Sweden: Stieg Larsson's 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo' - starting and stopping.

The world is thick with reviews of 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo' and there's little need for me to contribute another one. I haven't read other commentaries but the fact that it's a number one bestseller indicates how popular it is, and I believe that it has also achieved the feat of being critically acclaimed, too.

This is difficult for me, as I started reading the book a few months ago and found it less than compelling. The prologue was intriguing, but then I found myself bogged down with chunks of exposition about financial crimes far less exotic than those happening around me every day. I realised I was skimming paragraph after paragraph. Lisbeth Salander was introduced, but I wasn't moved by her, either. She struck me as a character very much following in the footsteps of, say, Donna Leon's Signorina Elettra crossed with the goth-chick-lab-tech traits of a variety of US dramas such as 'NCIS' (2003 - current) and 'Mysterious Ways' (2000 - 2002).

So I laid it aside as wave upon wave of praise crashed over it, and I felt compelled to give it another try. By the end of the week I'll know whether I've changed my mind!

Until then, here's my map of the (mainly) Stockholm locations of TGWTDT as far as I've now got:


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Sweden: Camilla Lackberg as the new Agatha Christie? A review of 'The Ice Princess'

The third stop on WhereDunnit's crime fiction tour of Sweden is the small fishing village of Fjällbacka, setting for Camilla Lackberg's first novel The Ice Princess.

Although she is the author of six books featuring Inspector Patrik Hedstrom of the Tanumshede police and writer Erica Falck, only one has been translated into English so far, with another, The Preacher, due for release in February. Lackberg has been called Sweden's Agatha Christie, and while it is certainly true that The Ice Princess is a beautifully plotted whodunnit, the characterisation and description is far more rich and dense than this comparison implies.

What she does share with many of Christie's stories is the setting she has chosen for her series: a self-contained community, where everyone tries to know everybody else's business, and secrets are hard to protect – but where keeping up appearances is vital. The community in The Ice Princess is the coastal village of Fjällbacka, where Lackberg herself was born and lived as a child.

When author Erica Falck returns to her childhood home in Fjällbacka to tidy up loose ends after the sudden death of her parents, she discovers the frozen, dead body of a schoolfriend she hasn't seen for decades. Reluctantly at first, and with the help of local police inspector Patrik Hedstrom, she begins to unravel the threads of mysteries that have lain hidden at the heart of the community for many years.

The importance of the setting is emphasised by the inclusion of a map of Fjällbacka, and the descriptions of the landscape are both vivid and an integral part of the story. One of the subplots concerns tourists and incomers from Stockholm buying up traditional homes just to use in the summer for holidays.

The characters are deftly drawn: Erica is a sympathetic lead: despite her tall blonde attractiveness – which would normally set me against her from the get-go - she is a little preoccupied about her weight, and, at thirty five and alone, worries about never having a partner or a child. The police squad are a cast of the usual suspects – the fiercely efficient secretary, the one coasting towards retirement, the suck-up – but my favourite is Police Chief Bertil Mellberg, with his paunch, his uncontrollable comb-over and his unshakable self-belief. Think Andy Dalziel without the charm or grace …. or skill.

Fjallbacka is about 90 miles north of Göteborg (Gothenburg) on the west coast of Sweden up near the border with Norway's coast. Although now primarily a tourist destination because of the picturesque aspect of the many original buildings, in the past it was a fishing village and it is this history which is important in The Ice Princess.

Fjällbacka means 'mountain hill' because the village is situated around the huge stone cliff of Vetteberget which is fractured by a fissure known as Kungsklyftan (King's Chasm/Cleft). The village is surrounded by an archipelago of lovely tiny islands, which also attracts many tourists – including, in the past, the famous movie actress Ingrid Bergman, who owned an island in the Fjallbacka archipelago and loved to go there each summer. At her request, after her death her ashes were scattered around Fjallbacka, and her statue was erected in the village square which was renamed in her honour.The hotel in the village, the Storla Hotellet Fjallbacka had mixed reviews on Tripadvisor, but most of the information available is of course in Swedish. There are more images here.

