Jeremy's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 14 Jan 2025 03:56:03 -0800 60 Jeremy's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind]]> 212755924 From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.�

One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us?

Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.

Dr. Harari also compels us to look ahead, because over the last few decades humans have begun to bend laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. We are acquiring the ability to design not only the world around us, but also ourselves. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become?

Featuring 27 photographs, 6 maps, and 25 illustrations/diagrams, this provocative and insightful work is sure to spark debate and is essential reading for aficionados of Jared Diamond, James Gleick, Matt Ridley, Robert Wright, and Sharon Moalem.]]> 464 Yuval Noah Harari 006342200X Jeremy 0 to-read 4.10 2011 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall]]> 8284935 From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day comes an inspired sequence of stories as affecting as it is beautiful.

With the clarity and precision that have become his trademarks, Kazuo Ishiguro interlocks five short pieces of fiction to create a world that resonates with emotion, heartbreak, and humor. Here is a fragile, once famous singer, turning his back on the one thing he loves; a music junky with little else to offer his friends but opinion; a songwriter who inadvertently breaks up a marriage; a jazz musician who thinks the answer to his career lies in changing his physical appearance; and a young cellist whose tutor has devised a remarkable way to foster his talent. For each, music is a central part of their lives and, in one way or another, delivers them to an epiphany.]]> 242 Kazuo Ishiguro 0307273083 Jeremy 3 3.79 2009 Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2009/10/31
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves:
review:

]]> Solar 8136756 NATIONAL BESTSELLER � From the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement, this “totally gripping and entirely hilarious� novel (The Wall Street Journal) traces the arc of a Nobel Prize-winning physicist’s ambitions and self-deception. Dr. Michael Beard’s best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions, and halfheartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. Meanwhile, Michael’s fifth marriage is floundering due to his incessant womanizing. When his professional and personal worlds collide in a freak accident, an opportunity presents itself for Michael to extricate himself from his marital problems, reinvigorate his career, and save the world from environmental disaster. But can a man who has made a mess of his life clean up the messes of humanity?Don’t miss Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons.]]> 354 Ian McEwan 038553342X Jeremy 4 3.54 2010 Solar
author: Ian McEwan
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2010/06/13
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Children's Book (Vintage International)]]> 8132887 Shortlisted for the Man Booker PrizeA spellbinding novel, at once sweeping and intimate, from the Booker Prize–winning author of Possession, that spans the Victorian era through the World War I years, and centers around a famous children’s book author and the passions, betrayals, and secrets that tear apart the people she loves.When Olive Wellwood’s oldest son discovers a runaway named Philip sketching in the basement of the new Victoria and Albert Museum—a talented working-class boy who could be a character out of one of Olive’s magical tales—she takes him into the storybook world of her family and friends.But the joyful bacchanals Olive hosts at her rambling country house—and the separate, private books she writes for each of her seven children—conceal more treachery and darkness than Philip has ever imagined. As these lives—of adults and children alike—unfold, lies are revealed, hearts are broken, and the damaging truth about the Wellwoods slowly emerges. But their personal struggles, their hidden desires, will soon be eclipsed by far greater forces, as the tides turn across Europe and a golden era comes to an end.Taking us from the cliff-lined shores of England to Paris, Munich, and the trenches of the Somme, The Children’s Book is a deeply affecting story of a singular family, played out against the great, rippling tides of the day. It is a masterly literary achievement by one of our most essential writers.From the Hardcover edition.]]> 883 A.S. Byatt 0307272958 Jeremy 3 3.75 2009 The Children's Book (Vintage International)
author: A.S. Byatt
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2010/01/09
date added: 2024/09/18
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Long Ships (New York Review Books Classics)]]> 10081041 --nyrb.com]]> 528 Frans G. Bengtsson 159017416X Jeremy 5 4.36 1941 The Long Ships (New York Review Books Classics)
author: Frans G. Bengtsson
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1941
rating: 5
read at: 2012/02/23
date added: 2024/09/10
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hell Fire (Inspector Konrad Sejer #12)]]> 25897831
In a parallel storyline, masterfully fused, Fossum tells the story of Mass Malthe and her troubled son Eddie as they navigate a relationship that some would call too close. Eddie constantly thinks about his unknown father � someone his mother would rather forget. When long-held secrets are revealed, it turns out that Mass and Bonnie share more in common than Eddie could have ever guessed.]]> 256 Karin Fossum 0544633377 Jeremy 4 3.75 Hell Fire (Inspector Konrad Sejer #12)
author: Karin Fossum
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.75
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2017/01/09
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Richard Stark’s Parker: The Score]]> 14539948
Darwyn Cooke, Eisner-Award winning creator of DC: The New Frontier, continues adapting Richard Stark's genre-defining Parker novels with his signature pulp flair in this third installment. A hard-nosed thief, Parker is Richard Stark's most famous creation, and Stark, in turn, is the most famous pen name of Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Donald E. Westlake.]]> 160 Darwyn Cooke 1613772084 Jeremy 5 4.30 2012 Richard Stark’s Parker: The Score
author: Darwyn Cooke
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves:
review:

]]> Dark Matter 205181201 A mindbending, relentlessly surprising thriller from the author of the bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy.

Jason Dessen is walking home through the chilly Chicago streets one night, looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the fireplace with his wife, Daniela, and their son, Charlie—when his reality shatters.

"Are you happy with your life?"

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.

Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.

Before a man Jason's never met smiles down at him and says, "Welcome back, my friend."

In this world he's woken up to, Jason's life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that's the dream?

And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could've imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

Dark Matter is a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human--a relentlessly surprising science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we'll go to claim the lives we dream of.]]> 368 Blake Crouch 0593875737 Jeremy 0 to-read 4.06 2016 Dark Matter
author: Blake Crouch
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> City on Fire 29496242 New York Times
Ìý
New York City, 1976. Meet Regan and William Hamilton-Sweeney, estranged heirs to one of the city’s great fortunes; Keith and Mercer, the men who, for better or worse, love them; Charlie and Samantha, two suburban teenagers seduced by downtown’s punk scene; an obsessive magazine reporter and his idealistic neighbor—and the detective trying to figure out what any of them have to do with a shooting in Central Park on New Year’s Eve.
Ìý
The mystery, as it reverberates through families, friendships, and the corridors of power, will open up even the loneliest-seeming corners of the crowded city. And when the blackout of July 13, 1977, plunges this world into darkness, each of these lives will be changed forever.
Ìý
City on Fire is an unforgettable novel about love and betrayal and forgiveness, about art and truth and rock ’n� roll: about what people need from each other in order to live . . . and about what makes the living worth doing in the first place.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 944 Garth Risk Hallberg 0804172951 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.49 1997 City on Fire
author: Garth Risk Hallberg
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.49
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Rules of Civility 13339004 Rules of Civility won the hearts of readers and critics alike.]]> 335 Amor Towles 0143121162 Jeremy 0 to-read 4.10 2011 Rules of Civility
author: Amor Towles
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Changeling 35863510 One man’s thrilling journey through an enchanted world to find his wife, who has disappeared after seemingly committing an unforgiveable act of violence, from the award-winning author of the The Devil in Silver and Big Machine.

Apollo Kagwa has had strange dreams that have haunted him since childhood. An antiquarian book dealer with a business called Improbabilia, he is just beginning to settle into his new life as a committed and involved father, unlike his own father who abandoned him, when his wife Emma begins acting strange. Disconnected and uninterested in their new baby boy, Emma at first seems to be exhibiting all the signs of post-partum depression, but it quickly becomes clear that her troubles go far beyond that. Before Apollo can do anything to help, Emma commits a horrific act—beyond any parent’s comprehension—and vanishes, seemingly into thin air.

Thus begins Apollo’s odyssey through a world he only thought he understood to find a wife and child who are nothing like he’d imagined. His quest begins when he meets a mysterious stranger who claims to have information about Emma’s whereabouts. Apollo then begins a journey that takes him to a forgotten island in the East River of New York City, a graveyard full of secrets, a forest in Queens where immigrant legends still live, and finally back to a place he thought he had lost forever.

This dizzying tale is ultimately a story about family and the unfathomable secrets of the people we love.]]> 448 Victor LaValle 0812985877 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.90 2017 The Changeling
author: Victor LaValle
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> In the Darkness 13156124 314 Karin Fossum 1846555256 Jeremy 5
The U.S. edition of this is called Eva's Eye.

The book opens ominously. Eva Magnus and her seven-year-old daughter Emma are walking along the lake in a park when the girl notices a body floating in the water. Eva, who is an artist and a single mother, already seems distracted when she heads for the nearest payphone, presumably to call the police. Instead she makes a rather mundane call to her father, and then, oddly enough, whisks her daughter off to McDonalds as if nothing happened. The reason for her behavior forms the core of a complex mystery, as we learn the nature of her connection to the body they saw in the lake, which is in a small Norwegian town.

After someone else reports the body, Inspector Sejer is called to the scene. He soon realises it was murder, and an excessively violent one. This is a busy time for his investigative team, as they are also investigating the death of a known prostitute � Maja Durban. When the dead man is identified as Egil Einarsson, who was reported missing shortly after the prostitute’s death, Sejer suspects a connection between the murders. During his investigation he befriends the teenage son of the dead man and their interactions form the few tender moments in the book that reveal the compassionate nature of Sejer which fuels his police work.

Sejer’s investigations leads us back to Eva and her strange reaction to the corpse, as well as a mysterious note left by the dead man. This, and other threads of inquiry, keep sending Sejer back to Eva and he eventually brings her in for questioning. What follows then is a major shift in the narrative. The events leading up to the murder begin to unfold and take up the majority of the book. This section of In the Darkness is quite riveting, and explores themes that recur throughout the Inspector Sejer series. One of these themes is that given the right (or wrong) setting and circumstances we might all be capable of criminal acts, even murder. This question is raised by the author, through Sejer, with thoughtfulness, intelligence, and compassion.

Sejer’s cool and collected demeanor sets the tone, but the main body of the narrative can definitely be categorised as thriller, seething with fear, murder, and desperation. Even when the story behind the murder is complete and we are brought back back to the present investigation, you’re still in for a final ride as Sejer slots the final pieces of the puzzle into place.

If you’re coming to In the Darkness after reading all the other Inspector Sejer books, you should be very pleased. This is not only an introduction to Sejer and his team, but a solid piece of crime fiction that relies less on gore and forensics than on trenchant insight into the primal act of murder, and its devastating consequences. It also introduces another observation that Fossum makes in her books: even when a case is solved, there are no winners. Highly recommended for Scandinavian crime fiction enthusiasts, or mystery lovers who like psychological depth in their reading.]]> 3.51 1995 In the Darkness
author: Karin Fossum
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.51
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/08/01
shelves:
review:
A slightly modified version of this review at

The U.S. edition of this is called Eva's Eye.

The book opens ominously. Eva Magnus and her seven-year-old daughter Emma are walking along the lake in a park when the girl notices a body floating in the water. Eva, who is an artist and a single mother, already seems distracted when she heads for the nearest payphone, presumably to call the police. Instead she makes a rather mundane call to her father, and then, oddly enough, whisks her daughter off to McDonalds as if nothing happened. The reason for her behavior forms the core of a complex mystery, as we learn the nature of her connection to the body they saw in the lake, which is in a small Norwegian town.

After someone else reports the body, Inspector Sejer is called to the scene. He soon realises it was murder, and an excessively violent one. This is a busy time for his investigative team, as they are also investigating the death of a known prostitute � Maja Durban. When the dead man is identified as Egil Einarsson, who was reported missing shortly after the prostitute’s death, Sejer suspects a connection between the murders. During his investigation he befriends the teenage son of the dead man and their interactions form the few tender moments in the book that reveal the compassionate nature of Sejer which fuels his police work.

Sejer’s investigations leads us back to Eva and her strange reaction to the corpse, as well as a mysterious note left by the dead man. This, and other threads of inquiry, keep sending Sejer back to Eva and he eventually brings her in for questioning. What follows then is a major shift in the narrative. The events leading up to the murder begin to unfold and take up the majority of the book. This section of In the Darkness is quite riveting, and explores themes that recur throughout the Inspector Sejer series. One of these themes is that given the right (or wrong) setting and circumstances we might all be capable of criminal acts, even murder. This question is raised by the author, through Sejer, with thoughtfulness, intelligence, and compassion.

Sejer’s cool and collected demeanor sets the tone, but the main body of the narrative can definitely be categorised as thriller, seething with fear, murder, and desperation. Even when the story behind the murder is complete and we are brought back back to the present investigation, you’re still in for a final ride as Sejer slots the final pieces of the puzzle into place.

If you’re coming to In the Darkness after reading all the other Inspector Sejer books, you should be very pleased. This is not only an introduction to Sejer and his team, but a solid piece of crime fiction that relies less on gore and forensics than on trenchant insight into the primal act of murder, and its devastating consequences. It also introduces another observation that Fossum makes in her books: even when a case is solved, there are no winners. Highly recommended for Scandinavian crime fiction enthusiasts, or mystery lovers who like psychological depth in their reading.
]]> <![CDATA[A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought, #2)]]> 226004 A Fire Upon The Deep, this is the story of Pham Nuwen, a small cog in the interstellar trading fleet of the Queng Ho. The Queng Ho and the Emergents are orbiting the dormant planet Arachna, which is about to wake up to technology, but the Emergents' plans are sinister.]]> 775 Vernor Vinge 0812536355 Jeremy 0 to-read 4.31 1999 A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought, #2)
author: Vernor Vinge
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Glass of Time (The Meaning of Night, #2)]]> 3419681
In the autumn of 1876, nineteen-year-old orphan Esperanza Gorst arrives at the great country house of Evenwood in Northamptonshire. There she will serve as the new lady's maid to the former Emily Carteret, now Lady Tansor. But Esperanza is no ordinary servant. She has been sent by her guardian, the mysterious Madame de l'Orme, to uncover the secrets that her new mistress has sought to conceal - and to set right a past injustice in which her own life is intertwined.

Unable to escape the reverberations of past misdeeds, Lady Tansor finds herself desperate to keep Esperanza from learning dark, dangerous truths.

As well as a page-turning period mystery, The Glass of Time is a beautifully written and vividly imagined study of seduction, betrayal, and friendship between two powerful women bound together by the past.]]> 586 Michael Cox 0393067734 Jeremy 0 to-read 4.00 2008 The Glass of Time (The Meaning of Night, #2)
author: Michael Cox
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Verge 62316463
Salvation, Rowena is told, lies to the North: in Culcrith, where her grandmother can save her from the curse. Her mother's farmhand, a young Egyptian man named Halim, is to drive her.

The trip isn't easy. Rowena is rebellious, spiky, and sees bad omens everywhere; Halim is reserved, quiet and prefers to play by the rules; the land is mysterious and treacherous, with people who have married old traditions with new prejudices. The pair's battle of wills may yet develop into an alliance, if they can only let their guards down and let the wild in.

Exploring belief, loyalty and legacies beyond our control, Nadia Attia's thrilling debut is as magnetic and unpredictable as the curse Rowena is racing to escape.]]> 272 Nadia Attia 1800810156 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.43 Verge
author: Nadia Attia
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.43
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Caveman (William Wisting, #9)]]> 24847861 368 Jørn Lier Horst 1910124044 Jeremy 4
It’s Christmas time and the Norwegian coastal town of Larvik is covered in a blanket of snow. A few doors down from where Chief Inspector William Wisting lives, Viggo Hansen is found dead in his home. He’s been there for four months without anybody noticing. His mummified body, in its dry, insulated setting, is found seated in the front of a television, still on when the police break in.

Wisting’s journalist daughter, Line, remembers the introverted Hansen and his fate makes a strong impression on her. She decides to write a human interest story about how people with no friends or family can be wholly forgotten and uncared for.

To better understand her subject, she requests access to his house, where there are still traces of the man’s dismal end � the chair he was found in, and even his TV guide lying there, still marked up. Although the death is declared unsuspicious, something tells her Hansen may have had a visitor before he died.

As Line canvasses the outlying neighbourhood in order to form a picture of Hansen’s life, she decides not to bother her father with vague speculations just yet. Which is a good thing because another body is found on a local Christmas tree farm. Similarly, it has lain a few months before being noticed. With no identification, it is slow going for Wisting and his investigative team until they find fingerprints on a brochure carefully tucked into a protective plastic sleeve in the dead man’s pocket. When the police database finds a match on the print, the news floors even the cool-headed Wisting. It belongs to Robert Godwin, a notorious American serial killer who has been on the FBI’s most wanted list since he eluded the authorities 20 years ago.

Wisting and his colleagues struggle to keep the case quiet before the press sniffs it out, but they are forced to involve the Americans and even the Swedes, who also have recent unsolved cases of involving missing young, blonde women � Godwin’s favourite type of victim. The chief question is whether the body they have is Godwin himself or one of his victims. Things get interesting when they discover a women’s blonde hair in the corpse’s clenched hand. The body turns out to be an American named Robert Crabbe who taught in the same university as Godwin. Crabbe was in Norway purportedly researching his ancestry, but perhaps he was on Godwin’s trail.

From

If there is an American serial killer on the loose living as a Norwegian, he might be hiding out as a ‘caveman�, using another person’s identity. When Wisting and his transnational colleagues dig deeper into murders and disappearances in Norway and Sweden, they realise Godwin’s killing spree certainly did not end 20 years ago. The race is on to discover which identity the caveman has been hiding behind, and to cut off his escape.

Upon every dramatic reveal, Horst shifts back and forth between the perspectives of the well-drawn characters Wisting and his daughter Line. Their investigations slowly converge, and when they do meet the ensuing suspense is relentless. Wisting realises too late that his daughter’s probings coincide with the killer’s trajectory, and the calm demeanour he hides behind only underlines the gravity of events. Likewise, the restrained tone of Horst’s writing lends power to the thrills. When the investigators finally cross paths with Godwin, it is most effective drama. However, the big moment comes in the book’s 11th eleventh hour, so the ending feels abrupt. The mystique of Godwin is a double-edged. When we finally glimpse him, he remains unfathomable, and the lack of face-time with the antagonist is frustrating.

The Caveman will delight fans of suspense and procedural realism, but these aren’t cheap thrills. Jorn Lier Horst’s career as a detective informs this novel. Wisting and his fellow investigators, as well as the crime scene examiner and the prosecutor on the team, are all credible characters. The rugged setting of Horst’s native Larvik enhances the storyline, but also serves as a substrate for Wisting’s and Line’s existential reflections, as they ponder the snowfall and their own loneliness and mortality.]]> 4.18 2013 The Caveman (William Wisting, #9)
author: Jørn Lier Horst
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/05/04
shelves:
review:
Originally published at

It’s Christmas time and the Norwegian coastal town of Larvik is covered in a blanket of snow. A few doors down from where Chief Inspector William Wisting lives, Viggo Hansen is found dead in his home. He’s been there for four months without anybody noticing. His mummified body, in its dry, insulated setting, is found seated in the front of a television, still on when the police break in.

Wisting’s journalist daughter, Line, remembers the introverted Hansen and his fate makes a strong impression on her. She decides to write a human interest story about how people with no friends or family can be wholly forgotten and uncared for.

To better understand her subject, she requests access to his house, where there are still traces of the man’s dismal end � the chair he was found in, and even his TV guide lying there, still marked up. Although the death is declared unsuspicious, something tells her Hansen may have had a visitor before he died.

As Line canvasses the outlying neighbourhood in order to form a picture of Hansen’s life, she decides not to bother her father with vague speculations just yet. Which is a good thing because another body is found on a local Christmas tree farm. Similarly, it has lain a few months before being noticed. With no identification, it is slow going for Wisting and his investigative team until they find fingerprints on a brochure carefully tucked into a protective plastic sleeve in the dead man’s pocket. When the police database finds a match on the print, the news floors even the cool-headed Wisting. It belongs to Robert Godwin, a notorious American serial killer who has been on the FBI’s most wanted list since he eluded the authorities 20 years ago.

Wisting and his colleagues struggle to keep the case quiet before the press sniffs it out, but they are forced to involve the Americans and even the Swedes, who also have recent unsolved cases of involving missing young, blonde women � Godwin’s favourite type of victim. The chief question is whether the body they have is Godwin himself or one of his victims. Things get interesting when they discover a women’s blonde hair in the corpse’s clenched hand. The body turns out to be an American named Robert Crabbe who taught in the same university as Godwin. Crabbe was in Norway purportedly researching his ancestry, but perhaps he was on Godwin’s trail.

From

If there is an American serial killer on the loose living as a Norwegian, he might be hiding out as a ‘caveman�, using another person’s identity. When Wisting and his transnational colleagues dig deeper into murders and disappearances in Norway and Sweden, they realise Godwin’s killing spree certainly did not end 20 years ago. The race is on to discover which identity the caveman has been hiding behind, and to cut off his escape.

Upon every dramatic reveal, Horst shifts back and forth between the perspectives of the well-drawn characters Wisting and his daughter Line. Their investigations slowly converge, and when they do meet the ensuing suspense is relentless. Wisting realises too late that his daughter’s probings coincide with the killer’s trajectory, and the calm demeanour he hides behind only underlines the gravity of events. Likewise, the restrained tone of Horst’s writing lends power to the thrills. When the investigators finally cross paths with Godwin, it is most effective drama. However, the big moment comes in the book’s 11th eleventh hour, so the ending feels abrupt. The mystique of Godwin is a double-edged. When we finally glimpse him, he remains unfathomable, and the lack of face-time with the antagonist is frustrating.

The Caveman will delight fans of suspense and procedural realism, but these aren’t cheap thrills. Jorn Lier Horst’s career as a detective informs this novel. Wisting and his fellow investigators, as well as the crime scene examiner and the prosecutor on the team, are all credible characters. The rugged setting of Horst’s native Larvik enhances the storyline, but also serves as a substrate for Wisting’s and Line’s existential reflections, as they ponder the snowfall and their own loneliness and mortality.
]]> <![CDATA[Red Team Blues (Martin Hench, #1)]]> 60784417
Martin Hench is 67 years old, single, and successful in a career stretching back to the beginnings of Silicon Valley. He lives and roams California in a very comfortable fully-furnished touring bus, The Unsalted Hash, that he bought years ago from a fading rock star. He knows his way around good food and fine drink. He likes intelligent women, and they like him back often enough.

Martin is a―contain your excitement―self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He knows computer hardware and software alike, including the ins and outs of high-end databases and the kinds of spreadsheets that are designed to conceal rather than reveal. He’s as comfortable with social media as people a quarter his age, and he’s a world-level expert on the kind of international money-laundering and shell-company chicanery used by Fortune 500 companies, mid-divorce billionaires, and international drug gangs alike. He also knows the Valley like the back of his hand, all the secret histories of charismatic company founders and Sand Hill Road VCs. Because he was there at all the beginnings. He’s not famous, except to the people who matter. He’s made some pretty powerful people happy in his time, and he’s been paid pretty well. It’s been a good life.

Now he’s been roped into a job that’s more dangerous than anything he’s ever agreed to before―and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive.]]> 213 Cory Doctorow 1250865840 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.77 2023 Red Team Blues (Martin Hench, #1)
author: Cory Doctorow
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Americanah 58459094 --back cover]]> 588 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Jeremy 0 to-read 4.26 2013 Americanah
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/07/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Redeemer (Harry Hole, #6) 5973826 The Snowman.

Christmas shoppers stop to hear a Salvation Army concert on a crowded Oslo street. A gunshot cuts through the music and the bitter cold: one of the singers falls dead, shot in the head at point-blank range. Harry Hole—the Oslo Police Department’s best investigator and worst civil servant—has little to work with: no suspect, no weapon, and no motive. But Harry’s troubles will multiply. As the search closes in, the killer becomes increasingly desperate, and Harry’s chase takes him to the most forbidden corners of the former Yugoslavia.

Yet it’s when he returns to Oslo that he encounters true darkness: among the homeless junkies and Salvationists, eagerly awaiting a savior to deliver them from misery—whether he brings new life or immediate death.

With its shrewdly vertiginous narrative, acid-etched characters, and white-hot pace, The Redeemer is resounding proof of Jo Nesbø’s standing as one of the best crime writers of our time.]]> 562 Jo Nesbø 0099505967 Jeremy 5 4.00 2005 The Redeemer (Harry Hole, #6)
author: Jo Nesbø
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2013/03/11
date added: 2022/02/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 4Ìý3 2 1 48589530
As inventive and dexterously constructed as anything Paul Auster has ever written, yet with a passion for realism and a great tenderness and fierce attachment to history and to life itself that readers have never seen from Auster before. 4 3 2 1 is a marvelous and unforgettably affecting tour de force.]]> 992 Paul Auster 1250618800 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.91 2017 4Ìý3 2 1
author: Paul Auster
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/10/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Tale for the Time Being 18079728 Hi! My name is Nao, and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you.

On a remote island in the Pacific Northwest, a Hello Kitty lunchbox washes up on the beach. Tucked inside is the diary of a sixteen-year-old Japanese girl named Nao Yasutani. Ruth--a writer who finds the lunchbox--suspects that it is debris from Japan's 2011 tsunami. Once she beings to read the diary, Ruth quickly finds herself drawn into the mystery of Nao's fate. Meanwhile in Tokyo, Nao, uprooted from her home in the U.S., bullied at school, and watching her parents spiral deeper into disaster, has decided to end her life. But first, she wants to recount the story of her great-grandmother, a 104-year-old Zen Buddhist nun, in the pages of her secret diary...]]> 422 Ruth Ozeki 0143124870 Jeremy 0 to-read 4.16 2013 A Tale for the Time Being
author: Ruth Ozeki
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/05/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Complete Cosmicomics 6018080
In Italo Calvino’s cosmicomics, primordial beings cavort on the nearby surface of the moon, play marbles with atoms, and bear ecstatic witness to Earth’s first dawn. Exploring natural phenomena and the origins of the universe, these beloved tales relate complex scientific concepts to our common sensory, emotional, human world.

Now, The Complete Cosmicomics brings together all of the cosmicomic stories for the first time. Containing works previously published in Cosmicomics, t zero, and Numbers in the Dark, this single volume also includes seven previously uncollected stories, four of which have never been published in translation in the United States.ÌýThis “complete and definitive collectionâ€� (Evening Standard) reconfirms the cosmicomics as a crowning literary achievement and makes them available to new generations of readers.]]> 402 Italo Calvino 1846141656 Jeremy 0 to-read 4.17 1997 The Complete Cosmicomics
author: Italo Calvino
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/09/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sorrows of Young Werther. Novella]]> 394908
Includes "Novella".]]> 201 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 0679729518 Jeremy 4 3.92 1774 The Sorrows of Young Werther. Novella
author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1774
rating: 4
read at: 2009/06/04
date added: 2020/05/06
shelves:
review:

]]> Purge 7029668 Purge is a breathtakingly suspenseful tale of two women dogged by their own shameful pasts and the dark, unspoken history that binds them.

When Aliide Truu, an older woman living alone in the Estonian countryside, finds a disheveled girl huddled in her front yard, she suppresses her misgivings and offers her shelter. Zara is a young sex-trafficking victim on the run from her captors, but a photo she carries with her soon makes it clear that her arrival at Aliide's home is no coincidence. Survivors both, Aliide and Zara engage in a complex arithmetic of suspicion and revelation to distill each other's motives; gradually, their stories emerge, the culmination of a tragic family drama of rivalry, lust, and loss that played out during the worst years of Estonia's Soviet occupation.

Sofi Oksanen establishes herself as one the most important voices of her generation with this intricately woven tale, whose stakes are almost unbearably high from the first page to the last. Purge is a fiercely compelling and damning novel about the corrosive effects of shame, and of life in a time and place where to survive is to be implicated.]]> 390 Sofi Oksanen 0802170773 Jeremy 5 3.81 2008 Purge
author: Sofi Oksanen
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2013/10/19
date added: 2020/01/30
shelves:
review:

]]> Flowers of Mold 43064674 212 Ha Seong-nan 1940953960 Jeremy 4 3.54 1999 Flowers of Mold
author: Ha Seong-nan
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2019/08/19
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Wolves at the Door (Varg Veum, #21)]]> 43820698 The wolves are no longer in the dark � they are at his door. And they want vengeance�

The next instalment in the international, bestselling Varg Veum series by one of the fathers of Nordic Noir�

‘Gunnar Staalesen is one of my very favourite Scandinavian authors. Operating out of Bergen in Norway, his private eye, Varg Veum, is a complex but engaging anti-hero. Varg means “wolf � in Norwegian, and this is a series with very sharp teeth�Ian Rankin

One dark January night a car drives at high speed towards PI Varg Veum, and comes very close to killing him. Veum is certain this is no accident, following so soon after the deaths of two jailed men who were convicted for their participation in a case of child pornography and sexual assault � crimes that Veum himself once stood wrongly accused of committing.
While the guilty men were apparently killed accidentally, Varg suspects that there is something more sinister at play � and that he’s on the death list of someone still at large.
Fearing for his life, Veum begins to investigate the old case, interviewing the victims of abuse and delving deeper into the brutal crimes, with shocking results. The wolves are no longer in the dark � they are at his door. And they want vengeance.

]]> 276 Gunnar Staalesen 1912374412 Jeremy 4
Considered to be the godfather of Nordic noir, Gunnar Staalasen is an icon in Norway, so much so that his literary creation, PI Varg Veum, is immortalised as a statue in the centre of his native city of Bergen.

Staalesen has been treating his fans to the exploits of Varg Veum for over 40 years now. Key to the detective’s appeal is his tenacity in solving a case. Murderous goons, exasperated local police and unwilling interviewees don’t deter him from knocking on doors until he gets answers. One thing’s for sure, money is not his prime motivator, as he barely makes a living as a private investigator. In Wolves at the Door, there is no paycheque at all, only the hope of doing the right thing. When we catch up with Veum, he has escaped prosecution after being framed for involvement in a paedophilia ring, and is trying to nurture his relationship with his new partner Solvi.

The shock waves of the paedophilia drama are still reverberating. Veum notices that members of the ring are dying in succession and under suspicious circumstances. To him, the guilty men’s deaths are starting to smell a lot like murder, which could mean the perpetrator is a victim acting as vigilante or another member of the criminal ring trying to cover their tracks. But the most immediate question which opens the book is: who has just tried to run Veum over with a car?

Early on you feel a creeping tension and the sense that crime continues to thrive. This escalates as our protagonist visits each paedophile’s destroyed family in turn. His past experience as a social worker confirms how victims of incest continue to suffer from crimes of the past, some turning to drug use or perpetuating the crime as abusers themselves. Through various interviews, we see the compassion which fuels Veum’s determination and which lies at the heart of his self-commissioned investigation.

To his dismay, it seems the broken paedophile ring was just the tip of the iceberg, as Veum’s investigation at one point hones in on a refugee orphanage that has become a human trafficking portal. As he keeps tabs on these and several other inquiries, it becomes a bit challenging for the reader to follow suit, and at times the plot weave feels a bit overcomplicated.

Veum still can’t determine if the murderer is a victim turned vigilante or if the deaths and attempt on his life were organised by the criminal network he seeks to expose. A sleazy loan shark menaces one of the drug-addled victims and her self-deputised protector Veum. Meanwhile, Solvi and her daughter are also threatened by mysterious phone calls and then an attempted hit and run, putting pressure on Veum to both solve the case and salvage his strained relationship with Solvi.

With an expositional style that is all but invisible, Staalesen masterfully compels us from the first pages. We follow Veum and his relentless yet thankless endeavours to whatever dark corner they may lead, buoyed by the sardonic PI’s dry humour and wry characterisations of all manner of humanity he encounters. Told in first person, we see the world through Veum’s eyes, but you’ll have to keep guessing who the culprit is. The detective keeps his cards close to his chest for purposes of suspense, but he is generous with his observations of the town folk, their dialects and the transformation of Norway’s historical urban landscape. You can see why Jo Nesbo calls Staalesen a Norwegian Chandler.

Veum learns that the one thing all of the murdered paedophiles have in common is that hours before their deaths an unidentified pastor came calling. His search for this man of the cloth extends as far as Berlin, but back home some dark doings continue in the family of one of the dead paedophiles, and what Veum stumbles across by accident is as horrific as anything he’s ever encountered. As always, the uninvited Veum is one step ahead of the police and he insinuates himself into a very dangerous unfolding drama that puts his life into danger. The ensuing confrontation between him and the unmasked killer is high drama at its best and the chaos he causes for the weary local police is one of the defining comic attributes of this great series.

If you’re a fan of Varg Veum, this is not to be missed, and if you’re new to the series, this is one of the best ones. You’re encouraged to jump right in, even if the Norwegian names can be a bit confusing to follow.]]> 3.51 Wolves at the Door (Varg Veum, #21)
author: Gunnar Staalesen
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.51
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2019/07/15
shelves:
review:
Originally posted at

Considered to be the godfather of Nordic noir, Gunnar Staalasen is an icon in Norway, so much so that his literary creation, PI Varg Veum, is immortalised as a statue in the centre of his native city of Bergen.

