TV News: French crime drama aplenty

Currently we have Witnesses series two, A Frozen Death, on BBC Four at 9pm on Saturday nights but next week on Wednesday (13 Dec), Channel 4 are showing the first of six parts of Vanished by the Lake. (The remaining five episodes can be watched via All 4).

Episode 1

Detective Lise Stocker hears a teenager has vanished from her hometown during a local celebration. Her two best friends disappeared in identical circumstances 15 years earlier. Is there a connection?

 

Even bigger news is that we finally have an air-date for Spiral series six. Courtesy of The Killing Times, the long awaited date is...30 December.

Review: After the Crash by Michel Bussi tr. Sam Taylor

After the Crash by Michel Bussi translated by Sam Taylor, 400 pages, August 2015, W&N, ISBN: 1780227329

French political analyst and university professor Michel Bussi garnered acclaim and awards in his homeland for his detective fiction over the past decade, but it was the publication of this standalone novel in early 2012 that catapulted him to near household-name status. More than 700,000 copies were sold in France (100 times his debut sales), and it was translated into two dozen languages, optioned for film adaptation, and serialised in a newspaper for months.

Un Avion Sans Elle is also the first of his books to be published in the United Kingdom, allowing us English-speaking crime fiction fans to find out just what all the fuss is about.

It is 1998, and Christmas looms. Private eye Credule Grand-Duc sits at his desk, dispirited, having spent nearly eighteen years failing to find the truth behind a miracle wrapped in a tragedy. A fiery plane crash near the Swiss border in 1980 had incinerated passengers and crew, but a newborn baby somehow survived. Joy turned to confusion and heartache, however, when two families – one rich, one poor – claimed the baby as their own.

Grieving grandparents found themselves at war in the public eye and the courts. Was the baby who survived Lyle-Rose or Emilie? Grand-Duc had been trying to answer that question ever since, but had come up empty. As midnight and the girl’s eighteenth birthday approaches, he grabs his gun and prepares to farewell this life, only to uncover a secret that upturns everything. Before he can share his last-minute discovery, however, he is silenced; homicide, not suicide.

AFTER THE CRASH is told in switching narratives, as we follow Mark (the baby girl’s maybe-brother) as he reads Grand-Duc’s casebook in 1998 and tries to work uncover the truth the detective left behind. Just how much can we trust what Grand-Duc wrote? What is the real truth?

Bussi spins an intriguing and unique mystery; a search for someone who isn’t missing, physically, but whose identity is. The novel has plenty of requisite clues, twists, and red herrings, while also posing some interesting questions about what makes someone who they are, how the media focus then forget tragedies, and how one twist of fate can create all sorts of ripples.

There is a strong narrative drive throughout AFTER THE CRASH, with the early “who is this girl, really?” hook cinching readers in for the roller coaster. The ‘detective’s diary’ device could fall flat, but seems to work well for this story – helped by a little suspension of disbelief now and then (Why wouldn’t Mark just skip to the end to check if there was an answer? Would someone really write a casebook in that style and language?). One flaw in an otherwise very fine piece of thriller writing is that the characters can at times feel like moving pieces; I didn’t feel particularly connected to many of them. This gives an effect of observing something very interesting as it unfolds, rather than being fully caught up in it, or sucked into the experience on a deeper level.

Despite this quibble, I thoroughly enjoyed the read. AFTER THE CRASH is written in something of a French style, in terms of pacing and other aspects. The story gets pretty dark, twisted and chilling in places – not in terms of gratuitous violence, but rather disturbing themes and situations. As it builds to a climax I was thoroughly hooked, and although some of the twists were predictable, Bussi still managed to deliver a few surprises along the way. A very good read.

Craig Sisterson
September 2015

Review: Arab Jazz by Karim Miské tr. Sam Gordon

Arab Jazz by Karim Miské translated by Sam Gordon, February 2015, 304 pages, MacLehose Press, ISBN: 0857053116

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

"....So, to recap: we've got three Salafists, one Hasidic Jew and a family of Jehovah's Witnesses... That is one holy hornet's nest!"

