Category Archives: Luis Miguel Rocha

How do you say congratulations in Swedish?

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By now everyone who cares is undoubtedly well aware that while I was sleeping on Friday night Johan Theorin’s The Darkest Room was awarded the 2010 UK Crime Writer’s Association’s International Dagger Award for crime fiction translated into English. My heartfelt congratulations and thanks go to Theorin and his translator Marlaine Delargy for what is a wonderful book and a terrific win. Although it wasn’t my personal pick of the bunch I will repeat what I said when I finished all six of the shortlisted books: there wasn’t a dud in the bunch and any winner is deserving. I congratulate the five nominees (indicated by ** in the list below) and their translators too because they were in excellent company.

To look at the bigger picture for a minute I’m also grateful that there is an award for translated crime fiction at all, and also for the great websites that bring these works to my attention, in particular the excellent Euro Crime which is a brilliant source of reviews and information about what I should spend my pay cheque on each fortnight :)

I am reading my 17th translated book of the year at present. Before the past couple of years I simply did not read translated fiction. I barely even knew it existed really but so far this year I’ve read (in reading order):

Before you think I’m being all lefty intellectual in rating ‘foreign’ stuff above English works I should point out that the above list contains my equally highest rated books of the year as well as by far the worst book I have read this century and everything in between. But being able to read from a much wider range of settings and voices than just the English-writing ones has enriched my reading life, even including the odd dud (it’s The Last Pope in case you’re wondering).

I have another couple of dozen translated titles teetering on mount TBR and that’s without starting to think about the books eligible for next year’s International Dagger award. I wonder what treats I have ahead of me.

Books of the month – April 2010

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In an effort to make my end of year selection of best reads a little easier I have decided to sum up each month’s bookishness here at the blog. Most people would have started in January but I’ve never been one to follow the crowd. Also I didn’t think of it until now.

That was then

I finished 15 books in April and threw another one on the DNF pile. Six of my completed reads were audio books which is an indication that the weather finally cooled down enough for me to get back into my regular routine of walking to walk every day (and sometimes home again too). Without wanting to sound all schmalzy I truly do feel grateful to be alive when someone tells me a great story as I walk through the city which I have almost to myself in the crisp early morning. Crunchy Autumn leaves underfoot are a bonus right now.

The pick of the month’s books was undoubtedly Arnaldur Indriðason’s Hypothermia. I am still reflecting on it and telling people about it and would be pressing my copy upon friends but for the fact I borrowed this particular book from the library (I’ve thought about opening my own branch but I’m not sure I want strangers reading newspapers in my lounge room all day to keep warm).  The one word I keep using to describe this book is beautiful. I’ll read it again one day.

Honourable mentions go to Deon Meyer’s Dead at Daybreak for introducing me to the compelling Zatopek (Zet) van Heerden and Margot Kinberg’s B-Very Flat for a fine modern take on the classic whodunit.

The other book from this month’s reading that I’m still talking about is Luis Miguel Rocha’s The Last Pope but only because it was the silliest book I’ve read in ages and I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think of something more polite than that to say about it when I go to my book club to discuss it on the weekend.

More to come

For now at least I’ve given up giving up acquiring books. I spent most of 2009 completely failing to give up getting more books and I know what the definition of insanity is. So I’m allowing my TBR pile to grow at its natural rate and I tell myself that I’m sensibly planning for the apocalypse. Oh you can smirk all you like about that but who’d have been laughing if the Icelandic volcano ash cloud had kept planes out of the sky for a year instead of a week huh?

Through a mixture of purchases both new and second hand (damn the library’s book sale), gifts from my fairy godmother, library borrowings and a prize win from the Scandinavian Reading Challenge host I acquired 18 books this month (a net gain for my TBR of only 2 books which is not too appalling). Highlights of these acquisitions that I’ve yet to read include:

Matt Rees’ The Samaritan Secret is the third Omar Yussef mystery set in Palestine and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the first 2 books. There’s already a 4th in the series so I need to catch up and look forward to reading this one soon.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The audio version of Shona MacLean’s The Redemption of Alexander Seaton is a historical mystery that’s been discussed at several of my favourite blogs including the excellent Confessions of a Mystery Novelist. It’s set in Scotland in 1620 and tells the tale of a disgraced would-be religious Minister who sets out to uncover the murderer of the apothecary’s nephew in an effort to redeem his good name.

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Simon Lelic’s A Thousand Cuts is a book I wanted to read after seeing Maxine’s excellent review at Euro Crime. The book views a horrific school shooting from the viewpoint of various people impacted by the crime including police, family members of victims and staff and students of the school.

