Thursday, December 31, 2009

Difference Between Anusol And Preparation H

5, 4, 3, 2, 1 ... Challenge taken in extremis


J 've finally found the Challenge 5 continents, consisting chronicle, during the year 2009, five novels, written by five authors each from a different continent (one European, one American, one Asian, one African and Oceania).

Statement Challenge at the last minute since I published four of these five columns between yesterday and today ...

The list of five novels is:
  • Africa (Mali): Moussa Konate, The Curse of the manatee ( chronic )
  • America (Argentina): Ernesto Mallo, The needle the haystack ( chronic )
  • Asia (China): Qiu Xialong, the very corruptible Mandarin ( chronic )
  • Europe (France): Catherine Fradier, 999 Camino ( chronic )
  • Oceania (Australia): Peter Corris, White flesh ( chronic ).

If there is a Challenge 5 continents in 2010, I think also participate. But taking me differently to avoid a sprint finish!


(image taken from Blog Challenge 5 continents )

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Chemical Formula Of Wax

A little lost on the way



U No detective story that "balance" about Opus Dei, "that can make a good topic. The fact that this organization in a cassock or tie comes to take legal action against the publisher of the novel for defamation against the author for complicity, it certainly creates publicity for the novel in question. But this is not necessarily a guarantee of quality fiction.

Opus Dei attacked 999 Camino of Catherine Fradier (published after the moon, collection Moons wan, 2007, 396 pages, ISBN 978-2 -35227-037-9) after I had read the book, so this is not an attack on Opus Dei against this novel that made me read it. I made the purchase of books by selling advertising to another argument, the stamp "Price SNCF French thriller - 8th edition. As I did not read, so far, the least polar awarded during the 7 previous editions of this award, I'm tempted by this one. What do you want, everyone has weaknesses.

Camino With 999 , we tread in the footsteps of Carla Montalban, group leader at the Crime Squad of Lyon, for a survey thorny on murders whose ramifications go back into the blackness quite secular and not spiritual and religious political machines. The underside of the case are already murderous torturous, and roots burrow into the glorious past not of France and Spain in the 1970s: the Case Matesa, political and financial scandal, background of succession between the dictator Franco and the future King Juan Carlos and rivalry for influence between the Falange and Opus Dei. But Catherine

Fradier felt obliged to add in the sauce quite thick already, taking Carla Montalban in the web family matters related to these shenanigans there. The sauce becomes indigestible, the strings too big, and my interest almost too tenuous.
Much of the book, however, held me spellbound through a sustained narrative pace, a very pleasant writing style, and characters which the author was able to give depth. But I found myself stuck in this story, passed from generation to tortuous almost transparent when the final is clear to the reader while it remains roughly a third of the book to discover. For a moment I allowed myself to hope that these tricks are too big that were false leads (too big, too) struck me with a better final surprise. But no. The final was very one I had guessed.
I think I would have preferred a bleak end to this half-fireworks marshmallow. The subject seemed to win everyone something more poignant, even tragic.

This 999 Camino me like a sprint in which the rider, believed to have already won race as he moved his arms and legs, collapsed, panting, a few meters from the line.

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For the record, point out that Opus Dei has lost its legal action against the publisher and the author of the novel at trial and on appeal. For more details, read this post then .

As I said, it does not give this novel an additional quality, but it's still a good place for freedom of imagination of authors and publishers.

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Why Susten 200 Is Used For Conceiving

Australia Hard Boiled


"She's a blonde, thin, a bitch and a bloodsucker. She acts freaked out, you know? Goal she's really ice-cool. Know What We Call Her down here? "His head shook Hardy." White Meat. "

It is quite common to have a crime writer, referring to another well known author. It is even often a selling point on the back cover or on a banner affixed to the book: "Stronger than Patricia Highsmith," or "The book would have loved to write Henning Mankell!" .
I myself will give something to this facility, like others before me, publishers or journalists, professional critics and lovers of crime fiction to say Peter Corris that his style is reminiscent of Raymond Chandler. This was the case, at least for his early novels in the series featuring the "private" Cliff Hardy. But with nearly forty novels in this series since the first The Dying Trade published in 1980 and the last one to my knowledge, Deep Water, published this year, Peter Corris has had time to draw his own way.


However, the kinship with the style of Chandler is not just a veneer of marketing. The adventures of Cliff Hardy, the private Australian Sydney bear the clear mark of the hard-boiled novel: the narrative in first person, the lonely and cynical private, body and soul battered (he was a boxer, has fought in Malaysia, was a logger and investigator for insurance, is to say if he saw the green and not ripe), under realistic adventure without dead time, the dialogues without fuss, the treated plots. In short, punch and class.

