Category Archives: amateur sleuth

Review: The Drowning by Camilla Lackberg

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THE DROWNING is the sixth book depicting life and death in Fjällbacka, Sweden’s answer to Cabot Cove or the villages of Midsomer. Its prologue features a description of a man’s death and the story proper then opens with police detective Patrik Hedström and his colleagues searching for Magnus Kjellner who has been missing for some months and whose wife visits the police station weekly to ask for updates. But no one, least of all Läckberg, seems terribly concerned about the man’s disappearance. There are, after all, pregnancies, nappies, parenting leave, pregnancies and other domesticity to discuss. At length.

We are also introduced to Christian Thydell, a local resident and debut author who has been receiving anonymous and threatening letters for some time. He has kept these a secret even from his wife but makes the mistake of mentioning them to his mentor and fellow author Erica Falck. She tells her husband, the aforementioned police detective, and their shared publisher with the result that every man and his dog is soon aware of Christian’s problems. Eventually links are made between Christian’s story and the missing man’s but it seems to take the Fjällbacka police a lot longer than it will take the average reader to work this all out.

These stories are intertwined with flashbacks to the life of a troubled young boy who was orphaned, fostered, bullied and almost responsible for the death of his sibling. Again, the connections seemed fairly obvious but this part of the book was in some ways the most successful for me as the characters in it at least felt like their creator was interested in what was happening to them. With the contemporary story I didn’t get much sense at all that the author really cared about the characters. At least that’s my interpretation of their collective insipidness.

I was going to try to be polite about the book because, on one level, it’s a perfectly competent cosy mystery. There’s oodles of domesticity, a straightforward whodunnit and the inevitable cliffhanger ending that gives the book something of a soap-opera feel. My problem is, I suppose, that the books are marketed as psychological thrillers or suspense novels and this one at least is nothing of the kind. Partly this is because the day-to-day lives of the series’ continuing characters occupy more time than the actual mystery despite the fact that nothing terribly new is happening to any of them. All the ones who are pregnant have been pregnant before and, honestly, there is a limit to how many discussions about how to fit parenting leave into their lives I am interested in (for the record that limit was probably reached about half-way through the previous book in this series). The endless consumption of buns with or without coffee, the repetition of jibes about Erica eating for two (she is pregnant with twins which I don’t count as a spoiler as it is revealed very early on) and being unable to stand up on her own whenever she sits down grew tiresome.

Perhaps if the mystery story had been stronger I’d have felt differently about this book but I thought the plot fairly obvious and it didn’t seem to tackle anything new either. In most of her previous books the mysteries have delved into an interesting area, such as THE HIDDEN CHILD‘s exploration of nazism in Sweden in both historical and contemporary times. Here a cast of insipid characters strolled through a story that expressed mild rebuke at poor parenting – a topic Lackberg has address in earlier novels (with better results). The psychological twist in the resolution was both predictable and unconvincing.

To me THE DROWNING feels like a book churned out to formula and it verged on treating its readers like idiots. At one point early on for example Patrik, who has been described as turning Magnus Kjellner’s life inside out in the period before the book opens, has a conversation with the man’s wife asking who his friends were. Surely this would have come up somwhere in the three months of exhaustive searching for the man? Especially as he only had three?

In its favour the book did pick up towards the end with the last third having a decent pacing and I did, as always, enjoy the narration of the audio version by Eamon Riley (in fact I’m not sure I’d have bothered finishing the book if I’d been reading it in print). Having enjoyed this author’s previous books I will give the next one a go on the grounds this could be an aberration. But the quality will have to be substantially improved if I’m not to consign this series to the “once good, now formulaic” list that so many other long-running authors have been added to.

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I have reviewed the earlier novels in this series The Ice Princess, The Preacher, The Stonecutter, The Gallows Bird and The Hidden Child

In the interests of fairness there are far more glowing reviews of this book at Bookish Magpie, TheBronteSister,

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My rating 2.5/5
Translator Tiina Nunnally
Narrator Eamonn Riley
Publisher Harper Collins Audio [2012]
ASIN B007HN3ZQO
Length 15 hours 28 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series #6 in the Erica Falck/Patrik Hedström series
Source I bought it
Creative Commons Licence
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Review: THE ROPE by Nevada Barr

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THE ROPE is Nevada Barr’s 17th novel featuring nomadic National Parks Service ranger Anna Pigeon, though in a timeline sense it is the first of Anna’s stories. Without any gimmickry or awkward flashback-filled plot devices Barr simply opens this prequel to her popular series in 1995 when Anna has taken a summer job at a national park near Lake Powell, Arizona. She has left her job as a stage manager but still wears the black clothes her former life demanded and, struggling to come to terms with the recent death of her husband, Anna has been distant with her colleagues and new neighbours. So no one is particularly surprised that she and all her belongings disappear one day; all assuming she has returned to New York or moved on to some place that suits her more. In reality, while out hiking on her day off, Anna gets lost then stumbles across a crime in progress which turns out to have very sinister consequences for her  She wakes up groggy and naked and realises she is trapped in a dry well from which there appears to be no escape.

