30 November 2009

Mini Review: VOICES, Arnaldur Indridason

I'm hitting 2 birds with one stone here, so to speak.

First of all this post is part of the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme, for the Letter I.

Then it is also part of a new meme I'm running, Suggest a Christmas Title.

The doorman at a Reykjavik hotel who doubles every year as Santa at Christmas parties in the hotel is found dead by one of the hotel maids, stabbed to death, in his squalid basement room.
Christmas is fast approaching and the detective Erlendur is confronted by the problem of how or even if he is going to celebrate Christmas. Is there anything to celebrate? Strangely he moves into the hotel while the investigation of the murder is carried out just feeling he can't go back to his flat.


The 5th in the Erlendur series, VOICES was Indridason's 3rd novel to be translated into English. Originally published in 2003, it made it into English in 2006, translated by Bernard Scudder. Erlendur of course eventually solves the murder mystery but along the way we learn a lot about the ghosts of his own past, and gain insight into his relationship with his drug-addicted daughter Eva Lind. And even in the last 10 pages we are still juggling candidates for the killer.

My rating when I read the book over 2 years ago was my maximum: 5.0

Other reviews to check:

Crime Fiction Alphabet Letter i - week beginning 30 November

The Alphabet in Crime Fiction - a Community Meme.

Here are the rules

Each week you have to write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week.
Your post MUST be related to either the first letter of a book's title, the first letter of an author's first name, or the first letter of the author's surname.

So you see you have lots of choice. You could write a review, or a bio of an author, so long as it fits the rules somehow.

Please check each Monday for the letter of the week, and then link your post back to the page. Also come back and put the link to your blog post in Mr. Linky below.
Then come and check to see who else has posted and visit their blog.
You have until the end of the week to complete your mission.

NB - if Mr Linky is unavailable, I hope it is temporary - leave a link in a comment

This week's letter:

See other letters: A B C D E F G H


29 November 2009

Review: A TWIST IN THE TALE, Jeffrey Archer

Macmillan Digital Audio, read by Martin Jarvis, ISBN 978-0-230- 70043-7, 4 hrs 30 mins, on 4 CDs.
A collection of 12 short stories first published in hardback in 1988. Macmillan Digital Audio edition published 2008.

Publisher's blurb:

A man calls unexpectedly on his mistress and sees another man leaving her flat. Accusing her of being unfaithful, he quarrels with her, strikes her. She dies. Leaving unseen, he tips off the police so that the other man is arrested and charged . . . Has he achieved 'The Perfect Murder'? A tantalising opening to A Twist in the Tale.

Consider also: a wine-tasting with a bizarre difference, a game of sex with a sexy stranger, a violent row in a golf clubhouse bar, a rivalry founded on eating cornflakes . . . just some of the openings in this cunningly constructed, fast-moving, entertaining set of stories from THE bestselling author of our time.

Just a very short mini-review from me:
These stories made a car drive go very quickly. I thought the stories were a little patchy, and one just downright boring. However as one of Amazon's reviewers commented "The book is very appropriately named, because the very end of each story has a bizarrre "twist" that you don't expect. The twist happens literally in the last sentence or two of each story, and the reader is completely surprised."
There were a couple of tales which were very very good.

My rating: 4.1

Sunday Salon - 29 November 2009

Imagine nearly 500 readers blogging about their current reading - that's what the Sunday Salon is. All of the contributors' Sunday Salon posts are collected via Yahoo Pipes into a single feed. You can subscribe to it by RSS or email or on Twitter. There is also a Sunday Salon room at FriendFeed, where you can read and comment on all the Salon posts.

