Daily Archives: December 17, 2010

2010′s First Time Authors

Posted on by
13

Blogger beyond borders Peter Rozovsky talked today (or yesterday depending on your hemisphere) about all the new authors he has discovered this year which, not surprisingly, sent me scurrying to my spreadsheet to find out how many books by new authors I have read this year. The answer: 81 (I’m not counting the DNFs) which I think by the end of the year will even out to around 50% of my reading (it’s slightly more than that right now but the next 4 books I have lined up are by repeat authors).

It was a bit less than 3 years ago that I was sick to death of the paltry range of tired crime fiction authors available on the shelves at my local bookstores (insert the names of a dozen or so Big American/English names at your discretion). Fortunately before I could summon the gumption to throw myself off a cliff in despair (or worse still, read a different genre) I discovered Aust Crime Fiction which led me to Mysteries in Paradise which led me to Petrona which all led me to a whole new way of finding interesting books to read. Since then I have read more than ever, most of the books by people my local bookstore has still never heard of (though to be fair some of that might be my fault as I suspect my Swedish pronunciation leaves a lot to be desired).

This year’s haul of new (to me) authors has got a little bit of everything.

On one end of the sub-genre scale there is cosy author Sheila Connelly and on the other end there is Ken Bruen (whose book The Dramatist was possibly the least cosy thing I have ever read but I loved it) (except when I hated it) (which was at exactly the same time as I loved it) and in the middle there’s a mixture of procedurals, thrillers, historical mysteries, psychological suspense and private detective yarns.

There are debut authors like Elly Griffiths and Simon Lelic who I couldn’t have read before this year if I’d tried and then there’s Maj Sjowall & Per Whaloo who everyone else has been reading for 45 years and I am just very late to the party.

The list contains my equal highest rating (3 5-star rated books) and my lowest rating (the silly, woeful The Last Pope). A rather astonishing 67 are rated 3 or more which means I would happily read more by the same author (and in some cases already have).

On the list there is at least one American, Argentinian, Australian, Brazilian, Canadian, Danish, Dutch, English, French, Indian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Mexican, New Zealander, Norwegian, Peruvian, Portuguese, Scottish, South African, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish author and they have set their books in 32 different countries/great icy wastelands.

I haven’t got the energy or inclination to include 81 hyperlinks but here is my list in full and you can easily find reviews of any of these by clicking on the author name in the right hand side-bar (over ——-> )

  • Alex Scarrow – Last Light
  • Andrea Camilleri – August Heat
  • Ann Waldron – The Princeton Murders
  • Anne Zouroudi – The Messenger of Athens
  • Ariana Franklin – Mistress of the Art of Death (5 stars)
  • Barbara Fister – On Edge
  • Bateman – Mystery Man
  • Belinda Bauer – Blacklands
  • Catherine Hunter – The Dead of Midnight
  • Charlotte Jay – Beat Not the Bones Australian
  • Christian Jungersen – The Exception
  • Claudia Pineiro – Thursday Night Widows
  • Dan Waddell – The Blood Detective
  • Dominique Manotti – Affairs of State
  • Edward Marston – The Railway Detective
  • Elena Forbes – Our Lady of Pain
  • Elly Griffiths – The Crossing Places
  • Gail Bowen – A Colder Kind of Death
  • Gene Kerrigan – The Midnight Choir
  • George Pelacanos – The Way Home
  • Giles Blunt – Forty Words for Sorrow
  • Glen Peters – Mrs Di Silva’s Detective Instincts and the Shaitan of Calcutta
  • Hakan Nesser – The Mind’s Eye
  • Imogen Robertson – Instruments of Darkness
  • Jackie Fullarton – Revenge Served Cold
  • Jacqueline Winspear – Maisie Dobbs
  • James Thompson – Snow Angels
  • Jeffrey Siger – Murder in Mykonos
  • Jim Kelly – Death Wore White
  • Jo Nesbo – The Redbreast
  • John Hart – The Last Child
  • Karen Maitland – Company of Liars
  • Kate Carlisle – Homicide in Hardcover
  • Ken Bruen – The Dramatist (5 stars)
  • Kwei Quartey – Wife of the Gods
  • Lief Davidsen – The Serbian Dane
  • Linda Berry – Death And The Easter Bunny
  • Lindy Kelly – Bold Blood
  • Luis Miguel Rocha – The Last Pope (0.5 stars)
  • Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza – Southwesterly Wind
  • Lynn Harris – Death by Chick Lit
  • M C Beaton – Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House
  • Maj Sjowall & Per Whaloo – Roseanna
  • Margaret Truman – Murder at the Kennedy Centre
  • Margie Orford – Blood Rose
  • Mario Vargas Llosa – Death in the Andes
  • Martin Edwards – The Coffin Trail
  • Mary Jane Maffini – Devil’s in the Details
  • Matt Dickinson – Black Ice
  • Mehmet Murat Somer – The Prophet Murders: A Hop-Ciki-Yaya Thriller
  • Michael Harvey – The Third Rail
  • Michael Stanley – A Carrion Death
  • Michele Giuttari – A Death in Tuscany
  • Nancy Martin – How to Murder a Millionaire
  • Nevada Barr – Borderline
  • P M Newton – The Old School Australian
  • Paco Ignacio Taibo II -The Uncomfortable Dead
  • Patricia Moyes – Falling star
  • Peter Klein – Punter’s Turf Australian
  • Philip Kerr – If the Dead Rise Not
  • Quintin Jardine – Inhuman Remains
  • R J Ellory – A Simple Act of Violence
  • Rob Kitchin – The Rule Book
  • Robert Engwerda – Mosquito Creek Australian
  • Robin Bowles – The Curse of the Golden Yo Yo
  • Robin Spano – Dead Politician Society
  • Sammi Carter – Candy Apple Dead
  • Sarah Andrews – In Cold Pursuit
  • Sarah Atwell – Snake in the Glass
  • Sheila Connolly – One Bad Apple
  • Shona MacLean – The Redemption of Alexander Seaton
  • Shuichi Yoshida – Villain
  • Simon Lelic – A Thousand Cuts (a.k.a. Rupture) (5 stars)
  • Simone van der Vlugt – The Reunion
  • Stef Penney – The Tenderness of Wolves
  • Stuart Neville – The Ghosts of Belfast
  • Sulari Gentill – A Few Right Thinking Men Australian
  • Teresa Solana – A Not So Perfect Crime
  • Tonino Benacquista – Badfellas
  • William Deverell – April Fool
  • Zoe Ferraris – The Night of the Mir’aj

