Books for Christmas (and any other time of year...)

If you're anything like me, you still won't have finished your Christmas shopping. So today let me highlight a few books you might like to seek out. Naturally, I can't resist reminding you about my own titles. Not only Gallows Court, but also the Macavity-winning The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, available in paperback as well as hardback. Then there's The Christmas Card Crime and other stories, a British Library anthology that's been in the small publishers' charts for weeks, and has dodged around and about the number one spot in the Amazon anthology bestseller lists for as long. To say nothing of Ten Year Stretch (the CrimeFest anthology), Blood on the Tracks....no, no, I must stop!

And one reason I must stop is because there are loads of other books I'd like to mention. And if I may, I'll begin with a few titles that may not be on your radar from authors of talent who don't have massive publicity budgets behind them, but who are certainly worthy of serious consideration by crime fans. End of Term by A.C. Koning, for instance, is definitely worth a look. It features a blind detective, Fred Rowlands, and is set in Cambridge in the 30s. I met the author at a crime event in Cambridge a year ago, and I think her work deserves to be better known.

Someone I first met a couple of years back, at the Essex Book Festival in Southend, is Leye Adenie. He's a really talented writer, and I was delighted that a short story of his featured in last year's CWA Short Story Dagger shortlist. His latest novel is When Trouble Sleeps. Again, he's a writer who will in my opinion become increasingly well-known.

Guy Fraser-Sampson is an experienced author, someone else I met at the festival in Southend. Guy is one of that increasing band of novelists making very good use, in a variety of ways, of the settings, characters, or conventions of Golden Age detective fiction (Alison Joseph and Andrew Wilson are among the others). Guy's latest is The House on Downshire Hill.

Now for books for which I've given blurbs during the course of this year. It's impossible, of course, to respond to every such request - life is simply far too short, and from time to time I have to go into blurb purdah. (As now, when I really need to get on with the next novel....) But here are three of the books I managed to read, and with enjoyment.

Abi Silver, a fellow lawyer, is responsible for The Aladdin Trial, which I described as "An enjoyably elaborate and distinctive variation on the courtroom thriller." Of Gigi Pandian's The Cambodian Curse and other stories, I said: "Mysteries about seemingly impossible crimes have a long and distinguished pedigree and in this collection Gigi Pandian keeps the tradition going with verve and ingenuity." Another collection of short stories comes from Teresa Solana, who comes from Spain but now lives in the UK. The First Prehistoric Serial Killer and other stories is a collection of which I said: "Teresa Solana's distinctive writing is humorous yet thought-provoking, and her short fiction is as entertaining as her novels."

If you're not already spoiled for choice, I could go on and on, mentioning books by splendid authors whom so many of you love such as Ann Cleeves, whose latest Shetland novel I reviewed recently; Kate Ellis, who has just published The Boy Who Lived with the Dead (I'm also desperate to get round to The Mechanical Devil, which has been high on my TBR list for a while) Sarah Ward, author of The Shrouded Path, and...well, it's getting late, and time's running out on me. Happy gift-buying!

A Not So Perfect Crime

When visiting somewhere new, I always like to seize the chance, if possible, to read a book set there. So my trip to Barcelona offered the ideal opportunity to sample a debut novel by a Spanish academic, Teresa Solana, called A Not So Perfect Crime. It’s just published by Bitter Lemon, who have made available some quite splendid books not previously available in English translation.

The novel is told by Eduard, one of two twin brothers, who run a detective agency together. In fact, it’s more or less a phoney operation, since neither of them is much good as a detective, and they invent a secretary to impress clients, spraying perfume around in their little office before pretending the girl has gone off on an errand. The office even has false doors leading nowhere, to give a grand impression to visitors.

When a top Catalan politician asks them to investigate whether his gorgeous wife is having an affair with a painter for whom she has apparently modelled. The shameless Borja, much the more entrepreneurial of the twins, extracts large sums of money from the client for doing very little, but when the wife ends up dead, our heroes find they may have bitten off more than they can chew.

This is a funny and enjoyable novel, and I was amused by the coincidence that one scene of the book took place in a café where we’d had lunch twenty-four hours earlier. The twins are a memorable duo and there are some laugh-aloud scenes. The element of the book that satirises Catalan politics rather passed me by, but this didn’t spoil the fun. The zany plot is a mess – but, to some extent, that is the point: this is a sort of ‘anti-detective’ novel. If Solana brings the twins back, she will almost certainly have to treat the story-line more seriously, but I hope this doesn’t deter her from a follow-up. Such good characters deserve to live again.