There are, in Cliff Hardy, something of Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler, and perhaps more, of Lew Archer, Ross Macdonald. And even the urban Sydney odors Californian cities, the fictional San Angelo or the real Los Angeles of Marlowe or the imaginary Santa Teresa (which recognizes Santa Barbara), Lew Archer.

You'll wonder why so you could look on the novels by Peter Corris, it's just a private in an almost American Australian city almost U.S. too. To which I reply that, beyond this initial feeling of deja vu, these novels have a real personality, an Australian perspective. It feels like when Cliff Hardy's adventures lead him out of town, towards this outback where the harshness of nature has hardened men themselves. It is also noticeable in the portrait of Australian society, torn between conservatism and tolerance, equality and voracity,


White Meat (Pan Books edition, 1981, ISBN 978-0330270182 ), published in France under the title of White Flesh (editions Shores, Shores Collection Black, 1989, 264 pages, ISBN 978-2869302129) is the third novel in this series of Cliff Harding. If I chose to take it over another novel in the series as an example of the work of Peter Corris is firstly because I discovered shortly after its publication, at a time when I devoured indiscriminately Hammett, Chandler or Ross Macdonald, and secondly because I think it speaks to the unique world of Peter Corris. In this White Meat, Australian society is very present, and tensions between the ethnic components of this motley company are a cornerstone of this novel. From downtown Sydney to the Aboriginal community in the suburbs La Perouse Aboriginal boxers to Italian mobsters, to the young woman disappeared, the stage is set and the actors are ready. Shake very well the ingredients, let us add a detective that blows on the head never did give up an investigation, and that's a great cocktail for lovers of hard-boiled. Born

there will soon be thirty years from the imagination of Peter Corris who wanted to write the kind of novels he loved to read, Cliff Hardy is still there today. Almost to the surprise of its creator, who did not expect such longevity, and pleasure drives hard-boiled novel, which have is a master of the genre.
What I regret is that a talented director has not taken possession of this character there to bring to the screen. While the New Zealand director Chris Thompson has adapted his novel The Empty Beach (1985) film, but this film did rather poorly as we approached to Germany (Ein Toter weiß zuviel ) without reaching France.
lacks Peter Corris and Cliff Harding a "great film", as has been the case for Sam Spade by Dashiell Hammett (I think The Maltese Falcon, John Huston (1941), starring Humphrey Bogart), the Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler (Humphrey Bogart, again in The Big Sleep Howard Hawks in 1946) or Lew Archer by Ross MacDonald (Lew became Harper in the guise of Paul Newman in Harper Jack Smight in 1966). Perhaps it is too late, fashion is not really the films of "private".

Do not film, and therefore taking a novel.



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  • To learn more about the author and his work, visit the website Peter Corris .

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Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Why Is Respiration Rate Greater In Mammals

A Scent of gamy

U No author likes to reward its readers detailed descriptions, so that the pace of the story sometimes gets lost in the maze of words. An inspector fond of classical poetry in a world where the excitement is married to capitalist shackles of a more civilized than police. And the food that accompanies the story throughout the pages. Those are the three strong elements that I have left my reading of the novel by Qiu Xialong The very corruptible Mandarin (Editions Points, Points collection Thriller, 2007, 346 pages, ISBN 978-2757804698).


In this "new" China, which has kept the name of the Communist party in power, business is booming for the dignitaries. Further north, they were called "apparatchiki" here in Shanghai, it is the "mandarins". And they have little to envy all powerful all ages of the world: they brew fortunes, live in luxurious houses with parks pregnant attend VIP club for miles in search of fun, play favors and threats, and feel untouchable.
Those not yet acquainted with this author or his hero quickly realize that if China Qiu Xialong door in his heart (even in his exile in the United States), it is not in his heart that Chinese society has become. His novels sometimes turn to the indictment a little heavy, not always alleviated by frequent allusions to poetry and cuisine.
But that Qiu Xialong readers already know, since the first novel in the series involving Scene Inspector Chen Death of a red heroine (Editions Seuil, collection Points Crime, 2003, ISBN 978-2020488877). And if the first novels in the series focused mainly on the Chinese working classes, it leads us to look under the discreet veil that covers the dark side of high places.

In addition, this novel in this, China is a little less present than in other series, as Inspector Chen is asked to travel to the United States to pursue the corrupt giving Mandarin the book its title. This offers the reader an interesting perspective on the U.S. as seen by a Chinese whose the dream is not to settle.


