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Sherlock Holmes, pipe-puffing hero of crime fiction, confers with his colleague Dr. Watson; together these characters popularized the genre.

Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalises crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred. It has several sub-genres, including detective fiction (such as the whodunnit), legal thriller, courtroom drama and hard-boiled fiction.

History of crime fictions[link]

While the archetype for a murder mystery dates back to "The Three Apples" in the One Thousand and One Nights,^[1] crime fiction began to be considered as a serious genre only around 1900. The earliest known crime novel is "The Rector of Veilbye" by the Danish author Steen Steensen Blicher, published in 1829. Better known are the earlier dark works of Edgar Allan Poe (e.g., "The Murders in the Rue Morgue " (1841), " The Mystery of Marie Roget " (1842), and "The Purloined Letter" (1844). Wilkie Collins' epistolary novel The Woman in White was published in 1860, while The Moonstone (1868) is often thought to be his masterpiece. French author Émile Gaboriau's Monsieur Lecoq (1868) laid the groundwork for the methodical, scientifically minded detective. The evolution of locked room mysteries was one of the landmarks in the history of crime fiction. The Sherlock Holmes mysteries of Arthur Conan Doyle are said to have been singularly responsible for the huge popularity in this genre. A precursor was Paul Féval, whose series Les Habits Noirs (1862–67) features Scotland Yard detectives and criminal conspiracies.

The evolution of the print mass media in the United Kingdom and the United States in the latter half of the 19th century was crucial in popularising crime fiction and related genres. Literary 'variety' magazines like Strand, McClure's, and Harper's quickly became central to the overall structure and function of popular fiction in society, providing a mass-produced medium that offered cheap, illustrated publications that were essentially disposable.

Like the works of many other important fiction writers of his day—e.g. Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens—Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories first appeared in serial form in the monthly Strand magazine in the United Kingdom. The series quickly attracted a wide and passionate following on both sides of the Atlantic, and when Doyle killed off Holmes in The Final Problem, the public outcry was so great, and the publishing offers for more stories so attractive, that he was reluctantly forced to resurrect him.

Later a set of stereotypic formulae began to appear to cater to various tastes.

Categories of crime fiction[link]

Crime fiction can be divided into the following branches:

Detective fiction[link]

• The whodunit: The most common form of detective fiction. It features a complex, plot-driven story in which the reader is provided with clues from which the identity of the perpetrator of the crime may be deduced before the solution is revealed at the end of the book.
• Locked room mystery: A specialized kind of a whodunit in which the crime is committed under apparently impossible circumstances, such as a locked room in which no intruder could have entered or left.
• Cozy: A subgenre of detective fiction in which sex, profanity or violence are downplayed or treated humorously.

Later and contemporary contributions to the whodunit[link]

• The historical whodunnit: Also a sub-genre of historical fiction. The setting of the story and the crime has some historical significance
• The inverted detective story: Also known as "howcatchem", the commission of the crime and the identity of the perpetrator is revealed to the reader first, then the rest of the story describes the detective's attempt to solve the mystery.
• The American hard-boiled school: Distinguished by the unsentimental portrayal of violence and sex, the sleuth usually also confronts danger and engages in violence.
• The police procedural: The detective is a member of the police, and thus the activities of a police force are usually convincingly depicted.
• The legal thriller: The major characters are instead lawyers and their employees, and they become involved in proving their cases.
• The spy novel: The major characters are instead spies, usually working for an intelligence agency.
• Caper stories and the criminal novel: Stories told from the point of view of the criminals.
• The psychological suspense: This specific sub-genre of the thriller genre also incorporates elements from detective fiction, as the protagonist must solve the mystery of the psychological conflict presented in these types of stories.
• Spoofs and parodies

Crime fiction and mainstream fiction[link]

When trying to pigeon-hole fiction, it is extraordinarily difficult to tell where crime fiction starts and where it ends. This is largely attributed to the fact that love, danger and death are central motifs in fiction. A less obvious reason is that the classification of a work may very well be related to the author's reputation.

For example, William Somerset Maugham's (1874–1966) novella Up at the Villa (1941) could very well be classified as crime fiction. This short novel revolves around a woman having a one-night stand with a total stranger who suddenly and unexpectedly commits suicide in her bedroom, and the woman's attempts at disposing of the body so as not to cause a scandal about herself or be suspected of killing the man. As Maugham is not usually rated as a writer of crime novels, Up at the Villa is hardly ever considered to be a crime novel and accordingly can be found in bookshops among his other, "mainstream" novels.

A more recent example is Bret Easton Ellis's (born 1964) seminal novel American Psycho (1991) about the double life of Patrick Bateman, a Wall Street yuppie and serial killer in the New York of the 1980s. Even though in American Psycho the most heinous crimes are depicted in minute detail, the novel has never been labelled a "crime novel", maybe because it is never explicitly mentioned whether Bateman actually commits the crimes or rather just fantasizes about them.

On the other hand, U.S. author James M. Cain is normally seen as a writer belonging to the "hard-boiled" school of crime fiction. However, his novel Mildred Pierce (1941) is really about the rise to success of an ordinary housewife developing her entrepreneurial skills and—legally—outsmarting her business rivals, and the domestic trouble caused by her success, with, in turn, her husband, her daughter and her lover turning against her. Although no crime is committed anywhere in the book, the novel was reprinted in 1989 by Random House, alongside Cain's thriller The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), under the heading "Vintage Crime".

