New Titles from Quercus - Jan-June 2013

Taken from the Quercus Spring catalogue, here are new titles for January to June 2013 that are relevant to Euro Crime, plus anything translated or a bit unusual...:

January

The Chessman by Peter May (already available in ebook) (#3 Fin Macleod, Police Officer, Edinburgh)

Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths (available in ebook on 20 Dec.)(#5 Dr Ruth Galloway, forensic archaeologist and DCI Harry Nelson)

Dark Winter by David Mark (paperback) (#1 Detective Sergeant McAvoy of Humberside CID)

Screams in the Dark by Anna Smith (#3 Rosie Gilmour, Crime Journalist, 1990s)

The Woman Who Wouldn't Die by Colin Cotterill (#9 Dr Siri Paiboun, Laos)

The Dark Valley by Valerio Varesi (tr. Joseph Farrell) (paperback) (#2 Commissario Soneri, Italy)

The Low Road by Chris Womersley (Australian noir)

February

Grandad, There's a Head on the Beach by Colin Cotterill (paperback) (#2 Jimm Juree, Crime Reporter, Thailand)

Sleepwalkers by Tom Grieves (paperback)

The Mattress House by Paulus Hochgaterrer (tr. Jamie Bulloch) (paperback) (#2 Psychiatrist Raffael Horn & Criminal Commissioner Kovacs)

Alex by Pierre Lemaitre (tr. Frank Wynne) (#2 Police Commandant Camille Verhoeven trilogy)

March

The Deliverance of Evil by Roberto Costantini (tr. N S Thompson) (#1 Commissario Michele Balistreri, Rome)

The River of Fire by Patrick Easter (paperback) (#2 Tom Pascoe, River Surveyor, 18thC)

The Devil's Recruit by S G MacLean (#4 Alexander Seaton, 17thC Aberdeen)

Holy City by Guillermo Orsi (tr. Nick Caistor) (paperback)

Killer at the End of the Line by David Thomas

The Crowded Grave by Martin Walker (paperback) (#4 Bruno, Chief of Police, France)

April

The Garden of Burning Sand by Corban Addison (set in Zambia)

The Voice of the Spirits by Xavier-Marie Bonnot (tr. Justin Phipps) ( #3 Police Captain Michel de Palma, Marseille)

Isle of the Dead by Alex Connor

Original Skin by David Mark (available in ebook on 28 Feb.)(#2 Detective Sergeant McAvoy of Humberside CID)

The Missing File by D A Mishani (tr. Steven Cohen) (set in Tel Aviv)

Two Soldiers by Roslund & Hellstrom (tr. Kari Dickson) (#6 Detective Inspector Ewert Grens)

May

Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths (paperback) (#5 Dr Ruth Galloway, forensic archaeologist and DCI Harry Nelson)

Until the Wrath Be Past by Asa Larsson (tr. Laurie Thompson) (paperback)

A Willing Victim by Laura Wilson (paperback) (#4 Inspector Ted Stratton, CID, WW2 London)

June

Killing Range by Phil Campion (#2 Steve Range, Ex-Special Forces operative)

The Lullaby of Polish Girls by Dagmara Dominczyk

The Gift of Darkness by V M Giambanco (#1 Detective Alice Madison, Seattle)

A Man Without Breath by Philip Kerr (#9 Private Detective Bernhard Gunther, 1930s Berlin)

Limit by Frank Schatzing (tr. Shaun Whiteside, Jamie Searle & Samuel Willcocks) (futuristic thriller)

Bed of Nails by Antonin Varenne (tr. Sian Reynolds) (#1 Guerin, Paris)

The Devil's Cave by Martin Walker (paperback) (#5 Bruno, Chief of Police, France)

The Resistance Man by Martin Walker (#6 Bruno, Chief of Police, France)

New Titles from Quercus July-Dec 2012

Browsing through the new Quercus catalogue for July-December 2012, these are the titles of euro crime/translated interest:

Quercus

July

Max Kinnings - Baptism (#1 DCI Ed Mallory)

Barbara Nadel - A Private Business (#1 Hakim & Arnold)

August

Tom Grieves - Sleepwalkers

Martin Walker - The Devil's Cave (#5 Bruno Chief of Police)

September

Phil Campion - Desert Fire (debut)

[Tony Park - Dark Heart (Australian writer, writing about Africa)]

November

Alex Connor - Memory of Bones

Peter Mayle - The Marseille Caper (#2 Sam Levitt)

MacLehose

August

Marek Krajewski - The Minotaur's Head (#4 Inspector Eberhard Mock, Breslau)

September

Asa Larsson - The Black Path (paperback) (#3 Rebecka Martinsson)

Highlights from new Quercus Catalogue

The Spring catalogue has arrived from Quercus/MacLehose Press. The crime highlights include:

January

Peter Temple - Truth (Australian)

