Who Killed Santa Claus? (...or 'What I'm reading')

I've just started my first Indridason. Indridason is the author of the Detective Erlendur series set in Reykjavik and 'Voices' is the third to be translated into English (but I make it the 5th in the series.)

Synopsis from amazon.co.uk:
"Detective Erlendur encounters memories of his troubled past in this gripping and award-winning continuation of the "Reykjavik Murder Mysteries". At a grand Reykjavik hotel, the doorman has been repeatedly stabbed in the dingy basement room he called home. It is only a few days before Christmas and he was preparing to appear as Santa Claus at a children's party. The manager tries to keep the murder under wraps. A glum detective taking up residence in his hotel and an intrusive murder investigation are not what he needs. As Erlendur quietly surveys the cast of grotesques who populate the hotel, the web of malice, greed and corruption that lies beneath its surface reveals itself. Everyone has something to hide. But most shocking is the childhood secret of the dead man who, many years before, was the most famous child singer in the country: it turns out to be a brush with stardom which would ultimately cost him everything. As Christmas Day approaches Erlendur must delve deeply into the past to find the man's killer. "Voices" is a tense, atmospheric and disturbing novel from one of Europe's greatest crime writers."

So far, Erlendur is reminding me of Wallander from Mankell's series though my experiences is limited to having listened to 'The Fifth Woman'.

TV version of Karin Alvtegen's Missing

Karin Alvtegen's crime novel, 'Missing', published in English in 2003, has been made into 2 x 90 min parts for showing on ITV1 at some point in the, hopefully not too distant, future.

The tv show blurb: "Homeless for several years, 21-year-old Sibyl Foster regularly scams rooms from unwitting hotel residents on the pretence that her purse has been stolen. She manages to get away with a room to herself, no strings – until one of her targets is violently murdered. When a second murder is committed, there is evidence that unmistakably links Sibyl as the prime suspect. But as they begin to investigate her, the police turn up more than they anticipate – including close links to a prominent public figure and a spell in a psychiatric hospital. As more and more skeletons are discovered in Sibyl’s closet, even she can no longer be sure that she is innocent. Written by Jimmy Gardner (This Life, Outlaws, The Cops, Buried) and adapted from a Swedish novel by Karin Alvtegen."

You can view the promo at the Minotaur site. The rights have also been bought for another of Alvtegen's books, 'Betrayal'.

A few links (News, Carofiglio and how to date Bond)

Firstly I've updated the 'News' page on Euro Crime with a few more items including Marcel Berlins' top crime novels of 2006 which includes Euro Crime, Petrona and Crime Scraps favourite, Gianrico Carofiglio's, 'A Walk in the Dark'.
(Reviews: Euro Crime, Petrona, Crime Scraps.)

Secondly, The Independent has a so called 'secret' section on Casino Royale (if you don't mind the advertising), here. For those wanting to know if they'd be eligible to date Bond, click on the 'exclusive' tab.

The Collaborator of Bethlehem - Matt Beynon Rees

Here's another tastefully covered offering from Soho Press and thus another book is added to the wishlist. 'The Collaborator of Bethlehem' by British author, Matt Beynon Rees, is billed as the first in a series of Palestine mysteries and the main character is history teacher, Omar Yussef.

Synopsis:
"For decades, Omar Yussef has been a teacher of history to the children of Bethlehem. When a favorite former pupil, George Saba, a member of the Palestinian Christian minority, is arrested for collaborating with the Israelis in the killing of a Palestinian guerrilla, Omar is sure he has been framed. If George is not cleared, he faces imminent execution.Then the wife of the dead man, also one of Omar Yussef’s former pupils, is murdered, possibly raped. When he begins to suspect the head of the Bethlehem al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades is the true collaborator, Omar and his family are threatened. But as no one else is willing to stand up to the violent Martyrs Brigades men, who hold the real power in the town, it is up to him to investigate."

About the author:
From his website: "Matt Beynon Rees is a mystery novelist and journalist. As a reporter, he has covered the Middle East for over a decade, with the vast majority of that time spent amongst Palestinians and Israelis. He’s a Contributor for Time based in Jerusalem, where he was the magazine’s bureau chief from June 2000 until January 2006. He was born in Wales in 1967 and studied at Oxford University and the University of Maryland. Beynon Rees wrote award-winning stories about the violence of the Aqsa intifada for Time."