When film director Michael Curtiz adapted Mildred Pierce for the big screen in 1945, he lived up to the cinemagoers' and the producers' expectations by adding a murder that is not in the novel. As potential cinemagoers had been associating Cain with hard-boiled crime fiction only, this trick—exploited in advertisements and trailers—in combination with the casting of then Hollywood star Joan Crawford in the title role made sure that the film was going to be a box office hit even before it was released.

Seen from a practical point of view, one could argue that a crime novel is simply a novel that can be found in a bookshop on the shelf or shelves labelled "Crime". (This suggestion has actually been made about science fiction, but it can be applied here as well.) Penguin Books have had a long-standing tradition of publishing crime novels in paperback editions with green covers and spines (as opposed to the orange spines of mainstream literature), thus attracting the eyes of potential buyers already when they enter the shop. But again, this clever marketing strategy does not tell casual browsers what they are really in for when they buy a particular book.

"High art" versus "popular art"[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

The discrepancy between taste and acclaim[link]

Up to the 1960s or so, reading the paperback edition of a crime novel was usually considered a cheap thrill — with the word "cheap" used in both meanings: "inexpensive" and "of minor quality". The educated and civilized world was often interested, at least ostensibly, in the "high art" categorised by classical music, paintings by renowned artists, famous literature and plays like those of William Shakespeare. The term "popular art" referred to folk music, jazz, or rock 'n' roll, photography, the design of everyday objects, comics, science fiction, detective stories or erotic fiction (the latter circulating in private prints only to beat the censor), to quote a few examples. The idea of a "main stream" of literary output suggested that any book deviating, in either content or form or both, from the established norm of "high art" was "cheap", and anyone interested in popular culture was uneducated and unsophisticated and most probably originated in a lower socio-economic division of the contextual society. The universities and the other institutions of higher learning also looked down on artists producing "popular art" and categorically refused to critically assess it.

This often did not correlate with the immense popularity of popular art on both sides of the Atlantic, sometimes due to sensationalism. For example, the British had been fascinated by Edgar Wallace's (1875–1932) crime novels ever since the author set up a competition offering a reward to any reader who could figure out and describe just how the murder in his first book, The Four Just Men (1906), was committed.

A reassessment of critical ideals[link]

In the long run, the vast output of popular fiction could no longer be ignored, and literary critics — gradually, carefully and tentatively — started questioning and assessing the complete notion of the perceived gap between "high art" (or "serious literature") and "popular art" (in America often referred to as "pulp fiction", often verging on "smut and filth"). One of the first scholars to do so was American critic Leslie Fiedler. In his book Cross the Border — Close the Gap (1972), he advocates a thorough re-assessment of science fiction, the western, pornographic literature and all the other subgenres that previously had not been considered as "high art", and their inclusion in the literary canon:

The notion of one art for the 'cultural,' i.e., the favored few in any given society and of another subart for the 'uncultured,' i.e., an excluded majority as deficient in Gutenberg skills as they are untutored in 'taste,' in fact represents the last survival in mass industrial societies (capitalist, socialist, communist — it makes no difference in this regard) of an invidious distinction proper only to a class-structured community. Precisely because it carries on, as it has carried on ever since the middle of the eighteenth century, a war against that anachronistic survival, Pop Art is, whatever its overt politics, subversive: a threat to all hierarchies insofar as it is hostile to order and ordering in its own realm. What the final intrusion of Pop into the citadels of High Art provides, therefore, for the critic is the exhilarating new possibility of making judgments about the 'goodness' and 'badness' of art quite separated from distinctions between 'high' and 'low' with their concealed class bias.

In other words, it was now up to the literary critics to devise criteria with which they would then be able to assess any new literature along the lines of "good" or "bad" rather than "high" versus "popular".

Accordingly,

• A conventionally written and dull novel about, say, a "fallen woman" could be ranked lower than a terrifying vision of the future full of action and suspense.
• A story about industrial relations in the United Kingdom in the early 20th century — a novel about shocking working conditions, trade unionists, strikers and scabs — need not be more acceptable subject-matter per se than a well-crafted and fast-paced thriller about modern life.

But, according to Fiedler, it was also up to the critics to reassess already existing literature. In the case of U.S. crime fiction, writers that so far had been regarded as the authors of nothing but "pulp fiction" — Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and others — were gradually seen in a new light. Today, Chandler's creation, private eye Philip Marlowe — who appears, for example, in his novels The Big Sleep (1939) and Farewell, My Lovely (1940) — has achieved cult status and has also been made the topic of literary seminars at universities round the world, whereas on first publication Chandler's novels were seen as little more than cheap entertainment for the uneducated masses.

Nonetheless, "murder stories" such as Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment or Shakespeare's Macbeth are not dependent on their honorary membership in this genre for their acclaim.

Pseudonymous authors[link]

As far as the history of crime fiction is concerned, some authors have been reluctant to publish their crime novels under their real names. More currently, some publish pseudonymously because of the belief that since the large booksellers are aware of their historical sales figures, and command a certain degree of influence over publishers, the only way to "break out" of their current advance numbers is to publish as someone with no track record.

In the late 1930s and 40s, British County Court judge Arthur Alexander Gordon Clark (1900–1958) published a number of detective novels under the alias Cyril Hare in which he made use of his profoundly extensive knowledge of the English legal system. In Tragedy at Law (1942). Scottish journalist Leopold Horace Ognall (1908–1979) authored over ninety novels as Hartley Howard and Harry Carmichael. When he was still young and unknown, award-winning British novelist Julian Barnes (born 1946) published some crime novels under the alias Dan Kavanagh. Other authors take delight in cherishing their alter egos: Ruth Rendell (born 1930) writes one sort of crime novels as Ruth Rendell and another type as Barbara Vine; John Dickson Carr also used the pseudonym Carter Dickson. The author Evan Hunter (which itself was a pseudonym) wrote his crime fiction under the name of Ed McBain.

