Forthcoming Books from No Exit Press/Oldcastle Books

 January 2023

Final Term is by Leigh Russell.When a pupil accuses a teacher of molesting her, his career and marriage are threatened... The girl's corpse is discovered in the woods, and the teacher becomes a suspect in a murder enquiry. The victim's best friend is then murdered so she cannot reveal the killer's identity. The investigating team are satisfied the teacher is guilty, apart from Detective Inspector Geraldine Steel, who believes the wrong man has been arrested. All of her colleagues disagree... but if she is right, the real killer remains at large.

Guns, Dames and Private Eyes: The Rivals of Philip Marlowe - Stories from the Golden Age of the American Pulp Magazines is edited by Nick Rennison. The prototypes of Raymond Chandler's immortal private detective Philip Marlowe first appeared in a magazine called Black Mask in the 1930s. Black Mask was not the only pulp magazine of the period to publish crime fiction. There were news stands full of them with titles like Dime Detective, Spicy Mystery Stories and Ten Detective Aces. And there were plenty of other private eyes in action. This was the era in which the hard-boiled American detective was born and Nick Rennison's anthology gathers an exciting selection of stories about the rivals of Philip Marlowe. From the intriguingly named Cellini Smith to the two-fisted female crime-solver Violet McDade, from the crime reporter Johnny Castle to the quick-witted, fast-shooting Marty Quade, these characters have their own style and originality. Authors like Norbert Davis, reputedly the favourite crime author of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, Cleve F. Adams and Robert Reeves may not have the reputations of Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, another famous name who began his career writing for the pulps, but they knew how to tell a thrilling story. They deserve to be remembered and admired, and this collection highlights more than a dozen of them.

February 2023

Robert B Parker's Fallout is by Mike Lupica. When two seemingly unconnected mysterious deaths occur on his watch, police chief Jesse Stone must pull out all the stops to unravel the truth and stop a killer from striking again. The small town of Paradise is devastated when a star high-school baseball player is found dead at the bottom of a bluff just a day after winning the team's biggest game. For Jesse, the loss is doubly difficult - the teen was the nephew of his colleague, Suitcase Simpson, and Jesse had been coaching the young shortstop. As he searches for answers about how the boy died and why, he is stonewalled at every turn, and it seems that someone is determined to keep him from digging further. Jesse suddenly must divide his attention between two cases after the shocking murder of former Paradise police chief, Charlie Farrell. Before his death, Farrell had been looking into a series of scam calls that preyed upon the elderly. But how do these 'ghost calls' connect to his murder? When threats - and gunshots - appear on Jesse's own doorstep, the race to find answers is on. Both old and new enemies come into play, and in the end, Jesse and his team must discover the common factor between the two deaths in order to prevent a third.

Too many people loved Kelly Rowland. One of them killed her, but was it the man in prison for her murder? Gethin Grey is back in the game. His wife may have left him and he's struggling with life as a single father, but now he's got his biggest case in years. The brutal murder of a young woman called Kelly Rowland has been the talk of the South Wales valleys. Even the conviction of a neighbour, a builder called Morgan Hopkins, failed to stop the gossip. There were too many other suspects still around, among them a pair of coppers: brother and sister. So Gethin was delighted when Morgan's family stumped up the money to pay him and his Last Resort Legals team to reinvestigate the case. But when a new lead takes him undercover into a support group for recovering addicts, Gethin has to confront his own demons. Moving from the former mining towns of the valleys to the shiny new waterfront developments of Cardiff, taking in adult puppet shows and piercing parlors, derelict mines and country clubs, Grey In The Dark is by John Lincoln and lays bare a world in which sex and money collide and everyone has their secrets. 

April 2023

Viper's Dream is by Jake Lamar. A hard-boiled crime novel set in the jazz world of Harlem between 1936 and 1961, Viper's Dream combines elements of the epic Godfather films and the detective novels of Chester Himes to tell the story of one of the most respected and feared Black gangsters in America. At the centre of Viper's Dream is a turbulent love story. And the climax bears an element of Greek tragedy. For the better part of 20 years, Clyde 'The Viper' Morton has been in love with Yolanda 'Yo-Yo' DeVray, a singer of immense talent but a woman consumed by demons. By turns ambitious and self-destructive, conniving and naive, Yo-Yo is a classic femme fatale. She is a bright star in a constellation of compelling characters including the chauffeur-turned-gangster Peewee Robinson, the Jewish kingpin Abraham 'Mr. O' Orlinsky, the heroin dealer West Indian Charlie, the corrupt cop Red Carney, the wife-beating singer Pretty Paul Baxter, the pimp Buttercup Jones and the brutal enforcer Randall Country Johnson. But Viper's Dream has a fast-paced vibe all its own, a story charged with suspense, intrigue and plot twists and spiced with violence and humour. It is also steeped in music. The Viper's story is intertwined with the history of jazz over a quarter century.

May 2023

Salvage this World is by Michael Farris Smith. There was no rising from the dead and there was no hand to calm the storms and there was no peace in no valley. In the hurricane-ravaged bottomlands of South Mississippi, where stores are closing and jobs are few, a fierce zealot has gained a foothold, capitalizing on the vulnerability of a dwindling population and a burning need for hope. As she preaches and promises salvation from the light of the pulpit, in the shadows she sows the seeds of violence. Elsewhere, Jessie and her toddler, Jace, are on the run across the Mississippi/Louisiana line, in a resentful return to her childhood home and her desolate father. Holt, Jace's father, is missing and hunted by a brutish crowd, and an old man witnesses the wrong thing in the depths of night. In only a matter of days, all of their lives will collide, and be altered, in the maelstrom of the changing world.