The US edition will be out in February 2007 and according to his blog, the UK version, retitled 'The Bethlehem Murders', will be out in June 2007.

Win a copy of Boris Akunin's new book from Random House (US)

Today's 'Outlined in Chalk' newsletter offers US readers a chance to win one of 25 advance copies of Boris Akunin's 'Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog'.

"To enter, please email your name and snail mail address to Random House and include "AKUNIN" in the subject line. Good luck!"

Rebus not dying next year

According to last Thursday's Edinburgh Evening News,

"AUTHOR Ian Rankin has revealed he is not planning to kill off his hard-drinking creation John Rebus - who today had a single malt whisky named in his honour.

Fans of the best-selling Edinburgh detective feared he would make a final bow at the end of the next novel.

But Mr Rankin, who lives in Merchiston, said: "He's not going to die at the end of the final book, that would be an indignity too far."

And he hinted that Rebus could return in a cameo role in a novel about his long-suffering sidekick, Det Sgt Siobhan Clarke.

The comments came as Orkney distillers Highland Park announced the new Rebus20 malt."

Ian Rankin expands on his plans for Rebus in The Scotsman and talks about Rebus and Whiskey here.

New reviews and other updates to the Euro Crime website

Both the new reviews added to the Euro Crime website this weekend are of titles by female Swedish authors: Liza Marklund's 'Prime Time', reviewed by Karen Chisholm, and Helene Tursten's 'The Torso'.

Other changes include:

The 'News' page has been updated.

The 'New Releases' pages have been updated.

The 'Authors' (485 sites) page of author websites has been updated.

In 'Books' I've added bibliographies for the following authors: Sean Brickell, Derek W Lake and Dennis Lewis.

In 'Books' I've updated the bibliographies (ie added new titles) for: Mark Billingham, Arnaldur Indridason, Arturo Perez-Reverte and Helene Tursten.

Casino Royale - let's not forget the book...

Today's Guardian reviews the new Penguin film-tie-in edition of Casino Royale. It's hard to believe that the book was written in 1953.

The review concludes:
"You should also read this because, without doing so, you will never have a complete picture of the imaginative postwar life of this country. It is odd to think that people watching the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II could take a break by reading the newly published hardback edition of this book. When Larkin said that sexual intercourse began in 1963, you may think that he was exactly a decade out. And in his hugely enjoyable study of Bond, The Man Who Saved Britain, Simon Winder points out that the key moment in the novel is when Bond orders an avocado pear ("with french dressing") for dessert. We forget how exotic and desirable the avocado was in 1953; and how hard it was to take money out of the country. When Bond is gambling with thousands of pounds at the baccarat table, British readers must have been boggle-eyed with envy. And even northern France, while a modestly dipped toe in the waters of Abroad, was still a start.

The other reason to read the books is that they are enormous fun. But you might have guessed that already."

Read the rest of the review here.

The Ruby in the Smoke

The first of the Sally Lockhart mysteries is to be shown over Christmas on the BBC, with Billie Piper playing the sixteen year old heroine. All four books by Philip Pullman are scheduled to be televised.

"'Have you ever heard the phrase The Seven Blessings?' That question causes a man to die of shock, and propels Sally Lockhart into a desperate adventure that will expose the deepest secrets of the corrupt and murderous opium trade. Sally is sixteen when the story begins, orphaned and alone. She's had an unconventional education: her knowledge of English Literature, French, History, Art and Music is non-existent, but she has a thorough grounding in military tactics, can run a business, ride like a Cossack and shoot straight with a pistol. When her father is drowned in suspicious circumstances in the South China Sea, Sally soon finds herself in terrible danger too - and at the rotten heart of it all lies the deadly secret of the ruby in the smoke."

Philip Pullman says of the series: "Historical thrillers, that's what these books are. Old-fashioned Victorian blood-and-thunder. Actually, I wrote each one with a genuine cliché of melodrama right at the heart of it, on purpose: the priceless jewel with a curse on it – the madman with a weapon that could destroy the world – the situation of being trapped in a cellar with the water rising – the little illiterate servant girl from the slums of London who becomes a princess … And I set the stories up so that each of those stock situations, when they arose, would do so naturally and with the most convincing realism I could manage.

There are many more such hackneyed situations awaiting my attention."

These are books I'd like to find time to read, however I'll have to make do with the tv programmes for now. Hopefully the show will encourage more children to read the original stories.