Paris, 19th Arrondissement.
Mid-afternoon.
Ahmed the Dreamer is on the balcony of his tiny apartment, watching the clouds. Dreaming. Poetry. Books. The second-hand, English-language thrillers stacked four deep around the walls of his room. Dreaming. The mountains, rocks, water and sand of his ancestors. He glides above their land, a man-vulture, suddenly plunging down towards a dark and terrible shape. His fellow vultures force him up and away. Banished. Ahmed feels the first drop of blood on his upturned face. He opens his eyes and looks upward, sees the foot of his neighbour Laura hanging from her balcony, blood gathering on the toes. Ahmed has crashed to earth.

9.15 pm. With keys to Laura's flat, for Ahmed looks after her orchids while the young air hostess is away, he goes upstairs. But her door is ajar, the window wide open. A bottle of wine on a table, two glasses and – on a white platter – an uncooked joint of pork bathed in blood and stabbed with a kitchen knife. The horror is out on the balcony. Laura, bound and gagged, T-shirt crimson, one enormous gash from the belly down. Ahmed returns to his flat, changes his stained djellaba and gets back into bed. Sleep. Dream.

3.45 am. Lieutenants Kupferstein and Hamelot, back at headquarters after having examined the murder scene, written their reports, eaten sushi and drunk beer – now sit apart, in their own worlds, distancing themselves from the savagery.

5.25 am. Ahmed gathers his blood-stained clothes and jogs along the canal for the first time in three years. In the undergrowth he burns the clothes. He feels again, he is alive. Back at his flat, carrying morning croissants and baguette, Ahmed finds two police officers. They tell him that his neighbour has been murdered. This time he allows himself to feel the shock. And invites them in. There are questions and it seems that for now detectives Kupferstein and Hamelot tacitly agree that Ahmed is not their man. Do you have a job, Monsieur Taroudant? Sick leave? For what? Depression? Before that, your job? Night-watchman. Thank you. Here are our contact details. Do not leave the arrondissement. But Ahmed never does. He closes the door behind the detectives and later, listening to the iPod that Laura gave him, loaded with her favourite music, he weeps. He will find the killer.

Meanwhile the detectives exit the lift and come face to face with the concierge. who tells them about Laura: her unrequited love for Ahmed, her three girlfriends – Bintou, Aicha and Rebecca. Rebecca is no longer in the neighbourhood but the other girls live around the corner. You can find them every evening at Onur's, the kebab place. Laura's parents? She wouldn't talk about them....

Karim Miské is a Franco-Mauritanian writer and documentary film-maker born in Abidjan but raised in France. ARAB JAZZ is his first novel, winning the 2012 French Grand Prix de Littérature Policière. Its title is a tribute to James Ellroy's WHITE JAZZ and its translator, Sam Gordon has made a vivid, natural telling in his own first novel-length translation.

Central to ARAB JAZZ is Ahmed, the son of a woman confined to a psychiatric hospital and himself a depressive undergoing psychoanalysis. (Or is he some kind of displaced shamanic dreamer?) Ahmed lives in the same arrondissement as Miské himself at the time of writing ARAB JAZZ. The 19th – a quarter made notorious by the Charlie Hebdo killings earlier this year. It is a setting used by other French writers and I think back to the books of Daniel Pennac with the 1980s-90s Belleville of his "Malaussène" series with its lively hotchpotch of immigrant cultures. But the warmth and diversity of Pennac's Belleville has taken a colder, darker turn by the time of Miské's "19th". The neighbourhood's religions still co-exist but each is moving towards born-again extremes. Miské started writing this novel around 2005 after having made a documentary about Judaism and Islam. He was aware of the growing extremism amongst some of these local communities but the Kouachi killings of January 2015 still shocked him. In a "Reader Dad" blog interview he says of his own feelings:

"I had been reading about the trial of the survivors of this [earlier] jihadi group in 2008 …. and the self-proclaimed imam of that group inspired one of the characters of the book. It was this imam who recruited one of the Kouachi brothers. When the Charlie Hebdo attack happened, I was, like everybody, horrified by the murders but also really disturbed by the way reality had re-entered my novel."