The Ice Princess and The Preacher have been made into a successful series for Swedish television. Lackberg has commented: " I loved the Swedish TV-series and especially the casting, which was great. They did the two first books and the series had very high ratings when it aired in Sweden, so they will now film the next two books come this fall." There are DVDs but they are only available in Sweden and I do not know if they come with English subtitles (I know some of the Swedish Wallanders do). This website, though in Swedish, shows the actors who play the main characters.

Last summer, Lackberg and Swedish chef published a cookery book called Smaker from Fjällbacka (Tastes from Fjällbacka), only available in Swedish. A review can be found here.

Finally, one of the things I was surprised to note in passing when reading this book, which struck me again as I start reading Stieg Larsson's The Girls With The Dragon Tattoo (yes, I know I'm way behind on this) is that Sweden has a statute of limitations on homicide, so that after 25 years even first degree murderers cannot be prosecuted. In 2005 there was discussion of removing this limitation, as DNA and other trace evidence can now be recovered from very old cases, but as far as I can discover it has not been repealed yet.

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Northumberland: Ann Cleeves and the Vera Stanhope books.

The windswept coastal villages and rolling moors of Northumberland are the settings for Ann Cleeves's three novels featuring Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope, first introduced in The Crow Trap (1999).

In this book three women, all of them with secrets, come together in an isolated cottage in the Northumberland National Park to undertake an environmental survey. But after two sudden deaths it is up to Stanhope to untangle the mysteries they would rather keep hidden. Big, brisk but basically kindly and with a reputation for eccentricity, Stanhope gets results through dogged persistence coupled with a wise intelligence and the ability to see unexpected connections. She hides her decisive mind behind a lugubrious and down-to-earth exterior. The location for this story – Baikie's Cottage – is based on a settlement called Threestone Burns, right up in the hills of the national park.

The second in the series, Telling Tales (2005), sees Stanhope seconded to South Yorkshire to investigate an apparent miscarriage of justice, but she returns to her cottage in the Northumberland hills for Hidden Depths (2007). Cleeves's mastery of shifting persepective is particularly evidenced in this finely crafted tale. The investigation revolves around a series of bodies discovered drowned surrounded by flowers like pre-Raphaelite figures, and a group of four men bound by the ties of old friendship.

Seaton, where much of the novel is set, is based on Holywell, near Whitley Bay in Northumberland. Deepden, where one of the bodies is discovered, is a fictional village up the coast is somewhere on the wide sweep of Druridge Bay. Hidden Depths is an intriguing and beautifully crafted story, and Stanhope is a strong and interesting detective.

Although I am enjoying very much Cleeves's latest Shetland Quartet series, I hope we haven't seen the last of Vera Stanhope!

Italy: Andrea Camilleri's "Paper Moon" in paperback, and Montalbano's Sicily.

You won't find Vigàta on any map of Sicily. It’s the fictional setting for Andrea Camilleri's highly popular series of nine (in English) crime novels featuring temperamental yet wise Inspector Salvo Montalbano.

Paper Moon is the most recent to be translated into English, and the paperback version has just been reissued. It delivers the expected romp as Montalbano once again finds himself investigating beautiful women, this time involved in the death of a travelling pharmaceutical salesman, aided (or hindered) by his caricature police colleagues. And throughout the story he is plagued by intimations of his mortality.

Camilleri himself grew up in the Sicilian town of Porto Empedocle on the SW coast of the island, and this is the inspiration for Vigàta, the little harbour town in which Montalbano serves alongside his small band of officers. In fact, so proud are the inhabitants of their literary connections that in 2003 the town was officially renamed Porto Empedocle Vigàta. The fictional city of Montelusa is based on Agrigento, the nearby provincial capital.The detective's favourite trattoria, the San Calogero, actually exists at 2 Via Roma, Porto Empedocle. The owners are used to tourists coming in and asking for Montalbano's favourite dishes.