Translated crime/thriller coming soon (1)

From Arcadia Books: "Leif Davidsen is a Danish journalist and the author of a number of best-selling suspense novels. He has worked for many years for Danish radio and television as a foreign correspondent and editor of foreign news, specialising in Russian, East and Central European affairs."

Will Vuk succeed in killing an Iranian author or will the police, who are aware of his intentions, succeed in capturing him? Find out in this dramatic political thriller from one of Denmark's finest crime writers.

Iranian mullahs have offered a four-million dollar reward to the person who carries out their fatwa, the death sentence of the internationally acclaimed author Sara Santanda. A Danish daily newspaper has in cooperation with the Danish PEN centre invited her to Copenhagen, and police officer Per Toftlund of the Danish Secret Service is put in charge of protecting her. A politician in parliament strikes a deal with dire consequences, and somewhere in the former Yugoslavia a young man signs up for murder. The man is Vuk. He is the Serbian Dane.

I've put the cover in quite large as I can't make out if that's a decaying body in a uniform! 'The Serbian Dane' is out 2 December.

Asa Larsson to be published in the UK

Good news for those of us reluctant to splash out on a US hardback, 'Sun Storm' is to be published by Viking in April 2007 albeit under the new title of 'The Savage Altar'. This means this title can be considered for the 2007 International Dagger. Alternatively the US paperback of 'Sun Storm' is out on Boxing Day (according to amazon.co.uk).

Read Karen Chisholm's review of 'Sun Storm' on Euro Crime.

I think I prefer the US cover, but what do others think?

"In a land of silence and snow, the killing has begun ...Rebecka Martinsson is heading home to Kiruna, the small town she left in disgrace years before. A Stockholm tax lawyer, Rebecka has a good reason to return: her friend Sanna, whose brother has been horrifically murdered in the church of the cult he helped create. Beautiful and fragile, Sanna needs someone like Rebecka to remove the shadow of guilt that is engulfing her, to forestall an ambitious prosecutor, and to confront the rumours circulating in a closed and frightened community. But to help her friend, and to find the real killer of a man she once adored and is now not sure she ever knew, Rebecka must relive the darkness she left behind in Kiruna, delve into a sordid conspiracy of deceit, and confront a killer whose motives are dark and impossible to guess ..."

The follow up, 'The Blood Spilt', is out in the US in January 2007.

Life on Mars & Vincent win International EMMY Awards

Full list of International Emmy winners, here

2006 INTERNATIONAL EMMY® AWARD WINNERS:

DRAMA SERIES - Life on Mars
BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR - Ray Winstone as Vincent

Adelaide Advertiser 's top crime titles 2006

Firstly thanks goes to the organiser of yahoo group oz_mystery_readers for this news, as it doesn't appear online.

The Adelaide Advertiser book reviewers have printed their 'best 100' books for 2006 and the paperbacks on their Crime List include several British authors:

British

'A Child's Game' by by John Connor
'The Lizard's Bite' by David Hewson
'The Naming of the Dead' by Ian Rankin
'Mr Clarinet' by Nick Stone
'Darkness and the Deep' by Aline Templeton

Australian

'Without Consent' by Kathryn Fox
'Diamond Dove' by Adrian Hyland

American

'The Cold Moon' by by Jeffrey Deaver

'Diamond Dove' sounds fascinating and it stars a young Aboriginal woman.

"Emily Tempest has been away from Central Australia for a long time—uni, travel, dead-end jobs. Finding trouble all over the world. Now she's back at Moonlight Downs, the community where she grew up, half in the Aboriginal world, half in the white. And true to form, there's trouble. An old friend brutally murdered and mutilated. An old enemy the only suspect. Until Emily starts asking questions.

Take a nail-biting mystery, an epic setting and a heroine with a talent for stirring things up. Throw in an affectionate flogging of outback Australia's melanoma-encrusted hide—and Diamond Dove may be the wittiest and most gripping debut of the year."

There's a long interview with author Adrian Hyland in The Age

Geraldine McEwan's Marple in 2007

Three more Marple films are on their way in 2007. Filming has been completed on 'Towards Zero' and 'Nemesis' with shooting just starting on 'At Bertram's Hotel'.

Half the fun of these is spotting the various guest stars, a who's who of British acting.

In 'Towards Zero' we have the best Doctor Who of them all, Tom Baker and the cad John Willoughby aka Greg Wise.

