Yesterday, the Amazon.com blog mentioned that Fred Vargas won the Dagger prize for crime writing for the 3rd time in 4 years. This time the competition was Nordic: Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic. Since we are reading “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” (translated from Swedish) right now, the notice caught my eye. I usually look things up on the Amazon site to see if they are available in Kindle format. It is almost always cheaper than paper and very quick to download like a cell phone call to my Kindle. There was nothing by Vargas available in Kindle. I checked our local library which has 4 by Vargas. I stumbled on the information that Fred Vargas is a pen name for a French woman anthropologist, historian and writer Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau . Her novels are available from Amazon in both English and French but currently, not for Kindle.
I like Kindle since it keeps all my books in one very compact place, where they are portable, searchable and convenient.
I read the first few pages of “Wash this blood clean from my hand” (Vargas, 2004, 2007 in English) and I feel that I have found another Louise Penny, the Canadian woman author whose “Still Life” we enjoyed recently. I know it is poor policy to mention a book before having read it all through but I am doing it anyhow. As I have mentioned, too much gore and reliance on sex and fear for excitement drop writing’s rank in my estimation so I will have to see what I think toward the end of a fat book.
