If a television series is not a conspicuous success on its first showing, it can glean massive cult status retrospectively, along with impressive kudos for its creators; David Simo
The term ‘roman dur’, which was used by Georges Simenon himself to refer to all those novels that he regarded as his specifically literary works, is difficult to render precise
Sitting in a Thameside restaurant (rather than a Scandinavian eatery) I once asked the Icelandic writer Ragnar Jónasson which of his own books he would suggest as a starting point
Reykjavik by Katrín Jakobsdóttir and Ragnar Jónasson Is it wise for presidents and prime ministers to try their hand at writing crime novels, however commercially tempting it ma
The crime fiction of the Iberian Peninsula has acquired a distinctive character over the decades, fashioning sometimes quirky Spanish variations on the standard police procedural f
Georges Simenon inspired many writers of psychological crime, such as Patricia Highsmith (as she once told me at a publisher’s launch party in London – Simenon’s name caused
Mention the name Georges Simenon and it will instantly flash up another name: Maigret. And there, for many of us, the story ends. The older generation will remember the superb BBC
The sun beats down, and cold-hearted murder is done. The very individual, and more laid-back, approach to crime fiction in Italy, that most Latin of countries – with its image (t
In Finnish writer Antti Tuomainen’s much-acclaimed third novel The Healer (2011), Helsinki is almost submerged under torrential rain, and the whole of society – from its infras
Just when Simenon aficionados were adding to their shelves the last couple of volumes of Penguin’s very welcome new translations of all the Maigret novels, there comes a surprisi
