BANDIT LOVE by Massimo Carlotto
If you’re a fan of Italian crime fiction, then reading Massimo Carlotto is a necessity. This author dubbed the “king of Mediterranean Noir” creates bleak worlds in which his Nietzschean anti-heroes struggle to survive.
BANDIT LOVE has the feel of a buddy novel, but the relationship of those buddies is entrenched in past lives of crime. The buddies in the novel are ex-con turned unlicensed PI Marco Burrati (aka the Alligator), gangster Beniamino Rossini, and Max la Memoria (Max the Memory). Burrati and Max, now trying to go straight, are co-owners of a bar named La Cuccia, and here Max the Memory (also known as the Fat Man) endlessly cooks his favourite recipes.
September 29, 2010
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Judi Clark · 
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Tags: Europa Editions, Foreign Detective, italy, Massimo Carlotto · Posted in: italy, Mystery/Suspense, Noir, Sleuths Series, Thriller/Spy/Caper
FEVER OF THE BONE by Val McDermid
Val McDermid’s FEVER OF THE BONE is the latest installment in her series featuring Dr. Tony Hill and Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan, who have been close friends for years. They are both struggling with deep-seated scars from traumatic experiences that left them shaken. As a result, Carol has become a bit too fond of alcohol and Tony is a loner who believes that he is unfit for anything but his work as a criminal profiler and psychologist. Carol is the fiercely ambitious and dedicated leader of the Bradfield Metropolitan Police’s Major Incident Team. Unfortunately, she has a new boss, Chief Constable James Blake, who thinks that her specialized and highly skilled task force is an unaffordable luxury that should be disbanded and absorbed into the mainstream of the CID. Jordan tries to prove him wrong when several adolescents are found murdered and mutilated by someone who lured them to their deaths. Meanwhile, in West Mercia, Worcester, Detective Inspector Stuart Patterson and Detective Sergeant Alvin Ambrose are anxious to find the killer of fourteen-year-old Jennifer Maidment. Her body was found even before her mother reported her missing.
September 19, 2010
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: Foreign Detective, Val McDermid · Posted in: Sleuths Series, United Kingdom, y Award Winning Author
LET THE DEAD LIE by Malla Nunn
Swaziland-born Nunn’s second 1950s South Africa novel, LET THE DEAD LIE, opens with a prologue in 1945. Series protagonist Emmanuel Cooper, a major in the South African army at the time, comes across a murdered washerwoman in a Paris doorway and immediately abandons the night’s pleasures to stay with the body until the police arrive: “…it was an insult to abandon a body in a city where law and order had been restored.” The main narrative opens in May 1953 in Durban and while Cooper remains true to his convictions, his life has gotten more difficult.
September 11, 2010
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: 1950s, Foreign Detective · Posted in: Class - Race - Gender, Noir, Reading Guide, Sleuths Series, South Africa, World Lit
THE SHADOWS IN THE STREET by Susan Hill
Susan Hill’s THE SHADOWS IN THE STREET is her fifth Simon Serrallier mystery. Hill continues to engage us with fresh characters and intriguing story lines. Simon does not even appear in the early chapters, since he is vacationing on a remote Scottish island, “where people did not hurry and there was little noise other than the sounds of nature.” Back in Lafferton, Simon’s twin sister, Dr. Cat Deerborn, is worried about her oldest child, Sam, who is upset but stubbornly uncommunicative, “an oyster, closed up tight.” The most compelling aspect of this novel is its frank depiction of young women who walk the streets trying to earn quick money.
September 3, 2010
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: Foreign Detective, Grief, Mental Health/Illness, Prostitution, Susan Hill · Posted in: Sleuths Series, United Kingdom, y Award Winning Author
THREE STATIONS by Martin Cruz Smith
In Martin Cruz Smith’s Three Stations, Arkady Kyrilovich Renko, Senior Investigator of Important Cases, may be nearing the end of his career. He has a bitter enemy in Prosecutor Zurin, who detests Renko’s tendency to “disregard orders and overstep [his] authority.” Zurin “exemplified the modest ambition of a cork…. He floated and survived.” When Renko and his perennially inebriated buddy, Sergeant Victor Orlov (“the smell of vodka came off him like heat from a stove”) look into the suspicious death of a beautiful young woman, they are ordered to declare the case a drug overdose and drop the matter. Ever the maverick, Renko decides to find the killer and worry about the consequences later.
August 23, 2010
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: Foreign Detective, Martin Cruz Smith · Posted in: Class - Race - Gender, Russia, Sleuths Series, y Award Winning Author
STILL MIDNIGHT by Denise Mina
Scottish crime novel STILL MIDNIGHT from author Denise Mina explores the levels of prejudice which taint the investigation of a non-textbook kidnapping case. When Glasgow based detective Alex Morrow first arrives at the home of some hard-working Ugandan immigrants to investigate the crime, it looks as though the crooks hit the wrong house. The kidnappers snatched elderly shopkeeper Aamir Anwar from his family and left demanding two million pounds, saying this was “fucking payback. For Afghanistan.”
July 5, 2010
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: Foreign Detective, Glasgow, Kidnapping, Racism, Scotland · Posted in: Class - Race - Gender, Sleuths Series, United Kingdom, y Award Winning Author
