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Crime and mystery fiction

Crime and mystery fiction

For readers of crime and mystery fiction to discuss books in the genre.
Crime and mystery fiction
I'm Buying Books for the Holidays... - http://www.kittlingbooks.com/2009...
I'm Buying Books for the Holidays...
Crime and mystery fiction
A fairly short post today and a long weekend off for me as I'm off to this festival early on Friday morning to see Sonic Youth, Primal Scream, the Buzzcocks, The... - http://bigbeatfrombadsville.blogspot.com/2009...
Have a wonderful time! - Margot Kinberg
Enjoy! - Dorte Jakobsen
Primal Scream, The Horrors, My Bloody Valentine, Nightmare Before Christmas, Fucked Up -- dearie me, I thought these were titles of crime novels of the less cerebral and more sanguineous kind preferred by some aficionados of the genre, until I looked more closely and descried that these are, in fact, ensembles of modern minstrels and balladeers. I take it you won't be going to Salzburg or Bayreuth next year, then, Lady Donna? - Philip
Thanks Margot and Dorte. And Philip - no...unless you know if Alien Sex Fiend are playing? :o) - Donna
Crime and mystery fiction
Crime and mystery fiction
Kerrie
Craig, where is your ~i~ in the crime fiction alphabet? Surely you have one!
He's keeping us in suspense - Friday is looming. (Proabably already here, over in Kerrie and Craig land). - Maxine
It'll no doubt be worth the wait : ) - Margot Kinberg
Crime and mystery fiction
Lovely post, Norman. I really like the character of Mr Geung. And he does the opposite of fade out in subsequent novels in the series ;-) - Maxine
Thanks Maxine, and it nice to know Mr Geung thrives in the rest of the series. - Norman
Crime and mystery fiction
Suggest a Christmas Title: Voices by Arnaldur Indridason - http://petrona.typepad.com/petrona...
Sorry to be a copycat but I can't find anything from 2006 or 2007 mentioning Christmas apart from this one. - Maxine
Crime and mystery fiction
Forgotten Book: THE SATAN BUG, Ian Stuart - http://paradise-mysteries.blogspot.com/2009...
Forgotten Book: THE SATAN BUG, Ian Stuart
I thought to myself "Didn't Alistair Maclean write one with this title, or one very similar". Then I read your post, Kerrie ;-) - Maxine
Crime and mystery fiction
Don't mess with the peer-review process - http://petrona.typepad.com/petrona...
OT and silly. - Maxine
Well that makes me very silly because I enjoyed it. ;o) - Norman
Me too, Norman. And the person who showed it to me has never even heard of YouTube before! (Someone emailed the link to him). Yep, you've guessed, Prof P. - Maxine
OT, but still very much worth reading, Maxine - I enjoyed it. - Margot Kinberg
Laughed all the way through this. I had to reject a paper for one of the journals I edit this afternoon for self-plagiarism (funnily enough as spotted by reviewer no. 3 - the other two were accept with minor revisions). I bet both he and I got this kind of reaction! - Rob
Yes, Rob, it has so many nice little touches that whoever did it must "know the game" pretty well;-) - Maxine
Crime and mystery fiction
Video interview with Kiwi/British crime writer (TV and novels) Neil Cross - http://kiwicrime.blogspot.com/2009...
Video interview with Kiwi/British crime writer (TV and novels) Neil Cross
oops. messed up the post timing again. this just went up now, not last night. - Craig Sisterson
What with post timings and time-differences - who knows where we are? Not me, that's for sure. - Maxine
Crime and mystery fiction
Crime and mystery fiction
Crime and mystery fiction
Crime and mystery fiction
Karen Meek
Meet At The Gate - Article - Euro Crime: The Gatekeeper's Site of the Week - http://www.meetatthegate.com/compone...
BSP alert: "It's Crime Week on Meet At The Gate, so what better site to feature the Euro Crime, the Internet's premier website for the latest and best in European crime fiction?" - Karen Meek from Bookmarklet
Congratulations, Karen! - Maxine
"It seems like they've read and reviewed every decent crime novel in Europe this decade." Congratulations - your website deserves it! - Dorte Jakobsen
Well done, Karen!!! Congratulations! - Margot Kinberg
Thank you! It's a team effort, I get to showcase some fabulous reviews from the faithful band of reviewers :). - Karen Meek
Richly deserved, Karen. I'm still working on that DBE for you. My brother and his wife, who lurk in Rothbury, were at the Queen's Garden Party a while back -- which probably explains why the Queen wasn't -- so I reckon a bit of strong-arming is possible there, and, for reasons not yet clear to me, he's been over at Alnwick hobnobbing with the Duchess of Northumberland, referred to by... more... - Philip
I'll keep an eye on my post! - Karen Meek
Crime and mystery fiction
Gunnar Staalesen and Fallen Angels - http://djskrimiblog.blogspot.com/2009...
