Turn over a new leaf

ADVENTURE and destination crime have been the standout travel book categories this year.

Crime pays for the prolific Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith.

IT has been a lean year for classic travel narratives. Of the big-gun international writers only Dervla Murphy has offered a new book. Her The Island that Dared (Eland Books, $49.95) chronicles her journeys - with and without family, a year apart - in Cuba and is written with her trademark acuity, fearlessness and honesty.

The transplant genre of restoring unloved French farmhouses and crumbling Italian villas seems to have all but ended; perhaps there are no unreconstructed buildings or charmingly available locals with names such as Jean-Michel or Fabio left (or perhaps make that the other way around).

Instead of the far-horizons idyll with wine under the loggia and a baguette permanently to hand, we have had a year of life-changing memoirs in which travellers have tested themselves against all sorts of odds and in all manner of unexpected destinations. Best of the lot for this year is The Riverbones by Andrew Westoll (UQP, $34.95), an account of his demanding excursions in the creature-filled rainforests and jungles of Suriname, the smallest sovereign state in South America.

Also worthy of praise in the travel memoir genre is Sahara by Paula Constant (Bantam Australia, $34.95), a journey "of love, loss and survival" as she walks with often irascible camels across the largest desert in the world. Boy He Cry: An Island Odyssey by Roger Averill (Transit Lounge, $32.95) is another excellent against-all-odds adventure, in this case set on a Papuan island with no electricity, two-way radios or civilising touches (definitely no visits to French markets or lunches with Italian truffle farmers).

The newly released My Pilgrim's Heart by Stephanie Dale (Voyager Moon, $29.95) also tests the author's resourcefulness as she walks with her son, Ben, in Italy, the Balkans, Turkey and the Middle East. Hers is a journey of often painful self-discovery, as all good travel writing should be, and will appeal to fans of Elizabeth Gilbert's bestseller Eat, Pray, Love. Also worth noting is that Constant, Averill and Dale are Australians, and all show the kind of humour and pluck for which we like to think we are famous.

There has been a slew of soft-crime novels this year with memorable detectives uncovering murders and assorted scams in exotic destinations. Look for Colin Cotterill's series of novels based in Lao and featuring Dr Siri Paiboun, a hardened battlefront medic and national coroner turned wily investigator; Curse of the Pogo Stick (Quercus, $29.95) is the latest in Cotterill's collection.

Setting her destination crime stories in Greece, Anne Zouroudi has created a character to rival Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot in the form of Hermes Diaktoros, a portly Athenian detective with white tennis shoes and very particular manners. Her latest is The Doctor of Thessaly (Bloomsbury, $32.99).

Shamini Flint also introduces a rotund Poirot-style character in her Inspector Singh but this Singaporean policeman has none of the little Belgian detective's trademark fastidiousness. Singh may be sweaty and scruffy but he does have a nose for sniffing out the perpetrators of crime, as proved in Flint's latest offering, Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder (Piatkus, $22.99).

And no look at destination crime could exclude Alexander McCall Smith and his Botswana-based No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, which shows no indication of putting up the no-more-cases sign. McCall Smith's lovable characters Precious Ramotswe, J.L.B. Matekoni and Grace Makutsi will be back in February in The Double Comfort Safari Club (Hachette, $34.99). Sounds like the perfect way to start a new year full of evocative yarns about places familiar and far. Happy summer reading.