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Are you tired of all the blood and gore? Are you exhausted by the break-neck
speed of today's thrillers? Then you may be ready for something
entirely
different.
In this section I have compiled unusual murder mysteries - such
as the books of
Arthur W. Upfield, featuring the half-aborigine half-white detective
Napoleon (Bony) Bonaparte. He is a smooth and charming
fellow, investigating mysterious murder cases in the Australian outback with his combination of bushmaster skills and brilliant
intelligence. Upfield wrote these novels in the late 1940s and early 1950s -
but just because they are half a century old they are no less enthralling.
Their strength is attention to detail and the authentic Australian
background. As the author slowly, and sometimes even languidly, develops his
plots the reader begins to feel the strange foreign atmosphere of a very different
world. |
Crime fiction detectives
are usually smart, athletic, good looking and bold. So maybe for a change you may
want to read about someone who is like the rest of us: Quite a bit
overweight, closer to 50 than 40, depressed with his life, sexually
frustrated, pissed-off with today's politics, and overworked. Meet the
Swedish inspector
Kurt Wallander. What he lacks in brilliant
intuition he more than compensates with his stubborn methodical mind.
Wallander is not one of those arrogant pricks that seem to know everything
in advance. He rather prefers to discuss his cases with his colleagues and more often
than not must be dragged into the right direction.
Kurt Wallander was created by
Henning Mankell. Born 1948 in
Stockholm and raised in a small village of Northern Sweden, Mankell
has spent much of his life in Maputo, Mozambique, where he is director of
the Teatro Avenida. With his European-African background Mankell has a
relentless grasp of the social and ethnic brutalities of our time. Make no
mistake! Mankell's stories may be located in the seemingly peaceful Skane
district of Southern Sweden, but there is nothing provincial or sleepy about
the plots. They are about ruthless serial killers, psychopaths, racist
fanatics and international terrorists. Under Northern Light you will find
some of the most outrageous crime scenes. |
Russian crime fiction
is mostly unknown in the West. Have you ever heard of Alexandra Marinina who
may have sold almost as many books as Agatha Christie? Unfortunately, very few Russian
crime fiction writers have been
translated into English. One of the few is contemporary author
Boris Akunin
(a pseudonym of Grigory Chkhartishvili, who perhaps used it as a reminiscence to
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, the well known Russian anarchist).
Akunin's hero is the
good-looking
Erast Fandorin - a mixture of Sherlock Holmes, Maigret, Hercule Poirot and James Bond, but with a mysterious Russian soul. He
investigates in Czarist Russia, surrounded by decadent aristocrats, violent
assassins, revolutionary anarchists, and glamorous ladies. |
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Copyright © 2012 by Claudia Heilig-Staindl. All Rights Reserved. |
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