Jo Nesbo and Michael Connelly by the Pool this Summer

I’ve been revisiting the crime fiction genre over the summer holidays as a perfect escape from the weather and natural disasters that are affecting both Queensland and country.

My first was Reversal, the new novel from Michael Connelly. I had previously read The Poet and then The Scarecrow both featuring Crime Reporter Jack McEvoy and FBI Agent Rachel Walling in a traditional style whodunnit but well written and with good twists and turns. I was curious to see if the latest offering which stars LAPD Detective Harry Bosh and defence attorney Mickey Haller is similarly enjoyable.

Jason Jessup was convicted 25 years ago in a high profile child murder case, but with the advancement of DNA testing, bodily fluids on the victim’s dress have subsequently been linked to her stepfather, thus putting in doubt Jessup’s conviction. In the interests of neutrality, Mickey Haller has been asked by the District Attorney’s Office to take on the prosecution of the case, effectively changing sides and coming up against one of his colleagues in the defence community. Mickey has to come up with the evidence to put Jesse away once and for all – evidence that is 25 years old.

I still have a soft spot for this more straight forward style of the crime genre having cut my teeth on Patricia Cornwall, James Patterson, Harlan Coben, and Jeffery Deaver but in recent years I found that there was too much of the same old, same old, and the offerings by some of the writers have become a bit formulaic. In recent times, I have yet to find an American crime author that I have wanted to read another of their novels, but Michael Connelly almost fits the spot with me having read three in the last 12 months. While Connelly’s style is much more American police show than Stieg Larsson edgy, he is still well worth a read next to the pool or at the beach this summer.

The second book that I read in this genre over January has been Jo Nesbo’s Nemesis. Now this is a writer that I want to read more of. Nemesis features Detective Harry Hole to whom the English speaking world was first introduced in The Redbreast. Like many of the lead characters in Scandinavian crime fiction, Hole is a “damaged” character - in The Redbreast he is a recovering alcoholic, with little personal life and whose closest friend in the police force ends up dead during the course of the novel. In Nemesis, things are looking up for Hole – he hasn’t had a drink since the last novel, and he is in a relationship with a future with Rakel and her son Oleg. Then, Hole’s life is turned upside down.

While on a murder case that occurred during a bank robbery, Harry has to investigate the apparent suicide of an old girlfriend. Complicating this investigation is that, unknown to his colleagues, he had dinner with her the night before and arrived home with no recollection of it after apparently “falling off the wagon”. Coincidentally, the only person who can identify the robber of the bank happens to be the ex-girlfriend’s uncle, a reknown bank robber himself, currently serving time in prison. What follows is a tale of mystery, revenge, and suspense where the reader is lead first one way and then another in guessing the outcome, but ultimately has to wait until the end before all is revealed.

I’m certainly looking forward to seeing what develops in the third novel available in the series in English, The Devil’s Star.

Murder in the Bayou - Black Water Rising by Attica Locke

I have been wanting to read is Black Water Rising by Attica Locke since I saw it had been shortlisted for this year’s Orange Prize for fiction by a women. Like Peter Temple’s “Truth”, which won the 2010 Miles Franklin Award, Black Water Rising is a crime novel, although with more in common with thrillers than the forensic crime that litters our TV screens and discount stores.

Last week, I picked up a copy and started reading it and couldn’t put it down. What a great book. Set in Houston, America in the 1980’s, and with the memory of Martin Luther King and the fight to end segregation still very foremost in people’s minds, the story has as it’s backdrop rising oil prices and the threat of a strike on the Houston docks which could shut down an economy that is highly dependent on the movement of oil.

We meet the main character, Jay, at night on the Bayou. A struggling African American lawyer whose main source of income is from personal injury claims, Jay is taking his wife on a “scenic” boat ride down the Bayou as a birthday present, courtesy of one of his clients. The stage is set for the finale of the evening: the boat is dirty and run down, the Bayou creepy and mysterious in the murky light. Suddenly, they hear a woman’s scream, gunshot, and then a body falling into the Bayou. Should Jay instruct the boat owner to keep on going and not get involved or should he heed his wife’s urging to help the person in trouble? Jay has personal experience of being black and at the mercy of the Southern legal system after nearly going to jail for something he didn’t do as a young, passionate, protester against segregation.  He is reluctant to stop but his natural sense of doing the right thing compels him to help and he dives in to save the woman, starting a series of events that Jay can’t escape.