Staalesen has been treating his fans to the exploits of Varg Veum for over 40 years now. Key to the detective’s appeal is his tenacity in solving a case. Murderous goons, exasperated local police and unwilling interviewees don’t deter him from knocking on doors until he gets answers. One thing’s for sure, money is not his prime motivator, as he barely makes a living as a private investigator. In Wolves at the Door, there is no paycheque at all, only the hope of doing the right thing. When we catch up with Veum, he has escaped prosecution after being framed for involvement in a paedophilia ring, and is trying to nurture his relationship with his new partner Solvi.

The shock waves of the paedophilia drama are still reverberating. Veum notices that members of the ring are dying in succession and under suspicious circumstances. To him, the guilty men’s deaths are starting to smell a lot like murder, which could mean the perpetrator is a victim acting as vigilante or another member of the criminal ring trying to cover their tracks. But the most immediate question which opens the book is: who has just tried to run Veum over with a car?

Early on you feel a creeping tension and the sense that crime continues to thrive. This escalates as our protagonist visits each paedophile’s destroyed family in turn. His past experience as a social worker confirms how victims of incest continue to suffer from crimes of the past, some turning to drug use or perpetuating the crime as abusers themselves. Through various interviews, we see the compassion which fuels Veum’s determination and which lies at the heart of his self-commissioned investigation.

To his dismay, it seems the broken paedophile ring was just the tip of the iceberg, as Veum’s investigation at one point hones in on a refugee orphanage that has become a human trafficking portal. As he keeps tabs on these and several other inquiries, it becomes a bit challenging for the reader to follow suit, and at times the plot weave feels a bit overcomplicated.

Veum still can’t determine if the murderer is a victim turned vigilante or if the deaths and attempt on his life were organised by the criminal network he seeks to expose. A sleazy loan shark menaces one of the drug-addled victims and her self-deputised protector Veum. Meanwhile, Solvi and her daughter are also threatened by mysterious phone calls and then an attempted hit and run, putting pressure on Veum to both solve the case and salvage his strained relationship with Solvi.

With an expositional style that is all but invisible, Staalesen masterfully compels us from the first pages. We follow Veum and his relentless yet thankless endeavours to whatever dark corner they may lead, buoyed by the sardonic PI’s dry humour and wry characterisations of all manner of humanity he encounters. Told in first person, we see the world through Veum’s eyes, but you’ll have to keep guessing who the culprit is. The detective keeps his cards close to his chest for purposes of suspense, but he is generous with his observations of the town folk, their dialects and the transformation of Norway’s historical urban landscape. You can see why Jo Nesbo calls Staalesen a Norwegian Chandler.

Veum learns that the one thing all of the murdered paedophiles have in common is that hours before their deaths an unidentified pastor came calling. His search for this man of the cloth extends as far as Berlin, but back home some dark doings continue in the family of one of the dead paedophiles, and what Veum stumbles across by accident is as horrific as anything he’s ever encountered. As always, the uninvited Veum is one step ahead of the police and he insinuates himself into a very dangerous unfolding drama that puts his life into danger. The ensuing confrontation between him and the unmasked killer is high drama at its best and the chaos he causes for the weary local police is one of the defining comic attributes of this great series.

If you’re a fan of Varg Veum, this is not to be missed, and if you’re new to the series, this is one of the best ones. You’re encouraged to jump right in, even if the Norwegian names can be a bit confusing to follow.
]]> Hunted 40209485 It starts when Desire Rosenqvist of Stockholm Police receives a letter. Two things are immediately clear: the letter she holds in her hands was written in a state of utter desperation and paranoia. And it contains details of one of her old murder cases, which only the murderer could know.

Desiree contacts private investigator Sam Berger, who sets off to the remote north of Sweden with his colleague Molly Blom to find the author of the letter and to stop them in their tracks.

But someone wants to keep them from getting to the bottom of the mystery at any cost and is watching their every move. What happens when the cops become the prey?

A dark and gripping Scandi-thriller set in the snowy tundra of rural Sweden, from international bestseller Arne Dahl.

]]> 418 Arne Dahl 1473547741 Jeremy 3
Arne Dahl, internationally known for his Stockholm-based Intercrime book and TV series, has recently brought a new series to the Nordic noir market. Book two of the Sam Berger series hits the ground running, with cops Sam Berger and Molly Blom on the lam from the authorities as a result of the disastrous investigation of the previous book Watching You, where both became implicated in a colleague’s murder.

Both under investigation, the pair are summoned to Lapland in the far north to secretly investigate a possible serial killer case. Under the direction of his former partner, Deer, who is head of police up here, Sam is thrust into a new partnership with Molly, whose dark ops background and hidden satellite phone makes him pretty sure she’s concealing something. Sam trusts Deer, but the problem is he’s not sure about his own role, mainly due to a mental breakdown, blackout and subsequent amnesia suffered while hiding out in a shack with Molly.

The book opens in rural Sweden with a letter, apparently written by a Jessica Johnsson, a paranoid woman in a wilderness cabin. The letter is addressed to Sam’s former partner, Desiré Rosenkvist, AKA Deer, now promoted to Superintendent head of Stockholm Police. It contains uncanny knowledge about Deer as well as information about a serial murderer who targets women with children. The author also notes that someone, possibly the murderer, is hiding in the woodwork and is approaching�

In Hunted, nothing is what it seems as identities blur and become transposed. We shift to a point on the timeline where Sam is injured and committed to a psychiatric institution. He is obsessed with escaping at all costs while feverishly trying to recall recent events. How this episode connects to current events becomes key to the murder investigation.

It becomes clear the murderer � and you’re kept guessing as to who it is with plenty of red herrings � is sending a message to Sam as he and Molly get closer to tracking them down. As in Watching You, the killer is targeting Sam with a very personal challenge, and it’s tied to Sam’s early years as a cop.

The victims pile up and include a biker chick, a Danish doctor and one person even manage to survive an attack. When Sam and Molly locate the letter-writer’s cabin they become victims themselves in what can only be described as a series of harrowing, certified-WTF fiascos.

Then it’s revealed that an unseen mystery man with a gloved hand has been watching them via surveillance equipment installed around their cabin hideout. Are the voyeur and killer the same person operating from deep within the national security apparatus? If so, how high up does it go and what are the true stakes? Who are Sam and Molly really chasing?

If the plots sounds convoluted, it surely is, as Dahl demonstrates that appearances are deceptive. Despite being delightfully complex and never swerving from its course as a first-rate thriller, this book doesn’t serve too well as a standalone, and new readers will feel the deficit of not having read the first book. If you already have enjoyed Watching You, this follow-up is definitely recommended. For fans of Scandinavian crime fiction, grim atmosphere and investigative procedurals, it will be more rewarding to start at the beginning.]]> 3.87 2017 Hunted
author: Arne Dahl
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2019/02/21
shelves:
review:
Originally posted on

Arne Dahl, internationally known for his Stockholm-based Intercrime book and TV series, has recently brought a new series to the Nordic noir market. Book two of the Sam Berger series hits the ground running, with cops Sam Berger and Molly Blom on the lam from the authorities as a result of the disastrous investigation of the previous book Watching You, where both became implicated in a colleague’s murder.

Both under investigation, the pair are summoned to Lapland in the far north to secretly investigate a possible serial killer case. Under the direction of his former partner, Deer, who is head of police up here, Sam is thrust into a new partnership with Molly, whose dark ops background and hidden satellite phone makes him pretty sure she’s concealing something. Sam trusts Deer, but the problem is he’s not sure about his own role, mainly due to a mental breakdown, blackout and subsequent amnesia suffered while hiding out in a shack with Molly.

The book opens in rural Sweden with a letter, apparently written by a Jessica Johnsson, a paranoid woman in a wilderness cabin. The letter is addressed to Sam’s former partner, Desiré Rosenkvist, AKA Deer, now promoted to Superintendent head of Stockholm Police. It contains uncanny knowledge about Deer as well as information about a serial murderer who targets women with children. The author also notes that someone, possibly the murderer, is hiding in the woodwork and is approaching�

In Hunted, nothing is what it seems as identities blur and become transposed. We shift to a point on the timeline where Sam is injured and committed to a psychiatric institution. He is obsessed with escaping at all costs while feverishly trying to recall recent events. How this episode connects to current events becomes key to the murder investigation.

It becomes clear the murderer � and you’re kept guessing as to who it is with plenty of red herrings � is sending a message to Sam as he and Molly get closer to tracking them down. As in Watching You, the killer is targeting Sam with a very personal challenge, and it’s tied to Sam’s early years as a cop.

The victims pile up and include a biker chick, a Danish doctor and one person even manage to survive an attack. When Sam and Molly locate the letter-writer’s cabin they become victims themselves in what can only be described as a series of harrowing, certified-WTF fiascos.

Then it’s revealed that an unseen mystery man with a gloved hand has been watching them via surveillance equipment installed around their cabin hideout. Are the voyeur and killer the same person operating from deep within the national security apparatus? If so, how high up does it go and what are the true stakes? Who are Sam and Molly really chasing?

If the plots sounds convoluted, it surely is, as Dahl demonstrates that appearances are deceptive. Despite being delightfully complex and never swerving from its course as a first-rate thriller, this book doesn’t serve too well as a standalone, and new readers will feel the deficit of not having read the first book. If you already have enjoyed Watching You, this follow-up is definitely recommended. For fans of Scandinavian crime fiction, grim atmosphere and investigative procedurals, it will be more rewarding to start at the beginning.
]]> <![CDATA[The Girl Without Skin (Grønland - Greenland #1)]]> 40553515 They were near the edge of the glacier. The sea beneath the helicopter was dense with pack ice. In front of them, the endless whiteness stretched as far as the light could reach. It hurt his eyes. Millions of white crystals. Except in one place. One spot. Right where the mummified Norseman had been found and Aqqalu had kept watch. There, the ice was glossy red.

When a mummified Viking corpse is discovered in a crevasse out on the edge of an ice sheet, journalist Matthew Cave is sent to cover the story. The next day the mummy is gone, and the body of the policeman who was keeping watch is found naked and flayed—exactly like the victims in a gruesome series of murders that terrified the remote town of Nuuk in the 1970s.

As Matt investigates, he is shocked by the deprivation and brutal violence the locals take for granted. Unable to trust the police, he begins to suspect a cover-up. It’s only when he meets a young Inuit woman, Tupaarnaq, convicted of killing her parents and two small sisters, that Matt starts to realise how deep this story goes—and how much danger he is in.]]> 356 Mads Peder Nordbo 1925603830 Jeremy 5
As the newspaper adjusts to this nightmarish setback by sitting on both stories, the frustrated Matthew is referred to a cold case from 1973. Four men were murdered and flayed in similar fashion. During his research into the unsolved case, he comes into the possession of the personal notebook of Jakob Peterson, a Danish expat on the local police force who investigated the case. The diary ends abruptly because Jakob himself vanished without a trace, but the contents point to a systemic cover-up of child abuse and governmental wrongdoing whose participants still thrive today, particularly local politician Lyberth. As Matthew digs into the diary, we are taken back into Jakob’s timeline in the 1970s and his investigation of child abuse, murder and institutional corruption.

Norbo shuttles us smoothly between the past and present, between Matthew’s persistent investigation and Jakob’s dogged, desperate effort to protect Paneeraq, a young girl whose abusive father is flayed along with three other men suspected of incest. Both cases smell of a cover-up from the higher echelons of government, and are presented with a masterful blend of cultural atmosphere and journo-investigative procedure incorporated into suspenseful thriller. The native belief in spirits hovers ever in the background, where past and present blend in Nordbo’s beautiful descriptions of ice and fog.

As Matthew and Jakob wade precariously through corrupt officials to identify the unknown killer, we learn the mummified corpse in the glacier is a more recent murder and not a true Viking, but the best is yet to come. Matthew crosses paths with the moody and dazzlingly exotic Tupaarnaq, a rebellious, tattooed seal hunter now released from jail after 12 years for shooting to death her mother and sister and flaying her father like a seal, making Tupaarnaq a prime suspect for the current murder. The anti-social Tupaarnaq claims innocence in both cases, but she knows more than she’s saying, so Matthew must gain her trust if he is to get to the bottom of the connected mysteries.

As we pass between stories we learn from Jakob’s notebook that he is a detective with professional integrity and the soul of a poet. A Danish transplant in Nuuk during the 1970s when it was called Fordsbro and the surrounding towns all have Danish names, he has an uphill battle to gain the trust of the Greenlanders, hindered at every turn by a corrupt chief who tries to quash his investigation. As he harbours a young girl named Paneeraq from her father’s sexual abuse, her father becomes the last victim, and Jakob finds himself being framed for the murders. While being openly threatened by local politician Lyberth to cease his investigation, a mysterious other party is leaving film reels in his flat that reveal the gradual torture of a missing girl. Jakob finds he can only trust his partner Karlo, but we know from the disturbing pages of his diary that dark forces beyond his control are winning the day.

Fans of Scandinavian crime fiction will find this a thoroughly atmospheric, melancholy and ultra-graphic thriller that casts a socially critical eye � attributes that are all the calling cards of Nordic noir. But unlike so many books now glutting the market, The Girl Without Skin doesn’t feel tendentious or derivative, despite its own tattooed star Tupaarnaq, who seems to be evoking Stieg Larsson’s infamous Lisbeth Salander from the iconic Millennium series. For folks whose introduction to Nordic noir was The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or even Peter Hoeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, this book is just as captivating with its endearing characters Matthew and Tupaarnaq, among other memorable characters.

Charlotte Barslund’s translation, clear as Arctic ice, is so fine you won’t be aware it wasn’t written in English. Fortunately for us, this book is the beginning of his Greenland series which will be followed by Cold Angst.]]> 3.66 2017 The Girl Without Skin (Grønland - Greenland #1)
author: Mads Peder Nordbo
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2019/01/06
date added: 2019/01/06
shelves:
review:
Journalist Matthew Cave has returned to Greenland, the country of his birth, after a tragedy in Denmark claimed his wife and unborn child. There are few diversions for the guilt-ridden reporter in the small town of Nuuk, so when a mummified corpse is discovered in a glacial crag, apparently a genuine Viking body, it looks like the scoop of the century for Matthew and his local newspaper. While he waits for confirmation from an archaeological team, someone steals his pictures of the scene. Soon after, the policeman guarding the corpse is himself is murdered, his corpse gutted and flayed in a manner similar to the mummy, which itself has vanished.

As the newspaper adjusts to this nightmarish setback by sitting on both stories, the frustrated Matthew is referred to a cold case from 1973. Four men were murdered and flayed in similar fashion. During his research into the unsolved case, he comes into the possession of the personal notebook of Jakob Peterson, a Danish expat on the local police force who investigated the case. The diary ends abruptly because Jakob himself vanished without a trace, but the contents point to a systemic cover-up of child abuse and governmental wrongdoing whose participants still thrive today, particularly local politician Lyberth. As Matthew digs into the diary, we are taken back into Jakob’s timeline in the 1970s and his investigation of child abuse, murder and institutional corruption.

Norbo shuttles us smoothly between the past and present, between Matthew’s persistent investigation and Jakob’s dogged, desperate effort to protect Paneeraq, a young girl whose abusive father is flayed along with three other men suspected of incest. Both cases smell of a cover-up from the higher echelons of government, and are presented with a masterful blend of cultural atmosphere and journo-investigative procedure incorporated into suspenseful thriller. The native belief in spirits hovers ever in the background, where past and present blend in Nordbo’s beautiful descriptions of ice and fog.

As Matthew and Jakob wade precariously through corrupt officials to identify the unknown killer, we learn the mummified corpse in the glacier is a more recent murder and not a true Viking, but the best is yet to come. Matthew crosses paths with the moody and dazzlingly exotic Tupaarnaq, a rebellious, tattooed seal hunter now released from jail after 12 years for shooting to death her mother and sister and flaying her father like a seal, making Tupaarnaq a prime suspect for the current murder. The anti-social Tupaarnaq claims innocence in both cases, but she knows more than she’s saying, so Matthew must gain her trust if he is to get to the bottom of the connected mysteries.

As we pass between stories we learn from Jakob’s notebook that he is a detective with professional integrity and the soul of a poet. A Danish transplant in Nuuk during the 1970s when it was called Fordsbro and the surrounding towns all have Danish names, he has an uphill battle to gain the trust of the Greenlanders, hindered at every turn by a corrupt chief who tries to quash his investigation. As he harbours a young girl named Paneeraq from her father’s sexual abuse, her father becomes the last victim, and Jakob finds himself being framed for the murders. While being openly threatened by local politician Lyberth to cease his investigation, a mysterious other party is leaving film reels in his flat that reveal the gradual torture of a missing girl. Jakob finds he can only trust his partner Karlo, but we know from the disturbing pages of his diary that dark forces beyond his control are winning the day.

Fans of Scandinavian crime fiction will find this a thoroughly atmospheric, melancholy and ultra-graphic thriller that casts a socially critical eye � attributes that are all the calling cards of Nordic noir. But unlike so many books now glutting the market, The Girl Without Skin doesn’t feel tendentious or derivative, despite its own tattooed star Tupaarnaq, who seems to be evoking Stieg Larsson’s infamous Lisbeth Salander from the iconic Millennium series. For folks whose introduction to Nordic noir was The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or even Peter Hoeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, this book is just as captivating with its endearing characters Matthew and Tupaarnaq, among other memorable characters.

Charlotte Barslund’s translation, clear as Arctic ice, is so fine you won’t be aware it wasn’t written in English. Fortunately for us, this book is the beginning of his Greenland series which will be followed by Cold Angst.
]]> Cleaver 893444
Weeks later, snowed in at five thousand feet, harangued by voices from the past and humiliated by his inability to understand the Tyrolese peasants he relies on for food and whisky, Cleaver discovers that there is nowhere so noisy and so dangerous as the solitary mind.]]> Tim Parks 0099481391 Jeremy 3 3.35 Cleaver
author: Tim Parks
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.35
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2009/06/11
date added: 2018/12/30
shelves:
review:

]]> Big Sister: Varg Veum 37832208 Varg Veum receives a surprise visit in his office. A woman introduces herself as his half-sister, and she has a job for him. Her god-daughter, a 19-year-old trainee nurse from Haugesund, moved from her bedsit in Bergen two weeks ago. Since then no one has heard anything from her. She didn't leave an address. She doesn't answer her phone. And the police refuse to take her case seriously.
Veum’s investigation uncovers a series of carefully covered-up crimes and pent-up hatreds, and the trail leads to a gang of extreme bikers on the hunt for a group of people whose dark deeds are hidden by the anonymity of the Internet. And then things get personal�
Chilling, shocking and exceptionally gripping, Big Sister reaffirms Gunnar Staalesen as one of the world’s foremost thriller writers.

]]> 322 Gunnar Staalesen 191237420X Jeremy 5
Varg Veum, a private eye operating out of the Norwegian town of Bergen, can’t seem to catch a break. He compulsively accepts cases that pay little or nothing but which he solves nevertheless, often at great personal sacrifice. Body and soul.
When a stranger strolls into his improvised office embedded in a hotel, she is no exception to this pattern. She has even less to offer Veum, except for one startling fact � his new client turns out to be his long lost half-sister Norma. Her appeal to Veum, to help her find her god-daughter Emma, a young woman who has vanished, opens up a whole new world to him. Suddenly, there is a new branch to his family, and his own history is revealed to him in ways that will change his life forever.

When he starts digging, the detective soon discovers that before she disappeared Emma had hunted down her biological father, Robert Høie Hansen, who adamantly refused to receive her into his new home and family. Veum finds out Robert left his first wife and two-year-old Emma 28 years earlier after being accused of the rape of a girl named Veslemøy Valaker. He was never charged. Is there a connection between Emma’s disappearance and her villainous father who was kicked out of his old life and has now kicked Emma out of his new one? Or is there something about Robert’s new wife Liv and son Andreas, who have their own take on the day Emma came knocking?

The father is in no mood to talk, so Veum interviews Emma’s best friend Åsa Lavik by telephone as she is studying in Germany. Åsa is a kindred spirit who is also fatherless and damaged. But the most suspicious interviewees may be Emma’s roommates, Helga and Karin, as well as their creepy landlord. All seem to know more than they’re saying.

Veum investigates the old rape case too but finds it impossible to interview the victim Veslemøy Valaker, and is left angry at the damage done to the poor soul. Veslemøy was so ravaged by the attack that she remains borderline catatonic and wary of any man who approaches. Veum’s queries lead him to the biker gang that Robert Høie Hansen currently belongs to and a deadly show-down. Fans of Varg Veum will be used to seeing the stoic PI outnumbered and just barely able survive armed only with his signature deadpan humour. Whether the old case and new one are linked or not, our undeterred survivor is compelled to solve the rape case too and bring some justice to poor Veslemøy.

Finally, midway through the novel, a break comes in the case pointing to an online suicide cult. Did Emma simply commit suicide after her father’s rejection, or is it an elaborate set-up for a homicide? And who is Amos, the online mentor who coordinates the deaths? The conjunction of the two investigations comes to a violent head and it will take two more homicides before you learn who is guilty. All your assumptions will be flipped when the truth emerges.

Staalesen’s Chandler-esque first-person voice works well to create a dramatic interplay between Varg’s investigative musings and his own fate, emphasised by Norway’s soul-reflecting emotive scenery, firmly in the tradition of Nordic noir. But the narrative tension Staalesen creates is achieved by not disclosing Veum’s true suspicions until the moment he confronts the guilty with his theory.

A missing girl. A tragic rape. Unknown fathers. Big sisters. A biker gang. An Internet cult. In the practiced hands of master storyteller Staalesen, these complex plot threads are woven together with astonishing finesse. You will be just as enthralled by the unbearably tragic case of Veslemøy as the search for the missing Emma, not to mention Veum’s origins in the vivid 1950s Bergen jazz scene.

Fans of Varg Veum, who have been following the series of books featuring the somber Norwegian PI will not be disappointed. Readers of Nordic noir who enjoy the darker travails of Scandinavian cops Erlendur, Harry Hole, or Konrad Sejer, will find much to enjoy in Varg Veum. The godfather of Nordic noir is in top form with an action-packed and dramatic story whose culmination blends the tragedy of two funerals tinged with tenacious hope of a family reunion that will leave you choked up and wanting more.]]> 4.06 2016 Big Sister: Varg Veum
author: Gunnar Staalesen
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2018/07/23
shelves:
review:
Originally posted on

Varg Veum, a private eye operating out of the Norwegian town of Bergen, can’t seem to catch a break. He compulsively accepts cases that pay little or nothing but which he solves nevertheless, often at great personal sacrifice. Body and soul.
When a stranger strolls into his improvised office embedded in a hotel, she is no exception to this pattern. She has even less to offer Veum, except for one startling fact � his new client turns out to be his long lost half-sister Norma. Her appeal to Veum, to help her find her god-daughter Emma, a young woman who has vanished, opens up a whole new world to him. Suddenly, there is a new branch to his family, and his own history is revealed to him in ways that will change his life forever.

When he starts digging, the detective soon discovers that before she disappeared Emma had hunted down her biological father, Robert Høie Hansen, who adamantly refused to receive her into his new home and family. Veum finds out Robert left his first wife and two-year-old Emma 28 years earlier after being accused of the rape of a girl named Veslemøy Valaker. He was never charged. Is there a connection between Emma’s disappearance and her villainous father who was kicked out of his old life and has now kicked Emma out of his new one? Or is there something about Robert’s new wife Liv and son Andreas, who have their own take on the day Emma came knocking?

The father is in no mood to talk, so Veum interviews Emma’s best friend Åsa Lavik by telephone as she is studying in Germany. Åsa is a kindred spirit who is also fatherless and damaged. But the most suspicious interviewees may be Emma’s roommates, Helga and Karin, as well as their creepy landlord. All seem to know more than they’re saying.

Veum investigates the old rape case too but finds it impossible to interview the victim Veslemøy Valaker, and is left angry at the damage done to the poor soul. Veslemøy was so ravaged by the attack that she remains borderline catatonic and wary of any man who approaches. Veum’s queries lead him to the biker gang that Robert Høie Hansen currently belongs to and a deadly show-down. Fans of Varg Veum will be used to seeing the stoic PI outnumbered and just barely able survive armed only with his signature deadpan humour. Whether the old case and new one are linked or not, our undeterred survivor is compelled to solve the rape case too and bring some justice to poor Veslemøy.

Finally, midway through the novel, a break comes in the case pointing to an online suicide cult. Did Emma simply commit suicide after her father’s rejection, or is it an elaborate set-up for a homicide? And who is Amos, the online mentor who coordinates the deaths? The conjunction of the two investigations comes to a violent head and it will take two more homicides before you learn who is guilty. All your assumptions will be flipped when the truth emerges.

Staalesen’s Chandler-esque first-person voice works well to create a dramatic interplay between Varg’s investigative musings and his own fate, emphasised by Norway’s soul-reflecting emotive scenery, firmly in the tradition of Nordic noir. But the narrative tension Staalesen creates is achieved by not disclosing Veum’s true suspicions until the moment he confronts the guilty with his theory.

A missing girl. A tragic rape. Unknown fathers. Big sisters. A biker gang. An Internet cult. In the practiced hands of master storyteller Staalesen, these complex plot threads are woven together with astonishing finesse. You will be just as enthralled by the unbearably tragic case of Veslemøy as the search for the missing Emma, not to mention Veum’s origins in the vivid 1950s Bergen jazz scene.

Fans of Varg Veum, who have been following the series of books featuring the somber Norwegian PI will not be disappointed. Readers of Nordic noir who enjoy the darker travails of Scandinavian cops Erlendur, Harry Hole, or Konrad Sejer, will find much to enjoy in Varg Veum. The godfather of Nordic noir is in top form with an action-packed and dramatic story whose culmination blends the tragedy of two funerals tinged with tenacious hope of a family reunion that will leave you choked up and wanting more.
]]> <![CDATA[The Dying Detective (Jarnebring & Johansson, #8)]]> 24737082
In the hospital, a chance encounter with a neurologist provides an important piece of information about a 25-year-old murder investigation and alerts Lars Martin Johansson's irrepressible police instincts. The period for prosecution expired just weeks earlier and that isn't the only limitation. Lars Martin Johansson is determined to solve the atrocious crime � from his deathbed.

The inimitable style, distinct voice and dark humour of Leif GW Persson, along with the fascinating exploration of a long-cold murder case, serves to make The Dying Detective a true masterpiece of the genre.]]> 432 Leif G.W. Persson 0857520881 Jeremy 5
As retired detective Lars Martin Johansson, a living legend in the Swedish National Police Force, approaches his favourite hot dog kiosk in Stockholm, he hasn’t a care in the world except to savour his favorite lunch ritual. Will it be Yugoslavian bratwurst, Zigeuner schnitzel, or elk sausage? The revered detective is surrounded by admirers as he ponders his choices, all delicious but none too healthy. Unfortunately, the fat and happy ex-cop suffers a massive stroke before his first bite. When Lars wakes up, he is in the neurology ward with a doctor leaning over him.

Besides a right arm rendered useless by the stroke, Lars also learns he has a bad heart and must reform his eating habits before he kills himself. Even his adorable wife Pia can’t cheer him up after that news. Barely on the mend, he is definitely not in the mood for the next development. His doctor, Ulrika Stenholm, begs Lars to help solve a cold case from 1986 � the rape and murder of nine-year old Yasmine Uryegan. The doctor believes she has new information and that only Lars Martin Johansson, the detective who sees around corners, can solve it. Ulrika conveys the story of her father, the priest who died knowing the identity of the child killer via a confessional statement, but whose identity he never revealed. The case hinges on two evidential clues: a feather and a hair clip.

True to his nature, the dogged detective can’t resist the case and starts gathering information while still in hospital. The attendant coroner, still on the force, remembers it well. He outlines the psychological profile of the killer, sardonically referring to him as the sensitive brand of paedophile who is characterised by friendliness, fastidiousness, deep narcissism, and being very dangerous. In fact, the failed investigation has stuck in the craw of Lars� former colleagues, not just because it was mishandled in every way by a notoriously mediocre, lazy and selfish chief. Had it been his case, Lars would have solved it in short order. And solve it he does.

Before you think you see a spoiler coming, understand that the unique take of this book is that it is not a whodunit, as Lars hones in on the prime suspect early on. The main thrust of the plot is just what he plans to do with the information when there is no hope of the murderer being charged. The statute of limitations applies to the crime.

Working mostly as an armchair detective, Lars ventures out into the field on crutches when needed, pushing away thoughts of his own mortality as he stalks his prey. He deputises an oddball crew of people to help him, recruited gradually as the story unfolds. There’s Mina, his tattooed Goth caregiver; Vladimir, muscle-bound yet gentle helper with the tragic past; and his brother-in-law Alf, a tax officer who leaves no record un-turned. Additional back-up is supplied by ex-partner Bo Jarnebring and Lars� big brother Evert. There is no shortage of former co-workers who lend their support too, some cheering him on and others offering to kill the perpetrator themselves.

In Leif GW Persson’s carefully paced thriller, the tension instilled into the narrative comes not from identifying the murderer so much as what form of justice can be brought to bear on the guilty who are outside the reach of the penal system. The last quarter of the book deals with Lars� strategy to confront the child killer and extract a confession. But since this monster can’t be tried for the crime, who should serve as judge, jury and executioner?

Although relatively few of his books are in translation, Persson, along with Swedish contemporaries Sjowall and Wahloo and Henning Mankell, has been at the heart of the Nordic noir literary movement which deals in the dark doings lurking just beneath the idyllic veneer of social democratic society. The Dying Detective is actually the eighth part of a series that began in 1978 featuring the detectives Jarnebring & Johansson, the last three all relating to the shocking unsolved murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme. Even this book touches on the subject as the murder of the girl took place before Swedish law lifted the statute of limitations following Palme’s assassination.

With its fascinating combination of dark humour, sentimentality and procedural detail, the book’s somber ending and the stoical outlook of its characters makes The Dying Detective a must-read for fans of Nordic noir. Winner of the 2016 Glass Key Award, the book is a landmark event in Scandinavian crime fiction. Fans of Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Dept Q series� brand of endearingly imperfect but dedicated heroes will find much to enjoy in this title.]]> 4.06 2010 The Dying Detective (Jarnebring & Johansson, #8)
author: Leif G.W. Persson
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2017/11/24
shelves:
review:
Originally posted on

As retired detective Lars Martin Johansson, a living legend in the Swedish National Police Force, approaches his favourite hot dog kiosk in Stockholm, he hasn’t a care in the world except to savour his favorite lunch ritual. Will it be Yugoslavian bratwurst, Zigeuner schnitzel, or elk sausage? The revered detective is surrounded by admirers as he ponders his choices, all delicious but none too healthy. Unfortunately, the fat and happy ex-cop suffers a massive stroke before his first bite. When Lars wakes up, he is in the neurology ward with a doctor leaning over him.

Besides a right arm rendered useless by the stroke, Lars also learns he has a bad heart and must reform his eating habits before he kills himself. Even his adorable wife Pia can’t cheer him up after that news. Barely on the mend, he is definitely not in the mood for the next development. His doctor, Ulrika Stenholm, begs Lars to help solve a cold case from 1986 � the rape and murder of nine-year old Yasmine Uryegan. The doctor believes she has new information and that only Lars Martin Johansson, the detective who sees around corners, can solve it. Ulrika conveys the story of her father, the priest who died knowing the identity of the child killer via a confessional statement, but whose identity he never revealed. The case hinges on two evidential clues: a feather and a hair clip.

True to his nature, the dogged detective can’t resist the case and starts gathering information while still in hospital. The attendant coroner, still on the force, remembers it well. He outlines the psychological profile of the killer, sardonically referring to him as the sensitive brand of paedophile who is characterised by friendliness, fastidiousness, deep narcissism, and being very dangerous. In fact, the failed investigation has stuck in the craw of Lars� former colleagues, not just because it was mishandled in every way by a notoriously mediocre, lazy and selfish chief. Had it been his case, Lars would have solved it in short order. And solve it he does.

Before you think you see a spoiler coming, understand that the unique take of this book is that it is not a whodunit, as Lars hones in on the prime suspect early on. The main thrust of the plot is just what he plans to do with the information when there is no hope of the murderer being charged. The statute of limitations applies to the crime.

Working mostly as an armchair detective, Lars ventures out into the field on crutches when needed, pushing away thoughts of his own mortality as he stalks his prey. He deputises an oddball crew of people to help him, recruited gradually as the story unfolds. There’s Mina, his tattooed Goth caregiver; Vladimir, muscle-bound yet gentle helper with the tragic past; and his brother-in-law Alf, a tax officer who leaves no record un-turned. Additional back-up is supplied by ex-partner Bo Jarnebring and Lars� big brother Evert. There is no shortage of former co-workers who lend their support too, some cheering him on and others offering to kill the perpetrator themselves.

