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Writer's pictureChris Quarembo

May/June 2021

Volume 1 Issue 2

After more than a year of pandemic confinement, I’m ready for a change of scene. But travel still seems off-limits, at least for now. If you are also feeling wanderlust, my recommendations in this issue might be just the ticket. The authors I’ve selected serve up satisfying mysteries while transporting readers to unique places and times, at least for the duration of their books. All these authors write critically acclaimed, multi-volume series.

Italy For a taste of Italy, two authors stand out. In Donna Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti series, we see the splendor and squalor of Venice through Brunetti’s eyes as he investigates crime and corruption. The first in the series is Death at La Fenice, in which Brunetti investigates the poisoning of a conductor at the famed Venetian opera house. Sicilian native Andrea Camilleri imbues his Inspector Salvo Montalbano series with the color, tastes, humor, and crime of this storied Southern Italian island. The Shape of Water is the first of eighteen novels.

Africa Botswana, one of Africa’s smaller countries, is the setting for Alexander McCall Smith’s entertaining and non-violent mystery series of twenty-one novels, featuring the wise and engaging Precious Ramotswe. The series begins with The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, voted one of the International Books of the Millennium by the Times Literary Supplement. European New Noir

Philip Kerr’s trilogy Berlin Noir introduces detective Bernie Gunther, whose goal is to stay alive and out of a concentration camp while investigating crime in Hitler’s Germany. The Oslo-based series of novels featuring detective Harry Hole, written by Jo Nesbo, are complex, intense, and suspenseful, exploring the darkest corners of Oslo crime. Nesbo was awarded the Glass Key for best Nordic crime novel. The Bat is the first of Harry Hole novels. Readers’ comments on my last newsletter: Matt Corso was pleased to discover Joseph Kanon’s spy fiction and gave a favorable review after reading Kanon’s The Defectors. Kristin Vogel loves spy novels and Cuba, so she ordered Paul Vidnich’s The Good Assassin. One correction came from Chris Hatch, who pointed out that John LeCarre’s George Smiley character first appeared in the novel, Call for the Dead, not in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, although Smiley is a minor character in that work. Consider Independent Book Stores When you purchase books, please consider patronizing independent bookstores to help keep them viable within our communities. Please feel free to email me, chrisquarembo@gmail.com, and share your comments about the newsletter, books you’re reading, and books to recommend to readers of this newsletter.

Watch for my next newsletter in July.

“I cannot live without books” – Thomas Jefferson, 1815

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