The Italian television episodes based on the Montalbano novels were filmed in various places around Sicily, but much of Vigàta was shot in the hillside town of Ragusa (see map below) a glorious baroque fortified town with steep winding streets, slashed by a deep ravine created by an earthquake which split the town in two in the 17th century, now spanned by four impressive bridges.

Montalbano's beachside home with terrace was shot using the seafront at Punta Secca, although the bedroom was filmed a few miles away at a seafront villa in Marina di Ragusa.

For a taste of the fantastic scenery and settings for the Italian TV version, visit the RAI Montalbano website, and here is a direct link to go directly to this page from which you can watch all the TV episodes – in Italian, of course.

I especially love the opening sequence which has some fabulous shots, so it's worth a look even if you don't intend to watch each 90 minute show in full! My only difficulty with this series is that Luca Zingaretti seems a decade too young for my idea of Montalbano, but he's quite compelling in the role.

Finally, anyone wishing to follow in Salvo's footsteps, there are organised tours– or you can even have one customised especially for you!

Click on the map to view larger

UK: TV detective series scheduled for 2009 include the following:

Another six episodes of Alexander McCall Smith's The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency stories. Despite the sad death of Anthony Mingella. Jill Scott and Anika Noni Rose return as co-founders Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi, but find their turf being trodden on by newcomer Cephas Buthelezi (Paterson Joseph) - a fellow private detective who sets up a rival agency and moves in on Mma Ramotswe's patch. The series is currently scheduled to air from March 2009.

David Peace's Red Riding Quartet has been made into a trilogy of films set in Seventies and Eighties Yorkshire – and drawing on the real-life hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper. Both the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph rate it as likely to be one of the television highlights of the year. Paranoia, police corruption and the Yorkshire Ripper form the backdrop to three feature-length adaptations of Peace's bleak, violent novels. Currently scheduled to air on Channel 4 in March, it stars Warren Clarke (Andy Dalziel) and Sean Bean.

I was attending Leeds University and living in Leeds during the 1970s and it was very scary at the time. The final victim was killed just off Alma Road in Headingly, where a very close friend and his wife lived whom we had visited many times.

UK: When will the Kindle be available here?

Why are we wa-aiting?

Of course, I know the technical reason given by Amazon: they have to sign up a variety of wireless networks to cover the whole of Europe before they want to go to the effort of introducing the Kindle over here.

But surely they must have some idea of when it is likely to be launched in the UK? I have been seriously thinking about buying the Sony Reader for several months, but each time I restrain myself in the belief that as soon as I do, the Kindle will be launched in the UK and I will kick myself for not waiting.

Today, searching for a copy of Charles Todd's A Fearsome Doubt which I want to read because it's set in Kent and I'm still working on my Wheredunnit book proposal [Promise to self: This WILL be completed by the end of January] I discovered that I could download it immediately as an ebook. So I'm all of a dither again.

There seem to be drawbacks and advantages to both the Sony and the Kindle.

The Kindle:

• It's not available in the UK and there are no details as to when it will be: very big CON
• Judging from the US website there are thousands of crime fiction books which I might want to read all ready for downloading: PRO
• But - the UK website might not have as many as the US one, and we might not be able to download from the US Amazon - Sony US ebooks aren't available to UK readers: CON
• From the available images, the Kindle isn't as attractive as the Sony 505: CON
• The Kindle has a keyboard, so you can make notes on what you are reading: PRO
• Eventually, when the wireless is set up, downloading wirelessly will be very rapid: PRO
  
• There is no effective & attachable light for the Kindle, only those old-fashioned clip-on things which I've never got on with for real books: CON
• Kindle books appear to be cheaper than Sony books, though it's hard to make a comparison: PRO

