Detectives between covers
Maxim Jakubowski, that man of exquisite sensibilities and wearer of many crime-fiction hats, is putting me in a book.Following the Detectives, out from London's New Holland Publishers this fall, is a collection of essays about cities and regions around the world and the fictional detectives who bring them to life. I wrote the essays on Arnaldur Indriðason's Iceland and Andrea Camilleri's Sicily, and let me tell you, that was not the most onerous work I've ever had to do. My fellow contributors include a bunch of people you ought to know, read and admire:
Boston: Michael Carlson
Brighton: Barry Forshaw
Chicago: Dick Adler and Maxim Jakubowski
Dublin: Declan Burke
Edinburgh: Barry Forshaw
Florida: Oline Cogdill
London: David Stuart Davies
Los Angeles: Maxim Jakubowski
New Orleans: Maxim Jakubowski
New York City: Sarah Weinman
Nottingham: John Harvey
Oxford: Martin Edwards
Paris: Barry Forshaw
San Francisco: J. Kingston Pierce
Shropshire: Martin Edwards
Southern California: Michael Carlson
Sweden: Barry Forshaw
Venice: Barry Forshaw
Washington, D.C.: Sarah Weinman
A dummy and sample pages will be on view at the London Book Fair next month, should you happen to be in the neighborhood, and Maxim says the book will be out in early autumn. Your Christmas shopping just got easier.
© Peter Rozovsky 2010
Labels: Andrea Camilleri, Arnaldur Indriðason, Detectives Beyond Borders in books, Following the Detectives, Maxim Jakubowski, New Holland Publishers, reference
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 11:44 AM
34 Comments:
Sounds great Peter! Congratulations :o)
Congratulations! You join a distinguished company of contributors, and I look forward to reading what everyone has to say. As a reader who admires Indridason's novels, and as a former wanderer who spent more than a year in Iceland, I especially look forward to what you have to say about the Land of Fire and Ice.
Thanks. I will look forward especially to reading about places I have not visited. I'll also be eager to see how the other writers interpreted their assignments. This should be fun.
Much obliged, Donna. I'm chuffed!
And did you see I've been reading William McIlvanney and listening to Hamish Imlach? I'll fit right in next time I visit Glasgow.
This is great, Peter: congratulations! I guess you can imagine which essay I will read first ;)
Congratulations. Looks tasty!
I can imagine, Simona. I can't promise that the book will include any recipes, though.
Thanks, Paul. I don't know if I'll get to taste much or any of it before anyone else, though.
Don't worry, I don't expect recipes, but I will want my copy autographed, so we'll have to organize that.
I blush at your request. I'll have to practice; I don't have much experience signing autographs except when signing checks to pay bills.
Peter
Thats very cool.
BTW Maxim's shop in a prime location in the Soho/Theatre District of London is worth a visit by all discerning crime fiction buffs.
Congrats, Peter! This is really exciting!
Many thanks, Brian. I am fairly pleased about this myself.
Thanks, Adrian. Maxim is probably a man of many shops as well as many hats. Do you mean the late, lamented Murder One, his new sell-by-mail operation, or the new maXcrime imprint (publisher of the novel "Watching the Wheels Come Off" by Mike Hodges)?
I used to stay at a hotel near Russell Square where I could see the British Museum out the window (out the window of the shared bathroom, actually). From there it was a short walk down Charing Cross Road and a bit further to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery. The first time I visited Murder One, I was pleased to see Maxim hard at work behind a desk. He had time for a chat, and I stopped and shopped on subsequent visits as well.
FYI I am not connected with the new Murder One mail order only operation... After closing the actual store, my two managers bought the name and the mail order database and goodwill and have branched out on their own (with my total blessing of course). These days all I do is write and edit, going back full circle to what I used to do before Murder One.
Sorry for the factual glitch. I should have done a bit more research.
I should change either the verb tense or the number of hats in my opening paragraph. Thanks.
Congratulations, Peter! - and everyone else involved. Sense of place is one of the key features that makes reading a pleasure for me. As I plan to be globe-trotting next year that book will be a terrific companion.
Thanks. Sense of place can mean different things to different readers and, perhaps, authors as well. That's probably the first thing I'll look for in the essays.
Good gosh, where do you plan to be hopping to?
Haven't settled on an itinerary yet but I hope to look in on some of the cities in Scandinavia that I have enjoyed reading about. I want to visit friends in Brussels and I don't think I've ever read any crime fiction set in Belgium so I must investigate that. I saw the film, In Bruges, which had the most amazing architecture, but I don't believe it was based on a novel.
One of the best, best-known and most prolific crime writers was Belgian, but I don't know if he set any stories there. That's Georges Simenon, of course. And one of the world's most famous fictional detectives was Belgian, but I don't know if Agatha Christie ever had the man with little gray cells work in his own country.
I agree about the architecture in Bruges, though I don't live heights and did not climb that bell tower to the top.
Yes, I knew of the Belgian link for Poirot and Simenon, but Belgium as a locale for crime fiction has eluded me. A quick google search brought up the names of authors Stan Lauryssens and Jef Geeraerts. Must check availability in English.
This encyclopedia entry gives some interesting background about Belgian crime fiction writing up to the 1970s:
http://www.jrank.org/literature/pages/6547/France-Belgium.html
Again, availability may be a problem. Unfortunately I'm no better at learning new languages than I am at speed reading.
Thanks. They seem like interesting characters, Lauryssens for his life and legal problems, Geeraerts for his politically controversial writing.
So nothing counts except the United Kingdom (7 locations), the United States (8), France (1), Sweden (1), and Italy (1). What an incredibly near-sighted view of the world of crime writing Mr Jakubowski has. Given your geographically democratic tastes, Peter, I'm surprised that you agreed to be part of this project.
I was a little surprised that, say, Bangkok was not on the list. But then, I don't know Jakubowski's thinking or the publishers'. For all I know, one or both could have conceived of the book as a guide to crime fiction's hottest current and traditional settings, as opposed to its up-and-coming ones.
I should be seeing Mr. Jakubowski some time in the next couple of months, and I could ask him how he or the publishers chose the settings they did, what the book's goals and intended audiences are, and whether he considered including any additional settings.
Well, if they want a Warsaw one they know where I am!
I imagine Warsaw has figured in a fair number of spy stories. How about crime fiction?
Well, Peter, if I ever finish my novella Red Winter there will be one but there's a ton of material waiting to be used.
There are all kinds of references in current crime fiction to Russians, Armenians, Albanians, Chechens, Croats and Serbs, but nothing jumps immediately to mind about Poles. Could this be because Poland was in relatively good shape when the Iron Curtain came down?
Just came across the criticism of place choices. The book was a commission from a publisher, and their initial proposal was even narrower in terms of locations. I managed to convince them that a half a dozen alternate ones I submitted should be selected.
The final selection is very much in line with commercial appeal or reknown of the writers whose books are being covered.
Should the book do well enough, there is always the opportunity to do a follow-up and cover areas like Russia, Japan, Australia and many others cited in Mr Fritz's note.
Thanks. I'd forgotten that authorial renown was a factor in the selections.
Melbourne would be a good choice if you turn to Australia in a future a collection. Its crime-fiction history dates to 1886, and it seems to the setting for a disproportionate amount of Australian crime fiction to this day.
Oh, my online serial Warsaw Monn has just kicked off at disenthralled:
http://disenthrallme.wordpress.com/issues/issue-6/
Isn't that nice?
Discreet self-promotion is never out of season. Here's the issue in handy, clickable form.
Cheers Peter, you're gent!
My pleasure. I may take a look at work tonight (during an idle moment, of course).
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