Be part of my blog this week
  • Join the Alphabet in Crime Fiction Community Meme.
    Tomorrow my blog will feature the invitation for the letter I. Today see the contributions for the letter H.
    Another way to get people to visit your blog, and also to meet some new crime fiction bloggers. In the last week we had 10 contributions so it is becoming a great way to see recommendations for new crime fiction titles and authors. We don't mind if you recycle a review you've already written or just contribute occasionally.
  • I'm running a feature called Suggest a Christmas Title.
    You can participate in this whether you are a crime fiction blogger or not.
    What you'll need to do is write a blog post about a book that some how features Christmas. Lots of people I know like to take advantage of the season by reading a book that is set at Christmas or is about Christmas in some way. In your blog post you can suggest several books or just focus on one. I'll use a Mr Linky so you can come back to link to more than one of your posts if you like.
  • Have you heard of the Virtual Advent Blog Tour? I'm participating on December 1.
    Each day anyone who wants to participate takes turns sharing a treat with our friends here in blogland. For example it could be something about your family traditions, recipes, your country's holiday traditions, or a favourite Christmas memory, movie, book, song...anything you like. Even if you don't celebrate Christmas we would like to hear about what your family does during the holiday season, whether it be celebrating Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or whatever it is that you do during this time.
    Already 85 bloggers have signed up.
Posted in the last 7 days:
Currently reading:
  • now - A SHILLING FOR CANDLES, Josephine Tey
  • audio (in the car) - WATER LIKE A STONE, Deborah Crombie
  • on line - THE DOG WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, Alexander McCall Smith chapt 57
Headlines & News:

Crime Fiction Alphabet - Summarising the Letter H

The Alphabet in Crime Fiction - a Community Meme.

The letter for the week beginning 23 November was the Letter H

Contributions by 10 book bloggers this week to your Crime Fiction reading.
This week two Agatha Christie novels, and two by Australian author Katherine Howell.
What about you? Are you up to the challenge? Why not join in?
Check tomorrow for the letter I

28 November 2009

WATER LIKE A STONE, Deborah Crombie

I read WATER LIKE A STONE (2006) first last year but I thought it a very appropriate entry for my Suggest a Christmas Title meme.

I am actually re-reading the book currently as an audio and enjoying it very much.

The first Christmas with your partner's parents is never an easy one, and Gemma James is not sure she is looking forward to the one that she and Duncan Kincaid and their two boys will be spending with his parents in Cheshire.

However on the eve of their arrival, Duncan's sister Juliet finds the mummified body of a baby concealed in the wall of a barn she is renovating, and everything takes on a different twist. Duncan finds the investigating officer called to the scene is someone he was at school with.

Despite the setting in the small Shropshire town where Duncan Kincaid grew up, WATER LIKE A STONE has a big canvas feel to it. There are a number of threads, at least one murder, a couple of mini-mysteries to be solved, and plenty of action, all taking place in the holiday season of Christmas to New Year. I've been struck in my re-reading about how much these threads all tie in to the idea of Christmas.

Most enjoyable read. #11 in the James/Kincaid series
My rating: 4.8

Others to look for by Deborah Crombie - from Fantastic Fiction
Duncan Kincaid / Gemma James
1. A Share in Death (1993)
2. All Shall Be Well (1994)
3. Leave the Grave Green (1995)
4. Mourn Not Your Dead (1996)
5. Dreaming of the Bones (1997)
6. Kissed A Sad Goodbye (1999)
7. A Finer End (2001)
8. And Justice There Is None (2002)
9. Now May You Weep (2003)
10. In a Dark House (2004)
11. Water Like a Stone (2006)
12. Where Memories Lie (2008)
13. Necessary as Blood (2009)

Suggest a Christmas Title

We've all read books set at Christmas time or related to Christmas in some way.
The aim of this meme is to allow bloggers to link back to posts on their site that relate to books about Christmas.
To make it easier for readers to locate books in their preferred genre, please include that in your link below.
  1. Suggested format
    BOOK TITLE, author name - crime fiction
    BOOK TITLE, author name - romance
  2. Please link to the actual post on your blog, not just the blog itself.
  3. In your post, please link back to this page, and feel free to use the image I've created.
  4. You may link to more than one blog post if you wish
  5. Links not complying with the above will be edited or removed altogether.
Thanks for your participation


27 November 2009

Review: BEAUTIFUL LIES, Lisa Unger

This is another of the reviews I wrote 3 years ago, and had posted elsewhere.

Bantam/Random House Australia, May 2006

The day thirty-plus Ridley Jones rescues a little boy from the path of an oncoming vehicle is the day her own life changes forever. When the initial flurry of media coverage dies down, and her photograph has been printed on the front page of a number of New York newspapers, Ridley is contacted by someone who thinks she is his daughter. Ridley already has parents. Her father is a well-respected semi-retired paediatrician, so who is this stranger?

