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Mrs Peabody’s suitcase of holiday crime 2011

Posted on by Kat Hall
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So here’s a list of the holiday crime novels I’ve finally settled on this year. Something of an eclectic bunch, these have either been recommended by other bloggers and readers, or caught my eye while browsing in real and virtual bookshops.

Ernesto Mallo, Needle in a Haystack and Sweet Money (Bitter Lemon Press). Set in the Argentina of 1970s military rule and beyond – both come highly recommended by Petrona.

Ellis Peters omnibus of A Morbid Taste for Bones and One Corpse Too Many – the first of the Brother Cadfael mysteries (which I’ve actually never read before), waiting for me in the bargain bucket at The Works. Bones has a Welsh connection to remind me of home.

Best International Crime: 36 Stories by Boris Akunin, Jeffery Deaver, Jo Nesbo, Ian Rankin and many more, edited by Max Jakubowski. A veritable treasure trove of 40 short stories, going for a song on Amazon.

Rex Stout, Fer-de-Lance and The League of Frightened Gentlemen (classic Nero Wolfe mysteries), as recommended by Kathy from the States. To my shame, I knew nothing of Stout until a short while ago – time to make amends.

Colin Bateman, Murphy’s Law: Sex, Psychos and a Grave Situation (off-beat, darkly humorous crime, picked up in Oxfam Books).

I’m looking forward to sampling all of these very much.

Mrs. Peabody Investigates will be taking a break for August. 

Wishing you all a very happy and restful summer.

Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, 21-24 July 2011

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Today marks the start of the 2011 Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, which, as ever, looks to have a rich and varied programme.

I attended the festival back in 2006, where I learned a great deal about crime fiction and even more about the (ahem) legendary sociability of crime writers, bloggers and fans. It’s probably no coincidence that the festival is sponsored by Theakstons – its official title is actually Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Festival.

I keep meaning to go back, and definitely will do so one day, but am honouring a date I’ve made with 10,000 puffins on the Welsh island of Skomer this weekend. To those of you who are lucky enough to be attending: have a wonderful time, and please report back to us on all the riches you find there.

Summer’s here! Mrs Peabody’s holiday crime fiction recommendations

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Now that it’s July, my thoughts are turning to the serious business of holiday reading.

Choosing reading matter to take on holiday is something I take extremely seriously: an afternoon of peaceful reading with ice-cubes tinkling in a cool drink by my side is one of my chief holiday pleasures, and the quality, quantity and variety of the crime fiction in my suitcase needs to be just right. Major disasters in the past have included being caught short in Spain, resulting in an exhaustive hunt for an English-language bookshop, and paying well over the odds for some crime fiction in New Zealand, where book prices are incredibly high. As a result, I now always carry a small library with me abroad (Kindle, of course, is another option, although I like to take second-hand paperbacks I can leave for other holiday-makers, which I then cunningly replace in my luggage with souvenirs).

The following are some random holiday crime fiction recommendations – all books that I’ve read and enjoyed, albeit for varying reasons. If you feel like posting suggestions in return I’d be very pleased to see them.

  • Light and frothy, with an emphasis on entertainment. Perfect for lounging by the pool or whiling away a few hours in a café with a cappuccino.

Fred Vargas’ Detective Commissaire Adamsberg series: a quirky and erudite collection of crime novels, mostly set in Paris. It’s not essential to read them in order, in my view, but Have Mercy on Us All is a good place to start. You may or may not know, but Fred is actually a female author, and an archaeologist by trade.

Colin Bateman’s Mystery Man: Murder, Mayhem and Damn Sexy Trousers (2009). It’s rare for writers to pull off a successful comic crime novel. This one made me laugh out loud, in spite of its ultimately rather serious subject matter – the legacy of the Nazi past and the weighty theme of post-war justice. A deft juggling act.

