Favourite Discoveries of 2016 (I)

As per usual I have asked my fellow Euro Crime reviewers to come up with their favourite crime fiction discovery of the past year - be it book, film or tv series.

The first entry comes from Norman Price.

Norman's Favourite Discovery of 2016

The former British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan was allegedly once asked what he feared most; his answer “Events, dear boy, events”. Well we have certainly had plenty of those in 2016.

My own personal events in which I had very close encounters with some of the most expensive equipment owned by the National Health Service lead to my discovery of the pleasure of sitting through a marathon DVD session. The total immersion in a series, in this case Vera, was a great help in taking my mind off my more serious health problems.

My wife and I had both read The Moth Catcher by Ann Cleeves and really enjoyed the characters and excellent plot, with the result that we decided to get the complete DVD set and watch it over several nights. Our old DVD had broken down years ago so we purchased a basic TV and DVD player combination and settled down to watch.

Fascinating plots combined with superb acting by Brenda Blethyn and David Leon as the main protagonists Vera Stanhope and Joe Ashworth made it a pleasant way to spend our evenings together. The last series without David Leon was not quite as good because the spiky interaction between the solitary Vera and the family man Joe was missing. But I would highly recommend the DVD of Vera.

I am trying to get back to reading, but if my concentration is not up to scratch one of my presents during this festive season was the complete set of the Inspector Morse series. That should last me the rest of the dark winter nights.

Favourite Euro Crime Reads of 2016 - Norman

I'm very pleased to welcome Norman back to Euro Crime and we'll hear more from him when I reveal his favourite discovery of 2016. But first, his favourite British/European/translated reads of 2016:

Norman Price's favourite reads of 2016

Here are my top five in no particular order:

The Moth Catcher by Ann Cleeves
Stasi Child by David Young
The Dying Detective by Leif G W Persson tr. Neil Smith
The Caveman by Jorn Lier Horst tr. Anne Bruce
Real Tigers by Mick Herron

These five outstanding books, a mixture of crime and spy fiction, had the basics of all good fiction, great characters, interesting plots and a sense of place.

Favourite Euro Crime Reads of 2015 - Norman

Today Norman Price reveals his favourite Euro Crime titles, in the latest instalment of the Euro Crime reviewers' favourite reads of 2015.

Norman Price's favourite reads of 2015

I did not read as many books as I usually do that could be classified as Eurocrime in 2015.
I was distracted for much of the year by both pleasant and unpleasant events, and several of my best reads came from the other side of the Atlantic.

But British and European authors also produced some great reads. I only reviewed one book for Euro Crime during the year and it was one of my top five:

1] The Lady From Zagreb by Philip Kerr.

The tenth novel in the Bernie Gunther series was another great read bringing the reader excitement, tension, great characters and a nice dollop of historical education about the war in the Balkans. An adult read because of the accounts of the particular horror of the Second World War in Yugoslavia, where ethnic tensions exploded in an orgy of killing that were to repeat themselves in the 1990s.
I was rather pleased that a brief section of my review for Euro Crime was used in the paperback version of the book located between blurbs by the Irish Times and The Sun.

2] and 3] The Hummingbird and The Defenceless by Kati Hiekkapelto translated by David Hackston

The explosion of Nordic noir that has hit our bookshelves, and TV screens, since the Stieg Larsson phenomena has meant that as well as some very good examples we have also seen some pretty poor stuff. If it is Nordic it must have a market has been the mantra.
It is nice to report that in Finnish author Kati Hiekkapelto we have a Nordic author, who is so good her books remind me of the Martin Beck series. The novels are set in a Northern Finnish coastal town and feature the classic combination of mismatched detective colleagues. Young attractive Anna Fekete, an immigrant from the former Yugoslavia of Hungarian ethnicity, and Esko, a middle aged Finnish redneck, a racist with a slightly soft centre beneath the harsh exterior. The books discuss some of the major problems of our time, immigration, the status of minorities, racism and loneliness, blending social commentary and police procedural quite brilliantly.

4] Viper by Maurizio De Giovanni translated by Anthony Shugar

Viper is another in the superb series set in Fascist Italy in the 1930s. The murder of a beautiful prostitute leads Commissario Ricciardi and his portly colleague to investigate a series of suspects. But in my opinion it is the two subplots, one involving the conversations and political jokes between Ricciardi, Maione and pathologist Dr Bruno Modi, that add spice to a story in a country where one wrong word can lead you to fall into the clutches of the OVRA, Mussolini's frightening secret police. The second subplot is the love triangle as two very different women, Livia the worldly glamourous widow and Enrica the shy bespectacled neighbour, struggle to attract Ricciardi's attention.

