France catches Cleave crime fever

Ngaio Marsh Award winner Paul Cleave's dark thrillers are increasingly being published in more and more countries, and translated into many languages. Readers worldwide are beginning to pick up on what some reviewers and readers have known for years - Cleave is one of the very best crime writers out there.

News has just come in that Cleave's debut thriller, THE CLEANER, has now sold 90,000 copies in its Le Livre de Poche pocketbook edition in France (on top of good sales in other editions - the paperback edition hit the #1 spot on Amazon France), and been voted by readers as the best thriller in the month of April.

This is the same book that was the bestselling thriller on Amazon Germany back in 2007 (outselling the likes of Lee Child, Linwood Barclay, and many more big-name international authors), where it sold more than 300,000 copies - making it one of the biggest and fastest selling debut novels in New Zealand publishing history (even if it was largely overlooked here at home).

THE CLEANER (sold as UN EMPLOYE MODELE in France) has also been picked up for film adaption.

Cleave's sixth thriller, THE LAUGHTERHOUSE, will be released in the United States in the next couple of months, while his other books are increasingly being published in various territories (eg the Spanish edition of COLLECTING COOPER, the fifth book, is being released this month).

It's terrific for New Zealand crime writing (which seems to be going from strength to strength in recent years) to see the likes of Cleave embraced so well by an international audience. Other New Zealand crime writers will also be translated into German this year in the lead-up to the Frankfurt Book Fair - so Cleave may just be the tip of a Kiwi crime fiction iceberg. Or more appropriately, the tip of the taiaha.