'Nemesis' features Richard E Grant and two Coronation Street actors, (Johnny Briggs and Anne Reid) but it's Sam Ryan from Silent Witness (Amanda Burton) who may give Miss M a run for her money in the detecting stakes.

Finally, 'At Bertram's Hotel' has Campion actor, Peter Davidson and Love Actually's tea lady at No. 10, Martine McCutcheon.

A fuller cast list can be found on Wikipedia.

Orion New Blood - Stuart Archer Cohen

Picking up where I left off a few weeks ago, the next 'where are they now?' author is Stuart Archer Cohen. It is indeed a mystery as since Orion's publication of 'The Stone Angels', nothing more has been heard of him, at least in the crime/mystery world. Having read the Shots interview, it's possible he won't write another crime novel.

Author details from amazon.co.uk:
"Stuart Archer Cohen is in his early 40s. He owns an international company trading in rare textiles, and lived in China and South America before settling in Alaska where he now lives with his wife and two children. He has travelled widely and speaks English, Spanish and Mandarin fluently. His acclaimed first novel, INVISIBLE WORLD, was set in Inner Mongolia."

Summary from amazon.co.uk: "The assignment depressed him. He knew that the Waterbury investigation would be a sham, that it was political and that the Chief was in on it. He knew that the reason he'd been appointed to head up the investigation was for the express purpose of not finding the killer. He knew that clearly, because he was the one who had put the bullet in the back of Waterbury's head. Comisario Miguel Fortunato has been in the Buenos Aires police for a long time. Perhaps too long. His pockets have seen more than half a million dollars in bribes over the years. But that's just the way it is. He hasn't done as much wrong as some of his colleagues, but he never managed to tell his wife - just dead from cancer - where most of their money was coming from. Now he has a delicate problem. Some time ago, Robert Waterbury, an American novelist, was found shot dead on Fortunato's patch - officially a drugs deal gone bad. But now the Americans are sending someone over - though nobody's sure why they've sent Athena, a human rights professor - and the case is reopened. Athena soon finds that here in Buenos Aires, the truth is way down anyone's list of priorities. Corruption seeps from the city's every pore in this gritty, atmospheric thriller, where no one is quite what they claim to be, and you have to pick your heroes from the bad, the very bad and the indescribably worse."

It's update time again...

The new reviews on the Euro Crime website this weekend feature two of Italy's finest writers. Check out Massimo Carlotto's 'The Goodbye Kiss' and Andrea Camilleri's 'Rounding the Mark', reviewed by Sunnie Gill.

Other changes are:

The 'News' page has been updated.

The 'New Releases' pages have been updated.

The 'Authors' (483 sites) page of author websites has been updated.

In 'Books' I've added bibliographies for the following authors: Jonathan Barnes, Gyles Brandreth, Gary Coyne, K O Dahl, John Macken and Roz Southey.

In 'Books' I've updated the bibliographies (ie added new titles) for: Vivien Armstrong, Lindsay Ashford, Colin Bateman, John Burdett, Lee Child, Natasha Cooper, Ann Granger, Patrica Hall, June Hampson, Sophie Hannah, Anne Holt, Peter James, Katherine John, Bernard Knight, Roberta Kray, David Lawrence, Paul McAuley, R N/Roger Morris, Amy Myers, Ed O'Connor, Sheila Quigley, Betty Rowlands, Pauline Rowson, Craig Russell, Kate Sedley, Sally Spedding, Sally Spencer, Aline Templeton, M J Trow, Pip Vaughan-Hughes, Jill Paton Walsh and Stella Whitelaw.

...and don't forget, the Competition closes tomorrow night.

Faber & Faber's Three (Historical) Investigators

Whilst I was updating my Euro Crime database with new titles for next year I came across a title from Faber and Faber called 'A Gentle Axe' by R N Morris.

Synopsis from amazon.co.uk:
St. Petersburg, Winter, 1867 - Two frozen bodies are found in an isolated corner of Petrovsky Park. The first - that of a dwarf - has been packed neatly in a suitcase, a deep wound splitting his skull in two. The second body, of a burly peasant, is hanging from a nearby tree, a bloody axe tucked into his belt. The detective Porfiry Petrovich, in his first murder case since Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment", suspects the truth may be more complex than others wish him to believe. His investigation leads him from the squalid tenements, brothels and drinking dens of the city's Haymarket district to an altogether more genteel stratum of society. Atmospheric and tense from its dramatic opening to its shocking climax.

