New books out: Duane Swierczynski, Ken Bruen, JP Koskinen

I just won't stop putting out new titles! I received my translator's copies of Duane Swierczynski's The Blonde last Friday, alongside with Ken Bruen's London Boulevard and the Finnish writer, JP Koskinen's Eilispäivän sankarit (The Heroes of Yesterday), which I both had a hand in.

Here's Ossi Hiekkala's great cover for Swierczynski's book. The book is Vaaleaverikkö in Finnish, which is a literal translation. We would've gone for Blondi, but we didn't want the book to get mixed up with Joyce Carol Oates's Marilyn book. The cover wasn't an easy one. We wanted to avoid the easy Sin City banality of this cover, but doing a dramatic cover without any weapons or some such proved very difficult. I think Ossi did a fine job.

As for the Bruen, I only picked the book, located the agent and started the negotiations (and found the translator for it). Koskinen's book I commissioned, but I never edited it (someone else did. It's about an old criminal who's been inside for the last 30 years, and when he's finally getting out, he doesn't understand shit about the new world. It's a very touching book, with some heavy-duty violence and black humor.

This is a nice job, but the titles have been selling too poorly, so it looks like I won't be doing it anymore. There's still Jason Starr's Fake ID coming out, hopefully next year. (Hopefully especially, since it's my translation.)

More on the titles here, alongside with some other books.