With two strong police characters, Kupferstein and Hamelot, a psychotic murderer, brutal corruption and the advent of a little blue pill that delivers a messianic high – we have a very potent brew and a plot that spans the Atlantic, Paris to New York. If you love the distinct flavour of French crime-writing and can take the misogynistic crime (and let's face it there is plenty of misogynistic crime in thrillers) this is a gripping, rich and wonderful book. With the writer's plan to develop a trilogy... start now with ARAB JAZZ.

Lynn Harvey, May 2015.

Review: The Dream Killer of Paris by Fabrice Bourland

The Dream Killer of Paris by Fabrice Bourland translated by Morag Young, August 2012, 215 pages, Gallic Books, ISBN: 190604032X

"We sat in a cafe on Rue de Rivoli. Through the window I could see the vast form of the Hotel de Ville and, in front, the old Place de Greve where so many villains had been quartered in the Middle Ages and much of the nobility had been decapitated during the Revolution."

THE DREAM KILLER OF PARIS is the second in the Singleton and Trelawney series after THE BAKER STREET PHANTOM. Andrew Singleton (Canadian) and James Trelawney (American) are private detectives working out of London. It's 1934 and in a quiet period of work, Singleton decides to go to Paris and investigate the apparent suicide of the poet Gerard de Nerval, which took place 70 odd years before.

On the cross-Channel ferry however Singleton is assailed by a vision. He sees the picture of a country scene hanging in the air over the sea and what's more the woman next to him can see it too. Both the vision and the woman disappear leaving Singleton bewildered.

Singleton's not been in Paris long when his friend Superintendent Fourier of the Sûreté intercepts him and asks for his help (again). Two deaths have occurred in locked rooms with no sign of foul play except for the look of terror on the victims' faces.

The victims both had an interest in dreams and the supernatural and both had received a visit beforehand by a mysterious Austrian gentleman. Singleton is joined by his friend Trelawney and along with the police they try to track down the Austrian before he visits anyone else.

On the back of the book, there is the categorisation of Crime/Fantasy which is quite accurate as this is not a crime novel where the usual rules apply; clues come via dreams, a medium and the solution to the crime is fantastical. So long as you're happy with that approach then this is an interesting read with the inclusion of real-life figures: historians, scientists, artists, adding weight to the increasingly otherworldly storyline. Plus there's the bonus of an evocative Parisian setting.

THE DREAM KILLER OF PARIS is a quick read and Singleton alludes to many other cases that they have solved so I expect there are a few more Singleton and Trelawney books in the pipeline, which I look forward to reading.

Film News: Switch

Switch, a crime drama starring Eric Cantona and co-written by crime writer Jean-Christophe Grangé has just been released in the UK:

Synopsis from IMDB:
In Montreal, the unemployed fashion designer Sophie Malaterre is summoned by Claire Maras to show her work to her boss. When Sophie arrives in the company, Clare apologizes and tells that her boss is on vacation and will return only two months later. Clare invites Sophie to have lunch with her and tells Sophie about the website switch.com, where it is possible to switch houses with a stranger for vacation. Sophie seeks an apartment in Paris nearby the Eiffel Tower that belongs to Bénédicte Serteaux and they change apartments. Sophie arrives in Paris on Saturday morning and has a dream day riding a bicycle through the tourist area. However, on the next morning, policemen break in the apartment and arrest Sophie while she is having a bath. Detective Damien Forgeat interrogates Sophie believing that she is Bénédicte and she learns that a beheaded body was found in her room. Further, all the evidences of her life has been deleted and she can not prove that she is Sophie.



