>NEXT YEAR NORDIC HEAVEN

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I don’t expect you all have any money left after buying all those Hannukah, Christmas and Winter solstice gifts.

Well helpful Karen at Eurocrime has blasted your 2008 credit card to pieces with her list of Scandinavian crime fiction due out next year.

This is a serious list of must have crime fiction, and I think I might have to come out of retirement to pay for that lot.

OK I know the eyes are not as good as they were and the hands are a bit arthritic [a bit!!!!!!] but I must have those Nesbos, Larssons, Mankells………

>BEST NON FICTION READ OF THE YEAR

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I did not have much time to read much non fiction this year, but among the books I did read was The Great Escape by Kati Marton.

The book tells the story of nine Hungarian Jews who fled Hitler and subsequently had a tremendous scientific and intellectual impact on our world.

Among the nine were four scientists, who helped usher in the nuclear age and the computer,
Edward Teller, John von Neumann, Leo Szilard, and Eugene Wigner; two great movie myth-makers, Michael Curtiz, director of Casablanca, and Alexander Korda; two immortal photographers, Robert Capa and Andre Kerstesz; and one seminal writer Arthur Koestler, author of Darkness at Noon.

This was a very inspirational story which I can highly recommend even if you don’t know the difference between a neutron and an electron.

>THE TURKEY

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I was very pleased to have read during the year so many good books, but one stood out from the crowd as a complete turkey.

Time to Kill by Brian Freemantle was so bad [review here] that I am not going to waste much more time disparaging it as an example of a formulaic so called thriller that did not work on any level.

Luckily I had a review copy but I feel sorry for anyone who actually bought it.

So there……..