Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Is It Time to Escape on a Foreign Mystery Tour?

As you emerge from winter's grip, it's time to plan for some fun travel -- and there's no cheaper way than a global mystery tour. Enjoy sunny piazzas, pyramids and pagodas with fascinating sleuths for company. If you're already addicted to bleak Scandinavian landscapes by Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series, consider Norway's "Queen of Crime" Karin Fossum and Swedish master Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander series. But then go sip white wine in a Paris café courtesy of one of the world's top-selling mystery writers, the late Georges Simenon, creator of the Commissaire Maigret mysteries. Add Italian zest with mystery fan favorites Andrea Camilleri, creator of Sicilian Inspector Montalbano, and Donna Leon, creator of Venice police detective Guido Brunetti. Best-selling Spanish novelist Arturo Perez-Severte can offer historical flair with his Diego Alatriste, a 17th century sword-wielding sleuth. Next leave Europe and go East. Sample Japanese Keigo Higashino's The Devotion of Suspect X, a 2012 Edgar Award nominee, and Qiu Xiaolong's series about poetry-spouting Shanghai detective Chen Cao, including Death of a Red Heroine, an Anthony Award winner for first novel. Fly over the Taj Mahal and land with Kishwar Desai's award-winning Witness the Night, featuring Punjab social-worker-cum-crime investigator Simran Singh. Visit Africa with the Botswana-based Detective Kubu series by Michael Stanley (alias of a duo of South African professors). Finally, come back to the Americas and go south with acclaimed psychological thriller The Book of Murder by Argentina's Guillermo Martinez. And that's a very abbreviated world tour of great mysteries! For a much longer list by geography, go to http://www.mysterylovers.com/books/book_clubs/foreign.php

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