Gunnar Staalesen and Fallen Angels
Crime and mystery fiction
How to look like a twit ... - http://theviewfromthebluehouse...
How to look like a twit ...
Well I am sure nowhere near a twit, I'm lost in admiration (being v scared of speaking in public however much I've prepared). - Maxine
Thankfully I don't get too phased by speaking in public, but being prepared helps enormously. It's the question time at the end I'm not too keen on - I always have a decent answer five minutes afterwards, but rarely at the time. - Rob
The lecture is a very comfortable situation for me, but this does bring back a most peculiar experience some twenty years ago when I was a director of a non-profit society that furnished programmes of dance and movement for children with various disabilities -- cerebral palsy, Downs, autism, et al. Leonore Gregory, a ballerina who designed and taught the programmes, asked me to... more... - Philip
Crime and mystery fiction
Review of Banksters by David Murphy and Martina Devlin (Hachette, 2009) - http://theviewfromthebluehouse...
Review of Banksters by David Murphy and Martina Devlin (Hachette, 2009)
The post not the bonkers bankers. - Norman
Perhaps it should be bonkers regulators? As selfish, free market capitalists the bankers were acting rationally within the parameters they were set. - Rob
You are right Rob, but sometimes the regulators pick on the small fry and make an example of them. - Norman
Crime and mystery fiction
Crime and mystery fiction
The Blight Way by Patrick F. McManus - http://www.kittlingbooks.com/2009...
The Blight Way by Patrick F. McManus
Crime and mystery fiction
Maxine
Best Crime Fiction of 2009 as selected by Readings staff · Readings.com.au - http://www.readings.com.au/news...
Interesting list. - Maxine from Bookmarklet
They are interesting... - Margot Kinberg
Yes, clearly these are books that are read and enjoyed by real people, not just posted as a marketing device. And interesting how many of them are translated. - Maxine
It is a very good list but why are all these best of 2009 lists coming out now? Don't people go on reading in December? - Norman
In the old days, we had to pass all these lists off well before xmas because of press deadlines. It is hard to understand why, on the internet (no print or regular publication schedule) so many people are jumping the gun. Maybe they hope readers will buy the books as xmas presents - in which case they should call them "xmas present recommendations" and save up their "best of" lists till 1 Jan! - Maxine
Ha ha, great minds! Jean Hannah Edelstein in the Guardian books blog today: "Anyone else bored with books of the year?They might have served a useful function once, but these annual lists have been made irrelevant by the blogosphere." http://www.guardian.co.uk/books... Good piece. - Maxine
I like the sound of The Unscratchables!:"Cassius Lap is the finest agent in the Feline Bureau of Investigation, an imperturbable Siamese with a mind as sharp as a can-opener." - Karen Meek
Crime and mystery fiction
You always have the most attention-getting titles, Donna! : ) - Margot Kinberg
Thank you Margot...I think :o) - Donna
But one had to read all the way through the post to get the sex bit! :O - Dorte Jakobsen
Subtle, that Donna! - Maxine
As a brick, Maxine :o) And Dorte, I could make a joke about that, but I won't :o) - Donna
Oh, come on, be a good sport ;) - Dorte Jakobsen
Kerrie
Have you watched http://www.youtube.com/watch... Interesting post by Declan Burke about it http://crimealwayspays.blogspot.com/2009...
