Category Archives: Spain

Spring smörgåsbord! Swiss, Korean, British, Spanish & American crime fiction

Posted on by Kat Hall
14

Spring is springing here in Wales, with pink blossom, white garlic, and bluebells emerging into the warmth. It does the soul good to be out in the garden and parks, or down on the beach.

I’ve been enjoying an eclectic range of crime fiction recently, including some longer, more ambitious reads.

Hunkeler's Secret

Hansjörg Schneider, Hunkeler’s Secret (Switzerland), tr. by Astrid Freuler, Bitter Lemon Press 2025

First line: Peter Hunkeler, former inspector with the Basel City criminal investigation department, now retired, woke up and didn’t know where he was.

I reckon Hunkeler’s Secret, the latest in the ‘Inspector Hunkeler’ series, is my favourite thus far. While in hospital recovering from an operation, Hunkeler finds himself sharing a room with Stephan Fankhauser, the gravely ill former head of the Basel Volksbank. One morning, Hunkeler wakes to the news that Fankhauser died in the night. But was it a natural death? Or did a groggy Hunkeler witness something untoward being done to his fellow patient in the wee small hours? After his discharge from hospital, the retired police inspector starts to investigate in his dogged, somewhat grumpy way. There’s also a new family relationship to explore, a wayward goat, and lots of good food.

One aspect of the ‘Hunkeler’ series I particularly like is its geographical setting. There’s the Swiss city of Basel on the one hand, where Hunkeler spent his working life and has a flat, and rural Alsace on the other, where he owns a little house. You get a real sense of the proximity of Switzerland, France and Germany to one another, with characters continually criss-crossing borders and speaking Swiss-German, Alsatian (an Alemannic dialect) and French. I love that Astrid Freuler integrates nuggets of the original languages into her excellent English translation, which gives readers an enhanced sense of the multiculturalism of the area. The region also has a complex territorial history, which plays a role in the resolution of this knotty Hunkeler case.

Jess Kidd, Murder at Gulls Nest (1950s England), Faber 2025

First line: The woman climbs the hill, a favourable wind behind her.

Murder at Gulls Nest is the first in Jess Kidd’s new ‘Nora Breen Investigates’ series, and is set in the 1950s seaside town of Gore-on-Sea, a place of boarding houses, terrible food, and recalibration after long years of war.

For thirty years, Nora was Sister Agnes of Christ, a dutiful nun at the High Dallow Carmelite Monastery. But when former nun Frieda goes missing, Nora feels compelled to find her, and takes a room at the Gulls Nest boarding house, where the young woman was last based. Here, Nora meets the ragtag assortment of Frieda’s fellow lodgers, and starts using her curiosity and sharp intelligence to get to the bottom of the mystery. When one of the lodgers is found dead, Nora knows that something is seriously amiss.

Readers of this blog will know that I’m a big fan of Jess Kidd’s work, especially her brilliant novel Himself. Murder at Gulls Nest is written in a slightly softer, slightly cosier style, but retains plenty of bite. As ever, Kidd’s use of language is sublime, and I’m looking forward to meeting the resourceful, irrepressible Nora Breen again in future.

Mirinae Lee, 8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster (North Korea and South Korea), Virago 2023

First line: The idea came to me while I was going through my divorce.

When Grandma Mook tells the obituarist at the Golden Sunset retirement home the story of her life — which spans a century of Korea’s history — there’s a suspicion that the old lady is just a fantasist. But: what if Mook Miran is telling the truth and she’s a trickster of the highest order? What if she genuinely was a murderer, terrorist, identity thief and spy?

A major theme of this novel is survival. Mook Miran’s eight lives, which we’re told in non-chronological order, illuminate the terrible hardships women faced in Japanese-ruled Korea (1910-1945) and later in North Korea, and pose the question of what it takes to survive such incredibly adverse circumstances. Part of the answer lies in the figure of the trickster, who survives and advances through nimble thinking and resolute action — even if the latter is viewed as a crime and comes at a price. Sparky, resilient and whip-smart, Mook Miran is a character you won’t easily forget, and the portrait she paints of Korea’s history is disturbing and fascinating in equal measure.

Andrew O’Hagan, Caledonian Road, Faber 2024

First line: Tall and sharp at fifty-two, Campbell Flynn was a tinderbox in a Savile Row suit, a man who believed his childhood was so far behind him that all its threats had vanished.

Caledonian Road, or ‘the Cally’, runs for a mile and a half through the London Borough of Islington. Like many roads in London, it takes you from economically deprived areas to obscenely wealthy ones in what feels like the blink of an eye.

Andrew O’Hagan harnesses the reality of this social divide in his powerful state-of-the-nation novel by creating an illuminating chain of connections: from Milo Mangasha, a tech-savvy student from a Cally council estate, and his uni professor Campbell Flynn, who lives in a posh townhouse with his aristo-therapist wife further up the road, to Sir William Byre, Flynn’s public school pal who’s up to his neck in dodgy deals, and Russian oligarch Aleksandr Bykov and son Yuri, who runs a very modern criminal enterprise and socialises with Campbell’s children. And that’s just a fraction of the cast!

Strap in for 600 pages of brilliant storytelling featuring utterly believable characters and razor-sharp social dissection. In particular, the novel holds up a mirror to the hypocrisies of well-heeled Londoners, and the establishment’s willingness to turn a blind eye to corruption and outright criminality. But it’s not without sympathy for its beleaguered central character, Flynn, whose spectacular mid-life crisis may offer a redemption of sorts, and has much to tell us about the perils of becoming alienated from your true self.

Teresa Solana, Black Storms (Spain), tr. by Peter Bush, Corylus Press 2024

First line: The man who was about to commit murder left home at six thirty, after telling his girlfriend Mary he’d business to see to and checking his car keys were in his pocket.

Whenever I read Teresa Solana’s work, I always come away with an appreciation of her highly distinctive voice, which blends a wry humour with steely social satire. Above all, there’s a wonderful energy to her writing, which seems to feed off the verve of Barcelona, the city where many of her crime stories are set. Her long-time translator, Peter Bush, captures all of these elements with aplomb in his English translations.

Black Storms introduces us to Norma Forester, Deputy Inspector of the Catalan police, who is tasked with solving the murder of an elderly professor at the University of Barcelona. No one can quite understand why a terminally ill man should be targeted in this way, but Norma’s experience and expertise gradually uncover the truth.

Equal attention is paid to Norma’s eccentric family, and they are great fun to hang out with. Norma is the granddaughter of an English member of the National Brigades, and the women of the family, all named after opera heroines, are a force of nature. I particularly like the way Solana shows Norma’s efforts to balance her family life and work, which the latter does in a messy, imperfect, but loving way.

