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“Multilayered and satisfying.”

— Publishers Weekly, Mar 13 2017

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have a serious backlog of books to review from my recent period of purdah. And, of those, a small (but generally wonderful) number are books that were very kindly made available to me by publishers for review. I feel terribly guilty...

— Jul 22 2015

My previous post about Philippe Georget’s second book in the Inspector Sebag series said that it had a promising beginning. That promise was definitely fulfilled and my interest was maintained throughout the entire 430 pages. The three strands of the plot are cleverly interwoven...

— Oct 6 2014

French crime writers are on a roll, with their quirky take on the genre even rivaling the Scandinavians. Don’t be put off by Philippe Georget’s rather awkward titles (this book’s predecessor was Summertime, All the Cats Are Bored), French crime writers tend to go in for...

— Oct 3 2014

Spring crime reading: World Noir series Spring has sprung here in Wales, and we’ve already had a few sunny days to reacquaint ourselves with the pleasures of reading outside in the garden, park, or by the sea. Bliss.

— Apr 4 2014

It’s been a stellar year for crime fiction fans, especially given the impressive range of mysteries translated into English. Skilled storytellers including Maurizio de Giovanni, Fuminori Nakamura, Denise Mina and Colin Cotterill deliver not only solidly good mysteries,...

— Jan 13 2014

My discovery of the year was Summertime, All The Cats Are Bored by Philippe Georget translated by Steve Rendall. This was a excellent debut novel with an intriguing title - a direct translation of the original French. One of the reasons I enjoyed it was that most French crime...

— Dec 31 2013

Gilles Sebag is not swashbuckling. In this novel, the veteran police detective lives in Perpignan in the eastern Pyrenees of France, bordering Spain’s Catalonia. Rising over the landscape is the Canigou, a massif on which we first meet Sebag heading down from a day hike.

— Dec 8 2013

Despite the distinctively postmodern title, this book is not a noir-ish meditation on the futility of existence. Instead, it is a straightforward though not to say simplistic police procedural. Summertime All the Cats Are Bored is set in the Perpignan area of Southern France,...

— Aug 6 2013

Inspector Gilles Sebag of the Perpignan police is worrying about the onset of middle age, the state of his marriage, and three baffling local crimes. The battered body of a young Dutch girl is found on a beach. A taxi driver who is known to be a bit of a lad suddenly disappears.

— Aug 1 2013

Europa Editions’ “World Noir” series hits another high note with the publication in English of Philippe Georget’s easygoing, deceptively intelligent French Mediterranean police procedural Summertime, All the Cats are Bored (L’ete tous les chats s’ennuiens, here given...

— Jul 23 2013

Summertime, all the Cats are Bored is set largely in the French Mediterranean city of Perpignan, an area where Catalan is already widely spoken. The central figure is police inspector Gilles Sebag, a northerner transplanted here who has been here for seven years now.

— Jun 24 2013

font-face { font-family: "Verdana"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } After two decades of marriage, Gilles Sebag, a police...

— Jun 18 2013

Exquisite Gallic ennui wafts through France-3 TV news anchorman Georget’s first novel, but it doesn’t prevent his appealing hero, national police detective Gilles Sebag, from ferreting out the twisted motives of an apparent serial murderer believed to prey on female...

— May 20 2013