Mike Ripley on Track

Mike Ripley’s September “Getting Away with Murder” column is up and running at the Webzine Shots. As always, Ripley’s coverage is so complete, I don’t even know where to start in recounting it: festivals and new series and old series and general comments about the crime corner of the book industry we all love.

Ripley’s observations tend to be spot-on and--quite often--are stated with great wit. Take, for example, this quick look at a new novel from Deon Meyer:

I am steeling myself for this month’s inevitable hysteria as publishers and booksellers trumpet that “South Africa is the new Scandinavia” when it comes to crime writing and that Deon Meyer is “South Africa’s Answer to Stieg Larsson”. He’s not; he’s far better.

As it happens, Trackers showed up in my office just today and I’d already decided to sneak it to the top of my TBR pile when I read Meyer’s sharp--and positive--assessment. Meyer writes in Afrikaans, which he explains in a touching comment in an interview that arrived with the book. “If I write in English, it takes me longer,” Meyer explains. “I have to translate my thoughts. ... Afrikaans is my mother tongue. It’s a small language, an endangered language. The one thing I can do for the language is to write in it.”

In the same interview, Meyer reports that he’s a big fan of Michael Connelly and insists that 2002’s “City of Bones is the most perfect crime novel I’ve ever read.”

Ironically enough, Connelly blurbs the North American editions of this book, which will be out next week from Atlantic Monthly Press in the States and Random House Canada north of the border. “With Deon Meyer, you can’t go wrong,” Connelly enthuses. I guess I’m going to trust in Ripley and Connelly and plan on spending a few hours with Meyer in the near future. Thanks, guys!