Craig Sisterson takes a look at some recent bestsellers.

New Zealand readers love their crime and thriller fiction. Although we’ve been a little slow to embrace the fantastic, high quality writing now being produced by some of our own local writers, we certainly devour titles from international authors. A quick glance at the weekly bestsellers lists shows that crime and thriller titles not only regularly top the International Adult Fiction bestseller list, but in fact often take up the majority of the Top 10 positions. We love our fictional crime tales, that’s for sure.

In the past few weeks there have been new releases from several of the biggest names on the international crime and thriller writing scene. But which of these five international stars are continuing to produce high quality crime and thriller fiction that is well worth reading, and which are relying more on reputations or past glories?

Here’s a quick round-up.

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By Camilla During
Gecko Press is a boutique publishing house, the brainchild of New Zealander Julia Marshall. She specialises in publishing foreign children’s books which she then gets translated into English. Marshall is careful to choose “curiously good books from around the world by well-established authors and illustrators”.

Gecko Press publications (which now number over thirty) continue to impress me with both the calibre of the authors and illustrators as well as the unstinting production values.

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Journalist ALISON McCULLOCH, who recently moved to Ireland, contributes the latest installment of the Scoop Review of Books’ Five Books series…

Getting to Know Ireland

Ireland: Inventing the Nation. By R. V. Comerford. Hodder Arnold/Oxford University Press. 2003.

Ireland has a deep and enduring relationship with emigration. Being migratory seems part of who the Irish are, and not just historically. As soon as the clouds of economic doom appeared on the horizon in 2008, newspapers started running stories about how many people were lining up to get out.

But there’s a fierce nationalistic sentiment here, too, where the “Celtic” identifier can be attached to just about everything – “Celtic crosses, Celtic soul, Celtic mind and Celtic spirit … Celtic rock, Celtic rhythm, Celtic chocolates, Celtic needlepoint, Celtic helicopters”, and let’s not forget the Celtic Tiger, R.I.P. So how do you reconcile such loyalty to country – and all things Celtic – with that centuries-old tendency of its people to pack up and leave? It’s pretty simple. In the struggle between economy and ideology, as Vincent Comerford argues in this most engaging book, Ireland: Inventing the Nation, economy will prevail over ideology at every turn. Call it Celtic pragmatism. Read more »

By KATHY McVEY
At the very basic level, cancer is your own cells attacking themselves. When I learned this after my own breast cancer diagnosis – early on – I felt like I’d been given a kind of power. I had a total belief that if my own body had created cancer, then surely I could reverse it. So I started reading…

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Theme 4 of Te Ara, the online Encylopedia of New Zealand.

General Editor: Jock Phillips; Theme Editor: Allan Gillingham

Reviewed by SIMON NATHAN
Te Ara, the Online Encylopedia of New Zealand, is being built up progressively, with a block of new content being added annually. The fourth section or theme is called ‘The Settled Landscape’, and deals with how humans have modified the land, clearing the forest and converting most of the lower altitude country to farmland. The emphasis of this theme is mainly on farming of both animals and crops. The 97 new articles cover a range of topics from superphosphate to animal diseases (which includes a chilling selection of illustrations). But it isn’t all technical stuff, as there is a delightful group of articles on Country Life.

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By Simon Nathan
Twenty years ago the publication of a book about New Zealand science was an unusual event. But in 2008 science writing is now sexy, attracting creative writers and established publishers. These five recent volumes are a sample of the excellent new science books that are available.

A Continent on the Move

Chief Editor, Ian Graham

Geological Society of New Zealand (distributed by Craig Potton Publishing). $50

There has been a revolution in geological ideas over the last thirty years. When I was a student, it was widely believed that the continents and oceans were fixed and unchanging. Development of the concepts of plate tectonics has given a completely different way of looking at the earth. This encyclopedic book is a synthesis of present knowledge of the geology of New Zealand and how it fits in with the rest of the world. Read more »

Wellington writer, librarian and feminist MARIA McMILLAN contributes the latest installment of the Scoop Review of Book’s “Five Books that…” series.

Freedom Train: The story of Harriet Tubman
By Dorothy Sterling
As a child I read obsessively. I crammed books in and swallowed them whole not wanting to stop to sleep or eat. At night after my parents came to turn my light off I would take my lamp under the covers so they couldn’t see–it is there still somewhere, white cloth covered plastic misshapen on one side from heat it should never have experienced. After I finally relented to sleep I would dream new chapters and entirely new conversations among characters. I would read books in one sitting and instantly forget most of the plot. Read more »

By Airini Beautrais

This is a tough call as I think to be any kind of writer you need to read more like five hundred books. However these are a few of the books that spring to mind as having influenced me at particular times of my life. Firstly my mum was a big William Blake fan. If I had been a boy it’s quite likely I would have been named Blake. Probably my first introduction to his work was a recording of ‘Tyger tyger’ made in the 60s which was on a nursery rhyme tape we had. When I was a teenager – maybe 15 – I read the Songs of Innocence and Experience and enjoyed it. Read more »

By Simon Nathan

Blackball is a remote and bleak West Coast mining town in the shadow of the Paparoa Range. The main mine closed over 50 years ago, but a small, fiercely loyal community remains. People with Blackball connections have fond memories of a town that probably seems better through nostalgia-tinted lenses. Although these books cover a period of more than 100 years, a common theme is that life in Blackball was tough. Read more »

Auckland crime writer ANDREA JUTSON – author of the just published The Darkness Looking Back – nominates five crime novels that have influenced her writing.

The Shape of Water – Andrea Camilleri
He might share his first name with me, but I can only marvel (and laugh, repeatedly) at Andrea Camilleri’s ability to weave a sparkling, tragic-comic mystery that truly breathes the spirit of modern Sicily. Read more »