The great era for spy novels ends with the death of John le Carre

From The Sydney Morning Herald:

‘‘When you enter the secret world and you are engaged in the intensive examination of your enemy, your opponent, you in a sense begin to know him and think about him not just as an opponent but some kind of secret sharer.’’

That was John le Carre, who has died at the age of 89, talking to The Age in 2001 about his own experiences with the British secret service before he embarked on his long and more successful career as a spy novelist and fierce critic of the hypocrisy and moral and political decline of his country – and, indeed, the west. He died of pneumonia on Sunday morning (Australian time) just as the British government was stumbling towards the final deadline for Brexit, a development he loathed.

In a sense how he defined his experience running agents in East Germany for MI6 determined the nature of his novels and particularly the three great Cold War novels featuring his best-known protagonist, George Smiley: there was a lot of talk, a lot of thought and a lot of smart people trying to get a handle on what the Soviet Union and its spymaster, Karla, were up to, and then outwit them. And, of course, they were frequently hindered by a traitor - a mole - in their midst.

read more here from The Sydney Morning Herald and John le Carre

Obit: Terry Goodkind

From The Bookseller: 

Tributes have been paid to “amazing” fantasy author Terry Goodkind, best known for the 17-volume Sword of Truth series, after he passed away aged 72.

His first Sword of Truth book was published in 1994 with many more following in a prolific writing spell that climaxed with Warheart, released in 2015 by Head of Zeus alongside e-books of the rest of the series.

In 2019, he returned to the world of D’Hara with five serial novels published between April 2019 and June 2020. The Children of D’Hara, a 1,000-page omnibus edition, will publish in February 2021.

read more here @ The Bookseller

website @ Terry Goodkind

Andrea Camilleri, beloved creator of Inspector Montalbano, dies aged 93

From The Guardian: 

One of Italy’s most popular authors, Camilleri wrote 23 novels starring his Sicilian detective, selling more than 30m copies around the world.  Camilleri, who was born in Sicily in 1925, was taken to hospital in Rome in June after going into cardiac arrest.

The author had written a handful of historical novels when, in 1994 at the age of almost 70, he wrote The Shape of Water, the first book starring his now famous Sicilian detective. Set in the fictional town of Vigata, Camilleri was originally going to call his central detective The Commissioner, but decided to pay tribute to the Spanish writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, the Spanish author of novels about the investigator Pepe Carvalho.

The Montalbano series now runs to more than two dozen books, and has been translated into 32 languages, with more than 30m copies sold. The Potter’s Field, translated into English by Stephen Sartarelli, won Camilleri the International Dagger, the highest foreign honour of the British Crime Writers Association. The Italian television adaptation, screened on BBC Four and in 65 other countries, has brought tourists by the busload to Sicily. The town on which Vigata is based, Camilleri’s home town of Porto Empedocle, is so proud of its connection that it officially changed its name to Porto Empedocle Vigata in 2003.

Camilleri published the 30th Montalbano novel, Il cuoco dell’Alcyon, in 2018. The final novel in the series was written 13 years ago, but has been kept in his publisher’s Palermo offices for safekeeping. “When I get fed up with him or am not able to write any more, I’ll tell the publisher: publish that book. Sherlock Holmes was recovered … but it will not be possible to recover Montalbano. In that last book, he’s really finished,” he said in 2012.

read more here @ The Guardian

Passing of Sydney author Peter Corris

From Business Insider:

Being mostly published in London for the curiosity of the English, Australian crime fiction had followed European models, with some major success like Fergus Hume’s best-selling "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab" (1886), and the fine series of mysteries by post-second world war women writers June Wright, “Margot Neville”, Pat Flower and Pat Carlon. But local crime fiction was little publicised and had little impact – the books mostly came into libraries from London.

English business interests and Australian outlooks changed as time passed. Then, in 1980, Peter Corris’s The Dying Trade appeared, a crime story which was American in its influence, fully Australian in its spirit, and both published and strongly publicised at home. The novel was the first adventure of a tough, but at times sensitive, Sydney private eye with the wonderfully Australian name, offering both geography and morality, Cliff Hardy.

But what Corris will be most remembered for, and what he kept flowing in novels — and also in a number of short stories – were the adventures of Cliff Hardy. Cliff was drinking and chasing women a lot back in 1980. He calmed down in both departments, but kept at his investigations of corruption and malpractice, both business-oriented and personal.

Through his hero, with his physical and moral echt-Australian name Cliff Hardy, and through his lucid, calm plotting, Corris has matched Raymond Chandler in the modern world’s dominant crime form.

read more here @ Business Insider

Obit: John Julius Norwich

From The Guardian:

John Julius Norwich, who has died aged 88, called himself a writer and broadcaster. He was really a man of many enthusiasms – for books, music, architecture, paintings – and his great talent was to be able to convey those passions to the public at large, through books, radio broadcasts and in nearly three dozen television documentaries from the BBC, on subjects ranging from the fall of Constantinople, through Napoleon’s final 100 days’ campaign, to Haiti’s revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture.

read more here @ John Julius Norwich and Wikipedia

He was a favourite author of mine, and I have (and have read) a number of his books including:

• The Normans in the South (1967)
• The Kingdom in the Sun (1970)
• A History of Venice: The Rise to Empire (1977)
• A History of Byzantium: The Early Centuries (1988); The Apogee (1991); The Decline & Fall (1995)
• A Short History of Byzantium (1997)
• Paradise of Cities: Venice in the Nineteenth Century (2003)
• The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (2006)
• The Popes: A History, (March 2011)
• Sicily: A Short History 2015
• Four Princes (2016)
• A History of France ( due to be released Oct 2018)

Jonathan Riley-Smith

It is with heavy heart that we relate the sad loss of noted Crusader and Knights Hospitaller historian and author, Jonathan Riley-Smith.  News came via the web - so more details will no doubt be forthcoming I am sure.

• Jonathan on Wikipedia
• Jonathan on Queen Mary University website

I have a number of his books in my own collection of crusades literature. A full list of his academic credits can be found on the above links.