Originally posted by Sunderporinostesta
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Crime fiction
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- Mar 2008
- 9837
- Tyne 'n' Wear (emphasis on the 'n')
- Dundee Utd, Gladbach, Atleti, Napoli, New Orleans Saints, Elgin City
Just finished Blood Med by Jason Webster- cop novels set in Valencia. Sometimes awkward to shoehorn left politics into the genre but this is the 2nd of his I've read that does a good job with the crisis and financial crash- no better location for it.
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Originally posted by boris View PostCrime fiction
Chester Himes is great - I recommend Blind Man with a Pistol as well, if you can find it.
I'm currently reading Mazaryk Station by David Downing, the last in his series of WWII books all named after various stations in Berlin. Not a crime thriller as such although with echoes of Alan Furst in terms of period and excellent scene-setting descriptions. Also recommended, and again set in Berlin during WWII, are the Bernie Gunther books by Philip Kerr (which include the Berlin Noir trilogy).
A similar process last year lead me to read David Young's Stasi Wolf which was really just a potboiler but I loved the atmosphere of Halle-Neustadt it conveyed.
I have had my revenge though, I passed him copies of Geoffrey Household's Rogue Justice and A Shot in the Dark, but they're more spy than crime so I'll shut up now.
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Originally posted by sw2borshch View PostI have had my revenge though, I passed him copies of Geoffrey Household's Rogue Justice and A Shot in the Dark, but they're more spy than crime so I'll shut up now.
It reads like it would have seemed a bit stiff at the time, as if Cowley from The Professionals had written a novel. There is something comical about the puff quotes the gentlemanly thriller community would garland each others' work with; "satisfies like a good single malt," or similarly old school male compliments. The "superbly tense" on the cover here catches the tone.
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Originally posted by sw2borshch View PostOur dad has got into the habit of buying books in charity shops then dumping them on me so I have acquired a copy Philip Kerr's The Pale Criminal and I am about fifty pages in. I am quite enjoying it, however this may be due to my Germany Withdrawal Syndrome, but it reads like a Teutonicised pastiche of hard boiled cop stories I have absorbed through other media (I have never actually read any of that stuff straight) and keeps putting me in mind of Count Arthur Strong's gumshoe monologue.
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Chris Holm-Red Right Hand. I’m not gonna lie this one leapt out from the shelves due to its Nick Cave title and Witness Protection Project angle. It’s a very run of the mill crime tale.
Jacob Ross-The Bone Readers. Caribbean Island pathologist and his maverick Police team solve cliched church situated crime. More run of the mill stuff.
Michael Connelly-Angels Flight. One of his Harry Bosch series. No 6 of 23. He does this stuff as good as anyone ever has. His stuff can almost act as an alternative history of modern LA. Certainly easier to digest than DeLillo or Elroys versions of the truth.Last edited by Sunderporinostesta; 24-11-2021, 10:45.
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- Mar 2008
- 9837
- Tyne 'n' Wear (emphasis on the 'n')
- Dundee Utd, Gladbach, Atleti, Napoli, New Orleans Saints, Elgin City
Martin Waites always names his novels after songs. I went off him after a couple of so-so series ones, but his miners' strike one (Born Under Punches) was great and partly set in the Wills' building (converted tobacco factory) about a mile from my house.
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I don't think I've seen Peter May mentioned on this thread yet - according to the blurb and Wikipedia he's won a string of awards. I just finished reading Cast Iron and it was definitely a page turner, although the denouement didn't really surprise me. He doesn't really build suspense and I felt an attentive reader would have long since half-guessed the ending. One of those, too, where there's a bit too much backstory on the character. He's a troubled guy (yet somehow always lands on his feet) - I get it. I don't really care that much about all his failed marriages, nor about how his past loves fall off the pages almost as quick as the dead bodies.
Also a word about an old favourite of mine who was mentioned upthread, Asa Larsson. Maybe not as brilliant a writer as some of the others, but I very much like her. I find her stories usually have a nice balance of intrigue, scenery and character. Particularly like that Scandi thing where they seem to drink coffee all the time. No matter how many bodies are piled up outside the village church, there's still time for a cup of coffee.
Couple of others I've tried recently, inspired by this thread:
Jo Nesbo (The Leopard) - never saw a plot twist he didn't like, this fella. I loved it for about three quarters of the way through, but it gets a bit incredible towards the end. Although the most incredible thing is that apparently the Oslo police just let their officers take off for a weekend in Rwanda or Hong Kong on a whim and on expenses. I know they believe in properly funding public services there but that is surely a bit much.
Ian Rankin (Knots & Crosses) - liked this one, apparently it's his first and wasn't really intended as a crime novel, which does show in hindsight. The characterisation and general quality of writing is very good though I think, which is not always the case in this genre. Would definitely read more, might try to see if I can work through them all in order.
