Review of ‘The Historian’ by Elizabeth Kostova

Poenari Castle, Romania

This was always going to be a hard sell for me.  Not only do I not like vampire fiction or film series, all of which tend to take themselves far too seriously (with the exception of the tongue-in-cheek British series ‘Being Human’), but I also am tired of being associated with vampires simply because I originally come from the Carpathian mountains.  To be precise, my father comes from the place where the so-called Dracula’s castle stands in ruins, Cetatea Poenari.

I’ve become somewhat tired of explaining that the vampire myth has always been far stronger in Bulgaria and Serbia, even in Greece, rather than in Romania.  That Vlad Ţepeş the Impaler was indeed a historical figure but has nothing to do with the pale Count imagined by Bram Stoker, and indeed, very little to do with Transylvania.  That the bad press Vlad received during his life and especially after his death was deliberately promoted by political rivals. Yes, he was a bit of a tyrant, creative in his cruelty and ruthless in meting out punishment – your everyday despot of the Middle Ages, then!

Vlad Ţepeş, the Impaler, Prince of Wallachia (1456-1462) (died 1477) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

However, I tried to set all of that aside and read Elizabeth Kostova’s book about the search for Vlad the Impaler’s real grave with an open mind.  It is a novel where the real hero is historical research itself.  It owes much to the original ‘Dracula’  novel by Bram Stoker, and it is all about a story within a story within a story, with letters and stories by different characters in different periods (some historical, some more recent) creating a sense of time-travel.

The unnamed main narrator was a sixteen year old girl when she discovered an ancient volume and a secret stash of letters addressed to ‘My dear and unfortunate successor’. Gradually, despite her father’s reluctance and fear, she uncovers the innermost secrets and horrors of her family’s past, including how her mother and father first met.  Narrators past and present travel all over Europe, finding emblematic documents in obscure libraries and taking in many eerie sights on and off the beaten tourist track.  Along the way, they encounter strange characters, dangerous librarians and the living dead.  They also find corpses, missing friends and each other in the process.  All in all, it makes a change from the vampire type novels aimed at the Young Adult market, but some may find the insistence on documentary detail and the lengthy descriptions slow down the action.

I quite enjoyed the first few chapters, the gradual quickening of horror, the Victorian style and atmosphere (although it is set in the 1930s, 1950s and 1970s). But it just felt too long and repetitive after a while and yes, there were inaccuracies. The characters all seem to have the same voice, regardless of their period, culture or sex.  If you want examples of thrilling research and discovery combined with love story or complicated action, A.S. Byatt’s ‘Posession’ or Umberto Eco’s ‘Foucault’s Pendulum’ are much better.  I have to admit that from about page 300 onwards (only half-way through), I skimmed through the chapters, simply because I did not want to admit defeat and abandon the novel.

I read this book as part of my Global Reading Challenge, aided and abetted by Kerrie from Mysteries in Paradise.  It is my contribution to the wildcard category – the Seventh Continent – an alternative setting you might not normally consider for crime fiction.

Real Viennese Crime Fiction

This is not really a book review, more of a declaration of love for its setting, and it fits into my Global Reading Challenge, the meme launched by the incomparable Kerrie of Mysteries in Paradise.

Ah, Vienna!  City of my heart – no matter how many places I live in, this is the place that feels closest to home, perhaps because I spent most of my childhood there.  Yet it’s not just gold-tinged nostalgia.  I will forever be regarded as an outsider there: no matter how fond how I am of Grinzing and the wooded hills extending beyond it, no matter how familiar I am with every element of the Viennese cuisine, no matter how easily I slip into the lazy lengthened vowels of the Viennese accent.

Viennese Souvenirs

Yet still I thrill to the slightest mention of the city, and I cannot resist any novel that is set there.  Yet somehow, until recently, crime fiction set in Vienna seems to have been written largely by foreign authors. The obvious one to mention is Graham Greene’s ‘The Third Man’.  Both the book and the film are excellent at conveying the disquieting atmosphere of a city on the very border of the Cold War. Frank Tallis has series of novels featuring a psychonalytical detective in early 20th century Vienna, but I found it a bit too rich, like a Sachertorte.  J. Sydney Jones also addresses the same period in Austrian history, introducing real-life literary celebrities, musicians and artists such as Gustav Klimt and Gustav Mahler with his Viennese Mysteries series.