In Leif GW Persson’s carefully paced thriller, the tension instilled into the narrative comes not from identifying the murderer so much as what form of justice can be brought to bear on the guilty who are outside the reach of the penal system. The last quarter of the book deals with Lars� strategy to confront the child killer and extract a confession. But since this monster can’t be tried for the crime, who should serve as judge, jury and executioner?

Although relatively few of his books are in translation, Persson, along with Swedish contemporaries Sjowall and Wahloo and Henning Mankell, has been at the heart of the Nordic noir literary movement which deals in the dark doings lurking just beneath the idyllic veneer of social democratic society. The Dying Detective is actually the eighth part of a series that began in 1978 featuring the detectives Jarnebring & Johansson, the last three all relating to the shocking unsolved murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme. Even this book touches on the subject as the murder of the girl took place before Swedish law lifted the statute of limitations following Palme’s assassination.

With its fascinating combination of dark humour, sentimentality and procedural detail, the book’s somber ending and the stoical outlook of its characters makes The Dying Detective a must-read for fans of Nordic noir. Winner of the 2016 Glass Key Award, the book is a landmark event in Scandinavian crime fiction. Fans of Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Dept Q series� brand of endearingly imperfect but dedicated heroes will find much to enjoy in this title.
]]> Quarry's Deal 25703997 0 Max Allan Collins 1511310456 Jeremy 3
Quarry, a former marine sniper turned hitman, is a unique character in pulp fiction. In Quarry’s Deal, the third book of the series, our hero has changed career track and now offers his protection to targets culled from a hit list that he lifted from a dead mob broker. In his new role as a hitman who takes out hitmen, Quarry faces the immediate challenge of locating Frank Tree, a successful casino owner whose name is on that list. He learns that the businessman is keeping a low profile and that the assassin assigned to him is actually a woman who is as beautiful as she is deadly. The story is told through Quarry’s perspective, so we learn what calculations come into play as he tries to turn the tables on the contracted hit job. He’s never killed a woman, but this time he may have to.

Quarry stakes out the mysterious blonde, named Lu, where she’s staying at a swinging singles apartment complex in Florida. His plan is to keep tabs on her and somehow reach out to the casino owner without her knowing. Lu remains mysterious, even as Quarry slowly develops a relationship with her. Eventually he follows her openly, all the way to rural Iowa. Frank Tree, has relocated to this empty state and set up a combination dinner theatre and gambling den in a small town, so he can bond with his troubled son and keep an eye on him. Posing as an out-of-work salesman, Quarry is finally able to approach the endangered businessman with his plan. As he checks out Tree’s joint and interacts with its employees (who include the assassin Lu), he suspects she is not working alone and that maybe he himself is being played in a larger game.

When the hit seems immanent, Quarry must get to Tree before he gets whacked, and get paid handsomely in the process, provided he isn’t killed. Collins does a good job of maintaining a dangerous vibe of tension. Even as the countdown to the hit begins, Quarry can’t quite let go of the alluring hit-babe whose philosophising and wry humour make her a kindred spirit he is reluctant to kill.

Collins� first-person narrative is punctuated by Quarry’s dry characterisations of the bimbos and thugs he deals with as he strategises and negotiates his way around assassin and mark. Quarry’s Deal carries an archaic hardboiled sensibility of violence and misogyny, and on the surface is a diverting throw-back to the classic pulps. Where it misfires is the introduction of subplots involving secondary characters that seem cobbled together as an afterthought and which make the overall story less cohesive. While his characters are two-dimensional, Collins is nonetheless a breezy and entertaining read. If you’re in the mood for a light version of Mack Bolan meets Donald Westlake, Quarry’s Deal comes recommended for your beach outing or the morning commute.

]]> 3.92 1976 Quarry's Deal
author: Max Allan Collins
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1976
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2017/11/21
shelves:
review:
Original review on , based on print edition

Quarry, a former marine sniper turned hitman, is a unique character in pulp fiction. In Quarry’s Deal, the third book of the series, our hero has changed career track and now offers his protection to targets culled from a hit list that he lifted from a dead mob broker. In his new role as a hitman who takes out hitmen, Quarry faces the immediate challenge of locating Frank Tree, a successful casino owner whose name is on that list. He learns that the businessman is keeping a low profile and that the assassin assigned to him is actually a woman who is as beautiful as she is deadly. The story is told through Quarry’s perspective, so we learn what calculations come into play as he tries to turn the tables on the contracted hit job. He’s never killed a woman, but this time he may have to.

Quarry stakes out the mysterious blonde, named Lu, where she’s staying at a swinging singles apartment complex in Florida. His plan is to keep tabs on her and somehow reach out to the casino owner without her knowing. Lu remains mysterious, even as Quarry slowly develops a relationship with her. Eventually he follows her openly, all the way to rural Iowa. Frank Tree, has relocated to this empty state and set up a combination dinner theatre and gambling den in a small town, so he can bond with his troubled son and keep an eye on him. Posing as an out-of-work salesman, Quarry is finally able to approach the endangered businessman with his plan. As he checks out Tree’s joint and interacts with its employees (who include the assassin Lu), he suspects she is not working alone and that maybe he himself is being played in a larger game.

When the hit seems immanent, Quarry must get to Tree before he gets whacked, and get paid handsomely in the process, provided he isn’t killed. Collins does a good job of maintaining a dangerous vibe of tension. Even as the countdown to the hit begins, Quarry can’t quite let go of the alluring hit-babe whose philosophising and wry humour make her a kindred spirit he is reluctant to kill.

Collins� first-person narrative is punctuated by Quarry’s dry characterisations of the bimbos and thugs he deals with as he strategises and negotiates his way around assassin and mark. Quarry’s Deal carries an archaic hardboiled sensibility of violence and misogyny, and on the surface is a diverting throw-back to the classic pulps. Where it misfires is the introduction of subplots involving secondary characters that seem cobbled together as an afterthought and which make the overall story less cohesive. While his characters are two-dimensional, Collins is nonetheless a breezy and entertaining read. If you’re in the mood for a light version of Mack Bolan meets Donald Westlake, Quarry’s Deal comes recommended for your beach outing or the morning commute.


]]> <![CDATA[Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness]]> 32791963
In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how subjective experience crept into being—how nature became aware of itself. As Godfrey-Smith stresses, it is a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind’s fitful development, Godfrey-Smith shows how unruly clumps of seaborne cells began living together and became capable of sensing, acting, and signaling. As these primitive organisms became more entangled with others, they grew more complicated. The first nervous systems evolved, probably in ancient relatives of jellyfish; later on, the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous mollusks, abandoned their shells and rose above the ocean floor, searching for prey and acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so. Taking an independent route, mammals and birds later began their own evolutionary journeys.

But what kind of intelligence do cephalopods possess? Drawing on the latest scientific research and his own scuba-diving adventures, Godfrey-Smith probes the many mysteries that surround the lineage. How did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? What is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually “think for themselves�? What happens when some octopuses abandon their hermit-like ways and congregate, as they do in a unique location off the coast of Australia?

By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots and comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind—and on our own.]]> 273 Peter Godfrey-Smith Jeremy 0 to-read 4.00 2016 Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness
author: Peter Godfrey-Smith
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/11/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Macbeth (Hogarth Shakespeare) 35792226
Førstebetjentene Macbeth og Duff, tidligere bestevenner fra barnehjemmet de vokste opp på, har begge markert seg i kampen mot byens to rivaliserende narkotikabander. Nå slåss de om samme høyere stilling i politiet. Imens legger Lady, byens mektige kasinoeier, ambisiøse og morderiske planer for seg og elskeren sin, Macbeth.]]> 446 Jo Nesbø 0553419056 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.54 2018 Macbeth (Hogarth Shakespeare)
author: Jo Nesbø
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Astrophysics for People in a Hurry]]> 32191710
But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.]]> 223 Neil deGrasse Tyson 0393609391 Jeremy 0 to-read 4.07 2017 Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
author: Neil deGrasse Tyson
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Children of Time (Children of Time, #1)]]> 25499718
WHO WILL INHERIT THIS NEW EARTH?

The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age—a world terraformed and prepared for human life.

But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare.

Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?]]> 608 Adrian Tchaikovsky 1447273281 Jeremy 3 4.29 2015 Children of Time (Children of Time, #1)
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2017/10/06
date added: 2017/10/06
shelves:
review:

]]> Her Body and Other Parties 34356276 9 Carmen Maria Machado 1681686880 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.40 2017 Her Body and Other Parties
author: Carmen Maria Machado
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Snare (Reykjavik Noir trilogy)]]> 35960965
***Longlisted for the CWA International Dagger***

‘Stylist, taut and compelling’� Daily Express

â€� Snare Ìýwill ensnare you’Ì� Marie Claire

‘A taut, gritty, thoroughly absorbing journey into Reykjavik’s underworld’� Booklist

–â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä�

After a messy divorce, young mother Sonia is struggling to provide for herself and keep custody of her son. With her back to the wall, she resorts to smuggling cocaine into Iceland, and finds herself caught up in a ruthless criminal world.

As she desperately looks for a way out of trouble, she must pit her wits against her nemesis, Bragi, a customs officer, whose years of experience frustrate her new and evermore daring strategies. Things become even more complicated when Sonia embarks on a relationship with a woman, Agla. Once a high-level bank executive, Agla is currently being prosecuted in the aftermath of the Icelandic financial crash.

Set in a Reykjavík still covered in the dust of the Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruption, and with a dark, fast-paced and chilling plot and intriguing characters,Ìý Snare Ìýis an outstandingly original and sexy Nordic crime thriller, from one of the most exciting new names in crime fiction.

–â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“â¶Ä“–––â€�

'A tense thriller with a highly unusual plot and interesting characters'Ìý The Times

‘Tense, edgy and delivering more than a few unexpected twists and turns’� Sunday Times

'Sharp shocks of chapters hit with increasing energy ... a towering powerhouse of read and I gobbled it up in one intense sitting’� LoveReading

‘The intricate plot is breathtakingly original, with many twists and turns you never see coming. Thriller of the year’� New York Journal of Books

'This first novel of a planned trilogy is stylish, taut and compelling and a film adaptation is in the pipeline. With characters you can’t help sympathising with against your better judgement, Sigurdardottir takes the reader on a breathtaking ride’� Daily Express

‘Lilja Sigurdardottir delivers a diabolically efficient thriller with an ultrarealistic plot � We cannot wait for Sonja’s next adventure’� L’Express

‘A smart, ambitious, and hugely satisfying thriller. Striking in its originality and written with all the style and poise of an old hand. Lilja is destined for Scandi super stardom’� Eva Dolan

‘For a small island, Iceland produces some extraordinary writers, and Lilja is one of the best.Ìý Snare Ìýis an enthralling tale of love and crime that stays with you long after you have turned the last page’Ì� Michael Ridpath

‘Zips along, with tension building and building � thoroughly recommended’� James Oswald

‘Crisp, assured and nail-bitingly tense,Ìý Snare Ìýis an exceptional read, cementing Lilja’s place as one of Iceland’s most outstanding crime writers’Ì� Yrsa Sigurdardottir

‘Clear your diary. As soon as you begin readingÌý Snare , you won’t be able to stop until the final page’Ì� Michael Wood

â€� Snare Ìýis a great read and the finale is both shocking and unexpected â€� a Wizard-of-Oz ending, without the laughs. Terrific and original stuff'Ìý European Literature Network]]> 229 Lilja Sigurðardóttir 1910633801 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.75 2015 Snare (Reykjavik Noir trilogy)
author: Lilja Sigurðardóttir
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Big Sleep (Philip Marlowe, #1)]]> 2052
Librarian's note: this is an alternate cover edition.]]> 231 Raymond Chandler 0394758285 Jeremy 5
It’s impossible to imagine a proper historical survey of noir fiction without reference to Philip Marlowe, the iconic character created by Raymond Chandler in his ground-breaking 1939 debut novel The Big Sleep. Marlowe is the prototypical hardboiled private eye. Street-smart and tough, he reads people and situations at a glance and acts with cold composure and suave calculation. The hard-drinking, cigarette-smoking loner is a product of the deadpan detective characters and colloquial street slang style born in the pages of the 1920s pulp magazine Black Mask, where Chandler wrote alongside Dashiell Hammett and James Cain. After the big success of The Big Sleep, the Marlowe adventures continued for six more books, including Farewell, My Lovely.

Although forged from Black Mask’s tough-guy mold, Chandler’s Marlowe is a far cry from Hammett’s iconic blonde satan Sam Spade, who wades indifferently through the mean streets of crime and carnage. Marlowe is tempered by distinct morals. In the steamy, corrupt heart of 1930s Los Angeles, he is a shining knight striving to do the right thing. He is synonymous with the dark sensibility that thrived in Black Mask and was canonised forever in the popular imagination by Humphrey Bogart on film, but Marlowe is a bit more evolved. The contemplative dick plays chess, listens to classical music, and is comfortable with this feminine side. A fastidious dresser, Marlowe’s discerning eye extends to fashion, architecture and interior design. He is the very model of the metrosexual detective � ahead of his time � in the burgeoning urban sprawl of LA.

As The Big Sleep opens, Marlowe describes his new client’s mansion in covetous detail. Guy de Brisay Sternwood is a decrepit general whose two wicked daughters have too much time on their hands and find trouble easily. The youngest and most trouble is Carmen Sternwood, who insinuates herself into the criminal underworld and is soon blackmailed. Older and smarter Vivian is also a piece of work. Her husband Rusty Regan ran off despite his cushy life. The general was fond of the tough Irishman, who helped keep the Sternwood girls in check. Although Marlowe is hired to fix the Carmen problem, the mystery of Rusty’s disappearance is ever looming in the background.

Following up on a lead, Marlowe enters the residence of smutty book dealer Arthur Geiger and finds his dead body, a drugged, naked Carmen Sternwood and the remains of a naughty photo shoot, minus the pictures. Marlowe soon meets a lot more colourful crooks and dames, including Eddie Mars, Joe Brody, and Agnes Lowzier, as he attempts to recover the incriminating photographs and finish the job. Three bodies later, Marlowe has had several run-ins with both Sternwood girls, and although sick to death of them, he is far from done.

Chandler’s gift is creating living characters using descriptive prose that immerses you into the hazy drama of Los Angeles and its underworld denizens, sleazy hotels and bars, all rendered as vividly as a Technicolor movie. Colloquial language and trenchant similes describe people, guns and streets in a manner both amusing and profound. Chandler’s prose settles so deeply into your consciousness that you feel you’re there with Marlowe as he spars with criminals and molls, hiding behind tropical bushes, or careening down the LA’s rainy boulevards. The street-smart private eye is not always in control, however, in a scene where his car breaks down and he falls into the hands of dangerous criminal Canino, as “Fate stage-managed the whole thing.�

Chander’s art of storytelling follows certain principles laid out in a 1944 article for the magazine The Atlantic Monthly, which later was re-worked as a 1950 essay of the same title, The Simple Art of Murder. In this now standard reference work, Chandler opines on the historical development of detective fiction, the influence of Dashiell Hammett, and the emphasis of character over plot. Soon after, this title was given to a collection of Philip Marlowe adventures, which were really re-worked earlier stories featuring the detectives Carmady and John Dalmas, the original incarnations which Chandler later cannibalised to form the character Philip Marlowe.

Marlowe’s metafictional detective agency
The Big Sleep is an important historical innovation in detective fiction, where noir breaks away from the genre’s low-brow status, pushing its boundaries into the larger world of literature. Chandler’s literary playfulness and emphasis on character over plot is evident in his advice to writers who get mired in plot: “When in doubt have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.�

Director Howard Hawks, while consulting with Humphrey Bogart during the filming of The Big Sleep, famously wired Chandler to ask him who actually killed one of its characters, to which Chandler responded that he didn’t know either.

For a writer ostensibly unconcerned with plot, the main plot of The Big Sleep’s hinges, at its halfway point, precisely on the act of storytelling. Marlowe has finished his assignment, but he’s still got a lot of explaining to do to the police. The official story needs to be told, truthful or not. In a marvelous meta-fictional moment, Marlowe, the district attorney and the police chief, like literary editors, gather and transform the first half of the book into a cover story for the press and thus protect the reputation of General Sternwood, a mutual friend of both the DA and Marlowe.

But Marlowe’s not the only one concocting stories. There’s an orgy of plotting by the characters in Big Sleep. Everyone’s got a front, a story designed to deceive or delay the truth. From Eddie Mars, the smooth-talking racketeer who smells opportunity, to Joe Brody, the impulsive blackmailer, to Eddie’s wife Mona, and especially the Sternwood sisters, who have the most to hide.

Marlowe feels compelled to act, as opposed to the knight depicted on a tapestry at the General’s mansion, who never quite reaches his damsel. On his own initiative Marlowe spends most of the General’s fat paycheck searching for the missing Rusty Regan. In the book’s dark second half, Marlowe himself becomes the story when he discovers the truth and must decide how to tell it to the old man: “Me, I was part of the nastiness now.�

A hardboiled legacy
Raymond Chandler, the poet laureate of noir, has been so influential it almost goes without saying that crime fiction and popular film culture owes its hardboiled image of the private eye to him. Chandler’s influence is seen in a whole generation of 20th century writers including Ross MacDonald, Walter Mosley, Robert B Parker (who himself finished Chandler’s last, uncompleted Marlowe book Poodle Springs), James Ellroy and Elmore Leonard, to name a few, an influence that continues well into the 21st century. Without Marlowe, it’s hard to imagine an Easy Rawlins or a Bosch.

Notable also as a screenwriter, Chandler penned the classics Double Indemnity, Blue Daliah and Strangers on a Train. But his greatest contribution may be the widespread use of first-person narration in film noir. Try imagining your favorite noir without the detective’s cynical, laconic voiceover. But if you really want to feel the Marlowe effect, open a random page of The Big Sleep and you’ll be drawn immediately to the dark and romantic milieu of 1930s LA with the urban knight Philip Marlowe as your world-weary, wise-cracking guide.]]> 3.96 1939 The Big Sleep (Philip Marlowe, #1)
author: Raymond Chandler
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1939
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2017/09/02
shelves:
review:
Originally published in

It’s impossible to imagine a proper historical survey of noir fiction without reference to Philip Marlowe, the iconic character created by Raymond Chandler in his ground-breaking 1939 debut novel The Big Sleep. Marlowe is the prototypical hardboiled private eye. Street-smart and tough, he reads people and situations at a glance and acts with cold composure and suave calculation. The hard-drinking, cigarette-smoking loner is a product of the deadpan detective characters and colloquial street slang style born in the pages of the 1920s pulp magazine Black Mask, where Chandler wrote alongside Dashiell Hammett and James Cain. After the big success of The Big Sleep, the Marlowe adventures continued for six more books, including Farewell, My Lovely.

Although forged from Black Mask’s tough-guy mold, Chandler’s Marlowe is a far cry from Hammett’s iconic blonde satan Sam Spade, who wades indifferently through the mean streets of crime and carnage. Marlowe is tempered by distinct morals. In the steamy, corrupt heart of 1930s Los Angeles, he is a shining knight striving to do the right thing. He is synonymous with the dark sensibility that thrived in Black Mask and was canonised forever in the popular imagination by Humphrey Bogart on film, but Marlowe is a bit more evolved. The contemplative dick plays chess, listens to classical music, and is comfortable with this feminine side. A fastidious dresser, Marlowe’s discerning eye extends to fashion, architecture and interior design. He is the very model of the metrosexual detective � ahead of his time � in the burgeoning urban sprawl of LA.

As The Big Sleep opens, Marlowe describes his new client’s mansion in covetous detail. Guy de Brisay Sternwood is a decrepit general whose two wicked daughters have too much time on their hands and find trouble easily. The youngest and most trouble is Carmen Sternwood, who insinuates herself into the criminal underworld and is soon blackmailed. Older and smarter Vivian is also a piece of work. Her husband Rusty Regan ran off despite his cushy life. The general was fond of the tough Irishman, who helped keep the Sternwood girls in check. Although Marlowe is hired to fix the Carmen problem, the mystery of Rusty’s disappearance is ever looming in the background.

Following up on a lead, Marlowe enters the residence of smutty book dealer Arthur Geiger and finds his dead body, a drugged, naked Carmen Sternwood and the remains of a naughty photo shoot, minus the pictures. Marlowe soon meets a lot more colourful crooks and dames, including Eddie Mars, Joe Brody, and Agnes Lowzier, as he attempts to recover the incriminating photographs and finish the job. Three bodies later, Marlowe has had several run-ins with both Sternwood girls, and although sick to death of them, he is far from done.

Chandler’s gift is creating living characters using descriptive prose that immerses you into the hazy drama of Los Angeles and its underworld denizens, sleazy hotels and bars, all rendered as vividly as a Technicolor movie. Colloquial language and trenchant similes describe people, guns and streets in a manner both amusing and profound. Chandler’s prose settles so deeply into your consciousness that you feel you’re there with Marlowe as he spars with criminals and molls, hiding behind tropical bushes, or careening down the LA’s rainy boulevards. The street-smart private eye is not always in control, however, in a scene where his car breaks down and he falls into the hands of dangerous criminal Canino, as “Fate stage-managed the whole thing.�

Chander’s art of storytelling follows certain principles laid out in a 1944 article for the magazine The Atlantic Monthly, which later was re-worked as a 1950 essay of the same title, The Simple Art of Murder. In this now standard reference work, Chandler opines on the historical development of detective fiction, the influence of Dashiell Hammett, and the emphasis of character over plot. Soon after, this title was given to a collection of Philip Marlowe adventures, which were really re-worked earlier stories featuring the detectives Carmady and John Dalmas, the original incarnations which Chandler later cannibalised to form the character Philip Marlowe.

Marlowe’s metafictional detective agency
The Big Sleep is an important historical innovation in detective fiction, where noir breaks away from the genre’s low-brow status, pushing its boundaries into the larger world of literature. Chandler’s literary playfulness and emphasis on character over plot is evident in his advice to writers who get mired in plot: “When in doubt have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.�

Director Howard Hawks, while consulting with Humphrey Bogart during the filming of The Big Sleep, famously wired Chandler to ask him who actually killed one of its characters, to which Chandler responded that he didn’t know either.

For a writer ostensibly unconcerned with plot, the main plot of The Big Sleep’s hinges, at its halfway point, precisely on the act of storytelling. Marlowe has finished his assignment, but he’s still got a lot of explaining to do to the police. The official story needs to be told, truthful or not. In a marvelous meta-fictional moment, Marlowe, the district attorney and the police chief, like literary editors, gather and transform the first half of the book into a cover story for the press and thus protect the reputation of General Sternwood, a mutual friend of both the DA and Marlowe.

But Marlowe’s not the only one concocting stories. There’s an orgy of plotting by the characters in Big Sleep. Everyone’s got a front, a story designed to deceive or delay the truth. From Eddie Mars, the smooth-talking racketeer who smells opportunity, to Joe Brody, the impulsive blackmailer, to Eddie’s wife Mona, and especially the Sternwood sisters, who have the most to hide.

Marlowe feels compelled to act, as opposed to the knight depicted on a tapestry at the General’s mansion, who never quite reaches his damsel. On his own initiative Marlowe spends most of the General’s fat paycheck searching for the missing Rusty Regan. In the book’s dark second half, Marlowe himself becomes the story when he discovers the truth and must decide how to tell it to the old man: “Me, I was part of the nastiness now.�

A hardboiled legacy
Raymond Chandler, the poet laureate of noir, has been so influential it almost goes without saying that crime fiction and popular film culture owes its hardboiled image of the private eye to him. Chandler’s influence is seen in a whole generation of 20th century writers including Ross MacDonald, Walter Mosley, Robert B Parker (who himself finished Chandler’s last, uncompleted Marlowe book Poodle Springs), James Ellroy and Elmore Leonard, to name a few, an influence that continues well into the 21st century. Without Marlowe, it’s hard to imagine an Easy Rawlins or a Bosch.

Notable also as a screenwriter, Chandler penned the classics Double Indemnity, Blue Daliah and Strangers on a Train. But his greatest contribution may be the widespread use of first-person narration in film noir. Try imagining your favorite noir without the detective’s cynical, laconic voiceover. But if you really want to feel the Marlowe effect, open a random page of The Big Sleep and you’ll be drawn immediately to the dark and romantic milieu of 1930s LA with the urban knight Philip Marlowe as your world-weary, wise-cracking guide.
]]> <![CDATA[Reconciliation for the Dead (Claymore Straker, #3)]]> 33831582 430 Paul E. Hardisty 1910633690 Jeremy 0
Decisions have consequences, so we must learn to live with them. Easier said than done when you’re a young soldier dropped into an absurd war based on lies that are revealed to you layer by abominable layer. A soldier’s survival depends on reconciling duty and obedience with the unraveling madness of war. But survival brings the permanent scar of survivor guilt and, for some, a mental unmooring.

Claymore Straker enters this dilemma in the third and final book in Paul E Hardisty’s series, which also includes The Abrupt Physics of Dying and The Evolution of Fear. Straker is a young South African paratrooper serving as his country intervenes in the Angolan civil war. When he and his buddy Eben decide to save a young woman from being raped by an allied military group, they step right into the middle of a nasty confluence of apartheid and corporate greed, the true dimensions of which they learn during a long dangerous journey through war-torn Southern Africa.

Hardisty’s soul-blistering journey into the mercenary dark corner of the Cold War is told through Straker’s first-person narrative. Past events unfold through the young soldier’s eyes and are punctuated, quite jarringly and effectively, through transcripts of Straker speaking in the present to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As he unburdens his guilt, perhaps at the expense of his own amnesty, we learn of the horrors he has faced and loved ones left behind, as he goes from hero to deserter to truth teller.

Straker and Eben learn the woman they saved is a communist rebel but are reluctant to deliver her back to the allied soldiers and their loathsome leader. They later learn he is just a profiteer trafficking ebony, ivory and blood diamonds. Straker’s sarge Crowbar is duty-bound, regardless of the moral outrages and stupid decisions of his superiors, so Straker must alone interpret the grey moral areas he faces. When he is wounded, he meets Vivian, an army nurse who belongs to a secret underground opposing the institutional racism and black ops of the apartheid regime. Their eventual alliance puts them both in grave danger against the mercenary known as Cobra and the evil Botha, both who are behind a much larger game involving biological weapons.

Hardisty’s prose conveys exceedingly well the adrenalin-fueled fear that comes with close combat and he uses the fog of war well to create suspense and tension. The characters are vivid and sympathetic, and you can feel Straker’s angst in this uphill struggle to find justice and personal meaning. There are two strong supporting characters including Vivian, a guardian with whom he forms a tenuous relationship; and his sardonic, intellectual bru Eben Barstow, who is the perfect foil during the deep injustices they encounter, and whose running commentaries come straight from Seneca and Cicero.

Reconciliation for the Dead is less a crime novel than a thriller about the tangled web of complicities bound in humanity’s worst crimes. The lead character is forever haunted by the victims of genocide, rape and racism. Thrilling as a war memoir, Hardisty’s choice of format is what makes it compelling reading. Though there are graphic descriptions of Straker’s many horrific incursions, it’s often what you don’t see that evokes the real horror. Hardisty brings the war into relief through the banal dryness of the court transcript, which keeps wresting you back into the moment of Straker’s cathartic telling. His agonising, hesitant testimony is punctuated with the phrase ‘witness does not answer�, which creates suspense for the death and betrayal we know is coming.

Sufficiently enjoyable as a standalone book, though this is the final book in the series it acts more as a prequel of sorts, showing Straker’s formative years before venturing into other conflicts, ever seeking personal redemption. As much as you can’t put this thriller down, you will look up from it often to digest what you’ve read and ponder the human condition.]]> 4.28 2017 Reconciliation for the Dead (Claymore Straker, #3)
author: Paul E. Hardisty
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/08/29
shelves:
review:
Originally posted on

Decisions have consequences, so we must learn to live with them. Easier said than done when you’re a young soldier dropped into an absurd war based on lies that are revealed to you layer by abominable layer. A soldier’s survival depends on reconciling duty and obedience with the unraveling madness of war. But survival brings the permanent scar of survivor guilt and, for some, a mental unmooring.

Claymore Straker enters this dilemma in the third and final book in Paul E Hardisty’s series, which also includes The Abrupt Physics of Dying and The Evolution of Fear. Straker is a young South African paratrooper serving as his country intervenes in the Angolan civil war. When he and his buddy Eben decide to save a young woman from being raped by an allied military group, they step right into the middle of a nasty confluence of apartheid and corporate greed, the true dimensions of which they learn during a long dangerous journey through war-torn Southern Africa.

Hardisty’s soul-blistering journey into the mercenary dark corner of the Cold War is told through Straker’s first-person narrative. Past events unfold through the young soldier’s eyes and are punctuated, quite jarringly and effectively, through transcripts of Straker speaking in the present to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As he unburdens his guilt, perhaps at the expense of his own amnesty, we learn of the horrors he has faced and loved ones left behind, as he goes from hero to deserter to truth teller.

Straker and Eben learn the woman they saved is a communist rebel but are reluctant to deliver her back to the allied soldiers and their loathsome leader. They later learn he is just a profiteer trafficking ebony, ivory and blood diamonds. Straker’s sarge Crowbar is duty-bound, regardless of the moral outrages and stupid decisions of his superiors, so Straker must alone interpret the grey moral areas he faces. When he is wounded, he meets Vivian, an army nurse who belongs to a secret underground opposing the institutional racism and black ops of the apartheid regime. Their eventual alliance puts them both in grave danger against the mercenary known as Cobra and the evil Botha, both who are behind a much larger game involving biological weapons.

Hardisty’s prose conveys exceedingly well the adrenalin-fueled fear that comes with close combat and he uses the fog of war well to create suspense and tension. The characters are vivid and sympathetic, and you can feel Straker’s angst in this uphill struggle to find justice and personal meaning. There are two strong supporting characters including Vivian, a guardian with whom he forms a tenuous relationship; and his sardonic, intellectual bru Eben Barstow, who is the perfect foil during the deep injustices they encounter, and whose running commentaries come straight from Seneca and Cicero.

Reconciliation for the Dead is less a crime novel than a thriller about the tangled web of complicities bound in humanity’s worst crimes. The lead character is forever haunted by the victims of genocide, rape and racism. Thrilling as a war memoir, Hardisty’s choice of format is what makes it compelling reading. Though there are graphic descriptions of Straker’s many horrific incursions, it’s often what you don’t see that evokes the real horror. Hardisty brings the war into relief through the banal dryness of the court transcript, which keeps wresting you back into the moment of Straker’s cathartic telling. His agonising, hesitant testimony is punctuated with the phrase ‘witness does not answer�, which creates suspense for the death and betrayal we know is coming.

Sufficiently enjoyable as a standalone book, though this is the final book in the series it acts more as a prequel of sorts, showing Straker’s formative years before venturing into other conflicts, ever seeking personal redemption. As much as you can’t put this thriller down, you will look up from it often to digest what you’ve read and ponder the human condition.
]]> <![CDATA[Reconciliation for the Dead (Claymore Straker)]]> 34730014
‘A solid, meaty thriller � Hardisty is a fine writer and Straker is a great lead character� Lee Child

‘A trenchant and engaging thriller that unravels this mysterious land in cool, precise sentences� Stav Sherez, Catholic Herald

‘Just occasionally, a book comes along to restore your faith in a genre � and Paul Hardisty does this in spades� Sharon Wheeler, Crime Review

'This is a remarkably well-written, sophisticated novel in which the people and places, as well as frequent scenes of violent action, all come alive on the page...� Literary Review

‘Hardisty doesn’t put a foot wrong in this forceful, evocative thriller � the author’s deep knowledge of the settings never slows down the non-stop action, with distant echoes of a more-moral minded Jack Reacher or Jason Bourne� Maxim Jakubowski

FOR FANS of Lee Child, Wilbur Smith, James Lee Burke, I Am Pilgrim]]> 368 Paul E. Hardisty 1910633682 Jeremy 5 4.61 2017 Reconciliation for the Dead (Claymore Straker)
author: Paul E. Hardisty
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2017/08/29
shelves:
review:

]]> The Quincunx 1368922 The Quincunx is an ingenious modern twist on the grand fictional tradition of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Charles Palliser unfolds an epic story of murder, disinheritance, and deception that knits all levels of English society together in a mesmerizing, intricately crafted plot.

Searching for clues to his origins, John Huffam, a young man from the north of England, comes to believe that he is the victim of a vast and ancient conspiracy, and that only by claiming his mystery-enshrouded birthright can he escape it.

His quest for the truth draws him from the remote countryside of his childhood into the violent and corrupt London underworld of the Late Regency—a world of poverty and fear for many, of fabulous wealth and luxury for the few. Here John finds that nothing is safe from the laws of supply and demand—the living and the dead, loyalty, friendship, and even justice itself.