August 2023

As a favour to her partner, Geraldine agrees to look into the disappearance of a young woman, only to discover that several other young women have also gone missing locally. They all vanished unexpectedly, without trace. When one of the missing women is discovered, unconscious and covered in mud, she dies without recovering consciousness, leaving Geraldine and her team in an urgent race to find the other missing women before it is too late to save them. Without Trace is by Leigh Russell.

September 2023

Master storyteller and award-winning author Chris Offutt’s latest book, Code of the Hills, is a dark, witty, and propulsive thriller of murder and secrets in a town where little is as it seems. Mick Hardin is back in the hills of Kentucky. He’d planned to touch down briefly before heading to France, marking the end to his twenty-year Army career. In Rocksalt, his sister Linda the sheriff is investigating the murder of Pete Lowe, a sought-after mechanic at the local racetrack. After another body is found, Linda and her deputy Johnny Boy Tolliver wonder if the two murders are related. Linda steps into harm’s way just as a third body turns up and Mick ends up being deputised again, uncovering evidence of illegal cockfighting, and trying to connect all the crimes.

October 2023

Never Walk Away is by Nick Triplow. DS Mark (Max)Lomax is a former Demonstration Squad Officer – a Special Branch Unit dedicated to inflitrating political and extremist groups, a world he thinks he has left far behind. Following a botched stakeout of a north London gangster, he finds himself on enforced leave and is called back into his old world of half-truths and conflicting agendas. As he digs into the death of the civil servant, Max is obstructed at evry turn, forcing him to turn to the people he once infiltrated an betrayed for help. With political reputations on the line, the case becomes less about uncovering the truth, then burying it for good.

November 2023

Charlie Walden is the Resident Judge of the Bermondsey Crown Court, where he had hoped for a quiet life, but has found it to be anything but. With the job of balancing the needs of prosecutors, judges, 'Grey Smoothies' – the humourless grey-suited civil servants – and the overall needs of a Crown Court, he soon finds himself struggling to keep the peace with his own delightful humour. In this first full length Walden novel Charlie is faced with a number of topical issues he hadn't anticipated; invited to join the Court of Appeal he finds hmself faced with a case involving the 'confusion' of one of his team; in another, a Trans teacher must be penalised for defacing a statue; a huge and mysterious cat comes to the rescue in yet another case, and so the harrassed Judge must pick his way through this minefield of exasperating casesin order to keep eveyone from the cannabis lobby to the anti-slave traders happy with his judgments. No hope of that quiet life for Charlie then but as ever he picks his way through the issues of the day with satirical good humour, insight and wit in another entertaining look at the British Court system. A Week on Mount Olympus and Other Tales From the Bench is by Peter Walden.

Kellye Garrett on writing Like A Sister

 

FORMER REALITY STAR DESIREE PIERCE FOUND DEAD IN LINGERIE IN BRONX WITH COCAINE AND NO SHOES.

Like A Sister started with a headline. Similar to the one above which is how my main character Lena finds out her estranged sister has passed. The actual one was about a former reality star found dead in the Bronx in New York City with ‘no pants and cocaine.’

It was from the New York Daily News, a newspaper over here known for writing click bait headlines long before click bait was even a thing. It struck me when I first saw it. Not just because yet another amazing Black woman’s life had been cut short. It also struck me how disrespectfully the headline was worded.

I had the same thought as Lena. That the paper wouldn’t have gone the “bit much” route if this young woman had been white.

Differences like this are something I notice a lot as a writer, former journalist, and lover of all things pop culture. Even before I had the idea for Like A Sister, I knew that I wanted to see someone like myself in whatever I wrote next. A single black woman who lives in a metropolitan area and often is overwhelmed by the Strong Black Woman cape meant to protect her – that same cape that often makes her want to crumble under its weight.

This is something I personally deal with a lot – especially over the past two years as I dealt with both the world crumbling due to COVID-19 and my own world crumbling due to the death of my grandfather. Although the circumstances were different – my grandfather died of natural causes at 92 after living a life filled with love and loved ones – I felt bad when I felt bad. I didn’t allow myself to mourn because there was so much to do. Wrapping up a life, especially one as long and beautiful as my grandfather’s, is not an easy thing. And the Strong Black Woman in me didn’t ask for help. I just did it myself.

And that wasn’t the only thing I wanted to see more of in the books on my shelves. I also yearned for more stories of single women living in urban areas. Don’t get me wrong, I love an unreliable married mom living on a suburban cul de sac chock full of secrets. It’s just not my reality.

So like many writers, I wrote a story I wanted to read. Needed to read.

I’ve been a crime fiction lover since I picked up my first Joan Hess cozy as a preteen. Back then, I’d wander the shelves of my local bookstore and camp out in the mystery section like it was a national park. I’d been so excited to see so much crime fiction being written and published by black authors. Only to be so disappointed over the years as more and more of those stories disappeared. It wasn’t much better for books by other crime writers of color.

It’s one of the reasons that Walter Mosley, Gigi Pandian, and I created Crime Writers of Color in 2018. We wanted a safe place to network and share opportunities. To cheer each other on and cheer each other up. To discuss the unique challenges of being a person of color in publishing.

Today we have over 350 members – and counting. And there’s been a resurgence of crime fiction written by and about people of color.

But even today, a lot of our stories are focused on racism – a subject that’s still extremely prevalent in the States. And again don’t get me wrong. We definitely need those stories, but it’s not our only story. We should have all types of books, just like our white counterparts.