The Residence, Shondaland / Netflix 2025

Last but not least, a very fun Netflix crime series: The Residence, which stars Uzo Aduba as Cordelia Cupp, a consultant with the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, and Randall Park as Edwin Park, an FBI Special Agent. They are called to the White House after a murder is committed during a state dinner for the Australian prime minister, and tasked with figuring out which of the 157 suspects is the murderer — including the fictional president and his husband.

Aduba is excellent as the bird-watching, unerringly brilliant sleuth. It’s really her show, backed by a superb ensemble cast, and the whole thing has a Sherlock-Holmes-by-way-of-Wes-Anderson vibe. It also throws a light on the lives of the permanent staff at the White House, who of course stay in place while presidents come and go. Very sharp, very witty and very entertaining.

Up to snow good! Mrs. Peabody’s top crime of 2024

Posted on by Kat Hall
10

Here is Mrs. Peabody’s top crime list for 2024 — featuring some of my very best reads from the last 12 months (though not necessarily published this year). The books are set in America, Australia, Finland, France, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Norway, and Spain. 

Perfect gifts for the festive season! Treat others! Treat yourself! Support indie publishers and local booksellers!

Antti Tuomainen, The Burning Stones, tr. from the Finnish by David Hackston (Orenda Books 2024, 271 pp.)

Setting: Rural Finland

First lines: Aaaaahhhhhhh. The steam spread over his skin like a hot, damp blanket, and flowed evenly and satisfyingly across his whole body.

Set in Puhtijärvi, a Finnish village nestled between a forest and a lake, The Burning Stones pays homage to the key role of the sauna in the nation’s wellbeing… whilst also cheerfully turning it into a crime scene.

When Ilmo Räty is found dead in the ashes of his sauna, the rest of his colleagues at Steam Devil, a leading sauna stove manufacturer, fall under suspicion. This is especially problematic for top saleswoman Anni Korpinen, as one of the police investigators holds an elk-related grudge against her family and the murderer seems to be doing their best to frame her. So: not only must Anni deal with her own mid-life crisis, she must also turn detective and ID the murderer before it’s too late. Hilarious and heart-warming in equal measure, The Burning Stones illuminates the rituals of the sauna and the delights of rural Finland. As ever, translator David Hackston does a fantastic job of conveying Antti Tuomainen’s distinctive dark humour and his eye for the idiosyncratic detail of everyday life. A delight. 

Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors, Canongate 2023

Setting: Penang and Kuala Lumpur, 1910 (now modern-day Malaysia)

First lines: A story, like a bird of the mountain, can carry a name beyond the clouds, beyond even time itself. Willie Maugham said that to me, many years ago.

Tan Twan Eng’s The House of Doors is a wonderfully absorbing and multi-layered historical novel. It imagines how the final tale of W. Somerset Maugham’s 1926 Casuarina Tree — ‘The Letter’, based on the real Ethel Proudlock murder case — might have come about, while the author visits his old friend Robert Hamlyn. Told from the perspectives of Willie and Lesley, Robert’s wife, the novel brilliantly evokes Penang and Kuala Lumpur in the 1910s and 1920s.  See the full review here.

Antoine Laurain, French Windows, tr. from the French by Louise Rogers Lalaurie (Gallic Books 2024, 174 pp.)

Setting: Paris, France.

First lines: In the middle of the unevenly cobbled courtyard stands a tall tree. No one has ever quite determined its species; some people in the building see a wild cherry, others see an oak, though it has never produced an acorn.

Analyst Doctor Faber has a new patient with an unusual problem. Nathalia Guitry is a photographer who finds herself unable to take photos. The reason, we soon discover, is that she accidentally photographed a murder, leaving her understandably traumatised. As a way into therapy, Doctor Faber suggests Nathalia writes about the people she observes from her apartment window. Going up floor by floor, she pens detailed portraits of her neighbours, all of whom are intriguing in their own right. But how much of what she writes is true? And what will the story of the fifth floor reveal?

A Parisian Rear Window that offers insights into therapy, along with lashings of acerbic humour and Gallic charm, French Windows is the perfect stocking filler. Hats off to Louise Rogers Lalaurie for gifting us such a sparkling translation of this novel.

Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman, Corsair 2021, 464 pp.

Setting: Turtle Mountain Reservation, North Dakota, 1953

First lines: Thomas Wazhashk removed his thermos from his armpit and set it on the steel desk alongside his scuffed briefcase. His work jacket went on the chair, his lunch box on the cold windowsill.

Louise Erdrich, one of my favourite writers, brings the 1950s community of the Turtle Mountain Reservation to life in this highly absorbing, polyphonic novel.

The Night Watchman‘s two main strands each have a criminal dimension. Patrice ‘Pixie’ Paranteau is a young woman whose work at the reservation’s factory allows her to provide for her mother and siblings. But her sister Vera recently vanished after moving to Minnesota, and Pixie now urgently needs to find her and her baby. At the same time, factory night watchman and Chippewa Council member Thomas Wazhashk is becoming seriously concerned about Resolution 108, which is due to go before Congress before too long. Styled as an ’emancipation’ bill, 108 threatens to abolish the official status of tribes as a means of appropriating yet more Native American land and rights — a wave of state-sanctioned violence that Thomas must somehow try to counter. 

The Night Watchman is at times very hard-hitting, but portrays the Turtle Mountain community with humour and warmth. While never sentimental, it shows the power of determination and grass-roots organisation (the character of Thomas is based on the author’s own grandfather), and the resilience and resourcefulness of women like Pixie. The novel won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Highly recommended!

Jørn Lier Horst, Snow Fall, tr. from the Norwegian by Anne Bruce (Penguin 2024, 432 pp.)

Setting: Norway and Spain

First line: The email appeared on his screen at 15.37 on Friday 8 December.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I’m a huge fan of Jørn Lier Horst’s ‘William Wisting’ novels — consistently thoughtful and intelligent police procedurals that use their crime narratives to illuminate various facets of modern society.

Snow Fall sees Wisting being asked to investigate the disappearance of Norwegian woman Astri Arctander — a member of an online crime forum looking into the recent murder of backpacker Ruby Thompson in the town of Palamós in Catalonia. Wisting’s investigation takes him from Norway to Spain, and includes navigating a relationship between himself as a police representative and the modern-day online detectives, whose information is gathered outside of the law but may nevertheless be useful. By the way, the handle of one of the online sleuths is intriguing: a certain ‘Mrs Peabody’ who seems to know her crime fiction! The author has not yet confirmed or denied the inspiration for this character…

Snow Fall is an absorbing police procedural by a writer at the height of his powers, brought to us in style by Lier Horst’s long-standing translator, Anne Bruce. Quality holiday reading!

Maggie O’Farrell, The Marriage Portrait, Tinder Press 2022, 438 pp.