THE ROPE has many of the qualities that I have come to expect from this series including the spectacular setting which is, once again, so deftly described that I feel I too have climbed the canyons and cruised the lake and learned a little more about this poor old planet of ours and the damage we seem determined to do to even the prettiest bits of it. Characters, especially the women, are another strong feature of Barr’s books and this one showcases three very different women. Anna is basically the same person as we see in later books: determined, independent and prone to not doing as she ought though, naturally, not quite as fully formed as she becomes. She remains one of the few fictional characters I’ve ever thought I would like to meet if such things were possible. Her boss for the summer is Jenny Gorman whose job involves collecting the alarmingly large amount of poo the park’s summer visitors deposit where they shouldn’t and trying to educate those same campers on proper poo-managing etiquette (this was an aspect of managing a national park I had never considered but now can’t stop thinking about). Jenny is an intense character whose own dark history is revealed as the story progresses as is her developing love for Anna (she acknowledges that this will be an unrequited love as Anna is not gay though she fleetingly dreams of things being different). The third woman to feature heavily in the book is Bethy, wife of one of the Park Services’ office employees Regis Candor, who, like Anna, undergoes something of a transformation throughout the book. Her husband and the other male characters are less successfully drawn, being somewhat two-dimensional and using awkwardly inserted language that doesn’t feel right for the situation (or maybe it’s just me who has never heard an adult use the word ta-ta’s in a non-ironic sense).

On a less positive note I did find THE ROPE slow, indeed almost glacial for the first half though it picked up a little. This is, I think, due to the book being almost ‘literary’ in the way it focuses on the inner lives and thoughts of Anna, Jenny and Regis & Bethy rather than being driven by complex plotting (honestly the plot is straight-forward and, I thought, fairly predictable). Even though I like Anna I was a little bored by her time in the dry well which lasted a very long time and had almost no suspense at all as it was a given she would escape so she could go on an star in the rest of the series. The other factor that spoiled the book a little for me was that it had one too many near-death escapes for our heroine. On my informal ‘believability scale’ one such escape from almost certain death is required, two is borderline acceptable and three, especially where the situations are very similar, pushes the story into pure fantasy territory. Perhaps this is only because I was listening to it, but by the end, when Anna portentously heads off for what is a blindingly obvious (to everyone but Anna) trap I started thinking of the story as a children’s pantomime where the audience is meant to yell “look out, he’s behind you” at appropriate points. In fact I’m not quite sure that I didn’t actually mumble this under my breath while on public transport.

I did like the book and enjoyed meeting a younger, slightly more vulnerable Anna than I have come to know from later stories but THE ROPE won’t make it to my favourites of the series. If you are an existing fan I’m sure there’s lots here for you but I wouldn’t recommend it as the first place to start for those new to the series and its heroine. I can however recommend the book in audio format, this time ably narrated by Joyce Bean who seems to have permanently (and very competently) taken over narrating the series from Barbara Rosenblat.

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THE ROPE has been reviewed at Kittling: Books (by Cathy who is a true aficionado of the series and was the reader who introduced me to Anna Pigeon.

My other reviews of Nevada Barr’s books are HUNTING SEASON (book #10) FLASHBACK (book #11), BORDERLINE (book #15) and BURN (book #16)

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My rating 3/5
Narrator Joyce Bean
Publisher Brilliance Audio [2012]
ASIN B006VFKYUY
Length 12 hours exactly
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series #17 in the Anna Pigeon series
Source I bought it
Creative Commons Licence
This work by http://reactionstoreading.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Review: Surrender by Donna Malane

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Diane Rowe finds people for a living. Whether it be for family members, PI firms, lawyers looking for witnesses, insurance companies, television shows or the cops Diane’s job is to find people who have gone missing. In the case that threads through SURRENDER some decades-old remains are found in a remote part of the Rimutakas, a mountain range on New Zealand’s North Island, and Diane is tasked with discovering who the person was.