Michael Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen series (televised earlier this year). Written quite a while ago now, but they’ve held up well, with a nicely rounded investigative figure. A wry look at Italian policing, politics and life. An earlier Mrs P. post on Ratking is available here.

  • Stronger stuff – more intense and challenging crime. The sort of novel you might not normally get round to, and which isn’t necessarily the easiest of reads in terms of its content or style.

Andrew Taylor’s Roth Trilogy. Brilliant and somewhat underrated, this trilogy excavates the history of a sociopathic killer, moving backwards in time from the present day to the 1970s and the 1950s. Best read in order for cumulative effect.

George P. Pelecanos, The Big Blowdown. First in the Washington Quartet by an author also famous for his contribution to The Wire. Grim and gritty depiction of D.C. just after the Second World War. Breathtakingly good.

Jussi Adler Olsen’s Mercy – a recent Danish sensation, which is brilliantly written, but very hard-hitting. First in the Department Q series, featuring detective Carl Mørck. A Mrs P. review of Mercy is available here.

Happy holidays and enjoy!

Belfast, Bateman and Bora

Posted on by Kat Hall
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I thoroughly enjoyed my recent visit to Belfast in Northern Ireland. Highlights included:

The Belfast ‘States of Crime’ Conference…

which was held 17-18 June and featured 60 academics from over 14 countries speaking on a wide range of international crime fiction. The focus of the conference was ‘the state’ and papers explored crime’s treatment of this topic from a number of angles, such as: state authority, state violence, the state and social exclusion, the criminal state, state memories and counter-memories, the welfare state, complicity with the state and resistance to the state. My paper was on the ‘The Nazi Detective and the State’, and examined the depiction of this controversial figure in three texts: Philip Kerr’s The Pale Criminal, Robert Harris’s Fatherland, and the German crime novel Wer übrig bleibt, hat recht by Richard Birkefeld and Göran Hachmeister [published the journal Comparative Literature Studies in 2013].

Other crime writers under discussion included Ian Rankin, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, James Ellroy, Ross MacDonald, Massimo Carlotto, David Peace, Dominique Manotti, Stieg Larsson, Chester Himes and Didier Daeninckx.

There’s a real buzz about crime fiction as an area of academic research at the moment. In the past there’s been some snobbery in academic circles about the value of studying popular culture, and many academics from previous generations felt they had to research crime fiction ‘on the side’ as a kind of guilty pleasure. There’s a significant shift now, with younger academics already writing doctorates on crime fiction rather than waiting until later when they’ve established an academic reputation. It’s a very welcome development, especially given that crime fiction is read by such huge audiences, and has an important cultural influence that merits analysis.

The Belfast Book Festival…

was running at the same time as the conference. Delegates and crime fans joined together for a roundtable with David Peace and Eoin McNamee on Friday evening. Both authors were very eloquent about their work and the kinds of problems raised when writing about real life crimes (the Yorkshire Ripper murders and the Patricia Curran murder respectively). Both also felt strongly that depicting the victims’ stories, so often overlooked in crime fiction, was of paramount importance to their own projects.

Each of the authors read from their works. Peace’s selection of GB84 was especially resonant given the the current economic climate.

The No Alibis Bookstore…

on Botanic Avenue, just around the corner from the university, is a treasure trove of crime fiction from all four corners of the world. But it also has a literary claim to fame, as it’s the same bookshop that’s featured in Belfast crime writer Colin Bateman’s Mystery Man: Murder, Mayhem and Damn Sexy Trousers. I had an illuminating discussion with the owner about what it was like to see your shop, and in large measure yourself, depicted in a work of fiction…

Aside from the fabulous selection of crime fiction, I’d recommend a visit for the following lovely touch: all customers are offered a cup of tea as they browse the bookshelves or read on the highly comfy sofas. What’s not to love?!