To discover the truth Ridley is required to assess everything she knows about her life. She knows that she has not lacked for affection, security, and comfort. She also already knows that there are no family photos of her before her second birthday, and now she begins to view events in her life, and people she has been close to, in a new light. When the enigmatic Jake moves into the vacant apartment in her building, a new element complicates what is already a rather tangled web.

BEAUTIFUL LIES is not only a thriller, but also a mystery. The action unfolds through Ridley's eyes. The story is narrated for us, the readers, by Ridley. Sometimes she addresses us specifically, sometimes just uses first person narration. It is an interesting tactic as it seems as if we are being asked to make our own judgements of the connections in this tightly woven plot. At the same time in BEAUTIFUL LIES there is underlying serious social comment as the author questions whether it is ever right to take children away from their natural parents, of whether philanthropy ever achieves a better world, of whether lies are ever justified.

I enjoyed the pace and puzzles of this well crafted tale. It is not hard to feel the tension as Ridley finds out things she would rather not know.

BEAUTIFUL LIES marked Lisa Unger's debut as an author, and already (2009) she has written 3 more novels. Be sure to take the BEAUTIFUL LIES Walking Tour on Lisa's website. Lisa takes the visitor to 9 locations in New York City, commenting on her own and Ridley's experiences of the city, as well as reading snippets from the book. If you are thinking about reading BEAUTIFUL LIES, you may be interested in Random House's reading guide.

My rating at the time: 4.7

Earlier this year I reviewed BLACK OUT, saying "This was an extraordinary book: very provocative in its exploration of how a person with a dissociative disorder may see the world. Looking at it as a thriller, I did find that some of the events stretched the bounds of credibility."

26 November 2009

Forgotten Book? BLACK AS HE'S PAINTED, Ngaio Marsh

This week's contribution to Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books.

According to my records, I read this on Australia Day (26th January) in 1977.

For those not familiar with her, Dame Ngaio Marsh (1895-1982) was a New Zealand crime fiction writer who has been compared with the greats: Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham. During her celebrated fifty-year career, Marsh was made a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, named Dame Commander, Order of the British Empire, won numerous prestigious awards and penned 32 mystery novels.

Current New Zealand writer Vanda Symon has thrown down a challenge to read Ngaio Marsh's books in order - rather similar to my own Agatha Christie Reading Challenge.

Therein lies the problem. While my local library still has a couple of copies of BLACK AS HE'S PAINTED on their shelves, just recently, when oz_mystery_readers chose another Marsh title, TIED UP IN TINSEL, as its "Christmas read", we unfortunately found that copies were not readily available. Our libraries had ditched them. We probably could have got them at a used book store, and Amazon lists all 32 books and says they are available second hand at remarkably low prices.

So friends, here's an author for you to hunt down. If you enjoy the classic cozies, then you will likely enjoy one of these. They still hold up well for modern readers, as you can see from my two mini-reviews below.

A MAN LAY DEAD (1934), my rating 4.3.
This is Ngaio Marsh's debut novel, a classic country house party murder mystery, where the reader is tempted to map the location of all of the characters at the location of the murder. Nigel Bathgate, with his cousin Charles Rankin, is attending his first houseparty at Frampton. He has heard these houseparties hosted by Sir Hubert Handesley are both "original" and unpretentious. There will seven or eight guests, and, upon arrival, he learns that the main event will be a Murder. Sir Hubert has his own rules for the Murder Game, and eventually a murder there is, but not the theatrically staged one they have anticipated.
This is not Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn's first murder case, although it is Ngaio Marsh's first novel. Alleyn is already a seasoned detective, with a reputation for thorough and careful sleuthing. His reputation precedes him. He arrives at Frampton from Scotland Yard the morning after the murder. The body has already been moved, and the local constabulary and the police doctor are already in attendance.
In essence what Marsh does in this first novel is establish some of the characteristics which will become Alleyn's "signature" in subsequent novels.

COLOUR SCHEME (1943), my rating 4.2.
Believed by some to be her best novel, this classic by Ngaio Marsh is set in New Zealand during World War 2. Someone is assisting Germans to sink British ships off the coast of New Zealand and flashing lights on a nearby mountain are thought to be an enemy agent signalling a German boat or submarine. The setting is a run-down spa with boiling mud pools in the North Island near a Maori pa. This is an almost theatrical novel. Marsh makes extensive use of her knowledge of Maori customs and of course there is a murder, a victim lured into a boiling pool. Enter Roderick Alleyn on loan to the NZ government, searching for enemy agents.