Pro: 4 Con: 4

The Sony 505

• It's available here now: very big PRO
• It's cheaper than the Kindle is likely to be, at £194, which includes a CD of 100 classics: PRO
• It's prettier than the Kindle, and the 505 has buttons to make one-handed reading easy: PRO
• A lighted cover is available for reading in the dark without disturbing anyone (or reading in most hotels nowadays): PRO
• There's no way of entering notes about books being read: probably a CON
• It isn't wireless. Can't see this as a problem for myself, as I won't be wanting newspapers and magazines. But never having experienced it, I might be quite wrong: probably CON
• The choice of books from Sony/Waterstones (and other UK-available sites) is fairly limited. For instance, I couldn't have got the latest Arnaldur Indridason: CON
  
• The books available from Sony/Waterstones are VERY expensive - 'The Private Patient' is even more costly as an ebook than it was to purchase as a hardback: big CON

Pro: 4 Definite Con: 2 Probable Con: 2

So I remain undecided - for now. But I don't think I can hold out much longer..........

Switzerland: "And Then There Was No One" by Gilbert Adair - Review

The postmodernist always rings thrice

And Then There Was No One is the third and possibly last book to feature Gilbert Adair's Agatha Christie pastiche caricature, Evadne Mount. She first appeared in the Boxing Day country-house mystery The Act of Roger Murgatroyd, which I read, and then A Mysterious Affair of Style, which I didn't.

This novel is written as a first person narration in the persona of the author 'Gilbert Adair' – a writer, who could be mistaken for David Hockney, who has written two Agatha Christie pastiches featuring a detective called Evadne Mount….. get the idea?

We are presented with the facts of the murder – who, when, where – on the first page of the prologue (a necessity, really, since the first body doesn't turn up until two thirds of the way through the book) – a prologue which exists as a wily chunk of exposition about the dead man's backstory. The victim – Gustav Slavorigin –was a Rushdie-esque figure, the author of a highly controversial polemical essay denigrating the American experience on 9/11 who has been pursued by, amongst others, the backwoods followers of a rabid neo-con Texan zillionaire.

The narrator, Slavorigin and several other ill-assorted authors meet in the Swiss town of Meiringen, site of the Reichenbach Falls, for the first Sherlock Homes literary festival. Meiringen is a real town with a real Sherlock Holmes Museum, proud of its literary associations and the Sherlock Holmes Hotel, though it sports the SportHotel (it must be catching…) branding is actually, I understand, one of the Hilton portfolio, though for some reason they keep this quiet.

Bravely, the Adair-narrator recites complete a piece from his "Unpublished Casebook Of Sherlock Holmes" to the audience at the convention – the completely new story 'The Giant Rat of Sumatra' as referenced in Conan Doyle's tale 'The Adventure Of The Sussex Vampire'.

Self-references abound, and real people are mixed with fictional creations: the real-fictional and the fictional-fictional worlds are dizzyingly interwoven, and the climax left me grinning with admiration.

The book is full of sly allusions to Christie's stories (Adair rents a house in the Cotswolds and travels down to it weekly on the 4:50 from Paddington) and to other crimewriters' works, for example the Martin Beck stories of Sjowall & Wahloo. But any jokes in German – and those in many other languages also – will have flown unnoticed right past me.

And that's really the problem I had with this book. This reader felt frustrated that she was probably missing more than half the jokes; it was frequently unclear whether the "author's" mocking tone was directed at himself, his story, or – most probably – at me. Although I enjoyed the romp and the worthy ending, I was left with the feeling that I'm not clever enough to fully appreciate the dazzling virtuosity on display in And Then There Was No One. And that, dear reader, is not a comfortable realisation!

The bronze statue of Sherlock Holmes outside the museum at Meiringen, Switzerland

Iceland: "Arctic Chill" by Arnaldur Indriðason - Review

Arctic Chill is the fifth book featuring Reykjavik detective Erlendur Sveinnsson to be translated into English – the first two in the series, Sons of Dust and Silent Kill, are still not available to the English reader.