Setting: Sixteenth-century Italy

First line: Lucrezia is taking her seat at the long dining table, which is polished to a watery gleam and spread with dishes, inverted cups, a woven circlet of fir.

Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait was one of my star reads of the year. The author takes her inspiration from a snippet from history — the mysteriously brief life of Lucrezia di Cosimo de’ Medici (1545-1561) — and Robert Browning’s 1842 poem ‘My Last Duchess’, which suggests that Lucrezia was murdered by her husband, the Duke of Ferrara. The resulting novel is an outstanding example of literary crime — ingenious but with plenty of heart. Read my full review here.

Garry Disher, Bitter Wash Road, Viper 2020, 416 pp.

Setting: Rural South Australia

First line: On a Monday morning in September, three weeks into the job, the new cop at Tiverton took a call from his sergeant: shots fired on Bitter Wash Road.

Bitter Wash Road is the first in Garry Disher’s ‘Constable Hirsch’ series. Paul ‘Hirsch’ Hirschhausen has recently found himself exiled from the city to a one-man cop shop in ‘wheat and wool country, three hours north of Adelaide’ — punishment for having dared to be a whistle-blower during a previous case. In Tiverton, the metropolitan cop must quickly adapt to rural policing — which is not always as quiet as one might think — and deal with the hostility of his new boss, the distinctly unenlightened Sergeant Kropp. Oh, and there’s likely to be a whole lot of extra fallout from Hirsch’s past too. 

This is an outstanding novel with great characterisation and a thrilling plot from the three-time winner of the prestigious Ned Kelly Award for Best Novel. I have the next in the series, Peace, lined up as one of my holiday reads.  

Hideo Yokoyama, The North Light, tr. from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai (RiverRun 2023, 408 pp.)  

Setting: Tokyo, Osaka and around Mount Asama, Japan

First line: In Osaka it had been raining since early morning.

The North Light is probably best described as a mystery and a meditation on middle age. Minoru Aose is a divorced architect who fell on hard times after Japan’s economic bubble burst in the 1990s. Although he now works for a small, reputable architectural firm, he seems to be largely out of touch with his feelings and unclear about what he wants from life.

Aose’s biggest achievement to date is the Yoshino house, a prizewinning residence near Mount Asama. His brief was to design a house that he himself would want to live in, and it is built to showcase the north light he loves. The chance discovery that the house is empty and the Yoshino family has vanished unsettles him greatly: he is both worried for the family and fearful that they hated the house. We accompany Aose as he unravels this mystery, a journey that reveals facets of his unusual childhood; the work of (real) German architect Bruno Taut, who fled Germany for Japan during the Nazi era; Japanese work culture; and the interplay of Japanese nature and architecture. Quietly gripping and beautifully translated by Louise Heal Kawai, this novel subverts the crime genre in extremely interesting ways.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas / Hanukkah / Happy Holidays!

In an unusually glamorous fashion, I’m just about to hop on a plane, so will catch up with your comments in a couple of days 🙂

Jingle bells! Mrs. Peabody’s 2018 Christmas recommendations

Posted on by Kat Hall
15

Here are Mrs. Peabody’s 2018 Christmas recommendations! Each is one of my top reads or views of the year, and will fit snugly into the Xmas stockings of all who’ve been good. Don’t forget to treat yourself, too!

Available from a wonderful local bookshop near you…

Jess Kidd, The Hoarder, Canongate 2018 (Ireland/UK)

The star of this highly original crime novel is Maud Drennen, newly appointed carer for ancient, belligerent hoarder Cathal Flood, who lives in a massive house in London and is the despair of social services. Both are Irish exiles and both have secrets to hide. There are mysterious disappearances, perplexing clues and dicey situations, not to mention a supporting cast of half-feral cats, an eccentric landlady and levitating saints. The novel has serious things to say about violence, family dysfunction, social isolation and old age, but is also deliciously irreverent (‘Renata is especially glamorous today, clad in an appliquéd romper suit and feathered mules’), and depicts its characters with warmth and heart. Its language is strikingly rich and expressive.

Joe Ide, IQ, Mulholland Books, 2016 (USA)

Joe Ide’s IQ, the first in the ‘Isaiah Quintabe’ series, was one of my most satisfying reads of the year. Taking inspiration from iconic detectives such as Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins, the novel fuses classic crime with urban noir in its depiction of IQ, an unlicensed black Long Beach detective, and Dodson, his streetwise sidekick (“It’s a hustler’s world, son,” Dodson said, “and if you ain’t doing the hustlin’? Somebody’s hustlin’ you”). It’s a remarkably polished debut that tells an absorbing coming-of-age story while treating us to a cracking investigation bristling with intriguing characters. Inventive, ingenious and authentic, the novel is a moving study of resilience and of life on the rougher side of town, but is also outrageously funny in places. You can read my full review here).

Malin Persson Giolito, Quicksand, translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles, Simon & Schuster, 2017 (Sweden).

The very worthy winner of the 2018 Petrona Award (of which I’m a judge): “The judges were impressed by Quicksand’s nuanced approach to the subject of school shootings. Persson Giolito refuses to fall back on cliché, expertly drawing readers into the teenage world of Maja Norberg, who faces trial for her involvement in the killings of a teacher and fellow classmates. The court scenes, often tricky to make both realistic and compelling, are deftly written, inviting readers to consider not just the truth of Maja’s role, but the influence of class, parenting and misplaced loyalty in shaping the tragedy. Rachel Willson-Broyles’s excellent translation perfectly captures Maja’s voice – by turns vulnerable and defiant – as she struggles to deal with events.” A tough, but excellent read.

Mystery Road, dir. Rachel Perkins, Acorn Media 2008 (Australia)

Mystery Road is set in the arid town of Patterson in north-western Australia. When local worker Marley Thompson goes missing, Senior Sergeant Emma James (Judy Davis) calls in detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pedersen) to help her solve the case. As they form an uneasy alliance and the investigation unfolds, we’re shown not only how Marley’s disappearance impacts on his family and the local townsfolk, but how long-held secrets are shaping the events taking place. The drama provides viewers with a nuanced depiction of an Aboriginal community and packs genuine emotional punch. The cinematography is stunning, with aerial shots capturing the vast, harsh beauty of the outback. You can read my full review here.

Adam Sternbergh, The Blinds, faber & faber 2018 (USA)

An outstanding genre-defying fusion of thriller, whodunit and Western. The Blinds is a speck of a town in rural Texas, populated by criminals and witnesses who have their memories wiped as part of an experimental programme that allows them to ‘start over’. Sheriff Calvin Cooper has policed the town for eight years without major incident, but now suddenly has a suicide and murder on his hands. These bring outsiders to the town, all of whom have agendas that will play out in different ways in the days ahead. The novel tackles big themes – criminality, redemption, the role of memory in identity formation, what makes a proper community – but is also a thrilling rollercoaster ride. Beautifully written with fabulously inventive touches… such as the way the residents acquire their new names.

 Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Fitzcarraldo Editions 2018 (Poland)

Janina Duszejko, a reclusive sixty-something-year-old who’s obsessed with astrology and the poetry of William Blake (the source of the novel’s title), lives in a Polish village near the Czech border. When one of her neighbours is found dead, followed by a member of the local hunting club, she speculates that the animals they’re hunting are taking revenge, and decides to investigate. A quirky existential take on the Miss-Marple-amateur-sleuth model, Drive Your Plow has a distinctive narrative voice – as suggested by chapter titles such as ‘Now Pay Attention’ and ‘A Speech to a Poodle’, and caused a stir in Poland by daring to question its deeply rooted hunting culture. Plow has recently been adapted for film by acclaimed director Agnieszka Holland (titled Pokot; I’m keen to watch it soon).

Teresa Solana, The First Prehistoric Serial Killer and Other Stories, translated from the Catalan by Peter Bush, Bitter Lemon Press 2018 (Spain)

The First Prehistoric Serial Killer is a collection of freewheeling crime stories, whose narrators include a prehistoric caveman, protective mother-in-law, spoiled museum director, a vampire and a houseful of ghosts. Each story gives the author the chance to stretch her imagination to the full, with equal measures of crime, humour and the grotesque mixed into a tasty criminal cocktail. The second half of the book is particularly inspired – a set of eight Barcelona stories under the heading ‘Connections’. Readers are challenged to spot the links between the stories, which proves to be great fun. You can read my full review here.

Belinda Bauer, Snap, Black Swan/Penguin, 2018 (Wales/UK)

Belinda Bauer is a hugely original writer, who uses the crime genre to explore both intimate scenarios and big themes. Snap opens with the disappearance in 1998 of pregnant mother Eileen Bright, who leaves her broken-down car on the M5 to phone for help. In the car are her three young children, Jack, Joy and Merry, who gradually realise that their mum isn’t coming back. A grim scenario, but one that’s never gratuitously exploited by the author. Instead, she shows in human and sensitive detail what happens to the family – mainly from the children’s point of view. Jack’s fight to find out the truth of what happened that day and the brilliant depiction of a host of characters, including grumpy DCI Marvel, make for a compelling read. There’s some razor-sharp humour in the mix too. The novel was longlisted for this year’s Man Booker Prize.

Adam Roberts, The Real-Town Murders, Gollancz 2017 (UK)

A fabulous science fiction/crime mash-up. The novel opens with Alma, a private detective in a near-future England, investigating the discovery of a body in the boot of a car. It shouldn’t be possible for the body to be there, because the factory where the car has just been made is off-limits to humans. So how did the corpse wind up in the boot? This nifty locked-room mystery is set in a complex future world where an evolved version of the internet – the Shine – lures citizens into living almost completely virtual lives. The tension between the virtual and the real, and the political power struggles it creates, are explored in this stylish, high-octane murder mystery. One for anyone who’s ever been to Reading! You can read my full review here.

Posy Simmonds, Cassandra Darke, Jonathan Cape 2018 (UK)

This graphic novel, a modern-day reworking of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, is an absolute delight. Our Scrooge is the eponymous Cassandra Darke, a disgraced London art dealer who is inadvertently drawn into a world of criminality…and possibly murder. This book would make an extremely handsome Christmas present, not only because of its author’s artistic and story-telling talents, but because it is so beautifully produced. Plus, it might be easier on the reading eye than a novel after a few glasses of Christmas plonk… You can read my full review here.

Wishing you all a wonderful and very merry Christmas!

Teresa Solana, The First Prehistoric Serial Killer (Spain) #WITMonth

Posted on by Kat Hall
7

Teresa Solana, The First Prehistoric Serial Killer and Other Stories, translated from the Catalan by Peter Bush (Bitter Lemon Press 2018 – published 15 August)

First line: A number of us woke up this morning when the storm broke, only to find another corpse in the cave.

Teresa Solana has carved out a distinctive space for herself as a crime writer with her ‘Barcelona’ crime series, featuring private detective twins Borja and Eduard. Irreverent and satirical, her novels deconstruct Catalan society, puncturing the pretensions of rarefied literary circles or the New Age meditation scene. One of the murder weapons in The Sound of One Hand Killing is a Buddha statue, which gives you some idea of the wicked humour that infuses Solana’s writing.

The First Prehistoric Serial Killer is something a little different – a collection of crime stories that shows the author at her most freewheeling and inventive. Take for example the eponymous opening story, which is set in prehistoric times, but whose detective caveman, Mycroft, seems to have an in-depth knowledge of psychological profiling and investigative terms – all very tongue-in-cheek. Narrators range from a concerned mother-in-law and spoiled museum director to a vampire and a houseful of ghosts, with each story giving Solana a chance to stretch her imagination to the full – crime, humour and the grotesque are mixed in equal measure into a vivid narrative cocktail.

For me, however, it was the second half of the book that stood out – a set of eight stories under the heading ‘Connections’ – almost all set in Barcelona, and all linked in some way. In a note to readers, Solana describes the stories as a ‘noirish mosaic that shows off different fragments of the city, its inhabitants and history’ and then throws down a gauntlet… ‘Reader, I am issuing you with a challenge: spot the connections, the detail or character that makes each story a piece of this mosaic’.

Well, it took me a while, but I had the greatest of fun figuring out the links between the stories (some really are just a passing detail, and I can only imagine the devious pleasure the author had in planting them). My favourites were ‘The Second Mrs Appleton’, for its deliciously twisted denouement, and ‘Mansion with Sea Views’, whose conclusion was unexpectedly dark and disturbing.

As some of you may already know, August is ‘Women in Translation’ month  (#WITMonth), an initiative that seeks to promote the works of international women authors, and to highlight the relative lack of women’s fiction in translation. Big thanks are due to Bitter Lemon Press for championing the work of Solana in the English-speaking world, and to her translator, Peter Bush, who does such a wonderful job of communicating Solana’s very special authorial voice.

And here, in no particular order, are another five crime novels by women in translation that I’ve particularly enjoyed and covered on the blog.

Masako Togawa, The Master Key, translated from Japanese by Simon Cove (Pushkin Vertigo 2017) – 1960s character-driven Tokyo crime with a twisty-turny plot. 

Ioanna Bourazopoulou, What Lot’s Wife Saw, translated from Greek by Yannis Panas (Black and White Publishing 2013) – a mind-bendingly imaginative apocalyptic hybrid crime novel.

Elisabeth Herrmann, The Cleaner, translated from German by Bradley Schmidt (Manilla 2017) – a quirky Berlin thriller with an unforgettable protagonist. 

Dolores Redondo, The Invisible Guardian, translated from Spanish by Isabelle Kaufeler (HarperCollins, 2015) – the first in a distinctive police series, set in the Basque country.

