Philippa Gregory thriller to be televised

From today's Bookseller:

Philippa Gregory's contemporary thriller The Little House is to be made into a two-part drama for ITV1.

The story focuses on the life of Ruth, a young mother who struggles with postpartum depression and the unresolved feelings she has about the deaths of her parents when she was a child; her career-minded husband Patrick and his parents Elizabeth and Frederick.

Independent production company TXTV will film the drama in May and June 2010.

Read the whole article, here.

Sherlock Holmes - trailer

The release of Sherlock Holmes the movie, Guy Ritchie style gets ever closer (UK release is Boxing Day). Here's a 2 minute trailer:



What do you think?

New Reviews: Genelin, Guthrie, Joensuu, Le Fanu, O'Byrne, Rimington

Three competitions are currently running:

i)Win a copy of Crocodile Tears by Anthony Horowitz (US only, closes 9 Nov)
ii)Win a copy of Beautiful Dead: Arizona by Eden Maguire (UK only)
iii)Win a copy of Sheer Folly by Carola Dunn (UK/Europe only)

Details on how to enter can be found on the Competition page

Here are the new reviews that have been added to the website today:

Norman Price reviews Siren of the Waters by Michael Genelin the first of a series featuring Slovakian detective Jana Matinova;

Amanda Gillies enjoys Allan Guthrie's Killing Mum a novella in the Crime Express range;

Maxine Clarke reviews Finnish author Matti Joensuu's To Steal Her Love;

Laura Root reviews the Gothic sounding classic Wylder's Hand by J Sheridan Le Fanu;

Michelle Peckham reviews The Crime Writer's Guide to Police Practice and Procedure by Michael O'Byrne and says it's of interest to non-writers as well

and Terry Halligan reviews the latest from former MI5 head Stella Rimington - Present Danger.

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

Don Bartlett: Interview of a Translator (part 3)

Parts 1 and 2 of the interview with translater Don Bartlett, can be found here and here.

Jo Nesbø and Don Bartlett have been short-listed for the CWA International Dagger for The Redbreast (2007) and The Redeemer (2009).

EC: Which Scandinavian crime authors would you like to see published in English?

DB: I have always been a big fan of Dan Turell. A larger than life Danish writer who died in 1993 at the age of 47. He wrote ten crime stories with great style, wit and warmth.

EC: What are you working on now? (What do we crime fans have to look forward to and will you be doing the rest of the Gunnar Staalesen books as it was reported that Arcadia intend to publish all of them...)

DB: At present I am about to start the next Jo Nesbø, THE LEOPARD. Who knows what will happen with the other Staalesen books? Of course I hope the series will go from strength to strength.

EC: Do you like to read crime fiction (that you're not translating)? - And if so which authors do you enjoy?

DB: Yes, I like reading crime fiction, and there are plenty of good books around. Looking at my pile, I can see recent reads have been Ann Cleeves, Teresa Solana, George Pelecanos, John Harvey…

EC: If you could have written one book which would it be?

DB: One? Philip Kerr’s Berlin trilogy? Does that count? Don’t know. I don’t have dreams of that kind.

EC: Thank you so much for your time Don and also thanks to Crime Scraps for the accompanying photos.



I wrote up the "translators panel" that Don was on at CrimeFest along with Ann Cleeves, Tiina Nunnally, Roz Schwartz and Reg Keeland (aka Steven T Murray) and it's on the blog here.

You can now also listen to the discussion via an mp3 file. (Other panels are available on this CrimeFest page.)

You can read reviews of some of the books that Don's translated, via the Euro Crime website bibliography pages for: K O Dahl, Jo Nesbø and shortly, Gunnar Staalesen.

(NB. These bibliography pages will also help you read the books in their original publication order, (in so much as they are available) rather than translation order. This is rather important for Jo Nesbø's books.)

Competition Reminder: Sheer Folly

Competition reminder. Residents of UK and Europe can win a copy of Sheer Folly by Carola Dunn.

Details of how to enter can be found on the competition page along with details of two further competitions.

Don Bartlett: Interview of a Translator (part 2)

Part 1 of the interview with esteemed translator Don Bartlett, can be found here.

EC: I believe you brought Jo Nesbø to UK publishers' attention (for which we are truly grateful). Did you have a hand in bringing K O Dahl to Faber's attention?

DB: I saw Jo (Norwegian), Håkan Nesser (Swedish) and Leif Davidsen (Danish) at a very amusing crime debate in Copenhagen. Afterwards I contacted Jo’s publisher and read everything he had written, so I was ready to enthuse when asked to write a reader’s report. And to give my opinion when Christopher Maclehose was negotiating to buy two books in Oslo. I had heard K O Dahl was being sold to Faber, so I contacted them and applied to be the translator. I had read all of Dahl’s books and was keen.

