The recent and unseemly controversy about foreign crime writers now being excluded from the Crime Writers' Association annual Gold Dagger awards has highlighted the fact that over the past decade foreign mystery authors have begun to appear in translation in the UK and the USA on a much more frequent basis than previously. For those who have been living on another planet, or another country, discontent (or jealousy, maybe?) amongst the association's committee and new sponsors stemmed from the fact that the prestigious award had been scooped three times in the last five years, respectively by a Spanish writer, Jose Carlos Somoza for The Athenian Murders, Swede Henning Mankell for Sidetracked and, just a few days before the change of policy announcement, Icelandic author Arnaldur Indridason for The Silence Of The Grave. Add to this the fact that members of the Association were not consulted and that some of the most prominent British mystery writers disapproved very strongly, and you have instant grounds for controversy and reason to investigate the thorny relationship between British crime writing and its rival European strand.

Throughout the 20th century crime writing has, on these shores, principally been perceived as an Anglo-Saxon trade, where both the legitimate and bastard sons of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie on one side of the pond, battled it out for supremacy with the grandchildren of Edgar Allen Poe and later pulp masters like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett on the wilder shores of the Atlantic. The strong resistance to reading books in translation amongst Anglo-American readers and publishing houses has meant that for a very significant amount of time, we have not been allowed to see the sheer richness and diversity of crime writing in other languages. How memories are short: weren't the true successors and contemporaries of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes people like Maurice Leblanc, creator of Arsene Lupin or Souvestre and Allain, responsible for that classic anti-hero Fantomas (without whom, surely, later rogues with a heart of gold like Raffles, the Saint and many others might not have come into being?); was Gaston Leroux, best remembered of course for The Phantom of the Opera, not the creator of the locked room mystery, that paragon theme of Golden Age crime writing, with his classic Le Mystere De La Chambre Jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room) and Le Parfum De La Dame En Noir (The Perfume of the Lady in Black) long before Christie, Ellery Queen, John Dickson Carr and others?

And then what about the doughty, irascible, imperfect cop whose personality and intelligence enchant the reader as he systematically unravels a dastardly devious case? Surely, the gang at Ed McBain's 87th Precinct, Hercule Poirot, Inspector Morse and handfuls of modern icons of mystery writing stand as originals? Three words: Inspector Jules Maigret. Which contemporary fictional policeman does not owe something to that great original, a policeman whose private life and working methods ring a familiar bell, and who proves to be all too humane, and not just a detecting cipher with cardboard thin personality and characteristics. And to solidify my case, let me put forward Swedish writers Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo's Inspector Martin Beck (soon to be reissued over here by Harper Perennial), another classic sleuth of the old school.

True, Anglo-American mystery fiction is widely translated throughout the world, and there are frequent instances where it has cross-pollinated and provided a fresh impetus to local authors and themes, but even though most current followers of the crime and mystery scene would argue this is a one-way traffic, I would venture that this has not always been the case. This can be evidenced by my earlier examples and, with the current popularity for crime in translation, there is a strong likelihood that foreign crime could prove a major influence on our crime writers for years to come.

And what wonderful examples there already are out there as the post Mankell generations of crime in translation make their way onto our crowded shelves and are finding an audience eager for new angles, new thrills, new noir landscapes! From Italy, we have welcomed Carlo Lucarelli's jazz tinged Bologna mysteries, Giampiero Rigosi's tongue in cheek capers, dark-hued Massimo Carlotto, Andrea Camilleri's Sicilian sleuth Inspector Montalbano, quirky and devious, Marcello Fois; from Scandinavia the aforementioned Henning Mankell and Arnaldur Indridason but also Karin Fossum, Liza Marklund, Jo Nesbo, Karen Alvtegen; from France, Pierre Magnan, Tonino Bennaquista, Jean-Pierre Manchette, Chantal Pelletier, the always unpredictable Fred Vargas, Didier Daenincx; from Cuba, the exuberant Daniel Chavarria; from Germany, Pieke Biermann, Jan Cosimo Wagner; from Switzerland, the late Friedrich Glauser; from Russia, the irrepressible Boris Akunin, whose two series already enjoy much popularity here and even from China, with the forthcoming publication of the procedural mysteries of Qiu Xiaolong, featuring Inspector Chen Cao. The list is already a long one, and growing by the month as enterprising imprints like Harvill Press, Serpent's Tail, Arcadia, Bitter Lemon Press, No Exit Press and other specialists pave the way for, all too often, major houses to follow in their footsteps and reap the commercial rewards. There is no doubt that there exists a growing appetite for foreign crime in translation and, what with decades of books left to revisit and rediscover (who will be first to launch Maurice G. Dantec, Andrea Pinketts, Jean-Hughes Oppel, Giorgio Scerbanenco?), the English reading public still has many treats in store and is no longer retrenched behind the language barrier as the healthy sales of Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind and, in all likelihood, the future best-selling status of Javier Sierra's The Secret Supper have and will demonstrate.

Conversely, I would wager a vigorous bet that the influence of these books and authors will soon begin to make itself seen in the books of our own British and American crime and mystery authors as they familiarise themselves with new ways of looking at the world, approaching the universal theme of the struggle between good and evil, that is at the heart of most mystery fiction. Happy days are here again!

Maxim Jakubowski is the crime columnist for The Guardian, owner of Murder One bookshop, Literary Director of the Crime Scene Festival at London's National Film Theatre and himself a crime writer.