Black Water Rising is part thriller, part social justice commentary. There is plenty of suspense, the odd standover man, corporate no-goods, and a little mystery about Jay’s relationship with the new mayor – a white woman he used to know very well in college before his life turned upside down. Colour is provided by the proposed dock strike, as Jay is asked by his father-in-law to take on the police department on behalf of a young dock worker who is accusing a senior union official of beating him up and the police doing nothing. The novel is pacey, and the plot cleverly strung together, while also giving insight to some of the history surrounding the fight to end segregation in America.

If you are interested in the other novels shortlisted for the Orange Prize this year, you might want to try:

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (Winner)
The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
A Gate at the Stairs by Morrie Moore
White Woman, Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey

Enjoyed the Millenium Trilogy then try the books by Jo Nesbo

Checking the bestsellers list in the A2 guide of The Age this week (for period ending July 10 2010), I can’t believe that the Millennium trilogy still makes it into the top ten bestsellers – not only at a national level but also for sales through independent bookstores in Australia. Surely everyone has read them by now. I have moved on and discovered another European crime novelist – Jo Nesbo. I recently read a fairly old novel of his, The Redbreast, which is set in Norway. Released in Australia by Random House, here’s the blurb for the novel from the Random House website:

Harry Hole, drunkard, loner and brilliant detective is reassigned to surveillance after a high profile mistake.


He’s bored by his new job until a report of a rare and unusual gun being fired sparks his interest because of its possible links to Neo Nazi activity. Then a former soldier is found with his throat cut. Next Harry’s former partner is murdered. Why had she been trying to reach Harry on the night her head was smashed in? The investigation leads Harry to suspect that the crimes have their roots in the battlefields of Eastern Front during WWII. In a quest that takes him to South Africa and Vienna, Harry finds himself perpetually one step behind the killer. He will be both winner and loser by the novel's nail-biting conclusion.

I have to confess that I found the beginning of the book a little confusing as it starts with an attempted assassination of a visiting US President. Oh, no I thought. Another American styled crime novel, but I kept going to see where it was heading. I’m so glad I did. This was a crime thriller with lots of suspense and really challenged me to work out the connections in the story. The novel weaves chapters about events in World War II with the current day murders, and as each connection is revealed I kept oscillating between different scenarios as to who was the killer, especially since we are given brief glimpses of him throughout the book without him being identified. Unlike many of today’s crime novels, it took me quite some time to get to that point where you know who did it and it came only just before Harry Hole did himself. Often, I find the identity of the perpetrator is revealed too quickly in today’s crime novels, and the rest of the story is not strong enough to maintain the engagement of the reader.

Apparently, there are two Harry Hole novels before The Redbreast, but these haven’t been translated into English so you do miss some of the character build up for Hole that you get when you read a series from the start. If you want to read the series in order, the books available in English in the series are Nemesis, The Devil's Star, The Redeemer, and finally, The Snowman.

Spooks, Neil Cross, and the Psychological Thriller

In trawling through publisher's websites for my new bookshop, I came across this video interview of author,  Neil Cross.  You may have read some of his novels, such as Burial released in 2009 or his latest tale of suspense, Captured released in May this year, but if not, then you may have come across his writing without knowing it.  If you are a fan of the BBC TV series Spooks, then you are familiar with Neil Cross's type of story, as he is the lead writer on the series and talks about this in the video.




I've read a couple of his books, and I have to say they are not for the faint hearted - in fact Burial had my heart racing when I woke up in the middle of the night having read a chapter before turning off my light the night before.  It was clever, and for some reason, I just had to read to the end even though I didn't really want to.  If you are a fan of the psychological thriller, then Neil Cross might be an author to try, but don't say I didn't warn you!

Swedish Crime - The New Flavour of the Month

I came across an article in The Guardian newspaper’s website from last year, entitled “Swedish crime wave sweeps European book charts”. It considers the success of Swedish crime writers in European book markets in 2008 and, as you might expect, Stieg Larsson was number one with his Millenium series. Surprisingly, other Swedish crime writers featured prominently with Henning Mankell at number 10, and Liza Marklund at number 12. In 2009, as reported in The Independent, the trend continued, with Camilla Läckberg joining Larsson and Mankell in the top ten.

