Five heat-seeking reads for arctic conditions

One title on the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five top books on winter escapes:

The Marseilles Trilogy
by Jean-Claude Izzo

The Mediterranean -- sweltering, polycultural, and perpetually on the verge of turmoil -- has emerged in recent years as a hotbed for crime fiction. No author better embodied the region's hard-boiled new wave than Jean-Claude Izzo (1945–2000), who penned tales of his native Marseilles' criminal underworld that rival the best of literary Gotham, London, and Los Angeles. "In Marseilles," says Izzo's crook-turned-cop Fabio Montale, "even to lose you have to know how to fight." Michael Dirda reports that Izzo's Marseilles Trilogy richly capture this "sensual, dangerous, and beautiful" city (which Dirda once called home), a place where "garlic, mint, and sweet basil" fill the air and where nightfall offers no relief from the heat, "only the darkness that allows illicit lovers to meet."

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue