Publishing Deal - Tana French

A standalone crime novel by Tana French is to be published next year. From the Bookseller:

Editorial director Katy Loftus bought UK and Commonwealth rights to The Wych Elm from her long-term agent Darley Anderson [], who described the novel as “an ambitious, thought-provoking, page-turning, masterpiece”. It is slated for publication for spring 2019.

The American-Irish author has written six award-winning novels published by Hodder, all set in Dublin, featuring different members of a fictional murder squad. The Wych Elm marks a move away from that series, with a central character who finds himself at the centre of a murder case when a skull is discovered in his family’s ancestral home.

And it's already on Netgalley, under a variation of the title:

Toby is a happy-go-lucky charmer who's dodged a scrape at work and is celebrating with friends when the night takes a turn that will change his life - he surprises two burglars who beat him and leave him for dead. Struggling to recover from his injuries, beginning to understand that he might never be the same man again, he takes refuge at his family's ancestral home to care for his dying uncle Hugo. Then a skull is found in the trunk of an elm tree in the garden - and as detectives close in, Toby is forced to face the possibility that his past may not be what he has always believed.

New Reviews: Child, Churton, French, Juul, Nickson, Rimington, Ryan, Slan, Thorpe

Here are 9 new reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today:

JF reviews Lee Child's seventeenth Jack Reacher adventure: A Wanted Man;

Terry Halligan reviews Alex Churton's debut, The Babylon Gene;

Michelle Peckham reviews Tana French's Broken Harbour, the fourth in the Dublin Murder Squad series;

Maxine Clarke reviews Pia Juul's The Murder of Halland tr. Martin Aitken;

Geoff Jones reviews the fourth in the historical Richard Nottingham series by Chris Nickson: Come the Fear;

Susan White reviews Stella Rimington's The Geneva Trap, the seventh in the Liz Carlyle series;

Amanda Gillies reviews William Ryan's The Bloody Meadow the second in the Korolev series set in 1930s Russia;

I review the first in the Jane Eyre Chronicles by Joanna Campbell Slan, Death of a Schoolgirl

and Lynn Harvey reviews Adam Thorpe's Flight.

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.

Sneak Peek at Broken Harbour

Tana French's Broken Harbour has recently been published. You can read the first 20 pages here (a pdf hosted on the Euro Crime website and provided by the publishers).

Maxine has already reviewed it for Petrona.

Official synopsis: In Broken Harbour, a ghost estate outside Dublin - half-built, half-inhabited, half-abandoned - two children and their father are dead. The mother is on her way to intensive care. Scorcher Kennedy is given the case because he is the Murder squad's star detective. At first he and his rookie partner, Richie, think this is a simple one: Pat Spain was a casualty of the recession, so he killed his children, tried to kill his wife Jenny, and finished off with himself. But there are too many inexplicable details and the evidence is pointing in two directions at once. Scorcher's personal life is tugging for his attention. Seeing the case on the news has sent his sister Dina off the rails again, and she's resurrecting something that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control: what happened to their family, one summer at Broken Harbour, back when they were children. The neat compartments of his life are breaking down, and the sudden tangle of work and family is putting both at risk ...

Favourite Discoveries 2011 (5)

Today's instalment of favourite discoveries of 2011 comes from Geoff Jones who chooses an American/Irish author who made quite a splash with her debut in 2007 and it went on to win the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for Best First Novel.

Geoff Jones's Favourite Discovery of 2011

In 2011 I discovered this exciting writer. Her first novel In the Woods made its debut in 2007 to apparently much acclaim (I must have been preoccupied with something else!). She followed this up a year later with the equally well received The Likeness. Her third book, published in 2010, is the one that made me notice this great talent – Faithful Place.

Born in the USA but of Irish parentage, she has lived in Ireland and Italy as well as America. She now lives in Dublin and is married with a daughter. She writes very well about Ireland which is a place I don't know but she describes it so well I feel as if I’ve been there. Her characters are very believable and she has a unique method that a minor character in one book becomes the lead in a subsequent one – very clever.

If I had been asked several years ago who my favourite authors were, very few women would have figured in the top 10. Not sure why – I suppose I felt that only men could write grisly murder mysteries? How wrong could I be!! Today Lynda La Plante, Karen Campbell, Denise Mina and Val McDermid feature prominently. I can now add Tana French to the growing list.

Her fourth book, Broken Harbour, is out in June 2012.

You can read reviews of Tana French's first three books here.