However in the unlikely event that Switch is not shown in your area...then it will be out on DVD on 9 April with the tag line:

"The Fugitive meets The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"...

France is the new Scandinavia?

At one of the panels at CrimeFest, it was said that France was going to be the new Scandinavia in terms of new translated crime authors. Whilst we're awaiting this (welcome) situation you can sample some new books set in France but written by North Americans.

Firstly, and I'm looking forward to this one very much, Canadian author M L Longworth has begun a series set in Aix-en-Provence a place I've not yet visited but want to. M L Longworth has been living there for the last 15 years. Death at the Chateau Bremont is published in the US in June by Penguin:


Set in charming and historic Aix-en-Provence, France, Death at the Château Bremont introduces readers to Antoine Verlaque, the handsome and seductive chief magistrate of Aix, and his on-again, off- again love interest, law professor Marine Bonnet. When local nobleman Etienne de Bremont falls to his death from the family château, the town is abuzz with rumors. Verlaque suspects foul play and must turn to Marine for help when he discovers that she had been a close friend of the Bremonts. This is a lively whodunit steeped in the rich, enticing, and romantic atmosphere of southern France.

I'm slightly sceptical about this next one (though willing to be convinced): Paris to Die For by Maxine Kenneth which features Jackie Bouvier/Kennedy/Onassis as sleuth... Paris to Die For is published by Grand Central Publishing in July in the US.

Inspired by an actual letter in the John F. Kennedy Library written by Jackie and revealing her job offer from the newly formed CIA

Young Jacqueline Bouvier's first CIA assignment was supposed to be simple: Meet with a high-ranking Russian while he's in Paris and help him defect. But when the Comrade ends up dead, and Jackie-in her black satin peep-toe stiletto heels-barely escapes his killer, it's time to get some assistance. Enter Jacques Rivage, a French photographer and freelance CIA agent who seems too brash and carefree to grapple with spies, though he's all too able to make Jackie's heart skip a beat.

Together the two infiltrate 1951 high society in the City of Lights, rubbing shoulders with the likes of the Duchess of Windsor, Audrey Hepburn, and Evelyn Waugh. Jackie, no longer a pampered debutante, draws on her quick intelligence, equestrian skills, and even her Chanel No. 5 atomizer as a weapon to stay alive in the shadowy world of international intrigue-and to keep her date with a certain up-and-coming, young Congressman from Massachusetts . . .

Will you be reading either/both of these?

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.

Unknown

The film Unknown starring Liam Neeson is based on Didier van Cauwelaert's Out of My Head, tr. Mark Polizzotti, first published in English in the US in 2004. The UK edition, titled Unknown, has only just been published, which I believe makes it eligible for consideration for this year's International Dagger.

When everything has been taken from you . . .

There’s nothing left to lose.

Martin Harris has been in a coma for three days.

When he wakes up, otherwise unharmed, he is shocked to discover that no one knows who he is – he no longer exists.

Worse still, another man is living Martin’s life. His identity, his home, even his wife have been stolen. He has lost everything.

Except his memory . . .

Will anyone believe that he is the real Martin Harris?

If not, is he mad?

Or is there a far darker explanation?

The UK release date for the film is 4 March. You can watch a (longish) trailer here.

Badfellas - Sneak Peek

I'm currently reading Badfellas by Tonino Benacquista, tr. Emily Read which is shaping up to be another Bitter Lemon Press gem.

Blurb: "The story is violent, pacy and full of black humour. Imagine the Soprano family arriving in France, or perhaps better, Ray Liotta, the snitch from ‘Goodfellas’ settling down with his family in a small town in Normandy."

Opening Lines:

They took possession of the house in the middle of the night. Any other family would have seen it as a new start. The first morning of a new life – a new life in a new town. A rare moment that shouldn’t take place in the dark. For the Blakes, however, it was a moonlight flit in reverse: they were moving in as discreetly as possible. Maggie, the mother, went in first, tapping her heels on the steps to scare away any lurking rats. She went through all the rooms, ending up in the cellar, which appeared to be clean and to have the perfect level of humidity for maturing wheels of Parmesan, or storing cases of Chianti. The father, Frederick, who had never felt at ease around rodents, allowed his wife to go ahead.