That’s why Like A Sister isn’t a story about racism. A story that isn’t focused on dealing with racism but more on the things we all can relate to – just from a decidedly Black perspective. Anyone with a sibling can understand the tricky politics that go into the relationships. As I say in my dedication, I love my sisters even when I hate them – and I know the feeling’s mutual. Lena having to navigate strained familial relationships including the guilt of being estranged from her sister and the anger at her absentee dad are just as important part of the book as the twists. 

Honestly, I still can’t believe this book will be on shelves for everyone to read – especially other black girls and women who are as obsessed with crime fiction as I was and still am. I hope everyone who decides to pick it up understands – and enjoys – what I was trying to do. It wasn’t to try to break down any barriers. It wasn’t to make any statements. It wasn’t to focus on our trauma.

I simply dreamed of writing a fun, twisty beach read. And I hope I succeeded.

Like a Sister by Kellye Garrett (Simon and Schuster) Out Now

She found out her sister was back in New York from Instagram. She found out about her death from the New York Daily News. But she's the only one convinced it wasn't an accident . . . Desiree Pierce, a Black reality TV star, is found dead on a playground in the Bronx. Her death is quickly declared an overdose by the police and the media - tragic, but not a crime. Lena Scott, Desiree's sister, knows that can't be true. Torn apart by Desiree's partying and by their father, a wealthy and influential hip-hop mogul, the sisters haven't spoken in years. But some things about Desiree couldn't have changed, even with time. Nobody is listening to her, but Lena is determined not to let anyone brush off her sister's death. She will find justice, even if it means uncovering the family's darkest secrets - or putting her own life at risk. Because there are two sides to every story - the one being told, and the one nobody wants you to know . . .

More information about Kellye Garrett can be found on her website.

You can also find her on FaceBook, follow her on Twitter and Instagram @kellyekell. She is also the co-founder of Writers of Color. Writers of Color can be found on Twitter @CrimeWoC, On Instagram @crimewoc and on FaceBook.

International conference – Crime Fiction and Democracy

International Conference – Crime Fiction and Democracy

Université Paris Nanterre 22-23 June 2023

Organized by the Centre de Recherches Anglophones (Université Paris Nanterre) 

and Queen’s University Belfast, 

in partnership with the Centre de recherches pluridisciplinaires multilingues (Université Paris Nanterre).

The proposed multidisciplinary conference intends to explore the complex, multifaceted relationship between crime fiction and democracy, from the late 19th century to the present.

Recent research has highlighted crime fiction’s relationship to democratic institutions and shown the productivity of reading the history of the genre against the development and consolidation of Western liberal States. This conference seeks to build on such approaches and extend them in two ways.

Firstly, it will focus on crime fiction’s relationship not only to state institutions but, more generally, to the transformative spirit of democracy – a spirit which, according to our working hypothesis, is one of the forces that has driven and is still driving the growth and success of the genre, in its various manifestations. The conference will therefore aim at linking crime fiction’s sociological and cultural history to the achievement or failure of democratic aspirations in different national and international settings and at different periods. It will, on the one hand, try to show how the genre may have represented a modernizing, democratic force within the literary field overall, particularly as its aesthetics often foregrounds vernacular linguistic practices and attitudes, thus subverting traditional scales of values and paving the way for a more egalitarian vision of literature. On the other hand, it may also highlight how crime fiction has, at times, harboured or promoted reactionary, authoritarian or ‘vigilante’ tendencies. These conflicting positions within the genre – sometimes within single works – reflect both crime fiction’s ideological diversity and the elusive nature of democracy, as an elusive concept whose understanding may shift considerably depending on time and place. But they also, overall, testify to the role of crime fiction as a literary testing-ground for democratic impulses and values.

Secondly, the conference aims at a wide historical and geographical scale, in order to account for the evolutions and manifestations of crime fiction in various cultural areas. It will welcome papers looking at the cultural and political history of the genre both in regions where it has long been established (as in the US and Western Europe) and in others where it has only more recently been recognized, as in Eastern Europe and Russia, Africa, Asia, the Arab world, the Caribbean or Latin America. In such regions, too, the conference will aim at correlating the rise of crime fiction with the emergence, affirmation, rejection or breakdown of democratic aspirations.

In order to explore these theoretical perspectives, this conference invites 20-minute papers, either in English or French, focusing on the multiple connections between democracy and crime fiction throughout the world, and seeking, if possible, a broad analytical approach rather than the analysis of single works.

Suggested bibliography

Bloom, Clive, Cult Fiction: Popular Reading and Pulp Theory, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996

Boltanski, Luc, Mysteries and Conspiracies Detective Stories, Spy Novels and the Making of Modern Societies, Translated by Catherine Porter, Cambridge: Polity, 2014

Boucher, Anthony, “The Ethics of the Mystery Novel,” in Howard Haycraft, ed., The Art of the Mystery Story (1946), New York: Carroll & Graf, 1983

Broe, Dennis, Class, Crime and International Film Noir, Globalizing America’s Dark Art, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014

Corcuff, Philippe, Polars, philosophie et critique sociale, Paris: éditions Textuel, coll. Petite Encyclopédie critique », 2013

Damrosch, David; Haen, Theo d’, Nilsson, Louise (ed)  Crime Fiction as World Literature, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017

Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish, translated by Alan Sheridan, New York: Pantheon Books, 1977

Hardt, Michael & Negri, Antonio, Empire, Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000

Haycraft, Howard, Murder for Pleasure, The Life and Times of the Detective Story, New York: Appleton, 1941

Jay, Paul, Global Matters: The Transnational Turn in Literary Studies, Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2010

Koselleck, Reinhart, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts, translated by Todd Samuel Presner & al., Stanford: Stanford UP, 2002

Manchette, Jean-Patrick, Chroniques, Paris: Payot, Rivages, 1996

Mandel, Ernest, Meurtres exquis: une histoire sociale du roman policier, Montreuil: PEC, 1984

McCann, Sean, Gumshoe America: Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism, Durham: Duke UP, 2001

Miller, D.A, The Novel and the Police, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988.