But Diane has something else on her mind as the book opens. Her ex-husband Sean, a Wellington policeman, arrives at her house with the news that a fresh body has been found. It is the body of a lowlife called Snow, the man everyone thinks (but can’t prove) responsible for the murder of Diane’s younger sister Niki a year ago. As Snow has been murdered in the same way that Niki was it seems likely there is a connection but Diane seems unwilling, unable even, to allow the police investigation to take its course without getting involved herself.

Both stories open strongly and though they remain unconnected except by Diane’s involvement for the length of the book, Malane manages to switch back and forth between threads with ease; combining them into a snappily paced book with much to offer readers. The missing persons case proves to have several false starts and though the methods used to start narrowing down the possibilities are a little more mundane than depicted in TV shows like Without a Trace I found this aspect of the book fascinating. Diane’s dabbling in the investigation of Snow’s death, or to be more precise Snow’s life as it pertained to her sister, is equally absorbing. Again there are several points at which it seems things are resolved only to find that there is yet another twist in this satisfyingly complex tale.

Another strong element of the book is the character of Diane who narrates her story with an attractive mixture of humour, self-deprecation and introspection. She’s quite straight forward in taking responsibility for her marriage breakup, fully admitting that she was impossible to live with in the aftermath of her sister’s death, and this frankness lulls the reader into thinking that Diane is as self-aware as she will ever be. But as the book progresses and she learns more about her sister’s life Diane also learns more about herself and the ways in which her own behaviour might have failed her sister. The reflection that we often don’t know people as well as we think we do, even those closest to us, is a tough lesson but one most of us have to grapple with at some stage. Malane teased this aspect of the story out sensitively but without straying into maudlin territory and it’s all the more compelling for the restraint shown.

I always worry when I mention that a book has humour that people will think the whole thing a barrel of laughs so I’ll be clear and say this book has dark moments too. I don’t want to give spoilers but I can say that at one point Diane is personally endangered and attacked. The way she deals with the aftermath of this, though perhaps surprising for a procedural-y kind of story, had an air of authenticity and helped make the book a memorable one for me.

SURRENDER was the winner of the inaugural NZ Society of Authors award for best unpublished manuscript in 2010 and (for once!) I can see exactly what the judges were thinking in bestowing the prize. This is a very assured piece of writing that offers intelligence, humour and suspense in equal measure and there’s a strong sense of physical place, a hint of romance and a wonderful canine character. I look forward to more of all of this from Donna Malane.

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SURRENDER has been In The Spotlight at Confessions of a Mystery Novelist and has been reviewed at Crime Watch

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My rating 4/5
Publisher NZ Society of Authors [2010]
ISBN 9780473174149
Length 300 pages
Format paperback
Book Series #1 in the Diane Rowe series (hopefully there are more to come)
Source I received it as a gift from a fellow book lover in San Diego - thanks Margot, I’ll be sure to pass it on to another book lover
Creative Commons Licence
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Review: Trick of the Dark by Val McDermid

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Having complained often and at length about authors who write the same book over and over again I chose to TRICK OF THE DARK up precisely because it was clear from the disparity of opinion about it that, if nothing else, McDermid had written a different book from her previous work. My main exposure to her writing has been through the Tony Hill books which are a bit bloody for my taste though I do like her writing so I was keen to try more of her standalone novels.

There were lots of things I enjoyed about TRICK OF THE DARK though my relationship with the book didn’t start well as the main character, psychiatrist Charlie Flint, is angst-ridden about whether or not to cheat on her wife Maria with another woman. I groaned audibly I think as the ‘to cheat or not to cheat’ storyline is a particular annoyance of mine both in real life and in fiction (cheat if you must but don’t bend my ear about your vacillation is my motto). But even though that thread does run throughout the novel I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of this complicated and fast-paced book.

As well as considering embarking on an affair, Charlie is in professional disgrace as the book opens due to an assessment she had made in a criminal case. Although something of a side thread I found this quite fascinating as it explored the notion of guilt and whether or not people can or should be prevented by society from committing crimes they’ve only thought about. One morning she receives some curious news clippings in the mail about a murdered bridegroom she doesn’t know. After some plot contrivances she works out that the clippings have been sent by one of her tutors from her time at Oxford and the widower of the bridegroom is Magda, whom Charlie knew as Maggot when she used to babysit her some years ago. When she gets in touch with the tutor, Corinna, she is is asked to investigate Magda’s husband’s murder. Corinna doesn’t think the two people who have been found guilty of the murder were responsible, instead she blames Magda’s new love interest, a woman called Jay who is also a former student of Corinna’s and is now a very wealthy business woman. Corinna tells Charlie that if she does not investigate and find evidence of Jay’s guilt Corinna will do whatever it takes to protect her daughter from the woman she perceives as evil.