From p69:

Without realizing it, Fred was proving a universal truth, which goes like this: as soon as one idiot tries to light a fire somewhere, four others will gather round to tell him how to do it.

Books about European Crime Fiction

One of the many knowledgeable commenters on the blog, Simon Clarke, has alerted me to a series of books about European crime fiction being published by the University of Wales. First up is:

French Crime Fiction
This first volume in the European crime fictions series acts as an introduction to crime writing in French. It presents the development of crime fiction in French cultures from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day and explores the distinctive features of a French-language tradition. Such discussion will be grounded in the study of novels by selected French-speaking writers, some of whom have an established international reputation, such as Georges Simenon, whilst others may be relatively unknown, such as Léo Malet.

Each chapter will examine a specific period, movement or group of writers, as well as engaging with broader debates over the contribution crime fiction makes more generally to contemporary French and European culture. All extracts in French will be translated into English. The book is written in an accessible style without assuming previous knowledge of crime fiction novels and their development in France, thus the title will appeal to undergraduates and also to the general, informed reader of crime fiction.

(This is due to be published in April 2009, £75 for a hardback edition.)

This is to be followed by Italian Crime Fiction:
This book constitutes an introduction to crime writing in Italian from its first development in the 1930s to the present day. It explores the distinctive features of the Italian tradition, such as the close links with the American and French tradition and the social commentary which characterises much crime fiction in Italian in the post-war period. This study focuses on novels by selected Italian writers, some of whom have an established international reputation, such as Leonardo Sciascia and Umberto Eco, whilst others may be relatively unknown, such as the new generation of crime writers of the Bologna school, and analyses the contribution crime fiction makes more generally to contemporary Italian and European culture. The book will be written in an accessible style aimed at undergraduates and does not assume any previous knowledge of Italian Crime Fiction. And will also appeal to the general, informed reader. All extracts in Italian will be translated into English.
(Currently listed on amazon for March 2010)

And hopefully appearing this year: Criminal Scandinavia: Nordic Crime Fiction. The information from Simon is that: "It's edited by Andrew Nestingen and Paula Arvas and will contain some great essays on contemporary Scandinavian writers such as Mankell, Marklund, Nesser, Holt, Indridason while also remembering the work of Sjowall and Wahloo".

The website does list a paperback version for the Italian volume at a more modest £16.99 but if your library has no plans to stock these books then an Inter-Library Loan is always worth a go. The fee is currently £2.50, refundable if the book is unobtainable..

Murder on the Eiffel Tower - excerpt

Last week's Read it First selection from St Martin's Press was Murder on the Eiffel Tower by Claude Izner (reviewed here on Euro Crime.)

Excerpt 1:

PROLOGUE
12 May 1889

Storm clouds raced over the barren plain between the fortifications and the goods station at Les Batignolles, where the scrubby grass smelled unpleasantly of sewers. Rag-and-bone men, grouped around carts filled with household rubbish, were using their gaffs to level the mounds of detritus, raising eddies of dust. A train approached from far in the distance, gradually getting bigger and bigger.

A gang of children came running down the hillocks, shrieking: 'There he is! Buffalo Bill is coming!'

Jean Mering straightened up and, hands on hips, leant backwards to relieve his aching joints. It had been a good haul: a three-legged chair, a rocking horse that had lost its stuffing, an old umbrella, a soldier's epaulette and a piece of wash-basin rimmed with gold. He turned towards Henri Capus, a lean old man with a faded beard.

'I'm going to see the Redskins. Are you coming?' he said, adjusting the wicker basket on his shoulders.

He picked up his chair, passed the Cook Agency vehicles and joined the crowd of onlookers gathered around the station, a mixture of workmen, petit bourgeois, and high society people who had come in carriages.

