Live from Lyon: Quais du Polar 2015 special report
The weekend just gone saw one of the largest literary festivals in Europe take place in Lyon. Quais du Polar brought together 70,000 crime fiction fans, and nearly 100 authors from over 20 countries. Over 30,000 books were sold and signed on the spot – where else will…
Fatale
Written by Jean-Patrick Manchette, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith — It is not fashionable anymore to be a leftist writer of crime fiction. Yet there have been a few crime writers whose works we now consider to be classics who had left-leaning political convictions. Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, Dashiel Hammett,…
Camille by Pierre Lemaitre
Translated by Frank Wynne — After taking the tropes of serial killers and kidnappings and turning them on their heads, in his latest book, Camille, bestselling French crime author Pierre Lemaitre takes on the heist story and subverts our expectations completely. This is our third encounter…
After the Crash
Written by Michel Bussi, translated by Sam Taylor — In 1980 an airplane flying from Istanbul to Paris crashes in the Jura mountains on the Franco-Swiss border. All 168 people on board are killed. The sole, almost miraculous survivor is a three-month-old baby girl. It turns out…
Cognac Conspiracies
Written by Jean-Pierre Alaux and Noël Balen, translated by Sally Pane — The Winemaker Detective series from Le French Book continues here and this time we’re in the Cognac region. As the heirs to one of the oldest family-run Cognac estates, the Lavoisier, face a hostile…
The Lying Down Room
“I love Paris in the summer when it sizzles”, goes the old song. Certainly, the August heat is a trial for Chief Inspector Serge Morel as he tries to solve a puzzling and brutal series of murders. Not only is Morel finding the temperature a…
NTN: Forty Days Without Shadow by Olivier Truc
Translated by Louise Rogers Lalaurie — New Talent November isn’t just about books penned in English, we’re interested in translations too. In the case of Olivier Truc – a French journalist living in Stockholm – it is all the more remarkable that the translation of…