Have you watched http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIq0VqF0MnA Interesting post by Declan Burke about it http://crimealwayspays.blogspot.com/2009/05/never-mind-bollocks-heres-espresso.html
Play
I like the idea of print on demand books but I am skeptical about it in reality. my first reason is practical - in my office the $90,000 photocpier/printer/collator/dishwasher breaks down regularly - invariably when it is most needed - and there are only 3 highly trained specialists in the city who can fix the damn thing. The espresso thing looks to have quadruple the amount of things... more... - Bernadette
I agree, it looks like too many moving parts to me. Too much to keep filled up too - ink, glue etc. And it is manual. It looks like you would have to take the finished book from its grip b4 starting a new one. If it could produce 10 an hour then in the time someone is working & watching it for say 7 hours, that's 70 books a day, may be 400 a week. Yopu couldn't set and forget as far as I can see. And there is a huge amount of waste paper, supposedly print quality. - Kerrie
Bernadette, Kerry, you're not cranky either individually or in tandem, and that's OFFICIAL from Crankines Validation Center, so there. This is the first time I've seen the Expresso running and it indeed looks more complicated than one would expect. On the other hand, having had a (virtual) toe in the printing industry for great many years, I can tell you that the innards of that... more... - ianf ⌘
That this is but a half-hearted attempt at making a self-contained "book automat" (akin to one-hour-photo ones, which also took couple of years to perfect) can be derived from its combination of a desktop-controlled standard double-sided laser printer with a custom-built (second) cover printer/ collator/ perfect-binder/ trimmer unit. Clearly something for testing, not for any dependable large-scale production. That said, its principles look sound to me, and there seems to be plenty of space for improvement. - ianf ⌘
The first iteration produced a pretty crappy-looking book. I've heard it's much better now. But of course, while in theory you could have every book available on demand, that would take publisher cooperation. They are still hunting for that word in the dictionary. Co.... coop..... ah, screw it. I wrote a piece last year for Library Journal about how to fix the industry and one idea was... more... - barbara fister
Thank you, Barbara, it's an intriguing proposition you're making, not sure how globally-portable it would be, but still. If I read the tea leaves of technology somewhat correctly, the publishing industry has about 10 years before emergence of thin, energy-efficient, readable in ambient light displays which will make it possible to offer multi-page (electronic display-)books, that will... more... - ianf ⌘
I've seen the Espesso working. I am sure that like any machine it can go wrong. I am equally sure that it (and others like it) will become part of the normal publishing/bookselling landscape. Does not have to be exclusive, just one of a set of models along with digital/e books, conventionally published books, etc. - Maxine
Since the Expresso rig is paid for by some publishing conglomerate or other, I bet there is no way an author can walk in from the street, submit a ready-formed manuscript in PDF fetched from the web or on a thumbdrive, and walk out with one or a few perfect-bound copies of her work. - ianf ⌘
That's correct, Ian - but that isnt the idea of the Expresso. It is owned by the publishers who paid to develop it, and they'll use it to print up items from a back-catalogue of some kind while the customer waits. It isn't intended to be a replacement for Lulu et al. It's "print on demand", not "self publishing". - Maxine
BTW, the stand was incredibly busy at the london book fair, with lots of men in suits writing their names on a list, so doubtless the machine will begin cropping up in lots of other places soonish.....and be put to other purposes. But for now, I think we are only going to be seeing it providing printed-up copies from a current/back-catalogue. - Maxine
Actually, I believe I read the U. of Michigan was making one available for people to publish their own stuff - conference presentations and the like ... well, not quite yet but in due course - http://www.lib.umich.edu/ebm... - barbara fister
Agreed, I think it will be used quite a bit for academic and other specialist purposes....Blackwell's first use of it in the UK was not for trade but academic - they only just released the first one for trade here after the LBF. Interesting to see how it will all pan out. - Maxine
Well, you are proved wrong, Maxine... the #EBM in Blackwell's is predominantly used by self-publishing (presumably non-acad/ non-"specialist purpose") authors. Also see http://friendfeed.com/tips-eb... and http://friendfeed.com/the-fut... - ianf ⌘
This discussion has become OT for this group, and I have no idea why you'd want to revive a six-month old discussion to say that you think someone is wrong, anyway. I suggest we close this thread here - maybe you can post your thoughts on this topic in another group, Ian. - Maxine
If this has become OT for this group, I didn't get the memo. Perhaps you could add me to your distribution list, Maxine. I remember there being quite an interest in #EBM and, since BBC Click presented it now, felt it my duty [DUTY, Maxine ;-))] to report it here. I'm sorry if you elected to view my comment primarily through the mirror of persecution. And incidentally, I did post most of my thoughts on it elsewhere. - ianf ⌘
Crime and mystery fiction
Guest Post: Joanna Challis on writing about Daphne du Maurier - http://eurocrime.blogspot.com/2009...
Guest Post: Joanna Challis on writing about Daphne du Maurier
Sounds intriguing, and nice post. I wonder how this book compares with Daphne by Justine Picardie? - Maxine
Crime and mystery fiction
Sheila Quigley and The Road to Hell - http://doyouwriteunderyourownn...
read her first novel but did not like it, very badly written I thought. - Maxine
Crime and mystery fiction
Reading books eligible for the CWA International Dagger 2010 - http://petrona.typepad.com/petrona...
Steve Murray has put in a droll (?) comment about the French..... - Maxine
Crime and mystery fiction
Review: TOO CLOSE TO HOME, Linwood Barclay - http://paradise-mysteries.blogspot.com/2009...
Good review, Kerrie. I quite enjoyed this book but not as much as I thought I would on the basis of his earlier one (not a first, as it turns out, though I thought it was at the time). In Too Close to Home most of the plot is rather obvious I think. But quite a good way to while away the time. - Maxine
Crime and mystery fiction
The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill - http://www.kittlingbooks.com/2009...
The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill
Perceptive review, esp about the character of Simon S (a bit wet, to say the least). I think the books improved after this one. Her latest (the 4th?) seems a bit overdue. - Maxine
Crime and mystery fiction
DJ´s Bait in the Box # 43 - http://djskrimiblog.blogspot.com/2009...
DJ´s Bait in the Box # 43
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