CRIME ON MY MIND

Cool Canadian crime writers!

Despite all the gloom and doom (and that is a reality, unfortunately) the mystery in a printed format is still alive and well. Yay!

After one & a half years out of the bookselling business, I feel out of the loop in many ways. I would always look forward to those quarterly catalogue sessions with the sales reps when they'd parade the upcoming mysteries, complete with covers and blurbs, in front of my eager eyes. I miss that part of the business.

What I rely on these days are the wonderful digests like Cool Canadian Crime from Crime Writers of Canada. Authors are also good about sending out alerts to new books. And publishers -- bless them -- send out advance reading copies, bound manuscripts and sometimes, a final copy of new books from Canadian authors for me to review.

How great is that!

I now am the proud owner of a TBR review pile. It's harder than I thought, I admit, to combine reading with writing. I'm continuously jotting down notes for my own manuscript, then pick up a book to read and review, only to find I'm drifting back to my own. Maybe I shouldn't admit this. But I do so only to explain why it may take me awhile to actually write a review.

So, to keep authors and publishers happy, at least to some small extent, I offer the titles in my TBR pile. Some are already out there on the bookselves, others are forthcoming, but all are by Canadian mystery writers. If they're not yet out, why not try something from the author's backlist to whet the appetite, unless of course, it's a first-time author.

I truly look forward to reading each and every one of these books. And I will. Just bear with me. So, here they are, in alpha order:

A Green Place for Dying by R.J. Harlick
Lake on the Mountain by Jeffrey Round
Last Dance by David Russell
Red Means Run by Brad Smith
Death Plays Poker by Robin Spano

Cool Canadian Crime writers -- right?! We have a lot of them and I'm certain anyone following this blog is a supporter. It's downright criminal if we don't spread the word!


Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April 3, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime