Film news – last month, best selling author Tess Gerritsen was welcomed onto the set of the TNT pilot TV series based on her books, chatting with Angie Harmon, who plays Jane Rizzoli on the screen. Stay tuned for more info on the show.
One of Janine’s recent discoveries is the Red Riding Quartet by David Peace – Nineteen Seventy Four, Nineteen Seventy Seven, Nineteen Eighty, Nineteen EightyThree. BBC made three movies, based on three of the books, which will see limited release in North America next month, and early word is that they are definitely worth seeking out!
And, need more details here, but rumours are that Left Bank Films, responsible for both the fabulous English Wallender series, is working on a tv adaption of Michael Dibdin’s beloved Inspector Aurelio Zen.
Click here to a chat with Kenneth Branagh about the second Inspector Wallender series, now airing in the UK, coming soon to our shores.
Click here for a fascinating interview with Henning Mankell, discussing his characters, Kurt Wallender, Linda Wallender and, from the forthcoming novel, The Man from Beijing, Judge Birgitta Roslin.
Special Feature: A World of Crime
For 2010 we have launched a global crime spree – highlighting fabulous books from far flung places.
More | Read from the Book
Once you’re enthralled with France, you might want to sample a few other mysteries set there. For example, Peter Mayle’s The Vintage Caper, about a wine caper gone wrong, is set in Paris, Bordeaux, and Marseille. Next month, Michelle Wan will release her fourth novel in the Death in the Dordogne series, Kill For An Orchid, which finds Mara and Julian on the trail of their mysterious orchid while dealing with the murder of Julian’s not-quite-ex wife! If you missed it last Fall, click here to read Michelle Wan's "notes from the field".
And finally, there is one of my personal favourites – Patricia Highsmith’s novels about the charming psychopath Tom Ripley. The series is set in the French country village of Villeperche and includes The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley’s Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley and Ripley Under Water.
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A Home Repair Is Homicide Mystery
In this mystery thriller, detective/fixer upper Jacobia Tiptree has to deal with one of the most dangerous criminals she has ever encountered. The really bad news is that he wants “Jake” dead. In between solving the mysteries of old-house insulation she must also field anonymous death threats and try to protect a visiting true-crime author who has come to town to research her next book. If it is a choice between losing the house she has built or putting herself in harms way, Jake isn’t sure which one she would prefer.
I’m a huge fan of this series both in print and on TV. At this point, though, the plot lines have diverged and each has it's own strengths. >In Dexter by Design, the discovery of a corpse (artfully displayed as a sunbather relaxing on a Miami beach chair) naturally piques Dexter’s curiosity and Miami’s finest realize they’ve got a terrifying new serial killer on the loose. And Dexter, of course, is back in business. It's s fantastic thriller with a killer who keeps Dexter on his toes and offers a lot of character development for both Deb and Rita. I can’t wait to see where Jeff Lindsay goes next! (Hint: Dexter Is Delicious is coming in the Fall)
Drugs, conspiracies, and the relentless search for order in a time of unbridled chaos permeate Charlie Huston’s latest novel, Sleepless. Blending violence, film noir mystery, and corporate machinations, Sleepless will appeal to fans of realistic, unflinching dark crime fiction. Huston doesn’t balk at the shadows; his novels show us darkened mirrors of ourselves and the criminal realities around us. Secrets, sometimes too bizarre or horrible to consider, reveal places and people that have fallen through the cracks in the world.
A Bishop/Special Crimes Unit Novel
I've been a fan of Kay Hooper's Bishop series for a long time now. I love FBI procedural novels, and when you throw psychic agents and terrifying supernatural villains into the mix, you have my attention.
Blood Ties, is the last of the Blood trilogy which also includes Blood Dreams and Blood Sins. The SCU has been tracking a pretty nasty evil across the US, following an unspeakable series of grisly murders across three states, and a trail of blood that leads to the small Tennessee town of Serenade. There, two more brutal killings lure the SCU into what may be the ultimate trap.
Winter blahs been getting you down? The solution is definitely to start reading the laugh out loud mysteries of Edmund Crispin. Vintage UK has just re-issued three more of his books featuring eccentric Oxford don Gervase Fen. Originally written in the 1940s and 50s they have wildly crazy and improbable plots, but you forgive him everything because the witty, frequently literary repartee between the characters is so marvelous. The first in the series is
The Case of the Gilded Fly in which a manipulative actress is murdered just as an important new play is about to open. Her body is found just steps away from Fen’s college rooms; he is gleefully on the spot to start investigating. P.D. James is a huge fan and highlights Crispin in her recent book Talking About Detective Fiction. She calls the character of Gervase Fen a "true original" who "romps through his cases with infectious joie de vivre in books which are genuinely very funny", noting that the books, "are always elegantly written with a cast of engaging, witty characters. . . Crispin is a farceur, and the ability successfully to combine this less-than-subtle humour with murder is very rare in detective fiction." I couldn't agree with her more. This is P.G. Wodehouse meets Dorothy Sayers -just the comic tonic to take us through to spring.