I am not a ardent fan of Qiu Xialong, I consider myself more as a casual reader, borrowing some of his novels at the local library not subject myself to read them all and even less buy them all. I suspect that not reading all the novels in the series, I pass elements that build, deepen the bonds between the recurring characters. But I do not feel passionate point of immersing myself completely in this series, as I am, however, a big fan of the novels of Martin Cruz Smith featuring Arkady Renko.
Besides, from reading this novel, I told myself repeatedly that I found there echoes of the adventures of Arkady Renko, and more particularly Gorky Park, whose novel I mentioned in this blog : corruption at the highest level, scheming businessmen who do not know borders, and an inquiry by an inspector whose "big bad" hope that Honesty really is the idealistic naivety which will lead to failure.

I therefore find it difficult to you Very clear whether this corruptible Mandarin is the top or bottom of the basket Xialong Qiu's novels. I can tell you that this is a novel poetic-gastronomico-political-police officer who has some good hours of reading, failing to provide a suspense or intrigue that keeps you close the book before you finish .

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For the curious
Readers who enjoy discovering the inspiration of the authors of thrillers when they dug into the reality of our world will not fail find that Xing Xing is a cousin of the novel not too distant from Lai Changxing. The Chinese businessman in Jinjiang, Fujian Province, had fled to Canada from China in the late 1990s, after having been caught red handed in a web of corruption and smuggling in which were involved senior Chinese officials. Was it an enemy of China "or become bothersome accomplice?
even more curious readers will get a more accurate idea of the case below devouring the book of the journalist who was responsible for seven of the Beijing office of the London Times , Oliver August, Inside the Red Mansion: On the Trail of China's Most Wanted Man (published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007, ISBN 978-0618714988).

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Under the heel of the general

I could be clever and pretend that I took advantage of Biarritz Festival last October, where I visited a neighbor for sneak up Ernesto Mallo and discuss with him, congratulate him for his crime novels in which I have plenty of all and rejoice with him the publication of the French translation of the first of them, La aguja en el pajar (published by Planeta Argentina, 2006, ISBN 978-950-491-457-0), under the title The needle in the haystack (Editions Payot-Seaside, Seaside Black Collection, 2009, ISBN 978 - 2-74362-000-4). I could, but I will not. In truth, it's even just after the Festival that I learned that Ernesto Mallo had participated.
I had not missed his novels, fortunately, discovered the other side of the Bidasoa in a bookstore where I have my habits.
If Ernesto hit Malla a big hit with his first novel, La aguja en el pajar (especially with the price Silverio Cañada Memorial for best crime novel published in English in 2006, awarded at the Semana Negra de Gijón, 2007) is that the The author is not a partridge of the year. Born in 1948 in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina lived trapped under the boot of the dictatorship, Argentina's last knee delusional liberalism and the great crisis of 2001 (which has swept the newspaper he ran then). So when, unemployed, recently separated from his wife and a daughter with very ill, he began writing his first novel, there not surprising that he dips his pen in black ink and fully Argentina.

The needle in the haystack is a thriller. Very dark. More black policeman, I would say. Indeed, even if the pretext for the novel is the discovery of two corpses of young "subversive" (two corpses are found to be three) and the main character is a police, not the detective story which is, in my opinion, the backbone of this novel.
Rather, the characters, especially the scenery which is not a background but a first plane.

The "human factor" dear to Graham Greene is very present here, in these figures that almost nothing is destined to meet, and paths which will telescope. Lascano, the officer shaken by the death of his wife Marisa, Amancio Perez Lastra, trapped in their debts and the beautiful Lara, Biterman, the lender who survived Auschwitz, Eva, the activist who Lascano may restrict prevent him from seeing his wife. Characters very typical, almost too the point that I was sometimes hard to believe, for example, the pathos generated by Inspector Lascano (although I understand the pain of having lost his wife). Characters that will weave together the fabric of human feelings of friendship, love, fear, disgust, revolt.

This novel is more than a detective story, a portrait scalpel Argentina's dictatorship, those where the yoke of fear hung over everyone else, where raids led to the "disappearances . The needle in the haystack is perhaps for Ernesto Mallo, the first step towards non-acceptance or analysis but, instead, the denunciation by the clinical picture, termination of cowardice and compromise. As long as people can take the pen to wake up consciences, literature can serve to protect the people, cultures and societies.

I want to non-Hispanics will soon discover in a French translation delincuente Argentine (editions Planeta Argentina, 2007, ISBN 978-950-491-702-1), which continues the account The needle in the haystack began. The police and the assassins, the militants and the military, the living and the ghosts of that which Argentina aspires to anything but the boot of the generals, are still at the rendezvous of the readers.

