Category Archives: book review

Review: THE BLACKHOUSE by Peter May

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Of late it seems to be the books with a really strong sense of their time or place that hold my attention. I suspect it has something to do with my yearning for a holiday I can’t have just at the moment. Not that I’m sure I would choose to have a holiday on the island of Lewis as depicted in Peter May’s THE BLACKHOUSE. While undoubtedly a spectacular place physically, May has depicted one of those remote settings full of troubled souls that makes this city girl quite comforted by the anonymity and crowds of urban sprawl. But I am a sucker for visiting such places virtually.

It is the story of Finn MacLeod, an Edinburgh-based detective who has just returned to work after a family tragedy. He is sent to the island because a murder there bares a strong resemblance to one he investigated several months ago in the city and as he is from the island originally he is thought (by the police computer system) to be the obvious person to investigate. Finn is ambivalent about the case, wanting to be away from his present circumstances where grief is overwhelming but reluctant to travel to the place he left 18 years earlier which still holds many memories, not all of them pleasant. So it is with a sense of foreboding mixed with curiosity that he – and we readers – set out on our travels.

The murder victim was the school bully of Finn’s childhood and few people have a kind word for the adult he became so there is a plethora of suspects in his brutal murder. But as is the way of things in small communities the secrets must be uncovered slowly and, in this instance, involve Finn re-living his own history of old friendships, a great love and some hazily remembered but significant events. May has created a group of very intense and credible characters for us to get to know over the course of these events: all of them with human frailties and secrets small and large that are revealed compellingly.

The book is told in two intertwining narratives: one a historical one which delves into Finn’s personal history and the recent history of the wider island community. We learn of Finn’s great childhood friendship, which was eventually tested by the girl both boys loved, and about the harsh environment and the ultra religious community. The annual guga hunt, where a dozen local men are selected to go to an off-shore rock to hunt the nesting birds which are a local delicacy, plays a pivotal role in the community and, at least for one year, in Finn’s life though it takes almost the whole book for all the details of this event to unravel.

In the present-day story which follows the investigation it is comparatively easy to see where the story is heading (if you’re a regular crime fiction reader anyway) but because we are meeting many of the people who have been introduced in the historical narrative it remained a compelling story for me. I was thoroughly hooked on wanting to see how the two versions of each character and the village community (which is a character of its own) would be connected.

This is a hard book about which to convey all the reasons I stayed up late into the night to finish it. Suffice it to say that it is a psychological study of an insular society and the lives, choices and actions of its key players. I found it totally engrossing and am looking forward to the second book in what is to be a trilogy. Happily for me a copy of that arrived on my doorstep this very afternoon.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

THE BLACKHOUSE has been reviewed at Petrona (the review which prompted me to buy the book) as well as Crimepieces, Euro Crime and The Lit Witch

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 4.5/5
Publisher Quercus [2011]
ISBN 9781849163866
Length 498
Format paperback
Book Series #1 in a trilogy
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.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

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)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
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: THE POTTER’S FIELD by Andrea Camilleri

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Although I haven’t read all the books in this series I have read enough of them to both know what to expect when opening the front cover of a new one and to eagerly anticipate my expectations being met. Happily I was not disappointed with the 13th instalment of the Inspector Salvo Montalbano series. At the centre of this book and its predecessors is an intelligent, introspective protagonist who loves good food, gives credence to his dreams and is in an unhappy struggle with the ageing process. Here he is called out to a rain-sodden crime scene where a body – or at least parts of one – has been discovered in a bin bag. When all the pieces of the poor individual have been collected it turns out to have been a middle-aged man but he is difficult to identify. As Montalbano grapples with the beginnings of the case several other troubles bubble to the surface including a beautiful woman reporting her husband missing and the behaviour of Montalbano’s faithful deputy Augello becomes increasingly erratic.

In its review of this novel Kirkus recommends the book for “mystery readers who enjoy the journey more than the solution” and I think that is a perfect description of who should read this book. The solution to the mystery is actually quite obvious from relatively early on but what kept my interest was watching how the case affected Montalbano and to see if things could be resolved so that those near and dear to him remained unhurt without causing lasting damage to Montalbano’s own integrity. And along the way there is the usual mixture of irascibility, good food and bad driving as well as some provided by the police station’s linguistically challenged desk sergeant and Montalbano’s own cynical side shining through such as when he muses that

“Ingrid’s husband was a known ne’er-do-well, so it was only logical that he should turn to politics”.

