Detectives beyond other borders

Have you ever peered into a telescope only to find someone peering right back at you? Neither have I, but that's the feeling I get when I find an overseas blog that explores the exotic world of American crime fiction.

I recently received a comment from Bernd Kochanowski, keeper of the newish German-language blog Internationale Krimis, or International crime fiction, which offers "thoughts about crime fiction, especially from the U.S., Great Britain and Ireland." I'll keep an eye on it to see if it offers a perspective on the American scene that I might have missed because I'm too close to it. [Rhian, keeper of the It's a Crime! (or a mystery...) blog, who signs her comments "crimeficreader," might be interested in Bernd's blog signature. He calls himself "krimileser," which means crime fiction reader.]

Then there's Jazz al Nero, an encyclopaedic effort that I recently deemed schmoozeable. This Italian blog's bibliographies are a sobering reminder of how little crime fiction is translated into English. Take the entry on Håkan Nesser. Why should an author from Sweden be especially attractive to readers in Italy? Yet at least five of his books have been translated into Italian, versus just two into English.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

New Mystery Readers Journal

The summer 2007 issue is out, full table of contents and selected articles here. This is the second of two issues about ethnic detectives, with articles from Henry Chang, Nick Stone, Ken Kuhlken and more. Articles include "The African American Sleuth in Genre Fiction," "H.R.F. Keating's Inspector Ghote as an Ethnic Sleuth," and a personal favorite, "Writing Toronto—As Ethnic As It Gets!"

Editor Janet Rudolph always offers a wide-ranging package of articles and reviews on pertinent, provocative themes, and each issue's list of more than thirty articles is apt to contain a surprise or two. Unlike "The Ethnic Detective, Part I," this issue contains nothing by me, but I'll be baa-ack.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

The international side of Mystery Readers Journal

I have now received the print version of Mystery Readers Journal's Ethnic Detectives, Part I issue, the online version of which I wrote about recently. Much of the issue focuses on "ethnic" detectives in the United States, including several articles that wonder what terms such as ethnic and outsider really mean.

Two of the articles relate more directly to international crime fiction: Adrian Hyland's, on how the Central Australian Outback drew him in, and Matt Beynon Rees's, on his novel The Collaborator of Bethlehem. I've written about Hyland's novel Diamond Dove before, and I'd read about his affection for the people of the Outback. Here he expands on this matter and talks also of his love for the land.

I haven't read Rees yet, but he has some interesting things to say about his setting and his novel, the first of a series. Here's my favorite:

By learning the language, I was able to give my characters some of the formalized greetings and blessings that are an important part of Palestinian speech. I translated them, rather than just putting the original Arabic phrase in italics, because I wanted readers to get the poetry of everyday speech. For example, to wish someone good morning my characters say `Morning of joy,' and the response is `Morning of light.' When someone gives them a cup of coffee, they tell them `May Allah bless your hands' Isn't that beautiful?

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Adrian Hyland
Matt Beynon Rees
Crime fiction in translation

Commentary on Khadra

An article in CrimeSpree Magazine's online version shares thoughts about Yasmina Khadra, whose many novels include four about the Algiers police inspector Brahim Llob. The article discusses some of the controversies surrounding the complex figure of Khadra, among them his service in Algeria's army.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Yasmina Khadra
Brahim Llob

New issue of Mystery Readers Journal

The Spring 2007 issue of Mystery Readers Journal is online and off the presses. It includes essays and reviews by Reed Farrel Coleman, Adrian Hyland, S.J. Rozan, Barbara Nadel, the Friends of Chester Himes, and many more, including a review by yours truly of Hyland's Diamond Dove (to be titled Moonlight Downs in its U.S. release from Soho Press).

Each issue of Mystery Readers Journal is devoted to a theme, often of special interest to readers of international crime fiction. Recent issues discussed mysteries set in Italy and mysteries set in the Far East, for example.

The new issue is the first of two on ethnic detectives, with articles on "The Post-Charlie Chan Era", "Who Is Ethnic?", "The Outsiders" and other interesting, even provocative topics. The Mystery Readers Journal link gives you the table of contents for the print magazine, with links to selected articles available online and to information about Mystery Readers International.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

Technorati tags:
Adrian Hyland

You don't have to read German ...

... to enjoy Krimi-Couch (denn Lesen ist spannender), an attractive and wide-ranging German crime-fiction Web site. The Krimis nach Regionen link, for example, offers comprehensive lists of crime fiction by region. Its categories include crime fiction from the Benelux countries, the Middle East, and Africa, for instance; I've already found an author or two whose work I'll look for.

The subject of translations and their availability in the English-speaking world comes up on crime-fiction blogs from time to time. It's interesting to see which translated authors German readers get to read.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

Technorati tags:
German crime fiction

... and a list of European author sites

The Euro Crime family of fine Web sites offers this list of European authors' Web sites, home pages and authors' groups. Not all the sites are in English, so you can even brush up on a language by reading about your favorite authors in Russian, French, Dutch or Spanish.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

A handy checklist of Nordic mysteries

I've just found this list of Nordic mysteries, published last year by the Marin County Free Library. It's almost a year old so not quite up to date, but it makes a nice shopping and reading list for crime fiction from Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland.

It states that no Finnish mysteries are available in English translation, which is not quite the case. Some of Matti Joensuu's work is available, at least in used copies, and there is always my man Pentti Kirstila, whose deadpan short story "Brown Eyes and Green Hair" is available in The Oxford Book of Detective Stories (An International Selection).

