New Reviews: Becker, Bruce, Dahl, Ferris, Griffiths, Tallis & Reviewers' Top 5s

As well as 6 new reviews, I have uploaded the Euro Crime reviewers' favourite reads of 2011, by reviewer. Tomorrow I will announce the favourite book, favourite author and favourite translator of 2011 (based on the aforementioned submissions!).

The competition's still open: win Death of the Mantis by Michael Stanley (no geographical restrictions).

Here are this week's reviews:

Amanda Gillies reviews the latest from James Becker, The Nosferatu Scroll (or The Vampires of Venice for Dr Who fans...?) which continues the high standard of the earlier books;

Alison Bruce's, third DC Goodhew book, The Calling is listed in Susan White's 5 favourite reads of 2011;

Laura Root reviews K O Dahl's Lethal Investments, tr. Don Bartlett which is the first in the Oslo-based Gunnarstranda and Frohlich series;

Terry Halligan reviews Gordon Ferris's post World War II set Truth Dare Kill the first in the Danny McRae series;

Maxine Clarke reviews the fourth and latest in the increasingly popular Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths: A Room Full of Bones set in North Norfolk

and Lynn Harvey reviews Frank Tallis's Death and the Maiden the sixth in this historical series set in Vienna, which is now available in paperback.

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive.

Forthcoming titles can be found by author or date or by category, here and new titles by Patti Battison, Rhys Bowen, Gyles Brandreth, C S Challinor, Cassandra Clark, Rory Clements, Julie Corbin, Peter James, Cottrell Howard Cunnell, Maurizio De Giovanni, Diego De Silva, Mark Douglas-Home, Nicci French, Alex Grecian, J M Gregson, Patricia Hall, C S Harris, Elizabeth Haynes, Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson, Roderic Jeffries, Laurie R King, Bernard Knight, Peter Lovesey, Faith Martin, Susan Moody, Amy Myers, Chris Nickson, Chris Pavone, Caro Peacock, Anne Perry, Oliver Potzsch, Jutta Profijt, Mary Reed and Eric Mayer, Linda Regan, Eileen Robertson, Rosemary Rowe, Pauline Rowson, Kate Sedley, Frank Smith, James Thompson, Rebecca Tope, Louise Welsh, Andrew Williams and Simon Wood have been added to these pages this week.

The Last Fix - Cover Opinions

This week's selection for "cover opinions" is the US and UK covers for K O Dahl's The Last Fix tr. Don Bartlett. The US paperback edition will come out on 29 March 2011 (cover unknown at this point).

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 K O Dahl?

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

Here is the Petrona review by Maxine of The Last Fix.

New Reviews: Cooper, Cottam, Dahl, Duns, Griffiths, Hayder, Kitson, Lewis, Seymour

Here are this week's reviews, a bumper bundle of 9:

Michelle Peckham reviews Glenn Cooper's The Tenth Chamber set in France and revolving around a secret method of longevity;

Amanda Gillies reviews F G Cottam's ghostly The Magdalena Curse;

Maxine Clarke reviews The Man in the Window by K O Dahl, tr. Don Bartlett (we're anticipating a new Dahl in translation in 2011);

Laura Root reviews Jeremy Duns's 1960s set spy thriller Free Country;

Rik Shepherd reviews the paperback edition of Elly Griffiths's The Janus Stone;

Amanda Brown reviews the paperback edition of Mo Hayder's Ritual;

Paul Blackburn reviews Minds that Hate by Bill Kitson, the latest in his DI Mike Nash series;

Geoff Jones reviews Kevin Lewis's Scent of a Killer which is the second outing for DI Stacey Collins;

and Terry Halligan reviews EV Seymour's latest Paul Tallis thriller: Land of Ghosts in which he's sent to Russia.

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

K O Dahl - The Last Fix (sneak peek)

K O Dahl's next book to be available in translation is The Last Fix, which is published on 4 June in the UK. Though it's the third to appear in English, it's the second in the 'Oslo Detectives' series. The Man in the Window is the third in the series and The Fourth Man is the fifth. All three books have been translated by Don Bartlett.

Part 1

The Girl on the Bridge

1
The Customer

There was something special about this customer, she was aware of that at once, even though he wasn't doing very much - that is to say she noticed the door open, but as the person in question went to the holiday brochure shelf instead of walking straight to the counter, Elise continued to do what she was doing without an upward glance. She sat absorbed in the image on the screen, trying to organise a trip to Copenhagen for a family of three while the mother on the telephone dithered between flying there and back or squeezing their car on to Stena Saga and taking the ferry crossing so that they were mobile when they arrived.