5] Leaving Berlin by Joseph Kanon

A spy story set in post-war Berlin that emphasises the desperate situation in a defeated country, and that the Soviet liberators are not that different from the former Fascist rulers.
It is sometimes a distressing read as dedicated communists slowly realise that the socialist state they arrived at hoping for some kind of utopia will eventually become the only country in history that builds a wall to keep people in rather than out.
The tragedy is made more real by the current situation in Britain where a major political party has been hijacked by people who wave Mao's little red book around in the Houses of Parliament, and apparently wish to recreate that GDR [East German Stasi state] in England's green and pleasant fields.

Favourite Discoveries of 2015 (6)

Norman Price champions the star of two British crime series in his Favourite Discovery of 2015.

Norman Price's Favourite Discovery of 2015

My Favourite Discovery of 2015 was Nicola Walker

Nicola Walker has had a long acting career starting with the Cambridge Footlights, and going on to have roles top TV series such as Spooks, Last Tango in Halifax and Scott and Bailey.

But 2015 was the year she starred in two brilliant crime series, Unforgotten on ITV, which premiered on 8 October, and River on BBC1, which premiered on the 13 October.

In River she played DS Stevie Stevenson, former partner of the troubled DI John River played by Stellan Skarsgard, who sees dead people. As with most good crime series on TV the supporting cast was excellent with long suffering DS Ira King played by Adeel Akhtar, as River's new partner, and the superb Leslie Manville as DCI Chrissie Read.


Unforgotten covers the complex investigation into a 39 year old murder with Nicola Walker in charge as DCI Cassie Stuart, with her assistant DS Sunil "Sunny" Khan, played by Sanjeev Bhaskar. Once I got used to the disconcerting situation that Walker was playing two police parts on different channels, and that Sanjeev Bhaskar is best known as a comedian, I really enjoyed Unforgotten. These two were really a great combination and were not overshadowed by a supporting cast of acting heavyweights including Tom Courtenay, Bernard Hill, Peter Egan, Trevor Eve, Cherie Lunghi and Hannah Gordon among others.

Both these home grown series were top notch and it shows that we don't have to rely on Nordic or US television for our diet of crime fiction. If you haven't watched them you are in for a treat. I will be on the look out for anything starring Nicola Walker in future.

Favourite Discoveries of 2014 (I)

As usual I have asked my fellow Euro Crime reviewers to come up with their favourite crime fiction discovery of the past year - be it book, film or tv series.

The first entry comes from Norman Price.

Norman Price's Favourite Discovery of 2014

My discovery of the year was on the television:

Happy Valley proved that British television could match the very best of American and Scandinavian crime fiction TV. A great script written by Sally Wainwright, who was also involved with that very good series Scott and Bailey, and brilliant acting by Sarah Lancashire as Police Sergeant Catherine Cawood made this one of the best police series of 2014. This series raised the perennial question of how a limited mostly unarmed police force and a justice system that appears weighted against the victims of crime can deal with criminal evil.

Favourite Euro Crime Reads of 2014 - Norman

Euro Crime reviewer Norman Price details his favourite reads of 2014:

Norman Price's favourite reads of 2014

My top five Euro Crime selections are:

Phillipe Georget - Autumn All The Cats Return tr. Steve Rendall & Lisa Neal

This was even better than Georget's debut book Summertime All The Cats Are Bored as it blends in an informative backstory about the Algerian War and the status of pied-noir, with the hunt for a killer. How will the relationship between Gilles and his beautiful wife Claire develop? This is a series that has characters, plots, and an interesting location in Catalan country.

Hakan Nesser - The G File tr. Laurie Thompson

The end of the series in which Van Veeteren is given a final chance to get closure in his dealings with Jann G Hennan a man he has known and clashed with since schooldays. The contrast between the drunken failure Maarten Verlangen and the smooth success G Hennan is almost distressing in the clarity in which it is portrayed in the book. Hakan Nesser makes Van Veeteren's guilt at his past failures one of the themes of the story. This is a long book but an easy read, and a fitting end to a superb ten book series.

Leif GW Persson - Free Falling As If In A Dream  tr. Paul Norlen

Lars Martin Johannson and his team attempt to solve the mystery of the assassination of Olaf Palme, the Swedish Prime Minister, in 1986. Witty entertaining and with some great female characters this is among the best of Swedish crime fiction. Although the Persson books are long and he invented the misogynist Evert Backstrom, in this book Anna Holt and Lisa Mattei do the work while the men eat, drink and talk, making it a fine reading experience.