Amongst all the gentle humour and stopping for long, delicious lunches there is some meat to the novel as it explores the nature of betrayal and its many guises. In turn this pushes the always philosophical Montalbano into consideration of more biblical references than I have seen him do in the past but they fit well into the story. In fact the only somewhat clunky cultural reference came from the self-referential scene in which Montalbano reads an Andrea Camilleri novel that turns out to have an indirect relevance to the case. This and the novel’s many purely slapstick moments prevented it from being the best of this series for me though perhaps these are the elements others look for.

Irrespective of any minor quibbles I thoroughly enjoyed THE POTTER’S FIELD which was, always, deftly translated by Steven Sartarelli whose notes at the end of each novel are almost as much of a treat as the story itself. It mixes humour and seriousness with ease and is just surreal enough to be surprising without stepping into absurd territory. Fans of the series won’t want to miss it though I probably wouldn’t recommend it as a starting point for people new to the series (its predecessor THE TRACK OF SAND would be a better place to start).

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

THE POTTER’S FIELD has been reviewed at Crime Scraps, Murder by Type and The Crime Segments

I have also reviewed August Heat, The Wings of the Sphinx and The Track of Sand

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 3.5/5
Translator Stephen Sartarelli
Publisher Penguin [this translation 2011, original edition 2008]
ISBN 9780143120131
Length 277 pages
Format paperback
Book Series #13 in the Inspector Montalbano series.
Source borrowed from the library


Review: THE CALLER by Karin Fossum

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I’m almost unwilling to admit that I found THE CALLER unsettling. Not because I’m worried you’ll think I’m a wuss (I am but I don’t care that you know it) but because you’ll think that’s a derogatory thing to say about the book and I don’t mean it to sound that way. Because I think it’s a terrific book, even if extremely sad and…unsettling…in the way it exposes the fragility of the lives we create for ourselves. The subject matter is too dark to for me to say I enjoyed it, but it has gotten under my skin in a way that few books do and I absolutely loved it.

It opens by introducing us to Lily Sundelin who has the perfect life in her small Norwegian town. Her gorgeous baby Margrete is asleep in a pram under a tree in their back yard and she is cooking a favoured meal to share with her much-loved husband when he comes home from work. After their relaxed meal she goes to bring Margrete inside and finds her covered in blood. After rushing to the hospital and fearing the worst they learn that Margrete is fine; the blood was not hers. And while you’d think such an outcome would be cause for rejoicing Fossum takes the story in a less obvious direction, depicting a family that fractures due to the loss of intangible things like security and certainty and the understanding of each person’s role in the family.

We learn early on who is responsible for the prank and this is where one of the book’s many strengths shines through. Because while feeling sympathetic towards the Sundelin family and the prankster’s subsequent victims I felt equally sorry for the perpetrator of the increasingly malicious pranks (which include things like publishing a death notice for an elderly lady who is still alive). He is a teenager who has never known the unquestioning, blind love of a parent that is, or should be, the birthright of every child. His father is unknown, his mother a cruel drunk who abandoned her maternal responsibilities many years ago and while not excusing the boy’s behaviour this situation certainly explains it. Like Konrad Sejer, the inspector assigned to the case, I couldn’t help but wonder how different the boy’s life would have been if he’d ever known the feeling of being loved and protected.

Sejer does not play a huge role in this book although the depiction of an ageing man reflecting on his life, his sadnesses and his joys is thoughtful and drew me into his world. I particularly liked the juxtaposition of the life of Sejer’s much-loved grandson with the life of Johnny, the perpetrator of the vicious pranks, and the way it demonstrated the difference that love can make to lives that start out badly. But the real stars of this book are the various victims of Johnny’s pranks who all feel like very realistic characters to me and their range of reactions to their treatment is fascinating. You might be pleased to know that at least one, a young girl, is not cowed or unduly traumatised by what happens to her which probably says something about the resilience of the young (at least those who are loved and wanted).