None of these books qualify for my several ongoing challenges though so I’m not sure when I’ll be reading these. The actual titles next up on my reading list are

  • Michele Giuttari’s A Death in Tuscany to complete the Europe portion of the global challenge (I’ve had it on the go for a week, it’s kind of dragging)
  • Leif Davidesn’s The Serbian Dane as book 2 in the Scandinavian Challenge (I’ve read the first 50 or so pages and am hooked)
  • Glen Peters’ Mrs D’Silva’s Detective Instincts and the Shaitan of Calcutta to complete the Asian leg of the global challenge (to be honest I bought it because I loved the title)
  • Malla Nunn’s Let the Dead Lie which is her newly released second novel that I am dying to read after devouring the first (plus I can count it for the Aussie authors challenge) (she wasn’t born here and the book isn’t set here but she lives here so she is an Aussie OK)

Chart of the month

As everyone probably knows by now I keep a lot of utterly useless information about the books I read and sometimes I create charts out of it all just to give the illusion I’m not barking mad. This month let’s look at how many pages I’ve read so far this year. I have no analysis of these figures for you except to say that you can tell January is holiday month in Oz – even though I was at work no one else was which meant I wasn’t busy and could get much more reading time into my day.

Pages read per month



Review: The Last Pope by Luis Miguel Rocha

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Pope John Paul I reigned over the Catholic Church for 33 days in 1978. The premise of this book is that he was murdered. By a shadowy group called the P1 who are, for the record, more dastardly and secretive than the dastardly and secretive P2. Thirty years later a journalist receives a list of names. An Italian man tries to kill her. So does the CIA. Someone whose name isn’t Jack Payne tries to stop them. Oh, and the Americans can’t kill Castro.

Though odd, the above paragraph makes more sense than the book (and it’s a heck of a lot shorter so you should thank me for saving you).

The Last Pope has

  • the Vatican
  • a pretty young woman
  • a rascally, acerbic offsider for the aforementioned young woman
  • a secret code
  • photographs with images that can only be seen under ultra-violet light
  • a list of shadowy figures
  • Masons
  • a seduction scene

If all it took to make a great thriller was the sum of such parts then The Last Pope would have been readable. But a thriller needs more than the right ingredients. So it wasn’t. Readable that is. Reasons include:

  • The writing is pedestrian (for example within three short paragraphs the same man is described as having perspiration streaming down his face, hands slippery with sweat, perspiration clouding his eyes and being in a cold sweat) (even if the original Portuguese has four different words for sweat I doubt there was a need to use them all in one page)
  • The construction is bamboozling with its short chapters jumping in time from 1978 to earlier to the present and, for all I know, several periods in between. Some of these jumps are identified by chapter headings but many are not (to the point that I began to think that someone dropped the manuscript on the way to the printer and all the chapters got put back together out of order)
  • Many of the characters have no names (The Italian Man, The Master, The Subject etc) but this is balanced out by the fact that those who do have names have several each. So it’s usually about as clear as mud who is talking or being referred to.
  • Perhaps worst of all is that the thing doesn’t know if it wants to be a novel (i.e. fiction) or an expose (i.e. fact). In a bizarre author interview that appears at the end of the book Mr Rocha claims that it’s all true and that the character of JC (who is the assassin) (trust me that isn’t a plot spoiler) is based on the real assassin who he (Mr Rocha) has spoken with. I might be more inclined to swallow all this if the author hadn’t in the same interview also said
    • Assumptions will be replaced by confirmed facts in a future edition
    • He has never received a bad review (he has, I’ve read them and claiming they don’t exist is on par with me claiming the chocolate cookies I ate this morning didn’t exist because I closed my eyes )
    • The reason the Catholic Church hasn’t made a fuss about this book is they know it’s true (which is absurd because the book suggests that anyone who tells the truth about all this will get a bullet to the head so I think Mr Rocha’s claims to street cred in the conspiracy community would have been improved if he said he’d been shot at and then gone into hiding)

Honestly I’d have stopped reading this book at about page 60 but it was a pick of my book club and I DNF’d the last one so felt a little obliged to finish it. Plus I have to admit to a perverse pleasure in seeing how bad it would get.

If you want a thriller set in and around the Vatican that doesn’t treat its audience like morons read God’s Spy by Juan Gomez-Jurado. Or any other book you can find.

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My rating 0.5/5

Translator: Dolores M Koch; Publisher: Penguin [This translation 2008]; ISBN: 9780141042695; Length 473 pages; Setting: All over the place, random dates between about 1971 and whenever the thing was first published.

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Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise has read the book (for the same book group). She has a different take on it and, as always, is far more polite than I am.