With a great hiss of steam, a locomotive followed by an endless convoy of coaches pulled up beside the platform. A covered wagon stopped in front of Jean Mering. Inside, panic-stricken horses were stamping wildly, and tossing their manes. Sunburned men in cowboy hats and Indians with painted faces and feather headdresses leant out of the doors. Everyone was jostling to catch a glimpse.

Jean Mering slapped the nape of his neck: an insect sting. Immediately he faltered, slid sideways, staggered, and then stumbled against a woman, who pushed him away, thinking he was drunk. His legs buckled and, as he lost his grip on the chair, he sank to the ground, dragged down by the weight of his basket. He tried to raise his head but already he was too weak. He could faintly hear Henri Capus's voice.

'What's the matter, my friend? Hold on, I'll help you. Where does it hurt?'

With a tremendous effort Mering managed to gasp: 'A...bee...'

His eyes were watering and his sight was becoming blurred. Amazingly, in the space of just a few minutes, his whole body had become as limp as an old rag. He could no longer feel his limbs, his lungs were straining for air. In his last moments of lucid thought he knew that he was about to die. He made a final effort to cling to life, then let go, slipping into the abyss, down...down...down... The last thing he saw was a dandelion flower, which was blooming between the paving stones, as yellow as the sun.

CURIOUS DEATH OF A RAG-AND-BONE MAN

A rag-and-bone man from Rue de la Parcheminerie has died from a bee-sting. The accident occurred yesterday morning at Batignolles station as Buffalo Bill and his troupe arrived in Paris. Bystanders tried in vain to revive the victim. The enquiry has revealed that the dead man was Jean Mering, 42, a former Communard who had been deported to New Caledonia but returned to Paris after the amnesty of 1880.

The man crumpled the newspaper into a ball and tossed it into the waste-bin.

CHAPTER ONE
Wednesday 22 June

Wearing a tight new corset that creaked with every step, Eugenie Patinot walked down Avenue des Peupliers. She felt weary at the prospect of what already promised to be an exhausting day. Endlessly pestered by the children, she had reluctantly left the cool of the veranda. If outwardly she gave an impression of dignified composure, inside she was in turmoil: tightness in her chest, stomach cramps, a dull pain in her hip and, on top of everything, palpitations.

'Don't run, Marie-Amelie. Hector, stop whistling, it's vulgar.'

'We're going to miss the bus, Aunt! Hector and I are going to sit upstairs. Have you definitely got the tickets?'

Eugenie stopped and opened her reticule to make sure that she did have the tickets, which her brother-in-law had bought several days earlier.

'Hurry up, Aunt,' urged Marie-Amelie.

Eugenie glared. The child really knew how to annoy her. A capricious little boy, Hector was hardly any better. Only Gontran, the eldest, was tolerable, as long as he kept quiet.

There were about ten passengers waiting at the omnibus station on Rue d'Auteuil. Eugenie recognised Louise Vergne, the housemaid from the Le Massons. She was carrying a large basket of linen to the laundry, probably the one on Rue Mirabeau, and was quite unselfconsciously wiping her pale face with a handkerchief as big as a sheet. There was no way of avoiding her. Eugenie stifled her irritation. The woman was only a servant but always spoke to her as an equal, with overfamiliarity, and yet Eugenie had never dared point out this impropriety.

'Ah, Madame Patinot, how hot it is for June! I feel I might melt away.'

'That would be no bad thing,' muttered Eugenie.

'Are you going far, Madame Patinot?'

'To the Expo. These three little devils begged my sister to go.'

'Poor dear, the things you have to do. Aren't you frightened? All those foreigners...'

'I want to see Buffalo Bill's circus at Neuilly. There are real Redskins who shoot real arrows!'

'That's enough, Hector! Oh that's good, he's wearing odd socks--a white one, and a grey one.'

'It's coming, Aunt, it's coming!'