The bitter cold of an Icelandic January sees Inspector Erlendur and his team - Sigurdur Oli, struggling with the concept of adoption as his wife desperate for a child, and Elinborg, whose own infant is sick – investigating the death of a ten year old boy found stabbed and abandoned in an icy garden.

His mother is a Thai incomer, and Erlendur must consider a range of suspects from teachers and classmates to neighbours and local racists. Matters are complicated further when it seems that a dangerous paedophile might be living in the area. At the same time Erlendur is preoccupied not only by the disappearance of a local housewife but also the questions raised during a visit from his daughter, Eva Lind, which he does not wish to answer.

This is a compelling police procedural which I can thoroughly recommend: Erlendur is in the mould of depressed Scandinavian detectives Martin Beck and Kurt Wallander, but is his own man, and the gradual unravelling of his personal tragedy from novel to novel is intriguing, as is the insight into Icelandic society and the finely drawn characterisations and spare prose style.

The next Erlendur novel, Harðskafi, promises much. It apparently takes the detective back to his childhood home (see below) deep into his soul and the defining trauma of his youth, the loss of his younger brother. Released in Iceland in 2007, it is due to be published in English in the Autumn of 2009 under the provisional title Hypothermia.

Sweden: In the footsteps of the first police series - up the Göta Canal with 'Roseanna'

The second stop on WhereDunnit's crime fiction tour of Sweden: the Göta Canal at Lake Boren.

The ten books by Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo featuring Detective Martin Beck of Sweden's National Homicide Squad, which together form one work consisting of ten individual instalments, have been called the first true police procedurals, and the first great series of police thrillers. As a fan of Scandinavian crime fiction for several years, I felt it was about time I went back to this source.

It's perhaps difficult now to appreciate quite how revolutionary the concept was - a series with a protagonist detective who was an ordinary man, not a hero or Lord or ratiocinative genius, but instead which demonstrated the day-to-day slog and tedium of a protracted investigation.

It is clear where Henning Mankell found some of his inspiration for Kurt Wallander - in fact, so many European policemen can trace their lineage back to Sjowall & Wahloo's creation, an introspective, wise, philosophising man with an unhappy home-life. In this very first novel, Beck reminds himself: "You have three of the most important virtues a policeman can have – you are stubborn and logical and completely calm."

The strange thing about these books is that there is so much that is familiar and up-to-date that it's easy to forget that the first one, Roseanna, was first published in 1965. It's only when the policemen have to wait for weeks and exchange letters and crackling telephone calls with their counterparts in Lincoln, Nebraska, that the reader is pulled up with a start, to realise that this was a world without mobile phones, computerized records and internet searches.

Roseanna begins with a dead body, specifically located in date and time and place, being pulled out of the water at the western edge of Lake Boren, where a series of five locks steps the Göta Canal up to Lake Vättern. (See map - the starting point of the plot is indicated by the green circle). The investigation into the death of the girl - eventually identified as the eponymous Roseanna - develops slowly through the following seven months until Beck finally arrests the killer.

It is wonderful to discover that the cruise ship which features so vividly in the story in 1963 – the MS Diana – still operates the route today: you can take the same cruise along the Gota Canal on the same ship as the ill-fated Roseanna! The scene of the crime was cabin A7: the MS Diana was refitted in 1987, and Cabin A7 is still on the main deck, but not quite in the correct position for Roseanna's cabin as described by Sjowall and Wahloo.

To travel on the cruise Stockholm to Gothenburg costs about £3,600 for two, although as Roseanna only made it to Boren Locks (Borenshult) a few miles east of Motala before her body was dumped in the water, you can get the experience in a two-day cruise from Soderkoping to Motala for £800 for two people in a (tiny) double cabin - a bargain, then! To see for yourself, visit the Göta Canal webpage in English.

