My newest LA Times column looks at the Inspector Adamsberg novels by Fred Vargas, one of the best series of detective novels being published right now. They are delightfully odd books, but what's also odd - though less satisfactory - is the scattershot way they have been published in the US. Here's how the piece opens:
Lately, English-language publishers have developed an unfortunate habit
with crime fiction in translation: Instead of starting at the very
beginning of a series -- as Pantheon did in bringing out the 10-book
"Story of Crime" opus by Swedes Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo in the
proper sequence -- books appear out of order, in haphazard fashion.
Heads are still being scratched over why "The Man Who Smiled," the fourth outing of Henning Mankell's popular detective, Inspector Kurt Wallander, was the last to be published in America. Because Jo Nesbo's Norwegian sleuth, Harry Hole, first showed up on British soil with "The Devil's Star" -- book five in the series -- it spoiled important plot points in "The Redbreast" (book three) and "The Redeemer" (book four), published in subsequent years. And I can't help but wonder if Stieg Larsson had lived to complete all 10 books he allegedly envisioned for his series characters Lisabeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" would have been published in English long after some mythical fifth or sixth volume took the entire world by storm.
Publishers choose the nonlinear approach for all sorts of reasons, such as commercial viability and what book in a series may grab reader attention best, so they will seek out earlier installments. "Jar City," for example, was a smart choice to introduce Iceland's undisputed crime-writing star Arnaldur Indridason because it was a major step forward, creatively and sales-wise, from the first two books featuring Inspector Erlendur (which remain untranslated). But readers who want to commit wholesale to a new series character and follow him or her through all manner of delightful and dangerous adventures are understandably frustrated at the disregard for series order....
Heads are still being scratched over why "The Man Who Smiled," the fourth outing of Henning Mankell's popular detective, Inspector Kurt Wallander, was the last to be published in America. Because Jo Nesbo's Norwegian sleuth, Harry Hole, first showed up on British soil with "The Devil's Star" -- book five in the series -- it spoiled important plot points in "The Redbreast" (book three) and "The Redeemer" (book four), published in subsequent years. And I can't help but wonder if Stieg Larsson had lived to complete all 10 books he allegedly envisioned for his series characters Lisabeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" would have been published in English long after some mythical fifth or sixth volume took the entire world by storm.
Publishers choose the nonlinear approach for all sorts of reasons, such as commercial viability and what book in a series may grab reader attention best, so they will seek out earlier installments. "Jar City," for example, was a smart choice to introduce Iceland's undisputed crime-writing star Arnaldur Indridason because it was a major step forward, creatively and sales-wise, from the first two books featuring Inspector Erlendur (which remain untranslated). But readers who want to commit wholesale to a new series character and follow him or her through all manner of delightful and dangerous adventures are understandably frustrated at the disregard for series order....
Read on for the rest, including my thoughts on the "newest" Vargas novel just out here - THE CHALK CIRCLE MAN, which actually introduces Adamsberg for the first time and was published in France way back in 1996.
Sarah, I enjoyed your Dark Passages piece on French Detection----we publish the Fred Vargas titles (which I have thoroughly enjoyed. I love the character of Adamsberg and his sidekick Danglard), but I wanted to know if you are familiar with the Sicilian Inspector Montalbano series written by Andrea Camilleri and translated by Stephen Sartarelli. Penguin has published ten of them and I can attest that they've been done in publishing order. Let me know if I should send you a set so you might share with your readers.
Yours,
Maureen Donnelly
Penguin Books Publicity
Posted by: maureen donnelly | July 06, 2009 at 04:24 PM
This seemingly random publication order drives us crazy at Stop, You're Killing Me!, too. Publishers' blurbs can be deceptive, as well, trumpeting a title as author's first book when it isn't, and frequently omitting the original title and/or publication date on the copyright page.
It isn't only English-language publishers, though, if the Leonardo Padura "Four Seasons" titles are any indication. Bitter Lemon published them in English in the same order as Tusquets Editores in Barcelona, so maybe no one thought about fixing the problem, with the result that the books came out in the order 3-4-1-2. A further gripe is that the seasonal titles, referring to the four seasons in 1989, were changed to colors (Havanna Red, Black, Blue, Gold), helping mask the out-of-orderness. Not to blame Bitter Lemon, because they do a great job of bringing translated works to us funcionally monolinguals, but the copyright info cites only the Barcelona reprint dates, not the Cuban original dates, further masking the mis-ordering of the books. Correct order being Blue, Gold, Red, Black.
Posted by: Stan Ulrich | July 15, 2009 at 11:57 AM