Film and literature: The case of crime fiction[link]

Crime fiction and the motion picture industry have complemented each other well over the years. Both cater to the need of the average audience to escape into an idealist world, where the good reaps the rewards, and the bad incur their punishment. Adaptations of crime fiction into films have been hugely successful.

For a detailed explication of the history of the relationship between crime fiction and the film industry, see the main article crime film and mystery film.

Crime fiction has also expanded to the world of videogames, an example being the Ace Attorney series, in which players investigate a murder in order to prove a suspect innocent and find the true culprit.

Availability of crime novels[link]

Quality and availability[link]

As with any other entity, quality of a crime fiction book is not in any meaningful proportion to its availability. Some of the crime novels generally regarded as the finest, including those regularly chosen by experts as belonging to the best 100 crime novels ever written (see bibliography), have been out of print ever since their first publication, which often dates back to the 1920s or 30s. The bulk of books that can be found today on the shelves labelled "Crime" consists of recent first publications usually no older than a few years.

Classics and bestsellers[link]

Furthermore, only a select few authors have achieved the status of "classics" for their published works. A classic is any text that can be received and accepted universally, because they transcend context. A popular, well known example is Agatha Christie, whose texts, originally published between 1920 and her death in 1976, are available in UK and US editions in all English speaking nations. Christie's works, particularly featuring detectives Hercule Poirot or Miss Jane Marple, have given her the title the 'Queen of Crime' and made her one of the most important and innovative writers in the development of the genre. Her most famous novels include Murder on the Orient Express (1934), Death on the Nile (1937), and the world's best-selling mystery And Then There Were None (1939).^[2]

Other less successful, contemporary authors who are still writing have seen reprints of their earlier works, due to current overwhelming popularity of crime fiction texts among audiences (One only has to look at the amount of crime related television series to observe the astonishing popularity). One example is Val McDermid, whose first book appeared as far back as 1987; another is Florida-based author Carl Hiaasen, who has been publishing books since 1981, all of which are readily available.

Forgotten classics[link]

On the other hand, English crime writer Edgar Wallace, who was immensely popular with the English readership during the early decades of the 20th century (and who achieved fame in German-speaking countries due to the many B movies made in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s that were based on his novels), had almost been forgotten in his home country until House of Stratus eventually started republishing many of his 170 books around the turn of the millennium. Similarly, the books by the equally successful American author Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970), creator of the lawyer Perry Mason, which have frequently been adapted for film, radio, and TV, were only recently republished in the United Kingdom — books such as The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (1937), The Case of the Green-Eyed Sister (1953), etc.

Even television adaptations are not enough to save some authors. Gladys Mitchell rivalled Agatha Christie for UK sales in the 1930s and 1940s but only one of her 66 novels remains in print despite a BBC television series of the The Mrs Bradley Mysteries in 1999.

Revival of past classics[link]

From time to time publishing houses decide, for commercial purposes, to revive long-forgotten authors and reprint one or two of their more commercially successful novels. Apart from Penguin Books, who for this purpose have resorted to their old green cover and dug out some of their vintage authors, Pan started a series in 1999 entitled "Pan Classic Crime," which includes a handful of novels by Eric Ambler, but also American Hillary Waugh's Last Seen Wearing .... In 2000, Edinburgh-based Canongate Books started a series called "Canongate Crime Classics," in which they published John Franklin Bardin's The Deadly Percheron (1946) — both a whodunnit and a roman noir about amnesia and insanity — and other novels. However, books brought out by smaller publishers like Canongate Books are usually not stocked by the larger bookshops and overseas booksellers.

Sometimes older crime novels are revived by screenwriters and directors rather than publishing houses. In many such cases, publishers then follow suit and release a so-called "film tie-in" edition showing a still from the movie on the front cover and the film credits on the back cover of the book — yet another marketing strategy aimed at those cinemagoers who may want to do both: first read the book and then watch the film (or vice versa). Recent examples include Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley (originally published in 1955), Ira Levin's Sliver (1991), with the cover photograph depicting a steamy sex scene between Sharon Stone and William Baldwin straight from the 1993 movie, and, again, Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho (1991). Bloomsbury Publishing PLC on the other hand have launched what they call "Bloomsbury Film Classics" — a series of original novels on which feature films were based. This series includes, for example, Ethel Lina White's novel The Wheel Spins (1936), which Alfred Hitchcock — before he went to Hollywood — turned into a much-loved movie entitled The Lady Vanishes (1938), and Ira Levin's (born 1929) science fiction thriller The Boys from Brazil (1976), which was filmed in 1978.

Older novels can often be retrieved from the ever-growing Project Gutenberg database.