What about you - have you read any Ngaio Marsh? If so, which is your favourite title? If not, will you look for some?

24 November 2009

Review: THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST, Stieg Larsson

MacLehose Press, 2009. Translated from Swedish by Reg Keeland. Originally published in Sweden in 2007. Author Stieg Larsson died in 2004 at the age of 50.
ISBN 978-1-906694-16-6
I read my copy on my Kindle.

The story opens with Lisbeth Salander's admission to Emergency at the Salengrenska hospital in Goteborg with a gunshot wound to the head. At the same time a second patient, her father, is to be admitted with severe axe wounds.
THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST, the third in the Millenium trilogy, is a close sequel to the second in the series, THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE.

In fact, if you haven't read FIRE, and even the first, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, then I think little of HORNET'S NEST will make sense. The explanations for what is happening in HORNET'S NEST are firmly rooted in both the previous novels, but most definitely in FIRE.
(If you are looking for an overview of each, try this page at Petrona)

Lisbeth Salander's fight to prove the charges against her are wrong results in the unveiling of a conspiracy that has existed for a decade and a half, where the rights of a 12 year old girl were sacrificed for "the good of the state."

In the face of so many other excellent reviews and commentaries on HORNET'S NEST such as those you'll find on Reactions for Reading, DJs krimiblog, Euro Crime, Crime Scraps, Detectives Beyond Borders, and Mack Captures Crime, just to name a few, I'm struggling here to say anything original.

For me, Larsson's women's rights agenda was stronger in this novel than in the other two. Right from the beginning we have an image of Salander as some sort of warrior. The opening paragraphs tell us about the six hundred women who served in the American Civil War, and then later we are reminded of the Amazons, and then the women's army that existed among the Fon of Dahomey. It is hard not to see Advokat Annika Giannini, Salander's lawyer in this role too. She turns out to be a courtroom lion whom the proecutors severely underestimate.
The other theme that comes through strong and clear is the power of the press to make or break a government, and even more the role/duty of a journalist to seacrh out the truth.

But enough, I'm not going to tell you more, otherwise I'll reveal too much.

The criticism others have made of the earlier two books is that they were still in need of some editing, that they were too long. THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST is in reality no shorter. In fact it probably could have done with tighter editing, but I really came to accept that as Larsson's style. He just had to make sure that the reader has all the required detail to get the right picture. For me the last section which ties the ends off was just a little too long. But that was probably because I was anxious to finish. According to my records it took me 12 days to read, rather than the 4 days or so I usually allow.

As I remarked the other day, HORNET'S NEST has made it into my top 10 books published in 2009, but it won't make it into my final top 10 read in the year.

My rating: 4.6

My other reviews:
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (rated 4.8)
THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE (rated 4.7)

Comic View: THE CHALK CIRCLE MAN

Please visit Unshelved for a full size view of the Comic

My review: 4.5, THE CHALK CIRCLE MAN, Fred Vargas

23 November 2009

Crime Fiction Alphabet THE MASK OF ATREUS, A. J. Hartley

Bantam Australia, May 2006

I'm taking this opportunity to re-publish a review originally published elsewhere, as part of the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme for the letter H.

There are really two beginning points for this thriller/mystery. In the dying days of World War Two, a German tank convoy escorting a truck is intercepted by an American platoon. In the skirmish that follows most of the Germans are killed and the rest flee leaving the truck behind. Inside the truck is a single crate stencilled with the German eagle and swastika. The contents of this crate are pivotal to the rest of the story.

THE MASK OF ATREUS then leaps to the present day. At 3 a.m. Deborah Miller, curator of a small private museum in Atlanta, Georgia, is awakened by the third strange phone call for the night. This one sends her hurrying back to the museum which she left just after midnight following a successful promotional evening. At the museum, in a room she did not even know existed, she finds the body of Richard Dixon, her mentor and the museum's founder and director. On the shelves around the room is a treasure trove of what seem to be genuine Mycenaean antiquities.

In THE MASK OF ATREUS the reader unravels the mystery through Deborah's eyes, travelling to Greece and Russia, patching together an incredible story. Deborah uses her curatorial skills to research, deduce and hypothesise, but she doesn't always get it right. Often in a quandary about who to trust, Deborah frequently feels that she is putting the pieces together the wrong way, perhaps even trying to solve the wrong puzzle. In true thriller style, her life is often in danger.