That’s about as simply as I can summarise the early part of the book and it gets more complicated from that point on but it’s surprisingly easy to follow. Though perhaps that’s just because McDermid has the skill to make such twists and turns look easy. The book does require the suspension of disbelief but I had no trouble doing that, quickly getting caught up in the whydunnit aspects of the novel and the lives of its three main characters.

In some ways I thought Charlie the least interesting of the three (though admit that’s mainly because I was bored by the whole cheating thread). Jay Stewart, whose point of view much of the story is told from, would be intriguing I think even if you weren’t always wondering in the back of your mind if she is a serial killer. She has already published one book, a misery memoir of her horrid childhood, to much acclaim and has been persuaded to write a second biography. This volume will focus on her more recent life of ‘triumph over tragedy’ and we learn about her life as she writes different chapters though readers are always aware of the unreliable nature of Jay’s ‘recollections’. It would be a terrific sign of society’s maturity to be able to write about this book without mentioning that the three main characters (and several minor ones) are lesbians but the women’s sexuality is a significant factor in the stories. Their various experiences of coming out (or not doing so) and being on the receiving end of homophobia significantly colours the lives of all the lesbians in the story and so is an integral part of the book. Unlike some of the more vitriolic reviews on Good Reads and Amazon I thought this aspect of the book was handled sensitively and intelligently.

TRICK OF THE DARK managed to draw me into subjects and worlds I have no experience of including the cloistered atmosphere of Oxford college and its lingering pull on all who attend, as well as the tribulations of being gay and hated for that fact (in my bubble world I like to think we’re all grown up about such things now but clearly not). Having had somewhat ambivalent expectations of this book through reading very positive and very negative reviews I was pleasantly surprised and would recommend the book to those who can suspend their disbelief in the interests of a ripping, and thought-provoking yarn.

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TRICK OF THE DARK has been reviewed at Crime Scraps, Euro Crime, Euro Crime (2), Petrona and Savidge Reads

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My rating 4/5
Author website http://www.valmcdermid.com/index.html
Publisher Hachette Digital [2010]
ISBN 9780748117017
Length 362 pages
Format eBook (ePub)
Book Series standalone
Source I bought it
Creative Commons Licence
This work by http://reactionstoreading.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Review: Evil Intent by Kate Charles

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Callie Anson is a newly ordained Anglican Priest and has just received her first posting as Curate of All Saints’ Church in Paddington, London. Recovering from the breakup of a relationship and coming to terms with her demanding new job (which includes more than its fair share of abuse as some people do not take well to the idea of female priests) are enough to deal with but she is soon embroiled in a murder investigation too. A hardline conservative priest is strangled and one of Callie’s closest friends is the prime, indeed only, suspect.

As my memory resembles a sieve I have no clue what prompted me to mooch this book nearly three years ago but I am immensely pleased that I did. Even without the mystery element (which was perfectly entertaining in its own right) this book has a lot to offer. You might not think you’d be absorbed by a depiction of the modern Anglican church and its internal political issues (including the ordination of women and the acceptance of openly homosexual clergy) but Charles has made them utterly compelling reading. She manages to be respectful of an institution she clearly loves but does not fawn or fail to criticize elements of doctrine or collective behaviour that she finds outdated and/or offensive. Most importantly though she does all this as part of an intriguing story, not as some political diatribe on the various issues raised. I wish that all the authors I read who have something political to say were equally well-versed in the art of showing (not telling).

Another aspect of the novel I found fascinating was its depiction of the media and the relationship between the police and the media. There is a journalist character here who drives much of the plot development and she, or at least her actions, are at times horrific, being entirely devoid of journalistic ethics, fact checking and the like. At one point in particular she shreds someone’s career based solely on one person’s claims without, it appears, any attempt (or even need) to check the claims made or interview the person who was the subject of them. I don’t know enough about either English law or media to know if this is realistic but if it is then it is a very sad indictment on the English fourth estate. I know our media here in Australia isn’t perfect but they wouldn’t quite get away with that.

The mystery plot is almost a minor component then of what made this book interesting for me but that’s not to say it wasn’t interesting too. While police could only see one possible suspect readers were provided motivations for several more potential culprits in what was something of an old-fashioned whodunnit. Even (especially?) among the various clergy and their families there were plenty of secrets which might have warranted killing someone in order to keep. Charles teases these out adroitly and keeps readers guessing until the end.

