Stuck in Mitteleuropa with you

The TBR pile is situated between wars these days, or between Europes, or as close as one can get to between centuries.

First came Rebecca Cantrell's A Trace of Smoke, set in 1931 Berlin. Now are J. Sydney Jones' Requiem in Vienna, which opens with Gustav Mahler conducting a rehearsal of Vienna's Court Opera in 1899; David Downing's Stettin Station, set in Berlin in November 1941; and Olen Steinhauer's The Tourist, which shows that wars (and spy novels) don't end when walls come down.

As I read these books, I'll think about a Europe as exotic and unfamiliar as any African or Asian clime. I'll think about what draws authors to those agitated times and places where eras, civilizations, cultures and religions clash.

These stories all happen where East meets West. What are your favorite borderlands for crime fiction?

While you're thinking, here's the first sentence of Steinhauer's book:

"Four hours after his failed suicide attempt, he descended toward Aerodrom Ljubljana."

Happy reading!

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Just call me Daddy War Books

Readers responded in good number to Friday's post about wartime crime fiction. One suggested I post a list of the nominated books and authors, and here it is:

— Alan Furst
— John Lawton
— Andrew Taylor's Lydmouth series
— David Downing, Silesian Station and Zoo Station
— Jo Walton: Farthing, Ha'penny, and Half a Crown
— Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther novels
— Jacqueline Winspear
— Rebecca Pawel's Carlos Tejeda series (suggested by Rebecca Pool in response to a post about Rebecca Cantrell)
— City of Gold by Len Deighton
— Marshall Browne, The Eye of the Abyss and The Iron Heart
— Charles McCarry

Some readers noted that their suggestions would usually be considered espionage novels or thrillers, but they offered good arguments for including them on a crime reader's list. I made the post to increase my own TBR list and to give a shout-out to good books I might (might!) not get around to reading right away. You helped me do both. Thanks, gentle readers.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009