Malin Persson Giolito, Quicksand, translated from Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles (Simon & Schuster 2017) – our 2018 Petrona Award winner; a superb exploration of the fallout from a school shooting.

El Guardián Invisible (film), Mindhunter (TV) and three Must Reads for 2018

Posted on by Kat Hall
17

Happy 2018, everyone! After a little hiatus, I’ve started getting back into some crime TV and film. I watched two gems over the festive break, each of which (oddly) featured serial killers and FBI inspectors, but were very different to one another in mood and tone.

The first was El Guardián Invisible, the 2017 Spanish film adaptation of Dolores Redondo’s novel of the same name, published as The Invisible Guardian here in 2015 (translated by Isabelle Kaufeler, HarperCollins). I loved the book and thought this was an excellent adaptation – faithful to the original while adding a stunning extra dimension through the visuals of Navarre’s atmospheric landscapes and weather. The rain seems to be torrential in pretty much every scene, which must have been fun for the actors… I particularly liked Marta Etura’s portrayal of lead investigator Amaia Salazar, an outstanding FBI-trained investigator, who returns to her home town to track a serial killer, and has to face up to her toxic relationship with her mother. It’s a hard-hitting, but satisfying watch.

The second was the Netflix Original series Mindhunter, which I resisted for a while due to its tough subject matter. But I kept hearing good things, and a recommendation from Brian, a regular reader of this blog, eventually led me to give it a go. And I’m glad I did, because it turns out to be a fascinating portrait of how the FBI developed a methodical approach to understanding and identifying serial killers in the 1970s. Based on the book by FBI agent John E. Douglas, the series shows two FBI agents, Holden Ford and Bill Tench (Jonathan Groff/Holt McCallney), becoming increasingly aware of the rise of the serial killer in modern American society, and attempting to gain insights into the phenomenon by interviewing serial killers and helping police forces with their investigations. They are joined by Boston psychology professor Dr. Wendy Carr (Anna Torv), who helps them work more systematically in building up their database and deepens their knowledge of how serial killers are formed and how they think. It’s all fascinating stuff, and I’m definitely going to stick with it, although it’s a very difficult watch in places (no gratuitous violence, but the details of the crimes are given verbally and sometimes shown in the photos used in the investigations). I tend to watch one episode at a time and then switch to something lighter!

I always get a bit of fresh reading energy around the New Year. Having read and enjoyed some Japanese crime fiction just before Christmas, I’m keen to read a little more widely – either by choosing novels set in unusual places or in different historical eras or both. Here are three Must Reads currently on my list:

  • Attica Locke’s Bluebird, Bluebird (Serpent’s Tail 2017), exploring race relations in East Texas
  • Joe Thomas’ Paradise City (Arcadia 2017), set in Sao Paulo, Brazil
  • Nicolas Verdan’s The Greek Wall (trans. by W. Donald Wilson, Bitter Lemon Press 2018), set on the border of Turkey and Greece

Which crime novels are on your Must Read list for 2018?

 

Extensive re-run of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Foreign Bodies’ crime fiction series on now!

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Thanks to Andy Lawrence for spotting that BBC Radio 4 is re-running episodes from Mark Lawson’s excellent ‘Foreign Bodies’ crime fiction series on BBC Radio Four extra and BBC iPlayer Radio. Most episodes will be available online for a month following broadcast, and offer 15-minute opportunities to delve into the work of key crime writers and traditions from around the world.

foreign-bodies

The ‘Foreign Bodies’ series are close to my heart for their celebration of international crime fiction, their focus on some of our most interesting detective figures, and their analysis of how crime fiction is used to explore important political and social issues. I was also lucky enough to contribute to two episodes in Series 1 – on the works of Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Jakob Arjouni respectively.

Here’s a list of the ‘Foreign Bodies’ programmes you can listen to via BBC Radio iPlayer, either now or in the coming days. If you’re looking for some gems to add to your reading list, then these programmes are definitely for you.

Series 1, Episode 1  Belgium: Hercule Poirot and Jules Maigret (Agatha Christie and Georges Simenon)

Series 1, Episode 2  Switzerland/Germany: Inspector Bärlach (Friedrich Dürrenmatt… with a contribution from Mrs Peabody)

foreign-bodies-barlach

Series 1, Episode 3  Czechoslovakia: Lieutenant Boruvka (Josef Skvorecky)

Series 1, Episode 4  The Netherlands: Commissaris Van Der Valk (Nicolas Freeling)

Series 1, Episode 5  Sweden: Inspector Martin Beck (Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö)

Series 1, Episode 6  UK: Commander Dalgliesh/Chief Inspector Wexford (P.D. James and Ruth Rendell)

Series 1, Episode 7  Sicily: Inspector Rogas (Leonardo Sciascia)

Series 1, Episode 8  Spain: PI Pepe Carvalho (Manuel Vázquez Montalbán)

Series 1, Episode 9  UK: DCI Jane Tennison (Linda La Plante)

Episodes 10 to 15 are not yet listed as available, but they may well be soon – I’ll update if so (these include Montalbano/Italy, Kayankaya/Germany, Rebus/Scotland, Wallander and Salander/Sweden, Harry Hole/Norway and Fandorin/Russia).

foreign-bodies-spain

Series 3, Episode 1  Cuba: an exploration of fictional investigations of Cuba after the Castro revolution with Leonardo Padura, author of The Havana Quartet, and Caroline Garcia-Aquilera, a Cuban-American writing from exile in Miami.

Series 3, Episode 2  USA: Laura Lippman and Walter Mosley, the creators of private eyes Tess Monaghan and Easy Rawlins, discuss how they introduced the experience of women and black Americans into crime fiction dominated by men and a McCarthyite fear of outsiders.

Series 3, Episode 3  Poland: Zygmunt Miloszewski and Joanna Jodelka reflect on how Polish crime fiction depicts the country’s occupation by Nazis and Communists, the transition to democracy through the Solidarity movement and lingering accusations of racism and anti-Semitism.

Series 3 Episode 4  Australia: Australia’s leading crime novelist, South African-born Peter Temple, discusses depicting a society shaped by both British colonialism and American power, and why Australian crime fiction should contain as few words as possible.

Series 3 Episode 5  Nigeria: Writers Helon Habila and C.M. Okonkwo discuss how a flourishing new tradition of Nigerian crime fiction explores British legacy, tribal tradition and the new “corporate colonialism” as global companies exploit the country’s mineral reserves.

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Mark Lawson’s article on the first ‘Foreign Bodies’ series is also available via The Guardian: ‘Crime’s Grand Tour: European Detective Fiction’.