In some ways this book is quite scathing of the institution that is the Anglican church but it is also reverential at times. Various characters describe what drew them to the church or what aspects keep them coming back, even when they don’t agree with everything going on from a political standpoint, and I liked the balance this provided. It made the book much more compelling than a one-sided polemic would have been. I really had no idea what to expect when I plucked this book from the depths of my TBR pile and was pleasantly surprised to find a thought-provoking and engaging book which I gobbled up in a single, late night sitting.

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My rating 4.5/5
Author website http://www.katecharles.com/
Publisher Poisoned Pen Press [2005]
ISBN 9781590582008
Length 339 pages
Format hardcover
Book Series #1 in the Callie Anson trilogy
Source I mooched it

This post is published at http://reactionstoreading.com if you are seeing it at another site then it has been stolen and/or used entirely without permission.

Review: Blood Atonement by Dan Waddell

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Blood Atonement is the second book in Dan Waddell’s series featuring English genealogist Nigel Barnes, who once again teams up with police who are investigating a current crime which has links to the past. The book opens with police called to Queen’s Park, London where Katie Drake has been gruesomely murdered while her 14-year old daughter appears to be missing. Not sure at first whether she has been taken by the killer or indeed is the killer the team soon find similarities to an earlier case and their investigation then requires they understand more about the family background of Katie Drake, whose past seems something of a closed book.

There will come a point at which the premise of this series, (genealogist working with police) will become unbelievable, but with only two books so far the twist on police procedurals still feels fresh. Waddell weaves the historical element into the present-day story well especially well here, giving a plausible motivation for the killings that doesn’t rely on serial killer-style fetishism. He also does a good job incorporating genealogical aspects of the narrative into the main narrative and (this being one of few subjects I know something about having been an archivist in a former life) gets it all right.

The DCI heading up the case is Grant Foster who was injured rather badly in the events of The Blood Detective and this is his first case back after a long recuperation. He is still feeling the aches and pains (and is meant to be working to a rather stringent return to work plan) of his injuries but is keen to get back into the swing of things. As a way of showing Foster is not quite the full-time curmudgeonly grump he seems in the second half of the novel he meets a young boy who is in potential danger and, in spite of himself, becomes quite attached to the lad. This is a sweet yet quite funny thread. Sergeant, Heather Jenkins continues to work together with Barnes though the personal relationship between the two that appeared to be going somewhere at the end of the first book has gone cold when this one opens. Barnes is not particularly happy about this but he puts it aside to get the job done and the two dart around the country (and the globe) happily enough. There’s a nice tangent in which Barnes is asked to appear in a pseudo-documentary style TV show that adds a bit of levity to the growing body count.

I like the combination of history and genealogical investigation in this series and the particular emphasis of this book (which I’m deliberately saying nothing about to avoid spoilers) is one of those subjects I always enjoy seeing explored. All the elements of a good who (and why) dunnit come together well here with plenty of suspects, a handful of red herrings and even a crazy old lady in an asylum. Jolly good reading.

Not the author’s fault: I read this via the Kobo app on my iPad which turned out to be a fairly frustrating experience of which I will speak further in a different post. Definitely my least favourite eReading experience to date but I tried very hard to keep my nasty thoughts about that distinct from my thoughts about the book itself.

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Blood Atonement has been reviewed at Aust Crime Fiction and Mysteries in Paradise

 

I reviewed the first book in the series, The Blood Detective, last year

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My rating 3.5/5
Publisher Penguin [2009]
ISBN 9780141040998
Length I don’t have a clue because the daft Kobo app is more interested in tweeting about my reading than telling me how many effing pages there are in the effing book (not that I’m annoyed or anything)
Format eBook (ePub)
Source I bought it

Introducing The Cosy Knave by Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen

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It would be a bit misleading of me to offer a review of The Cosy Knave, a newly published cosy mystery set in Yorkshire and penned by Danish writer and blogger Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen. Having been one of the beta readers of earlier versions of the book I don’t think I could claim my usual objectivity when setting out to review. But I do want to tell you about the book whicb I enjoyed as the original chapters made their way to me from Denmark and enjoyed again when I read them as a collective whole this week, following the book’s official launch last Monday.

It was nearly a year ago that the first three chapters of The Cosy Knave arrived in my email box and I leapt into a story about which I knew very little. I’d been a reader of Dorte’s crime fiction-related blog for some years and when she asked for volunteer readers for a new novel I was curious enough to raise my virtual hand. I do, after all, like to read cosy mysteries occasionally and one set in England but written by a Dane (who is an English teacher) should, I thought, prove a curiosity if nothing else.