Müller Elfriede & et Rueff, Alexandre, Le Polar français. Crime et histoire, Paris: La Fabrique éditions, 2002.

Oliver, Kelly & Trigo, Benigno, Noir Anxiety, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003

Pepper, Andrew & Schmid, David, Globalization and the State in Contemporary Crime Fiction: A World of Crime, London: Palgrave, 2016

Pepper, Andrew, Unwilling Executioner: Crime Fiction and the State, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2018. 

Rabinowitz, Paula, Black & White & Noir : America’s Pulp Modernism, New York: Columbia University Press, 2002

Selim, Samah, Popular Fiction, Translation and the Nahda in Egypt, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

Tadié, Benoît, Front criminel : une histoire du polar américain de 1919 à nos jours, Paris: PUF, 2018

Wald, Alan, Trinity of Passion: The Literary Left and the Antifascist Crusade, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007

Žižek, Slavoj, Living in the End Times, London: Verso, 2010

Please submit proposals of up to 250 words, together with a bio of approximately 100 words, by January 15, 2023 to Dominique Jeannerod, Andrew Pepper and Benoît Tadié:

d.jeannerod@qub.ac.uk; a.pepper@qub.ac.uk; benoit.tadie@parisnanterre.fr

Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by February 15, 2023. The conference is planned as an in-person event.

Scientific committee:

Margaret Atack (University of Leeds)

Katia Ghosn (Université Paris 8)

Brooks E. Hefner (James Madison University)

Alice Jacquelin (Université Paris Nanterre)

Dominique Jeannerod (Queen’s University Belfast)

Matthieu Letourneux (Université Paris Nanterre)

Andrew Pepper (Queen’s University Belfast)

David Platten (University of Leeds)

Lucia Quaquarelli (Université Paris Nanterre)

Benoît Tadié (Université Paris Nanterre)

Bodies in the Library as Viewed by Agatha Christie.

 Dr Keith A. Manley, 'Bodies in Libraries as Viewed by Agatha Christie and "Golden Age" Detective Writers

The name of Agatha Christie is synonymous with the discovery of dead bodies in libraries, usually in country houses. This paper will consider death amidst the books in Agatha’s novels and her own upbringing amongst books. But Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple will share the limelight with other `Golden Age’ sleuths of the 1920s and 1930s, with guest appearances from Lord Peter Wimsey, Inspector John Appleby, and others. All of them appreciated libraries, and murder of course; not for the faint-hearted. 

The following seminar will be in-person only at 5.30 p.m. in the Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London, WC1H 0AB. Free to attend, but please book in advance.

Booking can be made here.

Petrona Shortlist Announced

 

Exceptional crime fiction from Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden shortlisted for the 2022 Petrona Award.

Six exceptional crime novels from Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden have been shortlisted for the 2022 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. The shortlist is announced today, Wednesday 16 November and is as follows:

FATAL ISLES by Maria Adolfsson tr. Agnes Broomé (Sweden, Zaffre)

THE THERAPIST by Helene Flood tr. Alison McCullough (Norway, MacLehose Press)

EVERYTHING IS MINE by Ruth Lillegraven tr. Diane Oatley (Norway, AmazonCrossing)

KNOCK KNOCK by Anders Roslund tr. Elizabeth Clark Wessel (Sweden, Harvill Secker)

COLD AS HELL by Lilja Sigurðardóttir tr. Quentin Bates (Iceland, Orenda Books)

THE RABBIT FACTOR by Antti Tuomainen tr. David Hackston (Finland, Orenda Books)

The winning title will be announced on Thursday 8 December 2022. The winning author and the translator of the winning title will both receive a cash prize.

The Petrona Award is open to crime fiction in translation, either written by a Scandinavian author or set in Scandinavia, and published in the UK in the previous calendar year.

The Petrona team would like to thank our sponsor, David Hicks, for his continued generous support of the Petrona Award.

The judges’ comments on the shortlist:

There were 31 entries for the 2022 Petrona Award from five countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden). The novels were translated by 23 translators and submitted by 14 publishers/imprints. There were 16 female, 14 male and one male/male pair of authors.

This year’s Petrona Award shortlist sees Norway represented with two novels; Sweden with two and Finland and Iceland with one each. The judges selected the shortlist from a particularly strong pool of candidates with the shortlisted titles ranging from police procedural and domestic noir to the darkly comic.

As ever, we are extremely grateful to the six translators whose expertise and skill have allowed readers to access these outstanding examples of Scandinavian crime fiction, and to the publishers who continue to champion and support translated fiction. The significantly increasing number of female writers being translated is also to be commended.

The judges’ comments on each of the shortlisted titles:

 Maria Adolfsson - FATAL ISLES tr. Agnes Broomé (Sweden, Zaffre)

Maria Adolfsson’s gripping debut, FATAL ISLES, set in Doggerland - a group of islands in the North Sea between Denmark and the United Kingdom – paints a vivid picture of a northern island community with traditions, rich and poor families, and a stormy climate. Doggerland comes alive on the pages so much that you would never guess it is totally fictional. DI Karen Eiken Hornby is tasked with investigating the murder of her boss’s ex-wife. Does the motive have any connection to a secretive commune that existed on the island in the past? FATAL ISLES is a high tension, character driven, atmospheric police procedural.