Liza Marklund - Borderline tr. Neil Smith

More adventures of journalist Annika Bengtzon this time faced by a topical and up to the minute problem in that her husband Thomas, now reconciled with her after past differences, is kidnapped while working for an EU commission in East Africa. The tension mounts as she, aided by Jimmy Halenius, tries to negotiate her husband's freedom, but things are never that straightforward with Annika and complications occur.


Ben Pastor - A Dark Song of Blood

Martin Bora returns in a tense hunt for a murderer set in Rome during the first six months of 1944. A mixture of terrible real life events and the personal problems of Martin and his Italian police colleague Guidi are told in an easy to read style. Considering the complexity of the situation with the Vatican, Wehrmacht, SS, Italian Fascists, and the Resistance all having a part to play Ben Pastor does a fine job in making the narrative so clear.

Favourite Euro Crime Reads of 2013 - Norman

In today's instalment of the Euro Crime reviewers' favourite reads of 2013, it's Norman Price's favourite five Euro Crime and/or translated titles:

Norman Price's favourite reads of 2013

So here is a list of my five best reads of 2013 and a very difficult choice it was:

Fred Vargas - The Ghost Riders of Ordebec tr. Sian Reynolds

Derek B Miller - Norwegian by Night

Robert Harris - An Officer and A Spy

Phillipe Georget - Summertime All The Cats Are Bored tr. Steven Rendall

Leif G.W.Persson - Linda , As in the Linda Murder tr. Neil Smith

Favourite Discoveries 2013 (2)

Today's instalment of favourite discoveries of 2013 comes from Norman Price who blogs and reviews at Crime Scraps as well as at Euro Crime.

Norman Price's Favourite Discovery of 2013

My discovery of the year was Summertime, All The Cats Are Bored by Philippe Georget translated by Steve Rendall. This was a excellent debut novel with an intriguing title - a direct translation of the original French. One of the reasons I enjoyed it was that most French crime novels feature Parisian cops who may occasionally venture out into the provinces, while Summertime is located in Perpignan, a city situated on the Mediterranean coast with a cosmopolitan dual Catalan/French culture.

The intuitive detective Gilles Sebag, the main protagonist, is married to the beautiful Claire and they have two teenage children, Severine and Leo. It is all very French with Gilles unsure of Claire, and their relationship almost as important to the plot as the hunt for the perpetrator of crimes against young Dutch women.

I can't imagine Madame Maigret swimming naked with Jules, like Claire and Gilles in Summertime, but this is Perpignan not Paris and that was another simpler time.

I am looking forward to more novels about Gilles, his lovely wife Claire, his boss Castello and his colleague Jacques Molina.

Read Norman's full review of Summertime, All The Cats are Bored over at Crime Scraps.

Review: Then We Take Berlin by John Lawton

Then We Take Berlin by John Lawton, December 2013, 432 pages, Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press, ISBN: 1611856124

Reviewed by Norman Price.
(Read more of Norman's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

THEN WE TAKE BERLIN, the latest book by John Lawton, author of the acclaimed Inspector Troy series, begins in 1963 with the two main characters many miles apart.

Aristocratic German Christina Helene von Raeder Burkhardt, conveniently know as Nell, is in Berlin as assistant to Mayor Willy Brandt as they plan the itinerary for the visit of President Kennedy.

While cockney John Holderness, known as Joe to his pals and Wilderness to his women is about to receive an offer to visit Frank Spoleto, his old associate from their exploits in post-war Berlin, all expenses paid. Frank is apparently a partner in Carver, Sharma and Dunn, a Madison Avenue advertising agency. Frank persuades Joe, for twenty grand, to help Steve Sharma’s maiden aunt, a Jew who somehow survived the war in Berlin, but now stuck behind the Berlin Wall and wishes to get out of Communist East Germany for the freedoms of the West.

The rest of the book is a long convoluted back-story that relates incidents in the lives of Joe and Nell during the war and its aftermath. All the strands in the narrative lead back to a conclusion in Berlin in 1963.

Cockney Joe Wilderness comes from very different strata of British society than Frederick Troy. Joe’s mother is killed in the Blitz, and with his abusive father in the army, his grandfather Abner Riley, a safebreaker, and his much younger girlfriend Merle, a part-time prostitute, look after the teenager. Young Joe accompanies Abner on his expeditions learning his tricks of the trade. But as the war ends Joe is called up for his National Service in the RAF where his insubordinate behaviour towards the casual brutality of the NCOs leads him ending up in the glass-house.

