My favourite detective novels of 2011
Annotation:D.I. Vera Stanhope is one of my favourite detective characters. A frumpy and grumpy middle aged Yorkshire lass, she somehow nevertheless manages to be entirely endearing. These books were recently made into BBC series.
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Annotation:This Icelandic author has produced a gloomy detective called Erlendur with psychologically compelling stories and a comic element. If you prefer a video try Jar City – if you’re lucky your local video store might still have it.
Annotation:DCI Faraday is an interesting character living with the sadness of a wife who died young and the challenge of bringing up a deaf son. Like the other characters he is believable and sympathetically drawn. Hurley has spent time with the local police and it lends the strength of reality to this excellent police procedural.
Annotation:This author – I’m never sure which is her last and which her first name - writes Icelandic thrillers featuring lawyer Thora Gudmundsdottir. If you’re starting to run out of Scandinavian authors try this, it’s a very good read.
Annotation:Young Flavia de Luce is a little charmer. She lives in a crumbling pile in the English countryside with a father obsessed with collecting stamps and two older sisters with whom she is at war. With her mother dead, she is left to run wild, getting herself involved in local investigations (well,interfering with them really), or brewing things up in a laboratory she found abandoned in the east wing.
Annotation:Cooper and Fry are one of the best recent team added to the British detective genre. The setting in the Peak District is remarkably evocative and the stories are complex and satisfying. This is the latest in an excellent series
Annotation:The latest from Norway's bestselling "queen of crime". Need I say more?
Annotation:Set in the Yorkshire Dales and starring Inspector Alan Banks this is an intriguingly plotted police procedural. Banks is your usual loner detective, divorced and living in an isolated house surrounded by his music. He's a bit dour for some, but I like him and found the book totally absorbing. Recently made into a BBC series.
Annotation:Commissario Brunetti is one of my favourite policemen. Charming and thoughtful, he works his way quietly through the most difficult puzzles, sustained by the mouth- watering fare cooked up by his radical, university lecturer, wife. If you find you like these also try Marco Vichi’s Death in August
Annotation:Rankin hasn’t lost his touch. The Complaints department is proving just as engrossing as Rebus ever was.
Annotation:A psychological thriller from an excellent Swedish writer. She is inspired by British crime writers such as Ruth Rendell and she tells just as good a story.
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My favourite crime reads for 2011 were from British and European writers.
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