Crime reads in my city

I am going back to Montreal on holidays soon. After nearly two years of absence, it is about time. I don't know exactly what I will do on my first day in the city to get over the jetlag, many friends want to see me already, but I know I will visit a few of my old places, among them the Bouquinerie du Plateau, where I will very likely buy a second hand Série Noire. On holidays, I read crime fiction a lot, I mean even more than usual. And on top of that I read real crime books, such as Mafia Inc (albeit I read it in French), a brilliant history of the mafia in Montreal. It has been on my bookshelves for ages, I savour it like little by little.I am tempted to bring the book with me, just to read it there.

The more I read crime fiction and real crime history, the more I think that Montreal is such an ideal setting for crime fiction. It has been criminally (ha, ha, ha! the pun!) neglected as a genre. I mean yes, we made one really good TV series (or two), but the literary genre is not really developed. And yet, there is so much to work on, to start with our messy crime history. Kevin Burton Smith (fellow Montrealer) summed it up here. We have everything: a history of violence, a history of corruption, aa history of tensions between various communities, of tensions between the various police forces, the geography, at the gate of America yet with a port that leads to the Old World. It is just such a great setting, with atmosphere and character(s).