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Hotlists 2008

Fiction | Zoho DB

Crime Fiction | Zoho DB

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Booklists

Lists of books, many of which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist , Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus and Library Journal (LJ). Additional titles of interest may be included on the lists. Titles are generally listed alphabetically by author.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overbooked specializes in providing timely information about fiction (all genres) and readable nonfiction. Overbooked has been online since 1994. Overbooked is a work in progress . . .

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Booklists and Suggested Reading

European Crime Fiction Booklist

 

Page Modified: August 19, 2008

Crime Fiction with a European flavor and flair.

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A list of books, many of which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist (BL), Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus, and Library Journal (LJ). Additional titles of interest may be included on this list. Titles are alphabetically by author.

Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.

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• Murder in the Sentier
  Author: Black, Cara
  Publisher: Soho $ 24 ISBN: 1569472785 Date: 2002
  PW
  The third Aimee Leduc investigation is set in the historic Sentier district, where once-fashionable private mansions now house the Parisian "rag" trade and nightclubs. Members of a 1960s Red gang are seeking their hidden loot, which leads to new murders. Aimee fears the killers may include her long-lost mother.
  Suggested Reading: Paris Stars
  Updated 3/7/02
• Murder in the Bastille
  Author: Black, Cara
  Publisher: Soho Press $ 23.00 ISBN: 1569473242 Date: 2003
  Kirkus
  April in Paris is a time for crime when Aime Leduc is attacked in an alley and knocked unconscious. When she awakes, she discovers she is blind. The police maintain she was the victim of a serial killer targeting showy blondes. Was he after another woman, or was Aime his intended victim?
  Suggested Reading: Paris Stars
  Updated 1.26.03
• The Shape of Water: Salvo Montalbano
  Author: Camilleri, Andrea
  Publisher: Viking $ 20.95 ISBN: 0670030929 Date: 2002
  Kirkus
  Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano has become an international sensation whose adventures have been translated from Italian into eight languages, from Dutch to Japanese. The Shape of Water is the first book in this sly, witty, engaging series with its sardonic take on Sicilian life.
  Updated 3/28/02
• The Terra-Cotta Dog: Inspector Montalbano
  Author: Camilleri, Andrea
  Publisher: Viking $ 21.95 ISBN: 0670031380 Date: 2002
  Booklist
  Camilleri's Inspector Salvo Montalbano has garnered millions of fans worldwide with his sardonic, engaging take on Sicilian life and his genius for deciphering the most enigmatic of crimes. The Terra-cotta Dog is the second offering in the internationally bestselling series.
  Updated 10.24.02
• Lime's Photograph
  Author: Davidson, Leif
  Publisher: Vintage $ 12 (paper) ISBN: 1860469884 Date: 2003
  Booklist
  In this dramatic political thriller from one of Denmark's finest crime writers, Lime sets out to discover a motive when fire destroys his home, and finds himself drawn into the complex and terrifying web of international terrorism.
  Updated 10.8.03
• The Long Finish: Aurelio Zen
  Author: Dibdin, Michael
  Publisher: Pantheon List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0375404295 Date: 1998
  Kirkus
  After his adventure under the sun-drenched skies of Naples in Cosi Fan Tutti, Aurelio Zen finds himself back in Rome, being given yet another unorthodox assignment: to release the jailed scion of an important wine-growing family who is accused of a brutal murder.
  
