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European Crime Fiction Booklist
Page Modified: June 1, 2007
Crime Fiction with a European flavor and flair.
A list of books, many of which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist (BL), Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus, and Library Journal (LJ). Additional titles of interest may be included on this list. Titles are alphabetically by author.
Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.- Murder in the Sentier
Author: Black, Cara
Publisher: Soho $ 24 ISBN: 1569472785 Date: 2002
PW
The third Aimee Leduc investigation is set in the historic Sentier district, where once-fashionable private mansions now house the Parisian "rag" trade and nightclubs. Members of a 1960s Red gang are seeking their hidden loot, which leads to new murders. Aimee fears the killers may include her long-lost mother.
Suggested Reading: Paris Stars
Updated 3/7/02 - Murder in the Bastille
Author: Black, Cara
Publisher: Soho Press $ 23.00 ISBN: 1569473242 Date: 2003
Kirkus
April in Paris is a time for crime when Aime Leduc is attacked in an alley and knocked unconscious. When she awakes, she discovers she is blind. The police maintain she was the victim of a serial killer targeting showy blondes. Was he after another woman, or was Aime his intended victim?
Suggested Reading: Paris Stars
Updated 1.26.03 - The Shape of Water: Salvo Montalbano
Author: Camilleri, Andrea
Publisher: Viking $ 20.95 ISBN: 0670030929 Date: 2002
Kirkus
Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano has become an international sensation whose adventures have been translated from Italian into eight languages, from Dutch to Japanese. The Shape of Water is the first book in this sly, witty, engaging series with its sardonic take on Sicilian life.
Updated 3/28/02 - The Terra-Cotta Dog: Inspector
Montalbano
Author: Camilleri, Andrea
Publisher: Viking $ 21.95 ISBN: 0670031380 Date: 2002
Booklist
Camilleri's Inspector Salvo Montalbano has garnered millions of fans worldwide with his sardonic, engaging take on Sicilian life and his genius for deciphering the most enigmatic of crimes. The Terra-cotta Dog is the second offering in the internationally bestselling series.
Updated 10.24.02 - Lime's Photograph
Author: Davidson, Leif
Publisher: Vintage $ 12 (paper) ISBN: 1860469884 Date: 2003
Booklist
In this dramatic political thriller from one of Denmark's finest crime writers, Lime sets out to discover a motive when fire destroys his home, and finds himself drawn into the complex and terrifying web of international terrorism.
Updated 10.8.03 - The Long Finish: Aurelio Zen
Author: Dibdin, Michael
Publisher: Pantheon List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0375404295 Date: 1998
Kirkus
After his adventure under the sun-drenched skies of Naples in Cosi Fan Tutti, Aurelio Zen finds himself back in Rome, being given yet another unorthodox assignment: to release the jailed scion of an important wine-growing family who is accused of a brutal murder.
- Blood Rain: Aurelio Zen
Author: Dibdin, Michael
Publisher: Pantheon $ 23 ISBN: 0375409157 Date: 2000
Booklist
Set against the backdrop of the 3,000-year-old city of Catania, in the shadow of the smoldering volcano of Etna, Blood Rain reveals Inspector Aurelio Zen at his most desperate and driven, as he undertakes a case more chilling and threatening than any he has faced before.
Updated 4/3/00 - Medusa: Aurelio Zen
Author: Dibdin, Michael
Publisher: Dutton $ 23 ISBN: 0375422692 Date: 2004
LJ
Michael Dibdin's veteran Italian police officer is back. The newest addition to this remarkable series is a novel of long-held secrets set against a sweeping background of political and passionate intrigue.
Updated 2.2.04 - Under the Snow
Author: Ekman, Kerstin
Publisher: Doubleday Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385488661 Date: 1998
PW
Kirkus
LJ
From the acclaimed author of Blackwater comes another deeply atmospheric psychological thriller set in northern Sweden. When a man is murdered at a mah-jongg party turned sour, the local police constable receives conflicting reports as to the exact cause of the murder. Gradually, the facts of the case emerge under the relentless summer sun.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - Lie in the Dark
Author: Fesperman, Dan
Publisher: Soho Price: $ 24 ISBN: 1569471533 Date: 1999
Booklist
PW
In a thriller that recalls the first excitement of Martin Cruz Smith's Moscow, the author Dan Fesperman brilliantly renders the fragmented society and underworld of Sarajevo at war - the freelancing gangsters, guilty bystanders, drop-in correspondents, the bureaucrats frightened for their jobs and for their very lives - and weaves through this torn cityscape on man's desperate, deadly pursuit of the wrong people in the wrongest place. (Soho publicity)
- The Small Boat of Great Sorrows
Author: Fesperman, Dan
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 037541472X Date: 2003
PW Kirkus
In an electrifying tale of international intrigue, the author of Lie in the Dark follows brooding investigator Vlado Petric, who is being used as bait to bring justice to a murderer whose activities in World War II make the current generation of killers look like amateurs.
Updated 7.8.03 - Don't Look Back: Inspector
Sejer
Author: Fossum, Karin
Publisher: Harcourt $ 23 ISBN: 0151010323 Date: 2004
Kirkus
Meet Inspector Sejer: smart and enigmatic, tough but fair. Critically acclaimed across Europe, Fossum's Inspector Sejer novels are masterfully constructed, psychologically convincing, and compulsively readable. They evoke a world that is at once profoundly disturbing and terrifyingly familiar.