A greatly enlarged TBR pile for my own research project on Nazi-themed crime has resulted from those four days away. New reading includes: Dominique Manotti’s Affairs of State, Andreas Pittler’s Bronstein series (largely set in Austria before and during Nazi Occupation and featuring a Jewish policeman, but not yet translated, alas), Camilla Lackberg’s The Hidden Child, and Ben Pastor’s Lumen. The latter, which I’ve just started, is the first in the Martin Bora series, set in Nazi-occupied Cracow in 1939. It’ll be very interesting to compare it to other historical crime fiction set in the same period such as Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series.

A bit of a treat: Belfast ‘States of Crime’ conference

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Tomorrow I’m heading off to Belfast for a few days, and will pop my head round the door of the ‘States of Crime’ conference being held at Queen’s on Friday and Saturday. As its title suggests, the conference will be looking at representations of the state in crime fiction, and how it is shown negotiating issues such as criminality, policing, justice and civil rights. 

I’ve had a peek at the programme, and it’s stuffed with talks on international crime (Italian, French, German, Austrian, Swiss, Russian, Finnish, Swedish, African, Spanish, British, Irish, American). Heaven! 

The icing on the cake is a round table with David Peace and Eoin McNamee. Peace is a bit of a literary god in my eyes: I think his Red Riding Quartet is one of the best things ever written – irrespective of genre – and I’m really looking forward to seeing him in discussion at the No Alibis Bookstore on Friday evening. 

The ‘crime-loving library borrowers’ of 2010

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Last Saturday’s Guardian (19.02.11) carried a list of the top 100 books borrowed from UK libraries in 2010, along with a piece by John Dugdale on ‘the crime-loving borrowers’.

It turns out that almost two-thirds of the books on the most borrowed list are crime novels or thrillers, including the whole of the top 10 (four Pattersons, two Rankins, and one Child, Brown, Connelly and Slaughter respectively). Impressive stuff, and Dugdale explores a few of the reasons why this might be the case.

But the bit that caught my eye was this:

‘Stieg Larsson (who had the top three places in the sales chart) is relegated to a single entry in 76th place. Library users, this suggests, are less keen on Euro-crime, less responsive to the stimulus of TV or film adaptations, and not fond of lengthy, heavy tomes. What they want instead are American or American-style murder stories that are quick reads…’

What struck me was how much Dugdale ‘deduced’ from one statistic, and I’m wondering if he wasn’t being a little over-hasty in the assertions he made. After all, there’s an extremely complex set of factors that have contributed to Larsson’s position on the list in particular, and to the absence of other examples of Euro-crime in general.

Larsson first. Dugdale quite rightly notes the contrast between the 76th position on the list of The Girl who Played with Fire and Larsson’s dominance of the 2010 UK sales chart. This would actually suggest that readers liked the Millenium Trilogy so much that they wanted to buy it and keep it, rather than to borrow it and give it back. So ironically, it could well be the enormous ‘must have’ success of this crime series that has contributed to its lower position on the library chart. And (ahem), do such ‘lengthy heavy tomes’ really put libary readers off? The presence of Hilary Mantell’s doorstopper Wolf Hall at number 24 appears to suggest otherwise.

Larsson, of course, is a Euro-crime-writing phenomenon, whose world-wide sales were already in excess of 12 million by 2008. Other Euro-crime novels typically have a much bigger hill to climb before making it on to annual lists like these.

Firstly, European crime fiction has to be ‘found’ and translated by a sympathetic publisher like Maclehose. Only a modest selection make it. It’s inevitable, therefore, that the sales and borrowing figures for Euro-crime will reflect the smaller number of  Euro-crime novels that are in print compared with those produced for the massive Anglo-American market. Given this, it’s hardly surprising that only the truly big hitters like Larsson manage inclusion in the top 100.