• Blood Rain: Aurelio Zen
  Author: Dibdin, Michael
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 23 ISBN: 0375409157 Date: 2000
  Booklist
  Set against the backdrop of the 3,000-year-old city of Catania, in the shadow of the smoldering volcano of Etna, Blood Rain reveals Inspector Aurelio Zen at his most desperate and driven, as he undertakes a case more chilling and threatening than any he has faced before.
  Updated 4/3/00
• Medusa: Aurelio Zen
  Author: Dibdin, Michael
  Publisher: Dutton $ 23 ISBN: 0375422692 Date: 2004
  LJ
  Michael Dibdin's veteran Italian police officer is back. The newest addition to this remarkable series is a novel of long-held secrets set against a sweeping background of political and passionate intrigue.
  Updated 2.2.04
• Under the Snow
  Author: Ekman, Kerstin
  Publisher: Doubleday Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385488661 Date: 1998
  PW Kirkus LJ
  From the acclaimed author of Blackwater comes another deeply atmospheric psychological thriller set in northern Sweden. When a man is murdered at a mah-jongg party turned sour, the local police constable receives conflicting reports as to the exact cause of the murder. Gradually, the facts of the case emerge under the relentless summer sun.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
• Lie in the Dark
  Author: Fesperman, Dan
  Publisher: Soho Price: $ 24 ISBN: 1569471533 Date: 1999
  Booklist PW
  In a thriller that recalls the first excitement of Martin Cruz Smith's Moscow, the author Dan Fesperman brilliantly renders the fragmented society and underworld of Sarajevo at war - the freelancing gangsters, guilty bystanders, drop-in correspondents, the bureaucrats frightened for their jobs and for their very lives - and weaves through this torn cityscape on man's desperate, deadly pursuit of the wrong people in the wrongest place. (Soho publicity)
  
• The Small Boat of Great Sorrows
  Author: Fesperman, Dan
  Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 037541472X Date: 2003
  PW Kirkus
  In an electrifying tale of international intrigue, the author of Lie in the Dark follows brooding investigator Vlado Petric, who is being used as bait to bring justice to a murderer whose activities in World War II make the current generation of killers look like amateurs.
  Updated 7.8.03
• Don't Look Back: Inspector Sejer
  Author: Fossum, Karin
  Publisher: Harcourt $ 23 ISBN: 0151010323 Date: 2004
  Kirkus
  Meet Inspector Sejer: smart and enigmatic, tough but fair. Critically acclaimed across Europe, Fossum's Inspector Sejer novels are masterfully constructed, psychologically convincing, and compulsively readable. They evoke a world that is at once profoundly disturbing and terrifyingly familiar.
  Updated 12.29.03
• Matto's Realm: A Sergeant Struder Mystery
  Author: Glauser, Friedrich
  Publisher: Bitter Lemon $ 13.95 ISBN: 1904738060 Date: 2006
  PW Booklist
  A child-murderer escapes from a Swiss insane asylum. The stakes get higher when Detective Sergeant Studer discovers the director's body, neck broken, in the boiler room of the madhouse. The intuitive Studer is drawn into the workings of an institution that darkly mirrors the world outside. Even he cannot escape the pull of the no man's land between reason and madness where Matto, the spirit of insanity, reigns. - Publisher Marketing.
  Updated 12.5.05
• Jar City: A Reykavik Thriller
  Author: Indridason, Arnaldur
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312340702 Date: 2005
  LJ
  A man is found murdered in his Reykjavik flat, and the police have no obvious leads. Delving into the dead man's past, two investigators discover that the city of Reykjavik has one or two secrets of its own, secrets it would rather keep.
  Updated 10.11.05
• Enigmatic Disappearance
  Author: Jeffries, Roderic
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 21.95 ISBN: 0312265832 Date: 2000
  Booklist
  Inspector Alvarez likes the quiet life, away from the antics of Mallorca's expatriate community. When his tranquility is shattered by the disappearance of an Englishwoman, Alvarez thinks he has solved the case, but proving his theory is another matter.
  Updated 8/18/00
• Uniform Justice
  Author: Leon, Donna
  Publisher: Atlantic $ 24 ISBN: 0871139030 Date: 2003
  LJ Booklist PW
  Leon is the internationally bestselling novelist whose ever adroit, big-hearted Venetian detective Commissario Guido Brunetti has captivated fans throughout the world. As Uniform Justice opens, Brunetti is called to investigate a parent's worst nightmare: a young cadet has been found hanged, a presumed suicide, in Venice's elite military academy.
  Suggested Reading: Venice
  Updated 8.5.03
• Sidetracked: Kurt Wallender
  Author: Mankell, Henning
  Publisher: New Press Price: $ 25 ISBN: 1565845072 Date: 1999
  PW
  A teenage girl self-immolates, the former Minister of Justice is murdered and scalped, and suddenly Inspector Kurt Wallander finds himself searching for Sweden's first serial killer.
  