THE MASK OF ATREUS references three time planes: ancient Greece, the end of World War Two and today; and the author draws parallels between the Trojan Wars and more recent events. The mask of Atreus emerges with a symbolic meaning that has lived on beyond Mycenaean times. Archaeology, antiquities, and legends are threads that bind the action together.

THE MASK OF ATREUS is an intriguing debut novel by A. J. Hartley, an author who clearly knows his subject. The action moves apace, and the plot twists and turns, keeping the reader guessing. The characters are well drawn and Deborah Miller is particularly vivid. For readers who find the setting of this novel interesting the author has provided a postscript about the source material he used.

For me THE MASK OF ATREUS was a satisfying read, one where the threads of the story snap together in the final pages.

My rating 4.6

Review first published on Murder and Mayhem in April 2006.

THE MASK OF ATREUS was the first of a list of novels for British born writer A J Hartley:

Crime Fiction Alphabet Letter H - week beginning 23 November

The Alphabet in Crime Fiction - a Community Meme.

Here are the rules

Each week you have to write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week.
Your post MUST be related to either the first letter of a book's title, the first letter of an author's first name, or the first letter of the author's surname.

So you see you have lots of choice. You could write a review, or a bio of an author, so long as it fits the rules somehow.

Please check each Monday for the letter of the week, and then link your post back to the page. Also come back and put the link to your blog post in Mr. Linky below.
Then come and check to see who else has posted and visit their blog.
You have until the end of the week to complete your mission.

NB - if Mr Linky is unavailable, I hope it is temporary - leave a link in a comment

This week's letter:


See other letters: A B C D E F G


22 November 2009

Agatha Christie Blog Carnival #11 posted

The 11th edition of the Agatha Christie Blog Carnival has been posted.
It contains 19 contributions from 13 bloggers many of whom are taking part in the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge.

If you read Agatha Christie novels, write reviews or summaries on your blog, then you might like to consider submitting articles to the Carnival, and joining the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge.

It is never too late to join the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge.
See information about the Challenge here.
Join the Challenge here, and by all means use the Challenge image on your blog with a link back to our Blog Carnival site.

Each month the Carnival closes on the 22nd of the month, and is then published on the 23rd of the month. Your contributions are very welcome.
You can submit a link to any postings you have made that review Agatha Christie books to the Agatha Christie monthly Blog Carnival by going to the Carnival collecting space and putting in the URL, your details, and a comment about the post. We are also interested in any interesting online articles that you come across.

In my right hand column there is a widget you can add to your blog.

Sunday Salon - 22 November 2009

The year is rushing away from us and here DownUnder we have entered the season of street pageants, end of year parties, family celebrations, lists of best reads, and Christmas lights.

On the reading front, all this week I have been working my way through THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST by Stieg Larsson, and though I haven't finished it yet, I have listed it in my top 10 books published in 2009. It probably won't make it into my top 10 reads for the year, but I'll still be rating it at 4.5+.

Have you heard of the Virtual Advent Blog Tour? I'm participating on December 1.
Each day anyone who wants to participate takes turns sharing a treat with our friends here in blogland. For example it could be something about your family traditions, recipes, your country's holiday traditions, or a favourite Christmas memory, movie, book, song...anything you like. Even if you don't celebrate Christmas we would like to hear about what your family does during the holiday season, whether it be celebrating Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or whatever it is that you do during this time.
Already 75 bloggers have signed up.

