Category Archives: Crime fiction

Fact and fiction in criminal case file 002

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

Ieng Sary Hearing 1

Late last week Ieng Sary aka criminal case file 002, former foreign minister for the charnel house known as the Khmer Rouge regime, died in Phnom Penh at the age of eighty seven.

One of five senior members of the Khmer Rouge being investigated by an international tribunal, Sary died denying he had any role in overseeing the death by starvation, torture and murder of approximately 1.7 million Cambodians between 1975 and early 1979.

Unfortunately, he escaped justice, dying before the tribunal could hand down its findings into his case.

Described in the charge sheet as ‘retired’, he lived peacefully in the former guerilla strong hold of Pailin until 2007, when an ageing Soviet-era chopper swooped down and police arrested and bundled him off to Phnom Penh.

For me, the news of the 87-year-old Sary’s death was very much a case of fact and fiction merging.  Sary’s defection from the Khmer Rouge in 1996 forms the historical backdrop of my crime novel set in Cambodia, Ghost Money.

Normally, I’d feel dreadful using someone’s death as an excuse to plug my book, but I’ll make an exception in Sary’s case.

I was just about to a stint as a journalist with one of the wire services in Phnom Penh, when news of Sary’s defection from the Khmer Rouge broke.… Read more

→ 3 Comments

Posted in Asian noir, Crime fiction, Crime fiction and film from Cambodia, Snubnose Press

Tagged , , , , , ,

Ignore your TBR list #1

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 10 Comments

The way we die nowWriters and readers are always bitching about the size of our to-be-read (TBR) piles.

I’m not sure if it’s related to the fact that there’s more books available, if they’re easier to access electronically or via on-line bookstores like Booktopia, or whether social media means we just need something to talk about, to look busy, so hell, why not talk about how we’ve just added another book to our TBR list.

Whatever, the upshot is it’s rare for many of us, well, for me anyway, to find ourselves in a situation where we don’t actually have anything on hand to read and we need to find something quickly. A situation that necessitates departing from our planned reading list and taking a chance on whatever book we can find.

This happened to me last week.

I was in Queensland’s Surfers Paradise for several days on personal business. I’d finished the book I was reading, Dennis Lehane’s excellent Live By Night, a lot quicker than I thought I would. I didn’t have my Kindle or any other reading material with me and there was nothing in the house I was staying in.

So I had to go out and find a book. Quickly.

Now Surfers is not exactly book lover’s paradise but it does have one or two okay second hand bookshops.… Read more

→ 10 Comments

Posted in Charles Willeford, Crime fiction

Tagged , , , ,

Summer reading report back 2013

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

As the summer holiday’s draw to an end and the business part of 2013 kicks off, it’s time for a little run down of what I’ve read over the Christmas/New Year period and how I’m going to approach my reading in the year ahead.

fc3I’ve seen the 1972 movie Fat City, directed by John Huston, many times but never read the 1969 book of the same name by Leonard Gardner. It was hands down my read of the summer. Indeed, I’ll go as far as saying it’s one of the most beautifully written novels I can remember reading in a while.

Set in the fifties, Fat City is the story of two amateur boxers, Ernie Munger and Billy Tully. Tully is the older of the two, a former fighter who wants another shot at the big time. The fact he’s an alcoholic means he’s got no chance. Munger is a young man with potential, but you know from the first time we meet him, he’s not going to amount to much. The book follows the hopes, dreams and most of all, anxieties of these two men through a series of bars, flop houses and dead end jobs. As I said, there’s never any doubt the two won’t amount to much, the question is just how far they’ll slide.… Read more

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Crime Factory, Crime fiction, James Ellroy, Lee Marvin, Noir fiction

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My top crime reads of 2012

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Andrew Nette| 5 Comments

What’s the end of a year without a best of post?

Recently, I was asked by UK site Crime Fiction Lover to list my top crime reads for 2012. They would only let me pick five, but obviously I’ve read a lot more books worthy of mention than that. Here’s the long list.

He Died with his Eyes Open, Derek Raymond

A police procedural like no other, it starts, like so many other crime novels, with the discovery of a body. The unnamed cop (the story’s narrator) who catches the case is a tough talking sergeant from the Department of Unexplained Deaths, also known as A14, at the Factory police station. There’s no apparent motive and all the cop has to go on are a series of old cassette tapes in the dead man’s property that contain the deeply unhappy ramblings of a deeply unhappy man. Most police procedurals deal with crime from the point of view of the police. What’s unusual about this book is that the cop concerned is more like his victim.

Raymond was the pen name of English writer Robert William Arthur Cook, who eschewed his upper middle class family for a life of odd jobs, bohemian travel and frequent brushes with the law. Although he wrote for years, success eluded until with the publication of He Died with His Eyes Open in 1984, the first of five Factory books.… Read more

→ 5 Comments

Posted in Australian crime fiction, Book Reviews, Crime fiction, Crime fiction and film from Latin and Central America, Crime Fiction and film set in Vietnam, Derek Raymond, Don Winslow, Megan Abbott

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Next Big Thing

Posted on November 28, 2012 by Andrew Nette| 11 Comments

Call me old fashioned, but I only just found out what an Internet meem is the other day when I was tagged to take part in the ‘Next Big Thing’.

A meme is something that spreads via the Internet. In this instance, it’s a string of short interview questions with various authors about their current book or work in progress.

I was tagged by New Jersey based crime writer Wallace Stroby. He also tagged Scott Alderberg, Alison Gaylin and Philadelphia author Dennis Tafoya. Esteemed company to be in.

Stroby is the author of a string of crime novels, the most recent of which I’ve read is Cold Shot to the Heart featuring the professional female thief, Crissa Stone. If you haven’t checked his work out already, I suggest you do so.

Since I have foresworn off blogging about my next book, I’ll answer the ten questions about my current novel, Ghost Money.

1. What’s the title of your current book?

Ghost Money, out through Snubnose Press.

2. Where did the idea for the book come from?

It came from working on and off as a journalist in Cambodia in the mid-nineties and becoming fascinated with the place, the people, and the contrast between the anything goes, Wild West atmosphere of Phnom Penh and the hardscrabble but incredibly beautiful countryside.… Read more

→ 11 Comments

Posted in Asian noir, Christopher G Moore, Crime fiction, Crime fiction and film from Cambodia, David Whish-Wilson, Martin Limon, Noir fiction

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,