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Next up will be The Western Banker by Joe Barrett.

The author is a litigation specialist in the City of London dealing with International Trade, financing and shipping.  Currently he is on a sabbatical planning his PhD on the World Trade Organisation.  His next novel is to be based on the exploitation of the environmental agenda by big business.

The blurb from "The Western Banker" is:

Helen Fitzgerald has a first book out with Allen & Unwin (released in September) - Dead Lovely.

According to her bio Helen was born in Country Victoria, and now lives in Glasgow Scotland.  If anybody's tried her book - let us know what it's like.

Great to see Mike Ponder's name popup on Random House's website with his new book The Windsor Conspiracy.  

You might also want to have a look at Mike's website - just for a stroll through his art works which are really interesting. http://www.mikeponder.com/

Big Shots by Adam Shand(link is external) - tags: True Crime [Our New Books - LibraryThing(link is external)]

Neil Cross's Natural History just showed up for review which provided me a) with a book I'm looking forward to reading and b) with a bio on the author that added a few things I hadn't been aware of.  Spooks is one of those fabulous British TV dramas, where the pace is taut and the storylines just realistic enough to make you go hmmmmmm.  And Neil Cross, who lives in New Zealand is one of the writers on the upcoming 6th Series of Spooks.

The perfect suspect by Vincent Varjavandi(link is external) - Double Bay, N.S.W.: Longueville Media, 2006. 367 p. ; 23 cm.
tags: Crime [Our New Books - LibraryThing(link is external)]

First Tuesday Book Club for October 

The ABC have pushed this program out onto the internet quite well and it is possible to download a video file in either MP4 or WMV format. The most recent four episodes are available on their site as of today.

Subtitled EEEKKKKK - it's my turn....

The marvellous Barbara Fister came up with the idea of the Carnival of the Criminal Minds, which will be a strolling / wandering / juggling roll call of bloggers who, in turn, will point out some items of interest to our joint readership.   It's going to be great fun so I hope you'll subscribe and follow along with everyone.

The 10.30 from Marseille by Sebastien Japrisot(link is external) - Souvenir (1964), Unknown Binding, 181 pages
tags: Crime [Our New Books - LibraryThing(link is external)]

By pure chance I picked up two books by this author recently because, well I guess the titles appealed but the blurbs sounded intriguing.

The people at Bitter Lemon Press are really evil 

They send me these seemingly innocuous little messages with notes about books and suddenly I've got cravings.  Surely this is just addict encouragement.  Anyway - this arrived in my email box this morning and now I can feel that desperate sweat breaking out:

The Sinner

by Petra Hammesfahr

The Bethlehem Murders: A Novel (Omar Yussef Mystery Series) by Matt Rees(link is external) - Atlantic Books (2007), Hardcover
tags: Crime [Our New Books - LibraryThing(link is external)]

Maigret and the Idle Burglar (Penguin Red Classics) by Georges Simenon(link is external) - Penguin Books Ltd (2007), Paperback, 144 pages
tags: Crime [Our New Books - LibraryThing(link is external)]

The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas(link is external) - Canongate Books Ltd (2007), Paperback
tags: Crime [Our New Books - LibraryThing(link is external)]

Bewrite Books have recently released Brian's 3rd novel - Bloody Ham - http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/2991

For lovers of the traditional English style of cosy novel - this time with an Australian central protaganist - all of Brian's books should be of great interest to you.  If you've been lucky enough to read Bloody Ham - let us know what you thought.

Well I guess if Phryne Fisher can do it ( http://www.phrynefisher.com/(link is external) ) then Simone can too! 

http://www.simonekirsch.com.au/(link is external)

Wander over and find out all you ever wanted to know about Simone and were always vaguely worried she'd tell you.

Tower of Silence by Sarah Rayne(link is external) - Pocket Books (2004), Paperback, 491 pages
tags: Crime [Our New Books - LibraryThing(link is external)]

Torch by Lin Anderson(link is external) - Hodder Paperback (2007), Paperback, 240 pages
tags: Crime [Our New Books - LibraryThing(link is external)]

Well for us, 2007 MWF finished about lunchtime today, after our final session with Michael Robotham, Adrian Hyland and Alexander McCall-Smith.

Today was to be Kerrie and Bob's last day at the festival - they were returning to Adelaide in the morning, so combine that with the very late night before after the Ned Kelly awards and it was a slightly bedraggled group that staggered in for the 10.30am Panel - Unconditional Love.

Friday was a BIIIGGG day at the festival for us.

We started off at the dreaded 10.30am again - next year I swear I'll be resisting this getting up at sparrow's behaviour!

Anyway - A Touch of Class was first with Malcolm Knox, Deborah Robertson (Australian authors) and John Ajvide Lindqvist - where they talked about the influence of class in society and how it was portrayed in their books - very interesting comparisons between their three books.

New authors 101 - or how to get through a writers festival without sobbing in a corner!