EC: You mentioned at CrimeFest that you saw Harry as a northerner with a dry sense of humour, how do you characterise the main characters from Dahl and Staalesen's books?

DB: Gunnarstranda and Frølich (Dahl) are two quirky characters, each strong in his own way, not the most coherent team, but effective. Gunnarstranda is widowed, older, grumpy, easily teased by a confident woman. Frølich is single at times, younger, a willing worker, always thinking about sex. You can smile with or at both of them. Varg Veum (Staalesen) is gentle, worldly-wise, divorced, with a strong moral sense. Staalesen is soft hard-boiled crime! Neither author is short of humour.

EC: [The million dollar question] Why do you think Scandinavian crime fiction is so popular in Britain at the moment?

DB: We don’t seem to be overly open to translated fiction in Britain, so this crime wave is a welcome surprise. Some good Scandinavian writers established themselves (Mankell etc) thanks to an enterprising publisher and that created a taste for more. Scandinavia is both exotic and not so very different from here, and it’s modern, hi-tech. The best Scandi crime fiction has a strong sense of place, evocative writing, thinking characters, an interest in the fabric of society and our lives today, the ‘why’ of crime rather than the ‘how’. It has adapted solid models in a relevant, personal way. And, of course, there is a merry band of dedicated crime fiction bloggers at large who tell everyone how good it is.

EC: Are translators more appreciated these days?

DB: Yes, I think things are changing for the better. You only have to look at THE INDEPENDENT reviews to see that. Or crime fiction websites.

To Be Continued...

Don Bartlett: Interview of a Translator (part 1)

At CrimeFest in May, the Euro Crime representatives (Maxine pictured left, Norman and myself*) got to spend a few minutes with the very affable Don Bartlett, perhaps best known to crime fiction readers as the translator of Jo Nesbo's and K O Dahl's books, from the Norwegian to English.

(*He had already picked us out from the audience at the translation panel as the "crime bloggers" so not sure what that says about us :)).

Don has very kindly agreed to answer some questions about himself and his work:

EC: Britain's not known for its language skills - generally speaking people know a smattering of French, German or Spanish at best, so what led you to languages?

DB: I have always been interested in language and reading. At school we had French and German language assistants. They were fun, despite having to be with us, so that motivated me. What has happened to language assistants by the way? I stayed with a German family for a week, hitch-hiked around northern Europe in the holidays and had a German girlfriend.

EC: Your CV is very impressive: offering translations from German, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Spanish. Your recent work has mainly been from the Norwegian, do you prefer Norwegian or is that where the work is?

DB: I was recommended by David McDuff to read Norwegian crime fiction and it started from there. Norwegian literature punches above its weight, I like it and for me that is where the work is.

EC: Did you always have plans to be a translator, or is this an unexpected career path?

DB: Unexpected. The organisation where I was working centralised and those of us on the edge knew what was coming. I had felt I needed to get back to foreign languages and so I started doing something about it, translation courses, etc.

EC: With the Gunnar Staalesen series, the earlier books have had different translators. Do you read the other translations and try and match the tone/style or just focus on the original words?

DB: I have read one earlier translation, and of course I have read the other books by Staalesen. I decided it made more sense to take THE CONSORTS OF DEATH on its own terms.

EC: You're the current translator for three series written by male authors (Dahl, Nesbo, Staalesen). Would you like to translate a female author's books in the future or is the gender of the author irrelevant to your work?

DB: I started with Pernille Rygg. Shame she didn’t develop a series! I think the books come first. Not sure that translators have much choice over the direction of their work anyway.

To Be Continued...

Romanzo Criminale on BBC4

BBC4 strikes again. They are the 'go to' tv channel for international crime fiction in the UK. Unfortunately they don't have a lot of competition but I'm grateful for what they do show. Tomorrow they have the tv premiere of Romanzo Criminale at 22.30 and it is repeated on Sunday, 8 Nov 2009 at 01:30.


Inspired by a true story, an epic crime thriller which follows a gang's wave of violence, terror and corruption from the 1970s to 1990s. When childhood friends Ice, Dandy and Lebanese kidnap a rich man for a huge ransom they decide to spend their profits on taking over Rome's criminal underworld.

