It never rains but it pours

by Carola

Since December, only one month has passed without one of my Daisy Dalrymple mysteries staging a reappearance in one form or another. First came four new audiobooks, the 8th through 11th in the series. Last month it was a reissue of the second, The Winter Garden Mystery, in trade paperback, over 20 years after it first came out in hardcover--and with brand new art. These are some of the covers it's had over the years:

Yes, THREE German editions!

The latest, coming out in the UK on June 2nd, is the paperback edition of Daisy's most recent adventure, Superfluous Women.  (It won't be out in the US in paperback till September.)

So--NOTHING coming out in July or August? Unless the proposed Russian translations of the first three in the series unexpectedly materialize.

Then another 2 months until the fourth Cornish mystery, Buried in the Country, makes its first appearance in hardcover and Kindle--in both the US and UK--in December.

What a year!

Translations

by Carola

The first two Daisy Dalrymple mysteries have now come out in Hungarian. They have used the UK covers, but the titles are in Hungarian, of course.

 This is Death at Wentwater Court. I'm told it translates roughly as Daisy and the Frozen Don Juan. Which is all very well, but makes it liable to be confused with Fall of a Philanderer--though that takes place in summer...

 This is The Winter Garden Mystery. The translation is more or less Daisy and the Garden of Mystery. Fair enough.

 The German translations of Daisy had titles on a pattern similar to the Hungarian--they were all Miss Daisy und...  Most were perfectly acceptable but one actually gave away one of what you might call the inner mysteries, not whodunnit but to whom it was done. Maddening.

Some of the Polish titles were pretty strange. Gone West came out as the Mystery of the Empty Notebook. No empty notebook in that story.

Die Laughing is something like Torture Me with Laughter. It sounds as if the victim was tickled to death, which he wasn't.

I've been told the the translations of the actual text are pretty bad, but I guess they sold well in spite of it. Perhaps Polish readers are used to reading bad translations of foreign books and make allowances.


The only translations of my books that I've been able to read for myself were a few Regencies that came out in French. They were readable but had serious trouble when it came to the language of the period. I guess I shouldn't have written puns in Regency English.

The one above all that I would really like to be able to read is the Hebrew translation of Mayhem and Miranda. I can't believe they changed my innocuous story sufficiently to justify this cover:

Daisy in Polish

by Carola

My Daisy Dalrymple mysteries are now coming out in Poland. The Polish publisher bought the translation rights to the first 10, and I gather they're putting out one a week. This is the cover of the first, Death at Wentwater Court:

Cute and eye-catching, if somewhat inaccurate as far as the story's concerned. Very different from the original cover:

and the large print:













Not to mention the equally cartoonish US paperback:

and the UK edition:

Or the audio and two German editions each with different artwork!
They're calling the series Daisy D. I wonder if Dalrymple is impossible for Polish-speakers to pronounce.

There seems to be a boxed set of all 10. I'm not sure exactly how this works. Perhaps readers can buy the box along with one book and fill it as they come out? Or perhaps once all of them are out, they'll start selling the boxed set already filled. This box has the cover of the second in the series, The Winter Garden Mystery.

The spines of the volumes are very clever, producing a cat that strongly reminds me of the Pink Panther, which also adorns all three front covers that I've seen. Here's the third, Requiem for a Mezzo:

Interesting--especially as I can't remember ever writing about a cat in any of the Daisy books. There may be a casual mention somewhere in the 21 I've written to date, but I'm a dog-person and so is Daisy! Her stepdaughter's dog, Nana, appears in several of the books, finding a body in one and digging up a Clue in another, only to run away with it and rebury it. Nana even graces one cover:

I'd never actually described her appearance in detail, so now the artist has defined her.

With the help of friends and relatives, I've managed to put a welcome message in Polish on my website. A couple of days later I got more than twice as many hits than ever before--though I can't tell whether there were a lot of Poles!

While on the subject of cover art, I'm thrilled that the artist who's done so many great covers for Daisy (including Black Ship, above, but not Wentwater Court) is passing through town today and we're hoping to arrange to meet. I'm trying to decide which is my favourite, in case he asks.