What makes Swedish crime the new flavour of the month? Like a lot of people I know, I enjoyed the modern rawness of the Millenium series novels. The use of contemporary gadgets and brands such as Apple and Blackberry give the books an appeal to the younger end of the adult market and when combined with the interesting but far from perfect characters, the exotic setting (to Australians, at least), and the insights into Swedish political history, make these books a compelling read. Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers also included local issues with its story interwoven with the impact Sweden’s relaxed policies regarding immigrants on the attitudes of the Swedish characters. These novels remind me of the way TV crime shows made by the BBC have so much more depth than their American counterparts. Having just finished Camilla Läckberg’s The Stone-Cutter, I once again found an author whose writing embraces, not only the traditional crime, but also history and the undercurrents of daily life.

Here’s an excerpt from the inside cover for The Stone-Cutter:

The remote resort of Fjällbacka has seen its share of tragedy, though perhaps none worse than that of the little girl found in a fisherman’s net. But the post-mortem reveals that this is no accidental drowning…..

Local detective Patrik Hedström has just become a father. It is his grim task to discover who could be behind the methodical murder of a child both he and his partner, Erica, knew well. He knows the solution lies with finding the reason for such a terrible crime.

What he does not know is how this case will reach into the dark heart of Fjällbacka and tear aside its idyllic façade, perhaps for every.

The Stone-Cutter features two parallel stories – one set in the past, one in the present.  How are they connected? Each suspect that is introduced has the potential to be the murderer and is believable in their depiction. The author manages to keep the reader guessing right until the end, and it is this element of suspense which I believe is missing from many American crime novels that I have read recently. Finally, all is revealed and suddenly the two storylines converge and make sense. Together, this makes a good crime novel.

It is exciting to find something new and with hidden layers in this genre that has so many books that are, frankly, a waste of paper. I will be using the lists of authors I found in the two articles to select my crime reading for the near future. The only problem will be whether the books I want to read are available here in Australia. Given the number of bookshops that I went to in my local area in order to track down Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers, the first of the Wallender series of books, I might have to order them online.

Pyschological Thriller : Michael Robotham's "Shatter"

"A naked woman in red high-heeled shoes is poised on the edge of Clifton Suspension Bridge with her back pressed to the safety fence, weeping into a mobile phone. Clinical psychologist Joseph O’Loughlin is only feet away, desperately trying to talk her down. She whispers, “You don’t understand” – and jumps”

Well, that got my attention when I picked this book up at my local library. I had seen Michael Robotham’s new book Bleed for Me on the book shelves at a bookshop, but there are so many authors in this genre, I usually like to “try before I buy”. This is a psychological thriller so don’t read it if you want everything warm and fuzzy – No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency it is not. Personally, I like a bit of suspense and the battle of good against evil and you get it in buckets here.

Firstly, there is Joe, diagnosed with the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, he has had to reduce his hours working as a psychologist and take on some of the responsibilities of organising the home and his two daughters. There is a lot for the reader to identify with in Joe’s home life. Joe loves his wife and family, but he is struggling with his new role of house husband, including hiring a nanny that his wife approves of, and finds it hard to accept his wife’s devotion to corporate life which involves many overnight trips to London and overseas in her job as a translator.  We also get to glimpse the frustration he feels at the increasing physical limitations imposed by his disease. Underneath he is still the same intelligent man with perceptive insights into the working of the human mind and while he can’t trust his body anymore, he can still trust his mind

There are so many things wrong about the suicide that he was unable to stop that he starts to doubt that it is really a suicide - who was it that the women was talking to on the phone and what were they saying?. His doubts are compounded when the woman’s teenage daughter comes to see him maintaining that her mother would never commit suicide as she was scared of heights. But no one will listen. Well, not until there is a second death in similar circumstances.

As the story unfolds we meet the novel’s villian, Gideon, who is as skilled at understanding people’s minds as Joe but in a much more sinister way. Gideon can commit murder with no more than a mobile phone and manipulative suggestions, which should seem a bit far fetched but isn’t as we are bombarded these days with stories in the news of terrorists, cults, and suicide bombers.  I wasn't sure whether the existence of Gideon came too soon in the story, but I decided that it actually led to the suspense to hear Gideon's thoughts at the same time that Joe was trying to work out who was manipulating these women.