Updated 12.29.03 - Matto's Realm: A Sergeant Struder Mystery
Author: Glauser, Friedrich
Publisher: Bitter Lemon $ 13.95 ISBN: 1904738060 Date: 2006
PW Booklist
A child-murderer escapes from a Swiss insane asylum. The stakes get higher when Detective Sergeant Studer discovers the director's body, neck broken, in the boiler room of the madhouse. The intuitive Studer is drawn into the workings of an institution that darkly mirrors the world outside. Even he cannot escape the pull of the no man's land between reason and madness where Matto, the spirit of insanity, reigns. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 12.5.05 - Jar City: A Reykavik Thriller
Author: Indridason, Arnaldur
Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312340702 Date: 2005
LJ
A man is found murdered in his Reykjavik flat, and the police have no obvious leads. Delving into the dead man's past, two investigators discover that the city of Reykjavik has one or two secrets of its own, secrets it would rather keep.
Updated 10.11.05 - Enigmatic Disappearance
Author: Jeffries, Roderic
Publisher: Minotaur $ 21.95 ISBN: 0312265832 Date: 2000
Booklist
Inspector Alvarez likes the quiet life, away from the antics of Mallorca's expatriate community. When his tranquility is shattered by the disappearance of an Englishwoman, Alvarez thinks he has solved the case, but proving his theory is another matter.
Updated 8/18/00 - Uniform Justice
Author: Leon, Donna
Publisher: Atlantic $ 24 ISBN: 0871139030 Date: 2003
LJ Booklist PW
Leon is the internationally bestselling novelist whose ever adroit, big-hearted Venetian detective Commissario Guido Brunetti has captivated fans throughout the world. As Uniform Justice opens, Brunetti is called to investigate a parent's worst nightmare: a young cadet has been found hanged, a presumed suicide, in Venice's elite military academy.
Suggested Reading: Venice
Updated 8.5.03 - Sidetracked: Kurt Wallender
Author: Mankell, Henning
Publisher: New Press Price: $ 25 ISBN: 1565845072 Date: 1999
PW
A teenage girl self-immolates, the former Minister of Justice is murdered and scalped, and suddenly Inspector Kurt Wallander finds himself searching for Sweden's first serial killer.
- The Fifth Woman
Author: Mankell, Henning
Publisher: New Press $ 24.95 ISBN: 1565845471 Date: 2000
Library Journal
Booklist
In an Algerian convent, four nuns and an unidentified fifth woman are found with their throats slit. In Sweden, a birdwatcher is skewered to death in a pit of carefully sharpened bamboo poles. How are the deaths connected? It's up to Inspector Kurt Wallander to find out.
Updated 7/25/00 - One Step Behind: Kurt Wallender
Author: Mankell, Henning
Publisher: New Press $ 24.95 ISBN: 1565846524 Date: 2002
Kirkus
Booklist
An unknown killer is on the loose, but their only lead is a photograph of three dead young people in costume. Forced to dig more deeply than he'd like into the personal life of one of his colleagues, Wallander's investigation uncovers something he could never have imagined. One Step Behind is the fifth book to appear in English in what the Los Angeles Times Book Review calls the "exquisite" Kurt Wallander series.
Updated 2/24/02 - The Dogs of Riga: Kurt Wallendar
Author: Mankell, Henning
Publisher: New Press $ 24.95 ISBN: 1565847873 Date: 2003
Kirkus
PW
Bringing the acclaimed series to a close, The Dogs of Riga takes Inspector Kurt Wallander to Riga, Latvia, to investigate the murder of two Eastern European criminals.
Updated 3.31.03 - Before the Frost
Author: Mankell, Henning
Publisher: New Press $ 24.95 ISBN: 1565848357 Date: 2005
Booklist
Already an international bestseller, Before the Frost inaugurates Mankell's new mystery series about Linda Wallander, daughter of Inspector Kurt Wallander, and also features Stefan Lindman of The Return of the Dancing Master.
Updated 1.18.05 - Some Bitter Taste
Author: Nabb, Magdalen
Publisher: Soho $ 24 ISBN: 156947317x Date: 2002
Kirkus
Sara Hirsch is an elderly spinster who lives in a flat above a Florentine antiquities shop. Frightened, she calls on Marshal Guarnaccia for help, sure that strangers have been in her apartment. The marshal is busy, and before he can respond, she is found dead.
Updated 8.13.02 - The Summer Snow
Author: Pawel, Rebecca
Publisher: Soho Crime $ 23 ISBN: 1569474087 Date: 2006
PW
When an aristocratic lady of Granada, Spain, is found dead in 1945, the local police can't believe that she really may have been murdered. Lieutenant Carlos Tejada Alonso y Leon is assigned because the rich woman is his grand aunt Rosalia, and one of the chief suspects is his father. The family expects Tejada to exonerate its members, but Tejada is a man who puts duty first.
Suggested Reading: Historical Crime Fiction
Updated 12.27.05 - Bridge of Sighs
Author: Steinhauer, Olen
Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312302452 Date: 2003
Kirkus
In this auspicious debut, an inexperienced homicide detective struggles amid the lawlessness of a post-World War II eastern European city.
Suggested Reading: First Fiction & Mystery Debuts
Updated 10.31.02 - The Confession
Author: Steinhauer, Olen
Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312303289 Date: 2004
Kirkus
PW
LJ
Booklist
Eastern Europe 1956: Comrade Inpector Ferenc Kolyeszar, homicide detective and aspiring writer, is watching his life unravel. Estranged from his wife, frustrated by writer's block and tracking a murderer through the shadowy capital. By the author of Bridge of Sighs.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 1.10.04
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