February

Elly Griffiths - The Janus Stone

March

Shona MacLean - A Game of Sorrows

April

Marjolijn Februari - The Book Club

May

Colin Cotterill - Love Songs from a Shallow Grave
Adrian Hyland - Gunshot Road (Australian)
Guillermo Orsi - No-One Loves a Policeman (Argentinian) (nb. says Oct on amazon)

June

Elena Forbes - Evil in Return
Valerio Varesi - River of Shadows

The Quercus approach to Stella Rimington

From Publishing News:

HAVING ACQUIRED FORMER MI5 chief Stella Rimington for the fourth novel in her Liz Carlyle series - following three previous bestsellers published by Random House - Quercus is planning to re-position her to appeal to a more female readership when it publishes Dead Line in October with a striking female image on the jacket. It is the latest example of a publisher seeking to boost its market for a particular author by altering the jacket and overall packaging. Little, Brown is currently planning to reposition Nora Roberts to make her appeal to a broader audience, following research which showed that her readers weren't happy with her being solely billed as romance.

“Women are heavy readers of crime novels, and we believe there is an untapped market for women buying thrillers,” says Quercus Sales Director David Murphy. “Stella's novels have a strong female character, but we believe women readers may have been put off by the masculine look of her previous books.” Rimington's editor at Quercus, Jane Wood, adds: “Random House did a brilliant job with Stella, but as the first woman Director General of MI5 with great appeal herself to women as a role model, and writing about a strong female heroine, she should have strong appeal to women who like to read thrillers.” There will also be a filmed interview with Rimington for David Freeman's Meet the Author website to be shot in the apartment of Quercus Chairman Anthony Cheetham, once owned by Sir Winston Churchill.

The challenge for Quercus is to reach a new female readership without alienating the core male market for thriller fiction.

Forthcoming titles from Quercus

The Autumn catalogue from Quercus arrived today. So what do Euro Crime fans have to look forward to?:

July
Paulus Hochgatterer - The Sweetness of Life
Shona MacLean - The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

August
Elena Forbes - Our Lady of Pain

October
Colin Cotterill - Anarchy and Old Dogs
Phil Rickman - To Dream of the Dead
Stella Rimington - Dead Line

November
John Gardner - Moriarty

As well as those delights there are two titles by Peter Temple plus a number of US authors including Thomas H Cook.

Swedish Horror (for a change)

From the Quercus website:

The trailer for the film edition of Let the Right One In is now available on youtube and looks very exciting indeed. The author (John Ajvide Lindqvist) will be in the UK for the premiere of the film later this year, while his next novel Handling the Undead will be published by Quercus in September 2008.

(nb. the trailer is a bit gruesome)

Read Mike Ripley's review of Let The Right One In.

Gadding about this week (Quercus & Crimini)

This has been the week for book launches. Last Tuesday, Maxine and I attended the launch of Quercus' MacLehose imprint. The first offering from which was The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.

Ali (who took this photograph) has already comprehensively written up the proceedings on The Rap Sheet.





Then on Thursday we were off to the launch of Crimini, a collection of Italian noir short stories from Bitter Lemon Press. The short stories have been turned into a tv series also called Crimini and the evening began with a short clip from Diego Da Silva's entry, set in Naples. Then the bulk of the night was a panel of Crimini editor, Giancarlo De Cataldo, Frances Fyfield and Maxim Jakubowski. In a short intermission, the beginning of Romanzo Criminale was shown (De Cataldo wrote the book and was heavily involved in the film).

I took a few notes which are a bit disjointed:

Crime fiction is a relatively new genre in Italy. Carlo Lucarelli is considered the doyen of the genre. A second Crimini collection is planned with some new authors.

De Cataldo chose the authors for Crimini by asking his friends. He was later asked why there are no female authors in the collection but couldn't really answer that. Maxim stated that his forthcoming Rome Noir would have stories from three female writers, though, De Cataldo pointed out, only one is actually a crime writer.

Frances Fyfield said that American crime fiction taught her that you can have humour in a crime novel and she gave the example of Carl Hiaasen.

De Cataldo is a judge (and married to a lawyer "it happens") and Fyfield is a prosecutor. She said she felt priviledged to see other people's stories and always wanted to finish the stories off. Different professions would have led them to write different stories.

De Cataldo asked the Crimini authors to choose a place, a city and link it to the story, to the land. Camilleri - "the noble father" - said he couldn't write a Montalbano story as he'd written too many already. The book shows a very different side to the clichéd view of Italy.

For the tv series, to much audience amazement, the authors and screenwriters collaborated and agreed on how the story was to appear on screen. A character in Marcello Fois' story had to be changed from a politician to a manager. The tv series was well received critically and a second series is planned.

After the intermission, the discussion moved on to Romanzo Criminale. The Director's cut has 40 more minutes. The DVD was more successful than the film, all over Europe.

De Cataldo has written a follow-up to Romanzo Criminale with two of the characters from the original book. He has edited his original 700 pages to 350. Women have more importance in this one.

