Life is tough for readers of high-class international crime fiction. These books aren’t like the typical potboiler thriller. Their authors don’t just churn out a by-the-numbers page-turner every six months. A literary crime novel demands dedication and extensive effort to hone to something close to perfection. And then we English speaking types have to endure…
Here at MMM, the last twelve months have been crammed with mystery and intrigue, betrayal and revenge, bitterness and redemption – and some simply stunning plot twists. We’ve read and reviewed almost a hundred different crime titles across all aspects of the genre, from literary works of art by established grand-masters, to pulp fiction by…
The Commissaire Adamsberg series is almost the very definition of quirky. It’s the very highest quality Eurocrime, in which moral philosophy, human frailty and personal observation are interwoven with a genuinely perplexing mystery. Adamsberg heads a bureau of criminal investigators in Paris who have an apparently inexhaustible remit to resolve situations which fall outside the…
French novelist Fred Vargas writes two separate crime series which have been translated into English. The Commissaire Adamsberg investigations are more conventional, although even they exist on the outer fringes of idiosyncrasy. The Accordionist belongs to her other ‘Three Evangelists’ series, and it veers from quaintly quirky into absolute obscurity without following a straight line…
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