I was quite taken with those first three chapters, which introduced the small Yorkshire village of Knavesborough to which its prodigal son, a world-class violinist, was returning. This fact was the subject of much gossip at a village knitting group but it’s not until all the villagers gather together at Ye Cosy Knave (a tea shop) to watch a football (soccer) world cup match that they meet Sir Marco Bellini (who had been Mark Baldwin) when he left the village all those years ago. The first of several deaths follows shortly thereafter which offered the opportunity to meet a hard-working hero, a young constable, and his ambitious wife-to-be along along with a succession of amusingly named characters who form the suspect pool. Over the next month or so I eagerly awaited the arrival of each new batch of chapters until the conclusion arrived late last October (for someone who reads several books a week it was near-torture to spread a single book across 4-5 weeks).

I have kept up with Dorte’s progress on reviewing and editing the book via posts on her blog and I was keen to see the finished product when it was officially published last week. How different would it be I wondered? It’s still easily recognisable as the book I read but has acquired the kind of polish that the editing process allows for. I had a quick look today at the first of those original chapters and can see the changes that Dorte has made and appreciate the reasoning behind those changes. I hope at least a few of my suggestions helped her in this process.

And now the book takes on a life of its own and you can read it to. Here’s its official description

A humorous cosy mystery, set in Yorkshire 2010.

The vicious attacks begin when the prodigal son of Knavesborough, Mark Baldwin, returns to the sleepy village after forty years in Argentina, fully equipped with fame, fortune and effeminate butler.

Small wonder that the spiteful nosey parker Rose Walnut-Whip is stabbed, but how could the murderer get away with shattering the perfect, English tearoom idyll in front of twenty villagers?

Constable Archibald Penrose is in dire need of assistance as his superior, DI Mars-Wrigley, is preoccupied with England´s chances in the football world cup. Penrose´s enthusiastic fiancée, the mint-new librarian Rhapsody Gershwin, is more than willing to help as she sees this as Penrose´s route to promotion (and a welcome raise).

As she is the vicar´s daughter, Rhapsody´s treasure trove of local knowledge may come in handy, and to be perfectly honest, the young sleuth may also be a tad curious. And of course the crimes do not stop here. A dangerous criminal is on the loose in Yorkshire. Can the young couple stop the perpetrator in time?

I think the book displays the best elements of a cosy mystery, including that insular village life they are so famous for and a minimal amount of violence. Happily (for me at least) the book eschews the elements of cosies I’m not as fond of, including talking animals and ghosts. It is recommended to those of you who enjoy a light-hearted traditional mystery with lashings of red herrings and a nomenclature that will keep a smile on your face throughout.

The book is available from Smashwords in a variety of eBook formats and here’s a coupon code, provided by the author, which brings the price down to $2.99US: PN22N 

Review: Burned by Thomas Enger

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On his first day back at work after nearly 2 years’ absence Henning Juul, a reporter for an online news outlet, is immediately thrown into a major investigation. A young female film student has been found (by the ubiquitous dog walker) stoned to death inside a tent in an Oslo public park. Due to the manner of death and the specific body mutilations, and the fact the girl’s boyfriend is Muslim, the official investigation is quick to focus on a possible religious angle to the crime but Henning feels there is more at play. However he’s not even sure he can function as a journalist after so long out of the game, and takes a while to find his feet.

There was much to like about this book though, for me, the plot was a bit of a let down. Starting with the positives though the characters are all first rate; even the ones I hated were entirely believable and well drawn. It’s not a spoiler to reveal that Juul is a damaged man, both physically and psychologically, since losing his young son Jonas in a house fire two years previously. The guilt, the obsessive changing of smoke alarm batteries, the disconnection from the people around him, the desperation to find something ‘normal’ to cling on to, all help to build up a very credible picture of Henning Juul. What I liked most is that he is not an entirely sympathetic character and I suspect this must have been harder to tease out than someone who engenders nothing but compassion in the reader.

The character I particularly despised was Detective Inspector Bjarne Brogleand who is one of the two police investigators on the case and he spends his every waking moment fantasizing about his partner, a female cop. The language he uses in his thoughts is crude and disgusting and the thoughts themselves made me angry more than once but it is a realistic depiction of the kind of man who sees women as nothing more than sexual objects. Credible though he undoubtedly is I’m really not going to line up to spend any more time in his repugnant company.

