Road Rage Hits Spain, the Devil Deals in Sweden, and a Burglary Stumps Denmark A minor fender bender on a Monday morning leads a frazzled female executive named Sonsoles to hop out of her convertible and let loose with a string of insults and profanities that would make even the most grizzled truck driver blush…Continue Reading
Cuckoo Cavaliers Three Pests in Gavron’s Mess, Down and Out in Gdansk, And Gala Rings Twice in Spain John Belushi meets the Coen brothers — or maybe the three stooges — this month as a trio of young Israelis land in New York to strike it fabulously rich but soon put the pedal to the…Continue Reading
It’s a Wonderful Double Life Hot-Buttered in Finland, Dreyfus Redux in Israel, and Watusi on the Brain in Spain Nouveau-riche restaurateur Brede Ziegler is murdered not once, but twice in No Echo, the sixth in a series of shrewdly executed detective novels from megastar Norwegian author Anne Holt. After Ziegler turns up hot-buttered and trussed,…Continue Reading
Sketches of Spain Gala’s Jungle of Love and Aldecoa’s Enigma, Plus Holst’s Uppity Danish Women At the colossal Fnac megastore in Barcelona last month, you had to bushwhack your way past bales of Jean Auel’s The Shelters of Stone — the ubiquitously promoted tome could be had in no less than four separate editions: Catalan,…Continue Reading
Beat the Devil Coelho Back in Brazil, Mortier in the Netherlands, And Pleijel Shakes Up Sweden Brazilian high priest of letters Paulo Coelho has conjured up The Devil and Miss Prym after two years of soul searching, and the result is a half-million-copy catechism that’s been deemed a “parable in which the characters show all…Continue Reading