Neither book is available in English. Maxim said that the size of the Romanzo Criminale book and the current economics of publishing translated fiction were to blame.

There was some good news though, a tv series in collaboration with SKY began shooting last week. Different to the book and film but related somehow to Romanzo Criminale (I didn't catch that bit). It will be quite violent and viewers must be over 14.

De Cataldo also mentioned Quo Vadis, Baby? which started as a book, went on to be filmed and is now a tv series.
Details of the Crimini tv series can be found on the Italian tv channel RAI site and there are some videos and film stills. The video of the 'behind the scenes' is also viewable on YouTube. Also on YouTube is a clip from the Rapidamente episode (though I think this is just the scenes with Gabriella Pession!). The episodes are also available on Italian DVD but (not surprisingly) there aren't any English subtitles.

Is it too much to hope that BBC4 or Channel 4 will buy and subtitle the Crimini series...?

Quercus books to be optioned for filming?

From The Bookseller:

Quercus has signed a three-year first look deal with UK-based production company MARV Films, founded by "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" producer Matthew Vaughn. Under the agreement, MARV will have an exclusive window to review all of Quercus's fiction with a view to working with the publisher and its authors to option film rights.

MARV was founded by Vaughn in 2003, with marketer Kris Thykier becoming a partner in 2007. The company has produced the gangster film "Layer Cake" and the recent "Stardust", adapted from a Neil Gaiman novel.

Thykier said the deal marked a "new approach to working with British publishing houses." He added: "Anthony Cheetham, Mark Smith and Wayne Davis have quickly established Quercus as the most exciting publisher in the UK, with particular emphasis on the kind of strong thriller and crime genre material that we believe have a significant opportunity to translate to commercial, quality movies."

Anthony Cheetham, Quercus chairman, said: "In crime fiction there have always been strong links between book and film. Our new relationship with MARV will, I hope, allow Quercus to play a part in bringing some of the best new talent in crime writing to the attention of an exceptional team of film makers."

News from Quercus

Petrona and I had a very nice lunch date yesterday with the publicity department from Quercus. As well as sparkling conversation and a super Italian meal, they gave us a proof of January's 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo' by Stieg Larsson and their Spring 2008 catelogue.

They also let slip that Colin Cotterill and Nigel McCrery will be attending next year's Harrogate Crime Writing Festival.

Forthcoming titles from British and European authors are:-

January

The Natural Disorder of Things by Andrea Canobbio (printed in the US in 2006)
Death in Breslau by Marek Krajewski
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

February

A Quiet Flame by Philip Kerr (Bernie Gunther)

March

Romanno Bridge by Andrew Greig

May

The First Fingerprint by Xavier-Marie Bonnot
Disco for the Departed by Colin Cotterill

June

The Duke's Agent by Rebecca Jenkins (first published in 1997)
The Murder Village by Andrea Maria Schenkel
The Outcast by Michael Walters

Quercus featured on Lovereading.co.uk

The latest newsletter from online bookseller lovereading.co.uk has Quercus as the publisher of the month.

You can read extracts from Peter Temple's The Broken Shore and In The Evil Day, Philip Kerr's The One from the Other, Elena Forbes' Die With Me and Michael Walters' The Shadow Walker, amongst others.

For once Amazon recommends - gets it right

I was very impressed by 'The Prone Gunman', reviewed here on Euro Crime and I am looking forward to reading Michael Walters' Mongolian series of which, 'The Shadow Walker', is the first. So I was stunned when amazon.co.uk, read my mind, sort of:

Greetings from Amazon.co.uk
We've noticed that customers who have expressed interest in "Prone Gunman" by Jean-Patrick Manchette have also ordered "The Shadow Walker" by Michael Walters. For this reason, you might like to know that this book will be released on 3 May 2007.

You can read more about Michael Walters and 'The Shadow Walker' on his new(ish) website. He is published by Quercus and you can see from this list of new Autumn titles that the second in the series, 'The Adversary', will be out in October.

Forthcoming Quercus Titles

I picked up Quercus' Autumn catalogue at the LBF and some of the highlights by British authors include:

July

Elena Forbes - Die With Me (see this post)

Aug

Philip Kerr - The One From the Other (previously published in the US, the fourth in the Bernie Gunther series)

Sep

Nigel McCrery - Still Waters (author of the Sam Ryan/Silent Witness books, this is the first in a new series)

Oct

Phil Rickman - The Fabric of Sin (next in the Merrily Watkins series)

Michael Walters - The Adversary (follow-up to 'The Shadow Walker', set in Mongolia)

Dec

Colin Cotterill - Thirty-Three Teeth (previously published in the US, second in this series set in Laos. 'The Coroner's Lunch' is out in June.)

Not forgetting new titles from Australian authors - Peter Temple, Matt Rubinstein and Adrian Hyland.