 Helene Flood - THE THERAPIST tr. Alison McCullough (Norway, MacLehose Press)

A man goes missing under mysterious circumstances. Police detective Gundersen is officially working the case whilst therapist Sara tries to understand where her husband is. Set in the leafy Oslo outskirts, THE THERAPIST is a tense read that keeps us intrigued with unsettling twists and turns. Sara is constantly analysing herself and the people around her as her whole life is turned upside down. At the same time, she fears for her own safety and tries to remain professional with her clients. Author Helene Flood is a trained psychologist who has used her experience to inform the characters and the narrative in this page-turning debut thriller.

 Ruth Lillegraven - EVERYTHING IS MINE tr. Diane Oatley (Norway, AmazonCrossing)

EVERYTHING IS MINE is the story of two happily married professionals, Clara an ambitious child rights activist at the Ministry of Justice, and Henrik, a compassionate paediatrician. Dedication to their twin sons and their respective causes begins to crack when they are faced with cases of murder and abuse and an unravelling of a tangled web of emotional secrets follows. A powerful narration and detailed observations show a stark contrast between social standing and geographical differences in Norwegian life, and leave the readers with questions of how, and if, individuals can deal with unfairness and pain. EVERYTHING IS MINE combines important issues, thrilling action and a smart intricate plot, with a strong focus on social injustice and complex family relations.

 Anders Roslund - KNOCK KNOCK tr. Elizabeth Clark Wessel (Sweden, Harvill Secker)

Anders Roslund has published nine novels to date as part of the successful writing duos of Roslund & Hellström and Roslund & Thunberg, as Anton Svensson, and has been the recipient of numerous, prestigious international awards. Since the death of Börge Hellström, Roslund has continued their Ewert Grens series and KNOCK KNOCK is his first solo venture. Set over the course of three days, KNOCK KNOCK is another fine example of Roslund's talent for seamlessly blending together a solid police procedural with a high-octane thriller, leading to a gritty and fast-paced read set against his astute observations on the societal and political issues of contemporary Sweden.

Lilja Sigurðardóttir - COLD AS HELL tr. Quentin Bates (Iceland, Orenda Books)

COLD AS HELL, the first novel in a new slick series, introduces Áróra who returns from UK to her homeland Iceland following the disappearance of her estranged sister Ísafold. She uncovers a corrupted world of dark secrets but needs help from her policeman uncle to navigate an Icelandic society with which she is now unfamiliar. The author creates a chilling and tense atmosphere where the midnight sun hides crimes, and all relations are tested. The richness and intensity of the writing makes the investigative accountant Áróra, who will stop at nothing to understand and trace her sibling, a thoroughly modern and captivating protagonist in a league of her own.  

 Antti Tuomainen - THE RABBIT FACTOR tr. David Hackston (Finland, Orenda Books)

Antti Tuomainen was shortlisted for the Petrona Award twice before winning it in 2020 with, LITTLE SIBERIA. THE RABBIT FACTOR, which was also shortlisted for this year’s CWA Dagger for Crime Fiction in Translation, superbly demonstrates Tuomainen's singular gift for dark, absurd crime fiction undercut with poignancy. THE RABBIT FACTOR puts at its heart an ordinary man drawing on his previously undiscovered and extraordinary resolve, to carve out and keep his place in a hostile world, with often darkly funny results.

 The judges

Jackie Farrant - creator of RAVEN CRIME READS and a bookseller/Area Commercial Support for a major book chain in the UK

Miriam Owen - founder of the NORDIC NOIR blog and creator of content for communities

Ewa Sherman - translator and writer, and blogger at NORDIC LIGHTHOUSE.

Award administrator

Karen Meek – owner of the EURO CRIME website and blog.

Further information can be found on the Petrona Award website: http://www.petronaaward.co.uk.

Femicide author PASCAL ENGMAN on being published in the UK for the first time

My first novel, The Patriots, came out in Sweden in 2017. Since then, I feel very fortunate to have published five further titles and had my books translated into over 20 languages. Each new translation feels special in its own way, but it’s been a long-standing ambition of mine to be published in English, so I was delighted when Legend Press wanted to publish my Vanessa Frank series here. Femicide came out in late September and its publication has given me the opportunity to experience some wonderful things about the UK crime fiction scene. 

One of the first things I noticed was how incredibly supportive members of the crime writing community are of one another. As a newcomer to the UK crime fiction scene, I really valued fellow writers who supported Femicide and who understood the importance of raising awareness of the social problem which it highlights. 

Femicide explores the pressing issue of misogyny in today’s social landscape, specifically focusing on the online extremist ‘incel’ or involuntary celibate community. The story investigates the seemingly separate murders of three women and follows Detective Vanessa Frank as she links them together to the incel movement. Best-selling crime author Peter James generously gave me my first endorsement from a UK crime writer, and his kind words appear on the front cover of the UK edition of Femicide. Having the support of such a successful writer in the UK crime fiction scene made me feel instantly welcome. I also received support from Chris Merritt, a talented crime writer and psychologist who has also written a novel about the incel movement. Chris hosted a Q&A with me at the launch event for Femicide, and his experience made the conversation such an interesting one. 

I wanted to write about incels and draw attention to the issue because I’ve seen how it’s a particular problem in Sweden, and how it’s becoming a more widespread threat online. Journalists and commissioning editors in the UK have really understood this mission and I was grateful to have the opportunity to write about this in detail for Sunday Times Crime Club, Metro and LadBible. I found it extremely humbling when Mark Sanderson at Sunday Times Crime Club made Femicide the ‘Star pick’, and I always appreciate when I have the chance to talk about my work – so a special thank you to Shots for inviting me to write this piece! I was so pleased that I had the chance to write about the issue of incels not only in my fictional work, but in a more journalistic manner; these articles allowed me to share my findings from the time I spent studying incel forums online to learn more about how they operate. I think fiction is an incredibly powerful tool in communicating the emotional impact of such intense topics, but I was thrilled that I could share the facts to a wide UK audience to make people aware of the danger that this extreme misogyny poses to all of us. 

