I'm working on a piece for Eclectica this spring that covers several recent mysteries all by foreign authors. Frederich Glauser's Fever(from the wonderful Bitter Lemon Press) has to be one of the more interesting books I've read in ages. It's a rather complicated mystery involving some dead sisters (who were each married to the same brother), the dead brother (died years before), a clairvoyant who claims the dead man spoke to him (putting events into action which resulted in the women dying), another dead woman from years before who knew somebody else in these confused families who might have been the one to kill her and maybe not one, not two but three different brothers of the dead man.

Yeah - it's crazy.

It's really not hard to read or follow though and the protagonist, Sgt Studer, doggedly follows the clues and keeps notes on what he finds and wonders if everyone is crazy that is involved in the case (there is also treasure - huge treasure). I really liked Studer - he wasn't dazzlingly brilliant or stupid, just a man who knows how to ask questions and keeps asking them until he gets answers. He also is capable of being distracted by a beautiful young woman - so no, he isn't perfect. (But he doesn't cheat on his loyal and smart wife, which is also cool.)

What really put Fever over the top for me though was reading about the author, Frederich Glauser. Usually a fiction author does't have a lot of bearing on whether or not I like the book - what matters is just if it's good or not. But Glauser is so utterly fascinating is his own right that it's hard to separate truth from fiction. I had never heard of him before but he is apparently quite the historical European crime writer. It's all a bit hard to believe when you realize he was addicted to morphine and opium most of his life and was committed to a Swiss insane asylum when he first started writing crime novels.

Somebody needs to write a biography on this guy. (Or if it's out there in Germany, translate it into English!).

There are five Sgt Studer mysteries but the one I'm really jazzed to get is In Matto's Realm. It involves an escapee from an insane asylum - wouldn't you like to read about that environment by someone who had actually been there?

Oh - and did I mention that Glauser died in 1939 - so he committed in the 1930s? How did he stay sane enough to write in that kind of place? It boggles the mind.

Other titles in the Foreign Geography and Mystery piece: Blood on the Saddle by Spanish author Rafael Reig (surreal and cool), Kittyhawk Down by Australian Garry Disher (this was a great police procedural), The Innocent by Italian Magdalen Nabb (wonderful disection of a small town and its residents) and The Circle by Britain's Peter Lovesey (murder in a writer's group - you have no idea what fun this was and I can't resist writing about whenever I can!). I also might squeeze in one more...all were great reads.