Foreign bodies – Radio programme

This is just a very quick post about a series of programmes hosted by Mark Lawson, where he traces the history of modern Europe through detective fiction.

I’m drawn to this series because it ties the detectives into the wider cultural, political and historic perspective. I think this will help me as a reader by improving my understanding of the country and culture these detectives live in and so set their stories in context.

Reading the blurb in the Radio Times you can see that whilst a number of the ‘tecs are the usual suspects [no pun intended] there are some really interesting looking new ones such as Jakob Arjouni’s private detective Kemal Kayankaya, the child of Turkish immigrants and an outsider, who sees crimes and signs the German police ignore. As the programme looks like it will showcase a number of new authors that I’d never come across before, for me that’s a real bonus.

The iPlayer site for this programme also has links to a number of interviews with contemporary crime authors by Mark Lawson. I’m even tempted to start listening to these rather than writing the report I should be doing for work today!

If you want to find out more, I’ve attached the links for the BBCs publicity about the programme and to Mark Lawson’s Foreign Bodies site on iPlayer, so you can catch up on the programmes if you missed them on the radio:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2012/foreign-bodies.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nq6s8

Roman crime blogger