I was also delighted to have the chance to write about my literacy initiative for The Bookseller, and to have the opportunity to chat to the National Literacy Trust while learning about some of the amazing work that they do here in the UK. I officially launched my charitable foundation in 2021 with the goal of working to promote reading among children and young people in Sweden, so I really appreciated the opportunity to promote a cause that’s so important to me. 

Another brilliant thing about the UK crime fiction scene is the incredible amount of enthusiasm that British crime fiction fans have. The passion of the team behind the UK Crime Book Club on Facebook, for example, was phenomenal. They are so brilliant and I loved talking to them about Femicide.

This is only the beginning of my journey in the UK – Legend will be publishing more of my Vanessa Frank novels in the coming years, and I'm so excited for what's to come. In particular I'm really hoping to come back for some of the crime festivals, which you have such an amazing array of in the UK – from Capital Crime to CRIMEFEST and Harrogate to Bloody Scotland – and to have the opportunity to meet more UK crime fans face-to-face.

Femicide by Pascale Engman (Legend Press) Out Now

When 25-year-old Emelie is found murdered in her Stockholm apartment the same week her ex-partner is released from prison, it feels like an open and shut case for Detective Vanessa Frank. Who else would launch such a frenzied attack on the young woman? But Frank suspects there is something they're missing. Could the killing be linked to the rising online movement of men who want to punish women, the so-called 'incels'? When a survivor of brutal sexual assault comes forward, Frank uncovers more about this shadowy group who, in their own words, have weaponised the gender war and will stop at nothing to make themselves heard. Desperate to stop any further attacks, Frank escalates the investigation when a music festival intended to be a safe space for women becomes a potential target.

More information about the author can be found on his website.

You can also find him on Facebook. He can aslo follow him on Twitter @pascalengman

MacLehose Press unveils New Dragon Tattoo Title, The Girl in the Eagles Talons

 

Maclehose Press have announced that the English-language title for the much-anticipated 7^th novel in the Millennium series by Swedish author Karin Smirnoff will be The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons. It will be translated by Sarah Death, the award-winning translator of Selma Lagerlöf and Tove Jansson. Total sales figures for all six Millennium books, by Stieg Larsson and David Lagercrantz, have hit over 100 million copies worldwide across all editions and languages.

In a huge global event, The Girl in the Eagle’s Talon will be published simultaneously on 29 August 2023 by MacLehose Press and in Hachette UK’s international territories, and by Knopf PRH in the US and Penguin Random House in Canada.

The Swedish hardback edition was published as Havsörnens Skrik on 4 November to huge fanfare and rave reviews. Karin Smirnoff was interviewed on live TV and radio and the novel immediately hit the coveted no.1 slots on Sweden’s major online bookselling platforms, including Ad Libris and Bokustoppen. In the first five sales days, Swedish bookshops have sold over 7000 copies of the book (in a country of 10 million). In an innovative move by Swedish publisher Polaris, the e-book and audio releases of the Swedish editions will take place a month after hardback release, on 1 December 2022.

Karin Smirnoff’s take on the Lisbeth Salander story moves the plot from Stockholm to northern Sweden, an area vast and beautiful, but also dealing with economic and social problems and the effects of climate change and environmental exploitation. Karin Smirnoff and Stieg Larsson were both born in the northern county of Västerbotten, and both writers were shaped by the stark and empty landscapes of their birthplace.

The first Swedish press reviews for Havsörnens Skrik (The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons) have poured in and are extremely positive:

Svenska Dagbladet said: “We more than approve of Smirnoff's debut as a crime novelist … what impresses is the thrilling plot, the environmental depiction, and above all the unexpected and poignant relationship between Lisbeth and [her young protégé] Svala. Something tells me that the dark tale of Millennium will continue for a long time.”

Skånska Dagbladet, one of the largest daily newspapers in Sweden, emphasised the strong feminist angle to Karin Smirnoff’s new take on the Millennium series: “A really, really good crime novel. It is also a serious and successful attempt to keep Stieg Larsson’s commitment alive and let commercial literature speak serious truths about our time.”

Nya Tidning said that “letting Karin Smirnoff take over the baton from David Lagercrantz is a stroke of genius. It is hard to believe anyone could have done it better than Smirnoff. Apart from Stieg Larsson himself”.

Västerbottenskuriren said “The connections to Smirnoff's previous books become clear. This is as it should be, as there is the feminist anger, the fundamental connection that unites her with Stieg Larsson. A connection that is, quite literally, carried through smoke and shell fire by Lisbeth and Svala together.”

Petrona Award Longlist announced

 

OUTSTANDING CRIME FICTION FROM DENMARK, FINLAND, ICELAND, NORWAY AND SWEDEN LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 PETRONA AWARD

Twelve outstanding crime novels from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden have made the longlist for the 2022 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year.