However, in recent years, there has been a surge of native crime writers telling us of their love/hate relationship with their capital city.  [Because you aren't a real Viennese until you learn to complain about the city and its inhabitants.] Some of them rather obviously cater for the tourist market, much like the Mozartkugeln confectionery.  Some of them are intended for the domestic market (which includes Germany and Switzerland, of course).  None of them have been translated into English yet, as far as I am aware, but I will keep my eyes open for Wolf Haas (many of his books have been filmed for Austrian TV),  Edith Kneifl’s evocations of the Prater fun fair, Andreas Pittler’s novels set in the tumultuous 1930s, Marcus Rafaelsberger who changed his name to Marc Elsberg and now lives in Hamburg, and Alfred Komarek’s melancholy detective Polt, who lives just outside Vienna amidst beautiful vineyards.

But every now and then you find the genuine thing: a book that conveys all of the contradictory atmosphere of this city, everything that charms and frustrates you about it. This author is Stefan Slupetzky and his crime series is about Poldi Wallisch, a.k.a the Lemming for his tendency to engage in self-destructive behaviour.

The book I read, ‘Lemmings Zorn’ (Lemming’s Rage) is the fourth in the series, but I don’t think this is a series you need to read in chronological order.  Not surprisingly, it’s about rage and frustration, about average people trying to make a life for themselves in the city of endless construction sites, unapproachable neighbours and high noise levels. It is also about powerlessness and revenge, about shame and shamelessness.

It starts out as a humorous family saga. It’s a lovely May Day holiday and the streets of Vienna are empty, save for Lemming and his heavily pregnant life partner, Klara. Suddenly, Klara’s waters break, the ambulance fails to arrive and panic sets in.  Until the couple are saved by a stranger, Angela, who helps them with the birth, names the baby and becomes a family friend.  A few months later, however, on Christmas Eve, Lemming has to leave the baby with Angela for a few hours.  When he goes to pick up his son, he makes a gruesome discovery which changes their lives forever.

Macabre humour mixed with slapstick, surrealist dream sequences, philosophical asides and tongue-in-cheek observations, this is a crime novel unlike any other you have read.  I absolutely loved it and laughed out loud throughout.  Whether it would appeal to anyone who doesn’t know Vienna or the black humour of its inhabitants, we won’t know until it’s been translated into English. I do hope someone hurries up and does just that!

Related articles

• Set-jetting in Vienna (brandsandfilms.com)
• Viennese Weekend (memoirsofawayfarer.wordpress.com)
• In Love With Vienna: “Vienna Is Weird, But I Like It” – Salvatore Viviano (thenewcontemporary.com)

Memorable Moments from Lyon Crime Festival

Did you know that 70% of crime fiction editors in France are women?  That is just one of the surprising facts that I found out at the Quais du Polar in Lyon this last weekend.

What I also found there: a great intimacy between readers and writers, a fun-filled atmosphere, resilience to stand in the queue despite the rain and cold, and plenty of memorable quotes and valuable nuggets of information such as:

1) The Festival in Figures: 4 days, 70 authors, 35 panel discussions, 5 live recordings of radio programmes, 5 literary prizes (less to do with money, more to do with prestige and a spike in sales), 10 films introduced by authors, 10 theatre performances and an estimated 60,000 visitors.

Claude Mesplède was the President of the Readers’ Jury and the true beating heart of the Festival.  Passionate about crime fiction since the age of 10, he has edited anthologies of crime fiction, written the definitive Dictionary of Crime Literature and been instrumental in setting up the Toulouse Crime Festival.

2) The Urban Panel: The urban landscape as a scene of desolation, poverty and deprivation, with petty crime and trivial, sensationalised news items. This is crime fiction at its grittiest, providing rich social commentary. Young writers Rachid Santaki and Jérémie Guez write about the Parisian ghettos from personal experience, Petros Markaris mourns the amnesia and almost casual descent into violence and indifference of Athens, John Burdett shows a side of Bangkok that the Thai Tourist Board would undoubtedly not approve of.  It is left to Swiss writer Joël Dicker to round it off with a critique of the American media reporting on crimes in his runaway success of a debut novel ‘The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair’. (Oddly enough, Dicker has become a bit of a media buzz himself – however, in the picture I took of the panel he is not visible, so you cannot judge for yourselves if he is indeed as good-looking and boyish looking as he is hyped to be).

