William Minter is a writer and analyst on African and other international issues based in Washington, D.C. He edits the on-line AfricaFocus Bulletin, as well as the websites No Easy Victories and Mystery Places, and has kindly agreed to share his expertise on the international mystery scene. We’re running his essay in two parts.

IS THE MYSTERY NOVEL GOING GLOBAL?
Part One

by William Minter

Sweden’s Lisbet Salander and Botswana’s Precious Ramotswe may have little else in common. But these fictional detectives created by Stieg Larsson and Alexander McCall Smith are both harbingers of a trend which is gathering force: the globalization of the mystery novel. Along with the familiar scenes of English villages, London and Manhattan streets, and Los Angeles freeways, airport kiosks around the world feature books set in cold Nordic landscapes and African cities, in the high mountains of Tibet and in Brazil’s Amazon.

English-language readers can now sample mysteries and thrillers quickly translated not only from French, German, and Spanish but from a score of other languages. And although the authors are still much less diverse than the locations, and many countries are still unrepresented in the international marketplace, China’s Qiu Xiaolong, Cuba’s José Latour, and South Africa’s Deon Meyer, for example, have established outstanding mystery series with many loyal followers. And Kwei Quartey and Mukoma wa Ngugi, to cite only two younger writers, have published their first novels in what we hope will be ongoing series set in their home countries of Ghana and Kenya.

British and American authors still retain their numerical dominance among mystery writers, as befits their role in the origin of the mystery genre in the 19th century. But as G. J. Denko documents, the genre soon spread not only to the British dominions such as Canada and Australia, but also to continental Europe, Latin America, Russia, China, and Japan. British novelists in particular have also often featured “foreign” locales, from the interwar continental Europe of Eric Ambler to H. R. F. Keating’s more than 20 novels featuring Inspector Ghote of Bombay (Mumbai). And there were prolific non-Anglo-Saxon writers such as Belgian-born Georges Simenon, who wrote more than 70 novels featuring Paris police inspector Maigret, translated into English and more than 40 other languages.

Still, the variety of new settings and authors now available to readers is unprecedented, defying summary description or even enumeration. For my website, I have compiled a database of mystery writers with a strong sense of place, with authors linked to their accustomed settings, with 268 authors, 55 countries and multi-country regions, 44 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. If this were a full-time endeavor rather than a very part-time effort guided by my own reading preferences and suggestions by readers, the numbers would be much larger.

One may or may not have visited a place, or even rank it high on the list of places one would want to visit. But when a novelist convincingly links character and place, even non-natives can feel they are there. To my mind, this ranks as high as character and plot in deciding whether to add an author to my “must-read-the-next-book” list. Fortunately, the number of territories available for such arm-chair traveling is expanding, although only a few of the new authors have established more than a token presence in the international marketplace.

The mystery novel is definitely becoming more “global.” But its global reach still lags substantially behind that of economic globalization or the “world music” phenomenon. The Nordic countries now seem the most prominent new entries on the international mystery scene. In contrast, Asia (except for Japan) and Africa are only sparsely represented, with much room to grow. And while Spanish, French, German, and Italian-language authors are numerous, there still seem to be few that have made significant breakthroughs to English-language readers.

Next week, I provide a small selection of mystery authors and places, some already well-known and others in my view deserving of more attention, that will reward any reader seeking to journey beyond the more familiar terrains of Great Britain and North America. For a much wider array, visit Mystery Places’ list of countries and places.