We alternately call them crime novels or detective fiction; may even trivialize them as “mystery stories”, inadvertently classifying them with the likes of the Five-Find Outers. They include some of my favourite authors: Colin Dexter, Reginald Hill, H.R.F. Keating, Val McDermid, Ian Rankin, Ruth Rendell… and it’s only recently that I have learnt that another term for this sub-genre of fiction is the “police procedural”. And this term, in turn, throws up two names: Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö.
The Man on the Balcony is the third book in the Martin Beck series by this husband–wife team. The series is so-called because it features a Stockholm-based police detective of the same name as the central character, even though his colleagues appear to get just as much print-space.
Without further ado, read the review. More will follow as soon as I am able to get hold of the other books.
~PD
Please help: I need to come up with a good title for my book series, and for some reason I’m completely rubbish at titles.
For those of you who’ve forgotten — or don’t know — what the books are about, here’s a quick recap:
- A Shadow in Eternity
- The Key of Chaos
- The Timeless Land
Now, I do have some options for a series title, which follow, but please feel free to suggest anything else.
- The Sands of Time Trilogy: My publisher really likes this, but I am not completely sure about it. The first thing it brings to mind is the Longfellow poem about leaving behind footprints on the sands of time.
- The Halvard Series: Too generic? What if I write more books with the same setting? Will it confuse readers?
- The Halvard Castle Trilogy.
- Maya.
- The Ai’diyar Prophecy: To-the-point, leaving the option to write more on the same characters later on with no chance of confusion. However, the word “prophecy” may be misleading in the context of the books…
- A Shadow in Eternity: This is what I unofficially call it; in my MS the second and third books are titled, A Shadow in Eternity II: The Key of Chaos and A Shadow in Eternity III: The Timeless Land.
- Anything else?
All comments and suggestions will be much appreciated.
~PD
The Timeless Land is awaiting comments from the publisher, but I thought it’s high time I put up something about it.
“I want not to have killed a person.”
Maya Subramaniam’s life is arguably far more complex than the average fourteen-year-old’s. As the youngest Halvard of the Sands of Time, torn between loyalty to her family and to her Watcher, and dogged by a prophecy that predicts her to be the cause of the destruction of time… Honestly, how much can one person take?
An adolescent caught in a world of grown-ups, Maya finds herself in the middle of a Warrior conspiracy to see the Ai’diyar Prophecy to its conclusion. Homeless and confused, convinced that she wrecks the lives of those she loves, Maya finds herself doubting her ability to see right from wrong.
As she and her friends stumble into the Timeless Land, she is faced with a choice that could have a devastating impact on reality as we know of it. In this third and final book of the Halvard series, Maya finally comes face to face with the Prophecy.
The question is, will it be an end or a beginning?
(Read about the previous books: A Shadow in Eternity and The Key of Chaos).
~PD