THE CALLER is beautifully written (for which at least some of the credit must go to translator K.E. Semmel), full of compelling characters, has a deliciously ambiguous ending and is a superb study of the fragility of life. As Sejer muses towards the end of the novel when one of the pranks results in an unexpected and horrific outcome: What life has in store for some of us. Imagine if we knew.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

THE CALLER has been reviewed at Euro Crime, Petrona and Yet Another Crime Fiction BLog

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 5/5
Translator K.E. Semmel
Publisher Harvill Secker [2011]
ISBN/ASIN 9781846553936
Length 296 pages
Format trade paperback
Book Series #8 in the Inspector Sejer series to have been translated into English.
Source I borrowed it from the library
Creative Commons Licence
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Review: AGENT 6 by Tom Rob Smith

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AGENT 6 is the somewhat epic conclusion to Tom Rob Smith’s trilogy featuring MGB agent turned human being Leo Demidov. It takes readers from 1950 to 1980 and from Russia to America to Afghanistan in something that feels less like a thriller than it does a haphazard tour through the lowlights of Soviet-era history. As the book opens we’re in 1950 which is earlier than the action in the first two books and we see Leo at the height of his powers as a security agent who very much believes in the value of his role to the country he loves. He has been assigned a new agent to mentor and there are chilling scenes in which Leo teaches his protegé what to look for in a person’s diary in order to discern how much harm that person could potentially be to the State (the premise being that no one with a diary could be entirely harmless). Leo is also asked to assist with arrangements for the visit to Russia of American singer Jesse Austin (loosely modelled on Paul Robeson), one of the few western artists permitted to visit the country and only because of his professed belief in and support for communism. The visit provides an opportunity for Leo to properly meet Raisa, a woman he spoke to briefly on the train one day and the person who will become his wife.

This action ends rather abruptly and we jump forward 15 years to the period following Leo’s downfall and departure from government service (all of which is covered in the other two books in the set, CHILD 44 and THE SECRET SPEECH). Leo is disillusioned but seems happy enough; his loss of faith in the communist state is made up for by having his family around him. However that family, his wife Raisa and adopted daughters Elena and Zoya, are soon off on a state-sponsored trip to New York where the girls are to be part of a joint choir with American children at the United Nations. Many of the reviews and synopses I’ve seen describe subsequent events to this but I think that spoils things so shall stop here, except to say that members of the Russian delegation get in touch with their supporter Jesse Austin and the trip does not end as expected.

I almost didn’t bother reading this book after the disappointment which was its predecessor but I had an urge to complete the trilogy and did wonder if Smith had managed to recreate any of the magic of his first book, CHILD 44, which I can still remember passages from three years after reading it. In the end I am glad I read AGENT 6 because it washed away the distaste left behind by the ludicrous second novel, even if it didn’t manage to achieve the particular magic of that first novel.

The biggest difference between CHILD 44 and the subsequent books is that CHILD 44 essentially told a single, coherent story and almost as a by-product of that demonstrated broader points about the awfulness of a totalitarian regime, the lengths people will go to when they are pushed too far and the misery that can accompany seriously having to question one’s long-held beliefs. The story itself is quite intimate and allows the reader to be drawn into Leo’s world and develop a sense of the changes he is experiencing. The remaining books in the trilogy largely lacked this layer of narrative and so, for me, the power of exploring the broader issues was dissipated as we jumped hither and thither through Soviet history without any real focus. In AGENT 6 though there is an echo of the first book’s intimacy in the thread that depicts the life of Jesse Austin and his fall from grace, orchestrated by an unforgiving government. Austin’s dignity and his wife’s steadfast support of her husband and refusal to be bitter about all they lose were heart-achingly sad, especially when juxtaposed with the mean-spirited and cynical people attempting to use the Austin’s on both sides of the America versus communism fight.

For me the rest of the book is less successful, being too disjointed and broad to be fully engaging. The large chunk that takes place in Afghanistan, where Leo is forced once again to work for the State, though this time with his eyes open, was too long-winded. It felt to me like the author was trying way too hard to highlight the parallels between the Soviet attempt to conquer the country and the current war being fought there by America and its allies. This section of the book did introduce someone who should have been a compelling and sympathetic character but she didn’t quite work for me and in the end I don’t think she or the entire section added much to this book or the trilogy overall.

Like most readers I’m sure I spent most of the book wondering when the eponymous agent 6 would appear and then being quite disappointed when it finally happened but at least the ending of this book had less of a Hollywood feel than its predecessors. I do think Smith is a talented writer and even though I don’t think the ambition of this trilogy was evenly successful I’m glad to have read it and met some of the beautifully drawn characters. If you have read the other two books in the series I would definitely recommend you complete the picture with this one but if you’ve yet to start I’d just read CHILD 44 and leave it there.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I have reviewed CHILD 44 and THE SECRET SPEECH

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 3/5
Narrator Gareth Armstrong
Publisher Simon & Schuster UK [2011]
ASIN B005KTRZHC (downloaded from audible.com)
Length 13 hours 33 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series #3 of Leo Demidov trilogy
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: CARTE BLANCHE by Carlo Lucarelli

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I have an overwhelming urge to make this a very short review, in keeping with the book which comes in at less than a hundred pages that contain any writing.

