THE SNOWMAN By Jo Nesbo

from the Globe and Mail: Books

There are no serial killers in Norway. At least, there are none anyone knows about. That’s one of the many snippets in the complex plot of this mesmerizing novel by Jo Nesbo, the fifth Harry Hole book in English translation.

There are so many good crime novels coming out of Scandinavia these days that it’s almost become a cliché. But Harry Hole is different. Yes, he’s a policeman, just like Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander and Karin Fossum’s Inspector Sejer. But he’s also difficult, isolated and a natural loner, more akin to Philip Marlowe than Wallander. There is a sense of loss in Hole, and this novel plays it up. He’s an alcoholic who’s stopped drinking, subject to the desperate needs of addiction and the ruthless physical symptoms of the “dry drunk.” His girlfriend, Rakel, has found love and meaning with a new man. She’s planning to marry to move to Africa. His closest friend and mentor is gone, shot dead. What keeps Harry moving from one day to the next is the job. In this case, one missing woman who may be dead.


Nesbo begins this story with a small boy’s terror. The cause? A snowman, turned round, staring into his room, not out toward the world. And that’s the brilliance of Nesbo: He takes the simple and cozy, and transforms it into the terrorizing. The snowman is what binds the deaths of several women, all young, all mothers. Harry, the only policeman in Norway with “experience” dealing with a serial killer (in Australia), uncovers the case and then begins tracking the clues, which lead him in some very strange directions.


I guessed the identity of the killer early, but that didn’t detract from the story at all. I wanted to see just why and how, and what happens to the other people in this story. The characters are marvellous, the plot is tight and the setting perfect – just at the edge of a Norwegian winter – and the concept original. Serial killers may have become ubiquitous in North America, but in Norway, they’re still a novelty.

THE WINGS OF THE SPHINX by Andrea Camilleri

posted on Petrona

I thought I might share some extracts from this latest novel by the supreme Camilleri, aided and abetted by his magnificent translator, poet Stephen Sartarelli.  

Ever since television had come into the home, everyone had become accustomed to eating bread and corpses. From noon to one o'clock, and from seven to eight-thirty in the evening - that is, when people were at table - there wasn't a single television station that wasn't broadcasting images of bodies torn apart, mangled, burnt, or tortured, men, women, old folks, and little children, imaginatively and ingeniously slaughtered in one part of the world or another. 

Not a day went by without there being, in one part of the world or another, a war to broadcast to one and all. And so one saw people dying of hunger, who haven't got a cent to buy a loaf of bread, shooting at other people likewise dying of hunger, with bazookas, Kalashnikovs, missiles, bombs, all ultra-modern weapons costing far more than medicine and food for everyone would have cost.

John le Carré

Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.

CRIME FICTION AUTHORS

A list of crime fiction authors that I don't have time to write about but do highly recommend, especially for Gentle Readers:

Barbara Cleverly's Joe Sandiland mysteries set in India in the age of the British Raj.

Barbara Nadel, Francis Hancock, undertaker, London, 1940.

Colin Cotterill, Laos after the Vietnamese communist takeover, Dr Siri, undertaker.

Rennie Airth, Inspector John Madden, England in the aftermath of WW.

Magdalen Nabb, Marshal Guarnaccia, Florence, Italy.

Deborah Crombie, Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James, Scotland Yard.

Mehmet Murat Somers, the Hop-ciki-Yaya series set in modern Istanbul's transvestite community.

James Church, Inspector O, North Korea

Robert Van Gulik, Judge Dee, ancient China.

Ariana Franklin, Dr. Adelia Aguilar, medieval England, .

Amanda Cross, Kate Fansler, English professor, New York City.

Donna Leon, of course, Venice.

Andrea Camilleri, Sicily. 

Gianrico Carofiglio, lawyer Guido Guerrieri, contemporary Italy. Everyone loves this series.

Nicolas Freeling, Inspector Van der Valk, 1060's Amsterdam. 

Jason Goodwin, Yashim Togalu, Ottoman Empire, court eunuch, Istanbul 1836.

Michael Genelin, contemporary Slovakia.

Kate Atkinson, the Jackson Brodie series set in Scotland.

Pierre Magnan, Commissaire LaViolette, France.

h/t to Ruth Ross

The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.

- Mark Twain on literature

Math of Publishing Meets the E-Book

from the New York Times

In the emerging world of e-books, many consumers assume it is only logical that publishers are saving vast amounts by not having to print or distribute paper books, leaving room to pass along those savings to their customers.

Publishers largely agree, which is why in negotiations with Apple, five of the six largest publishers of trade books have said they would price most digital editions of new fiction and nonfiction books from $12.99 to $14.99 on the forthcoming iPad tablet — significantly lower than the average $26 price for a hardcover book.


But publishers also say consumers exaggerate the savings and have developed unrealistic expectations about how low the prices of e-books can go. Yes, they say, printing costs may vanish, but a raft of expenses that apply to all books, like overhead, marketing and royalties, are still in effect.

All of which raises the question: Just how much does it actually cost to produce a printed book versus a digital one?  Read more...