'Dans les Bois Éternels' (and is mercifully shorter to type than this year's Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand). You can read more about 'The Eternal Forest' (in French) here and you can check out the order of the earlier books and the English/French titles on the Euro Crime website.