See also[link]

Novels portal

• The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time
• Detective fiction
• Murder mystery game
• Mystery fiction
• Mystery film
• List of crime writers
• List of female detective characters
• Whodunit
• Hardboiled
• Art theft
• Crime Writers' Association
• Crime comics
• Giallo

References[link]

• Binyon, T J: "Murder Will Out". The Detective in Fiction (Oxford, 1990, ISBN 0-19-282730-8)
• The Crown Crime Companion. The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time Selected by the Mystery Writers of America, annotated by Otto Penzler, compiled by Mickey Friedman (New York, 1995, ISBN 0-517-88115-2)
• De Andrea, William L: Encyclopedia Mysteriosa. A Comprehensive Guide to the Art of Detection in Print, Film, Radio, and Television (New York, 1994, ISBN 0-02-861678-2)
• Duncan, Paul: Film Noir. Films of Trust and Betrayal (Harpenden, 2000, ISBN 1-903047-08-0)
• The Hatchards Crime Companion. 100 Top Crime Novels Selected by the Crime Writers' Association, ed. Susan Moody (London, 1990, ISBN 0-904030-02-4)
• Hitt, Jim: Words and Shadows. Literature on the Screen (New York, 1992, ISBN 0-8065-1340-3)
• Mann, Jessica: Deadlier Than the Male (David & Charles, 1981. Macmillan,N.Y, 1981)
• McLeish, Kenneth and McLeish, Valerie: Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide to Murder. Crime Fiction and Thrillers (London, 1990, ISBN 0-13-359092-5)
• Ousby, Ian: The Crime and Mystery Book. A Reader's Companion (London, 1997).
• Symons, Julian: Bloody Murder. From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel: A History (Harmondsworth, 1974).
• Waterstone's Guide to Crime Fiction, ed. Nick Rennison and Richard Shephard (Brentford, 1997).
• Willett, Ralph: The Naked City. Urban Crime Fiction in the USA (Manchester, 1996).
• Classic Crime Fiction

External links[link]

• World's Best Detective, Crime, and Murder Mystery Books

Denise Mina
Born	1966 Glasgow, Scotland
Nationality	Scottish
Genres	Crime fiction
www.denisemina.co.uk

Denise Mina (born 1966, Glasgow) is a Scottish crime writer and playwright. She has written the Garnethill trilogy and another three novels featuring the character Patricia "Paddy" Meehan, a Glasgow journalist. Described as an author of Tartan Noir, she has also dabbled in comic book writing, having recently written 13 issues of Hellblazer.^[1] Since 2006, she has had two plays performed with successful reception.

Mina's first Paddy Mehan novel, The Field Of Blood, has recently been filmed by the BBC for broadcast in 2011, and stars Jayd Johnson, Peter Capaldi and David Morrissey.^[2]

Biography[link]

Denise Mina was born in Glasgow in 1966. Her father worked as an engineer. Because of his work, the family moved 21 times in 18 years: from Paris to The Hague, London, Scotland and Bergen. Mina left school at sixteen and worked in a variety of low-skilled jobs, including: bar maid, kitchen porter and cook. She also worked for a time in a meat processing factory. Prior to attending university in her twenties, she worked in auxiliary nursing for geriatric and terminal care patients.

It was while researching a PhD thesis on the ascription of mental illness to female offenders, and teaching criminology and criminal law at Strathclyde University in the 1990s, that she decided to write her first novel Garnethill. Published in 1998 by Transworld, the book won the Crime Writers' Association John Creasy Dagger for Best First Crime Novel.

Mina lives in Glasgow.

Bibliography[link]

Novels[link]

Garnethill trilogy[link]

• Garnethill (1998)
• Exile (2000)
• Resolution (2001)

Patricia "Paddy" Meehan novels[link]

• The Field of Blood (2005)
• The Dead Hour (2006)
• The Last Breath (2007) - published as Slip of the Knife in America

Alex Morrow novels[link]

• Still Midnight (2009)
• The End of the Wasp Season (2010)
• Gods and Beasts (2012)

Other novels[link]

• Sanctum (2003) (published as Deception in the US in 2004)

Comics[link]

• Hellblazer, # 216-228 (DC Comics, 2006–2007)
  • "Empathy is the Enemy" collected Hellblazer issues 216–222
  • "The Red Right Hand" collected Hellblazer issues 223–228

Plays[link]

• Ida Tamson (2006)
• A Drunk Woman Looks at the Thistle (2007), inspired by Hugh MacDiarmid's long modernist poem, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, and first performed by Karen Dunbar.

[edit] Radio Plays

• The Meek, BBC Radio 3, 7 March 2009

Comic Collections and Graphic Novels[link]

• Hellblazer: Empathy is the Enemy (2006)
• Hellblazer: The Red Right Hand (2007)
• A Sickness in the Family (2010)^[3]

Denise Mina signing books at the Edinburgh International Book Festival

Notes[link]

1. ^ Irvine, Alex (2008), "John Constantine Hellblazer", in Dougall, Alastair, The Vertigo Encyclopedia, New York: Dorling Kindersley, pp. 102–111, ISBN 0-7566-4122-5, OCLC 213309015 
2. ^ Ellis, Maureen (13 December 2010), "Face to Face: Denise Mina", The Herald (Glasgow), http://www.heraldscotland.com/life-style/real-lives/face-to-face-denise-mina-1.1074064, retrieved 2010-12-14 
3. ^ Denise Mina Official Website

External links[link]

• Personal Website
• Denise Mina at Contemporary Writers (British Council)
• Still Midnight review and interview in The Scotsman
• Transcript and audio of Denise Mina talking with Ian Rankin at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, 17 August 2006
• End of the Wasp Season Review - ShotsMag Ezine

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Liza Marklund
Liza Marklund, November 2008
Born	Eva Elizabeth Marklund (1962-09-09) September 9, 1962 (age 49) Pålmark, Sweden
Occupation	Crime Novelist
Nationality	Swedish
Genres	Crime fiction, mystery fiction, detective fiction
Subjects	Crime, thriller, mystery, detective
Notable work(s)	The Bomber, Studio 69, Paradise
www.lizamarklund.se