Omnibus A, drawn by three stolid horses, stopped by the pavement. Marie-Amelie ran upstairs.

'I can see your drawers,' shrieked Hector, following her up. 'I don't care! From up here everything's beautiful,' retorted the little girl.

The fourth book in the series will be published next year.

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.

More Forthcoming Book Lists

Well buoyed on by the success of forthcoming Scandinavian crime/mystery novels, I've created a couple more list on amazon.co.uk for French and Italian crime novels coming soon to a bookshelf near you:

Forthcoming French Crime novels in 2008 (amazon.co.uk)

Forthcoming Italian Crime novels in 2008 (amazon.co.uk) - a bit short at the moment but I'll add to it as I hear of more titles.

Mike Ripley's Column & Leo Malet

Mike Ripley's latest 'Getting Away With Murder' column is now online at Shots. In it he mentions the French writer Leo Malet. I'll be uploading Malet's bibliography to the Euro Crime website shortly. The nine titles available in English were printed in the 1990s and are fairly scarce, however it appears that Macmillan are reprinting one of them next year: 'Neck and Neck at La Nation', is due out in December 2008 and I believe this to be a reprint of 'Death of a Marseilles Man'.

For once Amazon recommends - gets it right

I was very impressed by 'The Prone Gunman', reviewed here on Euro Crime and I am looking forward to reading Michael Walters' Mongolian series of which, 'The Shadow Walker', is the first. So I was stunned when amazon.co.uk, read my mind, sort of:

Greetings from Amazon.co.uk
We've noticed that customers who have expressed interest in "Prone Gunman" by Jean-Patrick Manchette have also ordered "The Shadow Walker" by Michael Walters. For this reason, you might like to know that this book will be released on 3 May 2007.

You can read more about Michael Walters and 'The Shadow Walker' on his new(ish) website. He is published by Quercus and you can see from this list of new Autumn titles that the second in the series, 'The Adversary', will be out in October.

Gallic Books redux

Following on from my earlier post, The Rap Sheet wonders if Gallic Books will distribute their books in the US. I commented there and it's worth repeating here that http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/ offer free delivery to anywhere in the world. I haven't used them myself (yet) but I've had good feedback from a number of successful purchasers.

More French authors, whose books have been translated into English, can be found on the Euro Crime website.

Gallic Books

I've just read about this new publisher on Susan Hill's blog. Gallic Books is bringing 'the best of French into English'.

From their website:

Gallic Books is a new publishing house dedicated to bringing contemporary French authors to the UK market.

At Gallic we feel there’s a lot of good French writing that deserves a British audience and our aim is to showcase the best.

Our launch list focuses on best-selling historical crime, a very popular genre on both sides of the Channel. The first two titles appearing in May 2007 are "The Chatelet Apprentice" by Jean-François Parot and "Murder on the Eiffel Tower by Claude Izner. Further crime and mystery follow in the autumn and early next year.

Gallic Books was founded by Managing Director, Jane Aitken, working with Editorial Director, Pilar Webb. Colleagues for many years at Random House UK, they are both committed francophiles.

The following two titles are out on the 15th May:

The brand-new Eiffel Tower is the glory of the 1889 Universal Exposition. But one day a woman collapses and dies on its second floor. Can a bee-sting really be the cause of death? Enter young bookseller, Victor Legris, who is determined to find out what really happened.

Claude Izner is the pseudonym of two sisters, both booksellers on the banks of the Seine, who are experts on nineteenth-century Paris.


Paris, February 1761. A police officer disappears and Nicolas Le Floch, a young Breton police recruit, is instructed to find him. When unidentified human remains are found it becomes a murder investigation. As Paris descends into Carnival debauchery it is Le Floch’s skill, courage and integrity that will help him unravel a mystery which threatens to implicate the highest in the land.

Jean-François Parot is a diplomat and historian who lives in the Loire. The Châtelet Apprentice is his first novel, and the first in a series of Nicolas Le Floch mysteries which have been published to much acclaim in French.