"Because Murder is More Fun Away From Home"
Keeping things in the British Commonwealth, Craig Sisterson of the Crime Watch blog is offering readers the chance to sample crime writing from New Zealand, and all you have to do is leave a comment.Labels: New Zealand
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 12:01 PM
This blog is a proud winner of the 2009 Spinetingler Award for special services to the industry and its blogkeeper a proud former guest on Wisconsin Public Radio's Here on Earth. In civilian life I'm a copy editor in Philadelphia. When not reading crime fiction, I like to read history. When doing neither, I like to travel. When doing none of the above, I like listening to music or playing it, the latter rarely and badly. Click here to find an independent bookstore near you.
17 Comments:
Kia Ora Peter - thanks for the plug, and the entry/comment you made yourself. Btw, which NZ book would you like if you're one of the winners?
Craig, I'll have to think about it. You'll know from my comment that I'm curious about what Paul Thomas got up to other than Guerilla Season, but I'm also curious about Vanda Symon. How about if I win, I send you a couple of dollars, and you send two books?
works for me. in fact, happy to do a trade if you like (outside of the competition) - I'll send you a NZ fiction book or two that you want and can't get over there, and you can send me some Canadian fiction you can probably get reasonably easily over there, that I can't get on the booksellers shelves here (e.g. William Deverell, Mark Zuelke etc)?
How does that sound?
Sounds good, except that I might want to read the books before I send them. I don't know those names. My big Canadian crime-fiction discovery has been John McFetridge.
http://kiwicrime.blogspot.com/2009/08/review-of-april-fool-by-william.html
A wee bit about Deverell there. I met a handful of Canadian crime writers, and they had similar issues to NZ ones - a lot more good crime writers than I realised, but many really weren't sold much outside Canada/US (if even in the US).
Of course Linwood Barclay, Peter Robinson etc are a bit of an exception to that... but there were plenty of others (e.g. Deverell, Zuehlke, and many many more)
Giles Blunt and Louise Penny might be two more exceptions. One thing some Canadian crime writers complain about is resistance on the part of publishers to books set in Canada. Perhaps that's what comes with existing next to the U.S.
Putnam didn't have that problem with Dick Francis's The Edge. It takes place almost entirely on a train from Toronto to Vancouver. Worked just fine for me, too; it's one of my favorites.
Perhaps the setting was more the train than Canada.
Does Dick Francis write non-horse-racing mysteries, too? If not, where on the train are the horses kept?
Horses were in a special car.
The setting was mostly the train, but there's a memorable scene in the Canadian Rockies involving a blizzard and flares.
In his more recent books he often wrote about characters who are on the periphery of the racing world themselves (wine merchant, small plane pilot, banker) but get roped into something happening in that world. His first three or four had jockeys as heros, but then he moved on.
Ha! My question was not entirely serious, but it should have been.
I'll tell you: a transcontinental train trip offers amply opportunity to keep the narrative moving. I can also well believe that horse racing, in addition to the thrill of the sport, would have ample attraction for crime writers: glamour, drugs, money and the chance to launder it.
I've mentioned this elsewhere, but Dominique Manotti, Peter Temple and Declan Hughes are among contemporary crime writers from around the world who have been drawn to horse racing as a setting and a subject.
Every time I re-read Francis I regret that I've never lived anywhere near a track so I could watch a race. Watching the Triple Crown races on the tube just isn't the same.
Every time I re-read Francis I regret that I've never lived anywhere near a track so I could watch a race. Watching the Triple Crown races on the tube just isn't the same.
As it happens, the novel I just started reading, Unspoken by Mari Jungstedt, opens with a horse-racing scene, though the action happens mostly among the bettors rather than on the track.
By the way, we've now hit the entry threshold on the competition to have two 'winners' - a few more entries and there will be three... more entries/more winners...
Kia Kaha from Aotearoa
May this contest drive your postage expenditures sky high.
It's looking that way - everyone has been so enthusiastic that I wish I could send everyone a Kiwi crime book, but considering we've got like 15 entries, from places as diverse as US, Aust, UK, Ireland, and Russia - my bank balance wouldn't cope.
NB Did you get my email about the other "Ngaio Award" thing?
You appear to be doing a good job of drumming up interest. I saw the Russian reply -- very cool.
That e-mail arrived just as I was shutting down my computer at home either for the night or to head out. I don't have access to it from this computer, so I'll look at it when I get home tonight.
Post a Comment
<< Home