This one's not out until next February but it seems Faber has a history (groan) of publishing crime novels with unusual heroes...

In July we had 'Critique of Criminal Reason' by Michael Gregorio:

Synopis from amazon.co.uk:
In 1793, Hanno Stiffeniis travels to Konigsberg to seek advice from Immanuel Kant. Whatever was said at that private meeting, it changed both their lives. Shortly afterwards, a close friend of the philosopher extracts a promise from the young man: never to return to Konigsberg. But ten years later, having become a magistrate, Stiffeniis is ordered to return there by the King. He must investigate a spate of murders which has reduced the city to a state of terror. Four people have died, and there is no sign of an end to the killing spree. Tension inside the city is heightened by the imminent threat of invasion: Napoleon is menacing the borders of Prussia. While hunting for a murderer in the criminal underworld of Konigsberg - forced to deal with scheming whores, necromancers who claim to speak with the victims, and the scum of the Prussian army - Stiffeniis is caught up once again in the enigmatic world of his former mentor, Kant. What demons haunt the magistrate's past and why has he had been enticed back to Konigsberg to deal with these grisly murders? Stiffeniis must face a dark truth which he would rather deny...

I'm not sure if it was terribly well received as shown by Peter Guttridge's review.

The third historical investigator appeared in June, in Jason Goodwin's, 'The Janissary Tree'.

Synopsis from amazon.co.uk
Yashim is no ordinary detective. It's not that he's particularly brave. Or that he cooks so well, or reads French novels. Not even that his best friend is the Ambassador from Poland, whose country has vanished from the map. Yashim is a eunuch. As the Sultan plans a series of radical reforms to his empire, a concubine is strangled in the palace harem. And a young cadet is found butchered in the streets of Istanbul. Delving deep into the city's crooked alleyways, and deeper still into its tumultuous past, Yashim discovers that some people will go to any lengths to preserve the traditions of the Ottoman Empire. Brilliantly evoking Istanbul in the 1830s, "The Janissary Tree" is a fast-paced literary thriller with a spectacular cast, from mystic orders and lissom archivists to soup-makers and a seductive ambassador's wife. Darker than any of these is the mysterious figure who controls the Sultan's harem.

The Independent's review is here.

Faber seem to have the market cornered for unlikely heroes of crime fiction. I'm just surprised they're not behind 'The Interpretation of Murder' by Jed Rubenfeld starring Freud.

What's the most unusual sleuth you've encountered?

Euro Crime website - 'News' page updated & Competition reminder

I've just added a few more links to reviews in UK papers, from the past few days, to the 'News' page.

There's still a few days left to enter the Euro Crime competition for a proof copy of the new Fred Vargas novel, 'Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand'.

Life on Mars

Sadly the next series of 'Life on Mars' will be the last. The BBC Press Release confirms:

Fans will finally learn the truth about time-travelling DI Sam Tyler (John Simm) and how he came to be stuck in 1973.

"We decided that Sam's journey should have a finite lifespan and a clear-cut ending and we feel that we have now reached that point after two series; so, although it is sad that we have just finished filming Sam's final scenes, it's also been an incredibly exciting few days!" explains writer and co-creator Matthew Graham.

However some of the characters, though it's not clear if that includes those played by the two main leads, John Simm and Philip Glenister, will appear in 'Ashes to Ashes' a 1980s spin off - more Miami Vice than The Sweeney.

Translated Crime Challenge

The CWA has announced the qualifying period for the 2007 Duncan Lawrie Dagger awards:
"Any UK publisher may enter books provided that the book is relevant to the appropriate award and was published between June 1 2006 and May 31 2007."

Earlier this year I put together a list of books I considered eligible* for the 2006 International Dagger. That list only included translated crime fiction from Europe. I'd like to create a similar list for 2007 but also include non-European translated crime. So far I've come up with only two titles...'Grotesque' by Natsuo Kirino (Feb 07, Japan) and 'Havana Blue' by Leonardo Padura (Apr 07, Cuba).

I know the cut-off date is a few months away but I'd have expected some books out by May to be listed on amazon by now.

The challenge is to tell me what authors/books I'm missing! (NB. They have to be published in the UK.)

*I did ask the CWA for this information but they were unable to supply it.