Eva Elisabeth "Liza" Marklund (born 9 September 1962) is a Swedish journalist and crime writer. She was born in Pålmark near Piteå, Norrbotten. Her novels, most of which feature the fictional character Annika Bengtzon, a newspaper journalist, have been published in thirty languages. Marklund is the co-owner of Sweden's third largest publishing house, Piratförlaget and a columnist in the Swedish tabloid Expressen. She is also a Unicef ambassador. The Postcard Killers, a crime thriller written in collaboration with American bestselling author James Patterson, is Marklund's twelfth book.^[1] It was published on January 27, 2010, in Sweden, and became number one on the Swedish bestseller list in February 2010.^[2] It was published on 16 August 2010 in the United States.^[3][4] At the end of August, it reached number one in the New York Times best-seller list, making Liza Marklund the second Swedish author (the first one being Stieg Larsson with the Millennium Trilogy) ever to reach the number one spot.^[5] Marklund lives in Spain with her husband Mikael.

Literary career[link]

Since her debut in 1995, Liza Marklund has written eight crime novels and co-authored two documentary novels with Maria Eriksson and one non-fiction book about female leadership with Lotta Snickare. Marklund's crime novels featuring crime reporter Annika Bengtzon have become international bestsellers. She won the "Poloni Prize" (Polonipriset) 1998 for "Best Swedish Crime Novel by a Female Writer" and "The Debutant Prize", (Debutantpriset) 1998 for "Best First Novel of the Year" with the crime novel Sprängaren (The Bomber), published in 1998.^[6][7] Marklund was named Author of the Year in Sweden 1999 by the Swedish trade union SKTF, won the radio network RixFM's Swedish Literary Prize in 2007, and was selected the fifteenth most popular woman in Sweden of 2003 and the fourth most popular woman in Sweden of 2004 in a yearly survey with 1,000 participants, conducted by ICA-kuriren, a publication published by a Swedish supermarket chain.^[8]

Her books have been number one bestsellers in all five Nordic countries.^[9] In 2002 and 2003, two of Liza Marklund's crime novels were listed on the international bestseller lists by the online magazine Publishing Trends, Prime Time ranking #13 and The Red Wolf ranking #12.^[10] In Scandinavia and Germany, her non-fiction novels have become the center of a heated controversy.^[11][12]

The Annika Bengtzon series[link]

The Annika Bengtzon series at present consists of eight books. The framework of the Annika Bengtzon series is crime reporter Annika's hectic life, at a bustling tabloid called Kvällspressen in Stockholm, Sweden. Her conflict lies in combining motherhood with her career ambitions.

Starting with The Bomber, in which Annika is already a deft professional, the story then moves back in time several years, to the start of her career and the meeting with her future husband Thomas. By the fifth installment The Red Wolf, the reader is back in the present. Books 6, 7 and 8: Nobels's Last Will, Lifetime and A Place in the Sun, together make up a trilogy, with recurring characters and themes and plots linked to each other.

With The Annika Bengtzon series, Liza Marklund introduced a female main character, the tabloid journalist Annika Bengtzon, in a genre where the main characters had often been men. Current events, like political scandals or women's issues, are often intertwined with the plot, or introduced in subplots.^[13] Marklund placed 22nd on the list of the most influential media personality of 2008 in Sweden, a list established yearly by the trade magazine for the advertising industry, Resumé.^[14] Prior to The Bomber, there were very few female commercially successful crime writers in Sweden. Marklund was one of the first highly successful Swedish female crime writers.

Films[link]

Two novels about Annika Bengtzon, The Bomber and Paradise, have been filmed in Swedish by the English director Colin Nutley. The actress Helena Bergström starred in the role as Annika Bengtzon in both movies. They premiered in 2001 and 2002.

In 2009, the film and TV production company Yellow Bird bought the rights to adapt an additional six Annika Bengtzon novels for the screen: Studio 69, Prime Time, The Red Wolf, Nobel's Last Will, Lifetime, and A place in the sun. Yellow Bird, which is part of the trans-European production and distribution group Zodiak Ent, produced the films based on Stieg Larsson’s the Millennium trilogy, and the award-winning English-language "Wallander" TV movies, starring Kenneth Branagh. Like the Millennium trilogy, the total production budget for the series will be around SEK 100m (just under €10m). The names for the main cast, writer and director of the series have not been revealed yet, but filming is expected to start in late 2010.^[15][16]

Chronology[link]

The Annika Bengtzon series has not been written in the order in which the events in the novels take place. The chronological order is as follows:

1. Studio 69 (1999) – takes place eight years before the action of The Bomber
2. Paradise (2000) – a direct continuation of Studio 69
3. Prime time (2002) – the action occurs between Paradise and The Bomber
4. The Bomber (1998)
5. Den röda vargen (2003) – an independent story which picks up from the end of The Bomber
6. Nobels testamente (2006) – takes place some months after The Red Wolf
7. Livstid (2007) – a direct sequel to "Nobels testamente"
8. En plats i solen (2008) - a direct sequel to Livstid

The last three novels can be considered as a trilogy, within the series.

