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Aunt Agatha appears more focuseed on the Times crossword than she does on plotting her next Poirot mystery! Ho-hum! Our Crime Book Blog Brings the Best in Crime Fiction to Your Browser! If you happen to be a fan, as we do, of the plodding, pessamistic, dour (must be the long winter nights!) Swedish Dick, then here we have it! After eight fine and very readable English translations of Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels, ranging from Faceless Killers through to Firewall, we are finally being treated to the 'gaps' in Wallander's career through The Pyramid (originally published in Swedish in 1999 as Pyramiden), five short stories - Wallander's First Case, The Man with the Mask, The Man at the Beach, The Death of the Photographer, and The Pyramid make up the new British edition of this tome which finally hit the shelves here several weeks ago. The Pyramid by Henning Mankell is published by Harvill Secker in Hardcover (2 Oct 2008) 448 pages ISBN:1846550971. List Price £17.99. Available from Amazon at £10.99. If this gives you a taste for more of the Kurt Wallander crime thrillers, here is a full list of the English translations along with the original British publication dates: Faceless Killers (1997), The Dogs of Riga (2001), The White Lioness (1998), The Man who Smiled (2005), Sidetracked (1999), The Fifth Woman (2000), One Step Behind(2002), Firewall (2002). And if you wish to see Wallander -or the 'Norse Morse' as he now seems to be dubbed by some of our media - on the screen - then don't forget that Kenneth Branagh will be playing him in the series to be shown on BBC1 commencing Sunday 23 November. So what can we tell you about the author, Henning Mankell? Born in Stockholm in 1948, he was already an author at 20, while working as a theatre director in Sweden, and for a time in Mozambique - from where he clearly drew much of the inspiration for the African settings and background that appear in some of his work. A man with a clear social concience, it is interesting to note that in the forward to The Pyramid we are told that the message he is trying to convey in the Wallander books is the sad state of Swedish society today, with its disinegrating welfare state (that was once, if we recall, the envy of the world)! +++ Body of Lies by David Ignatius Ridley Scott’s last movie Body of Lies – with box-office heavyweights Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe - will no doubt perk up interest in the writing of Washington Post columnist David Ignatius who penned the crime/spy/thriller about Roger Ferris and his exploits in Jordan as a CIA undercover agent. A veteran whose published works span more than 20 years David Ignatius certainly seems to have the right track record to plot such a book as Body of Lies his first title to be filmed! His earlier works in this field include Agents of Innocence (1987), SIRO (1991), The Bank of Fear (1994), A Firing Offence (1997). He has also written The Sun King (1999) – the latter book being a break with his usual genre as it deals with ambition and intrigue set against a background of the Washington newspaper world. Ignatius has worked as a journalist/columnist for a number of prestigious publications in the US including the Wall Street Journal where his coverage included CIA matters (it seems that even CIA insiders recon that this guy actually knows what he is writing about). He also served for a time as executive editor of the International Herald Tribune in Paris. If you would like more biographical information, then follow the link below: http://www.postwritersgroup.com/ignatius.htm Otherwise, you can buy your copy of Body of Lies through the link below, along with copies of other books by David Ignatius – whose work may well begin to garner a more popular following now!
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