Books to Die For at Bouchercon
So, while Ali Karim naturally had his fellow diners spitting up pizza through their noses at last night's dinner, we also talked about crime writers and books we loved. Sara Gran got big thumbs up, as did Stuart Neville, John Connolly, Adrian McKinty, and (yes) R.J. Ellory, among others.
Speaking of Neville, Connolly, McKinty, et al., I have just picked up Books to Die For, and I like it already. BtDF is a collection of essays by 120(!) crime writers about the crime novels that mean most to them.
The opening pages alone will fuel many discussions: a chronological list of the subject authors, from Poe and Dickens to Perihan Mağden and Mark Gimenez. See what I mean? This is not just a bunch of tributes to Chandler, Hammett, and Christie, though they make the list, too. I opened the book at random and came upon James Sallis writing about Jean-Patrick Manchette's 3 to Kill, for example. So, the early guess is Books to Die For will be a treasure house worth dipping into for years.
© Peter Rozovsky 2012
Labels: Books to Die For, Bouchercon 2012, conventions
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 9:55 AM
2 Comments:
Mine arrived yesterday. Haven't even had time to open it yet, but I'm looking forward to it.
There's an event tomorrow afternoon here at Bouchercon featuring John Connolly and all the contributing authors. I hope some of them will talk about their choices. I realiized today that I had first heard of one of the book's more obscure choices, Mehmet Murat Somer's, a few years ago when I asked him (Somer) about authors he liked.
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