Retrospective-January 2012

I enjoyed all the books I read in January and really don’t want to  make a distinction between them based on their quality in order to choose a pick of the month. But as I want to join the meme at Kerrie’s excellent Mysteries in Paradise  blog I will choose not necessarily the best, but certainly my most intriguing read as my pick of the month.

That was I Will Have Vengeance by Maurizio de Giovanni featuring a detective with an unusual ability to see the dead, and an interesting historical setting in Italy during the 1930s. 

During January I managed to review six books without [apart from Ingrid in Andrea Camilleri’s The Potter’s Field] a Scandinavian in sight, which must be some achievement in the current climate. I can thank Bitter Lemon Press and Hersilia Press for looking further afield than Scandinavia for some crime fiction gems. Hersilia Press, named after the wife of Romulus, have recently brought us books by the previously mentioned Maurizio de Giovanni, Alessandro Perissinotto, and Luigi Guicciardi; while Bitter Lemon Press have in their stable Gianrico Carofiglio, Cuban Leonardo Padura, and Argentinean Ernesto Mallo. What these authors don’t yet have is the marketing  machine behind the Scandinavians.

I have nothing against good Scandinavian crime fiction, after all I read six of the brilliant Martin Beck series over thirty years ago and until they were reissued in Harper Perennials spent hours looking for the missing four books in second hand bookshops, but it is the stupid reaction by the main stream media I find annoying. Do the hysterical stickers and blurbs on books such as “for fans of The Killing”, “Move over Wallander”, “Step aside Stieg Larsson”, “Iceland’s answer to Stieg Larsson”, “If you like Stieg Larsson, you’ll love Asa Larsson”, “The Next Stieg Larsson”, really help the reader to decide if this is a book they will enjoy?

Is it now easier for a weak book with exploitative violence, but set in the Nordic countries to be published than a fine example of Italian, French, South African, Australian or Greek crime fiction? Probably. And obviously the quality of the plot and the ability of the characters to inspire interest should be the major factors deciding whether a story gets published, not whether it is set in Copenhagen or Malmo.

My reading plan, despite the fact I have about about twelve Nordic books on my TBR shelf, is to try and alternate my reading between Nordic and the others, although when the CWA International Dagger shortlist is announced I could well be forced back into full Scandinavian reading mode.