3) Quotes about writing, sources of inspiration and the joys of being read:

It’s not about faith or inspiration, it’s about work. (David Khara)

I never wanted to write anything else but crime fiction. Writing a story that grips people, with strong characters, seems to me such an art and an achievement. (Sylvie Granotier)

When a community and a society is starting to lose its conscience, perhaps a writer has a duty to act as the collective memory. (Petros Markaris)

Petros Markaris

The banality of evil is what makes crime fiction so interesting.  We are always surprised to find a killer in our midst, which is why we always say ‘Who could have imagined X doing such a thing?’ But we never know people well enough to see what lurks beneath the surface. We seldom dare to look deep enough within ourselves even. (Joël Dicker)

I started out with crime fiction because it was something I liked reading and I thought I might be able to do it. But I didn’t think I would stay with it for so long. That’s because it is a genre that also allows you to say something true about men and women, and about the society in which we live. (P.D. James)

Amateurs wait for inspiration, the rest of us go to work.  You can’t be in it just for the money – I don’t chase the money (although it’s nice when I get it), but the readers’ hearts. However, Dickens, Shakespeare, Dumas all wrote for money.  The idea that a writer has to be   lofty and above commerce is a very modern one.  All I want to do is entertain.  If a reader takes my book to bed with them for 15 minutes and is still reading it at 5 in the morning, I have more than accomplished my mission. (Harlan Coben)

Diniz Galhos

Us younger French writers feel more like global citizens: we can write about America, about Japan, about anywhere in the world. A good story remains a good story, no matter where it is located. (Diniz Galhos)

The authors of obscure literary fiction who say ‘You have readers, but I have my dignity’ are kidding themselves if they think that their notion of success is any different from my notion of success.  Everyone wants more readers. (Jeff Abbott)

Elsa Marpeau

90% of present-day French crime writers have been influenced by American fiction, especially Elmore Leonard.  I am not sure that all those traditional differences between Anglo-Saxon and French literature still apply. (Elsa Marpeau)

Only bad writers think they are good, all others are insecure.  Your book is never quite what you want it to be. That’s what motivates you to write the next one. (Harlan Coben)

But above all, I found ornate, sumptuous and unusual locations, just right to celebrate literary delights!

Hotel de Ville, Lyon

Main Hall

And here is my book haul from the festival.  I really made an effort to restrain myself.

Modern German Classic: The Mussel Feast

Written just before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, this book by Birgit Vanderbeke is both domestic and allegorical, examining how all revolutions start with one small act of insubordination.

The story is deceptively simple. A brother and sister and their mother are waiting for the head of the family to show up for supper.  They are having mussels, a food none of them like very much, but which is their father’s favourite meal.  It is a special occasion, they tell each other, father is having a business meeting which may well end in a promotion. As they sit and wait, we find out more and more about this apparently ordinary German family, about the parents’ escape from East Germany and the back-breaking menial jobs their mother had to endure in order to support their father’s studying.  The author does an excellent job of describing the public charm and private horror of an inflexible, tyrannical man, but she doesn’t spare the mother either.  From the daughter-narrator’s point of view, her mother has colluded with her oppressor, switching to ‘wifey mode’ to appease and soothe him.  Yet only a few pages further, we discover that the daughter herself likes to be thought of as ‘Daddy’s girl’ and takes sides with her father to mock the other two members of the family.  The dictator’s policy of divide and conquer seeps in gradually, poisoning everything in sight. The more we find out, the more we discover this is a family reigned by fear and despair.

Presented as an ongoing interior monologue (much of it in just one paragraph), the book is an easy read, partly because of its brevity, but also because of its subtle humour and contradictory statements.  Yet for anyone who has lived in a non-democratic society or in an abusive family, it is a painful read.  It works perfectly well on both levels, describing the gradual descent from praiseworthy public ideals  to subverted, selfish interpretations. Thus, the father’s vision of  ’a proper family’ ends in constant criticism and disappointment that his flesh-and-blood children do not live up to his ideal. His desire to be ‘doing things together’ ends in him spoiling the atmosphere and blaming everyone else when things are not quite perfect.  And ‘investing in the children’s future’ becomes a pointless exercise involving an expensive stamp collection that no one is interested in.

