And finally.. the paperback line

I've been hinting for at least two years now that I may start editing a crime paperback line. Now it's finally official. The Finnish publisher Arktinen Banaani that has been producing mainly graphic novels or comics will start a paperback line that will feature also crime novels - and they will be handpicked by me. You've probably guessed already that the line focuses on hardboiled and noir.

The first books, out in October, will be Duane Swierczynski's The Wheelman (under the Finnish title Keikkakuski; which is the Finnish title for Walter Hill's classic getaway film, The Driver) and Allan Guthrie's Kiss Her Goodbye (under the title Viimeinen suudelma; this may still be subject to change). Both are excellent noir thrillers, although very different from each other. While Duane's book is a violent non-stop ride through a professional heister's worst nightmare, Allan's book is more into character (even though his hero, Joe Hope, is necessarily not one you want to get into). Its violence quotient is still quite large.

The paperback line will have three more novels the coming Spring, but more about them later.

Must admit that all this was mainly caused by Hard Case Crime. It was too cool a concept to leave undeveloped. The first two books will have illustrated covers done by Ossi Hiekkala, a young Finnish guy whom I've already dubbed "the Robert McGinnis of Finland" (even though there are no near naked babes on these two covers, sorry 'bout that). I'm hoping I'll find some use to my friend Jukka Murtosaari, too.

The illustrations on this post don't have the titles as yet, as I have those only as PDF's on my computer and I don't have the right program here to convert them into embeddable pictures. (Is that a word? Embeddable?)