The story started well, incorporating its gruesome but not gratuitous opening scene into a broader narrative that seemed to be heading in an interesting direction. It also gave a great depiction of modern journalism where online news has an insatiable need for new content to the point that veracity and accuracy are less important than having something new a few minutes before the competitors have it. The discussion of the disparity between what people say they want to read and what online outlets know (from click-through data) people actually read was particularly poignant given recent events in the UK media. But about half-way through the book I really did lose interest in what I found to be an increasingly disjointed and, at times, downright nonsensical, plot. I can’t say too much without giving spoilers but there was quite a bit that didn’t ring true for me. Things like Juul having a highly placed ‘Deep Throat’ style informant (who never slept and knew absolutely everything going on in official circles) and the triple-twist to the crime’s resolution just felt a bit too contrived for me. In the end it felt like a few too many ideas had been thrown in at the last minute and one or two could have been saved for a future outing. I did like the loose-end feel to the story though (which is not one for those obsessed with justice being done).

I didn’t deliberately pluck this book from my TBR pile in light of recent events in Norway but once I had decided to read it I hoped it might shed some light on its setting. In that I was for the most part disappointed, though perhaps learning that Norwegian society is very similar to my own is the lesson I’m meant to learn from my global reading. Overall I thought this a solid debut novel, particularly with respect to its characters, with a nicely unnoticeable translation by Charlotte Barslund (I tend only to think about translations when the language doesn’t feel right and that never happened here). The plotting will need to improve though for the series to deliver on the promise it shows here.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Burned is Thomas Enger’s first crime novel and it has been reviewed at Nordic Bookblog

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 3/5
Translator Charlotte Barslund
Publisher Faber and Faber [2011]
ISBN 9780571275175
Length 399 pages
Format hardcover
Book Series #1 in the Henning Juul series
Source I bought it

Review: Red Wolf by Liza Marklund

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My sixth book for this year’s Nordic challenge is the third Liza Marklund book I’ve read so far this year. I have become quite transfixed by the insight the books offer into the Swedish political and social history as well as the character of Annika Bengtzon, whom I don’t always like but do find compelling.

Newspaper journalist Annika Bengtzon has turned down a senior editor’s job so that she can continue investigative journalism. Having prepared a series of articles on terrorism she plans another on the anniversary of an attack during which a man died which happened in 1969 at an air force base in the far north of the country. No one has ever been convicted over the attack but local journalist Benny Ekland seems to have some new information so Annika flies to Luleå to meet with him. When she arrives she discovers he has died and she learns from speaking to an eye witness the police have not found that his death was the result of a deliberate hit and run. Through her connections at the highest levels of the police she also learns that their suspect for the ’69 attack was a local left-wing activist known as Ragnwald who, they believe, went on to become a ‘terrorist for hire’ in Spain and France. When Ekland is killed and other deaths follow everyone wonders if Ragnwald has returned and if so, why? It is Annika who joins the dots in this fast-paced story.

I have to admit that this book isn’t really the best work of crime fiction you’ll read, in that the crime does not always take centre stage. Marklund is at least equally, if not more, concerned with using the crime and its investigation as a backdrop for the exploration of a range of social and political issues. Fortunately for me I found these utterly fascinating and so did not mind terribly that the crime was dealt with in a more perfunctory way than I might normally look for.

One of Marklund’s ongoing themes, modern journalism and what’s happening to it, is explored in great depth here. As a news junkie who feels like her drug of choice has been almost eradicated these days I found myself nodding along with Annika when she lamented to her boss

Anne Nicole Smith on the front page three days in a row last week…A boy who masturbated on a reality show on Saturday. The Crown Princess kissing her boyfriend on Sunday…Can’t you see what you’ve done to this paper?”

And when he responds that there is investigative work still going on she continues

That doesn’t stop me from regretting the way journalism is going. Along with the other tabloids we’re writing about reality television as if it was the most important thing going on right now. Now that can’t be right, can it?

If it hurts me as a reader to see the drivel that a significant percentage of news media content has turned into, I can only imagine how deeply it must affect a journalist like Annika (and Marklund who is herself a journalist).

The other aspect of this novel that had me gripped was its insight into Swedish political history, a subject about which I am woefully ignorant (now maybe slightly less so). I had always known vaguely that Sweden’s political environment was a more left-leaning one than I am familiar with, but I had no idea just how this had played out over time. The use of an attack in the 60′s gives Marklund the chance to explore her country’s political environment at that time, something done deftly via the character of Berit who is Annika’s mentor at the newspaper. She has been involved with left-wing politics for much of her life so able to provide interesting background. Australia’s political scene is largely tame and centrist so I am always intrigued by societies that have a different kind of political history.

