Remember the Wide World of Sports on ABC? "Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport, the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat—the human drama of athletic competition"? In light of the Olympics and the spirit of the world coming together, here are some crime fiction news tidbits spanning the globe and hopefully focusing on the thrill-of-victory angle (we writers don't like to talk about "defeat").
The first stop is Turkey, where the Turkish Daily News took a look at crime novels set in Turkey, from The Confessions of Arséne Lupin by French author Maurice Leblanc, to several stories set at least in part in Istanbul: Charlie Chaplin, who became the hero of a 16-volume crime parody series; Hercule Poirot, who boarded the Orient Express in Istanbul; James Bond in From Russia With Love (which also featured the Orient Express) and Dorothy Gilman's Mrs. Polifax (The Amazing Mrs. Polifax, where the intrepid sleuth learns to fly a helicopter—you go, girl).
Representing Rome is David Hewson’s Nic Costa series, starting with A Season for the Dead. He's continued with a new title every year since, inclduing the latest, The Garden of Evil. "Rome, to me, is a real city," he says. "It can be a gritty, difficult and a pretty horrible place, but I adore it and its people."
From Ireland we have John Connolly. Although his books are set in America, he divides his time between Maine and his native Dublin. Connolly does not have much time for the English Golden Age detective writers, but admires GK Chesterton and Dorothy Sayers, whose metaphysical themes of religion and retribution appeal to the Irish Catholic in him.
The medal contenders from Scotland inlude Denise Mina, a former criminologist and long-time Glasgow resident, who was recently featured on NPR's Crime in the City; Ian Rankin, who was interviewed by the UK Mirror as a runup to ITV3's new crime fiction awards; and neophyte newsman turned crime writer Tony Black, who some have called the new Ian Rankin, to which Black replies, "Just about every new crime writer from Scotland has been called the 'New Rankin'. I'm obviously delighted to be spoken of in the same breath as him—it's fabulous and flattering—but I take it with a pinch of salt."
The English contingent consists of an article about Harrogate and the "Guess Who Might Be Andy McNab" game. The soldier turned thriller-writer, who for security reasons is never photographed, eventually identified himself and spoke to the Harrogate audience on the subject of what it is like to write about murder and violence from the perspective of somebody who has actually killed people.
From Scandinavia, there's a new kid in town, a web site for Scandinavian crime fiction in English and its companion blog, with author profiles from Karin Alvtegen to Sigurðardottir Yrsa.
AND THIS LATE ADDENDUM: The Christian Science Monitor featured author Colin Cotterill who uses Laos as a backdrop for his mystery novels featuring an all-Lao cast of characters, and is also lending a hand in a campaign to distribute children’s books to Laotian kids.
Play on!
Comments