They are:

Fatal Isles by Maria Adolfsson tr. Agnes Broomé (Sweden, Zaffre)

The Assistant by Kjell Ola Dahl tr. Don Bartlett (Norway, Orenda Books)

The Butterfly House by Katrine Engberg tr. Tara Chace (Denmark, Hodder & Stoughton)

The Therapist by Helene Flood tr. Alison McCullough (Norway, MacLehose Press)

The Commandments by Óskar Guðmundsson tr. Quentin Bates (Iceland, Corylus Books Ltd)

Smoke Screen by Jørn Lier Horst & Thomas Enger tr. Megan Turney (Norway, Orenda Books)

Everything Is Mine by Ruth Lillegraven tr. Diane Oatley (Norway, AmazonCrossing)

Silenced by Sólveig Pálsdóttir tr. Quentin Bates (Iceland, Corylus Books Ltd)

Knock Knock by Anders Roslund tr. Elizabeth Clark Wessel (Sweden, Harvill Secker)

Cold as Hell by Lilja Sigurðardóttir tr. Quentin Bates (Iceland, Orenda Books)

Geiger by Gustaf Skördeman tr. Ian Giles (Sweden, Zaffre)

The Rabbit Factor by Antti Tuomainen tr. David Hackston (Finland, Orenda Books)

The quality of the entries for the Petrona Award, now in its tenth year, remains consistently high, so much so that for the first time, the judges have decided to release a longlist. These twelve titles will be whittled down to a shortlist, to be announced on 16 November 2022.

The longlist contains a number of new faces as well as Petrona Award-winning authors, Jørn Lier Horst and Antti Tuomanen and the previously shortlisted Kjell Ola Dahl and Thomas Enger. 

Both large and small publishers are represented on the longlist, with Orenda Books leading with four entries, and the breakdown by country is Norway (4), Iceland (3), Sweden (3), Denmark (1) and Finland (1) with translator Quentin Bates being longlisted for all three Icelandic titles.

The Petrona Award 2022 judging panel comprises Jackie Farrant, the creator of RAVEN CRIME READS and a bookseller/Area Commercial Support for a major book chain in the UK; Miriam Owen, founder of the NORDIC NOIR blog and creator of content for communities, and Ewa Sherman, translator and writer, and blogger at NORDIC LIGHTHOUSE. The Award administrator is Karen Meek, owner of the EURO CRIME blog and website.

Write What you ...by Sofia Slater

The conventional advice to writers is Write what you know. That doesn’t always work with crime. I’m glad to say I couldn’t follow it for my book, Auld Acquaintance, because I’ve never been trapped on an island with a murderer. But the next best piece of advice I know is Write the kind of book you want to read. And that’s what I did with Auld Acquaintance. 

It's good advice for one reason above all: motivation. Even a short novel is a long project, so it takes some sticking to. It’s hard to keep working on something you don’t like. Like it and, just maybe, you’ll want to be at your desk every day slogging it out against the empty page.

There’s another reason this advice comes up so often. Sometimes you have to write what you want to read because you can’t find it out there by someone else. I was after that too. Crime comes in so many flavours, and there are masterly examples of each sub-genre. But certain strains tend to dominate at any one time, and before I started writing, I’d found myself longing for a kind of book that had dropped out of fashion. Not cosy crime exactly, but what you might call hygge crime: the kind of comfort you can only get in a properly dark winter.

On the one hand, there’s crime so cosy it could keep your tea warm. You know how it goes: an elderly but mentally undimmed protagonist (I love Miss Marple, but she has too many heirs), characters with faintly silly names, a Home Counties village, perhaps a celebrity author, often the presence of cats. Crime with the aesthetic of a chocolate box, only there’s a corpse behind the cottage door.

Then there’s the hard stuff, inspired-by-if-not-actually-Scandi-noir. Every detective an alcoholic estranged from their children, every criminal a child molester or human trafficker, every corpse missing a limb or gouged somewhere. And every relationship proved to be hollow: a lie, a sinister fabrication that ultimately only highlights the terrible and universal isolation of humanity. Particularly our detective, whose only friend is a half-empty glass of aquavit. 

Although I’ve read and enjoyed plenty of these books, I’ve often put them down with a feeling that something was missing. For me, the peak of crime as a genre is still to be found with the Golden Age novelists writing in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century: Agatha Christie, Josephine Tey, and their brethren.

What these writers manage beautifully is a balance of elements which have since been separated and concentrated by the workings of the market. The Golden Age writers knew that while true evil does lurk under the sun, when we’re not fighting it we want to drink, dance, eat well and enjoy each other’s company. Their novels manage to communicate both the dark heart of existence, and the trust and affection that still flourish around it – without slipping into either tweeness or bleakness. 

Christie is, of course, the reference point for so many cosy crime practitioners, but what inspired me while writing Auld Acquaintance was the way she creates a reassuring rhythm of cocktail parties, country houses, and dressing for dinner only in order to disrupt it. It’s a trick that shows civilisation up not as a lie but a defence mechanism. Her books are simultaneously completely reassuring and genuinely chilling. Think of the sudden swerve into darkness caused by the murder of a thirteen-year-old girl in the apple-bobbing tub at the beginning of Hallowe’en Party – not even one of Christie’s best. She never forgets the price to be paid for the cosiness we like to enjoy.

It is Tey, though, who remains my favourite crime novelist. She is the mistress of the slowly building sense that something’s wrong. Her detective, Alan Grant, has quite a nice life, really: full of friendships and genial colleagues, even if he struggles with the occasional bout of claustrophobia or a broken back. Yet, time and time again, he finds himself preoccupied by a flaw in his surroundings, something that seems minor at first, then shifts and grows, a kink in the mirror reflecting life which soon becomes all he can see. This approach – subtle disquiet developing into obsession – reaches an almost experimental acme in The Daughter of Time, a book in which nothing happens at all. An injured and bed-bound Grant, left with nothing else to do, lies in hospital thinking through the story of Richard III and the murdered Princes in the Tower, and decides that history has enacted a miscarriage of justice. It's gripping and brilliant, without the central character even leaving his bed.

