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Only one of Giorgio Scerbanenco's crime novels featuring Dr. Duca Lamberti had been published in English translation (Duca and the Milan Murders) before Hersilia Press brought out the very first Duca story, A Private Venus, last year. When I read Duca and the Milan Murders years ago, it struck me as a conventional murder mystery--but now, having read A Private Venus, I'm going to have to go back and re-read it (if I can find it), because A Private Venus is anything but conventional. Duca is a disgraced physician, just released from prison, when a wealthy man offers him an unconventional job, watching over (and if possible, detoxifying) the alcoholic waster who is his son. Duca takes the job, not having any other prospects, but discovers that there is a crime underlying the young man's lethargy and alcoholism. He enlists the help of a policeman from his past as well as a young woman that he meets, but basically Duca draws all the narrative energy upon himself. Which is a bit...

Camilla Ceder's Babylon, the second in her series featuring detective Christian Tell and his (now) girlfriend Seja Lundberg, has a family resemblance to a specific end of the Scandinavian crime spectrum: specifically that occupied by Mari Jungstedt and Camilla Läckberg. In all these writers' books, a central male character (a policeman or a reporter) meets a woman who is a witness in the first book's crime, and they become a couple in later books. In Läckberg's case, the non-cop/reporter female character is her central character, Erica Falck, is her central character and continues to be involved in crimes and investigations. In the cases of Jungstedt and Ceder, the relationship remains central to the stories, but the non-professional partner is less involved directly in the crimes (though in the case of Jungstedt she's dragged into events at least once more). Also, the books by all three are about the people in the story more than the crimes. And in all three, the p...

Apparently Jake Needham's newly published second volume of his Inspector Tay series, The Umbrella Man, is available only in a Kindle version because the government of Singapore is not happy with his portrayal of their island republic. Having been to Singapore, and having just read The Umbrella Man, I can well believe that. The novel is about the blending of personal, professional, and cultural disasters, but the story is grounded in an unusually direct portrayal of the consequences of Singapore's quest for stability and prosperity at the expense of other democratic goals. The novel begins with a series of bombings that will inevitably suggest terrorist attacks across the world (particularly, to an American reader at least, 9/11). The attack destroys the architectural and commercial heart of the city-state, as well as the confidence of its citizens. But Tay, due to the events of the previous novel, The Ambassador's Wife, is persona non grata with his own superiors and with t...