Saturday, October 14, 2006

Euro Crime Website - 'News' page updated

The 'News' page on the Euro Crime website has been updated with links to interviews and reviews from the last week.

Lynda la Plante's The Red Dahlia is reviewed twice - with slightly differing opinions:

from the Guardian:
"No one does a police procedural as well as La Plante, who orchestrates the suspense and the frenzy of the chase against the clock with as much panache as she elaborates the disarray of the investigators' private lives. It's breathless stuff which ranks impressively against the best of Prime Suspect. Because of her TV fame, La Plante is seriously underrated as a novelist; this should help to change that."

whereas the Telegraph says:
"If you can ignore the predictability in all this, the leaden dialogue, the writing-by-numbers prose, the flat-pack plotting, the implausible character motivation, the absence of verisimilitude, and the utter banality of it all, then this novel, the latest from the writer who brought us Prime Suspect, is just about all right."

Anyone read anything by her? I've not even seen Prime Suspect.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I read a couple of her early books-- maybe the first prime suspect. I enjoyed that. But then she became very forumulaic. In fact I don't think she even writes the books herself now, I think she's franchised her name---I recall getting a book by her from the library a few years ago and being surprised how slack and lazy it was. I looked at the biblio details and it seemed as if someone else had written it, or maybe a collaboration? Can't recall the exact details.
Bit like James Patterson.

The last book of hers I read was a few years ago when I was on a train somewhere. I finished the book and it was so bad I just left it on the train, as I didn't want to keep carrying it around with me and could not bring myself to throw a book away in the bin, however bad. I wasn't sure whether to be guilty or not that someone might waste their time reading it. I think I rationalised it that someone might just enjoy it!

Karen (Euro Crime) said...

Yes the later books in the Trial & Retribution series were written/novelised by Robin Blake.

I do have a review copy of The Red Dahlia and I did start it but, oh dear. It was a bit gory and the writing very noddy. Perhaps another time. But when the cream of European writers' books are in the tbr, why bother!