New Reviews: Beaton, Dahl, Lennon, Rygg, Sjowall & Wahloo and Wells

Here are this week's new reviews and details of the latest competition.

Latest Reviews:

I get to review the latest in the Hamish MacBeth series, Death of a Gentle Lady by M C Beaton, which is the 24th in the series but Constable are reprinting all the earlier ones at quite a rapid rate for those who have yet to become addicted;

Norman Price reviews the newly translated The Man in the Window by K O Dahl who like his fellow Norwegian Jo Nesbo has had his fifth book (The Fourth Man) translated before his third... Norman writes that Dahl is "one of the ever growing group of excellent Nordic crime fiction authors available in English";

Amanda Gillies reviews the second in the Tom Fletcher series by Patrick Lennon, Steel Witches, who, like Jim Kelly, sets his books in Cambridgeshire and both authors also appear to incorporate extremes of weather in their plots. Amanda calls it "a very fine piece of work";

Back to Norway and Maxine Clarke reviews the first of two books featuring Igi Heitmann, The Butterfly Effect saying that it "is a wonderful book;

Karen Chisholm helps out with Euro Crime's quest to review all ten of the Martin Beck books by Sjowall and Wahloo by reviewing the fourth (and some say the best) in this classic series, The Laughing Policeman

and Maxine provides a second opinion on Shirley Wells' Into the Shadows a book I enjoyed immensely and which Maxine says is "perfect for whiling away a wet Sunday afternoon".


Current Competition (closing date 31 May):

Win a signed copy of Spider by Michael Morley*

* UK/Europe only

Updated News page & Other links

I've updated the News page on the website with the usual links to new reviews and interviews. Death in Breslau and A Quiet Flame are getting a lot of review action.

You can read more about Marek Krajewski's Eberhard Mock (from Death in Breslau) series of four books which should all be published by Quercus/MacLehose Press.

A couple of must read links are:

K O Dahl, the author of The Fourth Man and the upcoming The Man in The Window is blogging at Moments in Crime, this week.

Detectives Beyond Borders has a two part interview with Mike Mitchell, the excellent translator of Friedrich Glauser's Sergeant Studer novels.

Forthcoming K O Dahl titles

Here in the UK, Faber have published The Fourth Man and the soon to be released The Man in the Window by K O Dahl and have signed up for two more of his titles, #2 and #6 in the Gunnarstranda and Frølich series. In the US Thomas Dunne Books will publish all four titles, beginning with The Fourth Man in March. (The Fourth Man is #5 and The Man in the Window #3 in the series).

From an article at Norway, the official site in the United States:

Kjell Ola Dahl has written numerous crime novels and his books have been translated into several languages. He has received several awards for his literary works, including the prestigious Norwegian Riverton Prize for his novel ”A Little Golden Ring” (”En liten gyllen ring”), in 2000. Now, no less than four novels from his popular series about the Oslo based police inspectors Gunnarstranda and Frølich are to be published in the U.S. by Thomas Dunne Books. We caught up with the author over a transatlantic cup of coffee.

A Realistic Approach
“The Scandinavian crime has a somewhat more realistic approach to the everyday life of ordinary people,” Dahl says, commenting on the considerable attention the genre has gained from an international audience the last years.
There has been a wave of popularity for this kind of literature, Dahl explains. His own novels have already had a formidable success in countries like Germany and Great Britain.

Dahl thinks this genre is appreciated by a global audience because it offers something else than the stereotypical crime. His novels feature both corrupt businessmen, cynical strippers, drug addicts and film noir type femme fatales, but Dahl also writes within a tradition of Scandinavian social realism.

For readers who are not necessarily familiar with the Norwegian geography and lifestyle, the settings add an exotic touch to the story.
“A lot of people appreciate the local settings, it gives a kind of social anthropology approach to what’s happening,” Dahl says.

Read the rest of the interview here.

K O Dahl update

I emailed Faber and Faber with my review of K O Dahl's The Fourth Man and enquired in passing as to whether they planned to translate any more. I'm pleased to report that two more are in the pipeline beginning with 'The Man in the Window' next March. Using my trusty online Norwegian-English translator and poring over K O Dahl's website, I make this the third in the Gunnarstranda and Frolich series whereas 'The Fourth Man' is the fifth...