I’d accept that publishers sometimes have a challenging time convincing a readership reared on a largely British and American cultural diet that European fiction – crime or otherwise – is worth reading. But I’m wondering if the recent surge of Euro-crime dramas on BBC4 is beginning to shift the perceptions of a more mainstream audience towards ‘foreign’ imports. The incredibly positive reaction to the Danish series The Killing is a case in point. One interesting observation from a couple of viewers has been how surprised they are to be enjoying a subtitled programme so much. So perhaps the success of quality foreign-language crime series like this will turn more people on to the wealth of excellent European crime fiction and TV out there. I really do hope that this is the case.

A bit of a milestone

Posted on by Kat Hall
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This week, Mrs. Peabody Investigates celebrates its 10,000th hit.

With thanks to @NHJ_HE and @grnfngrs for tipping the blog over the magic total, and to everyone who has visited the site and taken time to comment on the posts. This new life of crime is proving to be extremely enjoyable … look forward to more blogging and discussion in future months.

Scandinavian Crime Fiction Smorgasbord

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Thanks to a tip-off from cavershamragu, I’ve spent the evening wallowing happy as a hippo in mud over at the ScandinavianBooks website.

Rubbing shoulders with Nobel Prize winners Knut Hamsun and Selga Lagerlof are a whole host of Scandinavian crime writers. Indeed, five of the six authors featured under the heading of ‘contemporary and rising authors’ turn out to be crime writers too, illustrating the extent of the Scandi crime boom (as well as the present publishing clout of writers such as Stieg Larsson, Jo Nesbo and Karin Fossum). 

You can browse Scandinavian crime on the site by writer or by nationality (for the latter, hover over the ‘crime’ tab at the top of the homepage). As one would expect, the Swedes are well represented (Sjowall / Wahloo, Mankell, Larsson and Nesser to name just a few), but so are the Norwegians (Dahl, Egeland, Holt, Nesbo, Fossum), the Danes (Davidsen and Peter Hoeg of Miss Smilla fame) and those amazing Icelanders (Indridason, Sigurdardottir). There are also a couple of Finnish authors, Sipila and Joensuu, whom I look forward to checking out. Typically, each author entry features a biography, a review/overview of key works and links to other sites, such as the affiliated Nordic Bookblog. There’s some information on film and TV adaptations too. 

It’s a veritable treasure trove if you’re new to Scandinavian crime and want to find out what all the fuss is about. Or, perhaps like me, you might have read many of the classics, and are keen to lay your hands on some lesser-known works. Either way, this site is a highly useful resource. Tack så mycket! 

Oh, and if you’re into Viking sagas, it’s also definitely the place for you. Apologies for the naffness that follows; unable to resist.

Top 5 – Nordic Crime

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Over at the ‘Tipping My Fedora’ blog, Cavershamragu suggested that I put together a Top 20 Scandinavian crime list. I’ve got as far as a Top 5, as I’m not sure I have 20 I would heartily recommend. I’m also stretching Scandinavian to ‘Nordic’ (read for this anywhere that has a tendency to be cold, snowy and dark for much of the year), as I like Icelandic crime, and it has links to Swedish crime too…

1. Roseanna, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (Sweden 1965). An early police procedural, co-written by a husband-and-wife team, which explores the state of 1960s Swedish society from a left-wing perspective. One of the first crime novels to focus properly on the identity of the female victim as well as on the process of investigation and the murderer. First in the 10 book ‘Martin Beck’ series – read them all while you’re at it!

2. Firewall, Henning Mankell (Sweden 1998) While the Wallander series, of which this is the 8th book, is hugely and rightly lauded, you don’t often see individual Mankell books make top-crime-fiction lists. I think this is because the books work best as part of a series, and none obviously stand out. But even so, this is one of my favourites, and I really wanted Wallander to be represented. Another fine police series – greatly indebted to Sjowall and Wahloo’s ‘first wave’ police procedurals.

3. The Draining Lake, Arnaldur Indridason (Iceland 2004) If the Wallander books are ‘second wave’ police procedurals, then Indridason’s can be thought of as the ‘third’, as they clearly draw on the Mankell and Sjowall/Wahloo books before them. This is the 4th in the ‘Ernaldur’ series, and it’s one of the best crime novels I’ve ever read. Check out my earlier post for a full review.