Intelligence Officer Alec Burne-Jones rescues him from the drudgery of square bashing and cleaning toilets with a toothbrush. The IQ test set on Joe’s entry to the service shows that this well-read cockney wide boy is a bit of a genius, and Burne-Jones realises he could be useful in Germany unmasking Nazis and looking for nuclear scientists.

Meanwhile Nell sent by her parents to live with an uncle at Celle in Lower Saxony makes her way through a shattered country via Bergen-Belsen, where she helps to identify, nurse and interpret for the haggard survivors, to her home Berlin and to a relationship with Joe, who is now deeply embedded in series of black market scams.

I am a fan of John Lawton’s Troy series, which goes way beyond simple crime and spy fiction and resembles a social history of the time. THEN WE TAKE BERLIN has been called a Troy novel without Troy, although it certainly meets the Troy standard of eccentricity, humour, meticulous historical research and readability. Lawton is one of those authors who because of his historical subject matter can have you smiling and crying on the same page. In THEN WE TAKE BERLIN we are given a brief scattering of characters from the Troy series, with a very fleeting appearance of the man himself. While Eddie Clark an occasional character in the Troy series becomes a central figure in the black market scams arranged by Frank and Joe, and unreliable NKVD Major Yuri.

John Lawton’s memorable characters, for instance Rada, a wonderful old Russian exile living in Cornwall Gardens who is asked by Burne–Jones to brush up Joe’s Russian and German language but decides to educate him about European society, are usually larger than life.

How she had danced with Kaiser Bill in 1912… More charm than than you might imagine.

But in this novel his themes and the atmosphere are more compelling. A Europe destroyed with over 12 million displaced persons, Germany shattered with women prepared to do anything for food or coffee or cigarettes. The race to obtain the services of nuclear scientists, Belsen and the Holocaust, the attempt to remove former Nazis from public life with the issuing of “Persilscheins”, the Berlin airlift of 1948, the Cold War, JFK and “Ich Bin Ein Berliner”, all find their allotted place in the narrative.

This historical novel is a fine read, although a little episodic in the later third, and it is a book with great educational value even if you take into consideration the slight liberties with history explained in the author’s notes. Joe Wilderness might well become as an addictive a read as Troy.

How do you end a novel that quirkily blends mentions of real life people Edward Teller, Lise Meitner, Ernest Bevin, Ingrid Bergman and Broadway producer Arthur Cantor with your new fictional hero Joe Wilderness, a cockney safecracker, spy, and mensch? Well you have to accept a little eccentricity from a brilliant writer such as John Lawton. Let us hope we don’t have to wait too long for the sequel.

“Ah….the British doctors. Everything in its place. Yes. And I shall answer. I had not a day’s illness in my life until last year.”

“And….then?”

“I caught an incurable disease.”

“What’s it called?”

“Germany.”

Norman Price, December 2013

Review: The Windsor Faction by D J Taylor

The Windsor Faction by D J Taylor, September 2013, 384 pages, Chatto & Windus, ISBN: 0701187875

Reviewed by Norman Price.
(Read more of Norman's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

THE WINDSOR FACTION is an alternate history fiction novel. In this book’s parallel universe Mrs Wallis Warfield Simpson dies in 1936, and therefore Edward VIII does not abdicate.

The King lives a lonely life in Buckingham Palace, heartbroken and insulated from his people by his advisors and ministers. The idea the novel proposes is that with the King’s pro-peace, pro-appeasement or even pro-German position it would have encouraged the various groups that were working for a “negotiated peace” with Hitler during the years 1936-1939. Most of the novel is set during the period known as the Phoney War between the attack on Poland and subsequent British declaration of war, and the German attack in the West in May 1940.

……..but not of what hardly anybody called the psychology of appeasement, that irrepressible urge to give someone something that it was pretty clear he ought not to have.

The main plot line features young attractive Cynthia Fitzpatrick, whose family lives in Ceylon, along with other expatriate families administering the Empire. A sexual encounter with a rather unpleasant young man Henry Bannister is followed on their journey back by the fumbling Henry crashing the car into a tree. Henry’s death and the world situation mean that the Bannisters, even more unpleasant than their late son, and Cynthia’s parents return to England.