John Grisham (The King of Torts) - bizarrely, comes across as almost plausible! Lots of well-observed detail, meaning, for a thriller, it actually has quite a lot to say about the wider world as well. Definitely feels like he is the master of his genre.
Got a Henning Mankell on the pile ready to go next, as well as another I don't think has come up on this thread, Hakan Nesser. Looking forward to both.
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If anyone fancies some Australian crime Chris Hammer and Jane Harper are both well worth a go for remote Australian settings. Harper wrote The Dry, now a film. David Whish-Wilson really nails Perth and Freo and from my understanding also the ebbs and flows between politics, business and criminals in 70s and 80s Western Australia.
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Originally posted by Uncle Ethan View PostIf anyone fancies some Australian crime Chris Hammer and Jane Harper are both well worth a go for remote Australian settings. Harper wrote The Dry, now a film. David Whish-Wilson really nails Perth and Freo and from my understanding also the ebbs and flows between politics, business and criminals in 70s and 80s Western Australia.
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I've just finished reading Robert Goddard's novel Past Caring. It's about a failed historian with a scandal in his past who is recruited to investigate why a politician in 1910 who was seemingly destined for great things disappeared from public view. It is done through a memoir and subsequent discoveries lead the protagonist through some violent crime and to an interesting conclusion. It's a crime book where the crime isn't central to the story but the investigation is. It's a long read (623 pages but you don't know that on a kindle!) but it kept me hooked and turning the pages for several weeks. Recommended.
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Originally posted by The Bean Counter View Post
Got a Henning Mankell on the pile ready to go next, as well as another I don't think has come up on this thread, Hakan Nesser. Looking forward to both.
I'm reading the first of William McIlvanney's Laidlaw novels. Never read any of these before, and I feel I've been missing out.
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Originally posted by jameswba View Post
I've read what I think were Hakan Nesser's first two Van Veeteren novels, Mind's Eye and Borkmann's Point. Quite a few years ago now, and I never returned to him, but I really enjoyed them both, Borkmann's Point especially. They are different to most modern police procedurals in being 'placeless' - set in an unnamed country that might be Sweden or might not.
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Originally posted by Uncle Ethan View PostIf anyone fancies some Australian crime Chris Hammer and Jane Harper are both well worth a go for remote Australian settings. Harper wrote The Dry, now a film. David Whish-Wilson really nails Perth and Freo and from my understanding also the ebbs and flows between politics, business and criminals in 70s and 80s Western Australia.
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Originally posted by jameswba View PostLaidlaw is brilliant. Glasgow as McIlvanney describes it is just terrifying. I have to read the other two in this series.
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Thanks for all the recommendations for Val McDeirmid upthread, I got 1979 from the library during the week and raced through it in one sitting. Really well written. It seems from the blurb this is her first book with a new character, Allie Burns, who is a jobbing journalsit on a Glasgow newspaper in the late 70s. Assume it must be autobiographical, and while I'm not familiar with the rest of her work, I can hazard a guess that she probably enjoyed writing this.
Also gave Sara Paretzky a go during the week, but didn't really enjoy it as much. Is it worth giving her another go?
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Also just finished 1979 and have to admit didnt get the same feeling of satisfaction as TBC though agree it an easy read. Maybe that part of the nagging doubts-there were some big complex issues as part of the backdrop not least the Scottish devolution referendum, IRA terrorism on mainland UK,and being gay when it was still illegal. Yet overall just found these issues lightly sketched without any shades or nuances. And this extended to the characters themselves-stereotypical,one dimensional in the main and at times bordering on parody.
Like TBC I have no other point of reference for her back catalogue-in fact knew little of her until the news attention regarding her walkout of Raith Rovers. Her heart is obviously in right place and any book littered with the familiarity of football and pop culture that she displays has to be a positive. And was in two minds for a while about the closing pages wrapping up events but concluded it was appropriate in the context of the narrative and tale. Just dont think it a novel that makes me eagerly awaiting the next in the series
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Perhaps it's just my imagination but a surprising number of well-known "serious" fiction writers moonlighted as crime writers at some point in their career. I'm presently reading the "Duffy" series by Dan Kavanaugh (aka Julian Barnes.)
I was a little apprehensive, they're forty-years-old, so date from the early days of Barnes career. Are they old fashioned? (No.) Are they characteristic JB? (Somewhat surprisingly, yes!) The writing is both economical and characteristically witty. In fact if you didn't know they were Barnes work, I suspect an average perceptive reader might well be able be able to guess. Very much recommended.
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They’re forty! Aaaargh I’m getting old. Duffy s the PI with the limp after the shooting isn’t he? On/off girlfriends a WPC I think. Must be twenty years since I read one. I was always surprised they never became a TV series though there probably wasn’t enough of them.
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