Communism failed not because it didn’t have inspirational ideas, but because it refused to take into account human nature when putting them into practice.  Marriages and families fail because we cannot allow the others to be themselves.  A valuable lesson, presented in an intriguing way, with an ending that is stunning in its shocking simplicity.

I read this as part of my 2013 Translation Challenge and on that note, let me make one small aside. I was sharing this book and my delight that Peirene Press is making such work more available to an English-speaking audience with a group of aspiring or even published writers based here in the Geneva area. I bemoaned the fact that there have been few translations into English of world literature so far, and commented how pleased I was to see some new initiatives.

Their reaction surprised me a little.  OK, a lot!

They said that no wonder that German and French publishers translate so much literature from the UK and the US, because that’s where the best work is produced. (Never mind that they also translate from many other languages.) And that they themselves cannot be bothered to read literature from other countries, because the style is too different ‘from our own’.  Bear in mind that this is not a random group of expats, but keen readers and aspiring writers, who have been living in the local area for many years and usually speak the language very well.  The lack of curiosity and insularity perhaps explains why so little contemporary fiction is being translated into English.  It saddens me, because it feels like people are deliberately limiting their horizons, but what do you think?

English: The Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989. The photo shows a part of a public photo documentation wall at Former Check Point Charlie, Berlin. The photo documentation is permanently placed in the public. Türkçe: Berlin Duvarı, 1989 sonbaharı (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Carol Shields: Inspirational Quotes

Photography: Christopher Morris, 2001

I came across an old copy of the Canadian literary journal ‘A Room of One’s Own’ (dedicated to women’s literature) and found a moving tribute to Carol Shields written by her long-time friend and fellow writer Eleanor Wachtel.  Here are some excerpts that I found particularly inspiring.

About women’s literature

I’ve never for a minute doubted the value of women’s experience.  Whenever my books met with critical scorn because of their subject matter, I just shrugged. Other critical comments I listened to, but not that one.

About reading

Reading novels is not an escape; it’s a necessary enlargement of my life.

About living fully

…we have to use the time we’ve got to blurt bravely and get some words on paper and have lots of conversations with lots of people… Being interested.

About growing and developing

I never believed that people were formed at age seven and we’d never escape that inheritance.  I think people are always changing… and what changes them is access to language and their ability to expand their expression of themselves through language.

I think I would have liked to know her as a person. Luckily, we still have her books.

Global Reading Challenge 2013

Hello again, everyone, and thank you for not forgetting about me completely during my looooong absence, reinforced by lack of internet, laptop, place or time to call my own (writing time giving way to family time).

2013 is announcing itself as a very busy year professionally and personally, so finding the time to write will be even more of a challenge than usual. Yet, despite that, reading must and will happen.  And not just random reading – I do believe in challenging myself and going beyond my old comfort friends.  So I am signing up to the Global Reading Challenge as outlined by the avid reader and fantastic host Kerri of Mysteries in Paradise.

I am signing up for the Medium Challenge, which means reading two books from each of the continents, defined here as Africa, Asia, Australasia/Oceania, Europe, North America, South America and a Seventh Continent, which could be Antarctica, or an unfamiliar setting, such as the sea, space, a supernatural/paranormal world, history, the future etc. So fourteen books for the year – doesn’t sound like much, but when you add all the familiar reading, rereading, ARC for reviews and all that, it becomes a little less of a sure winner…

So that is my challenge, instead of New Year’s Resolutions.  What goals are you setting yourself, either for your reading or your writing?  Or personally? And what is your opinion of New Year resolutions?

Something Old, Something New…

Now that the Chinese government has told us in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS that the world is not going to end on the 21st of December, I can safely plan my ‘summary of just 2012′ blog post. Rather than having to summarise the whole history of Earth and human beings.

Out with the old, in with the new is what always comes to mind as the year changes.  So I shall follow the good old wedding traditions and find something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue to list as my highlights for the year 2012.

1) Old

I have rediscovered my pleasure for writing this year, especially for reading and writing poetry, which I haven’t done since high school.  Writing is an old passion of mine, but I have been very clever at avoiding it (at least in its fully creative guise) over the past decade or more.  So, welcome back, old friend, sit down and tarry a while.  It’s such a pleasure to have you here with me!