Each time he believes that he has eluded the conspiracy, its tentacles seem to entrap him and those dearest to him, destroying them or turning them against him. But is there a plot or are the connections he keeps finding merely coincidences? To answer all of his questions and solve the mysteries of his birth, he decides that, at peril of his life, he must uncover the darkest secrets of his family's past.

And with the obsessive logic of a nightmare, the figure of the quincunx, a figure of five parts, appears at every crucial turning point in John's quest. Herein lies the secret not only of John's identity but of the crime that stained his family with blood on his parents' wedding night and for generations before that.

The Quincunx combines the narrative thrust of the Victorian novel with the spellbinding ingenuity of a modern whodunnit—indeed, many of the clues to the mysteries that John confronts are to be found in the illustrative clues throughout the novel. Riveting in its suspense, scrupulously accurate in its period detail, and daringly original in form, The Quincunx is that rarest of literary achievements: a superbly written work of fiction that is impossible to put down.]]> 788 Charles Palliser 0345364635 Jeremy 4 3.72 1989 The Quincunx
author: Charles Palliser
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2010/01/01
date added: 2017/08/19
shelves:
review:

]]> Quicksand 31131399 QUICKSAND is an incisive courtroom thriller and a drama that raises questions about the nature of love, the disastrous side effects of guilt, and the function of justice.
Ìý
A mass shooting has taken place at a prep school in Stockholm's wealthiest suburb. Maja Norberg is eighteen years old and on trial for her involvement in the massacre where her boyfriend and best friend were killed. When the novel opens, Maja has spent nine excruciating months in jail awaiting trial. Now the time has come for her to enter the courtroom. But how did Maja, the good girl next door who was popular and excelled at school, become the most hated teenager in the country? What did Maja do? Or is it what she didn't do that brought her here?]]> 515 Malin Persson Giolito 1590518586 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.82 2016 Quicksand
author: Malin Persson Giolito
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/08/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Watching You 31817299 The start of a new series from international bestseller Arne Dahl.

SOMEONE IS WATCHING...

At each abandoned crime scene there's a hidden clue: a tiny metal cog, almost invisible to the naked eye. Someone is sending Detective Sam Berger a message, someone who knows that only he will understand the cryptic trail.

SOMEONE KNOWS...

When another teenaged girl disappears without trace, Sam must convince his superiors that they’re dealing with a serial killer. As the police continue the hunt to find the latest victim, Sam is forced to unearth long-buried personal demons. He has no choice if he is to understand the killer's darkly personal message before time runs out.

SOMEONE IS KILLING JUST FOR HIM...]]> 400 Neil Smith Arne Dahl 1911215493 Jeremy 4
Right out of the gate, Arne Dahl’s latest screenplay-ready Nordic noir thriller holds fast and never lets go. In its tense first pages, Detective Sam Berger and his assault team are in position, ready to storm into an abandoned shack wherein they hope to find missing teen, Ellen Savinger. It appears to be empty, but don’t exhale yet. One officer trips a booby trap of flying daggers. The wounded and terrorised cops� hopes are deflated when they find nothing except traces of blood and remnants of torture. To his dismay, Berger believes 15-year-old Ellen may be the victim of the same predator who has taken at least two other teens in the area. What’s more, they may be dealing with Sweden’s first serial killer. His boss wants Berger to keep a lid on this alarming theory, however, until more evidence appears.

Berger focuses on the anonymous tip that led to the raid in the first place, and identifies the mysterious caller as the same woman with a bicycle who shows up at the other missing children scenes, Natalie Freden. When they face off in the interrogation room, Dahl displays his flair for concise, penetrating dialogue. Amid her non-committal, evasive answers, Berger searches her facial expressions for a tell. He is certain the cool mystery woman knows a lot more about the killer than she’s saying, and the parley between them across the table is one of the most intriguing scenes.

Not only is Natalie Freden unfazed during her grilling, but a background check suggests she’s using an assumed identity. Freden’s intractability and her uncertain link to the monster who is snatching children make Berger very angry. Whatever their game, somebody is toying with the cops by proxy. It soon becomes clear that the culprit, who leaves behind tiny, precision-made watch cogs at the crime scenes, is sending a special message to Berger himself.

He thinks he knows who the killer is, and, you guessed it, it’s very, very personal. The puzzling thing is that he is keeping the investigation to himself, systematically pocketing evidence, leaving even his partner Deer out of it. The next time Berger has another sit-down with Natalie Freden, you are led to believe clarity is on the horizon. But just then, Dahl flips the script 180 degrees, forcing you to re-evaluate everything you’ve read up to this point. The riveting roller coaster ride of a thriller suddenly morphs into a Möbius strip of mystery, where hero becomes villain and hunter becomes hunted. A dizzying series of role-reversals and increasingly regressive glimpses into Berger’s past tease out their significance layer by layer, while an unseen hand manipulates events one cog at a time.

Recurrent flashbacks of a youthful run through an overgrown field, an abandoned shack and scenes of childhood cruelty lend a lyrical urgency to events. As their significance begins to coalesce, you can make your guess where things are leading. But Dahl shames you for your complacency and pulls the carpet out from under you once again, in terms of what you think you know about the victims, the killer and even the detective himself.

The premise is wildly far-fetched, and the human cruelty displayed, while not gratuitous, will make you blanch. But if you like intricate tightly-woven plots and quite a few action scenes, you can sit back and enjoy the ride as Dahl’s sure hand keeps things coherent despite their complexity. And just to prove it, Dahl doubles down and reveals yet another aspect � a shadow agency hovering over the proceedings, a dark ops agency with its own agenda with regards to the victims, which now number seven in all.

As the victims multiply, all with the same MO, Berger joins cause with the most unlikely partner to catch the killer, and hopefully find the young women still alive. Every step closer takes him back to his own traumatic past.

Fans of the Scandinavian television series The Bridge will find this thriller has all the darkness and twice the suspense, featuring a flawed dynamic duo, twists and turns, and an ending that suggests more to come in this auspicious new series.

]]> 3.71 2016 Watching You
author: Neil Smith Arne Dahl
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2017/07/04
date added: 2017/08/08
shelves:
review:
Originally posted at

Right out of the gate, Arne Dahl’s latest screenplay-ready Nordic noir thriller holds fast and never lets go. In its tense first pages, Detective Sam Berger and his assault team are in position, ready to storm into an abandoned shack wherein they hope to find missing teen, Ellen Savinger. It appears to be empty, but don’t exhale yet. One officer trips a booby trap of flying daggers. The wounded and terrorised cops� hopes are deflated when they find nothing except traces of blood and remnants of torture. To his dismay, Berger believes 15-year-old Ellen may be the victim of the same predator who has taken at least two other teens in the area. What’s more, they may be dealing with Sweden’s first serial killer. His boss wants Berger to keep a lid on this alarming theory, however, until more evidence appears.

Berger focuses on the anonymous tip that led to the raid in the first place, and identifies the mysterious caller as the same woman with a bicycle who shows up at the other missing children scenes, Natalie Freden. When they face off in the interrogation room, Dahl displays his flair for concise, penetrating dialogue. Amid her non-committal, evasive answers, Berger searches her facial expressions for a tell. He is certain the cool mystery woman knows a lot more about the killer than she’s saying, and the parley between them across the table is one of the most intriguing scenes.

Not only is Natalie Freden unfazed during her grilling, but a background check suggests she’s using an assumed identity. Freden’s intractability and her uncertain link to the monster who is snatching children make Berger very angry. Whatever their game, somebody is toying with the cops by proxy. It soon becomes clear that the culprit, who leaves behind tiny, precision-made watch cogs at the crime scenes, is sending a special message to Berger himself.

He thinks he knows who the killer is, and, you guessed it, it’s very, very personal. The puzzling thing is that he is keeping the investigation to himself, systematically pocketing evidence, leaving even his partner Deer out of it. The next time Berger has another sit-down with Natalie Freden, you are led to believe clarity is on the horizon. But just then, Dahl flips the script 180 degrees, forcing you to re-evaluate everything you’ve read up to this point. The riveting roller coaster ride of a thriller suddenly morphs into a Möbius strip of mystery, where hero becomes villain and hunter becomes hunted. A dizzying series of role-reversals and increasingly regressive glimpses into Berger’s past tease out their significance layer by layer, while an unseen hand manipulates events one cog at a time.

Recurrent flashbacks of a youthful run through an overgrown field, an abandoned shack and scenes of childhood cruelty lend a lyrical urgency to events. As their significance begins to coalesce, you can make your guess where things are leading. But Dahl shames you for your complacency and pulls the carpet out from under you once again, in terms of what you think you know about the victims, the killer and even the detective himself.

The premise is wildly far-fetched, and the human cruelty displayed, while not gratuitous, will make you blanch. But if you like intricate tightly-woven plots and quite a few action scenes, you can sit back and enjoy the ride as Dahl’s sure hand keeps things coherent despite their complexity. And just to prove it, Dahl doubles down and reveals yet another aspect � a shadow agency hovering over the proceedings, a dark ops agency with its own agenda with regards to the victims, which now number seven in all.

As the victims multiply, all with the same MO, Berger joins cause with the most unlikely partner to catch the killer, and hopefully find the young women still alive. Every step closer takes him back to his own traumatic past.

Fans of the Scandinavian television series The Bridge will find this thriller has all the darkness and twice the suspense, featuring a flawed dynamic duo, twists and turns, and an ending that suggests more to come in this auspicious new series.


]]> <![CDATA[The Scarred Woman (A Department Q Novel)]]> 34298771 The New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of The Keeper of Lost Causes delivers his most captivating and suspenseful Department Q novel yet--perfect for fans of Stieg Larsson.

Detective Carl Morck of Department Q, Copenhagen's cold cases division, meets his toughest challenge yet when the dark, troubled past of one of his own team members collides with a sinister unsolved murder.
In a Copenhagen park the body of an elderly woman is discovered. The case bears a striking resemblance to another unsolved homicide investigation from over a decade ago, but the connection between the two victims confounds the police. Across town a group of young women are being hunted. The attacks seem random, but could these brutal acts of violence be related? Detective Carl Morck of Department Q is charged with solving the mystery.
Back at headquarters, Carl and his team are under pressure to deliver results: failure to meet his superiors' expectations will mean the end of Department Q. Solving the case, however, is not their only concern. After an earlier breakdown, their colleague Rose is still struggling to deal with the reemergence of her past--a past in which a terrible crime may have been committed. It is up to Carl, Assad, and Gordon to uncover the dark and violent truth at the heart of Rose's childhood before it is too late.]]> 15 Jussi Adler-Olsen 152470248X Jeremy 0 to-read 3.93 2017 The Scarred Woman (A Department Q Novel)
author: Jussi Adler-Olsen
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/07/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Thirst (Harry Hole, #11) 32775291 Harry Hole returns in the eleventh installment of the author's best-selling, electrifying crime fiction series—published in 48 languages, more than 30 million copies sold worldwide.

InÌý±Ê´Ç±ô¾±³¦±ðâ€�the last novel featuring Jo Nesbø's hard-bitten, maverick Oslo detective—a killer wreaking revenge on the police had Harry Hole fighting for the safety of the people closest to him. Now, inÌýThe Thirst,Ìýthe story continues as Harry is inextricably drawn back into the Oslo police force. A serial murderer has begun targeting Tinder daters—a murderer whose MO reignites Harry's hunt for a nemesis of his past.]]> 445 Jo Nesbø 0735272492 Jeremy 4
The tagline says it all: Harry Hole is back! For those following the ten-book series featuring the dour, brilliant, and thoroughly scarred Norwegian detective, we were led to believe that Police might have been his last book. But now Harry is back, and tormented by a nightmare come true. The one criminal that got away from Hole has come out of hiding, and he’s thirsty for blood.

The book opens with an auspicious, typically Nordic noir scenario: a snowy white atmosphere ripe for blood splatter. But the white mist clears to reveal that we are actually in a Turkish sauna where a killer seethes with the thirst to kill. Nesbo is on his game and as playful as ever, as we then follow the three denizens of a bar in turn, and wonder who will be the victim � the local barfly, his creeped-out Tinder date, or the bar owner himself?

Meanwhile, Harry Hole is now retired from the police and is thriving in his marriage to Rakel. You will barely recognise the taciturn, reckless Harry of previous books. He is now content and having drawn out conversations about his feelings! Now professor at the police college, his old case files form the curriculum and draw big crowds, Harry’s stepson Oleg is a freshmen there and a quick study himself.

A brutal murder involving a medieval set of iron teeth and a lot of blood is what pulls Harry out of retirement. At first his answer is a flat-out no. But we know better. Harry is ambivalent about jumping back in the game and putting aside family for duty, but is perversely vindicated in his decision by the coercive Mikael Bellman, the ambitious chief who is grooming himself for justice minister. Bellman wants a quick victory under his belt and gives Harry a free hand to win one for the team, otherwise he will spoil Oleg’s future by revealing a criminal lapse from his past.

It dawns on Harry that the killer is the demon Valentin Gjertsen. It’s been three years, several plastic surgeries and a new fetish for blood, but it’s him, and he’s taunting Harry to come out and play. Soon enough the thirst meme extends from the hunted vampiric killer to the obsessed alcoholic hunter himself, as he closes in on the murderer whose machinations threaten everything he loves most. Fans may inwardly cheer that the angsty detective of previous books is now in the process of being revived, once again tempted by the bottle and once again obsessed with the hunt at the cost of a normal family life.

It is not until halfway through book, and two more murders later, that Hole finally assembles his team who are exhorted to think outside the box while gathered in the boiler room of police headquarters. There’s Stale Aune, expert psychologist and profiler, and personal friend; plus the eager young detective Anders Wyller. Bjorn Holm forensic investigator and ex-lover of Katrine Bratt, who has replaced Harry in Crime Squad, round out the team. Harry is also assisted by the analytical insight of vampirist scholar Hallstein Smith and blood expert Dr Steffens.

As the second and third victims fall prey to the murderer in excruciating detail, it becomes clear that while they seem to chosen randomly, they have the same MO and are linked by the dating app Tinder. The pressure to solve the case builds as the public’s fear, an aggressive press, and leaks about the case issuing from inside the crime squad create bad PR.

The Thirst has all the trademarks of classic Nesbo. It is expertly plotted with vividly drawn characters, frenetic police chases and philosophising villains, not to mention the usual bonus add-ons that are part and parcel of Nesbo’s thrillers. Esoteric science, ancient murder lore and indie music play their parts. The narrative tensions Nesbo creates are harnessed to Harry’s operating procedure, wherein he gets into the villain’s head so much that hunter and hunted mirror each other. More often than not, Harry falls in the process, only to pull himself out of the abyss in time to save the day.

But after 11 books Nesbo’s winning formula begins to feel a bit boilerplate, especially the obligatory scenario where storytelling villain fills in the helpless hero during his own drawn-out sacrifice as police verge on the wrong location. Nevertheless, Nesbo entertains in a unique way that makes you feel that you’ve been enriched while trying to solve the case. He is very good at creating complicated plots that are easy to follow, with several red herrings cleverly placed so that you’re guessing all the way and double-taking at certain characters who may or may not be as they appear.

This is not the best Harry Hole novel, and the motivations of the villain are far less convincing than those of the police characters, such as Katrine Bratt, who are better realised. One standout character is the mediocre, unfulfilled loser Truls Berntsen. Overall Nesbo fans who’ve thirsted for Harry Hole will be slaked. Expect to be thoroughly entertained, and if you can’t quite warm to the idea of a happy Harry Hole, don’t feel bad, you’re not alone.]]> 4.13 2017 The Thirst (Harry Hole, #11)
author: Jo Nesbø
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2017/04/15
date added: 2017/07/12
shelves:
review:
Originally posted at

The tagline says it all: Harry Hole is back! For those following the ten-book series featuring the dour, brilliant, and thoroughly scarred Norwegian detective, we were led to believe that Police might have been his last book. But now Harry is back, and tormented by a nightmare come true. The one criminal that got away from Hole has come out of hiding, and he’s thirsty for blood.

The book opens with an auspicious, typically Nordic noir scenario: a snowy white atmosphere ripe for blood splatter. But the white mist clears to reveal that we are actually in a Turkish sauna where a killer seethes with the thirst to kill. Nesbo is on his game and as playful as ever, as we then follow the three denizens of a bar in turn, and wonder who will be the victim � the local barfly, his creeped-out Tinder date, or the bar owner himself?

Meanwhile, Harry Hole is now retired from the police and is thriving in his marriage to Rakel. You will barely recognise the taciturn, reckless Harry of previous books. He is now content and having drawn out conversations about his feelings! Now professor at the police college, his old case files form the curriculum and draw big crowds, Harry’s stepson Oleg is a freshmen there and a quick study himself.

A brutal murder involving a medieval set of iron teeth and a lot of blood is what pulls Harry out of retirement. At first his answer is a flat-out no. But we know better. Harry is ambivalent about jumping back in the game and putting aside family for duty, but is perversely vindicated in his decision by the coercive Mikael Bellman, the ambitious chief who is grooming himself for justice minister. Bellman wants a quick victory under his belt and gives Harry a free hand to win one for the team, otherwise he will spoil Oleg’s future by revealing a criminal lapse from his past.

It dawns on Harry that the killer is the demon Valentin Gjertsen. It’s been three years, several plastic surgeries and a new fetish for blood, but it’s him, and he’s taunting Harry to come out and play. Soon enough the thirst meme extends from the hunted vampiric killer to the obsessed alcoholic hunter himself, as he closes in on the murderer whose machinations threaten everything he loves most. Fans may inwardly cheer that the angsty detective of previous books is now in the process of being revived, once again tempted by the bottle and once again obsessed with the hunt at the cost of a normal family life.

It is not until halfway through book, and two more murders later, that Hole finally assembles his team who are exhorted to think outside the box while gathered in the boiler room of police headquarters. There’s Stale Aune, expert psychologist and profiler, and personal friend; plus the eager young detective Anders Wyller. Bjorn Holm forensic investigator and ex-lover of Katrine Bratt, who has replaced Harry in Crime Squad, round out the team. Harry is also assisted by the analytical insight of vampirist scholar Hallstein Smith and blood expert Dr Steffens.

As the second and third victims fall prey to the murderer in excruciating detail, it becomes clear that while they seem to chosen randomly, they have the same MO and are linked by the dating app Tinder. The pressure to solve the case builds as the public’s fear, an aggressive press, and leaks about the case issuing from inside the crime squad create bad PR.

The Thirst has all the trademarks of classic Nesbo. It is expertly plotted with vividly drawn characters, frenetic police chases and philosophising villains, not to mention the usual bonus add-ons that are part and parcel of Nesbo’s thrillers. Esoteric science, ancient murder lore and indie music play their parts. The narrative tensions Nesbo creates are harnessed to Harry’s operating procedure, wherein he gets into the villain’s head so much that hunter and hunted mirror each other. More often than not, Harry falls in the process, only to pull himself out of the abyss in time to save the day.

But after 11 books Nesbo’s winning formula begins to feel a bit boilerplate, especially the obligatory scenario where storytelling villain fills in the helpless hero during his own drawn-out sacrifice as police verge on the wrong location. Nevertheless, Nesbo entertains in a unique way that makes you feel that you’ve been enriched while trying to solve the case. He is very good at creating complicated plots that are easy to follow, with several red herrings cleverly placed so that you’re guessing all the way and double-taking at certain characters who may or may not be as they appear.

This is not the best Harry Hole novel, and the motivations of the villain are far less convincing than those of the police characters, such as Katrine Bratt, who are better realised. One standout character is the mediocre, unfulfilled loser Truls Berntsen. Overall Nesbo fans who’ve thirsted for Harry Hole will be slaked. Expect to be thoroughly entertained, and if you can’t quite warm to the idea of a happy Harry Hole, don’t feel bad, you’re not alone.
]]> <![CDATA[We Show What We Have Learned and Other Stories]]> 29006815
The literary, historic, and fantastic collide in these wise and exquisitely unsettling stories. From bewildering assemblies in school auditoriums to the murky waters of a Depression-era health resort, Beams’s landscapes are tinged with otherworldliness, and her characters� desires stretch the limits of reality. Ing énues at a boarding school bind themselves to their headmaster’s vision of perfection ; a nineteenth-century landscape architect embarks on his first major project, but finds the terrain of class and power intractable ; a bride glimpses her husband’s past when she wears his World War II parachute as a gown ; and a teacher comes undone in front of her astonished fifth graders.

As they capture the strangeness of being human, the stories in We Show What We Have Learned reveal Clare Beams’s rare and capacious imagination—and yet they are grounded in emotional complexity, illuminating the ways we attempt to transform ourselves, our surroundings, and each other.]]> 184 Clare Beams 1940596149 Jeremy 0 to-read 4.10 2016 We Show What We Have Learned and Other Stories
author: Clare Beams
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/06/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> What My Body Remembers 31544900 New York Times bestselling author Agnete Friis comes the chilling story of a young mother who will do whatever it takes to protect her son.

Ella Nygaard, 27, has been a ward of the state since she was seven years old, the night her father murdered her mother. She doesn't remember anything about that night or her childhood before it but her body remembers. The PTSD-induced panic attacks she now suffers incapacitate her for hours sometimes days at a time and leave her physically and psychically drained.

After one particularly bad episode lands Ella in a psych ward, she discovers her son, Alex, has been taken from her by the state and placed with a foster family. Driven by desperation, Ella kidnaps Alex and flees to the seaside town in northern Denmark where she was born. Her grandmother's abandoned house is in grave disrepair, but she can live there for free until she can figure out how to convince social services that despite everything, she is the best parent for her child.

But being back in the small town forces Ella to confront the demons of her childhood the monsters her memory has tried so hard to obscure. What really happened that night her mother died? Was her grandmother right was Ella's father unjustly convicted? What other secrets were her parents hiding from each other? If Ella can start to remember, maybe her scars will begin to heal or maybe the truth will put her in even greater danger.]]> 304 Agnete Friis 161695602X Jeremy 5
Ella Nygaard’s earliest memory is becoming an orphan when her father murdered her mother. However, she is suppressing her memory of the event, and as a result suffers from PTSD, and is subject to fits. She is now a single mother on welfare in the suburbs of Copenhagen who must suffer the indignities of a system that monitors and scrutinises her every move. Hovering over her every decision in life is the implied threat of losing her 11-year-old son if she misbehaves. Not helpful to her case is her rebellious distrust of the state and its helping hand. She experienced several foster families before becoming a pregnant young adult, and has scraped through life ever since.

In the bleak opening scene, Ella is smoking outside her cement housing block with her only friend Rosa, herself on the edge of alcoholism. Soon after, she is on the lam with her son Alex after her anger got the best of her, and she holes up in her grandmother’s house on the coast of the North Sea, a house as abandoned as Ella’s memories of her traumatic past.

Ella’s Icelandic grandmother, who owns the place, is the last person she wants to face. She is a tragic figure who has lost one son to the sea and the other she believes was wrongly accused of murder. Ella refuses to discuss it or even see the old woman, who now lives in a care home. As memories begin to surface that remind Ella of the thing she wants to forget, she still won’t visit the old woman and fiercely resists any intimacy, whether offered by a local surfer, the house’s caretaker Baek-Nielson, or even childhood flame Thomas. The one intrusion she allows is the elderly hippie Barbara, an eccentric but kindred spirit who takes her under her wing and eventually moves in with her.

As the title indicates, being in her childhood home re-awakens memories, despite Ella’s resistance. Little by little, the deep-seated trauma of that night on the dunes is awakened, along with more welcome fugitive memories, such as how to clean a fish and where best to find amber on the beach. The memory of her mother’s murder also drives a second narrative that alternates with Ella’s own, this one leading up to that fateful night in 1994.

As Ella struggles with her current situation, flashbacks from the perspectives of each of Ella’s parents, Anna and Helgi, bring us closer to the moment of murder with each chapter. Helgi is a construction worker in a stagnant marriage, whose torrid affair with a mysterious young woman named Christy becomes increasingly unstable, and he realises he can’t extricate himself. His wife Anna must deal with her husband’s rejection, but also increasingly disturbing threats from the conservative religious community that expelled her years before. Part of the growing suspense built by Agnete Friis is how these facts might relate to the murder

As events threaten to overcome her, Ella realises she must re-kindle her memory order to protect herself and her son from the very secrets that the past reveal. She seeks out her old case files in order to reconstruct the events that turned her life upside down, to understand her parents� and her own struggles. She is aided by a trusted social services counselor over the years, who is distinct from the other counsellors � the ones that passively harass her in scenes vividly portraying life as a ward of the state.

The dilapidated cottage by the rugged sea, which both shelters Ella and also compels her to face her demons from childhood, serves as a powerful symbol for Ella’s struggling mind and her remembering body. The gradual unraveling of the central murder, which provides suspense and culminates in a final confrontation, plays out within a cohesive theme of memory and redemption.

If you like deeply flawed and reluctant protagonists who overcome adversity, there are certainly echoes of Nina Borg here. And that’s no surprise, because alongside Lene Kaaberbol, Agnete Friis is co-author the Nina Borg series. In her solo debut she delivers a realistic, gritty thriller with a lot of heart. You will find yourself rooting for the angry, damaged underdog Ella who yearns to have a normal life with her son. This novel is hopeful and uplifting and while delivered in the sober tones characteristic of Nordic noir, you may still feel a hitch in your throat at it’s cathartic ending.]]> 3.65 2015 What My Body Remembers
author: Agnete Friis
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2017/04/25
date added: 2017/04/25
shelves:
review:
Originally posted on

Ella Nygaard’s earliest memory is becoming an orphan when her father murdered her mother. However, she is suppressing her memory of the event, and as a result suffers from PTSD, and is subject to fits. She is now a single mother on welfare in the suburbs of Copenhagen who must suffer the indignities of a system that monitors and scrutinises her every move. Hovering over her every decision in life is the implied threat of losing her 11-year-old son if she misbehaves. Not helpful to her case is her rebellious distrust of the state and its helping hand. She experienced several foster families before becoming a pregnant young adult, and has scraped through life ever since.

In the bleak opening scene, Ella is smoking outside her cement housing block with her only friend Rosa, herself on the edge of alcoholism. Soon after, she is on the lam with her son Alex after her anger got the best of her, and she holes up in her grandmother’s house on the coast of the North Sea, a house as abandoned as Ella’s memories of her traumatic past.

Ella’s Icelandic grandmother, who owns the place, is the last person she wants to face. She is a tragic figure who has lost one son to the sea and the other she believes was wrongly accused of murder. Ella refuses to discuss it or even see the old woman, who now lives in a care home. As memories begin to surface that remind Ella of the thing she wants to forget, she still won’t visit the old woman and fiercely resists any intimacy, whether offered by a local surfer, the house’s caretaker Baek-Nielson, or even childhood flame Thomas. The one intrusion she allows is the elderly hippie Barbara, an eccentric but kindred spirit who takes her under her wing and eventually moves in with her.

As the title indicates, being in her childhood home re-awakens memories, despite Ella’s resistance. Little by little, the deep-seated trauma of that night on the dunes is awakened, along with more welcome fugitive memories, such as how to clean a fish and where best to find amber on the beach. The memory of her mother’s murder also drives a second narrative that alternates with Ella’s own, this one leading up to that fateful night in 1994.

As Ella struggles with her current situation, flashbacks from the perspectives of each of Ella’s parents, Anna and Helgi, bring us closer to the moment of murder with each chapter. Helgi is a construction worker in a stagnant marriage, whose torrid affair with a mysterious young woman named Christy becomes increasingly unstable, and he realises he can’t extricate himself. His wife Anna must deal with her husband’s rejection, but also increasingly disturbing threats from the conservative religious community that expelled her years before. Part of the growing suspense built by Agnete Friis is how these facts might relate to the murder

As events threaten to overcome her, Ella realises she must re-kindle her memory order to protect herself and her son from the very secrets that the past reveal. She seeks out her old case files in order to reconstruct the events that turned her life upside down, to understand her parents� and her own struggles. She is aided by a trusted social services counselor over the years, who is distinct from the other counsellors � the ones that passively harass her in scenes vividly portraying life as a ward of the state.

The dilapidated cottage by the rugged sea, which both shelters Ella and also compels her to face her demons from childhood, serves as a powerful symbol for Ella’s struggling mind and her remembering body. The gradual unraveling of the central murder, which provides suspense and culminates in a final confrontation, plays out within a cohesive theme of memory and redemption.

If you like deeply flawed and reluctant protagonists who overcome adversity, there are certainly echoes of Nina Borg here. And that’s no surprise, because alongside Lene Kaaberbol, Agnete Friis is co-author the Nina Borg series. In her solo debut she delivers a realistic, gritty thriller with a lot of heart. You will find yourself rooting for the angry, damaged underdog Ella who yearns to have a normal life with her son. This novel is hopeful and uplifting and while delivered in the sober tones characteristic of Nordic noir, you may still feel a hitch in your throat at it’s cathartic ending.
]]> Cursed (Henning Juul, #4) 33638884 409 Thomas Enger 1910633658 Jeremy 4
Henning Juul is a fearless investigative journalist based in Oslo who has garnered a fair number of enemies in the course of his job. He yokes himself to his work, but nothing can distract him from an uphill personal battle. He and his ex-wife Nora Klemetsen are still coming to terms with the recent death of their six-year-old son, Jonas. While in the care of Henning, the boy was the victim of arson meant to shut the writer up for good. When the grieving reporter returns to the newsroom, the trauma is still fresh, the burns on his face a constant reminder of the tragedy. Although he has somewhat reconciled with Nora, they haven’t seen each other in two years. She is now in a relationship with Henning’s co-worker Iver Gundersen. When they do make contact again Nora shares that she is pregnant.

Nora, who like Henning is an accomplished investigative journalist and workaholic, is approached to help solve a mystery. Her old friend Hedda Hellberg has disappeared and she decides to take on the task of finding her ostensibly in the capacity of writing a news story.

Juul has meanwhile put himself on leave to focus on finding his son’s killer. He learns there may be photographs of his home taken just before the blaze. He thinks the key player who orchestrated the hit may be a lawyer nicknamed Daddy Long Legs. This information is hard won. He calls in a favour from a contact in the criminal underworld, leading to a source who confronts him in a brutal Fight Club scenario: each query Henning has is matched with a blow, and he barely survives the pummeling.

As Henning and Nora doggedly hurl themselves into their investigations, every internal rumination they have points back to the mutual loss of Jonas, who has as much presence as any other character in the book.

Henning and Nora are vividly portrayed too, and Enger he doesn’t skimp on supporting characters either, such as Nora’s boyfriend Iver, who is nervous about his impending fatherhood and also uneasy about Henning continuing presence in Nora’s life. There is also a battery of sleazy lawyers, any one of whom may be the infamous Daddy Long Legs. Even Henning’s eccentric neighbour Gunnar is well-drawn.

To solve Hedda’s disappearance, Nora must look at each member of the Hellberg family, who are reminiscent of the Vangers in the Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series. Enger provides a genealogical chart to help track the Hellbergs and their motivations and business affairs, as each member in turn is considered a suspect.

The clear symmetry of a plot with tragedy and redemption at its heart makes Cursed a remarkable feat. As we shift back and forth between them, Henning and Nora are mirrored figures: two investigators with shared personal struggles who face grave danger and whose investigations converge in an unexpected way on the Hellberg family. The dual hunt leads to a damning document locked in a safe which reveals old family secrets stretching back to World War II. While we’ve come to expect such devices in stories, Enger delivers a suspenseful, action-packed drama.

When Henning and Nora’s paths finally cross it is not surprising, but it is the narrative’s emotional undercurrent, the possibility of a personal reckoning between Henning and Nora, where Enger really scores a poignant victory. As keen as we are to know whodunit, we are just as eager to learn how they each cope with the mutual tragedy of losing their son.

As much as being a thriller, Cursed is also an exceedingly good journo-procedural, a detailed look at the nuts and bolts of investigative journalism. The careful grooming of sources, the delicate give-and-take between journalists, media bosses and police, and the pitfalls of chasing down exclusives in the 24-hour news cycle � all this is authentically realised by former journalist Enger.

The character Henning has come a long way since Burned, the first book in a series of which Cursed is the fourth, but you don’t feel like you’re missing out by not having read previous volumes. Cursed shows Henning’s edging closer to healing from loss and forging new supportive relationships, and never giving up the hunt for his son’s killer.

It’s clear the Henning Juul series has a large-scale plan and Cursed shows a great momentum, but it is the bombshell dropped in the very last sentence that carries his investigation one jaw-dropping step further and leaves you breathless for more. If you’re into Nordic noir, journalistic procedurals, and anguished heroes, check out this series.]]> 4.23 2014 Cursed (Henning Juul, #4)
author: Thomas Enger
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2017/02/25
date added: 2017/03/18
shelves:
review:
Originally posted on

Henning Juul is a fearless investigative journalist based in Oslo who has garnered a fair number of enemies in the course of his job. He yokes himself to his work, but nothing can distract him from an uphill personal battle. He and his ex-wife Nora Klemetsen are still coming to terms with the recent death of their six-year-old son, Jonas. While in the care of Henning, the boy was the victim of arson meant to shut the writer up for good. When the grieving reporter returns to the newsroom, the trauma is still fresh, the burns on his face a constant reminder of the tragedy. Although he has somewhat reconciled with Nora, they haven’t seen each other in two years. She is now in a relationship with Henning’s co-worker Iver Gundersen. When they do make contact again Nora shares that she is pregnant.

