Yet Another Crime Fiction Blog

Here’s what I’m reading right now:

“Misterioso” is the first book in a ten book series. Here is the book description:

After successfully—but bloodily—dismantling a complicated hostage situation at a bank in the suburbs of Stockholm, Detective Paul Hjelm is faced with the requisite investigation by Internal Affairs. It is a potentially career-ending inquiry, but he is plucked out of it by the National Criminal Police commissioner, who drops him into an elite task force of officers assembled from across the country to find an elusive killer with a sophisticated modus operandi and even more sophisticated tastes.

Targeting Sweden’s high-profile business leaders, the killer breaks into their homes at night, waits for his victims, places two bullets in their heads with deadly precision, and removes the bullets from the walls—a ritual enacted to a rare bootleg recording of Thelonious Monk’s jazz classic “Misterioso.”

As Hjelm, his young, doggedly energetic partner, Jorge Chavez, and the rest of the team follow one lead after another in their pursuit—navigating the murky underworlds of the Russian Mafia and the secretive members-only society of Sweden’s wealthiest denizens—they must also delve into one of the country’s most persistent ills: a deep-rooted xenophobia that affects both the police and the perpetrator in a small nation that is becoming rapidly internationalized.

So far I am enjoying this one…

Let’s roll,

1. Dennis Lehane, my favorite crime fiction writer right up there with that sexy Norwegian guy Jo Nesbo, had this to stay about writing PI novels when asked about Laura Lippman’s Tess Monoghan series (guess it’s in a slump?):

Lehane said, “You accept when you read a private-eye novel, like one of the Tess books, that a reporter or detective will get into these adventures in the first place — when we know they don’t. Putting that premise out there is as fantastical as I want to get – I want everything else about them to be banal – be Babbitt! I want them to be interesting in regular ways. I think Laura is running into the same problem – after a certain point, it becomes ludicrous when people have these continual brushes with death that are also really going to damage their relationships. You wonder why they wouldn’t say, ‘f— this, I’m going to go off and work construction.’”

Source: The Baltimore Sun

Continue Reading…

Colin Cotterill has been making the rounds I see. He’s promoting his new book, Killed At The Whim of a Hat, the first in a new series. Go buy it. I’m a huge fan of his Dr. Siri books which are set during the 1970′s after communism has taken over in Laos. The novels are a favorite of mine because of the quirky characters and the political satire with the added touch of mysticism and folklore.

There are two Cotterill guest posts if you care to read them. The post gives you a glimpse of his sense of humor. The first is from The Book Page, titled, “The Strange Life of Colin Cotterill and the second one is at Central Crime Zone blog, title, I Am A Cult.” Lastly, the New York Times reviews his latest book and gives a positive review.

Tana French. There’s another Tana French interview I found via Crime Always Pays blog. Just to share, I recently got a email from Tana French. I was shocked when I saw her email in my inbox because I forgot I emailed her. How do you like that? I think I sent her the email after I finished In The Woods and that was a year ago. Anyway, I asked her about the next book in the series and she replied back (!) saying that the next book, Broken Harbour, won’t be out until next summer (bummer!) so no new book out this fall like I had originally quoted from someone else (cough) from the same link above (cough). Guess I’ll crack open The Likeness after all.

Last bit of news is that Amazon is having another major Kindle sale called The Big Deal and this one will last until July 27th. What makes this sale remarkable is that the Big 6 publishers are participating (!) like Random House, Harper Collins, etc. According to the article, there are 900 Kindle books for sale. Browsing the mystery list I saw titles by Ruth Rendell, Stuart Neville, Louise Penny among others. Go forth and buy!

P.S. The title of Cotterill’s book comes from a Bushism: “Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat.” (2004) as mentioned/quoted in the NYT article

Omnimystery News: New Motion Poster for The Hunger Games.

I’m one of maybe five people who are not excited or counting down the days till the movie version of The Hunger Games arrives next year. I read the book by Suzanne Collins almost a year ago and thought it was a decent read. It’s non-stop action set during dystopian times where 12 teens are selected in a lottery to participate in a televised event where they must fight to the death in a tournament called The Hunger Games. I’ve yet to read the sequels and probably won’t anytime soon. The motion poster is cool though.

This news landed in my inbox this morning from a fellow mystery reader. Tom Cruise is set to play Jack Reacher according to Omnimystery News. There’s already an outcry about the role going to Tom Cruise at The Rap Sheet and elsewhere. I have no opinion to share because I’ve never read the books. As I was reading the articles though, it reminded about the outcry people had over Tom Cruise being cast as Lestat (from Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series). The author threw a fit and asked all her fans to decry the decision but then…she saw the film and was all beside herself saying that Cruise did a good job. Back to Cruise, the film adaptation is the fifth novel in the Jack Reacher series, One Shot. Maybe I should read that one…oh and the author is supportive of the choice so…

Fiction Is Stranger Than Fact: An Interview With Tana French [7/11/11].

Time to pimp this book/author again…I loved Faithful Place and if you haven’t read it then…I don’t know what you’re waiting for because she’s one of the best Irish crime fiction writers out there now. I love her writing only because she delivers on all the things that are important to me: characterization, setting and dialogue for starters. Although, I still have The Likeness to tackle which I think I will sometime later this year, the books can stand alone very well. She writes detective fiction in first person narrative with all of them set in Dublin. Her next book, Broken Harbour comes out this fall. Edited: Broken Harbour won’t be out until next summer.