While opened on December 11 last, Argentina, the trial of twenty former soldiers of the Graduate School of marine engineering, central memory loss which were tortured and, for the Most killed about five thousand militants anti-dictatorship (there are about 200 survivors only), reading novels Ernesto Mallo, The aguja en el pajar and delincuente argentino is not only participate in a work memory, but open our minds to the breath of vigilance and resistance, and understand the price of freedom.


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  • To learn more about the author and his work as a writer and playwright, visit its website .
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Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Carolina Osmosis And Diffusion Lab Biology

At the Crossroads

the beginning was the Word. The verb of Dashiell Hammett, with whom he has carved gems like Red Harvest (1929, Red Harvest) and The Glass Key (1931, The Glass Key).
Then came the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan. The pair we had, hitherto, for unloading a Blood Simple (1984; Blood for Blood ) already very dark and Arizona (1987) badly shaken. And when Joel and Ethan Coen have grabbed the world of Dashiell Hammett to their gangster film, they have not missed their breaks.
With Miller's Crossing is immersed in Prohibition, its corrupt politicians, his wives and inevitably fatal disorder, the Italians looking to mess with the Irish who make them well . Alcohol flows into glasses, gutters and veins of the characters.
But we are far away to jazz clubs flashy way The Cotton Club Francis Ford Coppola (1984), although also far from the bombast of Untouchables (1987; The Untouchables ) Brian de Palma. In Miller's Crossing , défouraille it, fire it, it sends ad patres, but almost no effects. Perhaps because unlike those films where the director feels obliged to turn handheld camera shake by adding to show how the action is intense (a method that works well, however, in some cases) photography is here particularly licked, asked (I take my borsalino in this regard, Barry Sonnenfeld). Perhaps also because the music is fairly unobtrusive.

The Coen brothers have done hands on the heritage of gangster movies, obviously. He does not miss a felt hat, not a long coat in camel hair, not a Thompson submachine gun with charger pie, not a fine car, not a shot twisted, not run in a foggy place. It lacks neither an Irishman or an Italian or a Jew or a Dane, an international facing the 18th Amendment to the appointment.
They took all the spoils, have shaken and added their own ingredients. Dialogues that are gnashing their teeth, the characters all so rotten that none of them can serve as a lifeline to the viewer, a plot more convoluted than the accounts of Al Capone, almost caricatured characters, but rendered credible by the interpretation superb actors (Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney, John Turturro, Marcia Gay Harden, Jon Polito and Steve Buscemi, to name a few).



I found the screen with this Miller's Crossing, all the darkness and complexity that I appreciated in the world of Hammett but Joel and Ethan Coen have managed to bring an extra dimension.


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Monday, December 14, 2009

Nc Weekly Certification Forms

The vast entourloupe



L one of the deepest pleasures of detective in the novel and film, is that of having at the end of the story, the feeling of having been duped, led to erroneous deductions, until the revelation final. I must say, however, that I'm a good loser only if they were not put before a case can not be resolved. The novels in which the player can not get a correct idea of the ins and outs for the simple reason that the author knowingly hides the most important elements I do not normally give this exhilarating pleasure of having been deceived with which j open this message.
No, what I really like is to have been fooled when I had everything under his eyes. And flagrantly, and more.

And one of the largest successes in the field, my eyes, is The Usual Suspects (1995), the Bryan Singer film a screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie . A plot of drawers simmered with onions (Christopher McQuarrie won an Oscar, among others, for its screenplay), cross-evidence that bring more fog than light in the case of dialogues fed black humor, characters remarkably designed and served by brilliant actors (special mention to Kevin Spacey aptly rewarded for this role, including an Oscar), and a final revelation that gives you a blow punched in the stomach. Just before you start cheering, after regaining your breath.

The film, which bears the character of Keyser Söze the Top brains of crime is a huge sham, in which the viewer's attention is drawn to the dialogue, the narrative report, to the point 'sometimes forget the visuals. Our eye, beneath which lie the clues, then do not play its oversight role, and these are the words that instill in our minds what we eventually do to the truth.
Watching the film a second time, I found myself as having a number conjuring: I know the fall of the number, I was attentive to every detail (or at least I thought so), and bam!, I fell back into the panel. I am not an expert in the theory of film scripts, but I guess that concocted by Christopher McQuarrie to draw all the strings of the finest kind: the deception arose from the subjective narrative (in which the spectator, leaving her prudence , can only agree), the narrative ellipses, returns back in time and geography, and this room police, despite the changes of place and time, remains the center of the story to the point that we are almost in a camera.

The Usual Suspects draw a large theater of illusions. In the words of Verbal Kint (played by Kevin Spacey), "The greatest trick the Devil ever Pulled WAS convincing man he didn't exist", borrowing the words of Charles Baudelaire ("the greatest trick the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist ").

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