Cynthia gets a position with the literary magazine, Duration, and begins a relationship with a brash American cipher clerk at their Embassy called Tyler Kent, who had previously escorted the weird Hermione Bannister around town. On her visits to the Bannister country house, Ashburton Grange, meetings in London, and Tyler Kent’s rooms Cynthia discovers that these people are part of a “peace” faction of strident anti-Semites lead by an MP, Captain Ramsay, with a Miss Harris-Foster among their members.

"I looked up her file. Do you know she joined the Imperial Fascist League as far back as 1929 when there were just half a dozen of them sitting in a room in Craven Street with Mussolini’s photograph on the wall? And somebody who had tea at her flat said she had an antimacassar with the words “Perish Judah’ embroidered on the back".

At Duration magazine Cynthia meets up with fellow employee Anthea, a tall painfully thin girl of about twenty-four who reads the Daily Worker and has a friend Norman working in a cloak-and-dagger outfit.

Journalist Beverly Nichols, who moves warily among the peace faction, meets the King who is impressed by his articles. He is asked by the King to help him write his 1939 Christmas address to the Empire, an event that excites Captain Ramsay and his associates. This part of the narrative is in the form of a witty and bitchy diary in which Nichols amusingly frequently complains about the acquisitive behaviour of his young male friends. Some other sub-plots reinforce the atmosphere and mood of the class-ridden world of England in the 1930s, and 1940s.

In my ignorance I had not heard of author D J Taylor, whose fiction books have been long listed for the Man Booker Prize, and who also writes non-fiction about the interwar and past war years.

THE WINDSOR FACTION is one of those books I did not want to finish because I was enjoying it so much. It is such a clever blend of alternate history and faction that the reader might be confused as to which are the real life characters and which fictional creations. Of course Edward VIII, Beverly Nichols, the “sophisticated” American Tyler Kent, and the fanatical Nazi Captain Ramsay were real life characters. Another case where real people are more frighteningly insane than any fictional creations. Ramsay stated that Calvin’s real name was Cohen, and that Cromwell was an agent of the Jews.

The main character Cynthia develops over the course of the book and turns out to be much more enterprising and determined than the reader expects. The plot is full of intriguing characters at Duration magazine, in the Intelligence services and in the Fascist groups and is scattered with anecdotes from the time. Despite the serious subject the author manages to provide some humour with a sharp witty dialogue.

"Don’t do what Inkerman in B.2 did. He went away for a weekend with that woman he met at the Nordic League-the one who had a picture of Adolf in her bedroom-and there was the hell of a row".

THE WINDSOR FACTION is an excellent read, blending plot, characters, and educational value into a fascinating and interesting novel that reinforces the idea that the Second World War was like the Battle of Waterloo “the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life”.

Norman Price, September 2013

Favourite Euro Crime Reads of 2012 - Norman

Continuing the series of Euro Crime reviewers' favourite reads of 2012 here are Norman Price's favourite Euro Crime and/or translated titles, in the order he listed them:

The Potter's Field by Andrea Camilleri tr. Stephen Sartarelli

At last the old maestro win the CWA International Dagger with his usual mixture of mafia, sex, humour and intrigue.

Another Time, Another Life by Leif G W Persson tr. Paul Norlen

Another veteran crime writer with the second book in a trilogy that covers 25 years full of events, from the seizing of the West German Embassy in 1975 by terrorists, to a murder in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the opening of the Stasi records, to a reopening of the case in 1999/2000. Facts,satire, humour, mystery and some strong female characters to go along with Persson's usually obnoxious policemen.

The Blind Goddess by Anne Holt tr. Tom Geddes

My discovery of the year, the Hanne Wilhelmsen series.

Last Will by Liza Marklund tr. Neil Smith

Annika Bengtzon, the most popular and attractive journalist in Scandinavia continues the struggle to balance her career and family. In this brilliant book the reader learns about Alfred Nobel, his prize, how a media outlet is organised, and tales of scientific rivalry. No wonder Liza Marklund was one of Maxine's favourite authors.

Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst

One of Furst's other wartime thrillers, Spies of Warsaw, is being televised at the moment, starring David Tennant.

Spies of the Balkans is a superbly crafted story of Costa Zannis, a detective in Salonika who deals with political cases, in late 1940. It is the story of a society under tremendous pressure, war , intrigue, Nazis, spies, coup d'etats and escaping Jews all blended in with some historical information and a love story. At the very end of the novel Alan Furst puts in a lovely little unexpected twist, which can almost, but not quite make you forget what really happened to Salonika's ancient Jewish population during the war.