Blogging Anniversary - 10 years

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A while ago I checked when I did my first blog post, in order to celebrate with an anniversary post. Well, that day came and went without any reaction from me. Better late than never, so here a reminder of my very first blog post from 24 October 2012.  The book was New Finnish Grammar  by Diego Marani. Marani is an Italian novelist, translator and newspaper columnist. While working as a translator for the European Union he invented a language ‘Europanto’ which is a mixture of languages and based on the common practice of word-borrowing usage of many EU languages. It was a suitable book to start with, being a book about letters, languages and memories. With a beautiful prose, the novel went directly to my heart.  "One night at Trieste in September 1943 a seriously wounded soldier is found on the quay. The doctor, of a newly arrived German hospital ship, Pietri Friari gives the unconscious soldier medical assistance. His new patient has no documents or anything that can ide...
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K is for Killer by Sue Grafton

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Lornas sista flörtHas finished the "K" Sue Grafton alphabetical series about female detective Kinsey Millhone. This one is from 1994, and I remember having read one in the series many years ago. I like it although I can't remember which one.

I read this one in Swedish and maybe that is why I did not entirely like the writing, which could be due to the translation. It felt a little bit 'formal' at times and did not fit the overall tough, hard core writing and dialogue. Furthermore, there were some excessive 'milieu' descriptions which was a little bit repetitive and over the top. Having said that, I really like the murder mystery itself. It was rather slow, but you really get a feeling for the way a private detective have to work. Slowly, slowly finding small pieces of information leading forward, or not.

When the story starts our detective is hired by the mother of Lorna Kepler to try to find her murderer. Lorna died a year ago, and the police put it down to suicide. Her mother believes otherwise. Kinsey takes on the case and starts interviewing more or less the same people as the police did when investigating the case. It leads her in a slightly different way and she soon realises that Lorna is not the nice girl she pretended to be.

It took a long time until I could even start to suspect anyone of the murder. It is all very well hidden during the whole book. It is not until the very end, and more or less at the same time as Kinsey herself realises who the murder is, that the reader can guess. At least that was the case for me. Suspense until the end is never bad for a murder mystery.

The narration is from Kinsey's point of view and the style reminds me a little bit about Dashiell Hammett. Maybe that is why Kinsey slightly irritates me from time to time. She is not Sam Spade and the time is different. The style seems, to me, to belong more in the 1950s than the 1990s. But that might be only for me. All in all I like the story and would gladly read another of her 'letter' books. I like the idea of her using the alphabet to name her books.

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