Be part of my blog this week
  • Join the Alphabet in Crime Fiction Community Meme.
    Tomorrow my blog will feature the invitation for the letter H. Today see the contributions for the letter G. Another way to get people to visit your blog, and also to meet some new crime fiction bloggers. In the last week we had 8 contributions so it is becoming a great way to see recommendations for new crime fiction titles and authors. We don't mind if you recycle a review you've already written or just contribute occasionally.
  • Do you read Agatha Christie novels or short stories?
    You could join the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge. Some of us are reading her works in order of publication, while others are just reading them as they can get them. One a month seems to be a good target to aim for. Learn what the challenge is about, or simply join it. Every month you can submit your posts and other related sites to the Agatha Christie Blog Carnival. Tomorrow the 11th Agatha Christie Blog Carnival will be published, so look out for that.
  • From early in December I'll be running a feature called Suggest a Christmas Title.
    You can participate in this whether you are a crime fiction blogger or not.
    What you'll need to do is write a blog post about a book that some how features Christmas. Lots of people I know like to take advantage of the season by reading a book that is set at Christmas or is about Christmas in some way. In your blog post you can suggest several books or just focus on one. I'll use a Mr Linky so you can come back to link to more than one of your posts if you like. More details next week.
Posted in the last 7 days:
Currently reading:
  • now (on Kindle)- THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST, Stieg Larsson
  • next - TOO CLOSE TO HOME by Linwood Barclay
  • audio (in the car) - WATER LIKE A STONE, Deborah Crombie
  • on line - THE DOG WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, Alexander McCall Smith chapt 52
Headlines & News:

Crime Fiction Alphabet - Summarising the Letter G

The Alphabet in Crime Fiction - a Community Meme.

The letter for the week beginning 16 November was the Letter G

Contributions by 9 book bloggers this week to your Crime Fiction reading.
I've heard that this meme can be addictive! Why not join in?
Check tomorrow for the letter H
Thank you to all contributors.
Locate all contributions in this meme

21 November 2009

Weekly Geeks 2009-43: In Quest of a Top 10

Our Weekly Geeks task for the next fortnight (by December 4 that is) is to come up with our top 10 reads for 2009. To qualify the titles need to have been published in 2009. So this list is a little different to the one I will publish at the end of the year because that one will look at all the books I've read, not just those published in 2009.

My genre of course is crime fiction.
  • THE REDEEMER by Jo Nesbo
  • RED BONES by Ann Cleeves
  • MIDNIGHT FUGUE by Reginald Hill
  • DARK MIRROR by Barry Maitland
  • THE COMPLAINTS by Ian Rankin
  • THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST by Stieg Larsson
  • FIFTY GRAND by Adrian McKinty
  • BLACK ICE by Leah Giarratano
  • THE CHALK CIRCLE MAN by Fred Vargas
  • THE POISONING IN THE PUB by Simon Brett
There are 2 Australian authors in my list (and one currently resident Down Under), and 3 translated books .

If you'd like to contribute your top 10 to this community activity, read the Weekly Geeks page.

When Kindle finds BookSeat

Just a spot of decadence here. Book Seat is designed for hands-free reading and this week I discovered it is the perfect prop for my Kindle.

I've uploaded quite a few titles to my Kindle this week. I discovered free titles on The Book Depository - you need to know what to search for in the collection (try Edgar Wallace, Conan Doyle, Fergus Hume for starters. - let me know what else you find if you think they might interest me)

Look also for free crime fiction e-books on SmashWords - just a few titles - but there are also some cheap titles.

Amazon
has a number of crime fiction titles for which the charge is $2 which is the price for international Whispernet delivery. If you are not am "international" customer, than I think the cost is $0.

This week Amazon has released Kindle for PC, which means if you are ok with being anchored to your PC or laptop for your book reading, the ebook world opens up for you too. Here is an article you may like to check.

20 November 2009

Usually On the Mark #6: Ian Rankin

The observant will realise that I have once again changed this category/designation slightly.
Previous posts have been labelled , and , but they still didn't quite convey what I wanted to say.

What I had in mind is that these are authors that I will read even if occasionally a title doesn't hit the dizzy heights of excellence. They nearly always have something to offer, and I expect to enjoy them.

So far I have listed Agatha Christie, Ruth Rendell, Donna Leon, Karin Fossum, and Peter Lovesey.

Next on my list is Ian Rankin.

This year Ian has been inducted into the newly created ITV3 Crime Awards Hall of Fame.
Here are just some of his other awards:
  • Dagger Awards Best Novel winner (1997) : Black and Blue
  • Edgar Awards Best Novel nominee (1998) : Black and Blue
  • Edgar Awards Best Novel winner (2004) : Resurrection Men
  • BCA Crime Thriller of the Year Best Novel winner (2007) : The Naming Of The Dead
  • BCA Crime Thriller of the Year Best Novel nominee (2008) : Exit Music
Most crime fiction readers will know of Ian Rankin as the creator of John Rebus. Over a period of 20 years, from 1987-2007, Rankin published 17 Rebus novels, all set in his native Edinburgh.
When Rankin retired Rebus in EXIT MUSIC in 2007 (my rating 5.0), many wondered what Rankin would do next.