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

Non siamo più Roma!

Siamo Roma, that interesting English-language online magazine about the Eternal City, has changed its name for an interesting reason: Too many people thought it was called "Slamorama."

The new name is Rome File , and it's still an ideal guide for English-speaking travelers to Rome. I heard about the magazine through a posting on another blog about an interview with the Roman writer Massimo Mongai that turned into the blog post heard around the world. The interview is now to be found here.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

Technorati tags:
Massimo Mongai

An encyclopedic site

If you read Italian, you might enjoy the Jazz al Nero blog. The biography and bibliography section includes entries about writers whose names you've seen here (Yasmina Khadra, Petros Markaris, Ian Rankin, et al.), plus many more (Léo Malet, Mickey Spillane, Ellis Peters, Cornell Woolrich, etc.). Even if you don't read Italian, it's fun to see all those names on one list.

The entries are good places to pick up basic information on writers about whom you may be curious -- and to practice your Italian.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

A bibliography of crime fiction

I've posted about the Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide to Crime Fiction and T.S. Binyon's Murder Will Out: The Detective in Fiction. Here's a worthy companion to those two works on any crime-fiction reader's bookshelf, even though the revised edition does not yet exist in a form that can be shelved. Go to the Mystery File for information Crime Fiction IV: A Comprehensive Bibliography, 1749-2000, including links to addenda in the revised edition.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

For the thrill of shooting up ...

... to the top of Graham Powell's list at CrimeSpot.net, I'll post this and join the list of bloggers congratulating Graham for CrimeSpot's Gumshoe Award as best crime-fiction Web site. If you haven't visited CrimeSpot, do so now. It tracks what bloggers are saying about crime fiction and other important subjects. That makes it a good research tool as well as an entertaining and idiosyncratic read. I fondly remember the day I first showed up on his list!

French connections

A series of comprehensive and thoughtful posts on the Ile Noire blog traces the history of crime novels in France from post-1968 "neo polar" back through antecedents and predecessors in France, England, the United States, Europe and the ancient world: "Between France and the United States, there is a cultural difference that appears in the crime novel. Where American authors have no political message, our French authors are much more politicized, including in the noir novel all it can contain of the social."

Such histories are common, but this one is more thorough and more pointed than most. The most recent post may be the most interesting, offering, among others, a gold mine of French authors perhaps unfamiliar to many readers. The section includes the author Didier Daeninckx's intriguing definition of the crime novel as "a type of novel whose object is situated before the first page."

The histories include short biographies of notable authors and publication histories. All are worth reading.

© Peter Rozovsky 2006

Grab your Italian dictionaries ...

... and get ready to read Il Falcone Maltese, an Italian magazine about crime and noir fiction, movies and television. The on-line version contains introductions to a wide variety of articles, news, interviews and reviews on crime and mystery Italian and foreign, past and present, current and classic: Gianrico Carofiglio and Orhan Pamuk, to name two in the current issue. For full texts of all the articles, you'll have to subscribe or visit Italy.

© Peter Rozovsky 2006

Technorati tags:
Italian crime fiction

New Australian crime fiction

Crime Down Under's What's New section offers capsule descriptions of new Australian crime fiction -- a good holiday shopping guide.

Technorati tags:
Australian crime fiction

Good Reading from Australia

The Australian Crime Fiction Forum has a link to Good Reading -- the Magazine for Book Lovers, published in print and online versions -- a "great magazine and a useful site for those interested in the Australian book marketplace," according to Karen, who maintains the Australian Crime Fiction site.

A quick glance at Good Reading's contents and archives turned up a long list that included Robert Wilson on why he sets novels in Portugal and Spain, and a series about famous characters that included selections on Dr. Watson and Modesty Blaise. That's an intriguing mix and one that looks well worth exploring.

Technorati tags:
Australian crime fiction

A fine source for news and reviews of crime fiction

The Euro Crime Web site's news section has links to news, views, interviews and lots and lots of reviews from newspapers in Europe and North America. It looks like a great place to browse, to find new books and authors, and to find gifts as that special time of year approaches.

An arresting Spanish site

Detectives literarios is an interesting and eclectic site for those who read Spanish (and what better way to practice a language than reading about detective fiction?)

Among the detectives you'll meet in the introduction are Marco Didio Falco (Marcus Didius Falco, to those of us who read in Latin or English), Salvo Montalbano, Hercule Poirot, Perry Mason, Philip Marlowe, Joseph Rouletabille, Lew Archer, Philo Vance, Sherlock Holmes, Kurt Wallander, Guido Brunetti, Kostas Jaritos, Nastia Kaménskaya, Michael Ohayon, Harry Bosch, John Rebus "y tantos otros." Subjects of recent posts include Chester Himes, Patricia Highsmith and Yasmina Khadra. That's a nice list.

© Peter Rozovsky 2006

A source for short stories.

Those hard-working people at Crime Down Under have started an online crime-fiction magazine. The first issue of The Outpost offers six short stories by Australian and New Zealand writers, and plans are to publish quarterly.

Mysteries Around the World

That's the name of this directory from the Tulsa City-County Library. Click anywhere on the world map, and your computer takes you to a list of mystery stories set where you clicked. The lists include works both by writers from the countries they write about and from elsewhere. That last is not surprising in the case of the one book set in Antarctica.

© Peter Rozovsky 2006