Crime fiction is booming as never before – and with dozens of new titles translated into English for the first time, there’s a detective for every holiday destination.
Europe
Greenland
Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow by Peter Hoeg (Harvill)
The murder takes place in Copenhagen, but it is to the unforgiving Greenland coast that Smilla Jaspersen follows the trail. Peter Hoeg's book, with its slow pacing and heightened atmospherics, was surely the one that whetted the international appetite for Scandinavian crime.
Reykjavik
Tainted Blood by Arnaldur Indridason (Vintage)
If there is a pretender to Henning Mankell's crown, it could well be Arnaldur Indridason. His Inspector Erlendur novels have the bleak setting, social realism and gentle pacing we associate with Scandinavian noir.
Normandy
Maigret and the Old Lady by Georges Simenon (Penguin)
You might think that Maigret, Georges Simenon's gruff, obstinate detective, would be synonymous with Paris, but he did venture out of it. One atmospheric excursion was to a quiet town on the Normandy coast.
Paris
Seeking Whom He May Devour by Fred Vargas (Vintage)
For a contemporary police procedural that lives up to the legacy of Maigret, look no further than the dense, gripping Chief Inspector Adamsberg novels by Fred Vargas, two times winner of the International Dagger award.
Galicia
Water-Blue Eyes by Domingo Villar (Arcadia)
Villar's classy modern noir, featuring disillusioned cop Leo Caldas, starts with the gruesome murder of a young saxophonist. And why not? Jazz is the true soundtrack to the noir thriller, even when it is set in sunny northern Spain.
Madrid
Blood on the Saddle by Rafael Reig (Serpent's Tail)
You'll be hard pressed to find a stranger sleuth than Carlos Clot, but then nothing is simple in Rafael Reig's Madrid. The dead investigate their own murders, Spain is part of America and a droll, warped surrealism rules.
Marseille
One Helluva Mess by Jean-Claude Izzo (Arcadia)
The sunlit Côte d'Azur gets a severe going over in Izzo's books, which are full of gang warfare, racism and crime, both organised and disorganised. His Inspector Montale is a classic noir hero, hard-bitten and sensuous.
Berne
In Matto's Realm by Friedrich Glauser (Bitter Lemon Press)
No Alpine meadows in Glauser's Sergeant Studer books. Very little ornamentation, in fact, to these classic 1930s mysteries, if you don't count the knowledge of how Swiss mental asylums work. Glauser began writing while inside one.
Tuscany
A Florentine Death by Michele Giuttari (Abacus)
Giuttari knows of what he writes; the creator of Chief Superintendent Michele Ferrara is a former police chief of Florence, and his books set their insights into the reality of police work against an authentic Italian backdrop.
Sicily
The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri (Picador)
Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano books are one of the most popular foreign crime series at the moment. They have a mischievous sense of humour and a lovable hero in the compassionate, cynical person of Montalbano.
Athens
Zone Defence by Petros Markaris (Vintage)
Inspector Costas Haritos is another unhealthy, morose middle-aged homicide detective, but the merit of Markaris's books is the alternative they offer to tourist visions of Greece – the traffic, the weather, the people.
Austria
The Sweetness of Life by Paulus Hochsgatterer (Quercus)
Most European crime is police procedural, but this first novel by Hochgatterer transplants the psychological thriller to the Austrian Alps. His sleuths are a detective and (like Hochgatterer himself) a child psychiatrist.
Prague
The Widow Killer by Pavel Kohout (Picador US)
The former Czechoslovakia is a strange hole in European crime fiction in English. Playwright and novelist Pavel Kohout's The Widow Killer features a Czech detective who must team up with a Gestapo agent in occupied Prague to catch a serial killer.
Frankfurt
Happy Birthday, Turk by Jakob Arjouni (No Exit Press)
Sometimes it takes an outsider to be a great detective, and Kemal Kayankaya is just that: a Turk working as a private investigator in Frankfurt. Jakob Arjouni's books are fast-paced and grimly realistic thrillers that take their underworld setting seriously.