The Maria Eriksson series[link]

Marklund's literary debut came in 1995 with Gömda (Buried Alive). Based on a true story, the book is about a woman who is abused by her boyfriend and forced into hiding. It was re-worked and re-released in 2000, and the new edition became one of the best selling books of all times in Sweden.^[17][18][19] A second book in the Maria Eriksson series, Asylum Granted, was published in 2004. It describes how the woman is forced to flee abroad with her family. Finally, on February 2003, she is granted asylum in the United States, on grounds of domestic violence. The story received a lot of attention in Sweden, and was even discussed in the Swedish Parliament.^[20]

The pseudonym used for the main character in the series is "Maria (or Mia) Eriksson", who is also listed as a co-author of the first editions of the two books in the series. After a controversy regarding the truthfulness of the books, "Mia" revealed her identity in 2009 in order to confirm her story.^[21] Today she lives with a new husband in Arizona. Since 2006 she has written three additional books about her life and about domestic violence, but without Liza Marklund being involved.^[22]

Buried Alive tells the story of "Mia" and "The man with the black eyes", an immigrant from Lebanon, that soon turns into an abusive relationship. They have a child together and they break up, but the abuse continues and is intensified when "Mia" remarries. The welfare state is not able to protect the family, and they are forced into hiding.^[23]

"The man with the black eyes" is the antagonist also in Asyl Den Sanna Fortsättningen på Gömda (Asylum Granted - A True Story), the second book in the series, published 9 years later. The book tells the story of how the abuser forced the woman and her new family to flee abroad. They left Sweden for South America and then spent five years in the United States, attempting to establish asylum. "Maria Eriksson" submitted her application as a victim of domestic violence and gender-based abuse. "Maria Eriksson" was granted asylum on February 25, 2003.^[24]

Controversy[link]

Swedish journalist Monica Antonsson released a book in 2008 criticising the factual background of Buried Alive.^[25][26] Liza Marklund and her publisher argued that although some changes were made to make identification more difficult, the bulk of the story was factually correct.^[27] They conceded, though, that the novel should have been labeled as "based on a true story", rather than as "a true story".^[28][29][30]

Antonsson criticised that Maria Eriksson's grades and jobs were not factually correct, and that the ethnicity of a boyfriend and his criminal record was not reflected in the books. For example, the hospitalization of "The man with the black eyes" after aggravated assault by "Maria Eriksson's" Chilean husband, who was convicted and imprisoned for one year due to the assault, was not mentioned in the book.

In response to the criticism, Marklund has stated that she considers the bulk of the story to be factually correct and neither exaggerated nor deceptive.^[28] She has noted that the story is supported by hundreds of official documents from the courts and the social services. She has also written that she did not know of the aggravated assault committed by "Mia Eriksson's" Chilean husband, and that she read about for it the first time in Monica Antonsson's book. However, she noted that if Antonsson's information about the records is correct, then the court's decision confirms that the family was being harassed by "Maria Eriksson's" ex-boyfriend.^[31][32]

The controversy has been compared to the controversy surrounding Per Olov Enquist's Legionärerna and led to academic work studying the audience's relation to documentary novels. The genre is based on a mix of fact and fiction, where the author's own interpretation is part of the genre's conventions. The documentary novel often has a political objective, which in Buried Alive was to bring to the fore an abused woman's exposed situation.^[33] The genre also, like many Hollywood movies, uses popular clichés to appeal to a broader audience.^[34]

Gömda (Buried Alive) was initially released by Bonniers in 1995 and marketed under the category "autobiography/biography" in the publishing industry's catalogue.^[35] It was re-worked and re-released by Piratförlaget in 2000 as Buried Alive - A True Story and marketed as a "documentary novel", a term used by Piratförlaget also for the edition published by Bonniers.^[35]

In January 2009, the Swedish National Bibliography and the public libraries of Sweden reclassified all editions as fiction due to questions raised about the factual nature of the book.^[36][37] The classification of Asylum - the True Continuation of Buried Alive was not altered as it had been classified as fiction from the very beginning.

A spokesperson and part-owner of the Piratförlaget, Jan Guillou, has told the press that the company regrets that the book was marketed as "a true story" and that "based on a true story" would have been better.^[38][39] In Expressen, the evening tabloid where Marklund works, another part-owner of the publishing company, Ann-Marie Skarp, has stated that readers could not have been fooled by the label "true story" because, she argued, intelligent readers understand that the book is a novel based on reality and that it is not meant to be a biography.^[40]

Kerstin Angelin at the initial publisher, Bonnier Alba, has also commented in the press on the controversy by saying: "The storyline, the bulk of the story, must be correct for it to be called a true story. However, for various reasons one may not want to expose individuals with name and professions, out of concern for them. It is perfectly reasonable that not every detail is true."^[41]

UNICEF ambassador[link]

In 2004 Liza Markund was appointed ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF. The reason was her long interest in issues related to human rights. She travels regularly on behalf of the UNICEF and has, among other things, especially covered questions related to child slavery and children with HIV and Aids in the third world.^[42][43][44]

Bibliography[link]

The Annika Bengtzon novels[link]

• Sprängaren (1998; English translation The Bomber, trans. Kajsa von Hofsten, 2000; The Bomber, trans. Neil Smith, 2011)
• Studio sex (1999; Studio 69, trans. Kajsa von Hofsten, 2002; Exposed, trans. Neil Smith, 2011)
• Paradiset (2000; Paradise, trans. Ingrid Eng-Rundlow, 2004; Vanished, trans. Neil Smith, 2012)
• Prime Time (2002; Prime Time, trans. Ingrid Eng-Rundlow, 2006)
• Den Röda Vargen (2003; English translation The Red Wolf, trans. Neil Smith, 2010)
• Nobels testamente (2006; English translation Last Will, trans. Neil Smith, 2012)
• Livstid (2007)
• En plats i solen (2008; English translation A Place in the Sun)

The Maria Eriksson novels[link]

• Gömda - en sann historia (Buried Alive - A True Story, 1995; updated edition 2000)
• Asyl - den sanna fortsättningen på Gömda (Asylum Granted - A True Story, 2004)