Geoff's reviews can be read here.

New Reviews: Child, Cross, Edwards, Ellis, French, Kristian, Seymour, Theorin

Here are this week's reviews, which include visits to Iraq, Ireland, Sweden, USA and the age of the Vikings(!) as well as the UK:

Lynn Harvey joins the review team with her review of Lee Child's fifteenth Reacher novel, Worth Dying For, which has just come out in paperback;

Sarah Hilary reviews Neil Cross's prequel to his tv series Luther, Luther: The Calling;

I reviewed Martin Edwards's The Serpent Pool on the blog last week (do read the comments as well!);

Lizzie Hayes reviews another fifteenth in the series - Kate Ellis's The Jackal Man the latest in the Wesley Peterson series just out in paperback;

Geoff Jones reviews Tana French's third book in a connected series of books, Faithful Place;

Amanda Gillies reviews the last in the Raven Trilogy by Giles Kristian , Raven: Odin's Wolves (but hopes for more!);

Terry Halligan reviews the recently released new thriller from Gerald Seymour A Deniable Death

and Maxine Clarke reviews double CWA Dagger winner Johan Theorin's third book in the Oland Quartet: The Quarry, tr. Marlaine Delargy.

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

Reviews: Charles, Fitzgerald, French, Ingram, Jones & Allison, McGilloway

The current competition runs until 4 July (UK only I'm afraid): win a copy of The Library of Shadows by Mikkel Birkegaard, donated by the translator Tiina Nunnally.

Following on from last week, here's part two of the focus on Irish authors. Along with 2 Irish authors and 1 Northern Irish there are two Scottish and two English (writing together) authors reviewed today:

Geoff Jones reviews The Beautiful Sound of Silence by Paul Charles;

Maxine Clarke reviews Dead Lovely by Helen Fitzgerald writing "it slips down a treat - like an ice-cream with a vindaloo centre";

Michelle Peckham reviews The Likeness by Tana French concluding that it's "an engrossing read, and one to definitely recommend";

Paul Blackburn reviews The Stone Gallows by C David Ingram;

Terry Halligan reviews The Last Straight Face by Bruce Kennedy Jones & Eric Allison

and Norman Price reviews Gallows Lane by Brian McGilloway saying that the main character is "a successor to Rebus and Morse".

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

January's Audio Books from Oakhill Publishing

Another publisher of Audio books in the UK is Oakhill Publishing. And this month, they've released two notable crime novels on audio: Andrea Camilleri's The Scent of the Night and Tana French's The Likeness.

As an angry octogenarian holds a terrified and lovelorn secretary at gunpoint, Inspector Montalbano is reluctantly drawn into the case. The secretary’s boss, a financial adviser, has vanished along with several billion lire entrusted to him by the good citizens of Vigata. Also missing is the adviser’s young colleague, whose uncle just happens to be building a house on the site of Inspector Montalbano’s very favourite olive tree ... Ably abetted by his loyal and eccentric team, Montalbano, the food-loving, commitment-phobic inspector, returns for another delicious investigation served up in vintage Camilleri style.

The previous five Montalbano novels are also available as Oakhill audio books. The Scent of the Night is reviewed here on Euro Crime.

When Detective Cassie Maddox transferred out of Dublin’s Murder Squad at her own request, she vowed never to return. Then her boyfriend, Detective Sam O’Neill, calls her to a murder scene in Glenskehy. It isn’t until Cassie sees the body that she understands Sam’s insistence. The dead girl is her double, and carries ID identifying her as Alexandra Madison, an alias Cassie used when she worked undercover. But who killed this girl, and who was she? Having played Lexie once before, Cassie is in the perfect position to take her place ... and lure out her killer.

The Likeness is Tana French's second book and is the follow-up to the award winning, In The Woods and is reviewed, here.

New Reviews: Asensi, Black, French and Miles

This week's new reviews (apologies for the slight delay) are here:

New Reviews:

Michelle Peckham recommends a leisurely read of The Last Cato by Matilde Asensi which sees three people - a Swiss Guard, a nun and a professor going on a quest for an earthly paradise following instructions hidden in the Divine Comedy;

A warm welcome to new reviewer Paul Blackburn, who reviews one of the new recruits to the Tartan Noir band: Tony Black's Paying for It;

Maxine Clarke reviews The Likeness by Tana French which she finds disappointingly overlong

and Terry Halligan reviews The Art of Remonstration by Alan Miles the second in the Jim Diamond series.