While it was easy to follow where the storyline of Shatter was heading, Michael took the reader along very cleverly, building up the suspense and apprehension as to what Gideon would do next, and leading the reader, like Joe, to the final scenes knowing what is going to happen but being unable to stop it. I found Shatter an absorbing read and certainly worth a look if you like the crime genre and don’t mind that slightly squirming feeling in the stomach. Although, if you are like me and dream about what you have been reading before you go to bed, you might want to save this one for when you can read it in daylight.

Shatter is set in England and, thus, I assumed that Michael Robotham was an English writer. It was only when I was in a bookshop in Sydney that I discovered that Michael is actually Australian, but lived in England for ten years, working as a journalist, and then as ghost writer penning the autobiographies of celebrities. “Shatter” won the 2008 Ned Kelly Award for best crime book, and was shortlisted for a number of other crime genre awards around the world, including the UK’s Steel Dagger Award. If you like to read novels in order, the character of Joe O’Loughlin first appears in The Suspect.

A Little Bit of Comedy with your Crime?

Once upon a time (as the fairytale goes) I use to read a lot of the crime genre – Patricia Cornwell, Lisa Gardner, Jeffery Deaver, Harlan Coben (one of my favourites), and others but after watching too many CSI type programmes on TV, I found that I no longer enjoyed that sort of novel. Over the last few years I have discovered a new style of writing in the crime genre – comic crime. For pure entertainment, these books have it - light hearted and funny but be warned, you have to check your sense of reality in at the door.

Firstly, Janet Evanovich and her Stephanie Plum series of novels, One for the Money, Two for the Dough, Three to Get Deadly, and so on (you get the idea). When we meet Stephanie in One for the Money, she has lost her job as a lingerie buyer, her car has been repossessed and the only job she can get is as a bail bondsman for her horrible cousin, Vinny. She has no experience, no handcuffs, and wouldn’t know what to do with a gun even if she had one. If things can’t get worse, her first bail jumper to bring in is Joe Morelli, a gorgeous, former vice cop accused of murder one, who Stephanie has “history” with, as well as fireworks.  Combined with a setting in the “burbs” where everyone knows everyone else, a mother who is finding it hard to let go of the apron strings, and a grandmother who has a distinct liking for funeral viewings and lycra makes for a hilarious and very different novel.

In the later books, enter a couple of interesting characters.  Firstly Ranger, her colleague in the bail bond business, the hunky latin lover type and her exact opposite in the bail bondsman stakes – successful in business, drives a Porsche, and never misses getting his man. Then there’s Lula, a former hooker turned file clerk and now a wannabe bounty hunter and Stephanie’s new sidekick who has a interesting take on fashion.  Nothing ever seems to go right for Stephanie and this makes for lots of laugh out loud moments, interspersed with sexual tension between Stephanie and the men in her life. I’ve just had to keep reading them even though the series is up to number sixteen now.

Another series in a similar vein is Lisa Lutz’s “The Spellman Files”, The Spellman’s Curse, and “The Revenge of the Spellmans”.

The first novel introduces private detective, Isabel Spellman and her dysfunctional family. There’s Izzy’s parents, Albert and Olivia who run a private detective agency and are Izzy’s employers, her teenage sister Rae who likes to practice her surveillance skills on the people in her neighbourhood, and her blackmailing skills on her family to get what she wants, Izzy’s Uncle Ray – former cop but now alcoholic and gambler – who disappears for long weekends and has to be rescued.

Izzy is luckless in love and her ex-boyfriends have cameos in the book as Izzy tries to work out why none of them stick but there's hope for Izzy yet.  The subject of Issy’s new case, Daniel, turns out to be boyfriend number 9 material but there’s one problem – he’s a dentist, a profession that her mother distrusts intently. What follows is a tale of subterfuge as Izzy tries to hide her profession from Daniel, her boyfriend’s profession from her mother, while avoiding discovery by Rae who has been “hired” by Izzy’s parents to find out about the new boyfriend. To cap it off, Rae goes missing, and Izzy has to solve the most important missing person’s case of her career

If you like a bit of light relief in your crime then try this series.