2)  New

Joining the online community through blogging and book reviewing and connecting with other, much better writers than myself.  There is so much to learn here, so much to enjoy, especially on storytelling sites such as Cowbird,  that I am afraid I am spending far too much time reading other people’s work and not concentrating nearly enough on my own. I have also discovered a genuine community and mutual support system here, which was unexpected and moving.

3) Borrowed

I will borrow my own review of the Top 5 Crime Reads of my year from over at Crime Fiction Lover. But while you’re there, you may want to check some of the other Top 5 picks by my fellow reviewers.  They are all very knowledgeable about crime (fiction, of course). I have certainly added substantially to my already formidable TBR mountain.

4) Blue

No, I am not going to finish on a sad note, about what has made me blue this year.  Instead, since blue is my favourite colour, I will tell you about some of my best discoveries this year. I was going to do it in images, but this antiquated desktop can’t seem to cope with that.

- The beauties of France: its settings, its history, its (contemporary, rather than what I read in school) literature

- Peirene Press – beautiful editions of world literature in translation (with a pronounced Teutonic flavour), as well as an interesting business model based on subscription and community-building

- There is more to skiing than racing madly downhill – I have also learnt cross-country skiing and snow-shoeing this year

- That maybe I do need a cat to complete my happiness after all. We befriended a friend’s cat at the weekend and now I want one just like her!

- Online reading challenges.  I intend to participate in a couple this coming year: Translation Reading Challenge (particularly from cultures that I know next to nothing about) hosted by Curiosity Killed the Bookworm and the Global Reading Challenge, to be hosted by Mysteries in Paradise.

So, what have been your highlights this year? And what do you intend to keep on doing in the New Year, or what do you intend to start afresh?

 

 

 

 

Top Reads for October

 

 

It’s been a slow month in reading terms for me (we won’t even discuss how slow it has been in writing terms…). And a few of the books have been rather a let-down. So here is my meagre collection of books (there are links to ones I have reviewed on the Crime Fiction Lover website):

 

1) Adrian Magson: Death on the Pont Noir

 

 

 

2) Amélie Nothomb: Ni d’Eve, ni d’Adam – the Japanese setting intrigued me, but I found the book self-indulgent and the love story a little trite

 

3) S.J. Watson: Before I Go to Sleep – I had such high expectations of this one (there had been such a buzz around it and even the shop assistant wrapping it up for me said she had found it creepy and exciting).  So, perhaps it was inevitable that I should be disappointed.  The memory-loss premise is an interesting one, but I guessed the set-up quite early on, which rather spoilt the rest of the story for me.

 

4) Amanda Egan: Diary of a Mummy Misfit – bubbly fun – handbags at dawn at the schoolgates!  But also a spot-on critique of the snobbery and competitiveness of private schools.

 

5) Sarah Dobbs: Killing Daniel

 

6) Alan Bennett: The Uncommon Reader - a delightful romp about the Queen descending into a mad passion for reading (actually, it does have the occasional ring of truth to it!). My favourite quote from that is when the Queen buttonholes the French president to ask him about Jean Genet:

 

‘Homosexual and jailbird, was he nevertheless as bad as he was painted? Or, more to the point, [...] was he as good?’

Unbriefed on the subject of the glabrous playwright and novelist, the president looked wildly about for his minister of culture. But she was being addressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

[...] The president put down his spoon.  It was going to be a long evening.

 

7) Véronique Olmi: Un si bel avenir – not at all on a par with the riveting (if emotionally scarring) ‘Bord de mer’. This story of an ageing actress and anxious wife and mother, or even of female friendship, has been done so much better elsewhere.

 

8) Agence Hardy Bandes dessinées - I love the fact that there are so many graphic novels for grown-ups in France. This series is crime fiction, about a private detective agency set up by a glamorous widow, Edith Hardy, in Paris in the 1950s.  Beautiful recreation of very precise locations and period detail – a joy to read!

 

And my Top Pick of the month? Death on the Pont Noir – I adore the setting in a village in the Picardie region of France in the 1960s and am a little in love with Inspector Lucas Rocco.

