A sad case of Television Addiction

I am in danger of becoming a television addict and my reading is suffering. My excuse is the plethora of great miniseries dominating our screens in the last few weeks. My recorder has been overworked, and I have even discovered Van Veeteren lurking among the mysteries on my Tivo boxed sets.

BBC 4 are playing the second series of Young Montalbano. I have now got accustomed to the youthful Salvo, Livia, Mimi, Favio and Catarella and even Mrs Crime Scraps is a fan of this excellent series.

More Four have also gone continental with the French policial thriller Spin [Les Hommes de l’Ombre] which stars the gorgeous Nathalie Baye, as a Presidential candidate, Bruno Wolkowitch, and Gregory Fitoussi. Fitoussi played Pierre Clement in Spiral, and sent many female hearts of my acquaintance throbbing, so it is nice to see him playing a real nasty piece of work managing the presidential electoral campaign of the Prime Minister, an even nastier guy. The sexual relationships of these fictional characters are nowhere near as intricate as those of the last two French presidents, Nicholas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande. Obviously true life is stranger than fiction and power must be the ultimate aphrodisiac. 

On Channel Four we have the spy thriller Deutschland 83 in which we see both that the GDR [East Germany] was part of the evil empire and the FDR [West Germany], or at least their army, seems to have been part of an incompetent empire. Some people are rooting for the GDR spy Martin in this series seemingly failing to see his predicament as the ruthless cynical exploitation of a decent person by a foul regime. Part of Ronald Reagan’s evil empire speech is used in the trailer and it is unfortunate that the fall of the Berlin Wall has not changed the ideas of many influential politicians in this country. They still won’t accept that Chairman Mao and Uncle Joe killed more people before breakfast on any single day than the British Empire in the last three centuries. 

I have seen that it won’t be long before a new series of Happy Valley will be back on our screens, and I was surprised to realise that the rapist from that series Tommy Lee Royce was played by James Norton, who stars as Prince Andrei Bolkonsky in the visually magnificent War and Peace currently on BBC One. I am really enjoying that series although it would be nice if Pierre Bezukhov, played with great intensity by Paul Dano, sent his slutty wife Helene [Tuppence Middleton] off to a convent somewhere near Irkutsk.

War and Peace has lead me to start reading a book that has lived on my bookshelves for nearly twent years. I have decided it is time I read How Far From Austerlitz by Alistair Horne so less crime fiction and a bit of history for a change. In my pre-Crime Scraps days I read Alistair Horne’s magnificent trilogy on modern French History, The Price of Glory:Verdun 1916;  To Lose a Battle: France 1940, and A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962. 

The WH Smith poll: The Best Crime Writers of All Time chosen by you!

I have always considered crime fiction awards and polls very useful for introducing readers to writers and books that they haven’t read.  Even if one doesn’t agree with the choices made by the judges, or general public, the results are usually quite fun. But they do have to adhere to certain basic standards like sanity. If we judge the best crime writers simply on all time sales there is obviously only one winner with Agatha Christie a long way ahead of the number two, and James Patterson back in third place.

Do you know who number two is? 

WH Smith has a list 107 crime fiction authors in order of merit, and I do worry about my ageing eyesight, because I cannot see Colin Dexter’s name anywhere. Some of the voting was quite astonishing with S.J.Watson, who up to date has only published one book, at 65 ahead of Stieg Larsson 68, Lindsey Davis 69, Elizabeth  George 70. That one book may be very very good, but surely S.J. has to produce more than one book to merit a position among the best crime writers of all time.

Television exposure does not seemed to have helped some fine authors with Ann Cleeves at 90, Ellis Peters at 89, Andrea Camilleri at 84. I am ashamed to find that I haven’t even read any of the books by the numero uno on the list, Peter James. His detective Roy Grace works in Brighton, a town I used to know very well, as three of my mother’s sisters lived in Hove, the adjoining seaside resort. I will have to remedy my omission as “he won the crown effortlessly by an incredible number of votes.”

He must be very good to streak ahead of  Agatha Christie at 5, Raymond Chandler at 47, Michael Connelly at 32, Reginald Hill at 48, and Patricia Highsmith at 52. I would suggest that if the poll had asked readers to name their “favourite” five crime fiction authors it might have produced a more interesting result. 

By the way the number two  all time best selling crime fiction author was Georges Simenon. 

 

Longer and longer crime fiction?

As part of my weight training program I lifted four books I intend to read over the next few weeks [ authored by Jo Nesbo, Leif G.W.Persson, Hakan Nesser and Robert Harris] in order to photograph them with a few older books authored by people who also sold a few books in their time. 

With the Man Booker Prize going to young Eleanor Catton for The Luminaries, a nineteenth century murder mystery, that weighs in at 832 pages I wonder if this is all part of a cunning plot to sell Kindles, and other electronic reading devices. Readers faced with such huge books will have no choice but to download an electronic version, or face permanent wrist and shoulder pain. 

A seventh birthday and catching up with a baker’s dozen

Crime Scraps was started in September 2006, and I don’t know what is the average life of a blog, but I think it is well into adulthood by now. My original plan was to have a record of the books I had read, and to bring to the attention of any readers two series of detective books. The first was the ten book Martin Beck series Story of a Crime by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, of which I had read about six during the 1970s and 1980s, and I had searched second hand book shops for the remaining books with little success. The second was the Salvo Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri which I had recently discovered. 

I remember three years later charging into a WH Smith in the company of a distinguished translator of Scandinavian crime fiction, and finding only one of his books on display at the back. But within a few months Scandinavian crime fiction was all over the shelves in every type of retail outlet that sold books. And now we have had various Wallanders, Sarah Lund, and numerous other Nordic shows on TV, as well as Montalbano and Young Montalbano representing Italian crime fiction and Spiral from France with its distinctive Gallic approach.  I therefore decided to go back and spend a few weeks reading some of the crime writers who had me hooked years ago, and have read thirteen books since my holiday reading roundup.

I read and scored with star ratings:

Feast Day of Fools**, Pegasus Descending**, and Sunset Limited*** by James Lee Burke,

A Guilty Thing Surprised** and Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter*** by Ruth Rendell,

A German Requiem*** and The One from the Other*** by Philip Kerr,

The Hanging Garden*** by Ian Rankin,

Recalled to Life*****, Pictures of Perfection***** and The Wood Beyond*****by Reginald Hill,

The Scent of Death*** by Andrew Taylor [winner of the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger]

The Windsor Faction***** by D.J.Taylor [reviewed at Euro Crime]  

So what did I learn from reading and re-reading these books. Well some authors were not as good as I remembered and others made a fresh impression that encouraged me to read more of their output. Some of the writers produced such worthy messages that it made up for their over convoluted repetitive plots. But above all I came to the conclusion Reginald Hill was an outstanding crime writer coming up with new fresh ways to write interesting crime novels. I particularly liked his Dickensian Recalled to Life, his very clever Austen like Pictures of Perfection, and one that I had read a while ago Midnight Fugue, a parody/pastiche of the TV series 24 Hours.

Andrew Taylor’s The Scent of Death was well written, with a very atmospheric  setting in 1777 Revolutionary New York, and a good read, but was it any better, and did it have as strong a moral message as  the other contenders for the Ellis Peters Award. This was the third time Andrew Taylor has won this award and I sometimes think that winning the award is a major factor in repeat wins. I am not singling out Andrew Taylor for any criticism, because there are transatlantic authors who regularly win awards every year, and when I have read a sample of their work I have found it far less worthy than The Scent of Death. Even a great Fred Vargas fan such as I still cannot understand the thinking behind her win in 2009 over a strong field which contained books by Johan Theorin,  Arnaldur Indridason, Stieg Larsson, Jo Nesbo and Karin Alvtegen.

I have some new translated crime fiction to read and hopefully will be able to produce some full reviews, but I will end my catch up with a quote from Reginald Hill’s Recalled to Life, which begins with a murder in that watershed year of 1963, when an American president was assassinated, a British government fell, and a young innocent went off to university. 

Up to nineteen sixty-three it was still possible for thinking men to believe in progress. A just war had been fought and won, and this time the result would be, if not a land fit for heroes, at least a society fit for humans. We who grew up in the ‘sixties and ‘seventies and came to our maturity in the dreadful ‘eighties have seen the destruction of that dream without ever having the joy of dreaming it. Recalled to Life; Reginald Hill 1992     

THE AGE OF DOUBT: ANDREA CAMILLERI trans STEPHEN SARTARELLI

Veteran Italian crime writer Andrea Camilleri won the 2012 CWA International Dagger with his 13th book to be translated in English by Stephen Sartarelli, The Potter’s Field. His 14th book The Age of Doubt is another fine addition to this addictive series.

