Tana French, Los Angeles Review of Books

My review of The Trespasser, by Tana French, is posted on Los Angeles Review of Books, as of this morning:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/forensic-thousand-one-nights/
@lareviewofbooks

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I started a book this morning, but...

I started reading a book from my tbr pile that I've been looking forward to, based on readers' reviews and the publisher's blurb (and the book will remain nameless here). There was an interesting opening chapter set primarily in the past, an event that will color the rest of the book, and then an opening passage in the "present day," with the Detective Inspector arriving at a crime scene to find a naked, disembowelled woman tied to a bed. At that point I found myself stopping, uncertain whether I want to go on with the book. Haven't we had enough crime scenes like that, and is it inevitable that if we continue reading this one we're going to be treated to lots more women tortured in extravagant and lurid manners? I've pretty much stopped reading serial killer books because I'm weary and nauseated by this sort of thing, but these scenes seem to be unavoidable even in the police procedural and noir segments of crime fiction. Are there no other plots ...
Read more

Crime in Singapore

Image
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...
Read more

Icelandic noir TV series

Image
Iceland hardly seems like a breeding ground for noir fiction, since it’s a small country that the rest of the world knows mainly for its volcanic activity, hot springs, and cold climate. But the country has a famous serial killer, Axlar-Björn (though he was executed in 1596) and has in recent years experienced some of the conditions that foster noir: rapid change and increasing instability and inequality. In fact, Iceland was one of the poorest nations in E urope until, during WWII (known afterwards to to Icelanders as the Blessed War), it was invaded and occupied by foreign powers (England and the U.S. At the end of the war, the occupiers left behind considerable infrastructure that began the modernization and enrichment of the country--leading up to the financial crash in 2008 and the slow rebuilding since then. There has been a flowering of crime fiction from Iceland in recent years, beginning with Arnaldur In∂ridason’s dark police procedurals featuring Erlendur, of which Jar City ...
Read more