>FURROWED FRIDAY

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Mike Ripley in his amusing column at Shots Magazine was kind enough to mention that in 2008 not one of the “expert readers” of Euro Crime picked the eventual winner the name of which he seemed to have forgotten.;0)

Well this inexpert reader was in the middle of reading that book while the judges were deliberating, and might well have chosen it if given the time. Well that is my story and I am sticking to it. At least my choice got a special mention.

The 2008 International Dagger winner was Lorraine Connection by Dominique Manotti translated from the French by Amanda Hopkinson and Ros Schwartz.

My choice for 2009, not quite ignored by the judges, was Echoes of the Dead by Johan Theorin translated by Marlaine Delargy.

There is a theory being touted that Scandinavian writers are being seduced away from writing proper literature by the financial rewards of crime fiction. I am entirely in agreement with Barbara Fister in her rebuttal of this pomposity.

We are even told that Nordic writers are being sucked into “sub- and semi-literary channels” and actually selling books.

This denigration of crime fiction in comparison with literature will rumble on and on. But it is not as annoying as writers who try to make crime fiction literature, or what they think is literature, by writing very long sentences and using words I have to look up in the OED.

>A PRUSSIAN FROM SPOLETO

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My review of Ariana Franklin’s Relics of the Dead was sent to Karen of Euro Crime last night as I wanted to be ready to watch the cricket on TV this morning. I missed the first two balls and wickets of the day but watched the rest of a very sad pre-lunch performance by Australia.

I have started reading A Visible Darkness by Michael Gregorio, the third whodunit to feature Prussian magistrate Hanno Stiffeniis and set in the years following Napoleon’s victory at the Battle of Jena-Auerstadt in 1806. My review will appear at Euro Crime.

A review of Critique of Criminal Reason

My review of the second book in the series Days of Atonement.

Michael Gregorio are Michael G. Jacob and Daniela De Gregorio, who have been married over 25 years and live in Spoleto, a charming small town in central Italy, where we coincidentally spent a wonderful holiday a few years ago. An excuse for posting more photographs of Italy.