Mother knows best? Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects (USA) and Dolores Redondo’s The Invisible Guardian (Spain)

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects (2006) and Dolores Redondo’s The Invisible Guardian (tr. Isabelle Kaufeler, 2013) are quite different in style, but have a number of features in common, not least their challenging depictions of mother-daughter relationships.

gillian-flynn

Both crime novels begin with the murders of a series of young girls or teenagers. The killings take place in or around a small town or village, and are investigated by a young woman who grew up there, but who left as soon as she could. In Sharp Objects, Camille Preaker is a Chicago journalist whose mother, stepfather and half-sister live in the town of Wind Gap, Missouri. She returns there for the first time in eight years when her editor sends her to report on the killings of two young girls. In The Invisible Guardian, Inspector Amaia Salazar is ordered to lead the investigation into the murders of two teenagers, and returns from Pamplona to the village of Elizondo in the Basque country, where her mother and sisters are still based.

redondo

In the course of their journalistic and criminal investigations, Camille and Amaia are forced into close proximity with their families and to confront repressed childhood traumas. In particular, the novels portray abusive mother-daughter relationships in ways that are both unflinching and disturbing. In one, we are shown how abusive mothering is transmitted from one generation to the next. In the other, no rational reason for the abuse is ever shown, which is perhaps even more unsettling. In both novels, the daughters have to accept and somehow deal with the corrosive effects of their mothers’ extreme behaviour.

While both of these crime novels are excellent, they won’t be to the taste of all readers. Gillian Flynn, as I’ve noted in previous posts, is one of our most daring contemporary crime writers, who repeatedly takes on uncomfortable or taboo subjects such as self-harm. She often writes in the first person – as we see with Camille in Sharp Objects – and her protagonists are prickly and unconventional, or even downright unlikable. In this novel, Flynn creates an atmosphere dripping with Gothic menace, and piles on vivid physical detail to unsettle her readers. In the process, she dissects the suffocating, conservative nature of Wind Gap’s small-town life and shows how girls are pressurized to conform to gender norms in order to be accepted by society. Her other crime novels, Dark Places and Gone Girl, are equally challenging and rewarding reads.

gillian-flynn-trio

Redondo’s The Invisible Guardian can be categorised more straightforwardly as a police procedural and is written in the third-person. It creates a different kind of atmosphere, using the mists and forests of the Basque region along with the mythical figure of the basajaun to suggest that other-worldly forces are at work. (In this respect, the novel reminds me a little of Fred Vargas’ ‘Inspector Adamsberg’ crime novels, albeit without the quirky eccentricity that marks her narratives.) Like Sharp Objects, The Invisible Guardian is a hard-hitting novel whose depictions of gender and power relations will stay with you long after the story ends. It’s also the opening novel in the acclaimed Baztan Trilogy – the second novel, The Legacy of the Bones, is out now, and the Offering to the Storm is hopefully on its way.

Jingle bells! Mrs. Peabody’s 2015 Christmas recommendations

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Xmas tree

Bookish Christmas cheer! Source: en.webfail.com

Wondering what to get the crime lover in your life for Christmas? Here are Mrs. Peabody’s 2015 recommendations to help you out. As ever, they’re based on my own top reading and viewing experiences throughout the year and are designed to appeal to readers with all manner of criminal tastes. Available from a wonderful independent bookshop near you!

The Truth and other lies

Sascha Arango, The Truth and Other Lies (GERMANY: trans. Imogen Taylor, Simon and Schuster 2015). For lovers of Patricia Highsmith with a contemporary twist. The central protagonist of this standalone crime novel is the novelist Henry Hayden, whose highly successful life begins to unravel when he makes a fatal error one night. Hayden is a darkly comic creation whose story – involving a talented wife, a demanding mistress and a floundering police team – is witty and entertaining. The author is a well-known screenwriter for the German crime series Tatort (Crime Scene) and you can read a bit more about his debut novel here.

Cost

Roberto Costantini, The Deliverance of Evil (ITALY: trans. N. S. Thompson, Quercus, 2014). For lovers of complex crime fiction with strong historical, political and social themes. The first in the Balistreri Trilogy will keep its lucky recipient quiet for hours: a six-hundred page epic that spans twenty-five years of Italian history and tackles weighty issues such as religion, class and the legacy of Italian fascism, this novel is also a gripping murder mystery with an intriguing, morally flawed investigator – Commissario Michele Balistreri. Mrs. Peabody’s full review is available here.

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Eva Dolan, A Long Way Home (UK: Vintage, 2014). For lovers of fabulously well-written social crime novels. This police procedural explores migrant experiences in the UK in a timely and sobering way. Its main investigative protagonists, Detectives Zigic and Ferreira of the Peterborough Hate Crimes Unit – with Serbian and Portuguese heritage respectively – are both extremely well drawn, and the story, which starts with the discovery of a body in a burned-out garden shed, is gripping and believable. The second in the series, Tell No Tales, has also just been published…

Horst

Jørn Lier Horst, The Caveman (NORWAY: trans. Anne Bruce, Sandstone Press 2015). For lovers of top quality Scandinavian police procedurals. The fourth in the Norwegian ‘William Wisting’ series begins with the discovery of a four-month-old corpse in an armchair just down the road from the policeman’s own home. While Wisting investigates, his journalist daughter Line uses the case to ask some serious questions about society. Neither, however, are remotely prepared for where the case will eventually lead them. Elegantly written and completely gripping, this is Scandi crime at its best (and in my view it doesn’t matter where readers dive into the series). Mrs. Peabody’s interview with the author, a former police chief, is available here.

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Val McDermid, Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime (UK: Profile Books, 2015). For those interested in the grittier, scientific side of criminal investigations. Not to be read directly before or after Christmas dinner. This fascinating book, written by crime author Val McDermid, accompanied the Wellcome Trust’s exhibition of the same name earlier this year. Taking us from the crime scene to the courtroom, chapters explore entomology (maggots), toxicology (arsenic most foul), fingerprinting, blood splatter/DNA, facial reconstruction and digital forensics. Grim, but genuinely illuminating, the book also pays homage to the investigators who use science to track down criminals and bring them to justice. Every contact leaves a trace!

Where the Shadows Lie

Michael Ridpath, Where the Shadows Lie (UK/ICELAND: Corvus, 2011). For lovers of Icelandic crime and The Lord of the Rings. I’m late to the party as far as the ‘Fire and Ice’ series is concerned. In this opening novel, readers are introduced to Icelandic-born, Boston-raised homicide detective Magnus Jonson, who is seconded to the Reykjavik Police after getting on the wrong side of a drugs cartel in the States. Soon, he’s busy investigating the rather nasty murder of an Icelandic academic, while getting reacquainted with Icelandic culture and society. A highly enjoyable read that doubles as a great introduction to the land of ‘fire and ice’.