Miscellaneous[link]

• Härifrån till jämställdheten (co-written with Lotta Snickare; 1998)
• Det finns en särskild plats i helvetet för kvinnor som inte hjälper varandra (co-written with Lotta Snickare; 2005)
• The Postcard Killers (with James Patterson; 2010)

Awards[link]

• The Poloni Prize (Polonipriset) 1998 for Best Swedish Crime Novel by a Female Writer (for "The Bomber")
• The Debutant Prize (Debutantpriset) 1998 for Best First Novel of the Year (for "The Bomber")
• Swedish Union's Award 1999 for Author of the Year (for "Studio 69")

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Swedish website
• Unicef's official website
• Piratförlaget's website
• Expressen's website

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. It may have been edited by a contributor who has a close connection with its subject. Tagged since February 2011. The notability of this article's subject is in question. If notability cannot be established, it may be listed for deletion or removed. Tagged since February 2011.

Doug Johnstone (born 22 July 1970) is a writer, musician and journalist based in Edinburgh. His new novel, Smokeheads, is published by Faber and Faber on 3 March 2011. He has previously published two novels with Penguin, Tombstoning (2006) and The Ossians (2008), which received praise from the likes of Irvine Welsh, Ian Rankin and Christopher Brookmyre.^{[citation needed]}

Doug is currently writer in residence at the University of Strathclyde. He has had several short stories appear in various publications, and since 1999 he has worked as a freelance arts journalist, primarily covering music and literature. He is a singer, musician and songwriter in several bands, including Northern Alliance, part of the Fence Collective. Northern Alliance have released four albums, as well as recording an album as a fictional band called The Ossians.

Doug has a degree in physics, a PhD in nuclear physics and a diploma in journalism. He grew up in Arbroath and lives in Portobello, Edinburgh with his wife and two children.^{[citation needed]}

Novels[link]

• Smokeheads (2011)

• The Ossians (2008)

• Tombstoning (2006)

References[link]

1. http://www.faber.co.uk/author/doug-johnstone/
2. http://www.faber.co.uk/work/smokeheads/9780571260621/
3. http://www.strath.ac.uk/humanities/courses/english/staff/johnstonedouglasmr/

External links[link]

• dougjohnstone.wordpress.com

Donna Leon
Born	(1942-09-29) September 29, 1942 (age 69) Montclair, New Jersey, U.S.
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	American
Period	1992-present
Genres	Crime fiction
www.donnaleon.co.uk

Donna Leon (born in 1942, in Montclair, New Jersey^[1]) is the American author of a series of crime novels set in Venice and featuring the fictional hero Commissario Guido Brunetti.

Leon has lived in Venice for over 25 years. She was a lecturer in English Literature for the University of Maryland University College - Europe (UMUC-Europe) in Italy, and then worked as a Professor from 1981 to 1999 at the American military base of Vicenza (Italy)^{[citation needed]}. She stopped teaching and concentrated on writing and other cultural activities in the field of music (especially Baroque music).

The Commissario Brunetti novels are all situated in or around Venice. They are written in English and translated into many foreign languages, but not into Italian, at Leon's request.^[2]   The ninth Brunetti novel, Friends in High Places, won the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger in 2000. German Television has produced 16 Commissario Brunetti mysteries for broadcast.

Setting[link]

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice. Each case is an opportunity for the author to reveal another aspect of the seamy underside of society, and another aspect of Venetian life. Brunetti serves the vain and self-serving buffoon, Vice-questore Patta, while Sergente Vianello and the all-knowing and well-connected Signorina Elettra, Patta's secretary, assist Brunetti on the ground and through research. ^[3]

[edit] List of Brunetti novels

1. Death at La Fenice (1992)

   During a performance of La Traviata at La Fenice opera house the distinguished German conductor is found dead, apparently poisoned by a cup of coffee. Brunetti embarks on a voyage of exploration in the often murky world both of opera and the victim's family, eventually unearthing a surprising conclusion.

2. Death in a Strange Country (1993)

   Brunetti confronts a grisly sight when the body of a young American is fished out of a fetid Venetian canal. Though all the signs point to a violent mugging, something incriminating turns up in the victim's apartment that suggests the existence of a high-level conspiracy.

3. The Anonymous Venetian (1994) aka Dressed for Death

   Brunetti's hopes of a refreshing family holiday in the mountains are dashed when a gruesome discovery is made in Marghera - a body so badly beaten that the face is completely unrecognizable. But when the victim's identity is revealed, the investigation takes a very unexpected turn.

4. A Venetian Reckoning (1995) aka Death and Judgment

   A truck crashes on one of the treacherous mountain roads in the Italian Dolomites, spilling a terrible cargo. Meanwhile, a prominent international lawyer is found dead in the carriage of an intercity train at Santa Lucia. Can the two tragedies possibly be connected? Commissario Guido Brunetti digs deep into the secret lives of Italy's elite classes to find the answer.

5. Acqua Alta (1996) aka Death in High Water

   As Venice braces for a winter tempest and the onslaught of acqua alta - the rising waters from torrential rain - Commissario Guido Brunetti finds out that an old friend has been savagely beaten at the palazzo home of reigning diva Flavia Petrelli

6. The Death of Faith (1997) aka Quietly in Their Sleep

   Brunetti comes to the aid of a young nursing sister who is leaving her convent following the unexpected death of five patients. At first, Brunetti's inquiries reveal nothing amiss, and he wonders whether the nun is simply creating a smoke screen to justify abandoning her vocation. But perhaps, she has stumbled onto something very real and very sinister - something that puts her life in imminent danger.