Or one I'd rush out and buy - Behavioural Tips for Fans at Festivals (how not to frighten the poor bugger half to death).

----

As was the case in 2006, the Ned Kelly's were distributed as part of ongoing events at the MWF - in the Festival Tent, chaired by the FABULOUS Jane Clifton.

I'm posting this blog nearly a week after the event - so you'll have to excuse me if some of the details are a little blurred - there were a lot of drinks between then and now.

Anyway - the night started off with a debate as is the wont of these nights - the topic for this year was (according to the table notes) "That in crime fiction, the crime itself is rarely the most important thing".

This year's 10th Annual Ned Kelly awards were incorporated as part of the Melbourne Writer's Festival main programme.

Yeah - no longer part of the fringe festival :) :) :)

The Awards were held in the Festival Club Marquee at the Malthouse in South Melbourne on the 30th August.

It was a warm and balmy night......

As long as you don't take them too seriously.

Monday of MWF week was, however, spent reading, drinking tea, talking, reading, blogging, reading and generally slothing around.  We needed it after a very hectic weekend.

Tuesday was, however, part "work" in that we went food shopping (oh and book shopping) and tonight we're off to the local Pub Trivia Night - so it was sort of rest sort of work.

We'll upload the next pile of books in the photo album soon:  http://www.austcrimefiction.org/image

We had a quiet day today (well quiet is a relative thing, you know that) Got up late.  Coffee-d, sat around and read for a bit.  Got dressed then went to Springvale, an Eastern suburb of Melbourne with a large Vietnamese population. We had lunch at a Vietnamese cafe.  Pho.  (A Vietnamese soup).  Karen and Adam did some grocery shopping and then it was on to a used bookstore in Belgrave.

MY ACQUISITIONS :

The Flaxborough Crab -  Colin Watson

Hopjoy was Here - Colin Watson

Tuesday - day 4 of being woken by a small bouncing puppy!  Jedda is totally delightful - but wakes much earlier and more energetically than I do.

Well the first weekend of our 2007 MWF celebrations has been and gone and we have started again with a bang - or at the very least some desperately sore feet from strolling and sore ribs from laughing.

Well here I am.  Eating, drinking and reading - 3 of my favourite things.   Festivities officially kicked off on Friday afternoon when Karen, Adam, Helen and I hooked up with Kerrie, Bob, Karen's neighbour, Fiona and Brian Kavanagh for the Chocolate Walking Tour.  It's amazing how much you can justify prodigious over-indulgence in chocolate by telling each other that walking very short distances will negate the weight-gaining potential of pigging out.  Then home to work on curing Helen's long-running cold with most excellent Margueritas with lime juice.

After rising before sparrow's, and a 90 minute flight, I arrived in Melbourne early on Friday morning.  Leaving my luggage with Karen's neighbour at his office in the city, I fortified myself with coffee, and proceeded to wander the streets of Melbourne while I waited for Sunnie to arrive on the train from Karen's country property.  In my meanderings I somehow found myself in Kill City bookshop, and left an hour or so later with Sunnie ...

One of the big bonuses of this year's MWF is the free events that are popping up at the venue.  Yesterday we were lucky enough to be hanging around in the Festival Club when Rory Ellis appeared.

http://www.roryellis.com/new/home.html

One of the aims that we had for this year's Melbourne Writers Festival was to emulate the tradition that 4MA members have of an opening dinner.  We decided to have ours on the first Saturday of the festival and we were keen to find a venue that had something a little different about it.  We finally settled on trying Tjanabi - a newish restaurant on the edges of Federation Square - not that far from the Malthouse Theatre.  Interestingly enough, next year the Festival will be moving to Federation Square.

A link to SOHO Crime's newsletter arrived in my mailbox this morning - and Garry Disher and Colin Cotterill head up the entries.

Have a look at the newsletter:

http://www.sohopress.com/crimenewsletter.html

The Ned Kelly's will be presented as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival (we'll be there again this year) on the evening of Wednesday 29th July, 2007.

Best Crime Novel

Chain of Evidence by Garry Disher (Text Publishing)

The Night Ferry by Michael Robotham (Little, Brown)

The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan (MacMillan)

The Cleaner by Paul Cleave (Random House)

The Undertow by Peter Corris (Allen & Unwin)

Spider Trap by Barry Maitland (Allen and Unwin)

Best First Crime Novel

With little fanfare, some would say as little fanfare as he received in life, a report of the death of Eric Rolls appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald this week.  Not a crime fiction author, but an Australian author whose most well known book is probably 1981's A Million Wild Acres, the story of the conquest and destruction of the Australian Wilderness. Another of his books "Citizens and Sojourners" has adorned the shelves in these parts for many years.

Our final weekend covered 3 panels that we were particularly keen to attend.

Over on my partner's own blog (which you can now see via News and Views as well), he's been posting some reviews of books read whilst travelling recently. 

The first review is 

Fluke by Christopher Moore(link is external)

and the second is for