Death on demand

Paul Thomas, Death on Demand (NEW ZEALAND: Bitter Lemon Press 2013 [2012]) For lovers of maverick detectives and astute social commentary. Thomas wrote three novels in the ‘Ihaka’ series back in the 1990s. This later installment was published in 2012 and is often described as one of his best (it works well as a standalone, so having read the previous novels is not a requirement in my view). Highlights include the depiction of Maori policeman Tito Ihaka (‘unkempt, overweight, intemperate, unruly, unorthodox and profane’), an absorbing narrative and an insightful dissection of Auckland society. An extract from the opening is available here.

in bitter chill cover

Sarah Ward, In Bitter Chill (UK: Faber, 2015). For lovers of absorbing, quality British crime fiction. This tremendously polished debut is set in Derbyshire and focuses on an unsolved case from January 1978 – the disappearance of two young girls on their way to school. Only one, Rachel, is found and she has no memory of what happened to her friend. Thirty years on, a suicide triggers a review of the case by the local police team and Rachel finds herself being drawn unwillingly back into the past. With a narrative that moves deftly between past and present, this novel is a compelling read with a great sense of place. A full Mrs. Peabody review is available here.

Lovely Way to Burn

Louise Welsh, A Lovely Way to Burn (UK: John Murray, 2014). For lovers of dystopian or apocalyptic crime fiction. The first in the ‘Plague Times’ trilogy depicts a London engulfed by ‘the Sweats’, a pandemic that’s claiming millions of lives. But when Stephanie (Stevie) Flint discovers the body of her boyfriend, Dr. Simon Sharkey, it looks like a case of foul play. Stevie sets out to find out the truth behind Simon’s death and to survive – not necessarily in that order. An enthralling novel with a great heroine (and travelling by Tube will never be the same again). The second novel in the trilogy, Death is a Welcome Guest, is already out and is another fab read.

River DVD

River (UK: BBC/Arrow Films, 2015). For lovers of quirky TV crime series like Life on Mars. This crime drama, which was written by Abi Morgan and recently aired on BBC One, was an absolute standout for me. It seems to have divided audiences a little – not everyone liked or ‘got’ the concept – but those who did were glued to the screen as police detective John River tried to solve the murder of his partner, Jackie ‘Stevie’ Stevenson, while being helped (or hindered) by a number of ‘manifests’ or visions of the dead. This crime series did something truly original: it explored the effects of a serious mental health crisis with compassion, intelligence and wit. The acting by Stellan Skarsgärd, Nicola Walker and the supporting cast was also top class. For a fuller appreciation, see here. And there’s a great interview with Abi Morgan about the experience of writing River here.

And lastly, on my own personal wishlist from Santa:

La isla minima

The film La Isla Minima or Marshland (SPAIN: Altitude, 2015), which has been called a Spanish True Detective and was the winner of ten Goya awards, including Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Film. Here’s the blurb:

‘Spain’s deep-south, 1980. In a small village a serial killer has caused the disappearance of several adolescents. But when two young sisters vanish during an annual festival, their mother forces an investigation that brings two homicide detectives from Madrid to try to solve the mystery. The detectives are ensnared in a web of intrigue fed by the apathy and introverted nature of the locals. Nothing is what it seems in this isolated region and both men realize they must put aside their professional differences if they are to stop the person responsible.’

There’s a Guardian review of the film here.

Wishing you all a very happy festive season!

Scandi Xmas

Source: littlescandinavian.com

Globetrotting crime: Auckland, Bangalore, Barcelona, Havana

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Family Peabody is off on holiday in a cunning attempt to extend summer a little longer. As ever, my first priority has been choosing which books to take along. And by books, I mean actual books to read while lying by the pool/sipping a drink on the balcony/ enjoying a coffee in a cafe. Time to savour a break from the electronic world and wind down in seventies style.

reading

Here are four novels that have made the cut. All happen to be published by Bitter Lemon Press, which champions top quality crime fiction from all over the world. I made my choices on the basis of the cover blurb (see below), the setting, and that tingly feeling that makes you think you’ll enjoy a book. As a result, some are from the middle or even the end of a series, but that’s fine…

AUCKLAND/NEW ZEALAND: Death on Demand by Paul Thomas (Bitter Lemon Press 2013 [2012])

Death on demand

Maori cop Tito Ihaka – ‘unkempt, overweight, intemperate, unruly, unorthodox and profane’ – is a cop unable to play the police politics necessary for promotion, but a man who has a way with women, and he’s a stubborn investigator with an uncanny instinct for the truth. Ihaka is in the wilderness, having fallen foul of the new regime at Auckland Central. Called back to follow up a strange twist in the unsolved case that got him into trouble in the first place, Ihaka finds himself hunting a shadowy hitman who could have several notches on his belt. His enemies want him off the case, but the bodies are piling up. Ihaka embarks on a quest to establish whether police corruption was behind the shooting of an undercover cop and – to complicate matters – he becomes involved with an enigmatic female suspect who could hold the key to everything.

An extract from Death on Demand is available on the Bitter Lemon website.

BANGALORE/INDIA: A Cut-like Wound by Anita Nair (Bitter Lemon Press, 2014 [2012]

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It’s the first day of Ramadan in heat-soaked Bangalore. A young man begins to dress: makeup, a sari and expensive pearl earrings. Before the mirror he is transformed into Bhuvana. She is a hijra, a transgender seeking love in the bazaars of the city. What Bhuvana wants, she nearly gets: a passing man is attracted to this elusive young woman. But someone points out that Bhuvana is no woman. For that, the interloper’s throat is cut. A case for Inspector Borei Gowda, going to seed and at odds with those around him including his wife, his colleagues, even the informers he must deal with. More corpses and Urmila, Gowda’s ex-flame, are added to this spicy concoction of a mystery novel.

Read an extract from A Cut-like Wound here.

BARCELONA/SPAIN: A Shortcut to Paradise by Teresa Solana (translated by Peter Bush, Bitter Lemon Press, 2011 [2007)

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The shady, accident-prone private detective twins Eduard Martinez and Borja ‘Pep’ Masdeu are back. Another murder beckons, and this time the victim is one of Barcelona’s literary glitterati.

Marina Dolç, media figure and writer of best-sellers, is murdered in the Ritz Hotel in Barcelona on the night she wins an important literary prize. The killer has battered her to death with the trophy she has just won, an end identical to that of the heroine in her prize-winning novel. The same night the Catalan police arrest their chief suspect, Amadeu Cabestany, runner-up for the prize. Borja and Eduard are hired to prove his innocence. The unlikely duo is plunged into the murky waters of the Barcelona publishing scene and need all their wit and skills of improvisation to solve this case of truncated literary lives.

Read an extract from A Shortcut to Paradise here.

