Kuratierte Notizen & Neuigkeiten zur Kriminalliteratur | A sheet of notes & news about crime fiction
»Lost gathers force as it rushes to its genuinely surprising climax. While it isn’t my favorite Bolton novel (I’d recommend Awakening, Dead Scared or Sacrifice), there’s enough psychological suspense involved to make even squeamish readers forget the gore, for a time.«
Maureen Corrigan
Detective Constable Lacey Flint must stop a serial killer who’s draining the blood from young boys in London. Maureen Corrigan about Lost, the latest novel by S. J. Bolton. Her review you will find at The Washington Post.
»Bad Monkey is the closest Hiaasen comes to a police procedural, but true to form, it also is a look at the ludicrous ways of Florida, such as the true bait-and-switch in which a dead sailfish is surreptitiously placed on a tourist’s line.«
Oline H. Cogdill
Carl Hiaasen’s latest spoof involves an unattached arm, a good cop and a nasty monkey. Oline H. Cogdill reviews the new novel Bad Monkey at the Miami Herald.
»What is sure is that I don’t want to insert the normal day-after-day life in my novels. Not because I don’t like it, but because, from my instinctive (and intellectual) point of view, a detective novel belongs to the great family of tales, legends, myths, etc., and not to realistic literature.«
Fred Vargas
Detective stories are really myths and tales: Peter Rozovsky talked to Fred Vargas. Read the second part of his revealing interview at his fine blog Detectives Beyond Borders.
»Since I was always awake early, I used to lie there and look at the books. They had exotic titles like Eyeless in Gaza, For Whom The Bell Tolls, Cloud Howe, The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde, The Big Sleep. And the writers had weird names like Aldous Huxley and Lewis Grassic Gibbon. They became very familiar to me as I stared at them every morning, never drawing a distinction between what might be classed as »literature«, and the court and crime mysteries of bestsellers like Erle Stanley Gardner or Raymond Chandler.«
Peter May
Digging Into Crimes: MaryAnne Kolton interviews Peter May. Read more at Los Angeles Review of Books.
New crime fiction novels reviewed by Marylin Stasio. What she has to say about the books by Carl Hiaasen, Jeffery Deaver, Ace Atkins and Jo Nesbo you can read at The New York Times.
»We are criminals – killers, liars, cheaters – because crime pays biologically.«
Raymond Tallis
If criminals have broken brains, should neuroscientists play an increasing role in determining criminal responsibility? Raymond Tallis about the book The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime by Adrian Raine. His review at The Guardian.
»As we walk to the door, Banks pulls one final, left-field surprise. »Do you know that I know what caused the cancer?« I think I pull a face like Macaulay Culkin in
. »Cosmic ray,« he says. »I won’t brook any contradiction; it was a high-energy particle. A star exploded hundreds or thousands of years ago and ever since there’s been a cosmic ray – a bad-magic bullet with my name on it, to quote Ken – heading towards the moment where it hit one of my cells and mutated it. That’s an SF author’s way to bow out; none of this banal transcription error stuff.« Then the moment comes that I was dreading … but he says »See you soon« instead.
Stuart Kelly
Author Iain Banks died last Sunday, just before the publication of his final novel The Quarry. Last month he talked to Stuart Kelly about writing, politics and all the things still left to do. Read the final interview at The Guardian.
»Put it this way: she is all the things I like to think I once was. Sparky and spiky.«
Stella Rimington
Dame Stella Rimington, former MI5 chief turned novelist, discusses with Tim Adams her strangest meal ever, the state of the secret services and her fictional alter ego Liz Carlyle. The seventh of her novels featuring Liz Carlyle, The Geneva Trap will be published soon. Read the portrait at The Guardian / The Observer.
»Does anyone remember how we got dragged into the Iraq war – apart obviously from the dodgy dossier composed with the complicity of MI6? We went to war on the strength of information supplied by two ingenious fabricators.«
John le Carré
The influence of spies has become too much: Author John le Carré on secret courts, surveillance and the excessive influence of the CIA and MI6 on democratic institutions. His essay at The Guardian.
Crimewave: Sarah Weinman about three new crime fiction novels. Her reviews at the National Post.