 

Related articles

 

• Le French Book Brings French Bestselling Crime Fiction to the Rest of the World (prweb.com)
• Crime Pick of the Month: September (findingtimetowrite.wordpress.com)
• Newly Discovered… (findingtimetowrite.wordpress.com)

 

Dreaming of Bookshelves and Writing Desks

 

 

Where has all my text gone to?  I posted this yesterday with a little blurb about how I cannot resist a good bookshelf, wherever it might be in the house.  And how my husband keeps sighing and pointing out the progress of technology in the form of e-readers.  But this morning the text disappeared! Ah well, what use are words when the images speak for themselves?

http://www.thekitchn.com/in-good-company-dining-among-books-170014

http://www.houzz.com

Working lavishly:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/writersrooms – Marina Warner

http://www.Decoist.com

http://www.home-designing.com

In the in-between spaces:

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com

But where do we get most of the reading done? In the bedroom!

http://www.home-designing.com

Related articles

• A Selection of Unique Modern Bookshelves is Introduced by HomeThangs.com – Home Improvement Super Store (prweb.com)
• Outstanding Creative Bookshelves…..!!!!! (aamirazeem.wordpress.com)

Newly Discovered…

This is the joy of reading: that there is such a vast world out there waiting to be discovered… And you find new authors, new books, new genres, new countries to fall in love with.

This is the anguish of reading: that there is such a vast world out there, which you can never hope to explore in its entirety.

It feels at times like the explorers of two-three centuries ago faced with a rather blank map of Africa.  Where to go first?  What part of this vast continent was truly deserving of your time and attention?  Since you could never hope to cover it all.

For the time being, I continue to be somewhat haphazard in my meanderings.  I have not completely ruled out any genre, nor any country or time period.  But I do try to stick to what is easily accessible at present, hence my discovery of contemporary French literature (I had read mainly the classics, and mostly for schoolwork before).

So here are some of my new favourite things:

1) Veronique Olmi: Beside the Sea

Completely shattered after reading this – and yet I could not set it aside. Not the easiest of reads, especially if you are a mother yourself, but it exerted a powerful fascination. A language at once simple, unadorned, conversational and yet poetic. The back story is merely hinted at, never overtly stated. You are never in any doubt about the outcome, but what is remarkable is how the book shows just how fragile the barriers between ‘normal’ and ‘depressed’, between ‘normal’ and ‘dysfunctional’ families are. There are no easy distinctions and that very dangerous slippery slope is there for any one of us…

2) Pascal Garnier: The Panda Theory

This very dark, yet also quite funny and odd little book is the story of Gabriel, who shows up unexpectedly in a completely nondescript Breton town on a Sunday in October.  He seems taciturn yet amiable, maybe a little odd, and he gradually insinuates himself into the lives of disparate members of the local community.  He is an excellent listener and he offers to cook for people, with no ulterior motive whatsoever as far as they can tell.  While cooking a shoulder of lamb for the Portuguese bar-owner, José, he listens to the latter’s anxieties about his wife, sick in hospital. He gently turns down the flattering attentions of the pretty hotel receptionist, even as he cooks calves’ livers for her. He buys a saxophone off a couple desperate for money, although he does not play the instrument, and becomes involved in their sordid lives as well.  He wins a giant cuddly Panda at the funfair and gives it to José for his children.

Yet all is not as it seems.  Occasional flashbacks suggest a more troubled past life for Gabriel, who seems less and less cuddly as the story unfolds.

This is also the story of a small group of outsiders, people drifting at the periphery of society. These loners and no-hopers have somehow found each other and created an artificial family, clinging to each other and to some last shred of humanity.  Gabriel brings this group together, watches them reach their peak of happiness and knows from experience that life for them can only be a disappointment hereafter.

If I say that this is a novel about ‘existential angst’, it will probably put off any would-be reader.  Yet this world-weariness and anxiety are conveyed beautifully through an intriguing storyline, limpid prose and a dialogue of searing sincerity.  I cannot recommend it highly enough.

3) And four new crime fiction series that I look forward to reading in more depth. You know me and my love for exotic locations!  Alison Bruce’s DC Gary Goodhew series (set in Cambridge, UK), Adrian Magson’s Inspector Lucas Rocco (set in France) , Jeffrey Siger’s Inspector Kaldis (Greece) and Leighton Gage’s Chief Inspector Mario Silva (Brazil).

What have you recently discovered that made you want to get up and do a jig?  What do you want to share with everybody (or – hush! so good you want to keep it all to yourself)?