I highly recommend the edition I read, published by Harper Perennial in 2006. It features an interesting introduction by Henning Mankell, and articles and interviews at the back by Rick Shepherd. The only criticism I have is that the jacket designer clearly hadn't read the book, as Roseanna on the front has blonde hair and much make-up and bears no resemblance to the girl in the story. I intend to collect them all in this edition, if I can get hold of them – while I'm saving to to take that cruise up the Göta Canal from Stockholm to Gothenburg……..

Sussex: Peter Guttridge - 'A Ghost Of A Chance'

I've thoroughly enjoyed this week reading 'A Ghost Of A Chance' by Peter Guttridge (pub.1998, Headline) featuring his self-deprecating and witty series protagonist Nick Madrid.

As the story opens, Madrid is huddled on a South Downs hillside near Ditchling Beacon. He has been persuaded by his domineering and lubricious editor Bridget to spend Walpurgis Night, 30th April, camping beside a supposedly haunted prehistoric burial chamber where occultist Aleister Crowley - aka the Wickedest Man in the World, and the Great Beast - tried to raise the devil.

All Madrid manages to raise is a girly-scream when, after a bottle of beaujolais and an attack by rampant cows, he discovers a man hanged by his ankles in a nearby graveyard.

Madrid books a room in the local pub to investigate the death and the goings-on at the local mansion, Ashcombe Manor, which has been turned into a New Age conference centre full of dubious characters. Add to the mix an old friend of Madrid's who is shooting a movie about Aleister Crowley in Brighton Pavilion accompanied by various egomaniac method actors, and you have a highly-readable romp. The only thing that's serious here is the craft of the writer!

Sweden: Henning Mankell's Wallander comes to BBC 1 on November 30th

The first stop on our crime fiction tour of Sweden: Ystad

'Wallander', the BBC series based on Swedish author Henning Mankell's series of detective stories featuring Inspector Kurt Wallander is scheduled to begin on 30th November. The first episode (of three) is entitles 'Sidetracked', and stars Kenneth Brannagh as the eponymous cop.

The stories are set in Ystad in Skane, on the southernmost coast of Sweden - which Mankell has compared to Texas: "It runs along the border. I feel that in border countries there is a special dynamism that I use in my stories."

The Ystad Tourist Office has a page on their website about Kurt Wallander, and they run an official Wallander tour called 'In The Footsteps Of Inspector Wallander'. I don't yet know whether the tour is offered in English, but even if it isn't, you can download a useful pdf guide in English. The local paper, the Ystads Allehanda, has a flash movie about Wallander's Ystad. (There is an English translation!) It also includes an interactive map of the Skanes area.

Filming for the BBC series took place in Skane, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how Mankell's spare prose and somewhat bleak vision have been interpreted for television, and set in a landscape that I've only previously experienced through his books.

Now if only I could afford to go there.......

'Sidetracked' won the CWA's Gold Dagger award in 2001, and the other two stories which will be shown are 'Firewall' and 'One Step Behind'. Mankell's stories have been filmed before, but not in English.

Madly reading Sussex, Surrey & Kent!

This half-term week I have been madly reading crime fiction set in the South-East of England, as I am working on a WhereDunnit book proposal.

I have read:

MAD ABOUT THE BOY? by Dolores Gordon-Smith (Sussex)
BLACK COFFEE by Agatha Christie & Charles Osborne (Surrey)
MAXWELL'S CHAIN by M J Trow (Sussex)
SAVAGE TIDE by Glen Chandler (Brighton)
A FOREIGN FIELD by Margaret Mayhew (Sussex) - which turned out after all not to be crime fiction
FATAL LEGACY by Elizabeth Corley (Sussex)

and for fun, AN ENGLISH MURDER by Cyril Hare, which I took with me to my annual check-up at Guy's Hospital. Lucky I did, too, as I had to wait over an hour to see the consultant.

I am currently reading THE END OF SOLOMON GRUNDY by Julian Symon (Surrey) which I am not remotely enjoying. I hope I find more pleasure in the two stories of his set in Kent which I will get to shortly.