Despite the fact I’m desperate to read more books by many of my recently discovered authors I’m not giving up on new authors as 87 of the 194 books I own but haven’t (quite) gotten around to reading yet are also by new (to me) authors. I can’t wait to read ‘em.

What new authors have you loved (or not) during 2010? Do you like mixing new authors with old favourites? Do you have any new authors you plan to try in 2011?

Review: Forty Words for Sorrow by Giles Blunt

Posted on by
6

I read Giles Blunt’s first crime novel as the 9th book in my 13-book Canadian Book Challenge.

Detective John Cardinal of the Algonquin Bay Police Department worked the Katie Pine case as though she had been kidnapped and probably murdered even though everyone else thought she was a runaway. When her body is discovered in an abandoned mineshaft five months after her disappearance it falls to Cardinal to notify the thirteen year-old’s mother of her only child’s death.

The Inuit, it is said, have forty words for snow, Cardinal mused, what people really need is forty words for sorrow. Grief. Heartbreak. Desolation. These were not enough, not for this childless mother in her empty house.

This scene, which occurs near the beginning of the novel, is heart-wrenching and sets the tone for a sombre, sorrow-filled tale about missing teenagers, the police who must look for them and the people who took them.

A young boy had gone missing shortly after Katie Pine and Cardinal is convinced the two cases are related. After Katie’s body is found he and his new partner, Lise Delorme who has recently transferred to Homicide from Special Investigations, are allowed to spend time on the cases and they learn that Katie was alive and tortured for some time before she died. When they learn of a new victim, possibly still alive, the race is on to find the culprit. At the same time as all this is going on Delorme is tasked by her superiors with secretly investigating Cardinal who they suspected of having provided a known criminal with tip-offs and other valuable information.

The highlight of the novel is the characterisations, particularly of Cardinal. We learn a lot about his private life, including the fact that his wife is very ill which has led him, in the past, to make some bad choices in life. His sorrow relates to both his past actions and his current helplessness over his wife’s illness.  At about the half-way point of the novel readers learn who has committed the crimes and from that point on we start to see action unfold from their point of view to contrast with the police investigation. It is not giving too much of a spoiler to say that there are two people involved with the killings and while we spend a deal of time with both I will remember one of the portraits in particular of the person so starved for affection that they will learn to kill for it.

Another standout element of Forty Words for Sorrow is the depiction of the small town and its surrounds. From the outset my head was full of images created using Blunt’s words, starting with the frozen body in its block of ice (not to mention the mechanics of extracting it). The depiction of the harsh, freezing far Northern winter with its frozen lakes you can literally drive a truck on (hard to imagine for someone who dwells on the edge of a desert), short days and houses impossible to heat is first rate.

In some ways I thought the mystery was the weakest element of the novel as there was a little too much unnecessary focus on the torture perpetrated by the killers for my liking. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was gratuitous but it hovered around that mark and some careful editing using the theory that readers will probably imagine what you don’t describe in detail would, I think, have made for a better story. Overall though the book has much to recommend it and this is one Canadian author whose other works I will be chasing up after my current reading challenge is complete. It’s probably not news to many that the reportedly large number of words that the Inuit have for snow is an urban myth but I still think it’s a great title for this book which is, ultimately, about all the different kinds of sorrow there are.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 3.5/5
Publisher Harper Collins [2002]
ISBN 0007115776
Length 425 pages
Format mass market paperback
Source I mooched it