In the end, the best crime novels are good for the same reason Shakespeare is. Even if we see it as entertainment rather than high art, all the best tragedies have comedy mixed into them. Life is not cosy, but nor is it unrelenting in the suffering it causes. Crime is, like life, an ironic genre. That’s what I tried to keep in mind when writing Auld Acquaintance: somewhere there’s a fireside and a jumper worth getting back to, on the other side of all these bodies. If there wasn’t, I for one, wouldn’t want to read it. 

Sofia Slater is the debut author of Auld Acquaintance (£12.99, Swift Press)

Should auld acquaintance be forgot. And never brought to mind? Millie Partridge desperately needs a party. So, when her (handsome and charming) ex-colleague Nick invites her to a Hebridean Island for New Year’s Eve, she books her ticket North. But things go wrong the moment the ferry drops her off. The stately home is more down at heel than Downton Abbey. Nick hasn’t arrived yet. And the other revellers? Politely, they aren’t exactly who she would have pictured Nick would be friends with. Worse still, an old acquaintance from Millie’s past has been invited, too. Penny Maybury. Millie and Nick’s old colleague. Somebody Millie would rather have forgotten about. Somebody, in fact, that Millie has been trying very hard to forget. Waking up on New Year’s Eve, Penny is missing. A tragic accident? Or something more sinister? With a storm washing in from the Atlantic, nobody will be able reach the group before they find out. One thing is for sure – they’re going to see in the new year with a bang.

Solving Crime With Your Ex by Jónína Leósdóttir

Being an incurable Anglophile, I have long intended to have a British main character in one of my novels. I found the perfect opportunity to do exactly that when I was sketching the storyline of Deceit, my 6th book in the crime mystery genre. (Before I turned to crime, I had written 13 books in different genres, both fiction and non-fiction.)

In my first five crime novels, the protagonist was an amateur sleuth called Edda – a clever, energetic woman in her late sixties, recently retired after a successful career as a bookshop manager. A modern, Nordic character with an undeniable nod to Miss Marple. But when I started preparing a new series, I wanted to have two very different protagonists who complemented each other as a crime-solving team. 

First to take shape, was hard-working, Icelandic detective, Soffía – an independent, no-nonsense woman in her forties who lets nothing stand in her way. And who would be her complete opposite? An easy-going, polite and a bit old-school Englishman, of course. Thus, Adam the psychologist sprang to life. 

To have more fun, I decided to make Soffía and Adam a divorced former couple. Thus, they know each other extremely well, which is a bonus for people solving crimes together, but they are also fed up with each other, which inevitably creates tension. 

The couple had met when Soffía was a student in the UK and naturally, from her point of view, they moved to Iceland when she graduated. Adam simply had to adapt, learn Icelandic and forge a career in a foreign country. (It’s rather telling that his parents called their daughter-in-law The Bulldozer.)

They lived happily ever after … well, for about 15 years. By then they had a teenage daughter, Magga, that Adam couldn’t bear to be parted from by moving back to Britain. In other words, he moved to Iceland for Soffía but stayed for Magga. And, perhaps, for mystery woman, Jenny, too. Jenny, who? Now, that would be telling.

I thoroughly enjoyed creating Adam’s back-story, especially making him grow up in the lovely village of Wivenhoe in Essex, which I had got to know when I was a student at The University of Essex. Several years later, in the late eighties, when I was editor of a weekly newspaper in Iceland, I discovered by chance that the actor Joan Hickson lived in Wivenhoe. At that time, the Miss Marple series that Hickson starred in, was the most popular programme on Icelandic television. 

So, because of my love of Wivenhoe and Miss Marple, it became my mission to get an interview with the actor who portrayed Agatha Christie’s sleuth so charmingly and had the majority of the Icelandic population glued to their television sets once a week.

Although this was years before the birth of Google, I somehow managed to procure the name and phone number of Ms. Hickson’s agent. Perhaps, I have some of DI Soffía’s strong will and stubbornness. And I didn’t give up until the agent spoke to the actor who agreed to an interview over the phone. (Alas, my paper couldn’t afford to send me to Wivenhoe.)

This was an absolute “hold the front page” moment, a few hours before the paper went to print. I will never forget it: Joan Hickson was finally on the phone, I started my recording device and the interview took off. Half an hour later, I thanked Ms Hickson from the bottom of my heart for the wonderful chat, put the phone down and discovered that the recording had failed. I didn’t even have any notes, as I had trusted the equipment completely.

In my mind, it was out of the question to bother the agent and this kind, elderly lady in Wivenhoe again. But we had an empty front page. So, I put a “Do not enter!” sign on my office door and sat down to write all my questions and Hickson’s answers from memory – and, as everyone knows, blind panic is not particularly good for your memory. 

However, we ended up with a great front page and an exclusive interview with the most popular actor on Icelandic television at the time. Of course, I added a description of the village I missed from my university days and secretly envied Ms Hickson for living in. And now, decades later, I have included Wivenhoe in my crime series by making it Adam’s childhood home and the place where his parents still live.

Deceit by Jónína Leósdóttir Published by Corylus Books (Translated by Quentin Bates) Out now.

Reykjavík detective Soffía finds herself struggling to cope with a single-handed investigation into a spate of malicious acts taking place across the city, and enlists help from an unexpected direction. Her psychologist ex-husband Adam has advised the police before, but with Covid raging in the city, would prefer to stay holed up in his basement flat as he deals with challenges in both his working and private life. He grudgingly agrees to work with Soffía, as the stakes in the investigation are continually raised. Working out who bears a grudge that goes deep enough to lead to murder, they unravel complex family ties, lingering enmities and a dark past that the victims would prefer to keep secret, while Adam encounters a young woman in a race against the clock to find the father she has never seen, but for what purpose?