4. Borkmann’s Point, Hakan Nesser (Sweden 1994). This is an ‘Inspector van Veeteren’ mystery. I haven’t read any of the others in the series, but liked this one very much for its slightly quirky philosophical musings. Another police procedural (are there any other types of Nordic crime, I find myself wondering). 

5. The Killing (on BBC4 tonight!!!) (Denmark 2007) OK, cheating here now – not a book – but it’s a way of getting a Danish one in, even though it’s a TV series. See my review of last week’s opening episodes. Top quality crime. Might be based on a crime novel (not sure / will dig)…

If you expand this list out to include all the books in the respective series, you’ll have enough to keep you going for years 🙂 Unless you’ve read them all already that is…further suggestions welcome…

20 mysteries you must read before you die?

Posted on by Kat Hall
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A link came round on Twitter recently to the writer John Connelly’s website, where he and Declan Hughes have posted a joint list of ’20 mysteries you must read before you die’.

This is it:

1. THE GLASS KEY-DASHIELL HAMMETT (1931)

2. THE LONG GOODBYE-Raymond Chandler (1953)

3. THE CHILL-Ross Macdonald (1964)

4. DEEP WATER-Patricia Highsmith (1957)

5.THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE-George V.Higgins (1972)

6. THE TIN ROOF BLOWDOWN-James Lee Burke (2007)

7. THE LECTER TRILOGY-Thomas Harris.

8. STRANGER IN MY GRAVE-Margaret Millar (1960)

9. LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE DEAF MAN-Ed McBain (1972)

10. THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD-Agatha Christie (1926)

11. THE NAME OF THE ROSE 1980) by Umberto Eco

12. MORALITY PLAY ( 1995) by Barry Unsworth

13. THE BLACK ECHO (1992) by Michael Connelly

14. THE CRYING OF LOT 49 (1966) by Thomas Pynchon

15. THE BIG BLOWDOWN (1999) by George Pelecanos

16. WHAT THE DEAD KNOW (2007) by Laura Lippman

17. HAWKSMOOR (1985)  by Peter Ackroyd

18. FAST ONE (1932) by Paul Cain

19. MIAMI BLUES (1984) by Charles Willeford

20. THE LAST GOOD KISS (1978) by James Crumley

A few observations:

  • Of the above, I’ve read a grand total of … five. And I consider myself to be a complete crime afficionado, with shelves groaning under the weight of hundreds of crime novels.
  • Does this mean that I’m horribly ignorant? Yes and no. Some of the books on the list I know I should have read (Patricia Highsmith, for example). On the other hand, there are some I’m sure I’ll never want to read, such as the Hannibal Lector trilogy. Cannibalism’s just not my thing. Which is another way of saying that crime fiction is so broad, with so many subgenres, that top 20 lists are bound to vary significantly. For example, I’m not spotting any ‘cat detective’ novels here, which will almost certainly feature on someone’s list.
  • I’d agree with the nomination of the five I’ve read for a top 20 (2, 10, 11, 14, 15). I’m pleased to see Agatha Christie included, as she seems to have fallen out of fashion recently. I still remember the first time I read Roger Ackroyd as a teenager – the twist was a complete and hugely enjoyable surprise. Eco’s The Name of the Rose – absolutely. Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 – a little gem and very underrated. Pelecanos’ The Big Blowdown…blew me away.
  • But – I’d have had more foreign-language fiction. And only four women? Surely there must be more out there that merit inclusion?

So there’s only one thing for it, obviously – I’ll need to draw up a top 20 of my own. Already mulling on it and will report back in due course. Thanks to John and Declan for getting me thinking. Their list is here, and is well worth a look: each text has a little explanation of why it was chosen, and there are also some useful recommendations for further reading.

By the way, this one will definitely be on Mrs. Peabody’s list: