I hadn’t thought of the Lisa Cody or McDermid comparisons, but you’re right. And actually, Anna Lee and Kate Brannigan I remember reading in the mid-90s thanks to a very good local library. (More recent McDermids are a bit too gory for me.) That does raise a wider issue, though, and one for which I really don’t know the answer – how should translations of older books be received? (Particularly ones like this that are old enough to be dated but not old enough to be really historical.) I mean, it’s not necessarily an author’s fault – speaking generally, not just about this book – if tastes, experiences/genre exposure and editing fashions have changed.
(I’ve had this on my mind with TV as well of late, since I’ve been rewatching early episodes of Inspector Morse with someone who didn’t watch them the first time around. Lewis aired here, but apparently Morse was never shown in Germany, hence the revisiting.)
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I am glad to hear you say what you said about the Rowling – i read the first couple of chapters of someone else’s copy in advance of me possibly getting my own copy but it really didn’t grab me and I suspect you’ve hit the nail on the head. I struggled to think it would have been picked up if it were by Ann Smith.

Am currently listening to a book you recommended several times – Allegra Goodman’s Intuition – really enjoying the insight into the science/research world – I used see all the grant applications from various groups applying to us for research money and never knew it got so intense on the other side of the fence. Fascinating stuff.

I’ll be interested to hear what you think of the Leena Lehtolainen. She’s one of my favourite authors (again, read in German), but I’m not sure how well the books hold up when one isn’t a twenty/thirty-something feminist with a very similar set of issues and beliefs. It’s the reason I probably prefer Lehtolainen to Helene Tursten, on balance – Kallio’s way of dealing with sexism etc (a friend of mine calls it ‘whiny radicalism’, and I can’t really disagree!) is a lot easier for me to relate to than Irene Huss. And Maria Kallio’s relationship with her partner is probably the most accurate literary representation I’ve seen of the sort of relationship most of my academic colleagues and friends have, but we’re not a representative sample! (I know this is sacrilege, but I find Krister Huss – particularly in some of the later books that aren’t yet in English – to be a bit oddly portrayed.)

Plus I also wonder if the book is too dated – 1994 is actually a long time ago.