Jassy Mackenzie’s Jo’burg: ‘Top of the Crime Pile’

South African crime novelist Jassy Mackenzie hit the ground running with her 2008 publication, Random Violence, featuring gutsy PI Jade de Jong. Set in contemporary Johannesburg, the novel earned local acclaim. South Africa’s Sunday Times declared that this debut “excels in its ability to translate our propensity for violent crime into a clever plot that [...]

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Land of Fire and Ice (and Crime): Yrsa Sigurdardóttir’s Iceland

Yrsa Sigurdardóttir, Icelandic crime novelist, joins us today on Scene of the Crime. The author of numerous children’s books, Yrsa has also written a popular crime series featuring lawyer and single mother of two, Thóra Gudmundsdóttir. Of the five that have been poublished in her native country, two have thus far appeared in English translation, [...]

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Greek Tragedies: Jeff Siger’s Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis Series

Some people envision moving to a Greek island as the ultimate dream retirement plan. Jeff Siger went there to reinvent himself, leaving behind his lucrative New York law practice to set up his writing desk on the island of Mykonos. And with great results. The first two books in his Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series, [...]

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Underground London: Dan Waddell’s Foster and Barnes Series

Dan Waddell is assisting Scene of the Crime today in its investigations into setting and fiction. Waddell, a Londoner, is a former journalist, the bestselling author of Who Do You Think You Are? that accompanied the BBC series on genealogy, and, most importantly for us, the author of the crime series featuring Scotland Yard’s Detective [...]

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Crime and Punishment in Imperial Japan: The Sugawara Akitada Novels of I.J. Parker

Shamus Award-winning author I.J. Parker joins Scene of the Crime today to talk about her series of novels featuring Sugawara Akitada, who works as a minor official in the Ministry of Justice in Heian Kyo, capital of Japan in the 11th century. Akitada copes with this boring position by solving mysteries both low and high, [...]

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Looking for Trouble in Bangkok: Tim Hallinan’s Poke Rafferty

Today we travel to Thailand to examine the work of writer Timothy Hallinan, author of the Poke Rafferty series, set in Bangkok. Hallinan has divided his time between Los Angeles and Southeast Asia for almost thirty years.  He is the author of six private-eye novels set in Los Angeles and four Rafferty thrillers: A Nail [...]

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Slovakian Intrigues: Michael Genelin’s Jana Matinova Novels

Today we are fortunate to have Michael Genelin—author, lawyer, and international consultant on governmental reform. Michael is the author of three novels in the crime series  featuring police commander Jana Matinova: Siren of the Waters, Dark Dreams, and coming this summer, The Magician’s Accomplice. Genelin takes the reader into a part of Europe that most [...]

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The Other Oslo: K.O. Dahl’s Frølich and Gunnarstranda Novels

Kjell Ola Dahl has been called the Henning Mankell of Norway. The author of eleven highly acclaimed police procedurals, most of which feature Oslo detectives Frank Frølich and Chief Inspector Gunnarstranda, Dahl was introduced to English-speaking readers with his 2007 novel, The Fourth Man (originally published in Norwegian in 2005). Since then other books in [...]

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