First came DOORS OPEN, a stand alone that I rated at 4.6.
Then a new protagonist, Malcolm Fox, appeared in THE COMPLAINTS. My rating 4.7.

As you can see from this listing in my database
  • THE FLOOD (1986) 4.7
  • THE WATCHMAN (1988) 4.6
  • THE NAMING OF THE DEAD (2006) 4.8
my ratings have always been in the range of 4.5 to 5.

My general benchmarks are
    5.0 Excellent
    4.0 Very Good
    3.0 Average
    2.0 Poor
    1.0 Did Not Like
    0 Did Not Finish
So, for me, Rankin's new offerings are still reliably high in my ratings.
One of the things that holds him there, in my view, is that he is not just a crime fiction writer, but nearly always a social, and even political, commentator. He and the other 5 writers I have already listed have much in common. They place their novels in contemporary situations, where events happening at the time, issues the community is concerned about, provide a context for the mystery that is central to the novel.

Other links to check
Two new titles to look for:
  • CRIMESPOTTING, a collection of short stories to which Rankin has contributed.
  • DARK ENTRIES, a graphic novel, where Rankin has collaborated with Werther Dell'Edera.

19 November 2009

Forgotten Books: A TASTY WAY TO DIE, Janet Laurence

This week's contribution to Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books.

A TASTY WAY TO DIE is recorded in my reading for 1999, so I guess that is not so long ago, but I think it may be the only one I've read by this author.

According to Fantastic Fiction, this is the second title in a 10 title series writing 1989-2000, featuring Darina Lisle, a rising young cook and caterer.

Blurb for A TASTY WAY TO DIE
Tall, attractive Darina Lisle, recently shed of her own catering business, pitches in to help former school chum Eve--an ambitious London caterer--out of a predicament. The sick woman Darina temporarily replaces soon dies from eating a poisoned mushroom, probably meant for Eve. A subsequent poisoning (hemlock this time) discovered by Darina provides some of the best nonfood description in the book. Long on food preparation, short on action, this one stimulates enough juices to keep the pages turning. Mostly for gastronomes.

Fantastic Fiction suggests that if I like A TASTY WAY TO DIE, I might also like MURDER IS BINDING, the first in the Booktown Mystery series by Lorna Barrett.

Alternatively I might enjoy CARBS & CADAVERS, the first in the Supper Club series by J. B. Stanley.

Now both these books are too recent to qualify as "forgotten" but perhaps you have some culinary crime fiction titles to recommend?

Joanne Fluke is another who is trying to titivate our crime fiction taste buds. Is this just a modern phenomenon? I think not. Delicious Evil lists some interesting Food Mystery Novels and you can probably suggest a lot of classics where poisoning is a central theme.

18 November 2009

Progress report: THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST, Stieg Larsson

I'm reading THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST on my new Kindle, and I am not yet 50% through. I've read somewhere that the printed version is 600 pages long.

One thing that strikes me about this novel, more than any other that I've read in a series recently, is that if I hadn't read the previous ones, I would be all at sea in this one. Much of it depends on the reader remembering what has gone before. So you MUST read the books in order.

Some sites to check.
My reading of TGWKTHN so far has had me marvelling at the complexity of the threads being woven. Perhaps it is one of the features of reading it on a Kindle which makes it more difficult to flip backwards and forwards in a book, but I have this sensation of trying to hang on to elastic bands, thinking "how important will it be to remember this?" Sets of characters (and the settings in which they appear) are a bit like the Cheshire cat, here for a moment and then disappearing from view.

I'm finding some of the characters a bit difficult to track, particularly when the names look similar.
If you want some listing of characters, then you might like to read this Wikipedia set of articles.

16 November 2009

Crime Fiction Alphabet - G is for Gerritsen

I'm taking this opportunity to air two reviews of Tess Gerritsen books that I wrote some time ago and had posted elsewhere.
See other posts in the Crime Fiction Alphabet for the letter G here.