An Exmoor mystery: 'He Should Have Died Hereafter' by Cyril Hare

Whilst doing research on crime fiction in the South West of England I stumbled upon 'He Should Have Died Hereafter' by Cyril Hare, set mainly on Exmoor.

This book was published posthumously in 1957, and is a slim 140 pages - crime and mystery fiction could get away with being considerably shorter for much of the 20th century, it seems. Bannered as an Inspector Mallett mystery ( of which there were a further four) this story is in fact told mainly from the point of view of Hare's other series protagonist, Francis Pettigrew, a retired lawyer of the Queen's Bench.

This is a mystery of the old school: Hare was known for his ingenious plots, and as a lawyer and judge himself, his description of the legal process and finer points of law upon which his plot turns is clear and well-integrated.

The Exmoor setting is richly evoked and creatively employed, though he points out himself in an author's note that Exmoor is a real place but he has invented the specific localities in the story.

Hare deploys a couple of huge coincidences early on in the plot, but they are deftly introduced and did not trouble this reader over-much. 'He Should Have Died Hereafter' (despite the title, the plot owes nothing to 'Macbeth' - or his Lady) was an intriguing afternoon's read, and I have already ordered from the library two of Hare's other classic stories: 'Tragedy At Law' (one of H.R.F. Keating's 100 best crime and mystery books) and 'An English Murder' - apparently a twist on the isolated country-house murder.

Hare only wrote nine crime novels, but it's always pleasing to discover a 'new' writer of mystery puzzles of the classic kind - even if I am fifty years too late!

Northumberland stands in for Peak District & East Anglia: "Place Of Execution" by Val McDermid

Val McDermid's "A Place of Execution" - the first of her novels I ever read, nearly ten years ago - has been powerfully brought to life for ITV, starring Juliet Stevenson and Lee Ingleby.

The echoes of the Moors Murders, present in the novel, are absent in this dramatisation, and the location has mysteriously moved from the Peak District in Derbyshire to Northumberland, but nevertheless this is a compelling piece of drama.

Interestingly, Lee Ingleby also stars in another transplanted crime drama set in the 1960's - BBC's 'George Gently' series, based on the books by Alan Hunter. Norwich author Hunter set his many George Gently stories mainly in his home region of East Anglia, but for reasons best known to themselves the BBC located the stories several hundred miles north in Northumberland, and Lee Ingleby stars as Gently's brash sidekick DS John Bacchus. Ironically, the star of the show, Martin Shaw, is now based in Norfolk.

Murder Most Fell - Lake District Mysteries

Hurrah - my article on crime fiction in the Lake District - 'Murder Most Fell' - is carried in the November issue of 'Lake District Life'. It's a round-up article, featuring the books of Gillian Linscott, Gwen Moffat, Charles Todd, Reginald Hill, Val McDermid, Susan Wittig Albert and Martin Edwards.

Coming also in November's 'Cotswold Life' is my article on crime fiction in that other lovely part of England. There's something particularly compelling about murder mysteries set against a quietly beautiful landscape, I find - it's the incongruity, I suppose, of violence juxtaposed with what is often considered a peaceful, bucolic setting.

Moniack Mhor Crime Writing Course

Moniack Mhor was a fabulous place to spend Easter Monday! From April 9th to April 14th 2007 I attended a stimulating course on Crimewriting, hosted by eminent British crime fiction authors Andrew Taylor and Natasha Cooper. They were inspirational, and the rest of the group wonderful companions.

The course, run by the Arvon Foundation, was held in former croft buildings up in the hills about 3 miles to the north of Loch Ness (which location actually features in Andrew Taylor's recent book "A Stain on the Silence" - highly recommended)

Every day we had morning sessions delving into the creation and construction of crime fiction. The afternoons were free for writing exercises, walking or snoozing. All of us had a private tutorial with both Natasha and Andrew - I found mine extremely helpful, even though I did have to mostly start over with my book!

