Soho Crime around the world

I'm a huge fan of New York publisher Soho Crime's output - particularly the translated fiction. Their catalogue covers detective thrillers from Japan to Norway. Here are some of the picks - dates are for original (foreign-language, where appropriate) publication:

Cara Black - PARIS

American author Cara Black is as impressively prolific as Janwillem van de Wetering (below) - her Aimée Leduc is a half-French, half-American private detective who throws herself into her cases, alongside dwarf, computer expert sidekick René Friant. The novels travel the arrondissements of Paris, imbuing each book with the atmosphere of the individual districts. 

WHAT THEY SAY 'Murder in the Marais provides a richly textured journey into the dark side of the City of Light.' - Linda Grant

CHECK OUT Murder in the Marais (1999)

Akimitsu Takagi - TOKYO

Another excellent translation - by Deborah Boehm - which brings Akimitsu Takagi's traumatic The Tattoo Murder Case (1948) up to date. Set in the aftermath of Japan's loss in the WWII and the destruction of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a trio of detectives try to crack a case of tattoo theft. Do also try Seichi Matsumoto's excellent Inspector Imanishi Investigates (1961)

WHAT THEY SAY 'Clever, kinky, highly entertaining...' Washington Post on The Tattoo Murder Case

CHECK OUT The Tattoo Murder Case

Helene Tursten - GÖTEBORG
Helene Tursten's Inspector Irene Huss is a judo-practising cop to rival Sarah Lund in a series of procedurals that marches in the steps of Swedish innovators Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö.

WHAT THEY SAY 'Huss is quickly becoming one of the most satisfying lead characters in the thriving world of Swedish crime fiction.' - Booklist

CHECK OUT Detective Inspector Huss (1998)

Janwillem van de Wetering - AMSTERDAM and beyond

Dutch Zen-adherent Janwillem van de Wetering's many mysteries feature police duo Grijpstra and De Gier, as well as their boss, the Commisaris. The books present a thoughtful view of Dutch policing and venture further afield - to New York, Japan and one-time Dutch colonies, including Aruba and Curaçao. Questioning and even mystical.

WHAT THEY SAY 'He is doing what Simenon might have done if Albert Camus had sublet his skull.' - John Leonard

CHECK OUT Outsider in Amsterdam (1975), The Japanese Corpse (1977) and The Streetbird (1983)

Five Euro crime writers

FRANCE

First published in the UK in 2004, Have Mercy on Us All marked the arrival of a ferocious crime-writing talent. Fred Vargas is an archaeologist whose books are often inspired by a historical event, such as the plague, delivered with dark humour(s). Commissaire Adamsberg is the central figure, the work having taken a bit of a hit, for me, with a diversion for The Three Evangelists (2006). Vargas's latest - and Adamsberg's sixth - An Uncertain Place, kicks off in London's Highgate Cemetery.

GERMANY

The work of Andrea Maria Schenkel fits alongside the best of the recent wave of Scandinavian crime writers - I'm thinking particularly of Karin Fossum. Novels The Murder Farm (2008) and Ice Cold (2009) have thrown new light on wartime guilt while her most recent, Bunker, is a terrifying psychological thriller. All three are published by the exemplary Quercus and translated by luminary Anthea Bell.

GREECE

As if to emphasise the split in Eurozone countries, Petros Markaris's Costas Haritas novels are notably more popular in southern Europe. The Late-Night News (2004) was a suitably depressing introduction to the internal workings of Athens CID as Haritas investigates first the deaths of an Albanian couple, then a woman reporter's murder. Hard-boiled, and not conducive to tourism.

ITALY

For the Anglophone reader, it's hard to look anywhere other than Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen mysteries for an insight into Italian politics and corruption although Carlo Lucarelli stands out among a host of native crime writers. His UK debut Almost Blue (2004), a creepy tale of a blind radio buff who hears the voice of a serial killer, emerged some time after it had been made into a film in Italy. Lucarelli is one of many who's turned his hand to historical crime, in this case a trilogy of Commissario De Luca novels set in fascist wartime Italy.

SPAIN

Arturo Pérez-Reverte is currently best known for his Captain Alatriste books and though the author may not be the latest cutting-edge Spanish crime writer, he's been at the forefront of publishers' fascination with historical crime fiction since mystery The Flanders Panel was picked up by Harvill in 1994. (Harvill was also behind Vargas here, among others.) Follow-up The Club Dumas became a film, The Ninth Gate (1999), under Roman Polanski, starring Johnny Depp, while Viggo Mortensen has since become Alatriste (alongside Elena Anaya).

Welcome to Iceland

I've got a piece in Voyager this month on Scandinavian crime novelists, written with the magazine's splendid editor, Andrew. Due to the focus on Denmark, Norway and Sweden, there was no space for Iceland, home of one of the best Nordic crime writers of the last decade, Arnaldur Indridason. (I haven't tried his compatriot Yrsa Sigurdardottir, any good?)

Indridason emerged in the UK in 2004 with Jar City, a terrific exploration of this remote country's landscape and heritage in the form of a murder-mystery. (The book was reissued with the unbelievably dull title Tainted Blood but seems to have reverted to form, thank goodness.) There are now seven Inspector Erlendur investigations - branded Reykjavík Murder Mysteries by the publishers - as well as a historical thriller (Operation Napoleon), though the work has slightly flagged for me since 2006's Voices. (All dates are for UK translations.)

In 2008, a film version of Jar City hit our screens and I interviewed director Baltasar Kormákur (101 Reykjavík, 2000) about the difficulty of casting the much-loved lead role (the part went to Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson, pictured). I was especially taken with Kormákur's views on his country and what drew him to the book initially - 'We never believed we could make thrillers due to the lack of crimes,' the director noted of his first encounter with Indridason's work.

For Kormákur, detective Erlendur is a 'true Icelandic character, the type of man who has moved from the countryside and never really found ground in the city. That's why I emphasised the mountains: when he's out smoking, I pulled the mountains in. This man took the mountains with him to the city. There's a lot of those people, they bring horses to the city and they have a country life in the city but it doesn't fit. I liked that part of having him drive through the lava field and being alone in this humungous country - it's very big with very few people - and also emphasising not the beauty spots but the spots that are more real to me.'

Since then Kormákur has worked largely in the US - including on a thriller scripted by Indridason called Contraband, which stars Mark Wahlberg and is due out in Britain next March - although you can't blame him returning home to what sounds like an idyllic life. 'My ground is in Iceland but it's hard with an audience of 300,000 people, I've been lucky to get some experience abroad. If I haven't totally fucked it up I'll do some more movies but I'll always come back to Iceland, I'll never leave the country. I have five children, I live on a farm breeding horses - I just think life won't get much better than that.'

Pioneer sleuths

From contemporary women detectives in books and on TV, I've stepped back into the world of their fictional forebears. The first female sleuths didn't exist in real life but on the page, conjured by men and women writers as a means to allow them into a world males may not have gained entry, or simply because the characters remained unnoticed and beyond suspicion.

The heroines featured in Michael Sims' excellent anthology The Penguin Book of Victorian in Crime - out now - are feminist antecedents and many of their concerns resonate today: the case of The Mysterious Countess (by WS Hayward, 1864?) is suddenly accelerated when a policeman sells information to a newspaper, while the narrator of The Unknown Weapon (Andrew Forrester, 1864), Mrs G, notes, 'the detective force, many of whom, though very clever, are equally simple, and accept a plain and straightforward statement with extreme willingness'.