August 2 - I didn't have time to update this website in June and July, but I did manage to read a few novels worth recommending. For me, none come up to the 5-stars quality of Stieg Larsson's and John le Carré's latest, which I read in June. But they all are nicely written, and do have a sense of different places.

Sun Storm, by Ĺsa Larsson, is set in the unusual context of Sweden's far north and of a fundamentalist milieu which most of us would associate more with the rural U.S. South than with Sweden. Personally, I find an urban milieu more congenial, but this is worth checking out. This and several other novels by Larsson are available in English.

Cara Black (Murder in the Rue du Paradis) and Lynda La Plante (Deadly Intent) revisit their familiar milieus of France and England respectively, with twists of connections to Turkey and to international drug smuggling, respectively.

Drybone Hollow, by John Billheimer, and Stalking Moon, by David Cole, place themselves with credible local color in West Virginia and the Arizona/Mexico border area. Both are part of series that are reliably well-written and engaging.

Dan Fesperman, in The Amateur Spy, and Jeremiah Healy, in Spiral, venture out of their most familiar territories in the former Yugoslavia and Boston, respectively. Not bad, but one can't help feeling Fesperman is much less at home in the Middle East, and Healy less at home in Florida, than they would be on their home-ground territories in Europe and New England.