New Reviews: Auswaks, Brandreth, Byrnes, Frimansson, Hayes, Nesbo & New Competitions

Three new competitions have been added to the website this week:

i)Win a copy of Crocodile Tears by Anthony Horowitz (US only)
ii)Win a copy of Beautiful Dead: Arizona by Eden Maguire (UK only)
iii)Win a copy of Sheer Folly by Carola Dunn (UK/Europe only)

Details on how to enter can be found on the Competition page

Here are the new reviews that have been added to the website today:

Rik Shepherd reviews Sherlock Holmes in Russia, edited and translated by Alex Auswaks and finds it's not what he was expecting;

Terry Halligan is pleasantly surprised by Gyles Brandreth's Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile;

Amanda Gillies is disappointed with The Sacred Bones by Michael Byrnes;

Maxine Clarke reviews The Shadow in the Water by Inger Frimansson (the sequel to Good Night, My Darling);

Michelle Peckham reviews A Hard Death by Jonathan Hayes the second of his medical examiner series set in the US

and Maxine also reviews The Redeemer by Jo Nesbo (nb. coming soon...an interview with Jo Nesbo's translator Don Bartlett).

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

Girl Number 9

A six-part online series, Girl Number 9 starts tonight at 9pm. Each episode is 5 minutes long and ends on a cliff hanger. The premise of the story is:

Vincent Boylan (Joe Absolom) has just been arrested, suspected of being the man behind the brutal murder of seven girls, but the team only have a limited time to get a confession out of him. If they can't make him talk, he could slip through their fingers.

Detective Matheson (Gareth David-Lloyd), who led the investigation, is sent in to try and get some answers. But things soon take a horrifying turn for the worse, as Matheson and his boss Lyndon (Tracy-Ann Oberman) are about to find out that all is not as it seems.

You can find out more and watch the series, here. The episodes will be available for a short time after transmission.

Ellis Peters Award - the 2009 winner is...

The winner of the the 2009 CWA Ellis Peters Historical Crime Award has been announced...it is...Philip Kerr's IF THE DEAD RISE NOT.

The other titles shortlisted were:

Rennie Airth THE DEAD OF WINTER, Macmillan

Shona MacLean THE REDEMPTION OF ALEXANDER SEATON, Quercus

Mark Mills THE INFORMATION OFFICER, HarperCollins

Andrew Williams THE INTERROGATOR, John Murray

Laura Wilson AN EMPTY DEATH, Orion

New Competition time again

I mentioned the Crocodile Tears by Anthony Horowitz giveaway the other day which is for US residents only, well I now have a competition for UK residents only. This time it's for Beautiful Dead: Arizona by Eden Maguire.

Both books are by British authors, one is a spy/adventure book the other has a mystery to be solved (though there is a paranormal theme), and are aimed at teenage readers.

I hope to have a competition soon for some adult crime fiction books.

Details of how to win these books can be found on the Euro Crime competition page.

There's been no sign of the Beautiful Dead for weeks. Darina achingly misses Phoenix all over again. But surely he will return with the rest of the Beautiful Dead as so much still remains unresolved. It's been ten months since Arizona drowned in Hartmann Lake. Suicide, it would seem. But something doesn't add up. Drowning herself in a hidden-away lake does not sound like strong, confident, Arizona: Ellerton High School's high-maintenance drama queen. Darina needs to help Arizona the way she helped Jonas. But time is running out ...

Forthcoming titles from Hodder & Stoughton

The Spring 2010 catalogue from Hodder and Stoughton arrived yesterday. These are the new releases pertinent to euro crime (with a couple of exceptions):

January

Jasper Fforde - Shades of Grey (#1 in Painting by Numbers trilogy)
Stephen Leather - Nightfall (#1 Jack Nightingale)

March

Sophie Hannah - A Room Swept White (DC Simon Waterhouse and DS Charlie Zailer)
Dreda Say Mitchell - Gangster Girl

April

Carol McCleary - The Illusion of Murder (Nellie Bly)
Deon Meyer - Thirteen Hours (Benny Griessel - South African)

May

Karen Campbell - Shadowplay (Anna Cameron)
Matt Hilton - Slash and Burn (Joe Hunter)
Aline Templeton - The Road to Nowhere (Marjory Fleming)

June

Richard Blake - The Blood of Alexandria (Aelric)
John Connolly - The Whisperers (Charlie Parker)
Elizabeth George - This Body of Death (Lynley)
Erin Kelly - The Poison Tree (debut)
Patrick Lennon - Fixer

From the New Releases page on the website, you can see what's coming up and also what's been published in 2008 and 2009 and also by different categories.

New Italian crime fiction

I've had an email alerting me about a new publisher, Hersilia Press, which is focusing on Italian crime fiction. Their first book is Inspector Cataldo's Criminal Summer by Luigi Guicciardi which is the first in a ten (so far) book series and will be published in March 2010.

In a quiet holiday town in the Italian Apennines, during a torrid summer, a string of gruesome deaths stirs up trouble in the local community: a suspected suicide which Inspector Cataldo is called in to investigate brings to the surface shady events belonging to the past, and a mysterious foreigner shakes up the delicate social balance of a group of friends who have a lot to hide.

Dagger news and a prediction

News comes via The Bookseller that some of the Dagger shortlists will be announced next May at my favourite crime fiction convention, CrimeFest and that the Times is increasing its involvement:

The Times is to become the media partner for Crimefest in 2010, and will again provide press coverage for the Crime Writers Association (CWA) Dagger awards.

Crimefest is to take place from 20th—23rd May 2010, and the newspaper will carry a feature on the Bristol-based event in March. Following CrimeFest, the Times will also review the winners of its Sounds of Crime Awards for best abridged and unabridged crime audiobooks, sponsored by Audible.

The convention will also host the announcement of the CWA Dagger shortlists, and on 22nd May, the Times will again cover the shortlists, with reviewer Marcel Berlins supplying a a round-up of his favourites from the CWA Dagger in the Library, International, Non-Fiction, Short Story, and Debut Daggers.

Read the whole article, here.

The CrimeFest website is here (NB. Yrsa Sigurdardottir has recently signed up. CrimeFest is very supportive of translated authors and their translators.)

On a related note, Euro Crime reviewer and Crime Scraps blogger, Norman, has now read all the Ellis Peters Award shortlist. Norman's thoughts on who he wants to win and who he thinks will win, can be found here. The official winner will be announced on Thursday night.

New Competition time

I'm running a short-term giveaway for 1 copy of the new Alex Rider novel, Crocodile Tears by Anthony Horowitz, over on my teenage fiction blog. The giveaway is open to US residents only and will close on 9 November.

Details on how to enter the draw can be found here.

New Reviews: Cleave, Cole, Frimansson, Knight, MacBride, Williams

Here are the new reviews that have just been added to the website:

Michelle Peckham reviews a New Zealand crime novel - Cemetery Lake by Paul Cleave;

Amanda Gillies reviews GodSword by Emerson Cole;

Maxine Clarke reviews Good Night, My Darling by Inger Frimansson;

Terry Halligan reviews the paperback release of Crowner Royal by Bernard Knight;

Craig Sisterson reviews Halfhead by Stuart B MacBride

and Norman Price reviews the Ellis Peters Award contender, The Interrogator by Andrew Williams.

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

Kingston Killers - the evidence

My companion to the Kingston Killers event the other night, Maxine, has been super efficient and written it up already, over on Petrona.

The 9 attending authors were split into 3 groups: historical (Laura Wilson, Ariana Franklin, Nicola Upson), spooky (our categorisation!) (Johan Theorin, Yaba Badoe, Cathi Unsworth) and gritty (R J Ellory, Chris Carter, N J Cooper).

Each author read a short passage from one of their books and then each set was cross-examined by Chris of Crimesquad. Most memorable answer came from Laura Wilson when asked why she wrote historicals..."none of that fannying about with mobile phones"

Johan, Yaba, Cathi and Chris

Afterwards there was a buying and signing session and Maxine is seen here (clutching Echoes from the Dead) in discussion with Johan:


It was a great evening, well attended and I hope that Waterstone's at Kingston have future, similar events.

Johan Theorin wins a Dagger

The latest batch of CWA Dagger award winners was announced last night and International Dagger contender Johan Theorin won the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger for Echoes from the Dead.

(Petrona and I will hopefully be brave enough to congratulate him tonight when we attend the Waterstone's Kingston Killers event)

The other results are:

William Brodrick wins the CWA Gold Dagger for A Whispered Name
John Hart wins the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for The Last Child

Read the whole coverage at the CWA page.

UK edition of I Kill - in 2010

I Kill by Giorgio Faletti which was published in the US in June 2008 is getting its UK release in June 2010, published by Constable Robinson:

Monte Carlo. A ruthless serial killer stalks the rich and famous. The victims are found horrifically mutilated. Each kill is announced on the city’s most popular radio show.

‘The voice on the radio.
The writing, red as blood.
I kill…’

For seasoned FBI agent Frank Ottobre, who is recovering from his wife’s death, and police commissioner Nicolas Hulot, this will be the most harrowing case of their careers. They must track down the enigmatic killer before he strikes again. But this killer is always one step ahead of their every move…