Wednesday 7 October 2009

TALKING EURO CRIME FICTION ON RADIO 3'S NIGHT WAVES

In case you missed my contribution to the crime discussion on tonight's Night Waves (BBC Radio 3) you can pound this link and hear the programme again. My part follows the interview with PD James, which is very interesting: although she wouldn't define her work as cozy, she does talk repeatedly about feelings of comfort and safety in the way she writes crime.

At the end of our discussion of European crime, where Philip Dodd asks Shelly about social democratic political correctness I was sitting there poised to say 'that's why there are so many depressive detectives in the Nordic countries'. But I didn't get a chance!

I was pleased, however, to be able to draw a link between the contexts of Wallander and Stieg Larsson's novels, in that the real villains in both tend to be people who abuse the responsibility they've been given by society, moreso than simple 'criminals'. And to discuss Hakan Nesser in the context of the strange, Euro-melange, setting of his novels. The first EU crime fiction?

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