Nora, who like Henning is an accomplished investigative journalist and workaholic, is approached to help solve a mystery. Her old friend Hedda Hellberg has disappeared and she decides to take on the task of finding her ostensibly in the capacity of writing a news story.

Juul has meanwhile put himself on leave to focus on finding his son’s killer. He learns there may be photographs of his home taken just before the blaze. He thinks the key player who orchestrated the hit may be a lawyer nicknamed Daddy Long Legs. This information is hard won. He calls in a favour from a contact in the criminal underworld, leading to a source who confronts him in a brutal Fight Club scenario: each query Henning has is matched with a blow, and he barely survives the pummeling.

As Henning and Nora doggedly hurl themselves into their investigations, every internal rumination they have points back to the mutual loss of Jonas, who has as much presence as any other character in the book.

Henning and Nora are vividly portrayed too, and Enger he doesn’t skimp on supporting characters either, such as Nora’s boyfriend Iver, who is nervous about his impending fatherhood and also uneasy about Henning continuing presence in Nora’s life. There is also a battery of sleazy lawyers, any one of whom may be the infamous Daddy Long Legs. Even Henning’s eccentric neighbour Gunnar is well-drawn.

To solve Hedda’s disappearance, Nora must look at each member of the Hellberg family, who are reminiscent of the Vangers in the Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series. Enger provides a genealogical chart to help track the Hellbergs and their motivations and business affairs, as each member in turn is considered a suspect.

The clear symmetry of a plot with tragedy and redemption at its heart makes Cursed a remarkable feat. As we shift back and forth between them, Henning and Nora are mirrored figures: two investigators with shared personal struggles who face grave danger and whose investigations converge in an unexpected way on the Hellberg family. The dual hunt leads to a damning document locked in a safe which reveals old family secrets stretching back to World War II. While we’ve come to expect such devices in stories, Enger delivers a suspenseful, action-packed drama.

When Henning and Nora’s paths finally cross it is not surprising, but it is the narrative’s emotional undercurrent, the possibility of a personal reckoning between Henning and Nora, where Enger really scores a poignant victory. As keen as we are to know whodunit, we are just as eager to learn how they each cope with the mutual tragedy of losing their son.

As much as being a thriller, Cursed is also an exceedingly good journo-procedural, a detailed look at the nuts and bolts of investigative journalism. The careful grooming of sources, the delicate give-and-take between journalists, media bosses and police, and the pitfalls of chasing down exclusives in the 24-hour news cycle � all this is authentically realised by former journalist Enger.

The character Henning has come a long way since Burned, the first book in a series of which Cursed is the fourth, but you don’t feel like you’re missing out by not having read previous volumes. Cursed shows Henning’s edging closer to healing from loss and forging new supportive relationships, and never giving up the hunt for his son’s killer.

It’s clear the Henning Juul series has a large-scale plan and Cursed shows a great momentum, but it is the bombshell dropped in the very last sentence that carries his investigation one jaw-dropping step further and leaves you breathless for more. If you’re into Nordic noir, journalistic procedurals, and anguished heroes, check out this series.
]]> Lab Girl 25733983
Lab Girl is a book about work, love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahren’s stories: about her childhood in rural Minnesota with an uncompromising mother and a father who encouraged hours of play in his classroom’s labs; about how she found a sanctuary in science, and learned to perform lab work done “with both the heart and the hands�; and about the inevitable disappointments, but also the triumphs and exhilarating discoveries, of scientific work.

Yet at the core of this book is the story of a relationship Jahren forged with a brilliant, wounded man named Bill, who becomes her lab partner and best friend. Their sometimes rogue adventures in science take them from the Midwest across the United States and back again, over the Atlantic to the ever-light skies of the North Pole and to tropical Hawaii, where she and her lab currently make their home.]]> 290 Hope Jahren 1101874937 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.95 2016 Lab Girl
author: Hope Jahren
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Other Minds 28116739
In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how subjective experience crept into being—how nature became aware of itself. As Godfrey-Smith stresses, it is a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind’s fitful development, Godfrey-Smith shows how unruly clumps of seaborne cells began living together and became capable of sensing, acting, and signaling. As these primitive organisms became more entangled with others, they grew more complicated. The first nervous systems evolved, probably in ancient relatives of jellyfish; later on, the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous mollusks, abandoned their shells and rose above the ocean floor, searching for prey and acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so. Taking an independent route, mammals and birds later began their own evolutionary journeys.

But what kind of intelligence do cephalopods possess? Drawing on the latest scientific research and his own scuba-diving adventures, Godfrey-Smith probes the many mysteries that surround the lineage. How did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? What is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually “think for themselves�? What happens when some octopuses abandon their hermit-like ways and congregate, as they do in a unique location off the coast of Australia?

By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots and comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind—and on our own.]]> 257 Peter Godfrey-Smith 0374227764 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.86 2016 Other Minds
author: Peter Godfrey-Smith
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/02/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Burned (Henning Juul, #1) 9738515 416 Thomas Enger 0571275176 Jeremy 4 3.70 2010 Burned (Henning Juul, #1)
author: Thomas Enger
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2017/02/13
date added: 2017/02/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[I Shot the Buddha (Dr. Siri Paiboun #11)]]> 27774374 A fiendishly clever mystery in which Dr. Siri and his friends investigate three interlocking murders and the ungodly motives behind them
Laos, 1979: Retired coroner Siri Paiboun and his wife, Madame Daeng, have never been able to turn away a misfit. As a result, they share their small Vientiane house with an assortment of homeless people, mendicants, and oddballs. One of these oddballs is Noo, a Buddhist monk, who rides out on his bicycle one day and never comes back, leaving only a cryptic note in the refrigerator: a plea to help a fellow monk escape across the Mekhong River to Thailand.
Naturally, Siri can t turn down the adventure, and soon he and his friends find themselves running afoul of Lao secret service officers and famous spiritualists. Buddhism is a powerful influence on both morals and politics in Southeast Asia. In order to exonerate an innocent man, they will have to figure out who is cloaking terrible misdeeds in religiosity."]]> Colin Cotterill 1616957239 Jeremy 0 3.80 2016 I Shot the Buddha (Dr. Siri Paiboun #11)
author: Colin Cotterill
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2017/01/31
date added: 2017/01/31
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man (New York Review Books Classics)]]> 29496322 Ìý
Praneshacharyah finds himself unable to provide the answer, though an answer is urgently needed since as he wonders and the villagers wait and the body festers, more and more people are falling sick and dying. But when Praneshacharyah goes to the temple to seek a sign from God, he discovers something else entirely—unless that something else is also God.
Ìý
Samskara is a tale of existential suspense, a life-and-death encounter between the sacred and the profane, the pure and the impure, the ascetic and the erotic.]]> 176 U.R. Ananthamurthy 1590179129 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.76 1965 Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man (New York Review Books Classics)
author: U.R. Ananthamurthy
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1965
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 4�3�2� 30244626
As inventive and dexterously constructed as anything Paul Auster has ever written, yet with a passion for realism and a great tenderness and fierce attachment to history and to life itself that readers have never seen from Auster before. 4 3 2 1 is a marvelous and unforgettably affecting tour de force.]]> 866 Paul Auster 1627794468 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.92 2017 4 3 2 1
author: Paul Auster
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Changeling 31147267
Thus begins Apollo’s odyssey through a world he only thought he understood, to find a wife and child who are nothing like he’d imagined. His quest, which begins when he meets a mysterious stranger who claims to have information about Emma’s whereabouts, takes him to a forgotten island, a graveyard full of secrets, a forest where immigrant legends still live, and finally back to a place he thought he had lost forever.

This captivating retelling of a classic fairy tale imaginatively explores parental obsession, spousal love, and the secrets that make strangers out of the people we love the most. It’s a thrilling and emotionally devastating journey through the gruesome legacies that threaten to devour us and the homely, messy magic that saves us, if we’re lucky.]]> 431 Victor LaValle 0812995945 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.75 2017 The Changeling
author: Victor LaValle
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pond 25333047 Pond is an absorbing chronicle of the pitfalls and pleasures of a solitudinous life told by an unnamed woman living on the cusp of a coastal town. Broken bowls, belligerent cows, swanky aubergines, trembling moonrises and horrifying sunsets, the physical world depicted in these stories is unsettling yet intimately familiar and soon takes on a life of its own. Captivated by the stellar charms of seclusion but restless with desire, the woman’s relationship with her surroundings becomes boundless and increasingly bewildering. Claire-Louise Bennett’s startlingly original first collection slips effortlessly between worlds and is by turns darkly funny and deeply moving.]]> 148 Claire-Louise Bennett 1906539464 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.54 2015 Pond
author: Claire-Louise Bennett
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/12/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Mine 29501615 264 Antti Tuomainen 1910633534 Jeremy 5
Janne Vuori, an idealistic investigative journalist on the staff of Helsinki Today, has a thankless job and a failing marriage. These factors ensure he is easily lured into a very big story that arrives via an anonymous email tip. The country’s biggest nickel mine, touted as a boon to the economy, is not at all what it seems and represents an environmental disaster on a scale never before seen in Finnish history.

Even before you can imagine Janne getting threatened by greedy corporate bad guys, you witness from the first pages a methodical assassin picking off members of the mine’s board of trustees one-by-one. Tuomainen describes the deaths with a macabre flair that makes each kill seem like a well-synchronised ballet.

Janne’s wife Pauliina complains that he is neglecting their relationship and their three-year-old child for the sake of selfish idealism. He parries that she is a corporate sell-out, but her charge does seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. He sets everything aside to investigate the tip from the informant, who promises Janne even more if he shows substantial effort in his investigation.

Braving the frigid coast of the Gulf of Finland where the mine is located, Jaane is confronted by a menacing security officer. When asked about the mine, local people demonstrate a loyalty that seems tinged with fear. The sense of fear, menace and solitude is emphasised strikingly by author Antti Tuomainen. He switches us back and forth between the perspectives of both Janne, who ponders the implications of his discoveries, and the mysterious killer, who muses about the art of killing. Both of them tread through the snow, brooding. The presence of the unforgiving winter also lends a sense of psychological vulnerability that is fraught with danger, so you feel uneasy throughout.

Janne learns that another reporter named Lehtinen previously looked into the mine’s shady background before he was killed by car in Berlin. It was a hit-and-run, and the man’s notes mysteriously disappeared from his office. Jaane’s search leads him to Lehtinen’s daughter Maarit, who is mysterious, lovely, and quite fearless.

Since getting the very cold shoulder at the mine, Jaane feels like he’s being followed, and realises he may be risking his life for an exclusive. As he forgets some of his parental responsibilities back home, Pauliina is barely speaking to Janne anymore. And speaking of bad fathers and troubled relationships, Janne’s own father, who walked away 30 years ago, suddenly re-surfaces and wants to re-connect with him.

With his personal life in turmoil, he focuses instead on the professional task of interviewing a surviving mining board member and an environmental activist. Inevitably he crosses paths with the detective investigating the murders. When he publishes his findings, he receives a death threat directed at his wife and child that he cannot ignore. After considerable soul searching, he withdraws from the assignment and requests a transfer. Maybe he can resurrect his marriage and even get to know his father. This also means his job now is not finding the truth but tracking popular trends like ‘twerking� for the social column.

And yet he can’t keep away from the story. He goes back to the mine with Maarit and another scientist to collect soil samples. The sudden violence they are subjected to then determines the trajectory of the investigation, Janne’s personal relationships, and perhaps the fate of the entire country. With a subdued yet dramatic ending, Tuomainen demonstrates again his unique brand of thriller which poses deep dilemmas delivered in sparse prose, charged with a quiet power.

The Mine is as much about human relationships as it is about crime and environmental disaster. The themes of fate, destiny and family are the stock and trade of Nordic noir, but The Mine will stand also as an excellent example of the genre’s increasing emphasis on environmental injustice in its purview of social concerns.

Tuomainen, the poet laureate of Finnish noir, writes such evocative descriptions of snow that they recall Peter Høeg’s classic Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow. If you enjoy the lyricism of Jan Costin Wagner‘s melancholy wanderers in cold climates, you should enjoy The Mine, as well as Antti Tuomainen’s previous books The Healer and Dark As My Heart.]]> 3.57 2015 The Mine
author: Antti Tuomainen
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/12/13
shelves:
review:
Originally posted on

Janne Vuori, an idealistic investigative journalist on the staff of Helsinki Today, has a thankless job and a failing marriage. These factors ensure he is easily lured into a very big story that arrives via an anonymous email tip. The country’s biggest nickel mine, touted as a boon to the economy, is not at all what it seems and represents an environmental disaster on a scale never before seen in Finnish history.

Even before you can imagine Janne getting threatened by greedy corporate bad guys, you witness from the first pages a methodical assassin picking off members of the mine’s board of trustees one-by-one. Tuomainen describes the deaths with a macabre flair that makes each kill seem like a well-synchronised ballet.

Janne’s wife Pauliina complains that he is neglecting their relationship and their three-year-old child for the sake of selfish idealism. He parries that she is a corporate sell-out, but her charge does seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. He sets everything aside to investigate the tip from the informant, who promises Janne even more if he shows substantial effort in his investigation.

Braving the frigid coast of the Gulf of Finland where the mine is located, Jaane is confronted by a menacing security officer. When asked about the mine, local people demonstrate a loyalty that seems tinged with fear. The sense of fear, menace and solitude is emphasised strikingly by author Antti Tuomainen. He switches us back and forth between the perspectives of both Janne, who ponders the implications of his discoveries, and the mysterious killer, who muses about the art of killing. Both of them tread through the snow, brooding. The presence of the unforgiving winter also lends a sense of psychological vulnerability that is fraught with danger, so you feel uneasy throughout.

Janne learns that another reporter named Lehtinen previously looked into the mine’s shady background before he was killed by car in Berlin. It was a hit-and-run, and the man’s notes mysteriously disappeared from his office. Jaane’s search leads him to Lehtinen’s daughter Maarit, who is mysterious, lovely, and quite fearless.

Since getting the very cold shoulder at the mine, Jaane feels like he’s being followed, and realises he may be risking his life for an exclusive. As he forgets some of his parental responsibilities back home, Pauliina is barely speaking to Janne anymore. And speaking of bad fathers and troubled relationships, Janne’s own father, who walked away 30 years ago, suddenly re-surfaces and wants to re-connect with him.

With his personal life in turmoil, he focuses instead on the professional task of interviewing a surviving mining board member and an environmental activist. Inevitably he crosses paths with the detective investigating the murders. When he publishes his findings, he receives a death threat directed at his wife and child that he cannot ignore. After considerable soul searching, he withdraws from the assignment and requests a transfer. Maybe he can resurrect his marriage and even get to know his father. This also means his job now is not finding the truth but tracking popular trends like ‘twerking� for the social column.

And yet he can’t keep away from the story. He goes back to the mine with Maarit and another scientist to collect soil samples. The sudden violence they are subjected to then determines the trajectory of the investigation, Janne’s personal relationships, and perhaps the fate of the entire country. With a subdued yet dramatic ending, Tuomainen demonstrates again his unique brand of thriller which poses deep dilemmas delivered in sparse prose, charged with a quiet power.

The Mine is as much about human relationships as it is about crime and environmental disaster. The themes of fate, destiny and family are the stock and trade of Nordic noir, but The Mine will stand also as an excellent example of the genre’s increasing emphasis on environmental injustice in its purview of social concerns.

Tuomainen, the poet laureate of Finnish noir, writes such evocative descriptions of snow that they recall Peter Høeg’s classic Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow. If you enjoy the lyricism of Jan Costin Wagner‘s melancholy wanderers in cold climates, you should enjoy The Mine, as well as Antti Tuomainen’s previous books The Healer and Dark As My Heart.
]]> Cambodia Noir 25814249
Cambo offers a hundred kinds of trouble that June could have got mixed up in. The Phnom Penh underworld is in an uproar after a huge drug bust; a local reporter has been murdered in a political hit; and the government and opposition are locked in a standoff that could throw the country into chaos at any moment. But June came with secrets and terrors of her own. Cambodia is not the only place she’s traveled, or the worst, and the more Will learns about her past, the more danger they both are in. . .

Propulsive, electric, and filled with unforgettable characters, Cambodia Noir marks the arrival of a fresh new talent. Nick Seeley's debut novel is a powerful and unsettling exploration of loss, and being lost, and what happens when we go too far into the dark.]]> 352 Nick Seeley 1501106082 Jeremy 4
Will Keller is a dissipated, street-smart, and very jaded news photographer based in Phnom Penh. He is ever out to capture the next money shot, careening through the streets on a hired scooter, selling images of Cambodia’s misery for a newspaper.

Out of the blue, he is hired by a mysterious woman called Kara to track down her sister, June Saito, who also worked on the paper and mysteriously vanished. Keller remembers June, an idealistic neophyte intern who wrote increasingly in-depth articles. She may have gotten too close to the corruption rampant in the country, particularly Cambodia’s drug trade � a toxic, high-stakes cocktail of police, military, and opposing political parties, all manoeuvring for primacy. The new job offered by Kara comes at a time of growing unrest, and directly after Keller has survived an explosion. A tip-off had sent him to the scene of a drug bust involving a high-ranking general.

When another journalist is murdered in cold blood, Keller’s editor Gus wonders if his writers are getting too close to something hot. This both frightens and excites him. He supports Keller however he can and promises to look after Keller’s lover Channi, but otherwise stays out of it. Even when the investigation starts to point to journalists who may be caught up in the corruption.

Cambodia Noir oozes with atmosphere, a roiling mash-up of the gritty journalism like Michael Herr’s Dispatches and the psychological labyrinth of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. It’s the latter that seems to inspire the trajectory of its inward-turning, disassociative terror. Seeley’s compelling first-person narrative is classic noir, which world-weary Keller delivers in the deadpan tone of the pulps.

Keller needs cash and drugs to fuel his investigation, so he agrees to some well-paid side work involving blackmail. He is tasked with photographing the son of a high-ranking police officer in flagrante with a male lover. On this little jaunt someone tries to kill him with a machete, and he doesn’t know if it is a coincidence or if he’s been set-up. Now on the run, Keller doggedly yet carefully continues his quest to find June. Following the cryptic clues left in her increasingly hallucinatory diary, he begins to see things himself: the ghosts of murdered co-workers, friends and lovers begin to accompany him everywhere. As we learn, the dead person who haunts him most was his true love from the past.

As his mental state deteriorates, his appetite for drugs only increases. He binges on a steady diet of methamphetamine pills, marijuana and warm beer, and digs deeper and deeper into the very darkness that lured June herself. Using locational clues from her diary, and reaching near-insanity, he confronts the police, gangsters, and military � none of whom put any value on his life. With multiple factions leveraging to gain power, Keller may be a pawn, but he is a willing one. Hemmed in by enemies, and with the country on the brink of war, he marches forward like a damned soldier without a country.

Unable to trust anyone, Keller plummets headlong into the dark jungle in pursuit of June, unnerved by what he begins to suspect, but unable to resist the temptation. Keller’s investigation doesn’t end in the jungle but in a soul-shattering confrontation in the modern glitz of downtown Hong Kong. Keller asked for it, so he gets his answers amid a violent hail of bullets and glass. The final, gut-wrenching exchange will fill you with a sense of admiration and despair.

Seeley, who worked as a reporter in Cambodia, creates a riveting rollercoaster ride that is equal parts blood-beating thriller, psychological tour de force and commentary on journalism and cultural appropriation. The writer’s engaging style of authenticity combined with his gritty sensibility marks him as an author to watch.]]> 3.32 2016 Cambodia Noir
author: Nick Seeley
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/11/22
shelves:
review:
Originally posted on

Will Keller is a dissipated, street-smart, and very jaded news photographer based in Phnom Penh. He is ever out to capture the next money shot, careening through the streets on a hired scooter, selling images of Cambodia’s misery for a newspaper.

Out of the blue, he is hired by a mysterious woman called Kara to track down her sister, June Saito, who also worked on the paper and mysteriously vanished. Keller remembers June, an idealistic neophyte intern who wrote increasingly in-depth articles. She may have gotten too close to the corruption rampant in the country, particularly Cambodia’s drug trade � a toxic, high-stakes cocktail of police, military, and opposing political parties, all manoeuvring for primacy. The new job offered by Kara comes at a time of growing unrest, and directly after Keller has survived an explosion. A tip-off had sent him to the scene of a drug bust involving a high-ranking general.

When another journalist is murdered in cold blood, Keller’s editor Gus wonders if his writers are getting too close to something hot. This both frightens and excites him. He supports Keller however he can and promises to look after Keller’s lover Channi, but otherwise stays out of it. Even when the investigation starts to point to journalists who may be caught up in the corruption.

Cambodia Noir oozes with atmosphere, a roiling mash-up of the gritty journalism like Michael Herr’s Dispatches and the psychological labyrinth of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. It’s the latter that seems to inspire the trajectory of its inward-turning, disassociative terror. Seeley’s compelling first-person narrative is classic noir, which world-weary Keller delivers in the deadpan tone of the pulps.

Keller needs cash and drugs to fuel his investigation, so he agrees to some well-paid side work involving blackmail. He is tasked with photographing the son of a high-ranking police officer in flagrante with a male lover. On this little jaunt someone tries to kill him with a machete, and he doesn’t know if it is a coincidence or if he’s been set-up. Now on the run, Keller doggedly yet carefully continues his quest to find June. Following the cryptic clues left in her increasingly hallucinatory diary, he begins to see things himself: the ghosts of murdered co-workers, friends and lovers begin to accompany him everywhere. As we learn, the dead person who haunts him most was his true love from the past.

As his mental state deteriorates, his appetite for drugs only increases. He binges on a steady diet of methamphetamine pills, marijuana and warm beer, and digs deeper and deeper into the very darkness that lured June herself. Using locational clues from her diary, and reaching near-insanity, he confronts the police, gangsters, and military � none of whom put any value on his life. With multiple factions leveraging to gain power, Keller may be a pawn, but he is a willing one. Hemmed in by enemies, and with the country on the brink of war, he marches forward like a damned soldier without a country.

Unable to trust anyone, Keller plummets headlong into the dark jungle in pursuit of June, unnerved by what he begins to suspect, but unable to resist the temptation. Keller’s investigation doesn’t end in the jungle but in a soul-shattering confrontation in the modern glitz of downtown Hong Kong. Keller asked for it, so he gets his answers amid a violent hail of bullets and glass. The final, gut-wrenching exchange will fill you with a sense of admiration and despair.

Seeley, who worked as a reporter in Cambodia, creates a riveting rollercoaster ride that is equal parts blood-beating thriller, psychological tour de force and commentary on journalism and cultural appropriation. The writer’s engaging style of authenticity combined with his gritty sensibility marks him as an author to watch.
]]> <![CDATA[The Last Pilgrim (Tommy Bergrenn #1)]]> 29348332
Many years later, three sets of remains are found in a popular Oslo forest—two adults and a child. Despite his boss’s call to not spend extra time on the old case, Detective Tommy Bergmann cannot help but dig deeper, especially as he uncovers connections to a more recent murder. As he unravels the secrets of the past, it becomes clear that everything is permissible in war—and that only those who reject love can come out victorious.]]> 540 Gard Sveen 1503992128 Jeremy 0 to-read 4.02 2013 The Last Pilgrim (Tommy Bergrenn #1)
author: Gard Sveen
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/11/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bird Tribunal 31454606 233 Agnes Ravatn 1910633364 Jeremy 5
Allis Hagtorn is not quite sure what to expect when she shows up to work at a house on the edge of the isolated Norwegian fjords. She’s answering an ad for a live-in caregiver for the taciturn man who lives there. Sigurd Bagge is a man of few words so she’s left to wonder what is wrong with her obviously well-built new employer. Why does he needs care and just where is his wife? Her main motive in taking the job was to escape her old life, which we hear more about as the story progresses. Although she’s acutely self-conscious, she strives to impress him with her gardening and cooking prowess while furtively glancing at his handsome features. What sounds like a set-up for a light-hearted rom-com, however, is anything but.

The disarming opening belies a deep psychological thriller characterised early on by a mounting sense of dread. Allis is cut off from the outside world, willingly on one hand because she’s running from her past and a sense of failure. But on the other, she seeks information about Bagge and his wife, but her sole source is cryptic and sneering remarks made by the creepy old grocer in the remote country store she bikes to.

Seeking solace in nature after one of Bagge’s many moods swings, Allis encounters a disturbing scene in the forest � a burnt clearing and charred nails like some grim fairy circle. The discovery marks the beginning of a series of revelations that deepens the sense of unease.

The first-person narrative provides tension as we are not sure if we can trust Allis� limited perspective. Her enduring crush on Bagge, about whom she knows next to nothing, coupled with torment about her own self-worth lends a claustrophobic feel to the minimalist setting. The remote rural house has a Gothic ambiance that recalls the romance of Jane Eyre and the seething mystery of Rebecca. Latent mystery abounds in the house and its environs. Right from the start you are tantalised by a certain locked room. And then there’s the hidden cookbook belonging to the real elephant in the room, the missing wife. And outside, malevolent gulls and dead tits portend that Allis� fledgling romance may not be so healthy as she wished.

Although Bagge is a nagging mystery, Allis rolls up her sleeves, determined to create order in the house, garden and her own life. She tries to tame her brooding Rochester, who only emerges from his chambers for meals. In the forced intimacy of their isolation a clumsy relationship starts to blossom, but only after Alli shares with Bagge a sad and lovely story derived from Norse mythology, the death of Balder. The act of storytelling breaks the ice between them, but when it’s his turn to tell his story, it is a deeply disturbing and hallucinatory vision, the titular bird tribunal.

The real breakthrough in their relationship comes when she cooks a meal from his wife’s cookbook, luring him out of his lair to begin a relationship and the validation she so craves. Rich with imagery and symbolism, Ravatn’s prose leaves out punctuation in character dialogues. This device works very well for our nervous narrator, who because she lacks self-confidence, neurotically rehearses speech before delivering it, and we realise it’s an actual utterance only after Bagge responds.

As Bagge alternately accepts, rejects, and scares the hell out of her, he also pleads for forgiveness and begins to reveals all of his secrets: the story of his wife Nor, a lunar eclipse, and finally, the secret of what lies hidden in the boathouse. With each revelation, Ravatn harnesses the darker aspect of nature, which serves her vivid prose as a narrative agent of mystery, violence and the supernatural. In the tradition of Nordic noir, nature itself is a main character in The Bird Tribunal, where ordinary objects are ominous ciphers, and even the dazzling beauty of the fjords oozes with darkness and latent murder.

Even if you think you’ve solved the core mystery, Allis� fear and fascination will keep you turning the pages until the dramatic, harrowing end. Ravatn’s masterful prose and Rosie Hedger’s careful and clear translation makes for absolutely captivating reading. The Bird Tribunal is suffused with dark imagery from the ancient Eddas, creating a foreboding atmosphere that gets under the skin and stays there. Like a lunar eclipse, each revelation is another form of darkness.]]> 3.63 2013 The Bird Tribunal
author: Agnes Ravatn
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2016/10/11
date added: 2016/10/11
shelves:
review:
Originally posted at

Allis Hagtorn is not quite sure what to expect when she shows up to work at a house on the edge of the isolated Norwegian fjords. She’s answering an ad for a live-in caregiver for the taciturn man who lives there. Sigurd Bagge is a man of few words so she’s left to wonder what is wrong with her obviously well-built new employer. Why does he needs care and just where is his wife? Her main motive in taking the job was to escape her old life, which we hear more about as the story progresses. Although she’s acutely self-conscious, she strives to impress him with her gardening and cooking prowess while furtively glancing at his handsome features. What sounds like a set-up for a light-hearted rom-com, however, is anything but.

The disarming opening belies a deep psychological thriller characterised early on by a mounting sense of dread. Allis is cut off from the outside world, willingly on one hand because she’s running from her past and a sense of failure. But on the other, she seeks information about Bagge and his wife, but her sole source is cryptic and sneering remarks made by the creepy old grocer in the remote country store she bikes to.

Seeking solace in nature after one of Bagge’s many moods swings, Allis encounters a disturbing scene in the forest � a burnt clearing and charred nails like some grim fairy circle. The discovery marks the beginning of a series of revelations that deepens the sense of unease.

The first-person narrative provides tension as we are not sure if we can trust Allis� limited perspective. Her enduring crush on Bagge, about whom she knows next to nothing, coupled with torment about her own self-worth lends a claustrophobic feel to the minimalist setting. The remote rural house has a Gothic ambiance that recalls the romance of Jane Eyre and the seething mystery of Rebecca. Latent mystery abounds in the house and its environs. Right from the start you are tantalised by a certain locked room. And then there’s the hidden cookbook belonging to the real elephant in the room, the missing wife. And outside, malevolent gulls and dead tits portend that Allis� fledgling romance may not be so healthy as she wished.

Although Bagge is a nagging mystery, Allis rolls up her sleeves, determined to create order in the house, garden and her own life. She tries to tame her brooding Rochester, who only emerges from his chambers for meals. In the forced intimacy of their isolation a clumsy relationship starts to blossom, but only after Alli shares with Bagge a sad and lovely story derived from Norse mythology, the death of Balder. The act of storytelling breaks the ice between them, but when it’s his turn to tell his story, it is a deeply disturbing and hallucinatory vision, the titular bird tribunal.

The real breakthrough in their relationship comes when she cooks a meal from his wife’s cookbook, luring him out of his lair to begin a relationship and the validation she so craves. Rich with imagery and symbolism, Ravatn’s prose leaves out punctuation in character dialogues. This device works very well for our nervous narrator, who because she lacks self-confidence, neurotically rehearses speech before delivering it, and we realise it’s an actual utterance only after Bagge responds.

As Bagge alternately accepts, rejects, and scares the hell out of her, he also pleads for forgiveness and begins to reveals all of his secrets: the story of his wife Nor, a lunar eclipse, and finally, the secret of what lies hidden in the boathouse. With each revelation, Ravatn harnesses the darker aspect of nature, which serves her vivid prose as a narrative agent of mystery, violence and the supernatural. In the tradition of Nordic noir, nature itself is a main character in The Bird Tribunal, where ordinary objects are ominous ciphers, and even the dazzling beauty of the fjords oozes with darkness and latent murder.

Even if you think you’ve solved the core mystery, Allis� fear and fascination will keep you turning the pages until the dramatic, harrowing end. Ravatn’s masterful prose and Rosie Hedger’s careful and clear translation makes for absolutely captivating reading. The Bird Tribunal is suffused with dark imagery from the ancient Eddas, creating a foreboding atmosphere that gets under the skin and stays there. Like a lunar eclipse, each revelation is another form of darkness.
]]> Butterflies in November 20949737 296 Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir 080212318X Jeremy 0 to-read 3.30 2004 Butterflies in November
author: Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/09/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Seventh Child 20882689 Winner of the 2012 Glass Key Award given by the members of the Crime Writers of Scandinavia

All the best homes are by the water, or so the matron of Kongslund Orphanage tells her small charges. But at this particular house by the sea, not all is as it appears.

On September 11, 2001, on a desolate beach on the outskirts of Copenhagen, police begin investigating the strange death of an unidentified woman. Surrounding the body are what appear to be offerings to the deceased: a book, a small noose, a dead golden canary, a linden tree branch, and a photo of the Kongslund Orphanage. As the police puzzle over their bizarre findings, the Twin Towers fall in walls of flame and the case is quickly overshadowed by the terror half a world away.

Years later, as the sixtieth anniversary of the matron’s reign at Kongslund approaches, identical anonymous letters are sent to six of the home’s former residents, hinting at a cover-up that has allowed Denmark’s most influential to hide away their dirty secrets and keep their grip on power. As one tenacious reporter hunts for clues, he begins to unravel the true parentage of some of Kongslund’s “orphans.� Can he figure out who is sending the mysterious letters and who murdered the woman on the beach years earlier before it is too late?]]> 642 Erik Valeur 1477899804 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.04 2011 The Seventh Child
author: Erik Valeur
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.04
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/09/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Dirty Snow 44153
Hans Koning has described Dirty Snow as "one of the very few novels to come out of German-occupied France that gets it exactly right." In a study of the criminal mind that is comparable to Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, Simenon maps a no man's land of the spirit in which human nature is driven to destruction—and redemption, perhaps, as well—by forces beyond its control.]]> 244 Georges Simenon 1590170431 Jeremy 4 3.96 1948 Dirty Snow
author: Georges Simenon
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1948
rating: 4
read at: 2016/09/11
date added: 2016/09/11
shelves:
review:

]]> The Blind Assassin 78433 The Blind Assassin is a richly layered and uniquely rewarding experience.

It opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist.

For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The Blind Assassin proves once again that Atwood is one of the most talented, daring, and exciting writers of our time. Like The Handmaid's Tale, it is destined to become a classic.]]> 637 Margaret Atwood Jeremy 0 to-read 3.96 2000 The Blind Assassin
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/08/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Marked for Life (Jana Berzelius, #1)]]> 28815691
Public prosecutor Jana Berzelius steps in to lead the investigation. Young and brilliant but emotionally cold, Berzelius, like her famous prosecutor father, won't be swayed by the hysterical widow or intimidated by the threatening letters the victim had tried to hide. Jana is steely, aloof, impenetrable. That is, until the boy…�

A few days later on a nearby deserted shoreline, the body of a preteen boy is discovered, and with him, the murder weapon that killed him and the original victim. Berzelius is drawn more deeply into the case for as she attends his autopsy, she recognizes something strangely familiar in his small, scarred, heroin-riddled body. Cut deep into his flesh are initials that scream child trafficking and trigger in her a flash of memory of her own dark, fear-ridden past. Her connection to this boy has been carved with deliberation and malice that penetrate to her very core.Ìý

Now, to protect her own hidden past, she must find the suspect behind these murders, before the police do.Ìý

International bestselling author Emelie Schepp introduces us to the enigmatic, unforgettable Jana Berzelius in this first novel of a chilling trilogy.]]> 384 Emelie Schepp 0778319563 Jeremy 3
Nothing seems to ruffle Jana Berzelius, the cool and collected public prosecutor based in the Swedish municipality of Norrköping. With her formal manner and never a hair out of place, she’s the consummate professional who commands respect. So it’s no surprise when she’s called in by the chief prosecutor to head the investigation of the murder of Hans Juhlén, a highly placed migration official who was shot execution-style in his own home. His distressed wife’s emergency call opens the book.

Schepp begins with a sure hand, and this debut novel earned her the 2016 Swedish Crime Writer of the Year award. For fans of Nordic noir, Schepp delivers her credentials early on. The first three chapters have the episodic tension of a Hans Rosenfeldt television script. We are given a crime scene with a chilly Baltic backdrop, introduced to the team of investigators, and get a glimpse of the drama of a frightened child in a freight container full of refugees that portends dark deeds ahead. The investigative team has little evidence to work with at the crime scene except an open window and a child’s handprint, which is strange because the Juhléns have no children.

No witnesses can be found initially, but CCTV footage reveals a hooded child in the vicinity of the house. When the investigators finally find him, he is also dead � again, killed execution-style. During the investigation Jana is ever fearless and calm. Not one for small talk, she suffers no fools. Even Mia Bolander can’t get under her skin. Mia is a down-to-earth blue collar detective who rose up from the working class streets. She can’t stand Jana’s snooty airs and is antagonistic towards the privileged ice queen with the silver spoon in her mouth. But we learn Jana’s cool exterior belies a darker, edgier past.

The discovery of a scar on the dead boy’s neck recalls the mysterious scar which Jana has been hiding most of her life. Her own scar represents a childhood memory wiped by trauma, so the dead boy awakens deeply hibernated memories, disrupting her cool composure. We don’t like spoilers, but if you’ve read the publisher’s generous blurb you already know the team is dealing with child refugees who are kidnapped and trained as assassins who call their abductor ‘Papa�.

By the time the team realise Juhlén was a bad guy who exploited asylum-seekers and the codes on his computer point to missing freight containers, Jana is already ahead of them, and implicates herself in a very dangerous game. The daughter of a highly-regarded prosecutor, she must skirt her father’s influence, the cops, and the justice system in order to confront the mystery of her own past and her very identity.

During this fast-paced investigative drama, Schepp populates the investigation with a range of characters, but they feel flat and less vibrant than the story they’re participating in. Besides Jana and Mia, there’s chief Gunnar Öhrn, DCI Henrik Levin, technician Ola Söderström, and forensic ace Anneli Lindgren, who has an off-and-on relationship with chief Gunnar.

Although Schepp provides a strong character in Jana, her real strength is suspenseful plotting, which tends to outshine the characters. If you think a plot involving child assassins in Sweden is over the top, Schepp reminds us that the country is just a boat ride away from the grim realities of military-trained children in armed conflicts in Africa and those recruited by ISIL.

The wispy characterisations are nowhere more evident than in the crucible event of the story. After all the built-up tension, the final action-packed confrontation between Jana and Papa amounts to middling conventional drama. The obligatory gloating villain speech performed by a quasi-philosophical bad man is just not that interesting. One promising sub-plot early on, that of threatening letters in the Juhlén home that points to his systematic rape of vulnerable refugees, is not as tidily wrapped so much as dropped. But Schepp’s eliding of plot elements and character development can also be seen as an economical strategy that serves the book’s suspenseful pace. Marked for Life is quite a page-turner, as Jana races to get the bad guy and find out who she is.

Marked for Life is a promising debut for an author whose book began as a self-published manuscript in a competitive market. She may not be the next Stieg Larsson, but Marked for Life is an entertaining entry into Nordic noir and the first in a trilogy about the charismatic Jana Berzelius, a series worth following but which might benefit from more editorial scrutiny.]]> 3.58 2013 Marked for Life (Jana Berzelius, #1)
author: Emelie Schepp
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2016/08/30
shelves:
review:
Originally posted on

Nothing seems to ruffle Jana Berzelius, the cool and collected public prosecutor based in the Swedish municipality of Norrköping. With her formal manner and never a hair out of place, she’s the consummate professional who commands respect. So it’s no surprise when she’s called in by the chief prosecutor to head the investigation of the murder of Hans Juhlén, a highly placed migration official who was shot execution-style in his own home. His distressed wife’s emergency call opens the book.

Schepp begins with a sure hand, and this debut novel earned her the 2016 Swedish Crime Writer of the Year award. For fans of Nordic noir, Schepp delivers her credentials early on. The first three chapters have the episodic tension of a Hans Rosenfeldt television script. We are given a crime scene with a chilly Baltic backdrop, introduced to the team of investigators, and get a glimpse of the drama of a frightened child in a freight container full of refugees that portends dark deeds ahead. The investigative team has little evidence to work with at the crime scene except an open window and a child’s handprint, which is strange because the Juhléns have no children.

No witnesses can be found initially, but CCTV footage reveals a hooded child in the vicinity of the house. When the investigators finally find him, he is also dead � again, killed execution-style. During the investigation Jana is ever fearless and calm. Not one for small talk, she suffers no fools. Even Mia Bolander can’t get under her skin. Mia is a down-to-earth blue collar detective who rose up from the working class streets. She can’t stand Jana’s snooty airs and is antagonistic towards the privileged ice queen with the silver spoon in her mouth. But we learn Jana’s cool exterior belies a darker, edgier past.

The discovery of a scar on the dead boy’s neck recalls the mysterious scar which Jana has been hiding most of her life. Her own scar represents a childhood memory wiped by trauma, so the dead boy awakens deeply hibernated memories, disrupting her cool composure. We don’t like spoilers, but if you’ve read the publisher’s generous blurb you already know the team is dealing with child refugees who are kidnapped and trained as assassins who call their abductor ‘Papa�.

By the time the team realise Juhlén was a bad guy who exploited asylum-seekers and the codes on his computer point to missing freight containers, Jana is already ahead of them, and implicates herself in a very dangerous game. The daughter of a highly-regarded prosecutor, she must skirt her father’s influence, the cops, and the justice system in order to confront the mystery of her own past and her very identity.

During this fast-paced investigative drama, Schepp populates the investigation with a range of characters, but they feel flat and less vibrant than the story they’re participating in. Besides Jana and Mia, there’s chief Gunnar Öhrn, DCI Henrik Levin, technician Ola Söderström, and forensic ace Anneli Lindgren, who has an off-and-on relationship with chief Gunnar.

Although Schepp provides a strong character in Jana, her real strength is suspenseful plotting, which tends to outshine the characters. If you think a plot involving child assassins in Sweden is over the top, Schepp reminds us that the country is just a boat ride away from the grim realities of military-trained children in armed conflicts in Africa and those recruited by ISIL.

The wispy characterisations are nowhere more evident than in the crucible event of the story. After all the built-up tension, the final action-packed confrontation between Jana and Papa amounts to middling conventional drama. The obligatory gloating villain speech performed by a quasi-philosophical bad man is just not that interesting. One promising sub-plot early on, that of threatening letters in the Juhlén home that points to his systematic rape of vulnerable refugees, is not as tidily wrapped so much as dropped. But Schepp’s eliding of plot elements and character development can also be seen as an economical strategy that serves the book’s suspenseful pace. Marked for Life is quite a page-turner, as Jana races to get the bad guy and find out who she is.

Marked for Life is a promising debut for an author whose book began as a self-published manuscript in a competitive market. She may not be the next Stieg Larsson, but Marked for Life is an entertaining entry into Nordic noir and the first in a trilogy about the charismatic Jana Berzelius, a series worth following but which might benefit from more editorial scrutiny.
]]> Before the Fall 26245850
Was it by chance that so many influential people perished? Or was something more sinister at work? A storm of media attention brings Scott fame that quickly morphs into notoriety and accusations, and he scrambles to salvage truth from the wreckage. Amid trauma and chaos, the fragile relationship between Scott and the young boy grows and glows at the heart of this stunning novel, raising questions of fate, morality, and the inextricable ties that bind us together.]]> 391 Noah Hawley 1455561789 Jeremy 4
A private jet mysteriously goes off radar shortly after taking off from Martha’s Vineyard and crashes into the sea, killing nine passengers, but sparing two improbable survivors who somehow crawl to shore.

While one of the crash victims is media mogul David Bateman, one of the survivors, artist Scott Burroughs, pulls Bateman’s four-year-old son JJ from the floating wreckage, and swims with him for eight miles despite having a dislocated shoulder. But more ordeals are in store for the two survivors-cum-celebrities, who are assaulted relentlessly by the media and a news cycle hungry for new information.

With little initial forensic evidence to go on, the crash investigators begin by checking the backgrounds of the victims. There is David Bateman, media mogul behind the country’s top right-wing news network, who has plenty of enemies. Then there’s the equally high-profile Ben Kipling, a Wall Street power broker and money launderer whose young daughter had once been a kidnapping victim. Kipling was facing indictment just before boarding the plane, a fact his secret North Korean and Iranian clients won’t be happy about. The competent and no-nonsense pilot had a clean record, as did his co-pilot, a selfish rogue interested in the stewardess working on board. Then there’s Bateman’s elite bodyguard, who has had a broad range of international clients and a mysterious past. Besides young JJ, that just leaves Scott Burroughs, an artist whose sole subject just happens to be disaster scenarios.

Meanwhile, Bateman’s protegee, the right-wing pundit and talk show host Bill Cunningham who is a barely concealed version of Bill O’Reilly, cries foul play and conspiracy to gin up ratings. He locks his sights on the mysterious artist. Is this new darling of the media a savior, or a terrorist who somehow survived his own attack? After all, Burroughs has painted many disasters including a plane crash.

Hawley zooms in and out of the intimate struggles faced by the artist and the orphaned boy who form a fragile relationship fraught with trauma and survivor guilt, as they try to heal amidst the surreal broadcasted hype and circling media crews. The boy’s aunt is sweet and helpful, but her husband is a selfish Brooklynite hipster already drooling over the inheritance money.

As Burroughs avoids the media and their perverse spin on reality, Cunningham is as intrigued by the artist as the wealthy art patron who shelters him, but takes it personally when he refuses an exclusive interview. Cunningham will stop at nothing to get to Burroughs, even deploying his own mercenary gumshoe to hunt down victim’s families and tap phones.

While the civilian drama unfolds, the feds finally find the wreckage. It turns out the pilot was outside of his own cabin during the crash, his cockpit door riddled with bullet holes, apparently from the bodyguard’s gun. The bodyguard’s body has not been found. Scott Burroughs meanwhile prepares for a face-off with Cunningham on live TV. Just as the soulful artist and the master media manipulator begin their clash, the investigators locate the black box and learn the whole truth.

Before the Fall is both a mystery and a meditation on destiny that will appeal to crime fiction readers as much as those of general fiction who’ve raised the book up onto all bestsellers lists. Noah Hawley impressively packs many characters into a relatively small book, and the fierce momentum of events prevents any real investment into any one character, even our struggling artist-hero, Scott Burroughs.

The author’s keen and encyclopedic insight is brilliant to the point of exhausting. He examines the machinations of the mass media’s ratings race, forensic procedures, the art world, the macho bravado of the corporate jungle, and even the magical reverie of a local farmer’s market.

One detail you might balk at is an inordinately thorough biographical sidebar on real-life fitness guru Jack LaLanne, ostensibly justified here as the artist’s inspiration lifeline, but which nevertheless seems gratuitous. It’s as if Hawley decided to mash-up an unfinished biographical sketch with a plane crash thriller. I suspect the author, who himself is developing Before the Fall for the silver screen, might consign Jack to the cutting floor.]]> 3.69 2016 Before the Fall
author: Noah Hawley
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2016/08/24
date added: 2016/08/24
shelves:
review:
Originally posted on

A private jet mysteriously goes off radar shortly after taking off from Martha’s Vineyard and crashes into the sea, killing nine passengers, but sparing two improbable survivors who somehow crawl to shore.

While one of the crash victims is media mogul David Bateman, one of the survivors, artist Scott Burroughs, pulls Bateman’s four-year-old son JJ from the floating wreckage, and swims with him for eight miles despite having a dislocated shoulder. But more ordeals are in store for the two survivors-cum-celebrities, who are assaulted relentlessly by the media and a news cycle hungry for new information.

With little initial forensic evidence to go on, the crash investigators begin by checking the backgrounds of the victims. There is David Bateman, media mogul behind the country’s top right-wing news network, who has plenty of enemies. Then there’s the equally high-profile Ben Kipling, a Wall Street power broker and money launderer whose young daughter had once been a kidnapping victim. Kipling was facing indictment just before boarding the plane, a fact his secret North Korean and Iranian clients won’t be happy about. The competent and no-nonsense pilot had a clean record, as did his co-pilot, a selfish rogue interested in the stewardess working on board. Then there’s Bateman’s elite bodyguard, who has had a broad range of international clients and a mysterious past. Besides young JJ, that just leaves Scott Burroughs, an artist whose sole subject just happens to be disaster scenarios.

Meanwhile, Bateman’s protegee, the right-wing pundit and talk show host Bill Cunningham who is a barely concealed version of Bill O’Reilly, cries foul play and conspiracy to gin up ratings. He locks his sights on the mysterious artist. Is this new darling of the media a savior, or a terrorist who somehow survived his own attack? After all, Burroughs has painted many disasters including a plane crash.

Hawley zooms in and out of the intimate struggles faced by the artist and the orphaned boy who form a fragile relationship fraught with trauma and survivor guilt, as they try to heal amidst the surreal broadcasted hype and circling media crews. The boy’s aunt is sweet and helpful, but her husband is a selfish Brooklynite hipster already drooling over the inheritance money.

As Burroughs avoids the media and their perverse spin on reality, Cunningham is as intrigued by the artist as the wealthy art patron who shelters him, but takes it personally when he refuses an exclusive interview. Cunningham will stop at nothing to get to Burroughs, even deploying his own mercenary gumshoe to hunt down victim’s families and tap phones.

While the civilian drama unfolds, the feds finally find the wreckage. It turns out the pilot was outside of his own cabin during the crash, his cockpit door riddled with bullet holes, apparently from the bodyguard’s gun. The bodyguard’s body has not been found. Scott Burroughs meanwhile prepares for a face-off with Cunningham on live TV. Just as the soulful artist and the master media manipulator begin their clash, the investigators locate the black box and learn the whole truth.

Before the Fall is both a mystery and a meditation on destiny that will appeal to crime fiction readers as much as those of general fiction who’ve raised the book up onto all bestsellers lists. Noah Hawley impressively packs many characters into a relatively small book, and the fierce momentum of events prevents any real investment into any one character, even our struggling artist-hero, Scott Burroughs.

The author’s keen and encyclopedic insight is brilliant to the point of exhausting. He examines the machinations of the mass media’s ratings race, forensic procedures, the art world, the macho bravado of the corporate jungle, and even the magical reverie of a local farmer’s market.

One detail you might balk at is an inordinately thorough biographical sidebar on real-life fitness guru Jack LaLanne, ostensibly justified here as the artist’s inspiration lifeline, but which nevertheless seems gratuitous. It’s as if Hawley decided to mash-up an unfinished biographical sketch with a plane crash thriller. I suspect the author, who himself is developing Before the Fall for the silver screen, might consign Jack to the cutting floor.
]]> <![CDATA[A Brief History of Seven Killings]]> 20893314
Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters—assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts�A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 70s, to the crack wars in 80s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 90s. Brilliantly inventive and stunningly ambitious, this novel is a revealing modern epic that will secure Marlon James� place among the great literary talents of his generation.]]> 688 Marlon James 159448600X Jeremy 0 to-read 3.91 2014 A Brief History of Seven Killings
author: Marlon James
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/08/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The North Water 25666046 1859. A man joins a whaling ship bound for the Arctic Circle. Having left the British Army with his reputation in tatters, Patrick Sumner has little option but to accept the position of ship's surgeon on this ill-fated voyage. But when, deep into the journey, a cabin boy is discovered brutally killed, Sumner finds himself forced to act. Soon he will face an evil even greater than he had encountered at the siege of Delhi, in the shape of Henry Drax: harpooner, murderer, monster . . .]]> 255 Ian McGuire 1627795944 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.93 2016 The North Water
author: Ian McGuire
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/08/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Dark Matter 27833670 A mindbending, relentlessly surprising thriller from the author of the bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy.

Jason Dessen is walking home through the chilly Chicago streets one night, looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the fireplace with his wife, Daniela, and their son, Charlie—when his reality shatters.

"Are you happy with your life?"

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.

Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.

Before a man Jason's never met smiles down at him and says, "Welcome back, my friend."

In this world he's woken up to, Jason's life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that's the dream?

And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could've imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

Dark Matter is a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human--a relentlessly surprising science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we'll go to claim the lives we dream of.]]> 342 Blake Crouch 1101904224 Jeremy 0 to-read 4.13 2016 Dark Matter
author: Blake Crouch
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/08/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> War Porn 27774542 —The Wall Street Journal

“War porn,� n . Videos, images, and narratives featuring graphic violence, often brought back from combat zones, viewed voyeuristically or for emotional gratification. Such media are often presented and circulated without context, though they may be used as evidence of war crimes.
Ìý
War pornÌýis also, in Roy Scranton’s searing debut novel, a metaphor for the experience of war in the age of the War on Terror, the fracturing and fragmentation of perspective, time, and self that afflicts soldiers and civilians alike, the global networks and face-to-face moments that suture our fragmented lives together. In War Porn Ìýthree lives fit insideÌýoneÌýanother like nesting a restless young woman at an end-of-summer barbecue in Utah; an American soldier in occupied Baghdad; and Qasim al-Zabadi, an Iraqi math professor, who faces the US invasion of his country with fear, denial, and perseverance. As War PornÌý cuts from America to Iraq and back again, as home and hell merge, we come to see America through the eyes of the occupied, even as we see Qasim become a prisoner of the occupation. Through the looking glass of War Porn , Scranton reveals the fragile humanity that connects Americans and Iraqis, torturers and the tortured, victors and their victims.]]> 352 Roy Scranton 1616957158 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.50 2016 War Porn
author: Roy Scranton
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/08/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hermit (Erhard Jørgensen, #1)]]> 30254911
The last thing Fuerteventura needs is a murder. The island’s already got half-empty bars and windswept beaches, and the local police are under pressure to cut the investigation short.

But long-time islander Erhard, who sees more than most people, won’t let the investigation drop � and he has nothing to lose. He has severed ties with his wife and child in Denmark and has cut himself off from the modern world.

The question is: can an old man who knows nothing about mobile phones, the internet or social media possibly solve a murder in the modern world, especially one that stretches far beyond the sandy beaches of Fuerteventura?
]]> 472 Thomas Rydahl 1780748892 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.03 2014 The Hermit (Erhard Jørgensen, #1)
author: Thomas Rydahl
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.03
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/08/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Voices Beyond (The Öland Quartet, #4)]]> 25109409 Summer on the beautiful Swedish island of Öland. Visitors arrive in their thousands, ready to enjoy the calm and relaxation of this paradise.

Amongst them is Jonas Kloss, excited at the prospect of staying with his aunt, uncle and older cousins. But it is not as he had hoped. One night he takes a boat out onto the moonlit sea. A ship looms out of the darkness and the horror he finds on board is unimaginable.

Fleeing for his life, Jonas arrives at the door of an elderly islander, Gerlof Davidsson. Once Gerlof has heard his tale of dead sailors and axe-wielding madmen, he realizes that this will be a summer like none other Öland has ever seen.

For one man � the Homecomer � this is a very special journey. He seeks revenge that he’s waited a lifetime to exact�]]> 576 Johan Theorin 1446463486 Jeremy 4
Like the three previous books in Johan Theorin’s Öland Quartet, which are gothic thrillers rooted in the tradition of Nordic noir whose settings follow the passage of the seasons, the concluding book is set during a sleepy summer heat wave. The Voices Beyond exudes a brooding atmosphere, and even a hint of the supernatural, as dark forces penetrate an idyllic Swedish island resort. At its core is an unsolved mystery going back 60 years to a corpse knocking from the grave.

Gerlof Davidsson, an 84-year-old retired sailor, spends most of his time in a private room in the old folks� home, dwelling on his own mortality as he waits for a visit from his daughters. He passes the time handcrafting model ships in bottles while his friends die off around him, hoping the holiday at his summer cottage on the coastal island of Öland won’t be his last. One thing’s for sure, he’s destined for some adventure.

The Ölandic, the island’s dominant seasonal resort, is stirring to life, but there is a dark criminal element lurking in the blazing summer heat. Among the oblivious vacationers is a seasoned criminal known as the homecomer, a Swedish ex-pat soldier on his final deadly mission. You soon learn his past is deeply linked with Gerlof’s own. A big score is about to be settled on the small Baltic island that puts Gerlof at the centre of mayhem and death.

We learn in vivid detail the biography of the homecomer and his ties to the island. In chapters alternating with the present, harrowing episodes from his youthful career in Soviet Russia during the Great Terror eventually converge with the present day and his true purpose is revealed. With a deliberate and unhurried pace echoed by Gerlof’s thoughtful manner, Theorin builds a palpable feeling of dread that contrasts with the frolic of the summer vacationers. The homecomer plots with a group of disgruntled locals to rip-off the arrogant Kloss family, but his own game is much more terrifying.

The real terror begins when young Jonas Kloss, a teenage descendant of the old monied family, sees something he shouldn’t while out paddling one evening. He encounters a ship full of corpses except for one living man who is carrying an axe. He narrowly escapes and falls into the arms of Gerlof. The old sailor gently coaxes the facts out of the frightened boy, who afterwards sees a ghost near the ancient cairn built on the island’s edge.

Jonas� uncle, Kent Kloss, is the shady alpha male of the family who runs the resort. When he learns of the midnight encounter, Uncle Kent tells Jonas to keep quiet. As the narrative progresses, you learn that Kent knows more about the homecomer than he’s saying, as does his wife Veronica, and it’s them he’s targeting. As the cops are busy sorting the dead bodies that begin to surface, it is Gerlof who identifies all the players menacing the resort.

One of them is Lisa, aka DJ Summertime, who spins records at the resort’s disco, always keeping one eye on the wallets of the rich and drunk. She’s on hard times and fending off calls from whoever is pressuring her to send money. She gets busted by Kent Kloss and is coerced into being his agent to flush out the homecomer from hiding.

Although Theorin’s strength is his well-drawn character motivation, Lisa is one that gets a lot of play but seems a weak prop in an otherwise sturdy edifice. Her negligible role in the larger drama distracts from the otherwise cohesive theme of revenge and family secrets that run through the book.

In contrast, the homecomer’s tale of torment is riveting and crucial in understanding the drama to come. The well-worn narrative device of intermittent World War II flashbacks running parallel to the present is done masterfully here, with nicely bridged scenes that build the case for the vengeful homecomer’s deep grievance against the Kloss family. The double-narrative is cleverly punctuated by the uncanny knock heard from the grave, which opens the book and echoes throughout like a death-knell.

After an explosive denouement that brings the book’s themes full-circle, the final chapter is a wonderful afterglow wherein Gerlof confronts his own destiny and solves a generations-old mystery. Theorin’s final subdued passage is a coda as inspiring as it is sublime.

With its ghost ships, graveyards, and haunted cairns, The Voices Beyond trades on a supernatural undercurrent, whereas the endearing Gerlof, an unlikely detective, mythbuster, and even a bit of a hypnotist, proves that supernatural phenomena are firmly grounded in the rational. Even so, in Theorin’s Öland, where ghosts are unmasked the mystique yet remains.]]> 3.75 2012 The Voices Beyond (The Öland Quartet, #4)
author: Johan Theorin
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2016/07/19
date added: 2016/08/07
shelves:
review:
Originally posted on

Like the three previous books in Johan Theorin’s Öland Quartet, which are gothic thrillers rooted in the tradition of Nordic noir whose settings follow the passage of the seasons, the concluding book is set during a sleepy summer heat wave. The Voices Beyond exudes a brooding atmosphere, and even a hint of the supernatural, as dark forces penetrate an idyllic Swedish island resort. At its core is an unsolved mystery going back 60 years to a corpse knocking from the grave.

Gerlof Davidsson, an 84-year-old retired sailor, spends most of his time in a private room in the old folks� home, dwelling on his own mortality as he waits for a visit from his daughters. He passes the time handcrafting model ships in bottles while his friends die off around him, hoping the holiday at his summer cottage on the coastal island of Öland won’t be his last. One thing’s for sure, he’s destined for some adventure.

The Ölandic, the island’s dominant seasonal resort, is stirring to life, but there is a dark criminal element lurking in the blazing summer heat. Among the oblivious vacationers is a seasoned criminal known as the homecomer, a Swedish ex-pat soldier on his final deadly mission. You soon learn his past is deeply linked with Gerlof’s own. A big score is about to be settled on the small Baltic island that puts Gerlof at the centre of mayhem and death.

We learn in vivid detail the biography of the homecomer and his ties to the island. In chapters alternating with the present, harrowing episodes from his youthful career in Soviet Russia during the Great Terror eventually converge with the present day and his true purpose is revealed. With a deliberate and unhurried pace echoed by Gerlof’s thoughtful manner, Theorin builds a palpable feeling of dread that contrasts with the frolic of the summer vacationers. The homecomer plots with a group of disgruntled locals to rip-off the arrogant Kloss family, but his own game is much more terrifying.

The real terror begins when young Jonas Kloss, a teenage descendant of the old monied family, sees something he shouldn’t while out paddling one evening. He encounters a ship full of corpses except for one living man who is carrying an axe. He narrowly escapes and falls into the arms of Gerlof. The old sailor gently coaxes the facts out of the frightened boy, who afterwards sees a ghost near the ancient cairn built on the island’s edge.

Jonas� uncle, Kent Kloss, is the shady alpha male of the family who runs the resort. When he learns of the midnight encounter, Uncle Kent tells Jonas to keep quiet. As the narrative progresses, you learn that Kent knows more about the homecomer than he’s saying, as does his wife Veronica, and it’s them he’s targeting. As the cops are busy sorting the dead bodies that begin to surface, it is Gerlof who identifies all the players menacing the resort.

One of them is Lisa, aka DJ Summertime, who spins records at the resort’s disco, always keeping one eye on the wallets of the rich and drunk. She’s on hard times and fending off calls from whoever is pressuring her to send money. She gets busted by Kent Kloss and is coerced into being his agent to flush out the homecomer from hiding.

Although Theorin’s strength is his well-drawn character motivation, Lisa is one that gets a lot of play but seems a weak prop in an otherwise sturdy edifice. Her negligible role in the larger drama distracts from the otherwise cohesive theme of revenge and family secrets that run through the book.

In contrast, the homecomer’s tale of torment is riveting and crucial in understanding the drama to come. The well-worn narrative device of intermittent World War II flashbacks running parallel to the present is done masterfully here, with nicely bridged scenes that build the case for the vengeful homecomer’s deep grievance against the Kloss family. The double-narrative is cleverly punctuated by the uncanny knock heard from the grave, which opens the book and echoes throughout like a death-knell.

After an explosive denouement that brings the book’s themes full-circle, the final chapter is a wonderful afterglow wherein Gerlof confronts his own destiny and solves a generations-old mystery. Theorin’s final subdued passage is a coda as inspiring as it is sublime.

With its ghost ships, graveyards, and haunted cairns, The Voices Beyond trades on a supernatural undercurrent, whereas the endearing Gerlof, an unlikely detective, mythbuster, and even a bit of a hypnotist, proves that supernatural phenomena are firmly grounded in the rational. Even so, in Theorin’s Öland, where ghosts are unmasked the mystique yet remains.
]]> The Human Flies (K2 #1) 22535895 373 Hans Olav Lahlum 1447260198 Jeremy 4
When you pick up this Norwegian crime novel, don’t expect something out of the Nordic noir tradition. Instead prepare yourself for a classic whodunit of the highest calibre, a deviously challenging murder mystery set in an apartment complex in 1960s Oslo.

Kolbjørn Kristiansen, a rookie detective, sets out to make his mark with his first assigned case, and it’s a doozy. When neighbours living on a quiet street in Oslo hear a gunshot, they immediately rush upstairs to the source, the apartment of former minister and wartime resistance hero Harald Olesen. They discover, after gaining entry, that he’s been shot to death.

The immediate and most glaring mystery for our young detective is that there is no sign of forced entry, and no exit but the apartment’s single door, which was blocked by responding neighbours. Not only did the phantom perpetrator escape without being seen, but the apartment’s intact window rules out the possibility of an escape route on one hand or a sniper scenario on the other. This miraculous getaway forms a classic locked-room scenario. As the detective starts interviewing the apartment complex’s seven residents, all of them become viable suspects for one reason or another. As their individual stories are slowly revealed, deep links are discovered going back to a wartime drama of Nazi persecution and life and death choices made by ordinary people.

Early in the investigation, Kristiansen is aided in his endeavour by an unusual sidekick. Patricia Louise Borchmann is an 18-year-old wheelchair-bound genius. He is introduced by her father, who is Kristiansen’s former professor, and who begs to arrange a meeting between the two. She is an Agatha Christie enthusiast whose remarkably sharp mind has some definite ideas about the case, working only from details she’s gleaned in the papers. As Kristiansen interviews the residents and checks their backgrounds, he reluctantly reports back to Patricia. He soon realises that she is two steps ahead of him. Working from the confines of her mansion, she soon proves a valuable asset to the detective, sharing her intriguing theory that the murderer represents a species of what she calls ‘human flies�.

There’s a break in the case when victim Harald Olesen’s diary turns up. In it, Kristiansen reads about the final days before his death wherein he refers to various people using mysterious abbreviations, including the menacing character ‘D�. As the detective learns more about the residents of the building, he realises none of them is on the level. He shuttles back and forth between repeated interviews and Patricia’s dining room, as she helps the detective puzzle out the identities of the characters in the diaries, one of whom is likely the murderer.

Lahlum’s narrative works on many levels, veering in and out of the present investigation and a remote past, while revealing the murder victim’s diary entry by entry. As a story told in first person, related years later, describing the story of his investigation aided by Patricia and her Agatha Christie-esque scenarios, Lahlum’s story is a meta-detective story that is a joy to read.

As one of the suspects in the apartments becomes the second murder victim there is more pressure to solve the case. Patricia soon proves her mettle and Kristianson becomes dependent on her keen insights and dead-on predictions. She even comes to his aid in an entertaining final segment when he rounds up all the suspects in person for the resolving showdown of the mystery.

This novel is moderately hefty, as it works out the possibilities of each of the seven suspects, including the caretaker’s wife, a seductive young student, a mysterious American, another war hero, a former Nazi, a not-so happily married couple, and more colourfully rendered characters. Rich and complex as the story is, Lahlum’s choice of first person limits the narrative to the detective’s point of view. This lends suspense to the unfolding mystery but also leaves one bereft of insight into key figures like Patricia, who is arguably a stronger character than Kristiansen himself.

I would welcome a follow-up to this entertaining mystery, especially if it involves this offbeat but charming duo of sleuths.]]> 3.59 2010 The Human Flies (K2 #1)
author: Hans Olav Lahlum
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2014/03/30
date added: 2016/07/29
shelves:
review:
Originally posted to

When you pick up this Norwegian crime novel, don’t expect something out of the Nordic noir tradition. Instead prepare yourself for a classic whodunit of the highest calibre, a deviously challenging murder mystery set in an apartment complex in 1960s Oslo.