Only Camilleri could begin a novel with Salvo Montalbano dreaming he is dead and with the detective attending his own funeral. When Montalbano awakes he drives to Vigata in the pouring rain, but is held up by a line of traffic as the road has been swept away by the sea. He approaches the first car which is hanging over the chasm and encourages the young woman driver to leave her vehicle and come back to his house. The young woman introduces herself as Vanna Diguglio and says she was going to the harbour to meet her aunt Livia’s yacht named the Vanna. Montalbano learns that the Vanna is bringing in a corpse they have found floating in a dingy just outside the mouth of the harbour. The dead man’s face has been deliberately disfigured, and when Montalbano realises the glamourous yacht owner Livia Giovannini is very surprised to learn she has a niece he knows this case is going to test his abilities to the full.

This novel contains most of the ingredients that have made this series such a success. There is social commentary as the reader learns about Italy’s not so gentle treatment of immigrants; and we are invited to enjoy Catarella’s malapropisms, Montalbano’s appetite for food, Mimi Augello’s amorous talents, and Fazio’s solid police-work. The ageing Montalbano falls head over heels in love with the aptly named  Lieutenant Laura Belladonna, while discovering the identity of the disfigured corpse, and eventually the mysterious niece.

The lieutenant not only lived up to her surname, she exceeded it. She wasn’t just beautiful; she was knockout. For a brief moment, Montalbano was speechless. She was a good six inches taller than him, dark, with bright sparkling eyes, red lips in no need of lipstick, and above all, a very pleasant manner.

‘I’m entirely at your disposal,’ she said.

I wish! thought the inspector.

Why didn’t I enjoy this novel quite as much as some of the previous Montalbano books? I should say this is relative because this series is always a good read. Firstly I watched the TV version on BBC4 before I read the book, and therefore I knew the detail  of the plot. I do prefer to read a book first and then watch the TV or movie version. It should not make any real difference but I enjoy seeing if the film follows the book.

But also Montalbano’s attitude to his superiors is usually amusing, unfortunately in this book the lies he tells the well meaning Dr Lattes are in poor taste and frankly not worthy of the honest policeman we have grown to admire. That won’t stop me going on to read The Dance of the Seagull which sits expectantly on my book shelf. 

He started with a seafood  antipasto. Since the  nunnati were crispy as can be, he ordered a second side dish of them. He continued with a generous helping of spaghetti in squid ink. And he ended with a double portion of mullet and striped sea bream.  

CWA winners: International Dagger and the Ellis Peters

There were 13 books shortlisted for the CWA International Dagger and the Ellis Peters Historical Crime Fiction awards, and I had read nine of them. Luckily or perhaps by good judgement among those nine were both winners, and I could not disagree much with the choice the judges.

I did think that the International Dagger shortlisted novel Trackers by Deon Meyer was a great thriller, but as I have been singing the praises of Andrea Camilleri since I began blogging in 2006, the 86 year old was due to win. The Potter’s Field was as usual brilliantly translated by Stephen Sartarelli whose end notes add so much to the reader’s knowledge and enjoyment. I sometimes think those end notes would make a great reference book by themselves.

 

In a recent post considering that short list I wrote:

The Potter’s Field is the best and funniest offering from Andrea Camilleri in the Montalbano series for some time, and perhaps a good outside bet.

Nice that the judges agreed and the thirteenth translated book in the Salvo Montalbano series was a winner. Read my full review of The Potter’s Field here. 

 

The seven book Ellis Peters Historical Award shortlist had fewer outstanding books, but I hope I was fairly clear with my assessment.

My choice would be between the very clever and hard hitting Prague Fatale, and the atmospheric spy story Icelight. 

When I reviewed Aly Monroe’s Icelight I wrote:

I sometimes get irritated by silly blurbs but those on Icelight mention Graham Greene and John Le Carre and in this case I think they are justified.  The Peter Cotton series is getting better and better, and in Icelight the internecine squabbling of the security services is a prequel to the real life problems during the Cold War.

You can read my full review of Icelight here and a post about the superbly evocative book cover here. 

 

Congratulations to Aly Monroe and Andrea Camilleri, and the judges. 😉