Berlin
Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kästner (Red Fox)
No list of supersleuths would be complete with Emil Tischbein, the serious young hero of Kästner's children's classic. His adventures on the streets of Weimar-era Berlin are the perfect introduction to the world of fictional crime detection.
Wroclaw (Poland)
Death in Breslau by Marek Krajewski
Krajewski's quartet of books featuring Inspector Eberhard Mock start before the Second World War in the German town of Breslau – which, in 1945, became Wroclaw in Poland. Now, there's a plot twist for you.
Ystad (Sweden)
Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell (Vintage)
There's an Inspector Wallander walking tour in the small town of Ystad, testimony to the popularity of Henning Mankell's books and his slovenly hero, which began the boom in Scandinavian crime fiction.
Copenhagen
The Serbian Dane by Leif Davidsen (Arcadia)
Per Toftlund has all the character traits of your average morose homicide detective, but he's been promoted to the Danish Secret Service. Leif Davidsen's novel is more political thriller than whodunit, but it's topical and utterly gripping.
Norway
Don't Look Back by Karin Fossum (Vintage)
Karin Fossum's Inspector Sejer books have propelled her to the top rank of Scandinavian crime writers. She puts story above plot, and character above setting. Not much local colour but wonderfully truthful thrillers.
Lapland
Blackwater by Kerstin Ekman (Vintage)
No one goes further north, on land, to seek out and combat crime than Kerstin Ekman's Constable Torsson, who has to track his killers on skis.
Helsinki
The Priest of Evil by Matti Joensuu (Arcadia)
Matti Joensuu's Finnish detective, Inspector Harjunpaa, was an important forerunner of Wallander. Joensuu served in the Helsinki police for 35 years, and his unforced realism and sympathetic stance makes Harjunpaa one of the most appealing sleuths around.
Moscow
The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin (Phoenix)
It's strange that there's no contemporary crime fiction coming out of Putin's Russia, but Boris Akunin makes up for that with his intricate, allusive Erast Fandorin books, set at the turn of the last century.
Caribbean and South America
Havana
Havana Blue by Leonardo Padura (Bitter Lemon Press)
The four books featuring Leonardo Padura's Cuban detective, Mario Conde, certainly conform to the general conception of Cuba as a soiled idyll, both sultry and gritty. Translated from the Spanish, these are more rum-soaked than hardboiled.
Mexico
The Uncomfortable Dead by Paco Ignacio Taibo II (Serpent's Tail)
Paco Ignacio Taibo II is Mexico's top crime novelist in his own right, but a book co-written with Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos? Well that's too good to pass up.
Rio de Janeiro
The Silence of the Rain by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza (Picador)
Inspector Espinosa moves easily between the seedy downtown and the beautiful parks and squares of Rio's moneyed areas in these gentle, intelligent whodunits. Author Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza is more interested in weaving multiple stories than in piling up corpses.
Buenos Aires
The Buenos Aires Quintet by Manuel Vazquez Montalban
In private detective Pepe Carvalho, Manuel Vazquez Montalban created one of the great characters of mystery fiction. Barcelona is his stomping ground, but The Buenos Aires Quintet is a marvellous introduction to this philosophical gourmand of the highest intelligence.
Africa
Morocco
The Final Bet by Abdelilah Hamdouchi (Modern Arabic Literature)
The publishers claim this is the first Arabic detective story to be translated into English, and though Abdelilah Hamdouchi's novel may be a little simple for crime aficionados, it does give a – so far – unique perspective on a much-visited country.
Algiers
Double Blank by Yasmina Khadra (Toby Press)
Best known for her recent books set in Afghanistan and Iraq (such as The Sirens of Baghdad), Yasmina Khadra has also written a crime series about the Algerian detective Inspector Llob. Khadra is the female pseudonym of Mohammed Moulessehoul, a former officer in the Algerian army.