Kolbjørn Kristiansen, a rookie detective, sets out to make his mark with his first assigned case, and it’s a doozy. When neighbours living on a quiet street in Oslo hear a gunshot, they immediately rush upstairs to the source, the apartment of former minister and wartime resistance hero Harald Olesen. They discover, after gaining entry, that he’s been shot to death.

The immediate and most glaring mystery for our young detective is that there is no sign of forced entry, and no exit but the apartment’s single door, which was blocked by responding neighbours. Not only did the phantom perpetrator escape without being seen, but the apartment’s intact window rules out the possibility of an escape route on one hand or a sniper scenario on the other. This miraculous getaway forms a classic locked-room scenario. As the detective starts interviewing the apartment complex’s seven residents, all of them become viable suspects for one reason or another. As their individual stories are slowly revealed, deep links are discovered going back to a wartime drama of Nazi persecution and life and death choices made by ordinary people.

Early in the investigation, Kristiansen is aided in his endeavour by an unusual sidekick. Patricia Louise Borchmann is an 18-year-old wheelchair-bound genius. He is introduced by her father, who is Kristiansen’s former professor, and who begs to arrange a meeting between the two. She is an Agatha Christie enthusiast whose remarkably sharp mind has some definite ideas about the case, working only from details she’s gleaned in the papers. As Kristiansen interviews the residents and checks their backgrounds, he reluctantly reports back to Patricia. He soon realises that she is two steps ahead of him. Working from the confines of her mansion, she soon proves a valuable asset to the detective, sharing her intriguing theory that the murderer represents a species of what she calls ‘human flies�.

There’s a break in the case when victim Harald Olesen’s diary turns up. In it, Kristiansen reads about the final days before his death wherein he refers to various people using mysterious abbreviations, including the menacing character ‘D�. As the detective learns more about the residents of the building, he realises none of them is on the level. He shuttles back and forth between repeated interviews and Patricia’s dining room, as she helps the detective puzzle out the identities of the characters in the diaries, one of whom is likely the murderer.

Lahlum’s narrative works on many levels, veering in and out of the present investigation and a remote past, while revealing the murder victim’s diary entry by entry. As a story told in first person, related years later, describing the story of his investigation aided by Patricia and her Agatha Christie-esque scenarios, Lahlum’s story is a meta-detective story that is a joy to read.

As one of the suspects in the apartments becomes the second murder victim there is more pressure to solve the case. Patricia soon proves her mettle and Kristianson becomes dependent on her keen insights and dead-on predictions. She even comes to his aid in an entertaining final segment when he rounds up all the suspects in person for the resolving showdown of the mystery.

This novel is moderately hefty, as it works out the possibilities of each of the seven suspects, including the caretaker’s wife, a seductive young student, a mysterious American, another war hero, a former Nazi, a not-so happily married couple, and more colourfully rendered characters. Rich and complex as the story is, Lahlum’s choice of first person limits the narrative to the detective’s point of view. This lends suspense to the unfolding mystery but also leaves one bereft of insight into key figures like Patricia, who is arguably a stronger character than Kristiansen himself.

I would welcome a follow-up to this entertaining mystery, especially if it involves this offbeat but charming duo of sleuths.
]]> The Crow Girl 18332120
Its discovery reveals a nightmare world of hidden lives. Of lost identities, secret rituals and brutal exploitation, where nobody can be trusted.

This is the darkest, most complex case the police have ever seen.

This is the world of the Crow Girl.]]> 770 Erik Axl Sund 1846557577 Jeremy 5 to-read
The Crow Girl begins with the discovery of a young boy’s corpse, dumped by a Stockholm train station. Closer inspection reveals the body has been castrated, and mummified. If that wasn’t grim enough, forensics discover an anaesthetic in the young body, which is wracked with injuries, indicating the victim’s death may have been the result of a hideous phenomenon: human dog-fighting involving illegally trafficked children.

Detective Superintendent Jeanette Kihlberg, an overworked cop with a deep sense of justice is behind on her mortgage, burdened by her unemployed artist husband, and feels guilty about neglecting her teenage son’s emotional needs. Although she comes from two generations of cops, she still contends with a male-dominated workplace. While she tolerates her chief’s misogyny daily, she finds Prosecutor von Kwist downright obstructive. Von Kwist is particularly unhelpful in this case. After all, who’ll miss an unidentified immigrant boy?

With few clues to go on, Jeanette gets help from Sofia Zetterlund, a psychologist specialising in childhood abuse and trauma. Sofia moonlights as a psychological evaluator, recommending either psychiatric treatment or prison for offenders awaiting sentencing. Her latest subject, Karl Lundström, awaiting sentencing for sexually abusing his own daughter, has become a person of interest in Jeanette’s homicide case. Lundström has made public his views on castration, and is married to a dentist with access to anaesthetics. In his interview with Sofia, he lets on how easy it is to buy a child and implies that there is a far-reaching paedophile network with tendrils reaching right up into the government.

Sund gives flesh to an astonishing array of characters, inside and outside the police. The narrative shifts between Jeanette and Sofia, and we get right into their worlds. Jeanette is drawn immediately to Sofia, a kindred spirit who exudes mystery behind her professional exterior. However, the strongest character Sund introduces is Victoria Bergman, a patient of Sofia’s with a history of sexual abuse who is suffering from disassociative identity disorder and memory lapses as a result of trauma. And then there is the Crow Girl � an unidentified woman we see holding children captive via snapshots throughout the story.

The book is in three parts, and a stunning revelation in book one warns that nothing is what it seems, but everything is important and connected. In a master stroke, Sund’s standard police procedural setup transforms into a Hitchcockian fever dream as Victoria’s psyche explodes through the hypnotic audiotapes of interviews conducted by Sofia. As the doors of her memory open, her past begins to intersect with the present investigation. It grows harder to separate fantasy from fact.

As Jeanette is called to investigate the murder of Samuel Bai, she learns he is a former child soldier from Sierra Leone and also a patient of Sofia Zetterlund. Sofia meanwhile is sorting out what is real in Victoria’s ramblings. The unraveling of Victoria’s multiple personalities becomes increasingly relevant to the series of murders which follow.

In part three Sund ramps up the thrills and the creepy factor, and throws some outrageous aspects into the mix, including a barbaric religious cult, cannibalism and the Holocaust. While all of this sounds over the top, The Crow Girl doesn’t read like exploitation. It is notably thoughtful in its treatment of the issues of mental illness and child abuse. In the tradition of Nordic noir, there is fairly trenchant criticism of the welfare state, particularly with regard to the have-nots who fall through cracks of the social services. Alert readers will note that Sund even embeds a narrative nod to patron saints of the genre in Sweden, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö and Stieg Larsson.

The Crow Girl is a pulse-pounding thriller that manages to linger on character depth and puts an emphasis on supporting characters that are usually given short shrift. With its heady mix of graphic violence, noirish thrills and social commentary, the book has all the hallmarks of Nordic noir and is a must-read for Scandinavian crime fiction enthusiasts. This is an ambitious book with a large cast and multiple perspectives and timelines. At times audacious and far-fetched, it is nevertheless entertaining, combining the thriller credentials of Jo Nesbo with the deep psychological turmoil of Karin Alvtegen. But don’t expect the laughs of Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Department Q series in these grim pages. Do expect a spark of optimism, as Sund presents victims pushed towards destruction who survive against all odds and manage to re-define themselves on their own terms.]]> 3.74 2016 The Crow Girl
author: Erik Axl Sund
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/07/20
shelves: to-read
review:
Full review at

The Crow Girl begins with the discovery of a young boy’s corpse, dumped by a Stockholm train station. Closer inspection reveals the body has been castrated, and mummified. If that wasn’t grim enough, forensics discover an anaesthetic in the young body, which is wracked with injuries, indicating the victim’s death may have been the result of a hideous phenomenon: human dog-fighting involving illegally trafficked children.

Detective Superintendent Jeanette Kihlberg, an overworked cop with a deep sense of justice is behind on her mortgage, burdened by her unemployed artist husband, and feels guilty about neglecting her teenage son’s emotional needs. Although she comes from two generations of cops, she still contends with a male-dominated workplace. While she tolerates her chief’s misogyny daily, she finds Prosecutor von Kwist downright obstructive. Von Kwist is particularly unhelpful in this case. After all, who’ll miss an unidentified immigrant boy?

With few clues to go on, Jeanette gets help from Sofia Zetterlund, a psychologist specialising in childhood abuse and trauma. Sofia moonlights as a psychological evaluator, recommending either psychiatric treatment or prison for offenders awaiting sentencing. Her latest subject, Karl Lundström, awaiting sentencing for sexually abusing his own daughter, has become a person of interest in Jeanette’s homicide case. Lundström has made public his views on castration, and is married to a dentist with access to anaesthetics. In his interview with Sofia, he lets on how easy it is to buy a child and implies that there is a far-reaching paedophile network with tendrils reaching right up into the government.

Sund gives flesh to an astonishing array of characters, inside and outside the police. The narrative shifts between Jeanette and Sofia, and we get right into their worlds. Jeanette is drawn immediately to Sofia, a kindred spirit who exudes mystery behind her professional exterior. However, the strongest character Sund introduces is Victoria Bergman, a patient of Sofia’s with a history of sexual abuse who is suffering from disassociative identity disorder and memory lapses as a result of trauma. And then there is the Crow Girl � an unidentified woman we see holding children captive via snapshots throughout the story.

The book is in three parts, and a stunning revelation in book one warns that nothing is what it seems, but everything is important and connected. In a master stroke, Sund’s standard police procedural setup transforms into a Hitchcockian fever dream as Victoria’s psyche explodes through the hypnotic audiotapes of interviews conducted by Sofia. As the doors of her memory open, her past begins to intersect with the present investigation. It grows harder to separate fantasy from fact.

As Jeanette is called to investigate the murder of Samuel Bai, she learns he is a former child soldier from Sierra Leone and also a patient of Sofia Zetterlund. Sofia meanwhile is sorting out what is real in Victoria’s ramblings. The unraveling of Victoria’s multiple personalities becomes increasingly relevant to the series of murders which follow.

In part three Sund ramps up the thrills and the creepy factor, and throws some outrageous aspects into the mix, including a barbaric religious cult, cannibalism and the Holocaust. While all of this sounds over the top, The Crow Girl doesn’t read like exploitation. It is notably thoughtful in its treatment of the issues of mental illness and child abuse. In the tradition of Nordic noir, there is fairly trenchant criticism of the welfare state, particularly with regard to the have-nots who fall through cracks of the social services. Alert readers will note that Sund even embeds a narrative nod to patron saints of the genre in Sweden, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö and Stieg Larsson.

The Crow Girl is a pulse-pounding thriller that manages to linger on character depth and puts an emphasis on supporting characters that are usually given short shrift. With its heady mix of graphic violence, noirish thrills and social commentary, the book has all the hallmarks of Nordic noir and is a must-read for Scandinavian crime fiction enthusiasts. This is an ambitious book with a large cast and multiple perspectives and timelines. At times audacious and far-fetched, it is nevertheless entertaining, combining the thriller credentials of Jo Nesbo with the deep psychological turmoil of Karin Alvtegen. But don’t expect the laughs of Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Department Q series in these grim pages. Do expect a spark of optimism, as Sund presents victims pushed towards destruction who survive against all odds and manage to re-define themselves on their own terms.
]]> <![CDATA[The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)]]> 20518872 472 Liu Cixin Jeremy 0 to-read 4.07 2006 The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)
author: Liu Cixin
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/07/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Expendable Man 939794
Dorothy B. Hughes ranks with Raymond Chandler and Patricia Highsmith as a master of mid-century noir. In books like In a Lonely Place and Ride the Pink Horse, she exposed a seething discontent underneath the veneer of twentieth-century prosperity. With The Expendable Man, first published in 1963, Hughes upends the conventions of the wrong-man narrative to deliver a story that engages readers even as it implicates them in the greatest of all American crimes.]]> 339 Dorothy B. Hughes 1903155584 Jeremy 0 to-read 4.04 1963 The Expendable Man
author: Dorothy B. Hughes
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/07/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Novels in Three Lines 570963 A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS ORIGINAL

Novels in Three Lines collects more than a thousand items that appeared anonymously in the French newspaper Le Matin in 1906—true stories of murder, mayhem, and everyday life presented with a ruthless economy that provokes laughter even as it shocks. This extraordinary trove, undiscovered until the 1940s and here translated for the first time into English, is the work of the mysterious Félix Fénéon. Dandy, anarchist, and critic of genius, the discoverer of Georges Seurat and the first French publisher of James Joyce, Fénéon carefully maintained his own anonymity, toiling for years as an obscure clerk in the French War Department. Novels in Three Lines is his secret chef-d’oeuvre, a work of strange and singular art that brings back the long-ago year of 1906 with the haunting immediacy of a photograph while looking forward to such disparate works as Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project and the Death and Disaster series of Andy Warhol.]]> 171 Félix Fénéon 1590172302 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.97 1906 Novels in Three Lines
author: Félix Fénéon
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1906
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/07/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Three Little Pigs 29105822 A gripping mafia thriller, at once a folk tale-like adventure story and moral fable

Ben Frank has blood on his hands.

He knows that he has killed a man in a bar-room brawl. He knows that as an Italian immigrant in turn-of-the-century New York, life is tough. But what he doesn’t know is that the victim’s father, a Mafia boss, will settle a curse, a ‘maledizione�, on Frank’s family; that the shoemaker’s three sons will each die in their forty-second year.

Following the varying fortunes of the shoemaker’s sons � Al, Nick and Leo Frank � as well as their nemesis, a gangster by the name of ‘Terranova�, Three Little Pigs grows into a dazzling meditation on chance, destiny, choice and their consequences.

At once a gripping thriller and an investigation of character and fate, this is a revenge tragedy written by a master at the very peak of his powers. Can the brothers beat the curse?

From Apostolos Doxiadis, author of Logicomix, comes a unique and completely absorbing crime novel, sure to appeal to fans of Mario Puzo, Don DeLillo and Carl Hiaasen.

]]> 189 Apostolos Doxiadis 1910859079 Jeremy 5
Ben Frank, a struggling Italian immigrant and businessman, has turned to drink to deal with life’s little setbacks. But a streak of personal bad luck suddenly careens straight to hell when he kills the only son of a mafia boss during a drunken brawl. The father of the slain man, mobster Tonio Lupo, pays a visit to the ruined man, now in prison for murder. Face to face in a prison cell, the don wants to personally declare a devastating curse: each of Ben Frank’s three sons, without fail, will die in their 42nd year.

In turn of the century Brooklyn, mafia codes of honour were something taken very seriously indeed, and a maledizione delivered personally by a crime boss in particular is no joke. The doomed father must live out his remaining days in prison with knowledge of the death sentence given to his progeny, a fact he shares only with his eldest son Al.

As Al approaches his 42nd year, his father and the mafia don are both long dead, and he himself has emerged as a successful and prominent businessman. But as his fated 42nd birthday approaches and the question of whether the maledizione is is still in force hounds him more with each passing day. Is there a killer out there waiting patiently to fulfill the curse?

Al isn’t taking any chances, and has in fact built up his retailing empire with the sole purpose of creating a home defense network to shield himself from being whacked. Moreover, he reaches out to as many mobsters as he can find and pays them off in a desperate attempt to short circuit the implacable vector of the curse. Even so, he cannot be certain it is no longer active, although he breathes a little easier holed up in his home fortress on Long Island.

Three Little Pigs is told like a folktale with marked philosophical underpinnings. It is narrated with dry humour by a mysterious old man near the end of his days who has latched onto a stranger with a tape recorder in order to tell the tale. The narrator’s droll characterisation of the players in this drama are comprehensive and laugh out loud funny. We learn about the brothers: Al, the businessman with a heavy burden to bear; Nick, the narcissistic B-movie actor; and baby brother Leo, who finds religion. We also learn about the hitman, an educated, methodical thinker who is brought into the underworld as a Sicilian orphan and swiftly rises in the ranks. When he is summoned by the boss to take on a singular, life-defining task, as the old cliché goes� it’s an offer he can’t refuse.

As the killer verges on his target, we are treated to a catalog of Italian culture and mafioso sensibility, and plenty of comic moments involving oafish mob soldiers. But the core mystery here that niggles is just who is this old man relating the tale, and why is he telling it now? Three Little Pigs is an enthralling, tightly plotted book, at once a vibrant suspense novel and a lively essay on fate, destiny, and free will. I hate spoilers as much as you so let’s just say the three brothers, the hitman, and the narrator confront their destinies head-on.

If you are familiar with the author’s wonderful graphic novel Logicomix: An epic search for truth you might get a sense of where Doxiadis is coming from. This book hovers on the border of metafiction. The vehicle of story-within-a-story delivers with high entertainment value the real tenor of Three Little Pigs, and one which even Italo Calvino would admire, and that is the art of storytelling and the sheer pleasures of reading.]]> 4.40 1997 Three Little Pigs
author: Apostolos Doxiadis
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/06/22
shelves:
review:
Originally posted on

Ben Frank, a struggling Italian immigrant and businessman, has turned to drink to deal with life’s little setbacks. But a streak of personal bad luck suddenly careens straight to hell when he kills the only son of a mafia boss during a drunken brawl. The father of the slain man, mobster Tonio Lupo, pays a visit to the ruined man, now in prison for murder. Face to face in a prison cell, the don wants to personally declare a devastating curse: each of Ben Frank’s three sons, without fail, will die in their 42nd year.

In turn of the century Brooklyn, mafia codes of honour were something taken very seriously indeed, and a maledizione delivered personally by a crime boss in particular is no joke. The doomed father must live out his remaining days in prison with knowledge of the death sentence given to his progeny, a fact he shares only with his eldest son Al.

As Al approaches his 42nd year, his father and the mafia don are both long dead, and he himself has emerged as a successful and prominent businessman. But as his fated 42nd birthday approaches and the question of whether the maledizione is is still in force hounds him more with each passing day. Is there a killer out there waiting patiently to fulfill the curse?

Al isn’t taking any chances, and has in fact built up his retailing empire with the sole purpose of creating a home defense network to shield himself from being whacked. Moreover, he reaches out to as many mobsters as he can find and pays them off in a desperate attempt to short circuit the implacable vector of the curse. Even so, he cannot be certain it is no longer active, although he breathes a little easier holed up in his home fortress on Long Island.

Three Little Pigs is told like a folktale with marked philosophical underpinnings. It is narrated with dry humour by a mysterious old man near the end of his days who has latched onto a stranger with a tape recorder in order to tell the tale. The narrator’s droll characterisation of the players in this drama are comprehensive and laugh out loud funny. We learn about the brothers: Al, the businessman with a heavy burden to bear; Nick, the narcissistic B-movie actor; and baby brother Leo, who finds religion. We also learn about the hitman, an educated, methodical thinker who is brought into the underworld as a Sicilian orphan and swiftly rises in the ranks. When he is summoned by the boss to take on a singular, life-defining task, as the old cliché goes� it’s an offer he can’t refuse.

As the killer verges on his target, we are treated to a catalog of Italian culture and mafioso sensibility, and plenty of comic moments involving oafish mob soldiers. But the core mystery here that niggles is just who is this old man relating the tale, and why is he telling it now? Three Little Pigs is an enthralling, tightly plotted book, at once a vibrant suspense novel and a lively essay on fate, destiny, and free will. I hate spoilers as much as you so let’s just say the three brothers, the hitman, and the narrator confront their destinies head-on.

If you are familiar with the author’s wonderful graphic novel Logicomix: An epic search for truth you might get a sense of where Doxiadis is coming from. This book hovers on the border of metafiction. The vehicle of story-within-a-story delivers with high entertainment value the real tenor of Three Little Pigs, and one which even Italo Calvino would admire, and that is the art of storytelling and the sheer pleasures of reading.
]]> <![CDATA[Where Roses Never Die (Varg Veum, #16)]]> 27220066 September 1977.ÌýMette Misvær, a three-year-old girl disappears without trace from the sandpit outside her home. Her tiny, close middle-class community in the tranquil suburb of Nordas is devastated, but their enquiries and the police produce nothing. Curtains twitch, suspicions are raised, but Mette is never found.

Almost 25 years later, as the expiry date for the statute of limitations draws near, Mette’s mother approaches PI Varg Veum, in a last, desperate attempt to find out what happened to her daughter. As Veum starts to dig, he uncovers an intricate web of secrets, lies and shocking events that have been methodically concealed. When another brutal incident takes place, a pattern begins to emerge�

Shocking, unsettling and full of extraordinary twists and turns,ÌýWhere Roses Never DieÌýreaffirms Gunnar Staalesen as one of the world’s foremost thriller writers.]]> 285 Gunnar Staalesen 1910633097 Jeremy 4
It’s been three years since private eye Bergen PI Varg Veum tragically lost his girlfriend in We Shall Inherit the Wind. In the 19th book in the series � which began back in 1977 � the detective is seen wandering around the town, soul-searching from the bottom of a bottle of aquavit, unaware that a bold jewelry heist is going down nearby. Now a functional drunk, Veum is not aware of much these days, other than his own inner torment. Down on his luck and short of cash, he swallows his professional pride and takes on the occasional infidelity case, as long as it doesn’t require driving. But when a cold case suddenly lands on his lap, he wakes up and decides to go clean.

A 25-year-old case involving a missing child is just about to reach the statute of limitations when the distressed mother, Maja Misvær, approaches our depressed PI. In 1977, Mette Misvær, aged three, vanished from the sandpit behind her house and was never found, despite a full-scale investigation. Veum, who used to work in a child welfare agency, decides that solving this disappearance against all odds can give his life direction. So he takes the case before it is shelved forever.

Veum first hits up his old co-workers who were involved with the investigation. Most of the veteran cops are not happy to see him, but they share what they know. They all agree that no stone was left unturned and little Mette’s vanishing remains a complete mystery. However, one cop remembers there was definitely something off about the eccentric residents of the co-op complex where Mette lived, something unsaid that the neighbours held back. When Veum questions them, he finds the same is true 25 years later, and every interview uncovers a new buried secret. As with the resident priggish architect, a seductive aging actress, and a suspected paedophile, Veum finds that even the grieving mother harbours secrets that may be relevant to the mystery.

Veum is persistent and learns that the big skeleton in the co-op’s closet is a wild New Year’s party that occurred nine months before Mette’s disappearance, wherein the co-op residents swapped spouses. Every single couple that participated divorced in the following years. And one of these neighbours, Nils Bringeland, has just been killed by jewel thieves after a random confrontation on the street in the book’s opening scene. From the onset Veum can’t help thinking there may be a connection to tiny Mette.

When he learns from a jewellery store witness that the man on the street exchanged words with the masked robbers just before being shot, Veum is extremely keen to know what was said. When he susses out another coincidental connection between the swinging neighbours and the jewel heist, you’re sure the determined bulldog will find out if it relates to Mette’s disappearance. Just how the threads of the homicide and the disappearance connect remains elusive and compelling until the final suspenseful pages. Along the way you’ll be treated to healthy doses of atmospheric brooding that only Staalesen, the godfather of Scandinavinan crime fiction, can deliver.

Where Roses Never Die has a markedly different tone from the tragic gravity of We Shall Inherit the Wind, and actually contains some entertaining moments of levity. In scenes that recall Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole, Veum sizes up his interviewees. There are some notably comic and nail-bitingly violent moments with a dangerous duo of goons known as Flash Gordon and Thor the Hammer. But Veum, like a Norwegian Columbo, is not one to be put off and keeps circling back to the secretive players of this drama, his passive resistance defying all attempts to impede the investigation.

If this is your first time reading a book in this series, some of which are yet to be translated, you’ll find yourself instantly warming to the strong yet sensitive Veum and the vivid self reflections that punctuate his perambulations. His ongoing bouts with the tyrannies of alcoholism which threaten to thwart his investigative efforts are poignant, and the primal scene that forms the core of the mystery is equal parts shocking and ingenious. Almost 40 years into the Varg Veum odyssey, Staalesen is at the height of his storytelling powers.]]> 3.86 2012 Where Roses Never Die (Varg Veum, #16)
author: Gunnar Staalesen
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2016/06/08
date added: 2016/06/16
shelves:
review:
Originally posted on :

It’s been three years since private eye Bergen PI Varg Veum tragically lost his girlfriend in We Shall Inherit the Wind. In the 19th book in the series � which began back in 1977 � the detective is seen wandering around the town, soul-searching from the bottom of a bottle of aquavit, unaware that a bold jewelry heist is going down nearby. Now a functional drunk, Veum is not aware of much these days, other than his own inner torment. Down on his luck and short of cash, he swallows his professional pride and takes on the occasional infidelity case, as long as it doesn’t require driving. But when a cold case suddenly lands on his lap, he wakes up and decides to go clean.

A 25-year-old case involving a missing child is just about to reach the statute of limitations when the distressed mother, Maja Misvær, approaches our depressed PI. In 1977, Mette Misvær, aged three, vanished from the sandpit behind her house and was never found, despite a full-scale investigation. Veum, who used to work in a child welfare agency, decides that solving this disappearance against all odds can give his life direction. So he takes the case before it is shelved forever.

Veum first hits up his old co-workers who were involved with the investigation. Most of the veteran cops are not happy to see him, but they share what they know. They all agree that no stone was left unturned and little Mette’s vanishing remains a complete mystery. However, one cop remembers there was definitely something off about the eccentric residents of the co-op complex where Mette lived, something unsaid that the neighbours held back. When Veum questions them, he finds the same is true 25 years later, and every interview uncovers a new buried secret. As with the resident priggish architect, a seductive aging actress, and a suspected paedophile, Veum finds that even the grieving mother harbours secrets that may be relevant to the mystery.

Veum is persistent and learns that the big skeleton in the co-op’s closet is a wild New Year’s party that occurred nine months before Mette’s disappearance, wherein the co-op residents swapped spouses. Every single couple that participated divorced in the following years. And one of these neighbours, Nils Bringeland, has just been killed by jewel thieves after a random confrontation on the street in the book’s opening scene. From the onset Veum can’t help thinking there may be a connection to tiny Mette.

When he learns from a jewellery store witness that the man on the street exchanged words with the masked robbers just before being shot, Veum is extremely keen to know what was said. When he susses out another coincidental connection between the swinging neighbours and the jewel heist, you’re sure the determined bulldog will find out if it relates to Mette’s disappearance. Just how the threads of the homicide and the disappearance connect remains elusive and compelling until the final suspenseful pages. Along the way you’ll be treated to healthy doses of atmospheric brooding that only Staalesen, the godfather of Scandinavinan crime fiction, can deliver.

Where Roses Never Die has a markedly different tone from the tragic gravity of We Shall Inherit the Wind, and actually contains some entertaining moments of levity. In scenes that recall Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole, Veum sizes up his interviewees. There are some notably comic and nail-bitingly violent moments with a dangerous duo of goons known as Flash Gordon and Thor the Hammer. But Veum, like a Norwegian Columbo, is not one to be put off and keeps circling back to the secretive players of this drama, his passive resistance defying all attempts to impede the investigation.

If this is your first time reading a book in this series, some of which are yet to be translated, you’ll find yourself instantly warming to the strong yet sensitive Veum and the vivid self reflections that punctuate his perambulations. His ongoing bouts with the tyrannies of alcoholism which threaten to thwart his investigative efforts are poignant, and the primal scene that forms the core of the mystery is equal parts shocking and ingenious. Almost 40 years into the Varg Veum odyssey, Staalesen is at the height of his storytelling powers.
]]> Marie 9547432 185 Madeleine Bourdouxhe 074753506X Jeremy 0 to-read 4.00 1943 Marie
author: Madeleine Bourdouxhe
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1943
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/06/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Understanding Beliefs (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)]]> 21977917 What beliefs are, what they do for us, how we come to hold them, and how to evaluate them. Our beliefs constitute a large part of our knowledge of the world. We have beliefs about objects, about culture, about the past, and about the future. We have beliefs about other people, and we believe that they have beliefs as well. We use beliefs to predict, to explain, to create, to console, to entertain. Some of our beliefs we call theories, and we are extraordinarily creative at constructing them. Theories of quantum mechanics, evolution, and relativity are examples. But so are theories about astrology, alien abduction, guardian angels, and reincarnation. All are products (with varying degrees of credibility) of fertile minds trying to find explanations for observed phenomena. In this book, Nils Nilsson examines beliefs: what they do for us, how we come to hold them, and how to evaluate them. We should evaluate our beliefs carefully, Nilsson points out, because they influence so many of our actions and decisions.

Some of our beliefs are more strongly held than others, but all should be considered tentative and changeable. Nilsson shows that beliefs can be quantified by probability, and he describes networks of beliefs in which the probabilities of some beliefs affect the probabilities of others. He argues that we can evaluate our beliefs by adapting some of the practices of the scientific method and by consulting expert opinion. And he warns us about "belief traps"--holding onto beliefs that wouldn't survive critical evaluation. The best way to escape belief traps, he writes, is to expose our beliefs to the reasoned criticism of others.]]> 168 Nils J. Nilsson 0262526433 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.64 2014 Understanding Beliefs (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)
author: Nils J. Nilsson
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/06/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hummingbird (Anna Fekete, #1)]]> 23271755 364 Kati Hiekkapelto 1909807567 Jeremy 4 3.73 2013 The Hummingbird (Anna Fekete, #1)
author: Kati Hiekkapelto
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2016/06/08
date added: 2016/06/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Conspiracy of Faith (Department Q, #3)]]> 16101098
Carl’s investigation will force him to cross paths with a woman stuck in a desperate marriage- her husband refuses to tell her where he goes, what he does, how long he will be away. For days on end she waits, and when he returns she must endure his wants, his moods, his threats. But enough is enough. She will find out the truth, no matter the cost to her husband—or to herself.

Carl and his colleagues Assad and Rose must use all of their resources to uncover the horrifying truth in this heart-pounding Nordic thriller from the #1 international bestselling author Jussi Adler-Olsen.]]> 504 Jussi Adler-Olsen 0525954007 Jeremy 4 4.04 2009 A Conspiracy of Faith (Department Q, #3)
author: Jussi Adler-Olsen
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2013/07/22
date added: 2016/05/14
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Marco Effect (Department Q, #5)]]> 20821019 New York Times and internationally bestselling author Jussi Adler-Olsen returns with an astonishing and sinister case for Department Q

All fifteen-year-old Marco Jameson wants is to become a Danish citizen and go to school like a normal teenager. But his uncle Zola rules his former gypsy clan with an iron fist. Revered as a god and feared as a devil, Zola forces the children of the clan to beg and steal for his personal gain. When Marco discovers a dead body—proving the true extent of Zola’s criminal activities—he goes on the run. But his family members aren’t the only ones who’ll go to any lengths to keep Marco silent . . . forever.

Meanwhile, the last thing Detective Carl Mørck needs is for his assistants, Assad and Rose, to pick up a missing persons case on a whim: Carl’s nemesis is his new boss, and he’s saddled Department Q with an unwelcome addition. But when they learn that a mysterious teen named Marco may have as much insight into the case as he has fear of the police, Carl is determined to solve the mystery and save the boy. Carl’s actions propel the trio into a case that extends from Denmark to Africa, from embezzlers to child soldiers, from seemingly petty crime rings to the very darkest of cover-ups.]]> 496 Jussi Adler-Olsen 0525954023 Jeremy 4
In this latest book in the Department Q series from Denmark, a gypsy street urchin named Marco stumbles into the path of rampant corporate greed and murder. As an army of contract killers converges on the clever young thief on the streets of Copenhagen, Detective Carl Morck and his eccentric cold case squad must rescue the boy before it’s too late.

The book opens with a desperate chase in deepest Africa, where an honest worker dashes off a damning text on his cell phone about local corruption just before his own murder. The tentacles of this evil deed lead all the way to Copenhagen, where crooked bank officials embezzle funds through ostensibly benign third world development projects, like banana crops for the Baka People in Cameroon. Rene Erickson, the fund’s crooked chief, sends their own brilliant accountant, William Stark, to Cameroon to get the lay of the land. Eventually Erickson learns that Stark may be keeping his own records of the fund’s cooked books, so Stark himself becomes the next on the hit list.

The street-smart Marco belongs to the pickpocketing branch of the same group tasked with Stark’s murder. Marco finds out about it while escaping the group’s prison-like quarters. Zola, the head of the criminal band and Marco’s uncle, is tasked in turn to flush Marco out of the streets and eliminate him, so the chase is on.

When Detective Carl Morck trudges into police headquarters, he is his usual lovable self: full of despair, resigned for the worst, and possibly with some new health issues he’d rather not face. Although his partners in the cold case squad known as Department Q see him at his worst, Carl brings out the best in them. There is Rose, the brilliant and enigmatic goth, who is always two steps ahead of Carl, and Assad, the burly and mysterious Syrian who never lacks for a good camel proverb for every situation.

