Bits and Bobs (and Alan, Marek and Romain)

A few things. First up, another duplicated cover image--this time they use Alan Magee's 'Casting of Runes', a photorealistic painting.




Secondly, the last post of French-language crime novels made me wish I could read French. As I haven't yet descended to the point of buying books I can't understand just because I like the covers, I hunted around to see if the English-language versions of some of these books were as nice-looking. On the whole, unfortunately, they were not.

The Marek Krajewski books, set in pre-WWII Poland, look like my cup of tea. The English translations covers are okay...




..but I slightly prefer this German edition...



..though none are as good as the French (and not just because of bare bosomage).



In attempting to find out more about Romain Slocombe, I discovered that he's some sort of fetishist creepy-pants. What gives me this idea? Well, the books of his (or to which he has contributed) which are available in English include these...






..the last of which is a collection of photos of badly injured Japanese women taken in trauma centres and hospitals, with suggestions that they suffered these injuries during violent sexual encounters. If that doesn't give you the raging heebie-jeebies, well, I guess we'll just have to go our separate ways.