• The Fifth Woman
  Author: Mankell, Henning
  Publisher: New Press $ 24.95 ISBN: 1565845471 Date: 2000
  Library Journal Booklist
  In an Algerian convent, four nuns and an unidentified fifth woman are found with their throats slit. In Sweden, a birdwatcher is skewered to death in a pit of carefully sharpened bamboo poles. How are the deaths connected? It's up to Inspector Kurt Wallander to find out.
  Updated 7/25/00
• One Step Behind: Kurt Wallender
  Author: Mankell, Henning
  Publisher: New Press $ 24.95 ISBN: 1565846524 Date: 2002
  Kirkus Booklist
  An unknown killer is on the loose, but their only lead is a photograph of three dead young people in costume. Forced to dig more deeply than he'd like into the personal life of one of his colleagues, Wallander's investigation uncovers something he could never have imagined. One Step Behind is the fifth book to appear in English in what the Los Angeles Times Book Review calls the "exquisite" Kurt Wallander series.
  Updated 2/24/02
• The Dogs of Riga: Kurt Wallendar
  Author: Mankell, Henning
  Publisher: New Press $ 24.95 ISBN: 1565847873 Date: 2003
  Kirkus PW
  Bringing the acclaimed series to a close, The Dogs of Riga takes Inspector Kurt Wallander to Riga, Latvia, to investigate the murder of two Eastern European criminals.
  Updated 3.31.03
• Before the Frost
  Author: Mankell, Henning
  Publisher: New Press $ 24.95 ISBN: 1565848357 Date: 2005
  Booklist
  Already an international bestseller, Before the Frost inaugurates Mankell's new mystery series about Linda Wallander, daughter of Inspector Kurt Wallander, and also features Stefan Lindman of The Return of the Dancing Master.
  Updated 1.18.05
• Some Bitter Taste
  Author: Nabb, Magdalen
  Publisher: Soho $ 24 ISBN: 156947317x Date: 2002
  Kirkus
  Sara Hirsch is an elderly spinster who lives in a flat above a Florentine antiquities shop. Frightened, she calls on Marshal Guarnaccia for help, sure that strangers have been in her apartment. The marshal is busy, and before he can respond, she is found dead.
  Updated 8.13.02
• The Summer Snow
  Author: Pawel, Rebecca
  Publisher: Soho Crime $ 23 ISBN: 1569474087 Date: 2006
  PW
  When an aristocratic lady of Granada, Spain, is found dead in 1945, the local police can't believe that she really may have been murdered. Lieutenant Carlos Tejada Alonso y Leon is assigned because the rich woman is his grand aunt Rosalia, and one of the chief suspects is his father. The family expects Tejada to exonerate its members, but Tejada is a man who puts duty first.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Crime Fiction
  Updated 12.27.05
• Bridge of Sighs
  Author: Steinhauer, Olen
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312302452 Date: 2003
  Kirkus
  In this auspicious debut, an inexperienced homicide detective struggles amid the lawlessness of a post-World War II eastern European city.
  Suggested Reading: First Fiction & Mystery Debuts
  Updated 10.31.02
• The Confession
  Author: Steinhauer, Olen
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312303289 Date: 2004
  Kirkus PW LJ Booklist
  Eastern Europe 1956: Comrade Inpector Ferenc Kolyeszar, homicide detective and aspiring writer, is watching his life unravel. Estranged from his wife, frustrated by writer's block and tracking a murderer through the shadowy capital. By the author of Bridge of Sighs.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 1.10.04

 

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