clair081

Sometimes when I'm reading two books at the same time, or close together, one of them suffers from the inevitable comparison. I had been anticipating the third Danish crime novel by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis, and just about the same time an advance of that book arrived (courtesy of SoHo Crime) a copy of the new translation of the second Anna Jansson novel featuring Maria Wern, Strange Bird, arrived in the mail, courtesy of Stockholm Text (an interesting new project that has published a number of Swedish crime novels in translation). The two books share some things in common. The Danish duo usually focuses on crime that comes into Denmark from elsewhere, or at least has its origins in a globalized Europe. In the new book, the source is the Ukraine, an open field for criminals after the fall of the Soviet Union (according to these authors, at least). Natasha has fled her native country for asylum in Copenhagen, only to be a...

Not really daily, since I don't post quite that often, but a mismatched double post for today. The first is George Pelacanos's forthcoming The Double, which has something in common with Massimo Carlotto's At theh End of a Dull Day, which I reviewed recently (at least more in common with that book than the second one reviewed here today). The second for today is a straight-to-Kindle book in Italian, Viola Veloce's Omicidi in Pausa Pranzo (Murders in the Lunch Break), which is a combination crime novel, workplace satire, and Bridget Jones sort of story (more later). What Pelecanos shares with Carlotto is a noir tradition as well as a reliance on revenge or vendetta as a plot structure. But while Carlotto's characters fully, even joyfully, inhabit the revenge plot and the accompanying violence, Pelecanos's main character here (whom we've seen before, Spero Lucas) is conflicted and trouble (though hardly less violent). Lucas is a private detective whose specialt...