As always Annika Bengtzon is a troubled character and, as always, I spent a good portion of the book not liking her actions. I have never found her dull or unbelievable though, even when I’ve been disappointed in her behaviour. She is still dealing with the mental fallout from the events in the previous book in the series* which manifests itself in a variety of ways including anxiety attacks and the voices of kind angels in her head. Now there are rumblings from her boss that she may not be able to continue working on the kinds of stories she wants to do. On top of that she encounters yet more marital problems and it was her handling of this aspect of her life that I found objectionable, though I repeat it was entirely credible. The author’s note at the end of the copy of the book I read made particular mention of this in that Marklund was widely exploring the theme of people abusing their power and she wondered if Annika would also do so in the right circumstances. Would we all?

For me the best crime fiction does what Marklund has done here: combine a compelling plot with insight into some aspect of politics, history or society in general. While finding out ‘whodunnit’ is interesting, it is never as satisfying as finding out why. When this is played out against a backdrop of general social commentary it is the most satisfying of all.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Red Wolf has been reviewed all over the place including at Crime Scraps, Euro Crime (where Norman and Maxine both enjoyed the novel very much) and The Game’s Afoot (where Jose Ignacio was not so taken with the adventure).

I have reviewed two of Marklund’s earlier books, Studio 69 and Prime Time.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 4.5/5
Author website
Translator Neil Smith
Publisher Bantam Press [this translation 2010, original edition 2003]
ISBN 9780593065525
Length 508 pages
Format trade paperback
Book Series #1 in…
Source Borrowed from the library

*A book called The Bomber which has already been published in English in Australia and the UK (possibly also the US?) some years ago but which in my copy of Red Wolf is spruiked at the end as “The next Annika Bengtzon thriller”. Make of that whatever you like.

Review: 1222 by Anne Holt

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My fifth book for the 2011 Nordic Reading Challenge is my first stop in Norway.

The book takes its title from the height above sea level (in metres) at which events unfold. During the worst snowstorm in Norwegian history a train derails and 269 of its passengers are taken to a nearby mountain-top hotel where they will wait out the storm in relative comfort. During the first night however one of the passengers is murdered and it falls to a couple of hotel staff and one of the passengers, former policewoman Hanne Wilhelmesen, to investigate.

I admit to being a bit of a sucker for the ‘country house’ mysteries of which this is a variation. Over the years I’ve read the same basic story several dozen times because I like seeing how different authors try to bring something new to the much-used story arc, with varying degrees of success. I’d put this addition to the tradition at a little above average, with much to recommend it and a couple of things that annoyed me intensely.

The positives first though, which included the characters. Hanne is very enjoyable, though I could be biased because I recognise my curmudgeonly side in her aversion to humanity in general. She is wheelchair bound since being shot on duty some years earlier and has withdrawn to a very small circle for her human contact (essentially her partner and their daughter) so dealing with the large group of passengers is something of a struggle for her. The fact that many of them want to help her (carry her, push her wheelchair etc) doesn’t improve matters as she has a real aversion to this. Although reluctant to become involved in the investigation and related matters that subsequently unfold, she does eventually take an interest in seeing whether or not she still has the skills to do the job that was taken away from her.

The rest of the characters are more of a collective palette than individuals, though from this outsider’s perspective they provided quite a fascinating look at Norwegian society. Even Hanne at one point comments on this as she tries to work out whether or not they have a statistically representative sample of the country’s population. There’s a group of priests, s girl’s sports team, a group of doctors who’d been going to attend a conference (including one who is meant I think to be an exotic little person but whom I found annoying) and assorted others. The way they react to various events that occur over the time they are trapped together provides an interesting sociological backdrop to the book.

The annoying things about the book mainly related to the uneven plotting. There’s a subplot involving people who had been travelling on the train in a locked carriage (rumoured to be the Royal carriage) and are now ensconced on the top floor of the hotel and have no interaction at all with the larger group. This thread balloons out to become an utterly ludicrous bit of nonsense that was entirely pointless and unnecessary and its inclusion made me cranky.

1222 is an enjoyable take on the classic whodunnit which nicely captures its stormy, isolated setting. For me the sensational (i.e. silly) elements of the plot detracted a little from my overall enjoyment but it’s still a recommended read.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

1222 has been reviewed at Crime Always Pays and Euro Crime

I have reviewed another of Anne Holt’s books, What is Mine

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 3/5
Translator Marlaine Delargy
Publisher Corvus [this translation 2010, original edition 2007]
ISBN 9781848878105
Length 352 pages
Format mass market paperback
Book Series standalone?
Source I bought it