Saturday, September 25, 2010

Following the Detectives

Following the Detectives: Real Locations in Crime Fiction edited by Maxim Jakubowski is released today. As well as Maxim the contributors are: Dick Adler, Declan Burke, Michael Carlson, David Stuart Davies, Martin Edwards, Barry Forshaw, John Harvey, Oline Cogdill plus well-known to Euro Crime readers: bloggers J Kingston Pierce, Peter Rozovsky and Sarah Weinman.

Publisher's Blurb: Whether it be the London of Sherlock Holmes or the Ystad of the Swedish Wallander, Dashiell Hammett's San Francisco or Donna Leon's Venice, the settings chosen by crime fiction authors have helped those writers to bring their fictional investigators to life and to infuse their writing with a sense of danger and mystery.

Following the Detectives follows the trail of over 20 of crime fiction's greatest investigators, discovering the cities and countries in which they live and work.

Edited by one of the leading voices in crime fiction, Maxim Jakubowski, each entry is written by a crime writer, journalist or critic with a particular expertise in that detective and the fictional crimes that have taken place in each city's dark streets and hidden places.

The book includes beautifully designed maps with all the major locations that have featured in a book or series of books - buildings, streets, bars, restaurants and locations of crimes and discoveries - allowing the reader to follow Inspector Morse's footsteps through the college squares of Oxford or while away hours in a smoky Parisian café frequented by Inspector Maigret, for example.

Aimed at the avid detective fan, the armchair tourist and the literary tourist alike, Following the Detectives is the perfect way for crime fiction fans to truly discover the settings of their favourite detective novels.

3 comments:

Maxine Clarke said...

Sounds interesting. Of course, what we readers need is a decent map at the start of each actual novel we read. As things stand, I make do with my atlas each time.

Rodolfo Peña said...

For my present novel "An Inconsequential Murder" (http://www.untreedreads.com/?s=An+Inconsequential+Murder) which takes place in several cities in Mexico, and the one I am writing now (Lombardo in France) which takes place in Paris, I recommend my readers to look up the places mentioned in Google Maps, because I frequently use that to verify facts about places and streets. I find "Street View" on Google Maps a great aid when writing my novels.

kathy d. said...

It looks tantalizing, however, we need a BOOK II with Australia, New Zealand, India, Latin America (Buenos Aires, San Paolo), Thailand, China, and Japan, a long-term location of Japanese fiction, Southern Africa--lots of options there.