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When I have found an author and read them quite happily for many years I don’t like it when they become mainstream.
Is this intellectual snobbery [probably] or is it that the movies or TV on occasions make a complete mess of adaptations?
John Hannah as Rebus, and Lou Diamond Phillips [born in the Phillipines] as Navajo policeman Officer Jim Chee spring to mind as casting errors. But I really get irritated at the exposure of my favourites to the attention of media people who know nothing about the subject but have become instant experts.
Now Henning Mankell, Kurt Wallander, and Sweden have become victims of instant punditry and reviewers who seem to have never read a crime fiction book, or possibly any book.
How long did it take to think up the Radio Times headline ‘Inspector Norse’?
The Daily Mail weekend review goes one better with ‘Inspector Morose’, who is ‘ Swedish, scruffy and makes Morse look like the laughing policeman’.
I suspect the writer has not read the Sjowall and Wahloo novel of that name, because they go on to say ‘Swedish and witty: now that’s something you don’t often see.’
Why do the media employ a critic who on their own admission states:
I must be honest, I hadn’t been optimistic about the prospect of a Swedish detective. My only knowledge of the country came from watching Bjorn Borg playing tennis at Wimbledon, and reading about Ulrika Jonsson’s latest baby/divorce/lover.
If I had my grumpy old way no one would be allowed to review the Wallander series unless they could identify the two people in the portraits above. I am going to record the ‘Wallanders’ and save them to watch when the media hoopla has died down. The first episode is on BBC at 9.00 p.m. tomorrow.
I have decided to lighten my mood before I read Last Rituals by Yrsa Sigurdadottir and therefore I have started reading The Burglar who liked to Quote Kipling by Lawrence Block.
CRIME SCRAPS REVIEW 