Steph’s wonderful WhereDunnit blog is full of good news.
- BBC has commissioned more Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh – and the first is finally set to run in the US.
- The Nervous Man is a new Wallander novel, and probably the last in the series, that will be published in Sweden this summer.
- And in September, another Erlendur novel by Arnaldur Indridason will published in English in the UK – titled Hypothermia.
Sunnie has her reservations about The Girl Who Played With Fire – and wonders if anyone else did. “Good in parts but annoying and exasperating in others.” (She calls it a “curate’s egg” – a new phrase to me, but possibly a good book title, eh?)
Cathy Skye reflects on The Princess of Burundi – mixed feelings, but worth reading: “There was just enough of main character Ann Lindell there for me to know that she’s someone special that I would like to get to know better. (I would suggest that, if she has any more children, her maternity leave occurs between books and not right in the middle of one!) I also found Eriksson’s descriptions of Sweden and Swedish society to be very good. As I was reading, I felt as though I were there crunching through the endless snow and becoming better acquainted with the people.”
crimeficreader thinks highly of Camilla Läckberg’s The Preacher and writes a lovely and thorough review to explain why. Go read it.
If you’re going to CrimeFest you can hear all about the art of translation in the “Foreign Correspondant” panel. I believe this is all Maxine’s fault, or is it Karen’s? Anyway, never underestimate the power of blog comments.
Scandinavian Crime Fiction 
Barbara,
‘curate’s egg’ comes from an old cartoon in Punch, in which at the breaakfast table someone says ‘and how did you find your egg, curate’ and he replies ‘parts of it were excellent’, to evident howls of laughter from the Victorian or Edwardian readers.
Although it’s obvious from the joke that the egg must be terrible, but he’s trying desperately to be polite, the phrase ‘curate’s egg’ has come to mean something that is, in fact, good in parts and not so good in others. So it goes…
Thanks, Michael! Mystery solved.