I’m always eager to read stories written by people in cultures other than my own, especially stories that take genres and give them a local twist. My limited language skills mean that I have to wait until the books are translated into English before I can do this.

I’m still surprised at how many authors who top the best-seller lists in their own countries are not translated into English. It seems to me that it would be an easy win for the publishers. The material is already there and it’s clear that it works with many readers but still, there is a lag.

Things are getting better though and I’m trying to do my small part by searching out ‘translated into English’ titles that appeal to me.

The two books I’ve picked out this week are both by writers who lead the market in their own countries. One is from Finland and one is from Spain. One writes crime with a twist of dark humour. One has created his own universe to set international thrillers in.

I’m hoping to get something exciting and different from both of them.

---

‘Palm Beach Finland’ by Antti Tuomainen (2018)

---

Like many other people, I fell in love with Scandi Noir by watching the Danish TV series ‘Forbrydelsen’ (The Killing) way back in 2007. It introduced me to a new style of Noir and the joys of watching subtitled television. I’ve read widely in the genre: Samuel Bjork Ragnar Jonasson Helene Tursten Viveca Sten Silje Ulstein Hans Rosenfeldt Max Seeck and Jo Nesbo and I have others on my shelves who I haven’t gotten to yet.

The styles vary but one thing that has so far been absent is humour. I’m hoping that Antti Tuomainen will fill that gap and give me something that does for Scandi Noir novels what ‘Lilyhammer’ did for Scandi Noir TV. I’m hoping that Antti Tuomainen will turn out to be Finland’s Carl Hiaasen.

---

‘Red Queen’ by Juan Gómez-Jurado (2018)

This one is a roll of the dice for me. I like the idea of a kickass English woman as the main character of a Spanish thriller writer. What hooked me wasn’t the upcoming TV series but the opening sentences:

“Antonia Scott allows herself to think of suicide no more than three minutes a day.

To other people, three minutes might seem a negligible amount of time.

Not to Antonia. You could say her mind has plenty of horsepower, but Antonia’s head isn’t a sports car engine. You could say it’s capable of many data processing cycles, and yet Antonia’s mind isn’t a computer.

Antonia’s mind is more like a jungle, a jungle full of monkeys leaping at full speed from limb to limb. Many monkeys and many things, swinging past one another in midair, baring their fangs.

That’s why in three minutes—eyes closed, sitting barefoot on the floor, legs crossed—Antonia is capable of calculating: the speed at which her body would hit the ground if she jumped from the window in front of her; the number of milligrams of Propofol required to enjoy eternal rest; how long and at what temperature she would need to be submerged in an icy lake for hypothermia to stifle her heartbeats.

In those three minutes, Antonia plans a way to get hold of a controlled substance like Propofol (bribing a nurse) and finds out where the nearest icy lake is at this time of year (Laguna Negra in Soria). She prefers not to think about jumping from her loft, because the skylight is quite narrow, and she suspects the disgusting food served in the hospital cafeteria has gone straight to her hips.

The three minutes when she thinks about how to kill herself are her three minutes.

They’re sacred.

They’re what keep her sane.”

Gómez-Jurado, Juan. Red Queen: The #1 international award-winning bestselling thriller that has taken the world by storm (Antonia Scott) (pp. 1-2). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

I’m hoping for something, original, stylish and entertaining.