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Peggy Ehrhart

Ardaldur Indridason, Voices

Christmas Is for Happy People: Arnaldur Indridason’s Voices

By Peggy Ehrhart

December 20, 2011

“Christmas is for happy people,” a moody young hotel maid observes in Arnaldur Indridason’s (Indriðason) Icelandic thriller Voices. Indridason’s equally moody sleuth agrees. The moody sleuth, police inspector Erlendur Sveinsson, is on the scene because Santa has just been murdered—at one of Reykjavik’s leading hotels. In real life, Santa is the hotel doorman, who has…

The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu by Michael Stanley

Vengeance in Botswana: Michael Stanley’s The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu

By Peggy Ehrhart

November 17, 2011

A few years ago my husband and I spent a week at a safari camp in Tanzania. The safari experience included stunning views of landscape and animals, boozy evenings at the bar, nights in a tent as comfortable as our bedroom at home, an eccentric proprietor, and an equally eccentric assortment of fellow guests. The…

Toni Frissell’s Lady in the Water 1947

Edgar Allan Poe, Pioneer of the True Crime Genre: Truman Capote, Eat Your Heart Out!

By Peggy Ehrhart

October 4, 2011

It was a pleasant July afternoon in Hoboken, New Jersey. The year was 1841, and Hoboken offered a countrified respite from the sultry heat of New York City. Two young men were relaxing along the Hudson River near Sybil’s Cave, where a rocky cliff had been excavated to reach a natural spring. People believed the…

The Killers 1946 movie based — loosely — on Ernest Hemingway’s short story

Ernest Hemingway, Crime Writer—With A Little Help From Hollywood

By Peggy Ehrhart

September 7, 2011

Uncle Frank wanted to be Ernest Hemingway. He was my mother’s younger brother, a dashing figure who often stayed with us when I was a child in the early 1950s. Then he’d be off, hitchhiking from our house in the San Fernando Valley down to Mexico to take in a bullfight. Death in the Afternoon…

Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey

Welcome to Ghana, Mystery Lovers: Kwei Quartey’s Wife of the Gods

By Peggy Ehrhart

August 13, 2011

In Kwei Quartey’s Wife of the Gods, Ghanaian police inspector Darko Dawson observes a village ceremony: “As Dawson watched and listened, he saw in action the Ewe people’s long-held fame for the drumming tradition . . . unmatched by anything [he] had seen before.” I’ve seen the Ewe people’s drumming tradition in action too.  In…

Hakan Nesser: Mind’s Eye,the first Inspector Van Veteren thriller

The Existential World of Hakan Nesser: Life is What You Make It

By Peggy Ehrhart

August 5, 2011

I’m one of the few humans on earth who is not a Stieg Larsson fan. I closed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo after two pages and never opened it again. That says a lot about my distaste for the book, because in general I have a bias toward Swedish crime writers. I adored Henning…

Fred Vargas/ credit: Guardian and Eamonn Mc Cabe

Fred Vargas: History Behind Paris’s Curious Thrills?

By Peggy Ehrhart

June 18, 2011

I discovered Fred Vargas on the plane coming back from France. In real life she’s Frédérique Audouin-Rouzeau (Fred as the short form of her name, and Vargas from Ava Gardner’s character in The Barefoot Contessa), a French historian/archaeologist with many books to her credit, among them seven mysteries featuring Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg.  Six have been…

Confidentially Yours (Vivement Dimanche!) by Francois Truffaut

Truffaut’s Sexy French Female Sleuth

By Peggy Ehrhart

June 7, 2011

My husband is in love with Fanny Ardant. But I don’t mind. I’m in love with her too. She’s the beguiling actress who plays the female lead in François Truffaut’s Confidentially Yours (Vivement Dimanche!, or“Finally Sunday”in the original). It was Truffaut’s last film, made in 1983—an homage to Hitchcock. Julien Vercel (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is a…

Craig Stevens as Peter Gunn

Outsider Creds: The Coolness of Peter Gunn

By Peggy Ehrhart

May 6, 2011

When I was a child in the Southern California of the late 1950s, watching Peter Gunn on television was one of the week’s highlights.  Henry Mancini, who did the music for the series, lived in a neighboring town and went to our San Fernando Valley church, so we had a proprietary interest in the show. …

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