Reviews and News about British, European and Translated crime fiction, tv and film.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

At last, the first book in the series

Fans of translated crime fiction will know the frustration of not being able to read the books in the order they were written (eg Nesbo especially) but a couple of authors are finally having their first book in the series translated, albeit after two other of their books have already been published in English.

Hakan Nesser'sMind's Eye is the first in the Van Veeteren series, just published in the US and out in July in the UK.

Synopsis: Chief Inspector Van Veeteren knew that murder cases were never as open-and-shut as this one: Janek Mitter woke one morning with a brutal hangover and discovered his wife of three months lying facedown in the bathtub, dead. With only the flimsiest excuse as his defense, he is found guilty of a drunken crime of passion and imprisoned in a mental institution.

But Van Veeteren’s suspicions about the identity of the killer are borne out when Mitter also becomes a murder victim. Now the chief inspector launches a full-scale investigation of the two slayings. But it may only be the unspoken secrets of the dead–revealed in a mysterious letter that Mitter wrote shortly before his death–that will finally allow Van Veeteren to unmask the killer and expose the shocking root of this sordid violence.

The second author is Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett, whose Death Rites the first of the Detective Petra Delicado series has recently been published in the US.

Synopsis: Tough, sexy, at times apparently pitiless, Petra Delicado is a new kind of cop in Spanish crime writing. As she battles with sexist colleagues, ruthless reporters, indifferent witnesses, hardened criminals, and houseplants that just won’t flower, she sometimes thinks her thirst for new challenges and perpetual change is more trouble than it’s worth.

Inspector Delicado has been chained to a tiresome desk job in the documentation department of the Barcelona police force for months. But things are about to change. The department is short-handed and there’s a serial rapist on the loose. Delicado is partnered with the portly and impossibly compliant Sergeant Fermín Garzón with orders to solve the case before it succeeds in ruining the good name of the Barcelona police force. However, the only lead they have is the rapist’s mysterious signature: a circular mark of unknown origins he leaves on his victims’ forearms. No witnesses, no other leads, and no help from the victims themselves. To further complicate her life, Inspector Delicado is trying to shake off two ex-husbands, Hugo, who persists in shamelessly belittling her, and Pepe, as helpless and hapless as a little boy in her absence.

Oh, how frustrating! Nesbo, Mankell, Eriksson, Marklund, and now Nesser. When will these publishers let people read these books as the authors intended?!

At least now that the English speaking world has caught on to the fact that European crime fiction is actually good, and there is a market of eager readers, the newer authors are being tranlsated "as they write", eg Frode Gryttan, Joel Theoren, Marie Jungstedt, Andrea Maria Schenkel, etc. (Apologies for spelling!)