April 1945 must be in the running for most chaotic time of Italian political history (though it does have some stiff competition) as the Fascist regime is in its last days and its powerful supporters scramble to escape the country or distance themselves from the formerly powerful leaders. Amidst all this Commissario De Luca has transferred back to the ‘normal’ police from the military/political police and is tasked with finding the murderer of a wealthy playboy Vittorio Rehinard. Although wary of the political fallout from the investigation De Luca is promised he will have full cooperation but even so he spends at least as much time untangling the political mess surrounding the case as he does narrowing down the suspect pool.

What I should have been thinking about in the hour or so it took to read this novella was the problems faced by a basically good (?) man trying to do a difficult job when most people involved in the case have competing agendas. And for some of the time I did manage to focus on this aspect of the book. But for a lot of it I have to admit to getting sidetracked by wondering whether the author has it in for women. To be fair most of the characters of either gender in CARTE BLANCHE are pretty horrible but, to me, the author seemed to be making some kind of point with the fact that all the women in the book are evil temptresses or worthless functionaries and both kinds are universally treated with contempt by all and sundry (De Luca included).

There is certainly a cloying atmosphere created here and there is enough of interest to make me want to read the other two books in the trilogy. But for someone who has complained often about the padded length of much modern crime fiction I’m undoubtedly going to sound like a contrarian when I say that for me this book was too short. The loose ends and lack of character depth necessitated by the brevity left me, ultimately, not entirely satisfied.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

CARTE BLANCHE has been reviewed at Crime Scraps, Euro Crime, Petrona and The Game’s Afoot

I have reviewed the first book in another of Carlo Lucarelli’s series, ALMOST BLUE, which I liked a little more than this one.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 3/5
Translator Michael Reynolds
Publisher Europoa [This translation 2006, original edition 1990]
ISBN 9781933372150
Length 108 pages
Format paperback
Book Series #1 in Commissario De Luca Trilogy
Source Borrowed from the library
Creative Commons Licence
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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.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

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

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
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: THE HIDDEN CHILD by Camilla Lackberg

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THE HIDDEN CHILD is the fifth book centred around the summer tourist town of Fjallbacka on the west coast of Sweden featuring police detective Patrik Hedstrom and his true-crime writing wife Erica Falck. In this outing Patrik is starting paternity leave to look after the couple’s daughter Maja while Erica is looking forward to getting back to work and engaging in more adult intellectual pursuits after a year of looking after Maja herself. However when a dead body is discovered in town on the first day of Patrik’s leave he cannot resist the temptation to take a look at the crime scene, even though it means bringing one-year old Maja along. Erica is a bit miffed with Patrik for taking their daughter to a crime scene and for failing to grasp that looking after Maja does not mean leaving their daughter at home with Erica while Patrick goes shopping. But she too is soon interested in this crime as the dead man turns out to be the historian whom Erica visited when she discovered a Nazi war medal among her dead mother’s possessions. In fact the past has a particular pull on Erica as she also discovered some diaries her mother had kept as a teenager during the war years, and Erica keeps putting aside her own work to read the diaries in the hope they might provide some insight into her mother’s neglectful treatment of Erica and her sister Anna. When it becomes clear that Erica’s mother was friends with the historian who has now been killed Erica becomes involved in the investigation too.

From a criminal plotting perspective this is probably Läckberg’s best novel, incorporating two strong plots. The contemporary plot to determine the murderer of the historian is well thought out and doesn’t involve nearly as much police incompetence as the previous novels (though there is still a little). All the small police force play useful roles, including new recruit Paola who seems to fit in well, and the case explores some interesting issues including the rise of neo-Nazi groups in modern Sweden. But perhaps the book’s biggest strength is that this storyline links to a second one taking place in 1943-45, involving the recently killed historian, his brother who spent time as a prisoner of the Germans and several other Fjallbacka residents including Erica’s mother. Eventually the solution to the present-day crimes is located in the past though the nature of the connection is well hidden until the end of the book.

While the family lives of the characters in this series have always been a feature of the novels that I have enjoyed I do think this instalment went a little overboard with the minutiae of characters’ lives. Certainly not all the children are hidden in this novel. In fact the thing is teeming with pregnancies (five), births lengthily described (two), and assorted toddlers and teenagers not to mention yet another love interest for Patrik’s romantically unlucky boss Bertil, an encounter with Patrik’s ex-wife and assorted other minor dramas. It doesn’t feel like Läckberg has held much back for inclusion in the next instalment (aside from several more births I suppose). I do generally enjoy the lighter side of these novels though and it was nice to read a book in which pretty much everyone has a family life in the normal range (i.e. no dramas that can’t be sorted out with a good chat and no alcoholic/near suicidal loners lurking underneath the covers).

