“Crime writers have to use considerable ingenuity to bring anything fresh to the genre,” wrote Natasha Cooper in her Times Literary Supplement review of The Murder Farm (Quercus, 2008). But, she declared, Andrea Maria Schenkel in her first-ever novel had pulled it off. Later David Peace, himself a formally inventive writer, would hint at the way in which Schenkel had “shown and redefined the possibilities and responsibilities of the genre”.• A new Miss Marple mystery series debuts this Sunday on PBS-TV.
Now Schenkel has done it again. In her new book, the chilling Ice Cold (there is no other word) she re-imagines another real-life case, just as she did in The Murder Farm, this time of Johann Eichhorn, a serial sex killer executed in Nazi Germany in 1939. One by one, each book reached the top position in the German best-seller charts; each book was selected as the best crime novel of the year by the jury of mystery critics and literary scholars that award the Deutscher Krimi-Preis. The Murder Farm was also awarded the Friedrich Glauser Prize by Das Syndikat, the German crime-writer’s association. In Sweden, the book took precedence over both John le Carré and Peter Temple (amongst others) to win the 2008 Martin Beck Award, the Swedish Academy (of Detection)’s prize for the best translated novel.
• It’s been 18 years since the youth-oriented crime series 21 Jump Street disappeared from the FOX-TV schedule. But suddenly there’s talk of a big-screen version being produced, and news that Johnny Depp--who’s come a long way since he starred as undercover cop Tom Hanson on that show--wants a part in the flick.
• Another independent bookstore bites the dust. This time it’s Richmond, Virginia’s decade-old Creatures ’n Crooks, which specializes in mystery, science fiction, fantasy, and horror fiction. Read more here and here.
• For Karen Sisco lovers: the intro to that ill-treated ABC-TV series.
• The state of post-apartheid South African crime fiction.
• Still more classic book covers to love, from Robert Bloch, Charlie Wells, and Donald E. Westlake.
• TV Squad interviews Leverage’s Timothy Hutton.
• Shots’ L.J. Hurst speaks with James Zemboy, author of the new non-fiction book, The Detective Novels of Agatha Christie: A Reader’s Guide, which is described as being “perhaps the largest study of her work yet published.”
• If you have yet to discover the acclaimed work of Irish writer John Connolly (The Lovers), The Mystery Bookshelf offers a handy introduction to his novels.
• Hard Case Crime honcho Charles Ardai talks rather skeptically about the economics of publishing.
• And I’m posting this ... well, just because.
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