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The Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year

I’m delighted to be one of the judges for the 2014 Petrona Award for Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. The award will celebrate the work of Maxine Clarke, one of the first online crime fiction reviewers, who died in December.

The press release can be found here: http://eurocrime.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-petrona-award-for-scandinavian.html

Scandinavian crime fiction is experiencing a boom both here in the UK and abroad and there are a vast range of translated titles to choose from. There’s some exciting reading ahead.

The 2013 shortlist, which is based on Maxine’s reviews and ratings, has some great books on it too. They are:

PIERCED by Thomas Enger, tr. Charlotte Barslund (Faber and Faber)
BLACK SKIES by Arnaldur Indridason, tr. Victoria Cribb (Harvill Secker)
LAST WILL by Liza Marklund, tr. Neil Smith (Corgi)
ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER LIFE by Leif GW Persson tr. Paul Norlen (Doubleday)
another time another life
Pierced
LWillBlack Skies
Who would you most like to win out of these?
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The Best of June’s Reading

June was the CWA National Crime Writing Month and the excellent Reginald Hill tribute site attracted posts from crime writers, reviewers, bloggers and friends of this great writer. I contributed a review of the excellent The Stranger House.

For crimepieces, there was a strong international flavour to my reading with not a single book set in the UK. There wasn’t a bad book amongst my selection, an improvement on May’s offerings and it has been difficult to choose a winner. I am going to go with Black Skies by Arnaldur Indridason mainly because I had been looking forward to it and the anticipation did not spoil my read one bit.

The ten books I read in June for crimepieces were

1. The Man on the Balcony by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

2. Death and the Olive Grove by Marco Vichi

3. The Bull of Mithros by Anne Zouroudi

4. Summertime Death by Mons Kallentoft

5. The Kiss of Death by PD Martin

6. The Black Path by Asa Larsson

7. Containment by Vanda Symon

8. The Bloody Meadow by William Ryan

9. Black Skies by Arnaldur Indridason

10. The Silver Stain by Paul Johnston

As usual, Kerrie from  Mysteries in Paradise is collating the pick of the month’s reads.