Title changes that drive you nuts (or not)

Why do publishers change a book's title when translating or reissuing it? Why does Åsa Larsson's Solstorm become Sun Storm in the United States but The Savage Altar in the United Kingdom? How about The Smell of the Night and The Scent of the Night? Again, same book.

And could political sensitivities lie behind the change in title of Matt Beynon Rees' first crime novel set in the Palestinian territories? The Collaborator of Bethlehem in the U.S. became The Bethlehem Murders in the U.K. (The British edition also changes Rees' name, dropping Beynon.)

Sometimes a change is easy to understand. Fred Vargas' Have Mercy On Us All made a better English title than a literal translation of the French original would have been: Leave Quickly, and Return Late. And Cornell Woolrich's story "It Had to Be Murder" is more easily found these days under the title of the movie that Alfred Hitchcock made from it: Rear Window.

OK, readers, what title changes delighted or infuriated you — or made you scratch your head or roll your eyes?

And here's a special Detectives Beyond Borders quiz: Adrian Hyland's wonderful Australian debut novel, Diamond Dove, will be published in the United States as Moonlight Downs. Why?

© Peter Rozovsky 2007