HAVANA/CUBA: Leonardo Padura, Havana Fever (translated by Peter Bush, Bitter Lemon Press, 2009 [2005]

havana

Havana, 2003, fourteen years since Mario Conde retired from the police force and much has changed in Cuba. He now makes a living trading in antique books bought from families selling off their libraries in order to survive. In the house of Alcides de Montes de Oca, a rich Cuban who fled after the fall of Batista, Conde discovers an extraordinary book collection and, buried therein, a newspaper article about Violeta del Rio, a beautiful bolero singer of the 1950s, who disappeared mysteriously. Conde’s intuition sets him off on an investigation that leads him into a darker Cuba, now flooded with dollars, populated by pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers and other hunters of the night. But this novel also allows Padura to evoke the Havana of Batista, the city of a hundred night clubs where Marlon Brando and Josephine Baker listened to boleros, mambos and jazz. Probably Padura’s best book, Havana Fever is many things: a suspenseful crime novel, a cruel family saga and an ode to literature and his beloved, ravaged island.

An extract from Havana Fever is available here.

Happy reading! Mrs. Peabody will be back in a couple of weeks. 

CrimeFest 2015: The Petrona, CWA International Dagger and EuroNoir

Posted on by Kat Hall
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I can’t believe it’s already a week since the end of CrimeFest 2015. Time for my second post on this marvellous event, and some key highlights:

The Petrona Award: Yrsa Sigurðardóttir’s The Silence of the Sea, translated by Victoria Cribb, won the 2015 Petrona Award for the best Scandinavian crime novel of the year in translation. The award was presented by CrimeFest’s guest of honour Maj Sjöwall, which was very special for all concerned.

Petrona group

The Petrona judging team with Yrsa and Maj (centre). Photo: Andy Lawrence

The Petrona shortlist this year was wonderfully strong, with novels by Kati Hiekkapelto (Finland), Jørn Lier Horst (Norway), Arnaldur Indriðason (Iceland), Hans Olav Lahlum (Norway) and Leif G W Persson (Sweden). Fuller information about the shortlisted novels is available here and further details can also be found at the Petrona Award website.

The CWA’s 2015 International Dagger shortlist was announced at CrimeFest on the Friday night. The six shortlisted novels are:

  • Lief G.W. Persson, Falling Freely, as in a Dream (trans. Paul Norlen/Transworld/ SWEDEN)
  • Pierre LeMaitre, Camille (trans. Frank Wynne/Maclehose Press/FRANCE)
  • Deon Meyer, Cobra (trans. K.L.Seegers/Hodder and Stoughton/SOUTH AFRICA)
  • Karim Miské, Arab Jazz (trans. Sam Gordon/MacLehose Press/FRANCE)
  • Dolores Redondo, The Invisible Garden (trans. Isabelle Kaufeler/HarperCollins/ SPAIN)
  • Andreas Norman, Into a Raging Blaze (trans. Ian Giles/Quercus/SWEDEN)

Further details can be found on the CWA website, with the award being presented at the end of June. I’ve read a grand total of two, so need to do some catching up.

Euro Noir

Euro Noir panel with Barry Forshaw, Roberto Costantini, Gunnar Staalesen, Michael Ridpath and Jørn Lier Horst

Two CrimeFest panels I particularly enjoyed were the Nordic Noir and Euro Noir panels, moderated by Quentin Bates and Barry Forshaw respectively, and featuring Kati Hiekkapelto (Finland), Gunnar Staalesen (Norway), Clare Carson (UK/Orkney), Craig Robertson (UK/Faroes), Roberto Costantini (Italy), Michael Ridpath (UK/Iceland) and Jørn Lier Horst (Norway). Interesting observations abounded:

HummingbirdHiekkapelto’s The Hummingbird is set in fictional, northern Finnish town. It shows a darker side of Finland: alcoholism, loneliness and some poverty. She tries to write about Finland with the eyes of an outsider, like her investigator Anna Fekete, and sees Finland as being not very welcoming of immigrants. She’s rare in choosing to write about migration issues.

Staalesen describes the Norwegian town of Bergen as very film noir – it rains 250 days a year and so is an excellent setting for crime (the latest in his famous ‘Varg Veum’ P.I. series, We Shall Inherit the Wind, is about to be published by Orenda Press). For him, crime fiction is a way of telling stories about society and how we live our lives today. In contrast to many other countries, the status of crime fiction in Norway is high: it’s viewed as respectable literature due to its quality and its use as a form of social critique (e.g. Karin Fossum).

In her novel Orkney Twilight, Carson writes about Orkney from memories of childhood, which is apt because novel is about memory. Carson’s father was an undercover cop, and she’s drawn on the experience of being a young woman figuring out her father’s secret life. Orkney is a mysterious place with continuous light in summer; Carsen weaves Norse mythology throughout the narrative, which fits with the idea of undercover police/spies as master storytellers. She feels folklore is a way of talking about things that can’t be solved in life and that crime fiction is a modern version of that form, in that it gets to grips with unresolvable issues like death.

Ironically, given amount of murders committed in Nordic novels, Scandinavia and the Faroe Islands are probably safest places in world. There were no murders in Faroes for 26 years … until Robertson started writing his novel The Last Refuge. He feels a bit guilty about that.

Horst

Lier Horst used to get up at 5am every day to write while still working as a policeman. You have to set goal and put in the work – ‘it’s a hard job’. His first novel was based on a real murder. He saw the crime scene on the first day of his job and it stayed with him (the murderer was never caught). Writing about murders has ‘taught me a little about death, but a lot about life’, especially people’s emotions.

Barry Forshaw has coined the term ‘Scandi Brit’ for Brits like Michael Ridpath and Quentin Bates who set their novels in northern climes. Ridpath says it’s a challenge to write about other countries, but invigorating one. He regularly consults Icelanders on points of accuracy, which is a big help.

Cost

Costantini uses his engineering background to construct his plots. His acclaimed ‘Commissario Balistreri’ trilogy explores thirty years of Italian history from the 1960s to the 1990s, as well as developments in the Middle East. (I have bought the first and am looking forward to reading it.) He created a policeman with a compromised right-wing past as a deliberate challenge to readers.

There was praise for translators and their huge contribution to international crime fiction. Staalesen and Lier Horst are grateful to have the services of top translators Don Bartlett and Anne Bruce. Both are excellent, managing the most difficult of tasks like translating humour effectively.

Other highlights during CrimeFest included seeing Ragnar Jónasson hit the top of the Kindle bestseller list with his debut novel Snowblind late on Saturday night, chatting to authors like William Ryan and remembering how much good crime fiction I still need to read (e.g. the rest of his Captain Korolev series), and meeting friends old and new, like the lovely Elena Avanzas (@ms_adler, who blogs at Murder, she read), Maura and Karen from the Swansea Sleuths bookgroup, and Anya Lipska, who’s part of the newly formed and utterly marvellous Killer Women organisation. So much murderous creativity in one place and time! Roll on next year.