THE MEPHISTO CLUB
Random House Australia, Oct 2006

When Dr. Peter Saul and his wife Amy took their young nephew into their family soon after his father's death, they had no idea what they were letting themselves in for. Twelve years later a family friend Lori-Ann Tucker is found dead, dismembered, victim of a macabre killing. This new case for Boston PD detective Jane Rizzoli and pathologist Maura Isles will test their beliefs as well as strain their friendship.

The victim is discovered on Christmas Eve. Maura has just been to Midnight Mass conducted by Daniel Brophy, an out-of-bounds Catholic priest to whom she is very attracted. When Maura is called to the crime scene, she and Jane quickly realize that this is no ordinary homicide. Apart from the dismemberment of the body and the distribution of body parts in various rooms of the house, the murderer has also left ancient symbols daubed on walls and it seems as if this may be a Satanic killing.

Jane Rizzoli is definitely out of her comfort zone in this investigation. It is bad enough to have to handle this sort of investigation at Christmas. When a young policewoman is found butchered outside the home of the leader of the Mephisto Club, with the same sort of symbols on the door of his house, Jane is confronted by evil. Jane refers to one of the members of the Mephisto Club, whom she has met before, as a vampire. And worse, at the post-mortem, Maura discovers that the dismembered hand found at the first murder scene does not belong to that first body.

I found THE MEPHISTO CLUB an engrossing page-turner. There are those who will not like the aspects of this story where Gerritsen invites readers to think about the historical origins of evil and refers to apocryphal texts and ancient Hebrew and Christian beliefs. However Gerritsen's fans will welcome this addition to the Jane Rizzoli/Maura Isles series. There is nice development in our knowledge of Jane's family life, and her friendship with Maura is tested. This is the sixth novel in this series and, if you have never read anything by Tess Gerritsen, it will send you off to find more.

My rating 4.6

THE BONE GARDEN
Bantam Press, 2007

Maura Isles, Boston medical examiner, tells Julia Hamill that the skeleton she has dug up in her back garden is old, much older than the house that she has recently purchased. The skeleton is that of a female under 35 years, murdered and buried perhaps more than 150 years ago. Julia is recently divorced and had been labouring to convert the barren back yard into a garden when her shovel struck a skull. Now her backyard is an excavation site for the medical examiner's office.

For most of the book, which jumps - sometimes a little jarringly - backwards and forwards between the 1830s and the present day, we are following an ancestor of the last owner of the house, the person whose estate Julia bought the house from. We do this both through reading about events as they happen, and through papers and letters hoarded by the previous occupant Hilda Chamblett.

The prologue in THE BONE GARDEN is a letter dated in 1888 from O.W.H. to Margaret offering to tell her a secret about her parents that he has kept for fifty-eight years. Julia becomes involved in a quest to identify the skeleton when she is contacted by Hilda's elderly cousin Henry Page. He offers to tell her of the strange affair of Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of Boston's revered native sons, and the West End Reaper.

This is the eleventh of Tess Gerritsen's novels. It is almost a stand-alone. Maura Isles, one of the pair of usual protagonists in Gerritsen novels, makes only two cameo appearances at the beginning to give her verdict on the skeleton which has become the focus of excavation by the medical examiner's office. It almost feels like Isles is giving Gerritsen permission to branch out without her.

Writing 'cold case' books seems to have become popular with crime writers in the last year or two. For many it has been in the form of a police procedural, cold cases unearthed as retired detectives with time on their hands take advantage of technical advances like DNA and sophisticated fingerprinting software. Some have been cases of bodies buried for a decade or two. In THE BONE GARDEN Gerritsen was more ambitious, launching into a cold case almost two centuries old. Her images of Boston in the 1830s create for us an understanding of a time when medicine was in its infancy, anatomy a new science, and the world very different to the one we live in today.

On the Acknowledgements page, Gerritsen says she has had a long hard year labouring to bring THE BONE GARDEN to life. To be honest I don't think she has quite mastered the technique of interweaving of the present day with the historical. Just so that the reader doesn't get lost, she alerts us to each time change with chapter headings that say '1830' or 'The present'. In order to bring it off she has had to introduce elements of coincidence, dreams that connect Julia to events in the past, voices from the past clamouring to be heard, and more than one love story. I don't think Gerritsen fans will be disappointed, though. The writing is clever and tidy, there is more than one mystery to be solved, and despite the book's length, it flies quickly.

My rating: 4.6

Dec 2007 review originally published in Murder and Mayhem

Tess Gerritsen's website.

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