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Picks of the Week

  • Benjamin Black: The Lemur: A Novel

    Benjamin Black: The Lemur: A Novel
    Anyone who thinks John Banville lacks a sense of humor clearly did not read his serial for the New York Times magazine, available in novella-ish format in July. The story has all the basic crime ingredients - blackmail, adultery, murder, betrayal, that sort of thing - but it is so, so clear how much fun Banville had writing this pseudonymous exercise, loading up sentences filled with bizarre but well-placed metaphors and gently (or not so gently!) lampooning his characters as he moves them around his narrative chess board.

  • Cassandra Clare: City of Bones

    Cassandra Clare: City of Bones
    I read this on the flight home from the LA Times Festival of Books and it really is about the perfect airport read: fantastic storytelling, characters whose adventures and melodramas wrap you in their spells and really ass-kicking action scenes involving demons and all manner of underworld types. Sure, Clare clearly owes a huge debt to Buffy and Harry Potter, but dammit, I want to find out what will happen next to Clary, Jace, Simon & co. - and that's exactly the button that's supposed to be pushed.

  • Ibi Kaslik: ANGEL RIOTS

    Ibi Kaslik: ANGEL RIOTS
    Reading this novel was like being transported back to the mid-1990s Montreal I knew during my college years. But it also affords an inside look at the ups and downs, the politics and the dramas, the hookups and breakups endemic to a rising rock band. It's clear, whether told from the vantage point of the young violin prodigy with a boy's name or her bandmate looking to redefine himself outside the orbit of his best friend (and leader) that Kaslik knows this world cold, and we're privileged to share in this knowledge.

  • Irene Nemirovsky: David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Courilof Affair (Everyman's Library (Cloth))

    Irene Nemirovsky: David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Courilof Affair (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
    I'd recommend this simply based off of the utter gobsmacking brilliance that is LE BAL, one of the most crystalline and shocking novellas I've ever read, but the other three works simply confirm Nemirovsky's literary brilliance. THE COURILOF AFFAIR is a wonderful surprise for mystery readers because it's her version of a spy novel, tackling the moral quandaries of terrorism for a so-called greater good by personalizing the narrator's deeds and misdeeds. In other words, Nemirovsky's entire backlist can't be translated fast enough for me.

  • Sarah Hall: Daughters of the North

    Sarah Hall: Daughters of the North
    Goddamn, Hall can write, and her chosen dystopian subject matter gives her the chance not only to show off her sentence-by-sentence chops but to demonstrate how few steps removed our current culture is from the apocalyptic fervor of her world, where the reproductive rights of women are trampled on so definitively it takes an army of women to try, however futile the exercise might be, to take some independence back. I can't think of enough good things to say about this except that it should be read, now and years to come.

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May 02, 2008

Too Many Crime & Thriller Awards? Think Again

And this new one has some degree of muscle, what with it being the ITV3 Crime & Thriller Awards and the brainchild of Cactus TV's Amanda "Richard & Judy" Ross. More from the Bookseller:

ITV3 has teamed up with Cactus TV to launch a six-week Crime Thriller Season this autumn, culminating in televised ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards to celebrate crime fiction in film, TV and books.

Cactus has support from major publishers and retailers to promote the season, with posters and stickered books to be placed in shops and supermarkets.

Launching with an event at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival (17th–20th July), the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards will focus on the best of British and international crime novels, with around 15 categories in books, film and TV. The winners will be voted for by a panel of publishing industry figures, with an ITV3 viewers’ choice award for the top crime author.

If this has a Richard & Judy-esque effect on sales of crime fiction in the UK, that'll work pretty well...

Posted at 11:00 AM in World of Mystery |

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Comments

"And this new one has some degree of muscle, what with it being the ITV3 ..."

... and that's where you lost me.

Posted by: Ray | May 02, 2008 at 08:12 PM

I blogged about this today Sarah - I couldn't find information about the timing of the awards process. Thanks for the further info. Wish I lived in the UK - I hope the series penetrates to DownUnder TV but somehow think it won't.

Posted by: Kerrie Smith | May 03, 2008 at 04:10 AM

What a great idea. TV is so much more popular than reading these days, why not sell a few books, and have a review.

I googled ITV and came up with this:

http://www.itv.com/Channels/ITV3/default.html

It's not like American TV, with satellite, cable, etc. We have more reality channels like Biography, National Geographic, etc. I can't think of any fiction mystery in US except CSI like shows. I guess they don't have any real crime over there so they have to make it up. I mean pretty soon we are going to have a serial killer channel with your host Charlie Manson. I know I would watch.

Posted by: John Cecil | May 03, 2008 at 08:50 AM

It will no doubt be watched by tens of people.

Posted by: David J. Montgomery | May 03, 2008 at 02:26 PM

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