led to his debut novel, Lie in the Dark, which won Britain’s John Creasey Memorial Dagger Award for best first crime novel. Subsequent books have won the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for best thriller, the Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers, the Barry Award for best thriller, and selection by USA Today as the year’s best mystery/thriller novel.
Fesperman's new novel is Pariah.
At Lit Hub he tagged five favorite novels "set in seemingly realistic locations that exist in the here and now, and often within real continents and regions." One title on the list:
Ann Patchett, Bel CantoRead about another novel on the list.
Everything in this 2001 novel takes place within a few acres of an unnamed capital city of an unnamed country in South America, within the grounds of the home of the Vice President. The action begins when a diva soprano’s birthday performance for a wealthy Japanese businessman and a few hundred privileged guests is raided by terrorists.
Their botched kidnapping (their intended target, the President, never showed) evolves into a months-long hostage situation, an ordeal which transforms the house into a compact nation with its own tidy dramas of love, music, tension, tragedy and sublime beauty.
Bel Canto is among Harriet Constable's five best books about classical music, Jamie Day's seven crime titles featuring special events going off the rails, Mark Skinner's twenty great contemporary love stories, Nicole Holofcener’s ten favorite books, Jenny Shank's top five fabulous works of fiction for musicians, Jeff Somers's top five novels set in a single pressure cooker location, Tatjana Soli's six favorite books that conjure exotic locales, Kathryn Williams's six top novels set in just one place, Dell Villa's top eight books to read when you’re in the mood to cry for days, John Mullen's ten best birthday parties in literature, and Joyce Hackett's top ten musical novels.
--Marshal Zeringue
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