We were divided into groups of three to do the cooking each evening for the whole party, plus any guests. Some had to cook twice, but I was lucky enough only to have to cook once (lucky for everyone else, that is...) The food was great throughout the week: the recipes are clearly written with all the ingredients provided and it's a super kitchen to cook and socialise in. We ate round a huge refectory table at one end of the main room. For lunch and breakfast we sorted ourselves out, though Richard made a pan of porridge every morning which was much appreciated.

I loved my whole timethere, and found it a very easy place to write. - the view from my bedroom was beautiful, and the isolation and splendour of the scenery meant it was easy to be creative. I even learned not to be so scared of the on-the-spot writing exercises we were given throughout each morning. At the start I was very resistant to these: by the end of the week I had learned that I could, in fact, get something respectable down on paper, and not to be so negative and nervous about them.



In the evenings after the meal we chatted, played Scrabble, gave readings from favourite books, and Andrew and Mark played guitar and sang. On Wednesday we had a guest speaker, Clio Grey, who read from her novel and short stories, and spoke to us about breaking into publishing. So to Anne, Jax, Sheena, Razaz, Joanna, Christina, Mark, Richard and of course Andrew and Natasha - thank you, and see as many of you as possible in Harrogate!

Harrogate Crime Writing Festival 2007 - The Crown Hotel

The Harrogate Crime Writing Festival 2007 , which is to be held at the Crown Hotel , Harrogate, is now open for bookings.

I've booked my weekend pass, and have been doing a little research about the venue!

This hotel, which is currently undergoing extensive refurbishment, has very mixed reviews on Tripadvisor . It's obviously in dire need of the upgrades, with completion promised by the Spring of 2007. Let us hope that it'll all be done before we arrive in July! The refurbished room shown on the hotel website certainly seems pleasant.

The location can hardly be beat - in the centre of the town, right opposite the little Montpelier district with its unique, quirky shops and - most importantly - close to Bettys Cafe Tea Rooms, for wonderful teas, buns and traditional English baking! I especially love their cinnamon toast, and pikelets (imagine a crumpet squashed by a steamroller, a little crispy and laden with butter -yum.....)

It's also not far from the station, for those coming by train, but parking at the hotel seems to be a little limited. There are shoppers car parks close by, and some on-street parking, but obviously Harrogate will be very busy in the middle of summer. Nonetheless, I hope to come by car, as I'm sure I'll be travelling home with many, many books, and don't fancy lugging them around on British Rail!

There isn't much information at the moment about the festival itself on the Festival website - hopefully there will be more shortly. Guest so far include Frederick Forsyth, Lee Child, Val McDermid, Harlan Coben, Laura Lippman and Natasha Cooper.

Jenni Murray, of BBC Radio 4's 'Woman's Hour' is shown as presenting some of the events including a conversation with Val McDermid. I wish her well in view of her current treatment for breast cancer, which she announced on the radio last week, and hope that she will indeed be in good health and able to attend the Festival.

More on this Festival as information becomes available!

Predictable fare : 'Wife Of Moon' by Margaret Coel

Welcome to a regular and idiosyncratic look at crime and mystery fiction from a very personal perspective. My first comment is on a book I bought in Orlando last Thursday and finished reading this afternoon: 'Wife Of Moon' by Margaret Coel.

Coel is listed under Wyoming at wheredunnit.com and this book is the tenth in her series of novels set on an Arapaho reservation, but the first I have read. Last November, when I was in New Mexico, I tried a Tony Hillerman, but to this UK reader much of that was difficult to follow. No such trouble with Coel, and the novel is quite nicely written.

Problem is, there are two strands of murders - one in 1907 and one contemporary. The murderer in the flashback strand is obvious by the end of the first chapter, and the likely villain of the contemporary strand blindingly clear by page 24.

I read on to the end, through twists and turns of plot which were reasonably interesting, hoping that I would be wrong, but unfortunately not. I prefer my mystery fiction to be a little less predictable - at least let me get halfway through the story before I'm sure whodunnit!