Their first case in the book is actually quite boring. There is a suspicious death on an exploding boat that may be a case of insurance fraud turned murder, but Rose makes short work of it. When she stumbles upon the traces of a missing persons case, this chance encounter takes the investigation towards William Stark’s employer, and the Kannebaek Bank. Even as Morck connects the dots that will lead them to Marco, the young thief is tailing them, all the while in an effort to enlist their help. Many characters are involved in the drama, including Stark’s family, a couple who aids Marco but then are betrayed by him, and many other denizens of Copenhagen.

During this investigative drama we also learn more about the members of Department Q, especially the disastrous failures of Morck’s romantic life. But at least his de facto family at home is thriving including Hardy, his former police partner who was paralysed in a shooting that still troubles Morck. Work becomes a fresh hell when Morck’s boss suddenly quits and his nemesis Lars gets the chief’s job. Lars� implied threats to Dept Q’s future are nothing compared to Morck’s realisation that the dependable Assad has mysterious connections to Lars that reach back to the Iraq War.

One of the strengths of the Dept Q series is its tightly crafted and suspenseful plots. Parallel developments unfold within alternating narratives that converge in a riveting way. Adler-Olsen’s page-turners, much like Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole series, are complex but still enable you to easily pick up a plot thread. One drawback for newcomers to the series, however, is that they are on their own in figuring out the overall back story of Morck and his crew. The author doesn’t provide a recap for the series� recurring characters and story arcs, something that would have helped here, but doesn’t detract from the standalone enjoyment of The Marco Effect’s overall storyline.

Adler-Olsen is recommended for fans of Jo Nesbo, who like complicated plots with flawed but humane characters. The Department Q series continues its winning formula of blending comedy and dark villainy, and in The Marco Effect brings a suspenseful final confrontation on the streets of Copenhagen.]]> 3.85 2012 The Marco Effect (Department Q, #5)
author: Jussi Adler-Olsen
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2014/10/03
date added: 2016/05/14
shelves:
review:
The review originally appeared in .

In this latest book in the Department Q series from Denmark, a gypsy street urchin named Marco stumbles into the path of rampant corporate greed and murder. As an army of contract killers converges on the clever young thief on the streets of Copenhagen, Detective Carl Morck and his eccentric cold case squad must rescue the boy before it’s too late.

The book opens with a desperate chase in deepest Africa, where an honest worker dashes off a damning text on his cell phone about local corruption just before his own murder. The tentacles of this evil deed lead all the way to Copenhagen, where crooked bank officials embezzle funds through ostensibly benign third world development projects, like banana crops for the Baka People in Cameroon. Rene Erickson, the fund’s crooked chief, sends their own brilliant accountant, William Stark, to Cameroon to get the lay of the land. Eventually Erickson learns that Stark may be keeping his own records of the fund’s cooked books, so Stark himself becomes the next on the hit list.

The street-smart Marco belongs to the pickpocketing branch of the same group tasked with Stark’s murder. Marco finds out about it while escaping the group’s prison-like quarters. Zola, the head of the criminal band and Marco’s uncle, is tasked in turn to flush Marco out of the streets and eliminate him, so the chase is on.

When Detective Carl Morck trudges into police headquarters, he is his usual lovable self: full of despair, resigned for the worst, and possibly with some new health issues he’d rather not face. Although his partners in the cold case squad known as Department Q see him at his worst, Carl brings out the best in them. There is Rose, the brilliant and enigmatic goth, who is always two steps ahead of Carl, and Assad, the burly and mysterious Syrian who never lacks for a good camel proverb for every situation.

Their first case in the book is actually quite boring. There is a suspicious death on an exploding boat that may be a case of insurance fraud turned murder, but Rose makes short work of it. When she stumbles upon the traces of a missing persons case, this chance encounter takes the investigation towards William Stark’s employer, and the Kannebaek Bank. Even as Morck connects the dots that will lead them to Marco, the young thief is tailing them, all the while in an effort to enlist their help. Many characters are involved in the drama, including Stark’s family, a couple who aids Marco but then are betrayed by him, and many other denizens of Copenhagen.

During this investigative drama we also learn more about the members of Department Q, especially the disastrous failures of Morck’s romantic life. But at least his de facto family at home is thriving including Hardy, his former police partner who was paralysed in a shooting that still troubles Morck. Work becomes a fresh hell when Morck’s boss suddenly quits and his nemesis Lars gets the chief’s job. Lars� implied threats to Dept Q’s future are nothing compared to Morck’s realisation that the dependable Assad has mysterious connections to Lars that reach back to the Iraq War.

One of the strengths of the Dept Q series is its tightly crafted and suspenseful plots. Parallel developments unfold within alternating narratives that converge in a riveting way. Adler-Olsen’s page-turners, much like Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole series, are complex but still enable you to easily pick up a plot thread. One drawback for newcomers to the series, however, is that they are on their own in figuring out the overall back story of Morck and his crew. The author doesn’t provide a recap for the series� recurring characters and story arcs, something that would have helped here, but doesn’t detract from the standalone enjoyment of The Marco Effect’s overall storyline.

Adler-Olsen is recommended for fans of Jo Nesbo, who like complicated plots with flawed but humane characters. The Department Q series continues its winning formula of blending comedy and dark villainy, and in The Marco Effect brings a suspenseful final confrontation on the streets of Copenhagen.
]]> Snowblind (Dark Iceland, #1) 25067569 300 Ragnar Jónasson Jeremy 4 3.54 2010 Snowblind (Dark Iceland, #1)
author: Ragnar Jónasson
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2016/05/12
date added: 2016/05/12
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Seven Brief Lessons on Physics]]> 25734172 All the beauty of modern physics in fewer than a hundred pages.

This is a book about the joy of discovery. A playful, entertaining, and mind-bending introduction to modern physics, it's already a major bestseller in Italy and the United Kingdom. Carlo Rovelli offers surprising—and surprisingly easy to grasp—explanations of general relativity, quantum mechanics, elementary particles, gravity, black holes, the complex architecture of the universe, and the role humans play in this weird and wonderful world. He takes us to the frontiers of our knowledge: to the most minute reaches of the fabric of space, back toÌýthe origins of the cosmos, and into the workings of our minds. “Here, on the edge of what we know, in contact with the ocean of the unknown, shines the mystery and the beauty of the world,â€� Rovelli writes. “And it’s breathtaking.â€]]> 81 Carlo Rovelli 0399184414 Jeremy 0 3.97 2014 Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
author: Carlo Rovelli
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at: 2016/05/03
date added: 2016/05/03
shelves:
review:

]]> Ordeal (William Wisting #10) 29541819 320 Jørn Lier Horst 1910124745 Jeremy 4 4.12 2015 Ordeal (William Wisting #10)
author: Jørn Lier Horst
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2016/04/22
date added: 2016/04/22
shelves:
review:

]]> Beautiful Darkness 17287069 Beautiful Darkness is a harrowing look behind the routine politeness and meaningless kindness of civilized society.]]> 94 Fabien Vehlmann 1770461299 Jeremy 5 3.88 2009 Beautiful Darkness
author: Fabien Vehlmann
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2016/04/13
date added: 2016/04/13
shelves:
review:
As unsettling as Lord of the Flies, alternates between beauty and deeply disturbing content, wow!
]]> <![CDATA[Reykjavík Nights: Murder in Reykjavík (Young Inspector Erlendur, #2)]]> 18803656
Erlendur has recently joined the police force as a young officer and immediately sinks into the darkness of Reykjavik's underworld. Working nights, he discovers the city is full of car crashes, robberies, drinkers and fighters. And sometimes an unexplained death.

THE LOST

A homeless man Erlendur knows is found drowned. But few people care. Or when a young woman on her way home from a club vanishes. Both cases go cold.

THE SEARCHER

Two lost people from two different worlds. Erlendur is not an investigator, but his instincts tell him their fates are worth pursuing. How could they be linked?

IN THE HEART OF THE NIGHT

Inexorably, he is drawn into the blackness of the city’s underbelly, where everyone is in the dark or on the run.]]> 294 Arnaldur Indriðason 1846558123 Jeremy 5 3.70 2012 Reykjavík Nights: Murder in Reykjavík (Young Inspector Erlendur, #2)
author: Arnaldur Indriðason
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/03/20
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Reykjavik Nights (Inspector Erlendur #0)]]> 22917113
Erlendur has recently joined the police force as a young officer and immediately sinks into the darkness of Reykjavik's underworld. Working nights, he discovers the city is full of car crashes, robberies, drinkers and fighters. And sometimes an unexplained death.

THE LOST

A homeless man Erlendur knows is found drowned. But few people care. Or when a young woman on her way home from a club vanishes. Both cases go cold.

THE SEARCHER

Two lost people from two different worlds. Erlendur is not an investigator, but his instincts tell him their fates are worth pursuing. How could they be linked?

IN THE HEART OF THE NIGHT

Inexorably, he is drawn into the blackness of the city’s underbelly, where everyone is in the dark or on the run.]]> 230 Arnaldur Indriðason Jeremy 0 4.09 2012 Reykjavik Nights (Inspector Erlendur #0)
author: Arnaldur Indriðason
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/03/20
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Silent Room (Matthew Ryan #1)]]> 27241149
With a manhunt underway, Ryan is warned to stay away. Keen to preserve his career and prove his innocence, he backs off. But when the official investigation falls apart, under surveillance and with his life in danger, he goes dark, enlisting others in his quest to discover the truth. When the trail leads to the suspicious death of a Norwegian national, Ryan uncovers an international conspiracy that has claimed the lives of many.]]> 408 Mari Hannah 1447291042 Jeremy 5
The Northumbrian police’s Special Branch is thrown into an uproar when veteran DI Jack Fenwick, who is the soul of integrity on the force, is arrested for selling illegal weapons. When the prison van that escorts him is hijacked, Fenwick disappears, along with what was left of his reputation. Recent events have also tainted his close friend and partner of many years, DS Matthew Ryan. When Ryan himself is unaccounted for during the tumult of Fenwick’s arrest, it’s discovered that he’s been regularly looking in on his blind sister Constance on the company dime. The timing is unfortunate and Ryan’s closeness to Fenwick, coupled with a weak alibi and a jealous co-worker who already has it in for him, means he is temporarily relieved from duty pending an internal investigation.

Ryan is batting for his mentor, who he is sure was framed, but he can’t do much swinging without his badge. He is more troubled still that his partner left him in the dark about a secret investigation he’d been conducting before his arrest and disappearance. Fenwick’s lawyer informs Ryan that Fenwick was on the verge of busting open a far-reaching network of corruption with deep stakes, but wouldn’t divulge any details. Now with the internal inquiry breathing down his neck, Ryan is overcome by the troubling maelstrom of events. He bears the burden of getting Fenwick acquitted and retiring to his family alive � they are counting on Ryan to save the day.

Mari Hannah is known for her Kate Daniels series, but this is a standalone novel. You will see right away that one of the author’s strengths is in her characters. Her keen ear for dialogue helps render vivid characters whose identities are solidified through their relationships with others while their internal conflicts impel the suspense of the investigation. If her compelling portraits of grief, jealousy and betrayal were not enough, leave some room on your plate for a healthy dose of romance too.

Ryan is the protagonist, but the winning character in The Silent Room may just be retired Special Branch officer Grace Ellis, who enters the fray early on. She gets wind of Fenwick’s so-called jailbreak from her armchair telly in St Tropez and jumps on the first plane back, eager to clear her friend’s name and escape boredom. She and former colleague Ryan launch their own investigation with the help of Frank Newman, Grace’s lover and former MI5 operative. As Ryan and Grace’s contacts in the force clam up, the suspended cop, retired bloodhound, and ex-spook are forced to set up their own command center, the silent room, to uncover a deeper game of systemic corporate greed.

The internal review of Fenwick and Ryan, led by DS Eloise O’Neil, seems to be progressing in a fairly objective way except that O’Neil’s partner, the embittered Maguire, who pines for Ryan’s former girlfriend, insists that Ryan himself is involved. As further events unfold, the badgeless Ryan goes from hero to zero. In the throes of grief, the rogue cop and company must rush to clear Fenwick’s name and close his case.

Hannah checks off all the boxes for this satisfying thriller, including solid characters and compelling conflicts. When Ryan discovers a cache of Fenwick’s notebooks he decides to disclose his own notes and finally make common cause with the authorities. An unlikely romance is kindled between Ryan and his beautiful scrutineer DS O’Neil when they finally join forces. Hannah also throws in a veritable travelogue of the gorgeous Norwegian coast, where the investigation leads Ryan and O’Neil for the final confrontation with the truth.

The Silent Room is a very competent procedural built around the common theme of corporate greed, but it is notably free of the cynical and graphic violence prevalent in crime fiction. It stresses instead redemption and hope. The book doesn’t skimp on tragedy, however, and if you think the Scandinavians corner the market on landscape-fueled angst, think again. The grieving detective collapsed on the rugged shores of the North Sea is just as starkly beautiful in its rendering as any Nordic vista.]]> 3.57 2015 The Silent Room (Matthew Ryan #1)
author: Mari Hannah
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2016/01/08
date added: 2016/01/08
shelves:
review:
Reviewed on

The Northumbrian police’s Special Branch is thrown into an uproar when veteran DI Jack Fenwick, who is the soul of integrity on the force, is arrested for selling illegal weapons. When the prison van that escorts him is hijacked, Fenwick disappears, along with what was left of his reputation. Recent events have also tainted his close friend and partner of many years, DS Matthew Ryan. When Ryan himself is unaccounted for during the tumult of Fenwick’s arrest, it’s discovered that he’s been regularly looking in on his blind sister Constance on the company dime. The timing is unfortunate and Ryan’s closeness to Fenwick, coupled with a weak alibi and a jealous co-worker who already has it in for him, means he is temporarily relieved from duty pending an internal investigation.

Ryan is batting for his mentor, who he is sure was framed, but he can’t do much swinging without his badge. He is more troubled still that his partner left him in the dark about a secret investigation he’d been conducting before his arrest and disappearance. Fenwick’s lawyer informs Ryan that Fenwick was on the verge of busting open a far-reaching network of corruption with deep stakes, but wouldn’t divulge any details. Now with the internal inquiry breathing down his neck, Ryan is overcome by the troubling maelstrom of events. He bears the burden of getting Fenwick acquitted and retiring to his family alive � they are counting on Ryan to save the day.

Mari Hannah is known for her Kate Daniels series, but this is a standalone novel. You will see right away that one of the author’s strengths is in her characters. Her keen ear for dialogue helps render vivid characters whose identities are solidified through their relationships with others while their internal conflicts impel the suspense of the investigation. If her compelling portraits of grief, jealousy and betrayal were not enough, leave some room on your plate for a healthy dose of romance too.

Ryan is the protagonist, but the winning character in The Silent Room may just be retired Special Branch officer Grace Ellis, who enters the fray early on. She gets wind of Fenwick’s so-called jailbreak from her armchair telly in St Tropez and jumps on the first plane back, eager to clear her friend’s name and escape boredom. She and former colleague Ryan launch their own investigation with the help of Frank Newman, Grace’s lover and former MI5 operative. As Ryan and Grace’s contacts in the force clam up, the suspended cop, retired bloodhound, and ex-spook are forced to set up their own command center, the silent room, to uncover a deeper game of systemic corporate greed.

The internal review of Fenwick and Ryan, led by DS Eloise O’Neil, seems to be progressing in a fairly objective way except that O’Neil’s partner, the embittered Maguire, who pines for Ryan’s former girlfriend, insists that Ryan himself is involved. As further events unfold, the badgeless Ryan goes from hero to zero. In the throes of grief, the rogue cop and company must rush to clear Fenwick’s name and close his case.

Hannah checks off all the boxes for this satisfying thriller, including solid characters and compelling conflicts. When Ryan discovers a cache of Fenwick’s notebooks he decides to disclose his own notes and finally make common cause with the authorities. An unlikely romance is kindled between Ryan and his beautiful scrutineer DS O’Neil when they finally join forces. Hannah also throws in a veritable travelogue of the gorgeous Norwegian coast, where the investigation leads Ryan and O’Neil for the final confrontation with the truth.

The Silent Room is a very competent procedural built around the common theme of corporate greed, but it is notably free of the cynical and graphic violence prevalent in crime fiction. It stresses instead redemption and hope. The book doesn’t skimp on tragedy, however, and if you think the Scandinavians corner the market on landscape-fueled angst, think again. The grieving detective collapsed on the rugged shores of the North Sea is just as starkly beautiful in its rendering as any Nordic vista.
]]> Space Dumplins 24612531
For Violet Marlocke, family is the most important thing in the whole galaxy. So when her father goes missing while on a hazardous job, she can't just sit around and do nothing. To get him back, Violet throws caution to the stars and sets out with a group of misfit friends on a quest to find him. But space is vast and dangerous, and she soon discovers that her dad is in big, BIG trouble. With her father's life on the line, nothing is going to stop Violet from trying to rescue him and keep her family together.Visionary graphic novel creator Craig Thompson brings all of his wit, warmth, and humor to create a brilliantly drawn story for all ages. Set in a distant yet familiar future, Space Dumplins weaves themes of family, friendship, and loyalty into a grand space adventure filled with quirky aliens, awesome spaceships, and sharp commentary on our environmentally challenged world.]]> 316 Craig Thompson 054556543X Jeremy 5 3.82 2015 Space Dumplins
author: Craig Thompson
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/12/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Six and a Half Deadly Sins (Dr. Siri Paiboun #10)]]> 22889890
Siri is convinced someone is trying to send him a message and won’t let the matter rest until he’s figured it out. He finagles a trip up north to the province where the sin was made, not realizing he is embarking on a deadly scavenger hunt. Meanwhile, the northern Lao border is about to erupt into violence—and Dr. Siri and his entourage are walking right into the heart of the conflict.]]> 245 Colin Cotterill 1616955589 Jeremy 4 to-read
It’s the late 1970s in Laos, and Dr Siri Paiboun, retired coroner for the Laotian Communist Party, drags himself once again out of retirement to solve a mystery. It all starts when Siri receives in the mail an elaborately embroidered skirt with a severed finger sewn into the hem. His wife, Madame Daeng, proprietress of the local noodle shop that has just recently burned down, determines that the skirt, called a sin, is of a weave customary in the north. Siri and Daeng can hardly resist a true mystery, and the promise of adventure appeals to the elderly couple, who in truth have little else to do. So they embark on a journey north to investigate.

Siri and Daeng meet a succession of weavers. Each weaver hands them a new sin with a new clue lead them to a neighboring province. Who is behind the complicated treasure hunt of tribal weaving styles and clues, and what message are they trying to convey with a severed finger, a scroll, and a pipe stem?

Meanwhile, their mutual friend policeman Phosy is sent to investigate the suspicious deaths of some workers near the Chinese border. Here he runs into a very menacing foreman who threatens him. Siri’s old friend Civilai, a former politburo chief, is also sent in that general direction to ease some tense relations with the Chinese.

Siri and Daeng, who are not getting any younger, start to feel ill during their journey. To complicate matters, it seems they are heading towards a perfect storm: the news in town is that China has invaded Vietnam via Laos. By this time, they’ve run into their old diplomat friend Civilai, and all three stumble upon a cache of heroin and run afoul of a local drug lord. Along the way they are helped by a number of people whose potential is inhibited by the repressive regime and its absurd policies.

Cotterill’s gift for creating sympathetic characters that live and breathe is evident in this latest installment of the exotic Dr Siri series. His use of a locale serves less as colourful backdrop than an infusion of South East Asian history and culture. Cotterill’s sympathy for Laos might come off as didactic were it not so thoroughly tempered with his winning brand of wry humour, sprinkled with gems of wisdom thrown by the simple brave folk who sit by the Mekong River.

As the old couple soldier on, their health gets progressively worse. When they finally come to the last sin, and their last legs, it leads them to the mysterious creator of the clues. We learn of the horror that the sins represent, which also leads them to meet one of their oldest enemies. Cotterill skillfully brings together the three parallel investigations of Siri, Phosy, and Civilai, which meet to form an intricate central mystery as tightly woven as a Lao skirt. As is typical of these books, the final confrontation is quite harrowing and violent, wherein one of the characters dies twice, and we briefly visit the spirit realm. Welcome to Dr Siri’s world.

Although this book stands up alone as a very entertaining one, it is actually the 10th in a series of adventures starring the septuagenarian coroner, and it is probably the last. At this point, loyal readers of the series may feel let down a bit by the vague nature of the book’s ending, which teases a finality without truly spelling it out. For this reviewer, here’s hoping Cotterill launches a prequel series from Siri’s early days.]]> 4.00 2015 Six and a Half Deadly Sins (Dr. Siri Paiboun #10)
author: Colin Cotterill
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/12/06
shelves: to-read
review:
Posted on

It’s the late 1970s in Laos, and Dr Siri Paiboun, retired coroner for the Laotian Communist Party, drags himself once again out of retirement to solve a mystery. It all starts when Siri receives in the mail an elaborately embroidered skirt with a severed finger sewn into the hem. His wife, Madame Daeng, proprietress of the local noodle shop that has just recently burned down, determines that the skirt, called a sin, is of a weave customary in the north. Siri and Daeng can hardly resist a true mystery, and the promise of adventure appeals to the elderly couple, who in truth have little else to do. So they embark on a journey north to investigate.

Siri and Daeng meet a succession of weavers. Each weaver hands them a new sin with a new clue lead them to a neighboring province. Who is behind the complicated treasure hunt of tribal weaving styles and clues, and what message are they trying to convey with a severed finger, a scroll, and a pipe stem?

Meanwhile, their mutual friend policeman Phosy is sent to investigate the suspicious deaths of some workers near the Chinese border. Here he runs into a very menacing foreman who threatens him. Siri’s old friend Civilai, a former politburo chief, is also sent in that general direction to ease some tense relations with the Chinese.

Siri and Daeng, who are not getting any younger, start to feel ill during their journey. To complicate matters, it seems they are heading towards a perfect storm: the news in town is that China has invaded Vietnam via Laos. By this time, they’ve run into their old diplomat friend Civilai, and all three stumble upon a cache of heroin and run afoul of a local drug lord. Along the way they are helped by a number of people whose potential is inhibited by the repressive regime and its absurd policies.

Cotterill’s gift for creating sympathetic characters that live and breathe is evident in this latest installment of the exotic Dr Siri series. His use of a locale serves less as colourful backdrop than an infusion of South East Asian history and culture. Cotterill’s sympathy for Laos might come off as didactic were it not so thoroughly tempered with his winning brand of wry humour, sprinkled with gems of wisdom thrown by the simple brave folk who sit by the Mekong River.

As the old couple soldier on, their health gets progressively worse. When they finally come to the last sin, and their last legs, it leads them to the mysterious creator of the clues. We learn of the horror that the sins represent, which also leads them to meet one of their oldest enemies. Cotterill skillfully brings together the three parallel investigations of Siri, Phosy, and Civilai, which meet to form an intricate central mystery as tightly woven as a Lao skirt. As is typical of these books, the final confrontation is quite harrowing and violent, wherein one of the characters dies twice, and we briefly visit the spirit realm. Welcome to Dr Siri’s world.

Although this book stands up alone as a very entertaining one, it is actually the 10th in a series of adventures starring the septuagenarian coroner, and it is probably the last. At this point, loyal readers of the series may feel let down a bit by the vague nature of the book’s ending, which teases a finality without truly spelling it out. For this reviewer, here’s hoping Cotterill launches a prequel series from Siri’s early days.
]]> <![CDATA[Grandad, There's A Head On The Beach (Jimm Juree, #2)]]> 12992430 326 Colin Cotterill 0857387081 Jeremy 2 3.74 2012 Grandad, There's A Head On The Beach (Jimm Juree, #2)
author: Colin Cotterill
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2012/10/08
date added: 2015/12/05
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Axe Factor (Jimm Juree #3)]]> 17934616 Chumphon Gazette. This time they are sending her out to interview a local farang (European) writer, Conrad Coralbank, who writes award-winning crime novels. At the same time, several local women have left town without a word to anyone, leaving their possessions behind. These include the local doctor, Dr. Sumlak, who never returned from a conference, and the Thai wife of the aforementioned Conrad Coralbank. All of which looks a little suspicious, especially to Jimm's grandfather, an ex-cop who notices Coralbank's interest in Jimm with a very jaundiced eye. And now a major storm is brewing. Who knows what it will blow in for Jimm and her family?]]> 304 Colin Cotterill 1250043360 Jeremy 3
Frustrated journalist Jimm Juree, hemmed down by family obligations and with no romantic life to speak of, has left her career as a reporter in the big city to help her mother run their shack of a hotel in the small village of Maprao on the coast of Thailand.

When she is not solving crimes that seem to crop up in the vicinity, Jimm is running interference between a pushy transvestite brother, an intermittently sane mother, a brawny but otherwise ill-equipped brother, and a taciturn grandfather. Things don’t improve much when her long-lost father turns up to renew relations with his abandoned wife. The deadly cocktail of her loneliness, a suffocating family, and an impending monsoon which threatens to wash away the remains of their little resort � all combine to form a perfect storm which leaves Jimm emotionally vulnerable.

As if on cue, an elegant English crime writer steps onto the scene, whom she’s assigned by the local paper to interview. He readily sweeps her off her feet with sincere flattery and blue-eyed Continental charm. Her vulnerability to his romantic advances allows her to overlook some glaring oddities in the suave writer’s household, notably an absent wife and an extremely menacing maid.

That’s one side of the storyline. Every other chapter in The Axe Factor is an entry in the anonymous blog of a raving, axe-wielding serial killer who, after getting a first taste of shockingly violent murder wants to up the ante, and soon. Meanwhile, just as the writer is unconcerned about his wife’s absence, so the local police force is unable to connect the dots between her and other women reported missing in the area.

A death threat tacked to her door with a butcher knife and the attempted poisoning of the homeless dogs she shelters doesn’t sway Juree enough to snap out of her reverie. However, her family go into defensive mode, especially her grandfather Jah. He is a retired cop who never for a minute trusts the farang writer and the current crisis re-awakens his old investigative tendencies. With Jimm in a romantic glamour, it is up to her family to rally and protect her, as families do, even dysfunctional ones. This is a common theme in Cotterill’s books, where family and community form ranks to protect each other.

Jimm’s family is aided by her friend Lieutenant Chompu, an overtly flamboyant queen whose excellent nose for police work is belied by his magisterial flare. He is one of the best characters in the series, and is a trademark Cotterill creation: patently eccentric but with a heart of gold. Chompu helps Juree trace the missing doctor’s career, which describes a long history of defying corporate malfeasance and third world exploitation on a grand scale. When Jimm Juree disappears just as the blog promises a new victim, it may be too late for her rag-tag rescue squad of a family as they rush to the scene.

Folks used to Cotterill’s madcap brand of noir may nevertheless find this installment lacking. It seems to fall back on the structure of the previous book, Grandad, There’s a Head on the Beach, with its running gag of ironic chapter headings. The trouble is this one misses the mark, for all it’s comic intentions. It remains to be seen whether the series is getting attenuated or if this just represents a weak note. Even Cotterill’s revered Dr Siri Paboun series had lacklustre moments. The Jimm Juree books share the political undercurrent that runs through the Siri series, where the characters deal head-on with real social injustice issues, but it never pretends to be as sober, and is just plain wacky.

I’m a big fan of Jimm Juree, and as a whole, The Axe Factor preserves the series� well-developed characters, who maintain their quirkiness and panache in a novel filled with sex, violence, and ample red herrings to satisfy the average mystery fan. But for all its gory gruesomeness mixed with slapstick comedy, this mostly entertaining follow-up still falls flat in comparison to previous entries.]]> 3.72 2013 The Axe Factor (Jimm Juree #3)
author: Colin Cotterill
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2014/05/14
date added: 2015/12/05
shelves:
review:
Originally reviewed at

Frustrated journalist Jimm Juree, hemmed down by family obligations and with no romantic life to speak of, has left her career as a reporter in the big city to help her mother run their shack of a hotel in the small village of Maprao on the coast of Thailand.

When she is not solving crimes that seem to crop up in the vicinity, Jimm is running interference between a pushy transvestite brother, an intermittently sane mother, a brawny but otherwise ill-equipped brother, and a taciturn grandfather. Things don’t improve much when her long-lost father turns up to renew relations with his abandoned wife. The deadly cocktail of her loneliness, a suffocating family, and an impending monsoon which threatens to wash away the remains of their little resort � all combine to form a perfect storm which leaves Jimm emotionally vulnerable.

As if on cue, an elegant English crime writer steps onto the scene, whom she’s assigned by the local paper to interview. He readily sweeps her off her feet with sincere flattery and blue-eyed Continental charm. Her vulnerability to his romantic advances allows her to overlook some glaring oddities in the suave writer’s household, notably an absent wife and an extremely menacing maid.

That’s one side of the storyline. Every other chapter in The Axe Factor is an entry in the anonymous blog of a raving, axe-wielding serial killer who, after getting a first taste of shockingly violent murder wants to up the ante, and soon. Meanwhile, just as the writer is unconcerned about his wife’s absence, so the local police force is unable to connect the dots between her and other women reported missing in the area.

A death threat tacked to her door with a butcher knife and the attempted poisoning of the homeless dogs she shelters doesn’t sway Juree enough to snap out of her reverie. However, her family go into defensive mode, especially her grandfather Jah. He is a retired cop who never for a minute trusts the farang writer and the current crisis re-awakens his old investigative tendencies. With Jimm in a romantic glamour, it is up to her family to rally and protect her, as families do, even dysfunctional ones. This is a common theme in Cotterill’s books, where family and community form ranks to protect each other.

Jimm’s family is aided by her friend Lieutenant Chompu, an overtly flamboyant queen whose excellent nose for police work is belied by his magisterial flare. He is one of the best characters in the series, and is a trademark Cotterill creation: patently eccentric but with a heart of gold. Chompu helps Juree trace the missing doctor’s career, which describes a long history of defying corporate malfeasance and third world exploitation on a grand scale. When Jimm Juree disappears just as the blog promises a new victim, it may be too late for her rag-tag rescue squad of a family as they rush to the scene.

Folks used to Cotterill’s madcap brand of noir may nevertheless find this installment lacking. It seems to fall back on the structure of the previous book, Grandad, There’s a Head on the Beach, with its running gag of ironic chapter headings. The trouble is this one misses the mark, for all it’s comic intentions. It remains to be seen whether the series is getting attenuated or if this just represents a weak note. Even Cotterill’s revered Dr Siri Paboun series had lacklustre moments. The Jimm Juree books share the political undercurrent that runs through the Siri series, where the characters deal head-on with real social injustice issues, but it never pretends to be as sober, and is just plain wacky.

I’m a big fan of Jimm Juree, and as a whole, The Axe Factor preserves the series� well-developed characters, who maintain their quirkiness and panache in a novel filled with sex, violence, and ample red herrings to satisfy the average mystery fan. But for all its gory gruesomeness mixed with slapstick comedy, this mostly entertaining follow-up still falls flat in comparison to previous entries.
]]> Americanah 15796700 477 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Jeremy 0 to-read 4.32 2013 Americanah
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/11/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> City on Fire 24189224 New York Times
Ìý
New York City, 1976. Meet Regan and William Hamilton-Sweeney, estranged heirs to one of the city’s great fortunes; Keith and Mercer, the men who, for better or worse, love them; Charlie and Samantha, two suburban teenagers seduced by downtown’s punk scene; an obsessive magazine reporter and his idealistic neighbor—and the detective trying to figure out what any of them have to do with a shooting in Central Park on New Year’s Eve.
Ìý
The mystery, as it reverberates through families, friendships, and the corridors of power, will open up even the loneliest-seeming corners of the crowded city. And when the blackout of July 13, 1977, plunges this world into darkness, each of these lives will be changed forever.
Ìý
City on Fire is an unforgettable novel about love and betrayal and forgiveness, about art and truth and rock ’n� roll: about what people need from each other in order to live . . . and about what makes the living worth doing in the first place.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 911 Garth Risk Hallberg 0385353774 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.39 1997 City on Fire
author: Garth Risk Hallberg
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.39
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/11/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Father 25617068
An epic crime novel with the excitement of Jo Nesbo's Headhunters and the narrative depth of We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Father is inspired by the extraordinary true story of three brothers who committed ten audacious bank robberies in Sweden over the course of just two years.

None had committed a crime before. All were under 24 years old. All of them would be changed forever as individuals and as a family.

This intoxicating, heartbreaking thriller tells the story of how three boys are transformed over the course of their lives from innocent children to the most wanted criminals in Sweden. And of the man who made them that way: their father.]]> 496 Anders Roslund Jeremy 5 4.06 2014 The Father
author: Anders Roslund
name: Jeremy
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2015/10/22
date added: 2015/10/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hanging Girl (Department Q, #6)]]> 24611980 512 Jussi Adler-Olsen 0525954945 Jeremy 0 to-read 3.89 2015 The Hanging Girl (Department Q, #6)
author: Jussi Adler-Olsen
name: Jeremy
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/09/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>