Overall then I enjoyed THE HIDDEN CHILD and thought the translation up to the usual good quality even though duties have switched from Steven T Murray to his wife Tiina Nunnally. I think it interesting that my two favourite mysteries to be solved by Läckberg’s fictional characters are the ones where Erica takes more of a central role in the investigation (my other favourite is the first book in the series, THE ICE PRINCESS in which Erica really takes centre stage) and wonder if she’ll continue taking more of a proactive role in future novels.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’ve reviewed all of the earlier four books in this series THE ICE PRINCESS, THE PREACHER, THE STONECUTTER and THE GALLOWS BIRD (mini review)

THE HIDDEN CHILD has been reviewed at Euro Crime (Maxine) and Nordic Bookblog

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 3.5/5
Translator Tiina Nunnally
Narrator Eamonn Riley
Publisher Harper Collins [this translation 2011]
ASIN B0056GUO4U downloaded from audible.com
Length 17 hours 34 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series #5 in the Erica Falck/Patrik Hedström series
Source I bought it

Review: THE WINTER OF THE LIONS by Jan Costin Wagner

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9

THE WINTER OF THE LIONS is a peculiar book.

On one level it is a police procedural in which Finnish police seek to work out who killed a pathologist then a puppet maker then attempted to kill the television personality who had once interviewed both men on his highly rated chat show. But it’s hard to imagine any police force in the world operating as this one does, with little actual police work being done. Instead the lead investigator, one Kimmo Joentaa, makes a random, I might even suggest far-fetched, guess about the probable motive for the crime and proceeds to narrow down the pool of suspects his guess leads to in a fairly haphazard and not terribly successful manner (given that the culprit eventually shows up on their own virtually shouting “look at me over here, I’m the one”). So the book isn’t recommended for people who like their crime fiction to involve puzzles solved in a linear fashion with oodles of evidence.

That said, I enjoyed it a lot.

Part of that enjoyment invariably stems from the fact it didn’t tread the familiar path of a million police procedurals before it. I really do like authors who take interesting risks with the genre’s tropes, even if they’re not always successful. And there’s no doubt I was hooked by Kimmo’s approach to the case and was never not desperate to know who the culprit was and whether or not they would be found before more deaths occurred (something that never felt like a sure thing).

The characters are very strong too, though they do generally conform to the melancholic  stereotype associated with Scandinavian crime fiction. In fact Kimmo Joentaa could have been the prototype of the lonesome, introspective detective on which all others are based. His wife died some years ago and he is clearly still coming to grips with that, a fact borne out I think by his becoming somewhat bizarrely and immediately attached to a woman whose name he doesn’t even know. But perhaps my thinking this relationship an odd one says more about me than it does about Kimmo. Either way it added intrigue to the book.

We also meet the murderer fairly on in the book; though we don’t know who it is we know it is someone who has been involved in a tragedy and lost someone close to them. I’m normally not much of a fan of ‘seen through the eyes of the killer’ scenarios but here it was not sensational and offered some insight into how people cope (or don’t) with the traumas they experience. In fact the entire book could be looked at as a treatise on this subject, with Kimmo still suffering from his wife’s death and then losing his friend the pathologist who was killed at the outset of this book. And the television star who is the subject of the attempted murder is also a study in the kind of mental impact such a thing might have on a person.

Perhaps I was just in the right mood for peculiar (and cold, I did enjoy all that snow as I read the book during our sweltering summer) but I enjoyed THE WINTER OF THE LIONS more than I thought I might based on some of the reviews I read. Things surreal are not normally my cup of team but this one was just ‘normal’ enough to have me lapping it up and planning to go back and read the earlier books in the series (now that I have committed the cardinal sin of reading out of order).

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THE WINTER OF THE LIONS has been reviewed at Crime Pieces, Euro Crime, International Noir Fiction and Mrs Peabody Investigates

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My rating 3.5/5
Translator Anthea Bell (from German)
Publisher Harvill Secker [2011]
ISBN/ASIN 9781846553462
Length 268
Format paperback
Book Series #3 in Kimmo Joentaa series
Source Borrowed from library
Creative Commons Licence
This work by http://reactionstoreading.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Review: Trick of the Dark by Val McDermid

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13

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.