Some of the best-recognized crime-fictionists living north of the U.S. border don’t commonly set their tales on their home turf. However, there remain plenty of made-in-Canada authors with easily discernible links to the land of maple leaves.

Some of the best-recognized crime-fictionists living north of the U.S. border don’t commonly set their tales on their home turf. However, there remain plenty of made-in-Canada authors with easily discernible links to the land of maple leaves.
Most readers, when they deliberate over the geographical wellsprings of modern mystery and thriller fiction, think of either the United States or Great Britain. But Canada? Despite a history of contributions to this genre that dates back at least to the early 19th century.
J. Kingston Pierce had the opportunity to interview Marilyn Rose, a professor in the Department of English at Ontario’s Brock University. Rose has created the online database CrimeFictionCanada.
In memory of a dear friend, Pierce reviews for The Rap Sheet both Philip Kerr’s “A Man Without Breath”, a Bernie Gunther novel which is set in the 1940s, and John Sandrolini’s also historically aligned debut novel “One of our Baby”.
J. Kingston Pierce provides an interesting look at Loren D. Estleman’s “Alive!” and Susanna Gregory’s “Murder by the Book”. He has also read “The Old Turk’s Load” by Gregory Gibson and Owen Laukkanen’s “Criminal Enterprise”.
For the last few years, J. Kingston Pierce has provided part-time help to an independent bookshop in his north Seattle neighborhood. Here are his 10 crime-fiction recommendations for inexperiencedreaders.
You’ve got to wonder how Finnish homicide inspector Kari Vaara – introduced in “Snow Angels” (2009) – manages to keep going. The Kentucky-born, Finland-living Thompson knows how to pen emotionally riveting crime stories, as dark as a Nordic winter.
In “Capital Punishment”, the author debuts his third series protagonist, a British ex-homicide cop-turned-“freelance kidnap consultant” named Charles Boxer. This book finds Boxer hunting for Alyshia D’Cruz, the fetching 25-year-old daughter of a Indian businessman.
In Kem Nunn’s first novel, “Tapping the Source” (1984), Huntington Beach is a greasy smear on the California seacoast. This book begins as a noir quest and a whodunit for the main character, but finishes for him as a jaded who-cares-whodunit.
Koryta’s work took a while to cross the Atlantic. This had much to do with the fact that his first four books, concluding with “The Silent Hour” (2009), were all P.I. tales, and professional investigators-for-hire have never been staples of Britain’s literary culture.
J. Kingston Pierce on “Helsinki Blood” by James Thompson “Pale Horses” by Jassy Mackenzie; ”A Man Without Breath” by Philip Kerr; “The Perfect Ghost” by Linda Barnes; “When the Devil Drives” by Christopher Brookmyre and …
“The Boyfriend” reintroduces protagonist Jack Till (“Silence”), who retired from the Los Angeles Police Department as a homicide detective after almost two dozen years and now earns a living as a private investigator.
Author Leighton Gage heaps complications onto the tracks of his protagonist as this yarn steams ahead. Gage concocts police procedurals that are also stories of societal ills and illusions, and are stronger for such ambitions.
Although not everyone seems thrilled at hearing this news, organizers of the annual Malice Domestic conference have announced their nominations for the 2012 Agatha Awards. These prizes celebrate the traditional mystery, in the style of Agatha Christie.
J. Kingston Pierce reviews three mystery novels dealing in very different ways with World War I: “The Mannequin House” by R. N. Morris, Edward Marston’s “Instrument of Slaughter” and Robert Ryan’s “Dead Man’s Land.”
Robert Ryan’s publisher was shopping around for “a work of fiction featuring a ‘detective in the trenches of World War I,’” and Ryan came up with a splendid solution: Why not send Dr. John H. Watson, of Sherlock Holmes fame, to the front lines in France?
Thanks to the popularity — even today, in reruns — of the TV series “Perry Mason”, most people think of Erle Stanley Gardner solely as the creator of that extraordinarily successful Los Angeles criminal attorney played by Raymond Burr.
Coming off the success of three novels set in his native Northern Ireland, Stuart Neville now transports readers south and back half a century to the Republic of Ireland, where homicide threatens to overshadow what could be one of the country’s proudest moments.
Peter Robinson’s “breakout book,” “In a Dry Season”, was published in 1999. It was his 10th police procedural featuring dogged and hunch-trusting Yorkshire DCI Alan Banks. J. Kingston Pearce talked to Robinson about “Watching the Dark”, his 20th Banks outing.
J. Kingston Pierce presents Christmas-related mysteries, the big-screen adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s “The Glass Key”, the new table-computer-based crime-fiction periodical “Noir Magazine” and much more …