7. A Noble Radiance (1997)

   The new owner of a farmhouse at the foot of the Italian Dolomites is summoned to the house when his workmen disturb a macabre grave. Once on the job, Brunetti uncovers a clue that reignites an infamous cold case of kidnapping and disappearance involving one of Venice's oldest, most aristocratic families.

8. Fatal Remedies (1999)

   For Commissario Brunetti, it began with an early morning phone call. In the chill of the Venetian dawn, a sudden act of vandalism shatters the quiet of the deserted city. But Brunnetti is soon shocked to find that the culprit waiting to be apprehended at the scene is someone from his own family. Meanwhile, he is under pressure from his superiors at work to solve a daring robbery with a link to a suspicious accidental death. Does it all lead back to the Mafia? And how are his family's actions connected to these crimes?

9. Friends in High Places (2000)

   Commissario Brunetti is visited by a young bureaucrat investigating the lack of official approval for the construction of Brunetti's apartment years before. What began as a red tape headache ends in murder when the bureaucrat is later found dead after a mysterious fall from a scaffold.

10. A Sea of Troubles (2001)

    The murder of two clam fishermen off the island of Pellestrina, south of the Lido on the Venetian lagoon, draws Commissario Brunetti into the island's close-knit community, bound together by a code of loyalty and a suspicion of outsiders. When Signorina Elettra volunteers to visit the island, where she has relatives, Brunetti finds himself torn between his duty to solve the murders, concerns for Elettra's safety, and his not entirely straightforward feelings for her.

11. Willful Behaviour (2002)

    When one of his wife Paola's students comes to visit him with an interest in investigating the possibility of a pardon for a crime committed by her grandfather many years ago, Commissario Brunetti thinks little of it, beyond being intrigued and attracted by the girl's intelligence and moral seriousness. But when she is found stabbed to death, Claudia Leonardo is suddenly no longer simply Paola's student, but Brunetti's case.

12. Uniform Justice (2003)

    Brunetti faces an unsettling case when a young cadet has been found hanged, a presumed suicide, in Venice's elite military academy. As he pursues his inquiry, he is faced with a wall of silence and finds himself caught up in the strange and stormy politics of his country's powerful elite.

13. Doctored Evidence (2004)

    A wealthy elderly woman is murdered. Soon after her Romanian maid was hit by a train while trying to leave Italy with a large amount of money and forged papers. The case appears to be solved. Then a neighbour provides evidence that the maid was not guilty of the murder. Brunetti digs further into the case, though officially it is closed and finds that greed was not the motive behind the killing.

14. Blood from a Stone (2005)

    Shortly before Christmas, a man is killed in Venice's Campo Santo Stefano. An illegal immigrant from Senegal, he is one of the vu' cumprà who sell fake fashion accessories while trying to stay ahead of the law. At first, the crime seems like a simple clash between rival vendors, but as Commissario Guido Brunetti probes more deeply, he begins to suspect that this murder was the work of a professional. And why does his boss want him off the case?

15. Through a Glass, Darkly (2006)

    When the body of a night watchman is found in front of a blazing furnace at De Cal's glass factory along with an annotated copy of Dante's Inferno, Brunetti must investigate. Does the book contain the clues Brunetti needs to solve the murder and uncover who is ruining the waters of Venice's lagoon?

16. Suffer the Little Children (2007)

    One night a group of men break into the apartment of a pediatrician and his wife, violently assaulting the doctor and terrifying his wife and baby. They claim to be Caribinieri. Brunetti investigates and is drawn into a murky world of unethical medical practice, corruption and babies for sale to those with the money.

17. The Girl of His Dreams (2008)

    One rainy morning Commissario Brunetti and Ispettore Vianello respond to an emergency call reporting a body floating near some steps on the Grand Canal. Reaching down to pull it out, Brunetti’s wrist is caught by the silkiness of golden hair, and he sees a small foot – together he and Vianello lift a dead girl from the water.

18. About Face (2009)
19. A Question of Belief (2010)
20. Drawing Conclusions (2011)
21. Beastly Things (2012)

One of the hazards facing the writer of serial mysteries is the plain fact that detectives, like everyone else, grow old. Donna Leon, whose Beastly Things is her 20th mystery novel in as many years featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, faces her detective’s accumulating years head on as he investigates yet another mysterious and watery death in his beloved Venice. ^[4]

Other novels[link]

• The Jewels of Paradise (2012)

References[link]

1. ^ Marder, Dianna. "This case is culinary: Commissario's favorites", The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 8, 2010. Accessed July 25, 2011. "Some 25 years ago, an English teacher and opera expert originally from Montclair, N.J., felt the lure of the lagoons and adopted Venice as her home. Now Donna Leon, 67, is the celebrated author of 19 international best sellers (more than two million sold) featuring a shrewd but principled police detective by the name of Guido Brunetti - and she is finally rewarding her readers with a cookbook of his favorite recipes."
2. ^ http://italian-mysteries.com/leon-interview.html#Anchor-Publishers-23240
3. ^ http://www.amazon.com/Death-at-Fenice-Donna-Leon/dp/0061043370 Publisher's Weekly review
4. ^ http://nyjournalofbooks.com/review/beastly-things-commissario-guido-brunetti-mystery

External links[link]

• Donna Leon's Official Web Site
• The official UK Donna Leon website
• Interview with Donna Leon at italian-mysteries.com
• Places to visit that appear in Commissario Guido Brunetti Mysteries
• Alan Curtis's Baroque-music orchestra underwritten by Donna Leon
• Collection of Book Reviews